I guess that's it, guys

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I would have encouraged you guys to keep up with making new backgrounds from scratch, because I always felt that they were the weakest part of the FF7 port and can only be properly solved with an actual re-render, but if you feel it's time to spend your energy on other projects then don't feel tied down; go for it!
 
That's not the same. If you guys are lucky enough SE will hire some of you to voice the remake. But for Mayo and me is it pointless work because we won't be part of the games development. You see even if SE creates a medicore remake more people will play it because it is official. As example many Steam users do want mods but they are not ready to upgrade the game with an unofficial downpatch for that reason.
I will still do here and there a thing, and mainly I hope that QGears will become a great engine to create our own PSX styled games (I have a really good FF7 prequel in my head which let you see the plot of FF7 in a different light without to destroy the original game). Also I have now only very limited time for two years and the remake lets finally re-enjoy the game, because it has become only a project for me. The work which is needed to overhaul the game with a HD mod is too much. With the current announcement we need 20 high talented people and Aali to fix the light layer issue to have a release right in time before SE release the remake. I can't see that this will happening.
What we can do is to polish up the Background with Alien Skins Blow Up (the results are even better as the one of YarLson) and put a bit more handwork on them but that's all what should be done.

After all FF7 is only a game among other games so we shouldn't spend all of our life blood on it.
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Q-Gears is complete enough for you to write a story of your own, you can even design you own brand new fields to explore places that weren't in the orininal game.  Also if you want to help with the project you are more than welcome.  Currently I am working on the "Finishing Touch" mod/project for Q-Gears that fixes little bugs and field script errors in the game and makes it look much more polished.
 
I see Square Enix show too often lack of talent to trust anything they are working on.

I trust your (Mayo Master), SpooX and other Qhimm residents' talents much more, to say the truth.

But I understand your decision and we can not only hope it won't be a disappointment.
 
As far as the art in concerned, I'm convinced that I don't have the tenth of the talent of any artist from Square, and I certainly don not have the same resources either. I believe I'd be delusional to think otherwise. I think Yusuke Naora doesn't need my input to do his job. Personally, even in the productions from Square that I didn't like (FF XIII series, mostly), I remained in awe of the quality of the visuals.

With the news of the remake, if I still have passion for the art, I don't find much point of spending my life blood (as Kaldarasha aptly said) on something which they can very easily surpass. As far as art and creativity go, it would make much more sense to me to spend time on making something of my own, on an different project.
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Not to throw this completely off topic but alien skin blow up looks terrible in game. Lol I obsessed over these things for over a year although all I had to work with was my personal opinion. I agree with mayo though.. We have all known that the likelihood of this project teaching a finished state was slim to none.. But people learned here..

No artist wants to spend their entire career in the shadow of other works and we certainly don't want to compete with the skill resource and sheer collective attention that the remake will receive.. It's no artists desire to be overshadowed and largely ignored for their effort.. It's ludicrous to ask anyone to do so.

Now to say that we shouldn't pursue it is not my intent merely that one cannot be blamed or misunderstood for focusing their efforts in more profitable direction, both financially and otherwise.. After all its a waste to gain such a great talent and never developer something all your own.. So it is my deepest hope this project never a dies yet I know at the very least it will be on hiatus for a long long time.
 
Square may well have resources, but they're not going to recreate the original game - they're going to leave a ton of content out and it will not be the same game anyway.  The remake isn't a reason I'd personally have to quit but that's up to each person.

If this remake was sticking to the original and updating as necessary (which it should be doing but is not) then I'd agree this project is redundant.
 
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they're going to leave a ton of content out and it will not be the same game anyway.
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To be fair, they haven't said anything about leaving content out, just about adding new content. I mean, they probably are going to leave some things out (especially combat-related), but it's silly to guess what or how much.
 
To be fair, they haven't said anything about leaving content out, just about adding new content. I mean, they probably are going to leave some things out (especially combat-related), but it's silly to guess what or how much.
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There was someone in IRC who had read more.  But the interviews already have stated content is being dropped, even that "leak" guy has mentioned it.  But at the very least, it is not going to be the same game.  ATB and so on are not going to survive and that's among many things that fans actually want in a remake.  The remake will have nice graphics but it's not a replacement, so this project is still relevant imho.
 
