PSV COMMUNITY PROJECT!! WE NEED YOUR HELP!!

[Haaiku]

Hello, my name is Jason Harris. I've recently started writing and designing PSV

Right now, we are at a great road tword the greatest release of a fan game. EVER.
I want to take this project EXTREMELY serious- I want you too.

Here are a few ideas so far as to what i have.
I GREATLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO CONTRIBUTE IN THIS PROJECT. NO GAME WAS EVER CREATED BY ONE PERSON, AND WITH HELP FROM THE COMMUNITY, WE WILL HAVE AN EXTREMELY AWESOME GAME (REMEMBER THE SAYING: UNITED WE STAND, DEVIDED WE FALL.)

Good and Evil, with choices in diolague (what i want to think of as BIOWARE flavor)
Costumizable Characters
DUAL character types (EXAMPLE: HUmar + FOmar)
Multiple Endings

HOPEFULLY===
1 on 1 battles over the internet (yours V.S. Someone elses) and other types
(cause how many times have you said, "MINES BETTER!!!")

-----------------------------
So far, only 4 characters have been created, and their names, pics, etc. will be released at a later time.

CHECK BACK OFTEN, AS THIS WILL BE UPDATED EVERY FEW DAYS!!!
GOOD LUCK MY FRIENDS!

[Daren]

So basically, your trying to make an online Phantasy Star type of game?

[Missagh]

I moved this to the fan stuff board.

[LegoMuskCat]

^ that was along my line of thought, too.

If there was some PSV project, I'd like it to stick with the main series, keeping a few aspects intact. Chief among them would be the turn-based battles, perhaps styled after PSII or PSIV (preferably the latter since it's an upgrade of the former). I'd also love to see an extensive amount of characterization and a deep plot (not horribly and unnecessarily convoluted to the extent of some games).

The following will have extensive spoilers on the classic series.

My list of random thoughts includes:
1. Nei - Yes, she dies in PSII, and Rika is a Numan/Newman in PSIV. Cool beans. But Nei herself doesn't need to come back, whether it's through cloning or any other means. Feel free to introduce a new Numan if desired, I don't care as long as it makes sense as to why they're around (maybe Rika has descendants?).
2. Instances of the Alisa III - This is something that never melds well with PSI, II, or IV in my opinion. I think there's a very good reason why it was pretty much left out of PSIV (that and the events of PSIII happen post PSIV anyways in the JP version). Some other worldship could be used, perhaps. I'd like to see some good 'splaining done if this is the case.
3. Recycled bosses - As cool as it is to see cameos of older characters, or even bosses (such as Lashiec's brief return in PSIV), unless it's executed very well and has some semblance of logic behind it, I'll never understand the point of why anyone would wanna bring back a dead and used adversary. Dark Force, in theory, shouldn't return either, unless the idea behind that is that DF has become independent of the Profound Darkness. Zio's cult consisted of people who were brainwashed, and when he died his spell seemingly wore off, so there shouldn't be any remaining fragments of that, either.
4. Yet another Lutz - [silliness]We all know Rune, and his Esper title of "Lutz". He's special "because" he's "Lutz". We don't need another special snowflake. I don't even care for "Lutz", even in PSI because he looks like a girl. This is why, when Phantasy Star was translated by SOA, they named "him" Noah and called "him" a her. I always knew that Noah was Lutz's stage name. And I also knew that Lutz was really a SHEmale! Knew it... >.>[/silliness]
5. Lutz - What? I'm repeating the above? Oh. Well. We don't need another Lutz, the idea is done and used. Give me a damn good explanation if he's reused. The whole "I'm special and reincarnated" thing could be said, but should it, really? And making Lutz female only confirms my suspicions that Lutz was a girl all along, so that makes Rune a female by extension! The yaoi was a lie after all!![/srsly dun wit silliness]
6. Retconning Phantasy Star - PSIV did it, and everyone knows it. But it's considered canon. If the series needs to be retconned for some reason, like story reasons, then it should have a good explanation.
7. Overall goal for the protagonist(s) - In PSI it was about overthrowing the tyrant Lassic. For PSII it was about removing Mother Brain from power (and perhaps saving Motavia by extension?). PSIII's worldship needed to be saved from destruction by Dark Force's hands. PSIV basically followed in PSIII's footsteps, as DF was hellbent on destroying Algo once again. Something always needs to be saved... Fighting to protect something precious, whether it's freedom, the future, or the world. I simply wanna see something worth fighting for. Give me a reason to care about the world and its people. Give us, the players, a compelling reason to journey and see the game to its end.
8. Graphics - I suppose PSIV is the standard for "good" graphics, even if it's based on PSII's. Whether it's the sprites, the maps, or the animated enemies, they all look pretty good. I'm honestly keen on PS's overall style as a whole, but I can't say I've seen anything else that looks quite right.

