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Kandy_Man
Guest
Project has been updated. Everything I was sent has been uploaded along with all of the music I've done (though that's all wip). Even set up Breezy for when you click play on the Balamb Town scene 
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makipl
Guest
Awesome!
I was really worried something bad had happened to you. :/
The breezy is cool!
Expect more updates soon!
I was really worried something bad had happened to you. :/
The breezy is cool!
Expect more updates soon!
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Kandy_Man
Guest
No don't worry, no car accidents, no assassin from square, just been swamped at work.
Thanks for comments on breezy. I'm really tempted to do an actual recording rather than a digital instrument, but I wonder if I'd ever be satisfied with it haha
Looking forward to the updates. I did a quick run through in the scene view while my version of the music was playing and it felt awesome. Can't wait to see the finished version
Thanks for comments on breezy. I'm really tempted to do an actual recording rather than a digital instrument, but I wonder if I'd ever be satisfied with it haha
Looking forward to the updates. I did a quick run through in the scene view while my version of the music was playing and it felt awesome. Can't wait to see the finished version
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Kandy_Man
Guest
This one is for the programmers out there.
I've been studying Qgears, along with any info I could find on how FF8 works, and trying to plan out how the underlying code should be structured. I've taken inspiration from the data that Qgears gave us, though a lot of it has to be changed as that project is designed for FF7, not FF8.
However, I thought I'd put this up to get some feedback from any programmers looking to get in on this. It's definitely not much, but it's more just to see if people think this is heading in the right direction. If people have other ideas about how to do it then I'm all ears.
A lot of the files are Unity stuff, so the only ones that need looking at are ones with actual code in them. I've left some "to do's" in there as I just don't have the time to do as much at one time as I would like. I also made the character stats animation curves. I've spent a while researching the best way to go about character stats in RPGs for a long while now (well before this project) and it seems an effective way to do it is to use animation curves, where we can set points on a graph, such as level 1 strength = 2, level 100 strength = 150, and then just evaluating the graph based on current level. Saves a lot of time and allows good control as well (such as a character that grows slowly but then becomes really strong in their last 20-30 levels, sort of a pay off for sticking at it).
If anyone has any questions or like I said earlier, any better ways of doing things, let me know!
https://github.com/Kandy-Man/FF8HD/pull/2
Edit: Just made another commit taking care of some of the tasks I left in as comments.
I've been studying Qgears, along with any info I could find on how FF8 works, and trying to plan out how the underlying code should be structured. I've taken inspiration from the data that Qgears gave us, though a lot of it has to be changed as that project is designed for FF7, not FF8.
However, I thought I'd put this up to get some feedback from any programmers looking to get in on this. It's definitely not much, but it's more just to see if people think this is heading in the right direction. If people have other ideas about how to do it then I'm all ears.
A lot of the files are Unity stuff, so the only ones that need looking at are ones with actual code in them. I've left some "to do's" in there as I just don't have the time to do as much at one time as I would like. I also made the character stats animation curves. I've spent a while researching the best way to go about character stats in RPGs for a long while now (well before this project) and it seems an effective way to do it is to use animation curves, where we can set points on a graph, such as level 1 strength = 2, level 100 strength = 150, and then just evaluating the graph based on current level. Saves a lot of time and allows good control as well (such as a character that grows slowly but then becomes really strong in their last 20-30 levels, sort of a pay off for sticking at it).
If anyone has any questions or like I said earlier, any better ways of doing things, let me know!
https://github.com/Kandy-Man/FF8HD/pull/2
Edit: Just made another commit taking care of some of the tasks I left in as comments.
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Zervox
Guest
Regarding Level stats etc
this is from my personal work
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uzr64mo3sfqzd0x/CalcStats.txt?dl=0
(cstat here reads from the ',' in the HP column in Monster or Players table for example so LvlStat_1 = first number in the column, every column has 4 values.)
