FF6: The Dimensional Gate

[Terramano]

Now what is the Dimensional Gate?

Its a Place in the WoR that has "Wormholes" to many different locations of Time-Space, each containing A new Superboss (and a little pseudo dungeon/map to make it feel less random though with the emphasis is on little since the main objective will be the bosses, hence the previous name Boss exhibition). Upon Deafeating all of them, a Ripple will open containing the final, and Ultimate boss(es) of the hack.

About 24 are planned not including the final area which will contain a surprise if i manage to pull it off.

Why?

Since I love the idea of superbosses in general (Who doesnt love a challenge in his favorite game (yes VI probably is mine). I remember the first time i encountered Ruby weapon (though VII not being my favorite it was my first encounter with an over the top boss since Atma and the dragons barely are any harder than normal bosses in ff VI) not knowing what to expect I was like wtf is this... which makes defeating them the more satisfying) and dont rly like the idea of adding bosses on random encounters on the world map (like the popular dinosaur forest bosses) since they feel so out of place. So i wanted to add a series of challenges, with at least an absolute minimum of "story", game integration and progression, and also because I feel that apart the 1 million hp challenge there are very few superbosses to download that are rly compareable to the ff7 weapons (or penance and the dark aeons etc etc).

How?

An Ips will be released that will require a savegame of an unmodded game (Apart character player sprite edits and skill animation edits)ANYWHERE in the WoR (everyone should have one of those I guess), so you will be able to use your own endgame party. This is due to the fact that i will make use of Edited WoB maps and monsters which will make it impossible to play the game from start with the hack installed. This shouldnt pose any problem though.

Whats done So far?

*Updated 22.11.2012*

All Bosses Visual designs are done! The gate is added to the WoR map, properly enterable, and 95% of the planned maps are fully done mappingwise (meaning design is done and the physical maps are more or flawless too whitch is a bit bitchy on some sets). Gate itself is fully mapped. Dimensional Zone is fully. Small boss Zones are fully mapped, and only the Final zone is left. Im currently editing the battle background for the final boss which is a bit more tedious than it sounds since it pretty much involves pixel editing the different scattered chunks of compressed data. Ill then add all the npcs (containing most of the "story") and Space ripple animations, and then The final and most important part, item skill stat tweaking and script creation will begin. I expect a release in about 1-2 months.

And yes, the katakana under the Final Fantasy VI logo DOES mean Dimensional Gate =)

Screens (Updated)


The big machine aswell as the Dimension background look both alot better when moving. And this Boss will have another background.

*Update 1* Gate teaser

All "bosses" mentioned below are mechs (lets say non organic) To fit into the tiny story, and into the setting of the All-technological Gate. The real and various bosses the Zone itself leads to, will ofcourse be all kinds, since ripples there will allow to warp to different timespace zones allowing any type of enemy since they can lead anywhere. But I figured In the Gate There should be only mechs since.. well i dont wanna go into the story yet =), Also obviously the zones bosses will Be the real heart of the mod and way tougher than the Gates Bosses. Well Enjoy.

Oh and most of these machines are actually moving so it looks way better ingame.



The Island

Ancient Cave

Ancient Cave Ripple

Entrance of the Gate (one boss will guard the Door, and He will also introduce the player to what the gate is, where it comes from and basic story including why you cant proceed)

First Room with Engines Left and right branches (the dead ends) will contain a boss each, required to kill before taking on the boss guarding the door

Stairs, Duh

Main engines, Left and right dead End Will contain a boss each required to kill to proceed to the gate

Warp room, where the power of all these engines/rooms comes together The Create the Wormhole, Will contain one last Boss guarding the telepod Leading to the interdimensional Zone with all the ripples leading to the real bosses.
Biggest story chunk will follow when entering the InterDim. Zone, and there the challenge really begins. But no worries every mech in the gate will provide a bigger challenge than the hardest legit fight in the original game still, and unless any original ingame enemy, each of them definitely can kill a top tier party if youre not acting carefully.

Also if not obvious, to make it feel realer, Each boss in the whole hack is Onetime only and the progress is saveable. You can therefor enter, fight as far as you come until it gets too difficult, leave and level up or whatever and come back at a later point and keep going. You can reach the dimensional zone with a normal party but from then apart the obvious emphasis on tricky Scripts, stat maxing will nonetheless be imperative to keep going. This might increase the motivation to max stats for some since in the original game even though you are able to, there rly is no use in doing so.

Hope you like it.

*Update 2* Dimensional Zone Teaser

Now Here it is, the Main Interdimensional zone. This was WAY more work than it looks like because that tileset is a bitch. About 15-17 hours went into this map. Mostly due to small details, just check out the tileset yourself. Anyhow The hardest mapping part is finally done. Only the small boss zones and the last zone left so give or take 5 days, mayb 6.Its a completely used 2048*1024 Map

Please click on the full resolution lick below this resize to watch it in full size.

