Messages

26

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-31 13:30:35 »

This is absolutely incredible.  I had a busy weekend so only just seeing these updates from the last couple days now.  As for it being open world, that was my ideal scenario, and Unity takes care of things like LOD and stuff for us, so going open world would actually be really easy assuming all of the scenery was aligned and scaled correctly.

As for not knowing Unity, that's fine.  Getting the assets done is the hard part I think.  Once they are imported it's just a case of aligning them to make an open world and then programming in some sort of dynamic loading so we don't have to have the entire world loaded at once (no point having Esthar loaded when we're in Balamb).  There's plenty of people familiar with Unity so if you personally are not, don't worry, focus on a different area such as the environments like you're doing now.

I've been completely blown away by your work Maki so if you want to go ahead with the fishing pier I'd have no problem with that.  Alternatively, if you'd rather have a discussion about that, we can, and like you mentioned, the interiors could be worked on next.  If we can get the entirety of Balamb Town done that would be a perfect place to move on from environments to things like props, characters etc I think, then we can make a demo using Balamb Town.  Demo doesn't have to make sense in terms of plot, but we can get something going such as NPCs, interactions, quests, random encounters, boss encounters etc just to show it working.

I'm super excited

27

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-15 19:31:44 »

That looks amazing!  Also, nothing wrong with a bit of bloom I finally got the Internet in my new house and downloaded the GitHub project so I'll get properly started on that now. Also, any finished assets I'll add to the repo so we can keep track of them and they'll all be stored in one place

28

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-13 19:07:21 »

Done.  Also gave it a DDO treatment, added better normals, and created spec/gloss maps.

I've added the flag/logo - but i need to make it look less 'flat'.

After a tweak or two, I'm off to the rest of the assets.

That's looking fantastic. Absolutely floored by what you guys are doing

29

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-12 10:32:43 »

Damn, Maki.  You are making so much progress, I'm wondering how I'm going to keep up.  I might just have to succumb to using 4096x4096 textures - especially considering this isn't meant to be an MMO

4096x4096?  Do it! 

30

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-10 20:42:39 »

Damn that's amazing. You're probably gonna get sick of me pretty quick as I can imagine a lot of my comments are gonna be something like "wow that's awesome" haha

31

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-10 09:21:35 »

This is looking more and more awesome every day I'm certain we can do this now

32

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-09 17:25:57 »

<3


This is the latest teaser. I'll be back when I finish whole Balamb:

Can't wait 

33

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-09 10:36:53 »

Holy wow, this has suddenly came on incredibly quick, very well done Maki this is awesome.  Really hoping other forum members who can help you out take notice, I don't know where to begin with modelling or texturing unfortunately.

34

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-01 18:30:04 »

Yep!

Unity 4, Unity 5 metallic and Unity 5 Metallic Specular

I know we agreed to make Demo first with Dollet raid (yes or no? xD) but I decided to do Balamb for attention. As far as I can somehow do three buildings, lamp, gate and gas dispenser I can't do whole Italy-themed city/fountain statue/comm tower etc. this is far beyond my 'skill'

I thought Dollet mission would be a good example but I'm happy to do whatever, besides, this definitely caught my attention and seemed to get others as well, so great job!  Hopefully some other modellers will take note and take it on, but I mean we could still demo all of the games mechanics within Balamb Town just to show it off. May as well since there's already some progress there

35

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2017-01-01 18:16:06 »

Holy crap, I'm away from the thread for a little while and this is what I come back to?  Awesome!  I'll try and make a bit of progress on the scripting side of things but this is looking awesome.  As for substance painter, I believe Unity also has it integrated similar to how UE4 uses it so it should import to that no problem as well.  Damn this is exciting 

36

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-12-01 13:02:12 »

Like was just said in the previous post, most people on here modding the FF games definitely do not fall under the definition of amateurs, they are clearly very skilled, hence I decided to enquire here about if people would be interested in it.

Unfortunately, the graphics on those older games are ruined when trying to play on modern monitors.  It's one thing to have the 3d models rendered at 1080p which makes them a bit nicer looking, but the backgrounds are just stretched and look horrible.  When playing FF8 recently I even noticed that just before you leave for the Dollet mission, after Headmaster Cid gives his speech, he becomes part of the background and goes from looking ok to a pixelated mess.  Things like that are very difficult to fix with mods (and in that particular case I'd say that isn't fixable without recreating all backgrounds for Balamb Garden in order to maintain continuity).

Personally, I'm not interested in a QGears-like project, I'd like to work with the community to make a true FF8 remake that stays true to its roots with optional enhancements such as voice acting, optional alternative soundtracks and the like.  As cool as it is being able to extract game files and stuff, they'd only get us so far in doing a good looking remake.  They'd be good for reference in making new models and stuff, but if we tried to shove modern looking high quality models back into the original game, I can see things falling apart very quickly as the game was just not designed to work with such high quality assets.  Besides that, imagine having the game done in proper 3D, being able to move the camera and see the world from angles you just couldn't before.