I think that's it. Hopefully this laundry list and overly huge post doesn't deter you from your project. =P
Just my two cents.

I also have some questions that aren't overly important, but I felt like asking:

• What program/game maker will you be building this game with?
• It looks like you're aiming to model this more after PSO than the main series. Is it wise to call it PSV then, when PSO is unrelated to Algo?
• How much experience do you have with game creation?
• Are you dedicated to your commitments?
• What areas are you not so good with?
• What's your favorite color?
• Can you pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time?

Thank you, if you've read this entire post. =)

[Haaiku]

I moved this to the fan stuff board.

Thanks!

[Haaiku]

^ that was along my line of thought, too.

If there was some PSV project, I'd like it to stick with the main series, keeping a few aspects intact. Chief among them would be the turn-based battles, perhaps styled after PSII or PSIV (preferably the latter since it's an upgrade of the former). I'd also love to see an extensive amount of characterization and a deep plot (not horribly and unnecessarily convoluted to the extent of some games).

Exactly my thought-- and of course there will be HEAVY amounts of coustimization.

The following will have extensive spoilers on the classic series.

My list of random thoughts includes:
1. Nei - Yes, she dies in PSII, and Rika is a Numan/Newman in PSIV. Cool beans. But Nei herself doesn't need to come back, whether it's through cloning or any other means. Feel free to introduce a new Numan if desired, I don't care as long as it makes sense as to why they're around (maybe Rika has descendants?).

I have already created a NUMAN/HUNEWEARL type character, and yes, it will make a lot of sense once you play the game

2. Instances of the Alisa III - This is something that never melds well with PSI, II, or IV in my opinion. I think there's a very good reason why it was pretty much left out of PSIV (that and the events of PSIII happen post PSIV anyways in the JP version). Some other worldship could be used, perhaps. I'd like to see some good 'splaining done if this is the case.

see the part about lutz

3. Recycled bosses - As cool as it is to see cameos of older characters, or even bosses (such as Lashiec's brief return in PSIV), unless it's executed very well and has some semblance of logic behind it, I'll never understand the point of why anyone would wanna bring back a dead and used adversary. Dark Force, in theory, shouldn't return either, unless the idea behind that is that DF has become independent of the Profound Darkness. Zio's cult consisted of people who were brainwashed, and when he died his spell seemingly wore off, so there shouldn't be any remaining fragments of that, either.

>i am going to stay away from recycled bosses such as zio, but as you can expect, Dark force will return in some way or another. however, also expect some bosses and enemies from the pso series MIGHT end up in this- one already written is
De Rol Le.

4. Yet another Lutz - [silliness]We all know Rune, and his Esper title of "Lutz". He's special "because" he's "Lutz". We don't need another special snowflake. I don't even care for "Lutz", even in PSI because he looks like a girl. This is why, when Phantasy Star was translated by SOA, they named "him" Noah and called "him" a her. I always knew that Noah was Lutz's stage name. And I also knew that Lutz was really a SHEmale! Knew it... >.>[/silliness]

> Dont worry about Lutz- although he will return, and im going to go all out and reveal an entire character-- it will be in a character know as KATE. This will also tie up the story line of ALIS in some way-- im thinking you'll be shocked by this part in the game!

5. Lutz - What? I'm repeating the above? Oh. Well. We don't need another Lutz, the idea is done and used. Give me a damn good explanation if he's reused. The whole "I'm special and reincarnated" thing could be said, but should it, really? And making Lutz female only confirms my suspicions that Lutz was a girl all along, so that makes Rune a female by extension! The yaoi was a lie after all!![/srsly dun wit silliness]

see above

6. Retconning Phantasy Star - PSIV did it, and everyone knows it. But it's considered canon. If the series needs to be retconned for some reason, like story reasons, then it should have a good explanation.

