AVALANCHE

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MrAdults

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Hi everyone. I registered here a while ago to post a bit in the tech forum, so I figured I might as well post and let everyone know about the project I just finished up a few days ago:
http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/ava/index.php?content=inc_media.htm
It is a third person action game in the style of Devil May Cry, set in the FF7 universe. It also features music from the FF7: VotL project, and most of the content is brand new (some free models from turbosquid are used, and a number of character models are heavily based on original FF7 mesh designs, though not straight-ripped from FF7 itself). Pretty much everything you could want to know is (hopefully) in the online instruction manual, and there is some gameplay video on the page linked if you would like to take a look before deciding whether or not to download it. So, please enjoy.
 
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That looks very good, I'll be sure to download it once I'm finished my current downloads. :-)
 
Wow, I'll have to wait a while for the download, but it looks very good.  Just curious, how long did it take to finish a project like this?
 
A Square-Enix Cease & Desist in 3... 2...  :wink: ... well, it wouldn't surprise me if it happens, but in the meantime, I'll download it and give it a go.  :-D
 
This is looking pretty boss, dude. Did you design the engine from scratch or are you using an existing one? I haven't played this yet but I've checked out the manual and the game play looks awesome. Even if I turn out to not like the game play, I've gotta give you credit for what I've seen thus far.
 
do you think its possible to post mods with other characters being controlled, either on your site or this one? Great job by the way.
 
Thanks you for all the compliments. It took about 6 months from start to finish. The tech is another story, though. The tech is all done from scratch, and it's something I've been working on, off and on, for the past 5 or so years.

do you think its possible to post mods with other characters being controlled, either on your site or this one? Great job by the way.
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If anyone sends me a mod like that, I'll happily post it. You could accomplish such a thing with the SDK on the downloads page. The SDK code is all written in C/C++, and can be compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 2005. It should also compile with the free Express Edition of MSVC++ 2005.
 
I've been playing it a little - it's pretty smooth, well done! It has so little to do with FF7 though, you might have been better off creating your own game world, as we all know how much big companies love to squash pet projects like this. Honestly the game is probably good enough to stand on its own rather than relying on their franchise.
 
The story is pretty subtle in a lot of ways, but it's pretty deeply tied into FF7's, as well as, like FF7, Kabbalism in general. There are a lot of references to that even in the items and enemies, but yeah, it probably could stand on its own with a little bit of refactoring. I'm a videogame industry veteran of about 10 years now, though, and I really just wanted to make something that I could love. You kind of start to get sick of the general soullessness and lack of passion behind the work in this industry when you have to crank out enough titles under the direction of people who lack a real coherent vision of what they're making, as silly as that may sound. And the general characters, environments, and setting in FF7 stand out to me so much as one of the greatest interactive experiences I've ever had that I just decided to go with it. If Square comes down on it, that'll be a shame, but hell, it was worth it. :)
 
If Square comes down on it, that'll be a shame, but hell, it was worth it. :)
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Too true, I downlaoded this and it has kept me entertained for a while.  Well done, I think it's pretty damn awesome! :-D
 
Oh, absolutely, I have nothing against you choosing it as a base. Considering that the later FF (and non-FF Square) games tend to copy item/spell names and such from earlier instalments while completely changing the gameplay I don't think you've done any worse than they have, they just happen to own the property and drag it into the dumps on purpose.

I should say that I haven't played too far yet, so I don't know how deep the plot goes.
 
You definitely seem like someone who could benefit the Q-Gears project.  Interested?
 
the game looks good, but for some reason the camera angle seems to be locked where i see 'up' tifa, as well as the camera angle is spinning clockwise very quickly and the manual and messing around in the configuration doesn't seem to do anything, is it just me with that problem?
 
You definitely seem like someone who could benefit the Q-Gears project.  Interested?
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I've been following it loosely, and would be happy to contribute code to it if there's any work I've already done that would assist it. I did a lot of work in figuring out PSX format battle models and animations, but presumably Q-Gears already has a solid base for all of that. If not, I would gladly contribute anything I wrote there.

the game looks good, but for some reason the camera angle seems to be locked where i see 'up' tifa, as well as the camera angle is spinning clockwise very quickly and the manual and messing around in the configuration doesn't seem to do anything, is it just me with that problem?
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It sounds like you have an input device attached to your system with an anlog stick stuck in the up position. Try disconnecting any gamepads, that will probably correct the problem.
 