Using a Sqllite database in this case
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kwyt8u6fms7tfep/data - Copy.db?dl=0
Monster and Players table has the values needed to fill stat calculations
"HP" columns etc.
Monster stat|level calculation is 100% identical to original game to my knowledge.
the Player tables, is because leveling in FF8 levels grants stats to players as well, the values that I've filled in on players is just what I managed to get approximated as close to as possible, leaving 95% of the levels stats close to the original game. the few levels that are not 100% correct inbetween is only offset by +- 1 stat but last levels is identical stat wise.
btw creating the database was a pain in the butt filling each value by hand. ;P
this is from my personal work
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uzr64mo3sfqzd0x/CalcStats.txt?dl=0
(cstat here reads from the ',' in the HP column in Monster or Players table for example so LvlStat_1 = first number in the column, every column has 4 values.)
Using a Sqllite database in this case
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kwyt8u6fms7tfep/data - Copy.db?dl=0
Monster and Players table has the values needed to fill stat calculations
"HP" columns etc.
Monster stat|level calculation is 100% identical to original game to my knowledge.
the Player tables, is because leveling in FF8 levels grants stats to players as well, the values that I've filled in on players is just what I managed to get approximated as close to as possible, leaving 95% of the levels stats close to the original game. the few levels that are not 100% correct inbetween is only offset by +- 1 stat but last levels is identical stat wise.
btw creating the database was a pain in the butt filling each value by hand. ;P
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Kandy_Man
Guest
Personally this seems overly complicated to me. The pull request I put up has a single variable per stat and a getter that is one line, where as your implementation requires 5 parameters and quite a bit of math to return the same value. Not to mention, you said how much of a pain it was filling in each value by hand. That was the purpose of the animation curve that I mentioned in my last post. We don't need to calculate values like that when we already have the values that each character will be at each level. With the animation curve, we can set level 1, level 100, and for extra precision, each 10 levels (could go every 5 if you wanted to be super precise) and we'll have the same results only much cleaner and with a lot less work involved by us and the hardware when trying to calculate.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I just feel that calculating values is a waste of processing when we have the calculated values that we could just look up based on the character level.
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Zervox
Guest
as I said, it is to copy the original game's values without having to recreate the data nor it's behaviour. 
the amount of processing power used to calculate the stats are neglible, you can't even reliably measure the time spent due to how little time is spent in that part of the code.(yes, even if in my work I created 10000 enemies, all their stats would'be calculated according to their inputed level in sub milisecond time)
about the time spent with the DB, I would've saved considerable amount of time just modifiying the Ifirit tool to export all the values.
but yeah, either way works. didn't say you had to use the code, just made it available.
the amount of processing power used to calculate the stats are neglible, you can't even reliably measure the time spent due to how little time is spent in that part of the code.(yes, even if in my work I created 10000 enemies, all their stats would'be calculated according to their inputed level in sub milisecond time)
about the time spent with the DB, I would've saved considerable amount of time just modifiying the Ifirit tool to export all the values.
but yeah, either way works. didn't say you had to use the code, just made it available.
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Kandy_Man
Guest
No one really seemed that bothered by the implementation so I've gone ahead and merged that into master. I'll be looking to get back to this soon. What would people prefer worked on first? I'm torn between battle system or the character controller for when the player is in the field. If anyone has any preferences, speak up, else I'll pick one when I next get around to it
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Kaldarasha
Guest
I would start with the battle module. It offers many possibilities to present the game on YouTube or Twitch. It's simply the best way to show the new engine in action. The field is very important but with its static camera rather boring to look at.
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Alkor
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I really hope for this project..
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makipl
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I wish it succeeded, but that's too giant project and I'm bad at texturing (>implying that I'm good at modelling too...) so artists currently are our Phoenix Down's, and we at the moment have 0 HP. I still have all the source files and everything by the way!
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LeonhartGR
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makipl
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I'm at it again:
Textures are placeholders
Textures are placeholders
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LeonhartGR
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Ahhhh! What a wake up post! Maki I love you brother! Nice progress and good luck!