>What's Retconning?

7. Overall goal for the protagonist(s) - In PSI it was about overthrowing the tyrant Lassic. For PSII it was about removing Mother Brain from power (and perhaps saving Motavia by extension?). PSIII's worldship needed to be saved from destruction by Dark Force's hands. PSIV basically followed in PSIII's footsteps, as DF was hellbent on destroying Algo once again. Something always needs to be saved... Fighting to protect something precious, whether it's freedom, the future, or the world. I simply wanna see something worth fighting for. Give me a reason to care about the world and its people. Give us, the players, a compelling reason to journey and see the game to its end.

>Trust me, like a stephen king novel, you'll want to find out the ending

8. Graphics - I suppose PSIV is the standard for "good" graphics, even if it's based on PSII's. Whether it's the sprites, the maps, or the animated enemies, they all look pretty good. I'm honestly keen on PS's overall style as a whole, but I can't say I've seen anything else that looks quite right.

> all phantasy star games have had at least one major change in graphics (Just look at PS3). i want to stick with the PS4:EotM style, but change it up a little bit.

I think that's it. Hopefully this laundry list and overly huge post doesn't deter you from your project. =P
Just my two cents.

I also have some questions that aren't overly important, but I felt like asking:
What program/game maker will you be building this game with?

I want to stay away from RPGmaker and mainly go with something like C++ or XNA studio

It looks like you're aiming to model this more after PSO than the main series. Is it wise to call it PSV then, when PSO is unrelated to Algo?

It is going to continue along the timeline of the main series-- just because i want some things like section IDs doesn't mean i want this game to be a PSO incarnate. i mainly want this to be a PS game that connects with the internet-- a simple (well... in words...) idea shouldn't change what i have in mind.

How much experience do you have with game creation?

absolutly none, but im in school

Are you dedicated to your commitments?

yes- Make a promise, don't break a promise

What areas are you not so good with?

Dead lines and Programming

What's your favorite color?

Green, Yours?

Can you pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time?

yes, and did you know that thats the final test in American Sign Language?

Thank you, if you've read this entire post. =)

no, thank you for the crit. no matter what people think, this will make a better game overall!

BenoitRen: fixed the quoting

[Haaiku]

I wanted to post a little something something that reveals how i want this game done--
and yes, there will be cheat codes (but none like infinate health, unlimated money, etc.)

[LegoMuskCat]

I apologise if I came off as trollish. =P I was seeing how serious this was, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that that IS the case. You have my full support! And my favorite color is very random, whatever strikes my fancy at the time. >.>

Retcon's definition from wikipedia (since I'm too lazy):

Retroactive continuity (often shortened to retcon) refers to the alteration of previously established facts in a literary work. Retcons may be carried out for a variety of reasons, such as to accommodate sequels or further derivative works in the same series, to reintroduce popular characters, to resolve chronological issues, to reboot a familiar series for modern audiences, or to simplify an excessively complex continuity structure.

Anyhow, I like a lot of the ideas, though I'm curious about the overall execution you had in mind. Will there be Mags? Even if it seems different, a PSO-inspired 2d RPG should be interesting. ^^ I am a huge fan of PSO, after all~

[rafael_esper]

I think I can help you, as my strong areas are programming and deadline planning, as I've always been a software developer, and now I'm working on my management skills.

You should know that it's very common to be excited about a project in the beginning, but it takes a lot of work. You won't profit anything besides the experience and learning, as it's a fan game. Even though a lot of us are passionate about the game, there isn't a lot of PS fan gamers - it's a very specific niche. After a while, you are going to be atracted to other projects, and it's very hard to resist this wanderlust and focus on a single project. It's well known that a project has a beginning and an END, but only 40% of the projects do finish. And this considering that most of them envolves a lot of money and responsibility.

