That's right, I'm such a psychofan of the game, I made a board game for himself and his buddies. Made of wood, paper, metal and plastic! The road to being able to share my passion with you was winding, long, bumpy and full of holes, and you will find out exactly what it was like and divide my story into a few parts. So sit comfortably adventurers and hang your eyes on the hooks of attention.
Part one, but not so it started.
I came into contact with the games of the Ivalice cycle in a completely different order than they were on the market. First: Vagrant Story, then: Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT Advance and Final Fantasy XII. There are decisions in the life of a human being that are deciding about our current situation. I'm glad (orange you not huehue) of the experience of VS, FFT and FFTA before playing in FFXII. I know that the reception of the Twelve would be different if it did not happen. I could see where this this world source and its uniqueness. A multitude of connections and developments was like meeting an old friend. Familiar sounds, images and this atmosphere were something unique. I know that this game is not perfect and it is controversial and I understand why. For me, this is a game whose record shows 348 hours spent and I am still coming back to it. And after beating it I made myself a return to previous cycle games. This unique atmosphere of mystery and the need for plotting with information and hidden hints, and above all, a godly story - I could’nt get enough! Playing these titles was accompanied by the feeling that these solutions would fit into a classic, board RPG game. I knew and played in my youth DnD and seeing the battlefields in FFT, I imagined how would it look like as physical chessboard. And I began to transform my dream into reality.
At the beginning I refreshed the rules of the only paper RPG game I played, that is DnD and getting to know other rules of other tabletops - Warhammer, Vampire, Cyberpunk, Neuroshima. I wanted to get some inspiration and to draw out more interesting ideas. When I was in the right mood, I started to learn the FFT game system. I worked out all the patterns and explanations, variables and constants, random cases and game mechanics with commitment and passion. What is infernally interesting, I was no good in mathematics at all in school - I had a worst grades every semester, but now when it came to this game, the information itself was coded into my brain. It struck me how many dependencies this game has and made me realize that it is more elaborate than I thought. The amount of coffee and sugar I pumped into myself when deciphering all these complexities helped to create a skeleton of bases on which full game was later based. In total, it took me over 100 pages in Word and 70 pages in a notebook and two months.
Having already the core of the system, I was able to add elements of the Ivalice world known from FFXII, VS and FFTA2. It was a pleasure, during which I learned more nuances and subtle tips that unite everything together. Circumstances have made me leave for a few months to work, earn money for a laptop and start living in another city. During this work, I had the opportunity to calmly devise. When moving the boxes with the commodity, I came up with the rules of playing the moogle race. While lining the patties, I honed the idea of implementing the undead, and during the evening walks along the beach I worked out a plot for the world. After returning home, a flooded dam of designs and ideas that I had in my mind covered another 200 pages with text. The creative process of this stage: 1 room studio, keyboard, cat and coffee. I felt like Stephen King or another prolific writer. That's how I felt, and probably the impression I made was different - a quick return from work, quick food and hours in front of the cards and monitor. These was a moment of very, very early beta testing and creation of a prototype of the board and character sheets. Beautiful time. The year 2011.
Today, I talk about this stadium with a smile on my face. The terrible performance of a horrible material - styrofoam and a carton from mega pizzas - these things did for the testing ground. The system was lame agonizingly, the character's card was so illegible that I got lost in it myself, but I knew perfectly well, that it would look like that at the beginning. These tests were to verify my enthusiasm and ideas. I did not lose my enthusiasm and some ideas went to the bin. Then came the year-long stage of absolute commitment - day after day I tried to write, check or supplement something.
