Update 04/08/24
Project is still ongoing at the slow rate I work, but it has been delayed the past few weeks since I’ve been working on a little single chapter tie in project for the CELICA competition. Probably the fastest I’ve built anything in FEBuilder! Go check it out once it’s posted (will post link here).
Excuses for my slow progress
Update 12/01/23:
Good news is the project isn’t dead.
Bad news is because of some catastrophic data loss it’s going to be a while before I have anything new.
Main source of the slow pace now is the story is being reworked from the ground up. Characters remain mostly the same, but many things including the scenario will be different from the old proof of concept demo (link and old details removed as of 08-02-2023).
That said, I’ve decided to rebuild the whole thing on a fresh ROM armed with better knowledge of FEBuilder. I thankfully had most of the assets like portrait sprites and whatnot backed up, and those that aren’t I can likely pull from the older backups, but probably won’t have any actual updates in a while.
The data loss didn’t help the rate I’ve been putting this project together, but it allows me to rebuild the thing without having some, admittedly inconsequential, broken things and bugs that annoyed me.
Current plans are to have:
Full length game/story of ~20-30 chapters, not including “interlude” chapters.
Fleshed out “Archive” (Guide Menu) for lore buffs and reference (this may or may not survive)
Fully written supports (mixed bag of serious character interactions, jokes, learning of backstories, etc.)
Custom animations (mostly vanilla or pulled from graphics repo. With credits of course)
Custom music (from other games, with credits)
New/Added classes
Non-Branching promotions
Skill System (personal skill only are planned, but some characters may get a promoted class skill)
And finally trying not to let it get over ambitious for a first project. Because I tend to do that.
Work’s been kicking my butt lately (11-12h shifts lately cause OT is needed) so progress is slower than I had expected, still trucking though. Spent more time making some FFXI tracks work than anything else of late because of the overtime. Has been a huge pain and time sink trying to get the instruments right and figuring out which tracks can be removed while still having it sound right (some have more than 24 tracks, and many won’t work because of it.). I need to spend more time writing/eventing lol.
I hope to get a build with the first 4 or 5 chapters out at least to get some feedback in the next couple months. Anyway, here’s an example of the music:
They’re direct from the PS2 sound files (can’t get midis from the PC version .dat files to my knowledge). I never managed to get VGMTrans to work myself, but I managed to find a download from someone who went through the trouble of doing it all for FFXI (credit in video description). The midi instruments are all wrong since the game uses a certain soundfont, and a lot of the tracks can be several octaves too high or too low. Kind of a pain, but worth it!
So far I’ve been able to get quite a few which will work fine in FEGBA. Zi’tah sadly has 32 tracks, so without significant work will be impossible (was the first song I wanted to use…). Selbina is missing a key track as well for some reason, which made me sad.
Got quite a few going. Just off the top of my head, I’ve done: Battle Theme 2, Battle in the Dungeon 2, Hume Male, Mhaura, Repression, The Grand Duchy of Jeuno, Ru’lude Gardens, A New Horizon, Whispers of the Gods, Vana’diel March 2, Rolanberry Fields.
Just a short update since I haven’t done one in a fair while:
Work is progressing slowly on this hack, as ever. Sort of on the back burner at the moment with life and other things taking my time and attention. Work, adulting, and whatnot. Also GG Strive and FFXIV… Oh and FFXI is gonna have a return campaign… And SF5 is getting a Rival Schools rep and-- Yeah…
I occasionally jot down ideas and notes and stuff when they come, just a matter of time constraints and balancing what I want to focus on with my free time. Which, of late, has been actually completing a relic while it’s relevant in FFXIV and mixing people up with Millia in GG.
Motivation for making this thing is not gone by any means, but I did say it’d be a slow process for me.
Updated the original post.
Updated screenshots
Added some details about the story/plot.
Not quite ready to release a demo/first chapters yet. Working out bugs in eventing and adjusting writing until I like it more (I’m not quite set on the opening game text yet, but I posted it under the Plot details. It’s subject to change). Nearing the point of an early build though, I think. Hopefully by the end of the year.
I’m annoyed at myself for not releasing any builds at this point. Haven’t worked on the hack itself much lately, been trying to piece story stuff together and plan it out more than I usually would. Sick of disliking the progress and starting from scratch >.> Happy with where it’s at right now for the most part, but I want to solidify things more for myself before committing to a release build, even if only a 3-4 chapter demo (or 5-7 if gaidens count).
In the meantime, here’s another FF11 song I made work in it. Not sure where I’ll put it, probably in a later part of the game. But it was something to do during writers block time while still wanting to work on the bloody hack. Wings of the Goddess nostalgia right here.
The project’s first demo build is linked in the main post.
Build contains 4 chapters (prologue-chapter 3) and 2 interludes (dunno what others call them, rest chapters?).