When you start, you are going to have a lot of results very fast. It's like Pareto's law, a lot will be accomplished with 20% of the effort, but to finish the game will take a lot of tedious work, tweaking, testing, re-testing, etc. I myself have started working on my game projects since I was at school, and I couldn't finish a whole game project that I was satisfied with.

Now that I'm more experienced I have assumed my ongoing projects, and one of them is to create a Phantasy Star maker, in order to allow fans to create their own Phantasy Star game without too much work. The framework will offer a map editor, character editor, events editing, all related to a PS-game (ex: same sprites, monsters, spells, sounds, music, etc). The option to customize more the project will be offered later. But this project will take at least this whole year to be ready for testing.

Finally, I would advice against writing a lot of code to do things like drawing sprites or entities, playing sounds, dealing with 2d-characters mechanisms (like obstacle detection, party-following movement, wandering entities) or animations. This is already done by others, and you will waste a lot of time if you plan to rewrite the whole thing. Of couse you would learn a lot by writing you own engine, but this will take the focus out of your game project. I won't point out to any solution right now, but as I said, I want to help you in this project, so we could discuss this later.

Good luck!
Rafael, the Esper.

[Haaiku]

I think I can help you, as my strong areas are programming and deadline planning, as I've always been a software developer, and now I'm working on my management skills.

You should know that it's very common to be excited about a project in the beginning, but it takes a lot of work. You won't profit anything besides the experience and learning, as it's a fan game. Even though a lot of us are passionate about the game, there isn't a lot of PS fan gamers - it's a very specific niche. After a while, you are going to be atracted to other projects, and it's very hard to resist this wanderlust and focus on a single project. It's well known that a project has a beginning and an END, but only 40% of the projects do finish. And this considering that most of them envolves a lot of money and responsibility.

When you start, you are going to have a lot of results very fast. It's like Pareto's law, a lot will be accomplished with 20% of the effort, but to finish the game will take a lot of tedious work, tweaking, testing, re-testing, etc. I myself have started working on my game projects since I was at school, and I couldn't finish a whole game project that I was satisfied with.

Now that I'm more experienced I have assumed my ongoing projects, and one of them is to create a Phantasy Star maker, in order to allow fans to create their own Phantasy Star game without too much work. The framework will offer a map editor, character editor, events editing, all related to a PS-game (ex: same sprites, monsters, spells, sounds, music, etc). The option to customize more the project will be offered later. But this project will take at least this whole year to be ready for testing.

Finally, I would advice against writing a lot of code to do things like drawing sprites or entities, playing sounds, dealing with 2d-characters mechanisms (like obstacle detection, party-following movement, wandering entities) or animations. This is already done by others, and you will waste a lot of time if you plan to rewrite the whole thing. Of couse you would learn a lot by writing you own engine, but this will take the focus out of your game project. I won't point out to any solution right now, but as I said, I want to help you in this project, so we could discuss this later.

Good luck!
Rafael, the Esper.

holy....!!!!
i probably will use your PS Maker-- I have a LOT of tilesets, enemies, etc. (getting all of this on its own took me about a year, and i'm still not done getting them yet) and if you need them, i will GLADLY contribute-- is there a way you can let people download it? it sounds VERY interesting!

[Haaiku]

I apologise if I came off as trollish. =P I was seeing how serious this was, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that that IS the case. You have my full support! And my favorite color is very random, whatever strikes my fancy at the time. >.>

Retcon's definition from wikipedia (since I'm too lazy):

Retroactive continuity (often shortened to retcon) refers to the alteration of previously established facts in a literary work. Retcons may be carried out for a variety of reasons, such as to accommodate sequels or further derivative works in the same series, to reintroduce popular characters, to resolve chronological issues, to reboot a familiar series for modern audiences, or to simplify an excessively complex continuity structure.

Anyhow, I like a lot of the ideas, though I'm curious about the overall execution you had in mind. Will there be Mags? Even if it seems different, a PSO-inspired 2d RPG should be interesting. ^^ I am a huge fan of PSO, after all~

nah, i don't plan on changing any of what was already put down- i only want to add on and finish a few broken strings--
any way, yes, i want mags, although im not sure how to implement them-- did you check out the preview of the graphics? the birds (respectivly called Macaw and Sunday) are the replacments for the man in blacks mag--
(the man in black in my so far ALL TIME FAV!!! so, i want to wait a little bit before i reveal anything about him!- heres a little hint though, he wears a hat-- and is in fact a he.)