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It's rather a combination of the project's feasibility, and where it would fit in the end.
I had enough time for contemplating that the project's chances of success were very slim: as I said, it would have required a very tough schedule for 10 productive artists for 5-6 years in the best case. With the current crew, the team is closer to 3 people producing on average 5 scenes per year, so we would have needed some serious "snowball" effect to have any hope of getting somewhere. We would have needed to gather a lot of interest to incite people to join the team.
At the end of it, if the only purpose of the project was an upscale of the graphics, the project would end up being redundant with Omzy's and yarLson's, not to mention the possibility for new image filtering techniques to emerge. What stimulated me was the possibility to go beyond that and alter the original to bring improvements. I was feeling that it was up to me and the team to eventually get some kind of "remake", and to be honest I've been feeling constrained in my creative process by many technical limitations (although, I was still ok with that framework). With Square going at it pretty much "without limitations", they can transcend the original much better than I. If the project were to continue, I feel it would fall into some kind of "mucky middle", halfway between a conservative vision (sticking to the original, where Omzy's and yarLson's find their purpose) and an evolving vision (Square's remake). It's too much work for something having so little purpose. If there were good odds of being able to complete it before Square's remake, I would have given it a shot, but that's not going to happen.
There was someone in IRC who had read more.  But the interviews already have stated content is being dropped, even that "leak" guy has mentioned it.  But at the very least, it is not going to be the same game.  ATB and so on are not going to survive and that's among many things that fans actually want in a remake.  The remake will have nice graphics but it's not a replacement, so this project is still relevant imho.
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In the end, what you would have liked is a HD remaster (like what Square did for FFX), not a remake. I am personally a lot more interested in a remake than a remaster (even if I had the choice, as a creator). Maybe because I've always been particularly interested in the process: "take a concept/idea, analyze it, and transform it to make it better". Square may not do it like I would, but I'm totally cool with that.
 
Well, I wanted both... I wanted it to fix what needed fixing, rather than alter story, remove content, and remove systems...  that to me isn't even a remake.  If it is, it's a lazy one.
 
Well, I wanted both... I wanted it to fix what needed fixing, rather than alter story, remove content, and remove systems...  that to me isn't even a remake.  If it is, it's a lazy one.
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Right now, I do not think it is fair to say that, on many counts. I would prefer to discuss the changes brought by the remake once we know more about them, and even then, we're likely to disagree on their merits/flaws (since I would prefer the ATB to be replaced, and certainly not by a turn-based system).
 
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Square may well have resources, but they're not going to recreate the original game - they're going to leave a ton of content out and it will not be the same game anyway.  The remake isn't a reason I'd personally have to quit but that's up to each person.

If this remake was sticking to the original and updating as necessary (which it should be doing but is not) then I'd agree this project is redundant.
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DLPB and I have the same view on what the original will be even though we differing levels of excitement for it.

The fact is, the remake is going to be drastically different from the original, and those that want the original with some TLC and few changes will still desire a mod such as Team Avalanche. In an ideal world, we could have both this mod to keep the game faithful to the original, and the remake to get the modernized take on it.

There is a very real possibility the remake is going to be completely crap like many of the posters here believe, and if that happens we will all come crawling back to beg modders to keep working on the original.
 
Something that's being overlooked though is as Maya briefly mentioned this is a massive project, and at the moment TA is way too under staffed to reasonably complete this. It seems more like the main goal so far as been completing backgrounds in an attempt to attract more help, which hasn't gone well and is even more unlikely now with the remake happening. Personally I'd say with the final version of the Reunion and Kaldarasha's models coming the game's pretty much complete. Many of the upscaled backgrounds are really good and with a combination of them you can piece together a pack of really clear backgrounds. Paired with Kaldarasha's models everything looks pretty good together.

Otherwise down the line even if the new game tanks, maybe it'll be moddable on PC. I could definitely see us ripping models and backgrounds from it to import for the original too lol.
 
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Well I always had intentions to try and promote these scenes across other social medias. I haven't been very swift in getting my projects done either, so I know the feeling of being "unstaffed." I was hoping what promotion could be done would bring in some help because I have seen new faces show up here over the past year that have been capable of modding this game very well. It all takes time, effort, and patience.
 
I am very excited about the annoucement. I like doing 3D so there are no feelings of my side that my work was or is in vain. Quite the contrary I learned a lot.
 
well that's a shame i was really looking forward for the midgar overhaul at least :(
 
I still have a lot unfinished scenes on my harddrive that I will finish. If I ever lose interest I will upload them so anyone can play with them.
Funny thing: The amount of scenes that are finished or started could have easily sufficed for the Bombing Mission. The problem for me always was that Spoox at least has had blockouts for a lot of the scenes and it is not known what has happened to them. So from my point of view we were not that understaffed ( of course we could need programmers and the more artists the merrier) but a little unorganized.
 
If you feel we were unorganized, I'm accountable for that since I had taken the lead of the project. I managed TA with the following principles:
- My chief concern was how few we were, and that each artist could produce a scene in about 1.5 month minimum, and that the whole project demanded more than 500 scenes to be re-created. Since we were stretched so thin, what I wanted to avoid above all was redundancy. Thus, I tried to manage the project so that each person would work on really separate places. One of the problems regarding Midgar scenes was that some artists never made it quite clear what the extent of their contributions would be like (and I'm not talking about SpooX), and I was always willing to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than discounting them out right (again, because of our overall productivity issues).
- I had to account for the fact that various artist may very well have different creative profiles. To generalize: on the one hand there are three steps regarding the production of a work: getting the work started, developing a started work, and being able to wrap up and finish the work. Creative people are generally good at one of these three things, seldom at the three things at once. On the other hand, when facing a multitude of tasks, some people prefer to work sequentially (getting each job one after the other, and seeing each job through one by one), some others prefer to branch out (starting numerous jobs, and keep juggling between jobs). People preferring the "branching out" option are rather uncomfortable with a sequential approach, because keeping at a single task gets them bored and make it seem like a chore. So I think it is best to leave the people work with the approach they're the most comfortable with. I had the feeling that you could classify SpooX (he'd confirm himself, maybe  ;)  ) as someone who excels at starting tasks, and prefers to branch out.
- I had to be aware that, for contributors, many Real Life aspects had to take precedence over Team Avalanche. Be it job responsibilities, taking care of family/friends, recovering from an accident, all this is more important than Team Avalanche. It would be pointless to ask of someone else not to have a balanced lifestyle for the sake of the project. I've experimented upon myself last year since I had occasionally crossed the line between "hobby you're passionate about" and "chore you want to get over with", and even if you want to remain serious and passionate about this, Team Avalanche has to remain a hobby. This was in my opinion the only line to follow, because you can't have the drive for such project if you lose the "fun" aspect of it. That's why, after evaluating that, I was estimating the maximum productivity from an artist to be around 10 scenes per year, and more realistic expectations would even be below that.

