Final Fantasy Mod: Public Beta thread

[DJ Bonebraker]

Ok, since I've made the move into my new house (mostly.... we still have boxes that need unpacked), I've decided to do some work on the Final Fantasy mod and try and get it out the door once and for all.

First off, I tweaked the workers a bit: Captured workers (all types) become POW's, which can be traded, and upgrade (for 0 cost) into whatever worker your faction has.

Also, I've been re-vamping some of the unit graphics (namely the much-neglected Dragoon line) with some of the excellent stuff that Sandris and co. have put out recently, and I'm starting to work on making the final units that need made... I'm currently using Supa's Terror Rider as the Chocobo rider unit, but since I realized that the rider is, in fact, buck naked, I'm going to be working on my long neglected Chocobo Rider unit.

To that end, I've just created a complete library of Chocobo animations (which I may upload, since Kinboat has already uploaded the chocobo itself, in case anybody wants to make, say a Rock Jack from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind), and will likely start animating and rendering that either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Furthermore, thanks to the whimsical units I've made for the Playground mod, I now have a good animation library to make the following units:

Red Mage
Black Mage
Queen Reina (or Lenna)
Sorceress Edea
Shinra SOLDIER
Cloud Strife
Squall Leonhart
Laguna Loire
Emperor Paramekia

...and a few others I may have forgotten.

I'm also working a bit on the side of how to integrate the Lord of The Mods with the Final Fantasy factions (for instance, since this will have the LoTR civs achieving modern tech, I'm debating about whether to give the Cossack unit to Rohan or the Easterlings... I'm leaning towards the Easterlings, since they seem to be a blend of Mongols and Russians, particularly the bearded Easterlings with Axes, which means that Rohan will probably have something along the lines of Hussars or Uhlans, to keep with their Germanic pattern....)

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

Sounds great. I've been hoping for an update to the Final Fantasy Mod for a while.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Sounds great. I've been hoping for an update to the Final Fantasy Mod for a while.

Yeah, I'm really sorry about the delay, and dropping off the face of the earth for about 6 months, but I got married, and had one of the most awful run-arounds for buying a house you could imagine (I submitted my offer for the house in May and didn't close the deal until NOVEMBER, thanks mostly to bumbling incompetence on the seller's part), so I haven't had much time for modding.

Hopefully I'll be able to get something that's at least acceptable out the door early next year.

 

[BreonX]

I've recently been enjoying this mod for a little while and playing fine until, upon completion of my Great Horde Wonder and I get this error

Load Error

ERROR READING FILE

Missing entry in "Scenarios\Final Fantasy\text\PediaIcons.txt":
WON_SPLASH_BLDG_GreatHorde

This of course causes the game to exit. I could cancel the wonder because I have it saved the turn before but don't want to run the risk of another civ building it and causing the same crash.

Really good mod btw, could spend many hours on this. Keep up the good work.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Sorry about the lack of reply, Breon, but I believe that I patched that error already (should be attached to the first post)...

Anyways, I'm working on getting this mod finised ASAP.

So here's the Honeydew Inc. To Do list of things to do (followers of the Yogscast should get that one):

1. Make Queen Reina king unit DONE
2. Re-Make Shinra SOLDIER
3. Re-Make Mithra Ninja (I have WAY better props, figures and animations now that I can easily use)
4. Make Red Mage
5. Make Black Mage
6. Make Sorceress Edea king unit
7. Make Chocobo Cavalry
8. Make Chocobo Dragoon
9. Make Squall Leonhart king unit
10. Make Laguna Loire king unit
11. Re-Make Queen Hilde LH based on PsP remake's graphics
12. Make Queen Hilde unit based on said images.
13. Make Emperor Paramekia king unit
14. Make Cecil Baron king unit.
15. Possibly re-make Mithra Archer and Ranger units.
16. Possibly re-make Viera Ranger & Gunner units.
17. Maybe use the "Damsel" unit (or a modified version thereof) I made for the Playground mod as the "White Mage" unit, in place of the modded princess I'm currently using.