Full resolution link click here
Concept/Explanation: The Blue and red dots are placeholders. The blue dots represent The timespace ripples leading to the different boss zones and the red dots are the npc that will only let you pass into the next area of 5 after youve beaten a set of 5 bosses. Means you beat all 5 of teh first level -> proceed to level 2. Same there -> level 3 -> same there and the big last mount gets unlocked which contains 1 more boss before entering the warp on top and then inside it are 2 more, the 2 last bosses. Meaning this map cointains 15+1 = 16 bosses and after each 5 you can proceed to the next 5. The last zone will Have 2 as said and the Dimensional gate has 6. Totals out at 16+6+2= 24 Bosses By me in this hack. Guest bosses of ppl in the forum will get an extra room independent of the Story itself.

Also The background (all black areas) looks like this

It moves so it looks pretty trippy, and(all is relative obviously ;P) "interdimensional", at least enough to leave me satisfied.

Soon the boss-scripting will begin.

Heres a Teaser of one of the Bosses; Randgrid. Original Artist will, like all, be credited in the game, permission to use is already obtained by the original atist on Pixiv. Resizing it was a pain, the original sprite was 400*500 (oh and it had a mouse face lol). *edit* Please be fair and do not use this sprite until my hack is released, alot of work went into resizing and obtaining permission took quite some convincing (Im mentioning this because something like that has happened to me before, though not romhacking related) The background will change obviously.

sorry for the colors, hate zsnes screenshot function, but its probably my settings, dunno why its so dark/low in quality, only realised it now watching it, Ill figure it out and retake the screenshot tomorrow.

I feel like mentioning since all the boss sprites are alrdy modified and rdy to implement, they are all of very high quality (Personal reasons, since i just love good liking sprites) and apart 2 none of them has ever been used in a snesrom hack afaik, since most have been resized and modified by me and werent originally created as boss sprites for ff6. There are 2 exceptions but the rest are all as of yet unused bosses, of a quality similar to Randgrid.

Well folks, this is it up to this point, I sincerely hope you guys find this hack enjoyable, Ill post updates here regularily.

Cheers, John.

[Talbain]

It would be cool if you made a segment where you walked on/through that black area trippy stuff.  Looks way cooler than the foreground.

[Terramano]

Not sure im following, but if I understand you right and you mean walking on the blue part, then sadly I have to disappoint, since that will most likely not happen since there would be no proper way to map any outlines or actually to genrally create a big map with the available tilesets and layermaps, and also the way it moves which is hard to imagine from the static image, is actually not rly fit for a walkable texture. =/ (I think I know what you have in mind but unfortunately its not rly executable in any good looking way).

[ETG]

How feasible would it be to have a new game start off in the WoR half of the game with everyone at appropriate levels and equipment?

[Terramano]

Well It should be pretty doable actually, simply by handing out the ips with a savegame that I make, that starts on solitary island and has all the chars appropriately leveld. This might actually be a good idea since that way I can implement generally lower stat growth curves (which would be obsolete if someone loads his own savegame with maxed chars since the saved stats overwrite the curves so to speak. Thats why stat cheats are saveable) similar to those in the great mod FF6 best game ever though prossibly not quite as low since I will heavily work on the boss scripts and stats anyway, but it will allow me to increase the bosses difficulty from both sides. Ill post info on that topic once im in that phase.

thnks for commenting, cheers.

[Kiyoshi Aman]

Far, far too much of a focus on vertical symmetry; it looks distinctly unnatural.

[Terramano]

Im afraid its absolutely on purpose since I very much find it aestethically appealing when machinery is symmetrical, as you noticed the big map is not symmetrical. Well the island is too but its for the same reason, to make it stand out on the world map as a special place and not to showcase realistic results of vegetational growth and the accurate effects of plate tectonics 

Cmon talking about unnatural looks in the domain of video games?

On a side note the whole Idea of it is not natural if you actually read it, so I find it perfectly acceptable to give the place a distinct non natural look.  Also It actually looks way more in your face on overview than ingame since the area overlookable at one time is very small.

Anyhow I am still glad for your and any critical input but in this case, I love the way it looks and theres no chance in hell I will change it, though I might add that as mentioned in the text too any map in this hack is a cosmetical necessity and far from the focus of it, and they are only posted to make the topic look a bit more alive until I have some more relevent stuff to showcase =)

[Zeemis]

Far, far too much of a focus on vertical symmetry; it looks distinctly unnatural.

A few of us said that to him, but I don't think he will change that. I think he's going for that.

[Pikachumanson]

Who are you to doubt El Dandy?

[Merta]

Anyway of continuing the saga of FFVI is much appreciated by me, and most of the FFVI hacks that I've seen have hardly had something so different like this in any of them. The screenshots really look good and I am liking the Randgrid boss. It's very interesting, for me, to theorize how this new location would fit into the universe of the game, though it also reminds me of the optional dungeons and bosses in the GBA remake of FF1. Will check it out when it gets finished.

[Terramano]

Exams over, And I have picked this project up again so changing the status back from inactive. Gonna Post the recent progress within the next week.

[Drakon]

Exams over, And I have picked this project up again so changing the status back from inactive. Gonna Post the recent progress within the next week.

Heh nice I also started working on projects I shelved until exams are over.  This looks awesome.  Only thing missing is a demonstration video.

[Bregalad]

Youre lucky I've 4 exams next week.

[tryphon]

You're lucky. I too have four exams this week.

But I'm the teacher...