Skipping a cutscene sounds like an optional feature that would be nice to have, I'll bare it in mind.

Also, there is no reason this couldn't be finished.  Obviously not as quickly as a professional studio working full time, but what do you expect?  I'm sure it could be done in less time than it took to do FFXV

Also as was mentioned previously, Unity is a fantastic engine for amateurs, hobbyists and professional developers.  I only mentioned it as I have a fair bit of experience with it, but as mentioned, it's very easy to get into no matter what your discipline is, be it coding, music, art, animation etc.  Meaning if you've got the skill, getting your work into Unity and working will be a breeze.

37

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-30 09:33:47 »

Just wanted to throw this out there:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/77339434/Blue-Fields-v2.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/77339434/Breezy-v2.mp3

I started on a Roses and Wine pack a few years ago, was doing a lets play to show it off and my YouTube channel was closed for copyright infringement.  Kinda put me off finishing it but with the decision to work on this project I thought I'd pick it back up again.  Means I get to finish the Roses and Wine pack I wanted to do and we'll have all the music necessary for this project, win win.  It's also a rough mix as I've gotten new instruments since I first started on the pack so this is really starting over again.  I know the levels of certain instruments need adjusting, but any feedback would be great.

38

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-28 13:26:42 »

Damn that looks awesome.  Any and all help is welcome 

I know it was mentioned in the topic at some point that an entire remake would be extremely time consuming.  I think what we should consider is where to start so that the art guys/girls don't start on something that we couldn't use/show for a long time.  Personally, I like the idea of starting with the original demo (so the Dollet mission) as it has a clear beginning and end as well as not being too long.  Of course I'm open to suggestions, just so we can start to push this forward.

39

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-28 09:55:26 »

gradient probably looks like that due to jpg.

and the links you simply have to do
["url=https://postimg.org/image/px46x6ynh/]["img]https://s14.postimg.org/px46x6ynh/Screen0.jpg[/img][/url]
excluding the "

in my project I didn't worry about the UI look replication, I wrote code for handling scenes in 3D and 2D although with the hope of there eventually being access to full 3D scenes/objects to build the scenes from. of course you could make quite some good look alike scene with premade assets just would take some time.

Turns out it was the way I was referencing the dropbox link, but thanks, images are showing now

Yeah I'd like this project to be as faithful as possible while being better looking, hence my attempt a while ago at replicating the UI.  Unity makes it very simple to handle scene changes and 3D objects as you can imagine, plus I have an asset from the Unity asset store that deals with looping music whilst maintaining the intro to a song which is used incredibly frequently in FF music.  Just need the big modules now such as battle system, field system, mini game system, inventory system, junction system etc.  The hard part of having a game engine is taken care of with Unity.  Not that this means we can do it overnight or anything, but if you wanna help you're more than welcome to

40

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-27 10:34:21 »

That's a pretty interesting take on the UI. I started tinkering in Unity one time to try and replicate the UI, when I find it I'll attach it. As for motivation. I've wanted to do this for many many years but never had the skills to, but now I think I do. I think with the help of this community it could definitely be done. Just hearing the covers I did of the music a few years ago got me pumped to work on it again so I'm not worried about my motivation dropping

Edit: Found the UI stuff I was looking for. The gradient was a lot smoother on the computer than it looks in the pictures. Tried to embed them in the post but I suck so links will have to do.

41

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-26 15:47:27 »

Kandy_Man, I'm extremely busy with everything and before I could proceed to this project I need to do all the requests for VIII research/modding from users here.
Anyway, totally random I checked my cloud folder and found these two screenshots:


Unfortunately I lost the video.

I completely understand that. I can't commit full time myself either with work and stuff so don't worry, we'll chip away at it over time and get there in the end.

That's awesome, is that models and textures ripped and put into a different game/engine? Obviously I can see the enemies but the environment looks much higher quality than what was in FF8.

42

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-21 09:34:28 »

There's already an RPG framework for Unity called ORK that I would say is very much an RPG Maker alternative in that it is all editor based with little to no coding required to make an RPG with different types of battle systems.  Unfortunately it's quite expensive.

I guess you could make the argument that the PSX FF games all have the same fundamental elements (field, inventory, turn based battle etc), and therefor working on that as a core could produce something that could work for all of them, but then they also have very different systems on top of it (materia versus junction).  Not to mention, personally, I'm only interested in seeing 8 taken to the next level, hence this topic.  As nice as it sounds to have an RPG Maker style asset on the Unity Asset Store, that was never my intention with this project and would increase the scope for the project quite a bit.  I was just looking for like minded people with a love for FF8 who would like to work on taking it to the next level.  Who knows, maybe in future we could end up there, but that sounds like something that would be way off in the future.