 

[Dumanios]

Hmm, will Cecil have both Paladin and Dark Knight forms be made?

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Perhaps.... I'll need to look up the latest (from the PsP/Nintendo DS remake) version of the dark knight, but I don't see where that would be much of a problem, since both will use the same animations, just different armor, and considering my quad-core processor portable PC has reduced Poser 5 unit rendering times down from ~4-8 hours to about 2 hours max (It actually took me longer to do the post-processing of the rendered image files for my Amazon RPG than it did to render it).

I'm currently rendering Edea, BTW. Next up is most likely the Shinra SOLDIER and Cloud Strife (considering that they, also use the same base figure and animations, but with some slightly different clothes and props)...

 

[dragonprobably]

I hate to use my powers of Thread Necromancy, but this is one of the mods lost to the Fall of Atomic Gamer and I was wondering if anyone has a copy of it?

 

[Quinzy]

I'd also be highly interested in getting this mod back

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

Same here. I think I might have it somewhere in my old backup drives. But even if I do, it's very likely that I only have the older versions.

 

[Blake00]

Damn I don't have this one in my files either.. does anyone else here still have it? If you can get me a copy I'll use my large file access to upload it here to CFC to preserve like I've done with so many other rescues around here.

Looks like @DJ Bonebraker is still active on the site too! So you've still got a copy your mod mate I can give you a temp cloud location to upload it to and then arrange hosting for it here! Be such a shame if your work is lost forever!

.

 

[Blake00]

Managed to successfully rescue Magus77 's old Final Fantasy 7 Civ3 mod however I've still had no luck finding @DJ Bonebraker 's Final Fantasy Civ3 mod here. Fortunately his mod update file download in his original post still works so I've got that file but his original mod itself is still completely lost. Does @Node60 , @r16 or anyone else around here have this one in your collections?

.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

I still have the file, just need to figure out how to upload large files (also need to reinstall WinRAR, since I just did a massive system overhaul & am still in the process of reinstalling software).

 

[Blake00]

I still have the file, just need to figure out how to upload large files (also need to reinstall WinRAR, since I just did a massive system overhaul & am still in the process of reinstalling software).

Just saw your reply to my message on Flickr. Glad my investigative work has paid off again haha, thank you so much for coming back! Fortunately your problems are ones I can help with mate.

Firstly in your message you mentioned an issue with setting WinRAR back up and its key file, I remember the joys I had with that years ago too. Personally I'd recommend dropping it entirely as it hasn't been the best option since the early 2000s really! 7zip is completely free, it can open your old rar files and best of all if you use its native 7z format compression with everything set to max your zipped files will be smaller than rar, regular zip and anything else out there (I've taken peoples big old Civ3 mods and shaved hundreds of MBs off them with 7zip). It's definitely one of the front runners for compression (Although I recently found out about ZPAQ's super compression but no one would have the required software sadly). I made the switch from Rar to 7zip about 10-15yrs ago and never looked back lol. It's small and easy to install so you'd be up and running in like a minute. Better for you (uploading & hosting space wise) and better for any fans with slow download speeds.

Secondly on to the hosting issue...

CivFanatics still has a not so great upload size limit however there are a number of other good options. Thunderfall and the CFC admins kindly granted me large file FTP upload access here a while back so I can upload your your file here eg. like what I did with Drift's Civ3 Master of Myrror mods, Magus77's Final Fantasy 7 mod or SheepMonster's SW-Revenge of the Mod project just to name a few. So I can upload a copy to here too if you want. (EDIT: However I'm hearing talk from admins that they may be moving to something else for large file storage in the future so I'm not sure what's going to happen with it or how good the replacement will be).