It’s not as polished as I was intending it to be at this point (I am not happy with chapters 2 and 3, I’m well aware they need to be reworked), but I said I’d push to get it out before the end of the year and I figure I need some feedback on the project thus far.
That and if I don’t push it out now, I probably won’t before the end of the year with the holidays coming up. Busy time of year as you all know. Also Endwalker.
Can’t promise I’ll update this often, and my snail’s pace of work will likely continue, but I will still be working on this project for the foreseeable future. I’m only really planning on releasing builds when I’m happy enough with them. Hopefully you all enjoy it!
KNOWN ISSUES
-The enemy placement and game balance is NOT FINAL for any chapter. Chapters 2 and 3 are definitely going to be reworked. Been focused on the writing side more.
-Eventing jankyness exists. Please do not skip things with the Start button, might break things if I forgot to put the “disallow scene skipping but allow dialogue skipping/fastforward” in.
--------------(Use the B button instead if you are skipping!)---------------
-Writing is not fully proofread or edited, sorry for any mistakes.
-The Archive is slightly buggy because of text overflow. Should be fine for the most part. The Archive is also not finished nor are the contents final, this is a demo build.
-I kinda just assigned enemy IDs so long as they had the right name, so enemy generic portraits likely won’t match their class on the map. Will eventually fix.
-Not all of the dialogue is final, there are some issues and inconsistencies with it which I intend to adjust at a later date. It’s in a “good enough” state for now.
-There are still some placeholder dialogue (boss quotes, for example) and portraits (the not-even-recolored bandits being obvious).
-Portraits are still kinda messy. None of them are done, but some are further along than others.
-Certain music tracks have the velocities set too high. Still learning how to use DAWs in general, not sure if Anvil Studio lets you adjust velocities.
-Music volumes might be a bit inconsistent, but none should peak.
-Sometimes a couple characters spawn in the wrong position in the 2nd interlude. But it still works.
Oh hey, it’s been a year since I made the original post. Ha! Just swinging by for an update on the project:
At current I haven’t had much time since posting the patch file a couple months back to work on it. At current, work and life and whatnot are taking precedence. I’m still planning on continuing this project, but for now work on the hack itself will be on an indefinite hiatus.
I still will likely be working on story bits and outlining stuff for it in some of my free time, but it just may be months or longer until start working on the hack itself again.
Just a quick update on the project: It’s not dead, but the game likely won’t be getting any updates any time soon.
Trying to make a more structured story than how I’ve generally done my writing (i.e. I found out the hard way that writing as it comes to mind, editing later may not be the best way to approach writing for me). I’ve never finished anything the old way, so yeah; structured approach it is.
Leaving the demo up as is, I’m still proud of it as it is despite its many flaws. It’s my proof of concept. And I have many changes to the story in the works since the demo build. But before I dive back into working on the romhack project again I’ve a lot of legwork I want to put into writing the story. Basically getting story and worldbuilding done first, making the game second.
Haven’t made an update in a bit; project is still alive and still going at a snail’s pace.
Have made some characters and portraits and some map editing (changed some tilesets and whatnot), but not much done on the story front.
Probably will be last update until I have something more solid to show. Several revisions in mind for story, need to make myself finalize stuff and stop changing things. May not see anything some time, but it is being cobbled together.
BACK UP YOUR STUFF OFTEN AND MAKE REDUNDANT BACKUPS
SSD kicked the bucket during a stretch I wasn’t working on the project, bad sectors made my project’s files unrecoverable. Didn’t lose everything off the drive, thankfully, but ~30% of it was straight up unreadable. Only found out the drive was dying because I tried to watch an old video I had saved and it was corrupted.
Good news is the project isn’t dead and I learned a valuable lesson regarding data backups. I am currently rebuilding it and I’ll be backing things up much more regularly to my NAS.
Bad news is at the rate I work it’ll likely be a long time before I have any actual updates again. Not that I made many updates in the first place.
That said, I’ve decided to rebuild the whole thing on a fresh ROM armed with better knowledge of FEBuilder. I thankfully had most of the assets like portrait sprites and whatnot backed up, and those that aren’t I can likely pull from the older backups, but probably won’t have any actual updates in a while.
Firstly: Updated original post and added some current screenshots. Made some progress at least. Still truckin’ along slowly after the whole catastrophic data loss thing. Also, work on this project went on a slight hiatus for about the past month because…
Secondly: I made a sort of prequel chapter to this project in the form of my CELICA entry featuring some younger versions of characters in the new screenshots on original post. Go check it and the other CELICA entries that are posted out!
Been a few months since last update. Went on a few months hiatus because life (work, going back to school, other games, etc.). Worked on it over the past weekend and did get some work on it done though.
I did, however spend some time over that hiatus making some ripped music files from other games work in FE8 with the all instrument patch.