43

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-17 20:24:00 »

Ok the GitHub link above now has a Unity project in it.  It's pretty much empty except for an initial folder structure.  Fairly sure I've missed stuff out but it's a good enough start I think.  Created using Unity 5.4.2 but that will change as time goes by.  Also I accidentally pushed with my work Git account so excuse that it doesn't say the commit was by Kandy-Man, it was still me, I'll try and be more careful in future.  As mentioned above, if anyone has anything they want to add or wants to get started, either make a pull request or I'll add you as a collaborator or something.  Feel free to download the repo and let's get started!   

44

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-17 13:22:12 »

Git repo has been created here https://github.com/Kandy-Man/FF8HD  Currently just has an ignore file set up for Unity but I'll get around to creating a proper Unity project and structure so we can organise everything properly.  If anyone has anything they'd like to add (e.g. if you already have stuff ripped for us to examine) feel free to make a pull request.  Sorry this took so long, I'm doing this when possible at work.

45

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-16 19:53:09 »

Forget it. We already have all the tools and much more ripped things (the train set for example was uploaded by me, but this whole packing, taking a shot, writing a description job is sooo boring). Also, the 'G.Fs' section are not GFs itself, but enemies (so no GF sequence)(and we have it!). We have everything. Shunsq made a MCH2blend importer (field characters importer with animations)(but it looks like it's not yet released [as it's purpouse is to import it back to FF8 too] so...

Yes, github is fine for me. Go on!

Oh great I didn't know we had so much available.  I mean, I knew we had a lot just from the mods section, but wow.  Can you point out where some of this stuff is as Mcindus mentioned wanting to try to increase the poly count on the character models.

As for GitHub, I'll create a new account in the morning and post in here the details for it.

46

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-16 08:26:38 »

If you want to play the original SGT files, you must have the Yamaha XG midi plugin to get the correct instruments, etc.  It came with soundblaster cards and was part of the original PC downloads as well.  I don't know of any XG drivers for modern cards, etc... not sure how that would work.  Hopefully that gives you some insight.

Also - I'm a texture artist, a 3d environment artist, and an amateur 3d modeler.  If someone got me the original .obj's of the characters, I could try my hand at increasing their poly count.
Anything else to contribute would be fun also.

That's awesome to hear Mcindus, I've seen quite a few mods for FF8 with your name attached so I'm looking forward to anything you can do (I have your essential mods thread bookmarked and check back quite frequently).  I guess we have to start somewhere and like I mentioned previously, I'm not sure where, so I'll do a bit of digging and see if I can get any character models, I'd consider that a good start if we had something art based to show off rather than just cubes interacting on a screen.  Even something simple like the textures for the conversation box and inner monologue box or something would be a fantastic start I think (the one I did in the video in the first post wasn't exactly great).  I'll look into getting us setup with a github or something so we have a place to store everything.

*EDIT*

*double edit*

The link before was to the thread discussing getting the models, these are the links necessary.

Models = https://www.models-resource.com/playstation/finalfantasy8/
Textures = https://www.textures-resource.com/playstation/finalfantasy8/
Sprites = https://www.spriters-resource.com/playstation/finalfantasy8/

In terms of checking out the original art, it doesn't get much better than that.  Only thing missing is the field versions of the characters, the models mentioned above are all battle models and apparently rigged too.  Hopefully that's enough to get us started

47

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-13 18:40:20 »

So in terms of where to begin, do you have any ideas Maki?  I realise there's documentation on the engine that was used back then such as the way it was modularised and stuff, would basing it on that be a good place to start?  Obviously with things like Unity we don't need to make as much from scratch as what Square did back in the day, and I've been thinking about whether basing a remake on the way the engine worked back then is even a good idea as tech has moved on so much there's potential for there to be a better way to do it today.  For what it's worth, the demo I showed in that first post, although it was never used for the demo I had an editor based on RPG Maker in terms of making a character, a weapon, a magic type etc.  It wasn't finished as I realised about half way in I was spending more time on the editor than I was on the demo for the assignment, but it could be a way of making things easier when it comes to making characters/magic/weapons etc.  It's linked here if anyone wants to check it out (https://youtu.be/7D7Gkh2bcXg?list=PL7GtxGvnH4xF-jZDZpc2ZHcwztwcgJDCx).  There was a lot more of it completed by the end, it was just used as an example.

Basically I don't just want to dive in and start coding without a plan else that will lead to disaster.  We can always get it going using primitives until we attract some artists.