In role-playing games, I've always liked the idea of character cards/sheets. Paper mapping of character statistics and the fact of watching variables and taking care of such a card was always appealing to me and added RPG games this magical feeling. I am aware, however, how annoying it was to constantly check patterns, descriptions and other things during the session in such a game. After many tests, I came to the conclusion that in the age of technology, I want players to have an easy and quick way to change eg levels, equipment, jobs and other variables in the game thanks to the program. The FFT system is huge and the relationships between the values are intricate and I wanted to spare players to calculate "on a piece of paper" and thus speed up the game itself. I can not program myself, so I sought help. And so I met Hubert, a young talented programmer who helped me turn the idea into a fact. The program is nothing but an interactive character card, in which we can change and set, for example, the character's equipment, health points, statistics. Everything is calculated in the background, so you can check how damage will look like when changing weapons. You can set the portrait of the character (even a mobile gif), add new characters, but first of all set the order of the turn as in the FFT and save the whole characters. I can quickly create opponents and add new equipment, new creatures and even jobs. The entire creative process with Hubert lasted less than half a year and everything was only discussed on the Internet! I am full of admiration that he has managed to understand my ideas and I am very grateful to him for simplifying many of them. Meanwhile, when Hubert created HeroCard, because that how he called his program, I work with the board itself. I knew that now the greatest effort and trial awaits me, so I did not waste time.
For the base of the board, I used a table with IKEA 55x55cm, which I painted with impregnation, covered with veneer and painted with acrylic paints and screwed wooden rotating wheels.
The blocks needed for building upwards are cut to size and sanded with squared timber. They have been painted in different colors due to their height. Each field on the board has dimensions of 4x4cm and blocks have a height of 1cm, 2cm, 3cm, 5cm, 7cm and 10cm respectively.
I was looking for interesting monsters and characters from all Ivalice games (and not only), and printed them on PVC. I do not hide that I like it amazingly and sometimes I pull it out and just look at it. Coins are also made in this way. I thank Raptor for the pawns with all my heart! The crystals are the decorations that I ordered from aliexpress. Buildings and elements on the board are papercraft - I did not think that building them would be so rewarding and I would like to recommend them to anyone. I used different types of paper with different thicknesses, but I must admit that model paper is very grateful, although it does not forgive mistakes. Vegetation is aquarium plants and painted bottle brushes. Dice and towers to them is my little obsession. Probably everyone who played role-playing games loves to collect different dice of different textures and colors. I made one of my dice pair with a pure dice, modeling chisel, dyes and runes from FFT. The towers, on the other hand, are laser cut and look incredibly well - they serve not only for decoration, but also guarantee a completely random roll of dice. I damped them with felt to prevent the dice falling hundreds of times through their viscera, making no noise or destroying the wood. My gem is a mechanical tower, which looks like a castle with zodiacal clock - dice are placed on the pawl, one element is pressed, and the dice roll inside the structure and fall out through the rising gates. Several elements also move, among others during the drawing, the stained glass changes into figures. A beautiful thing, especially since it is assemble by myself. What astonishment I had when it turned out that these towers, dice, coins, etc. can be obtained directly from the company that supplies stores all over the world and the headquarters is a few kilometers away from me! Best wishes Onyx!
Honestly, only now, writing this text, I began to think about how many gold pieces I spent on this game. The budget is considered more in terms of time devoted to implementation and labor: it took quite a lot of work, especially since I personally did not only deal with pawns and program. When it comes to financial matters, it's hard to determine the exact amount, because some things I already had in stock and I did not have to spend a penny on them. Counting the material used for the rehearsals and the final work, i.e. wood, prints and plastic, it is surely the amount of rounding up several hundred zlotys. Adding aesthetics, dice, pawns, gadgets, etc. is an additional one thousand PLN. Every programmer knows how much his work is worth. Without adding coffee, sugar and having to buy a laptop again, I think I could buy a current console pro for that amount (with two controllers and several games with season passes). Of course, in retrospect, I realize that I could implement some of the solutions with a smaller financial effort. In short, the total amount was considerable, but by spreading it over 8 years of successive work on passion and hobby these are amounts incommensurate with satisfaction and joy.
The fully playable alpha version was ready in the spring and it was an interesting feeling realizing that the preparation really had just finished and that now the real game is starting.
If you want know more, here is article and interview on Destructoid about it!
Also original post
https://www.ppe.pl/blog/70284/12235/final-fantasy-tactics-ivalice.html
Thanks for your attention!
A fantastic post - as always! I can't even imagine the amount of time and work (and gil 😉) you poured into the game. No wonder it's a masterpiece...and Ivalice in flesh.
OdpowiedzUsuńThank you! If it weren't for you and your support, this text wouldn't exist!
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