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Mcindus
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I need to start texturing this....
It will be a slow process as I'm very busy, but now that I know what I'm doing I think we'll make some good progress.
It will be a slow process as I'm very busy, but now that I know what I'm doing I think we'll make some good progress.
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cmh175
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Not sure how I never saw this, but very impressive! Above all, I'm glad to see you've stuck with this project ever since you posted it. That's half the battle. My knowledge about Unity is mostly textbook, no hands on experience, but I'm pretty familiar with UE4 (may translate well enough). I'm actually curious what made you pick Unity over UE4, I love the Unreal blueprints. To better help with development you should definitely look into Houdini FX and Houdini Engine if you aren't already using it. You'll spend more time creating a single Houdini digital asset, but you'll be able to procedurally create a whole level in UE4 and Unity in almost no time at all. Once you have a growing library of these assets you'll fly through level assembly (textures too). I'm actually getting into this now and learning more about environment creation in UE4. The Indie license isn't free, but it's not super expensive either. The amount of functionality you'll get out of it, and amount of time and effort it'll save you in the long run will make it really worth it.
I'm a Game Art student at Full Sail, and in the last...8 months or so of classes (one class each month), so my workload between assignments and personal projects can get pretty heavy, but I can try to help out with any environment or prop pieces you need. I'm getting into character sculpting now too, but it's a work in progress, anatomy is probably the biggest hurdle to get over. Other than you working in Unity, our pipelines seem pretty similar. I use Maya, zBrush, Houdini, Photoshop, and Substance Designer/Painter, so anything I work on would fit into the game design pretty well.
My Artstation if you want to see my work first: https://www.artstation.com/cmh175
I'm a Game Art student at Full Sail, and in the last...8 months or so of classes (one class each month), so my workload between assignments and personal projects can get pretty heavy, but I can try to help out with any environment or prop pieces you need. I'm getting into character sculpting now too, but it's a work in progress, anatomy is probably the biggest hurdle to get over. Other than you working in Unity, our pipelines seem pretty similar. I use Maya, zBrush, Houdini, Photoshop, and Substance Designer/Painter, so anything I work on would fit into the game design pretty well.
My Artstation if you want to see my work first: https://www.artstation.com/cmh175
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Mcindus
Guest
Honestly, I think we should do this port in Unreal. As an artist, it's just so much better looking and more optimized than unity. We can start a design in Unity in the meantime, but I do think we should ultimately use UE.
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makipl
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I'm not going to lie, I did every single visualization directly in Unreal Engine except the full Balamb Garden that I did in Unity, and as I do prefer UE4 over Unity, so yeah, I'm with you. ?
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cmh175
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Luckily porting from one to the other wouldn't be a huge hassle, assuming you've just done level assembly and materials and no coding. The UE4 blueprints would make gameplay like this pretty simple though. There's even blueprints for turn based battles like old school FF games. Would probably require almost no custom coding. I'd honestly considered doing a project like this for FF7, but it wasn't something I wanted to undertake alone, not at that scale. Though I'll admit, learning Houdini to procedurally assemble level assets is making me reconsider. Feel free to reach out if there's anything I can do to help here. I may not have time to do an entire scene, but I could assist with any props or environment assets that need to get done. As well as Hero Props if you're planning to do characters down the line (working on a character pipeline for quick NPC creation, though I need to learn and practice with Marvelous Designer). I keep an album for personal projects on my Artstation, so everything I work on ultimately helps.
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makipl
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World of Final Fantasy has fully modelled Balamb hall (with some 'artistic' addons):
extremely good for reference purpouses and floor texture
Vista is also there:
Textured in UE4 if I didn't mess up some materials (the model has changed text [translated english to rubbish made-up language] and logo is different):
extremely good for reference purpouses and floor texture
Vista is also there:
Textured in UE4 if I didn't mess up some materials (the model has changed text [translated english to rubbish made-up language] and logo is different):
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