48

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-07 14:00:47 »

Not much from visual side:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT0_a7gKfMY&feature=youtu.be
but it's reading all files from original archives, so that's something. The music is OGG unfortunately. I tried to find a way to play original SGT songs, but it's heavily deprecated and there's no documentation anywhere.

It's okay if you want to use Unity. I'm also into C# with all that MonoGame and Paradox/Xenko engine too.
For models - I can do some basic models also, but for example Balamb fish statue- no way!

About the UE4 balamb garden- I tried to contact the author some time ago,  but got no reply. :C

That's awesome.  Reading from the original files is always a good thing, it will help in regards to being faithful instead of guessing things.  Yeah I was looking for years on music stuff, always wanted to extract the midi information so I could better learn the songs, then I learned that the midi information in the PC version is actually not accurate to the PSX version I believe?  OGG is how I did the music in my university assignment and probably how I'd suggest implementing music into a remake.

I'd rather Unity and if you're a C# person too that's even better, of course if you've been using MonoGame you would be

I'd say anything is better than nothing at this point, just to get the ball rolling so to speak, maybe attract other people who think they could do a better job of models and stuff (and I'd welcome them to if they can).

Yeah I think I tried to contact him too and got nothing.  Shame, but hopefully some people on here would be interested, I've seen what some of the HD mod creators can do

49

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-07 13:38:02 »

I'm always ready to help in FF8 remakes!
You see, the biggest problem in whole remake project is lack of artists. There are some fantastic 3D Artists here (FFVIII: The movie for example) but that's still too small (maybe enough for demo, but not for whole game xD).
I had some fun with putting ripped models into Unreal Engine 4 and it looked quite odd as it's still low-poly strawberries.
I've made also a demo in MonoGame with overture, menu, field support. Programming is not a problem, there are many programmers and VIII fans here, but as said above- I'm having a hard time to notice more 3D artists.
Find someone who would want to recreate whole Balamb Garden model in full detail.

Anyway, count me in.
I'll show you my MonoGame FF8 engine implementation for training, sec ...

Yeah I had a feeling artists was going to be the problem.  I did see a video one time of someone who remade Balamb Garden in MineCraft (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P3NEiUYHro) along with someone who made an area of it using some assets they made in UE4 so that will be with looking into I think (http://scottmichaelh.artstation.com/projects/v163Y).  Only reason I suggested Unity is I'm very familiar with C# but not at all familiar with C++, not to mention Unity is catching up in terms of graphics and I personally find Unity to be easier to work in.  Even if we only got a demo completed (like the original FF8 demo for example) I'd be extremely proud that we'd achieved that.

Looking forward to your FF8 MonoGame implementation

50

General Discussion / Final Fantasy 8 in Unity?

« on: 2016-11-07 12:43:43 »

Hi, I'm a long time viewer of these forums, only joined today as I thought this was definitely the place to post about this.

I've been longing for a Final Fantasy 8 remake ever since it was announced that 7 8 and 9 were being remade for PS2 (that obviously never happened, though the FF8 tech demo was fantastic at the time).  As part of an assignment at university, I made a very simple demo based on FF8 (which can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7lfGBGgWk0 real stuff begins at 3:00, no idea why I left it running that long in the beginning).  I thought it would be cool if the community made a remake as they would probably be more faithful to the original than SE would be (see what they are doing with the FF7 remake for example), not to mention I've seen what some members of this community are capable of and I'm sure they could do a fantastic job (combine the knowledge of the community regarding how the engine/mechanics/formulas work along with other fan projects such as the voice over projects, people making hd models/textures and stuff and it could turn out incredible).

As you can see in that video, I have absolutely zero artistic talent, the only thing I'm proud of art wise is that I managed to make the gradient look pretty decent (as a non artist anyway), and the throw back to the Galbadian enemies as capsule soldier and capsule leader (I guess I'm quite happy with my covers of the music although I could do a way better version of them these days).

Basically, would anyone be interested in seeing this happen, and if so, would anyone be prepared to help?  I'd volunteer for music and programming as I've been involved in music for 13 years and am a recent Games Software Development graduate, but obviously there is a lot more than that that needs to go into it (I'd also like some optional enhancements, for example, if the voice over project was included voices could be optional along with the grey boxes being substituted for more subtle subtitles at the bottom of the screen, again, optional.  I also like the idea of optional camera stuff, i.e. traditional FF8 camera or more modern right analog stick to move camera so you can see more of the world instead of being confined to the camera angle set in the game).  Time would be limited for myself (and I imagine most people) due to work, but I think if enough people were interested in working on it we could do a pretty good job in not too long of a time thanks to software such as Unity.

Or, if no one is interested I'll crawl back into my cave and pray SE eventually does it (properly that is)