I've got cloud storage with a public upload access area (I can PM you the link) that you can literally just drag and drop your file on to it and it will upload it there for me to grab and then upload here. Or if you've got some of your own temporary cloud storage (Windows Live, Google Drive, DropBox) you'd rather use to get it to me that's fine too.

The above will solve the immediate issue. However if down the track you want to go the extra mile adding a hosting option elsewhere (as a mirror to the CFC one), not to mention increasing public exposure of your work then I recommend ModDB.

Spoiler ModDB advice and guide :

You can either design a full mod page by going to the Civilization 3 section here and clicking on the + 'add mod' button which would allow you to create a full page with lots of pics, info and most importantly the files:
https://www.moddb.com/games/civilization-iii-conquests
(Click to expand example picture - I Accidentally had it on Civ2 instead of Civ3 when I took this snap but you get the idea haha)


ModDB will also host pictures and videos of the mod for you too, and even host blog like dev diaries & announcement articles to attract more fans to your work.

Here's my Civilization 2 Red Alert 2 scenario page if you want a example how one looks:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-red-alert-2-siege-of-new-york-scenario

Another example is from when I made a similar suggestion to Vindsval for his massive 1.5 gig Downfall Apocalypse Civ3 scenario that was sitting in personal cloud storage and he went and created this page for his mod:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-downfall

OR if you want the easiest quickest option then don't even make a mod page and just add your mod to the general Civ3 files/downloads section here instead (add file button is in the same place as on the mod page I showed above):
https://www.moddb.com/games/civilization-iii-conquests/downloads

I'm happy to do that for you (eg I made one for Drift's Master of Myrror Civ3 mod with his permission) as I know ModDB like the back of my hand these days (currently 12 projects on there and counting haha) but then you wouldn't have control over the download should you update the mod and would need me to update it which would suck a bit, so I usually recommend modders create their own pages.

Other stable long term free hosting alternatives include Internet Archive Org which I've been using to preserve hundreds of Civ2 scenarios and recently successfully did the Star Trek Civ3 mod on there as they support permanent file/pic/vid/chat hosting like ModDB, I recently found out about Nexus Mods supporting Civ3-6 and they are another popular mod file/pic/vid/chat hosting site, and even Sourceforge (which people think is just for source code but I've seen people use it to host regular mods as well) would you believe as they support free file/pic/vid/chat hosting too.
. . . .

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

I don't need or want 7zip: I have everything for WinRAR, but just need to find time & mental health to actually track down all the installation files & the key for it, and I'll have it reinstalled. I'll try to do that later today. I also want to see about double-checking the FF mod folder (probably will be removing the custom music I use in my personal copy for copyright reasons, or replacing it with my original music, the first option has the added benefit of drastically reducing file size, though). Again, I'll try to look into getting the updated RAR file sorted out sometime this week, since I actually now have a line to someone who has access for large file uploads.

I had considered trying to use dropbox or something similar to upload a fully updated version of the mod, but I figured nobody cared about this old mod anymore, lol.

EDIT: I also have been streaming the current version of the mod on my Twitch if anyone is interested in checking that out. I'm figuring on getting back to doing that on my Tuesday Twitch streams (once I get Civ III reinstalled) if anyone is curious about it.

 

[Blake00]

I don't need or want 7zip: I have everything for WinRAR, but just need to find time & mental health to actually track down all the installation files & the key for it, and I'll have it reinstalled.

lol okay then, hey it's your computer mate so if you wanna search for the hard to find dinosaur program you go right ahead haha. Hope you find everything you need to get it going again and it's not a stress.

I had considered trying to use dropbox or something similar to upload a fully updated version of the mod, but I figured nobody cared about this old mod anymore, lol.

I've chucked over my public upload onedrive link in our Flickr convo but if you wanna do your own hosting then yeah Dropbox is certainly a popular free option. Funny thing is a lot of people don't realise they've got multiple accounts of unused cloud storage, so here's more possibly unwanted help tips haha.