I hope you can better appreciate the inherent limitations of undertaking a massive project when calling on the efforts of a loose group of amateurs.
 
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Right now, I do not think it is fair to say that, on many counts. I would prefer to discuss the changes brought by the remake once we know more about them, and even then, we're likely to disagree on their merits/flaws (since I would prefer the ATB to be replaced, and certainly not by a turn-based system).
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Since this is supposed to be a remake, I'm not sure how you feel removing a core component of the original game is okay.   That is not a remake, it's a complete change and re-imagining.  I am willing to bet that the vast majority of the fans of the original game WANT the ATB system in place, along with every other core component.  Because it was those things that made them like FF7 in the first place.  Why bother with a remake if the plan is to just do away with what made them a classic in the first place?  This point seems to be utterly lost on too many people, yourself included.  It isn't logical.  The whole purpose of this remake was supposedly to listen to fans who wanted to play the game again with better graphics - that's precisely what most people found to be the #1 reason for a remake.  It wasn't because they didn't like the ATB system.  I have literally never once heard an argument for a remake that went along the lines of "ATB system needs replacing" - it was always to upgrade the lego graphics and crap translation.

So basically, by changing a core component, you just alienate the majority of the very people the remake was appeasing.  Not very smart.  Not at all logical.  But, from Senix's pov, financially sound - because it will appeal to more people outside of the fanbase which, as I have said a few times, is the real reason the remake is in production. 

I am not saying ATB was perfect and I certainly know that the implementation of the battle system was mediocre, but those are the things that needed fixing.  I don't find any joy at all in gambits or AI characters.  I like to use my brain - and modern games are brainless and aimed at the brainless and make everyone else brainless.  I watched an FF15 trailer/demo more recently... and all it was to me was a huge pile of chaos with no tactics and little real input from the player's side.  That's not what games are meant to be about. 

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I mean just look at that.  It's just a chaotic mish mash of slashes -  It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.  If that's what gaming has come to then the industry might as well call it a day.
 
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So... you wish me to explain why I would have the dumb idea of willing to change the ATB system? Okay.

Personally, when I play a RPG, I play it primarily because I'm interested in the discovery of a fantasy world, epic adventures, and relationship between characters, and how the video game medium has a particular way to get the player immersed and involved in all this. When I play a RPG, I do not feel attached to specific combat mechanics. Regarding combat mechanics, what matters to me is that they're entertaining, have a certain element of strategy, and be coherent with the story/universe. If combat mechanics follow "Scheme X" instead of "Pattern Y", I don't really care. Now, I've never said that I didn't like ATB: actually I found that ATB was interesting and entertaining when I was playing the game back then. However I tend to prefer more dynamic systems, something that has a little more punch to it. Now, saying that an "action" orientation of the gameplay would be necessarily brainless, especially in comparison of earlier games, is in my opinion invalid: first because having to take fast decisions isn't necessarily detrimental, and second because earlier games did not necessarily require a much more clever approach (many old turn-based RPGs proposed combats which would be solved by "Attack">"Attack">"Attack" more than 90% of the time).
I will even make another case: when I recently played Dragon Age Inquisition, the game offers you the possibility to either play it like an action RPG, or to pause anytime for instructing your characters to take a specific course of action (which kind of breaks it down to a turn-based approach). If you play in higher difficulty setting (which I did), you have to plan your actions a lot more carefully, so you tend to take combat with a more "turn-based" approach, whereas you can keep the pace of an action game if the difficulty level is more forgiving. While I certainly had the impression that a higher difficulty mode made the game more "strategic", I was not at all convinced that it made the game more entertaining. And please, I am not saying that because "I don't like to think, it makes my head hurt"  ::)
Personally I would like the ATB system to be replaced because I desire a renewed, refreshed experience. There are other ways to make a game work, and I'm open to a variety of ideas. I do not hold a specific vision which should be adhered to dogmatically.
 
For me does FFX have the most stupid system. You spend a lot time in leveling skills and in the end all enemies are immune to the most of them and all what's left is to deal much damage and try to get as much turns as possible.
I think that DQ8 has the best battle system I have ever played because it is simple designed and every skill is more or less useful in end.
 
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