[Haaiku]

i want to add a little bit to whats going on, and tell you guys the basics of the story

[Haaiku]

PSV will take place 3000 years after the events of PS3 (since in the timeline it comes after PS4).
here is the new map of it. the sea is rising and old techs are being re-descovered

[LegoMuskCat]

My only problem with this is that Paseo wasn't in PSIV. =( Plus I kinda don't expect Nayla to still be around when it was in bad shape in PSIV, because of the crash of the worldship and all (which should've been much larger and more devastating than it was originally, IMO, considering the ship was SO FRIGGIN HUGE in PSIII >.<).

And Piata was a thriving place, especially if you consider that it lasted through PSII-PSIV (that's one thousand years of STILL being around). I half expected it to grow into a larger place, or maybe it became something else. Maybe because of that giant hole in the ground leading to The Edge, people grew afraid, especially after the other events in PSIV, and eventually abandoned it. There were the monster breeding capsules retrieved from Birth Valley, the investigation of Birth Valley which only brought them more trouble (including the inhabitants of Zema, who were turned into stone), along with the self-destruction of Birth Valley which could be blamed on numerous things from an outside perspective...it was considered a holy site to the people of Zema, so how would they feel about the research team of Piata poking their noses where they don't belong? Lots of blame could go around, and it would make the Academy look bad, and a bad reputation would stop the flow of people into the academy overall, I'd think. Then, you could consider PSIV's ending, showing Hahn teaching, presumably at the Academy. So, whatever you decide for that, good or bad.
/end of rant

This is all speculation, of course, and I think it's fun to think about small things like this. =p

Timeline, for reference:

• PSIV - AW 2284
• PSIII - AW 3284
• PSV - AW 6284

The above is correct for what you had in mind, yes? Just trying to make sure I follow. ^^; And about mags: I have no problem with them, personally. I think you may wanna follow PSO in terms of stat caps, so that you can only increase a stat so far even with the help of mags. Otherwise you could have some pretty broken characters. =p

[Haaiku]

My only problem with this is that Paseo wasn't in PSIV. =( Plus I kinda don't expect Nayla to still be around when it was in bad shape in PSIV, because of the crash of the worldship and all (which should've been much larger and more devastating than it was originally, IMO, considering the ship was SO FRIGGIN HUGE in PSIII >.<).

And Piata was a thriving place, especially if you consider that it lasted through PSII-PSIV (that's one thousand years of STILL being around). I half expected it to grow into a larger place, or maybe it became something else. Maybe because of that giant hole in the ground leading to The Edge, people grew afraid, especially after the other events in PSIV, and eventually abandoned it. There were the monster breeding capsules retrieved from Birth Valley, the investigation of Birth Valley which only brought them more trouble (including the inhabitants of Zema, who were turned into stone), along with the self-destruction of Birth Valley which could be blamed on numerous things from an outside perspective...it was considered a holy site to the people of Zema, so how would they feel about the research team of Piata poking their noses where they don't belong? Lots of blame could go around, and it would make the Academy look bad, and a bad reputation would stop the flow of people into the academy overall, I'd think. Then, you could consider PSIV's ending, showing Hahn teaching, presumably at the Academy. So, whatever you decide for that, good or bad.
/end of rant

This is all speculation, of course, and I think it's fun to think about small things like this. =p

Timeline, for reference:

• PSIV - AW 2284
• PSIII - AW 3284
• PSV - AW 6284

The above is correct for what you had in mind, yes? Just trying to make sure I follow. ^^; And about mags: I have no problem with them, personally. I think you may wanna follow PSO in terms of stat caps, so that you can only increase a stat so far even with the help of mags. Otherwise you could have some pretty broken characters. =p

HolY!!! you are the man! of course, PSV is currently in the very begining of writing and design, and the map has already changed from the one displayed here-- and yes, it will take place in AW 6284, so there are other things to consider in towns.
Speaking of which, would you like to be a head writer? i can't write the story on my own (im also trying to get Missagh to help write too- so its so far just two writers-). expect an update soon!