First Fantasy II ideas vault

[xlibman]

Thanks. I still need to look through the code to see how I was drawing dungeon walls, to see if I could make the bottom part of walls a different tile for the walls at the top, but only when the left and right paths are open. ALso the obstacles/events other than doors will have to be drawn before the walls, so that they don't overlap above them. Or I could just draw new houses in the middle of the screen at the top for the village mode.

[c4ooo]

Story
A few years into the future, terrorists took over all nations and wiped out most of the Earth population. Survivors retaliated with nukes, but this only hastened Earth destruction. Only North Korea managed to survive the initial attacks, but the nuclear fallout eventually spread to their country, killing anyone who didn't take shelter underground.

1000 years after, the few survivors that remains underground have gained magical powers that they can use while doing math. Anything else that survived became a monster and no one has any knowledge about past civilization. Now that the overworld is radiation-free, it's time to seek for that info and the answer to mankind's future.

Another thing you could do is refer to nations as archetype god figures; the Nuclear War I would be referred to as a battle in the pantheon
EX:
"Acmerius" -America
"Kitaius" -China
"russus" - Russia
"Kaereas" - ("ae" makes an "I" as in "eye")

[xlibman]

I was more thinking about the following, from a 1000 years into the future point of view, where people have no knowledge of past civilizations and the only indications being some books and maybe a map or two. The game areas will be refered to as the following by people:

DRPK ( North Korea)
Overworld (surface of DRPK)
Underworld (underground shelters in DRPK where survivors resides)
Dead Zone (rest of the world, overrun by monsters. Only what used to be China is visited, there)
Himalaya (thought to be a legendary place by people)


Areas not visited in game but still brought up by NPCs or books (the acronym meanings are lost since 1000 years ago because of how DRPK is cut off from the rest of the world and the fact the only survivors are located therr, underground)
ISNA ( North America)
ISEA (Europe and Asia)
ISA (Africa)
The existence of the rest of the world is unknown to anyone

[xlibman]

Bump:


So I had some ideas for a FFII game that would use the CE Textlib stuff in the other topic rather than the above. Animations would be more simple to not have to update the map tiles all the time during battles, but I had some ideas for battle content:

Magic spells (enemy sprite disappears during animation):
LV1: Fire (vertical Textlib lines of red hue randomized over enemy sprite)
LV1: Ice (same animation, but blue)
LV1: Bolt (vertical line going down flashing between black and yellow, with a row of 5 rectangles flashing randomly between black and yellow)
LV1: Cure (HUD flashes between navy and cyan)
LV2: Flare (even larger fire animation (flames go high enough to cover the entire monster height)
LV2: Frost (same but blue)
LV2: Blitz (even larger bolt)
LV2: Life (HUD flashes even longer between navy and cyan)
LV3: Blast (big sphere cycling through red, orange, yellow and white)
LV3: Psy (same but black, navy, magenta and cyan). Absorbs HP
LV3: Flash (same, but instantly flashes between magenta, yellow and cyan)
LV3: Holy (HUD flashes even longer between navy and cyan)
Magic damage is same as Mana Force.

Sphere colors are stored in a list and the sphere is made of 7 rectangles (13,1 then 26,3 then 26,5 then 52,5)

Items:
Herb: Heals Poison
Potion: Heals 1000 HP
Walnut: Heals 100 MP
Elixir: Heals 9999 HP and 999 MP

Enemy attacks (text is preserved during animations using command 34 in Textlib):
Regular: HUD flashes between red and normal once
Fire: HUD flashes between red and yellow a few times
Poison: HUD flashes between green and yellow a few times
1K Hit: HUD flashes between red and normal a few times
Flash: HUD flashes between magenta, yellow and cyan
Omega: HUD flashes between black and white even longer


Damage formulas are the same as Mana Force, kinda.

Also, I think you will only be able to equip 4 magic spells at once and you will only acquire level 2 and 3 magic past a certain point in the game, from mastering or by purchasing the spells. The in-game menu would let you equip different spells.


And the battle layout would be similar to Dragon Warrior for the NES. I don't know if there will be a text box explaining the battle but that's a possibility if I can fit in all text. here are text examples:

Enemy used Flash
9999 HP damage

You used Elixir
All HP/MP Healed

You used Herb
Poison is healed

You used Potion
1000 HP healed

You used Walnut
100 MP restored

You used Blitz
9999 HP damage

You used Evil
9999 HP absorbed

The HUD flashing stuff is because there is no animation for when you take damage, since battles are first-person view. Instead, the HUD will flash.

The game story premise would be similar to the ISIS holocaust idea, but slightly different and the in-game story would be different as well:

     A long time ago,
  The world caught fire,
Evil dust caused chaos and
      Magic was born.
A seal was created with it
 To protect the survivors,
     But they now face
      a new threat...

[Jkolade936]

That's a whole lot of good ideas, for "some."
I like them, though. The story is awesome.

But as for this:

The HUD flashing stuff is because there is no animation for when you take damage, since battles are first-person view. Instead, the HUD will flash.

Maybe you could at least add some sort of hazy vision thing, or blood splatters around the edge of the screen when the health get low? Also, you could have Wal-rush CE Textlib's death animation.

[xlibman]

That could work, although the idea there is to ensure that nothing gets drawn over the map tiles, to keep speed as high as possible. Something that could be done, though, is make the battle command menu disappear and put the magic animation there.

[Jkolade936]

Sounds good to me.