• If you've got a youtube account then that means you'll got a google account (as one owns the other), so that would mean that you've got an unused google drive account ready to go if wanted or needed (I don't use mine but I think its 5GB or bigger).
• Alternately if you've ever had an old hotmail email account then that would mean you've got a Microsoft Live account (as one owns the other), which means you'd have a Onedrive account sitting around unused as well (this is what I use, it's 5GB).

EDIT: I also have been streaming the current version of the mod on my Twitch if anyone is interested in checking that out. I'm figuring on getting back to doing that on my Tuesday Twitch streams (once I get Civ III reinstalled) if anyone is curious about it.

More of a youtube guy that a twitch guy, but considering there's no surviving screenshots of your mod I'd love to see it! So yeah feel free to chuck a link to it. Don't expect a 'live' visit though as I'm in Australia so I'm usually asleep when most people are streaming haha.

Speaking of your links.. in my recent efforts to track you down I noticed your sig has got some dead ones..

Lord of the Final Fantasy Mod still works and redirects to new format (BTW did you ever finish that crossover mod? feel free to release your last beta and we'll get that preserved too! ).

The Tweaked Out C3C Mod uses an old CFC forum link that sadly hasn't survived the atomic move and doesn't seem to redirect
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81690
Here's a working replacement
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/81690/

My graphics library doesn't work and doesn't redirect
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=97551
This fixes it
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/97551/

My Units still works and redirects to new format.
Unit Preview Thread still works and redirects to new format.
My AoI 3.0 story still works and redirects to new format.
Final Fantasy Mod Beta still works and redirects people to this thread

Oh and I forgot to say the reason I do a lot of this search and rescue work is because I'm building a link repository of cool total conversion scenarios and mods for Civ games. You'll see in the list that Final Fantasy is an area of interest to me so that what lead me here to your old thread haha! Eventually I'm gonna do a big video series on my retro gaming youtube channel covering civ games and many of these cool mods so would love to cover your work!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ol-moo-doom-b5-strek-swars-sgate-homm.657805/

.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, the Lord of the Final Fantasy mod is basically dead in the water. Only mod/scenario I've been working on since I basically disappeared shortly after I made the biggest mistake of my life (getting married to the RL Bellatrix LeStrange), is some tweaks to the FF mod and a slow, but steady work on building a mod based on the Sci-Fi game mode in Civ II: Test of Time....

I'll see about updating my sig links (and replacing the Lord of the Final Fantasy one with my Twitch, since I stream Civ III & Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars from time to time).

 

[Blake00]

"getting married to the RL Bellatrix LeStrange"

hahahaha oh dear.

No worries, was hoping there might be a playable beta of LOTFF to share but ahh well. I look forward to trying your main Final Fantasy mod!

.

 

[CorvusFortis]

I still have files, just in case.

 

[Blake00]

Thanks to Fortis I've got a copy of this great old Final Fantasy Beta mod to test and preserve for my ongoing scenario search and rescue work which includes Final Fantasy! I also recently successfully preserved Magus77's old Final Fantasy 7 Civ3 mod too.

I've tested it with my disc install of Civ3 (steam install users will need to modify label files) and it worked! Looks awesome!!! I'm going to enjoy playing this!!

Last time I spoke with @DJ Bonebraker she said she was working on a new and much improved version of this mod so lets all cross our fingers she gets it to the finish line! In the meantime at least we've now got the old version safe and sound from being lost again.

I've repacked with 7zip (down to 427MB from the old 573MB zip file) and uploaded a copy of the mod to CivFanatics servers to preserve her work. Should DJ Bonebraker return to CFC she can modify her original post download link for this mod to link to here instead of the long gone Atomic one.
https://www.civfanatics.com/users/downloads/civ3/FinalFantasyBeta.7z


Faction selection (so many from different FF games!! I remember fighting the dark lord Garland in FF1 back in the day!):

Exploring the map as Cloud Strife (FF7) and meeting the Bastok from (FF11).