After playing a bit, about halfway through I'm guessing, some thoughts:

This has the potential to become an extremely good game. If there were "adventure" parts of the game where you could talk to people, upgrade your gloves, you know more of an RPG feel when you're not fighting, that could make it pretty sick.

Stages are monotonous. The fighting system is EXTREMELY well done and takes some attention away from this, but they're still pretty bare bones in design. Using stages that fit better into the FF7 universe would send them over the top.

The ability to play as Barret and/or Cloud would be nice. I just want to pick someone up and shoot them like Barret did in the beginning! Barret would make a neat shooter type character, Cloud of course could be a "Sword of the Berserk" style character, and Tifa is pretty much perfect as is.

I'm only nitpicking cause it's pretty obvious what all the good points are. Graphics are just right. Not over the top, but they all fit together and that's what counts to me. Intuitive controls, good HUD, I'm loving the combat, and the forge system is pretty cool. It all just seemed mashed together so it can be what it is. As I mentioned, if you somehow scrapped the church and gave non-combat time more of an adventure feel with shops and such, wow. If nothing else, this would blow Dirge of Cerberus out of the water with some work.

A little easier with I suppose would be some materia. Unless they're hidden items I just haven't forged yet, using some actual magic would be fun.

Anyways, great job. I was expecting a lot less than this when I played. I'm a streets of rage/dynasty warriors person so this is a treat so far.
 
Yeah, repetitive level design and a lack of non-combat interludes is completely a decision made due to a lack of resources and time constraints. I'm only one man, and to be honest, I only started mapping at the beginning of this project, so I'm still relatively slow in getting things done. So I had to play up the strengths instead, which meant a focus on the combat. I really wanted to do a lot of that differently, but I couldn't afford to stretch this thing out another 3 months.

The good news is that it's extremely moddable, and other people can easily make new missions that invovle non-combat and tons of interaction. The scripting system is pretty robust and has functionality to make all sorts of cinematic sequences and NPC interactions without touching a line of real code. You can even make new inventory items and weapons without touching any code, and do inventory checks in NPC interactions or have NPC's provide you with new inventory items or anything else you could possibly want. But the bad news is that no one has shown an interest in that yet.

I wanted non-Tifa player characters as well, but the problem there was animations. Tifa has something around 800 frames of animation, and I also hadn't done any work as an animator before the start of this project, so that was a whole lot of work for me as well. A typical enemy can get away with maybe 100-200 frames and a lot of duplicated frames to fill in the gaps, but you just can't really get away with that on the player, and you need a lot of variation in moves and abilities to make it a worthwhile experience. That's another thing that someone could easily add in with the AVALANCHE SDK, though.

But all that said, glad you like it so far. Do feel free to help spread the word and get other developers interested if you have time, I would love to see and assist other people in making content for this. But then, that's probably obvious with that gigantic modding section I wrote on the web site. :)
 
Before this drops TOO far down, I gotta ask how this is going. I noticed you've updated to a 4th version with some new features. I must confess I'm tied up already too much to help out, and I can't make heads or tails of how to make mods for this haha. Anyone working on anything special?

Admittedly, I'm also trying to just shed more light on this. I still say this engine has enormous potential to turn into one HELL of an action/RPG based in the FF7 universe.
 
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Hey, sorry for taking a month to reply. :) I have been doing iPhone contract stuff and traveling, so it's taken me this long to get around to looking at this forum again. I'm going to be going back to AVALANCHE after this current contract project is wrapped up, though. Would love to hear any late feedback or mod ideas anyone has on the game, I will probably be focussing more as I return on implementing new tech features and making mods that branch off of the main game with new gameplay ideas and experiments.

As a side note, the engine is also running on the iPhone in vertex-lit mode. I actually managed to get some native AVALANCHE content up and running on it, and had Tifa running around at a solid 30fps on hardware. Unfortunately, being all FF7-based, I'm pretty sure Apple would never allow it on the app store. ;)
 
just from looking at the gameplay it looks like you could set up magic system one button uses one cycles through the magic you have

you could also intoduce a party system 3 people that you can switch between one button cycles threw different characters and you change whos in your group in the hub the Ai would be similar to the enemys only slightly better and each charater being better at different things tifa being the all round barret like a tank more health less damage gets attacked first cause he should hit first being ranged cloud being more damage orentated less health.

by the way looks good
 
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