[xlibman]

So I have finished drawing all dungeon sprites and the village tiles, including potential day/night cycle ones (if that gets implemented, that is). Due to the freedom the enemy sprite engine will give, the sprite data is made of only 6 sprites, yet there are 48 enemies. Each dungeon have 6 enemies, one of which will be flagged as a boss that can't be run into in random encounters. Whichever enemy is flagged as a boss (if any) will depend of which dungeon you're in.


Regarding Castlevania II Simon's Quest day and night cycles, if they get implemented, Cursed Woods will not have any enemy during daytime, while Life Forest will not have any at night (they'll be asleep), and town villagers will be unavailable at night or even replaced with ghosts.

And for more freedom, it's possible that there will be two event types in dungeons, one of which shows up in the center of the screen and the other blocking the northern entrance in the screen. But again, I could just make map data boolean, so basically when a door is open it would just act as if a wall opened.

[xlibman]

So I just checked and it looks like with the current size of the FFII monster sprites, I might be able to show the main character during battle, after all. What do you think about the following?



Of course, when you select battle commands, your character would disappear due to being hidden behind the text window, but otherwise this would allow me to have the same magic animations on your character.

The idea there is to ensure that the wall tiles are never erased during battle (except maybe the final boss if I make it larger and have no walls in that battlefield, but that's another story.

I might also still display damage inside a text box, because this is what it would look like in traditional RPG style (which would cause issues in some game areas):

[Jkolade936]

That monster looks pretty awesome!

For the damage, you could make the HP on the bar flash red and change instead of displaying it on the character.
For the monster, there may or may not be space between the monster and the character.

[xlibman]

Thanks. Actually if you check one of my older posts (I think in pixel art) I posted more monster sprite examples. This particular monster will not be in that dungeon, though. It was more an example.

And yeah that was an idea I had. However, another idea I had was to make battles sideways, like Final Fantasy. The menu would be below the character and monster, leaving enough space for damage display.

[Jkolade936]

Like Reuben Quest, with the character on the right?

[xlibman]

I don't know on which side the character would be, really. In Illusiat and FInal Fantasy, the character was often to the right, but in First Fantasy it's the other way around and the view is diagonal. That said, I guess maybe people might be fine if the two were switched around and made horizontal, since FFMF was the first game. I also need to make the main character drawing as a sub-routine

[xlibman]

So I had an idea for FFII magic system:

Allow the player to create his own magic spells. He would go to the magic shop and pay the mage to sell him magic powers. Each mage would be located to the extreme north, south, east or west of the world map (outside the Evil Dust Barrier or very close), so that the story about how that's where magic power is available still makes sense.

Your character would only be able to carry 4 spells at a time, so he would need to go to the magic shop again to redo his combinations. The currently existing spell would be replaced with the new one.


More importantly, though, I was considering allowing the player to create spell combinations. They would probably all look the same or close, depending of the level at which they are learned, but perhaps that could be solved via some list creation (for example, when casting a spell it would store the spell animation type and the spell color hues in a list, along with the character healing/damage, the enemy damage, bonuses (eg regular attack/defense, elemental properties or protection, exp obtained after battle).

You would combine an element :
-Earth (requires obtaining earth crystal)
-Wind (requires obtaining wind crystal)
-Water (requires obtaining water crystal)
-Fire (requires obtaining fire crystal)

With a magic power:
-Fire
-Ice
-Bolt

Combo	LV 1	LV 2	LV 3
-Earth+Fire:
-Earth+Ice:
-Earth+Bolt:
-Wind+Fire:
-Wind+Ice:
-Wind+Bolt:	Heal	Heal	Life
-Water+Fire:	ATK++	DEF++	MAG++
-Water+Ice:
-Water+Bolt:
-Fire+Fire:	Fire	Xplod	Xplod
-Fire+Ice:	N/A	N/A	?
-Fire+Bolt:

It's possible also that casting a spell of a specific crystal element might increase your element level and either be able to learn stronger versions of a spell or a totally new one. Some combinations might just do nothing or just fall back on another spell.

[xlibman]

New sprite ideas for dungeon graphics, if I was gonna switch to triple-rectangle sprites:



Enemies would most likely continue using the original technique or at the very least many more rectangles and the main character would continue being drawn the way he is now.

The numbers and the weird colored schematic basically shows in which order each rectangles get drawn. The sprites are designed to have a transparent background, so some combinations might not be possible.

EDIT: How things would be drawn:

When entering dungeon:
1) Room gets filled with plain color
2) Half of the wall tiles gets drawn (it won't scan through a matrix, but rather be drawn in an hard-coded way) (10 tiles, meaning 30 rectangles, meaning 180 list elements)
3) The other half gets drawn in a similar fashion (10 tiles, meaning 30 rectangles, meaning 180 list elements)

When moving inside the dungeon (all of the following happens in one single command)
4) The floor gets filled with plain colored rectangles (this is because sometimes, the floor might be a different color than wall backgrounds) (3 rectangles, meaning 18 elements)
5) Entrance/dead end backgrounds get updated depending of if they're walls or floor tiles  (6 rectangles, because left and right are 2 rect each, which means 36 elements)
6) Entrances or dead ends, along with the event tiles) sprites get drawn (11 tiles, meaning 33 rectangles, meaning 198 elements)

This means I can probably squeeze the last three into 1 CE Textlib list, because that would be 252 elements and CE Textlib accepts 255 elements at a time (42 rectangles max)