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News > Final Fantasy 2 GBA demo

#23783 - krom - Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:12 pm

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
Ethos has released a nice Final Fantasy 2 RPG demo:

Here is my first Demo, I like it and hope you do.

The demo features mosaic transition effects like in the original game.

Grab it from the main site!

#23829 - Ethos - Thu Jul 22, 2004 2:54 pm

If you want to see the old version with NPC sprites and a saving feature (Pressing A button will cause the demo to resume from that location).

http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~jtmonagh/Blaster.gba
http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~jtmonagh/Blaster.sav (NEEDED!)

Right now I am transitioning into a new engine with concurrent movement for NPC and character (done), and a base (paralax) background.

#25171 - Ethos - Tue Aug 17, 2004 6:27 pm

lol...for anyone who actually cares, the new version should be released within a week or two.

I am just finishing up animated tiles with more than two frames, and will have to harvest a few more graphics for door opening, switches.

Btw, does anyone care? lol

#25174 - dagamer34 - Tue Aug 17, 2004 7:31 pm

Ethos wrote:
lol...for anyone who actually cares, the new version should be released within a week or two.

I am just finishing up animated tiles with more than two frames, and will have to harvest a few more graphics for door opening, switches.

Btw, does anyone care? lol


I care. :)
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Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(

#25196 - Krakken - Wed Aug 18, 2004 4:49 am

I care but I wish more was done before it's presented.

#25210 - Ethos - Wed Aug 18, 2004 6:25 pm

Krakken wrote:
I care but I wish more was done before it's presented.


Well it was my first demo, a lot of the basics of an engine and GBA graphics had to be learned first, also 50% of my development time is taken to update my Java map creator.

But as a teaser these are the features implemented on the new Demo:
1. Whole Castle Baron
2. Chest opening, with flag marking
3. Switches will work (tile fliping + collision changing)
4. Animated Tiles
5. Animated NPCs (fixed or random movement)
6. The framework for Paralax backgrounds (2 Layered Backgrounds)
7. Door opening

Removed:
1. Saving, the code is there, but it is unneeded in a Demo (pain to have a .sav file)

To be added in the next Version:
1. Message Layer
2. NPC dialog
3. Party Menu
4. New/Load Menu

Any other Ideas??

I am also looking for resources, like item lists, monster lists, ripped graphics. Just respond if you have any good links :)

Thanks

#25223 - Krakken - Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:54 am

Heh, seems you did quite a bit since your first demo. I haven't actually tried this one yet as it doesn't seem to be on the main site... did krom forget?

#25318 - Ethos - Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:13 pm

Krakken wrote:
Heh, seems you did quite a bit since your first demo. I haven't actually tried this one yet as it doesn't seem to be on the main site... did krom forget?


I said a week or two,
Right now its just me making the maps, I've implemented most of the code.

Here are two additions that I added yesterday,
1. Movement for the Paralax background (moving water)
2. Alpha blending water sprites (lower portion)

#25319 - Lord Graga - Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:23 pm

Brilliant. Is there a battle system and an inventory yet?

#25342 - Ethos - Fri Aug 20, 2004 11:49 pm

Lord Graga wrote:
Brilliant. Is there a battle system and an inventory yet?


1. Battle system is my last phase, after world map.
2. Inventory is implemeted in the backend, but without menus/dialog layer it is pretty much useless.

#25352 - Lord Graga - Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:07 am

Sexy.

#25502 - Ethos - Tue Aug 24, 2004 4:28 am

Ok, here's the story....
I have the demo 90% complete, but I am implementing windowing right now since I can't use my fade effect with the Waterblending and also the bed-blending in FF2. I have Windowing working, I am just trying to find out how to do my updates during hblank to make them smoother.

I will release at the latest right before I leave for 2 weeks to Scotland on the 3rd.

#25535 - Lord Graga - Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:15 pm

Sounds fantastic. Get that engine going! :D


I'd be great to see a finished RPG engine for GBA, for once. Do you plan to do scripting?

#25536 - Ethos - Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:26 pm

Lord Graga wrote:
Sounds fantastic. Get that engine going! :D


I'd be great to see a finished RPG engine for GBA, for once. Do you plan to do scripting?


Yes, but not in this phase. I originally put in all the structures for sending script commands to the engine, but removed it about 2 months ago.

The engine still has 2 modes, Script Mode, Default Mode.

The way it was written to work was if there is an event in Default Mode, it points to a script and flips the mode to Script Mode. The script completes and will give parameters back to the engine to load the new map that is needed after the script in Default mode.

Script Mode would also be used for the Initial game intro.

Btw, I am done all the engine now. And map creation is at 65%.

Just need to pull out that map editor I made and finish up the left and right towers.

Cross your fingers, I may do a release tonight. (Therefore you'll see it in a week, or so it seems)

#25537 - Lord Graga - Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:39 pm

Thumbs up :)

#25556 - Ethos - Wed Aug 25, 2004 1:07 am

Demo e-mailed, hope you guys enjoy once it becomes avail.

#25573 - Lord Graga - Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:09 am

\o/

#25576 - Krakken - Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:28 am

Can't wait! ;)

#25876 - Ethos - Mon Aug 30, 2004 5:36 pm

Well i'm on hiatus until mid Sept, so don't expect the next installment until end Sept-mid Oct.

Do any of you think a website would be useful? Or just create too many headaches for me?

#25883 - zazery - Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:42 pm

Maybe make a quick single page html site with a few screenshots and notes etc. on it.

#26000 - Ethos - Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:45 pm

OK, a check from everyone on menus.

This is my proposed menu design (since of course the usual menu is way too large to fit the gba screen).
So instead of full screen scrolling (ugh), I think that this'll work nicely

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Any suggestions?

#26002 - Lord Graga - Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:58 pm

Not right now, but it looks good.

#26035 - DekuTree64 - Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:30 am

Hmm, I would suggest squeezing the options closer together on the right hand menu, so they all fit on the screen at once. One nice trick is to use HBlank to change the text BG's REG_BGxVOFS to get less than a whole tile of spacing between each of the options. Easiest to just make a static table of vofs values and use HDMA to copy them in.
The left side looks ok that way, just scrolling it. Not much way around it unless you make a font that's less than 8 pixels tall and use the partial-tile spacing trick on that too, but that would probably look like poop, and the portraits would still be scrunched.
_________________
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The best optimization is to do nothing at all.
Therefore a fully optimized program doesn't exist.
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