Shining Force Central

I have not noticed this before.

I want to show you my support. I've seen attempts at remaking Shining FOrce 1 and other little projects that were... well, they were bad, even I attempted it, it takes a lot of work, and most projects do not get anywhere far enough to be relevant.

But this, and looking at the checklist. Sorry for my swearing, but ******* wow.

I put the demo in RPG Maker 2003 just to take a quick look at how much work was in there and its already impressive.


You see, there's 2 things that interest me massively here:

-A remake of Shining Force 3 that actually looks enjoyable (no offense to the original but the bad 3D graphics gets me)

-An opportunity to find a Shining Force platform


In no way do I want to steal your work, but its so amazing, I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it make for a great base for any other Shining Force game or fan-made creation? Remakes of Shining Force 1-2, made by anyone, using your work as a base?

Maybe thats just me day dreaming. I always wanted to re-create Shining Force somehow, so that one could create the dream game based on it. Shining Force 1-2's systems hold a special place in my heart, as you can imagine.

If nothing else, I'd love to get my hands on the final engine and try my hands with it. I hope thats not a concept that offends you, however.

In fact, I'd love to see an updated alpha, just to see the inner workings of your engine, especially if you ever get all the core stuff done.


So if nothing else, just wanted to show you my support.

@SFJake: I apologize for the lateness of this reply. It's been a difficult year for me, what with my health condition and all. I'd like to thank you for your wonderful support. I verily appreciate it.

Indeed, a tremendous amount of work has gone into this project thus far. I happen to be a fan of early-era 32bit graphics, so I can still enjoy the original SF3's jank-ass graphics. However, I certainly understand that they're subpar.

And even though I can enjoy those graphics, I still think that the game *ought* to have been done in the style of its predecessors, which is a large part of why I'm doing this project; I want to give this game the justice it's always deserved. I mean, the Sega Saturn was a 2D powerhouse, after all. It would have been far better suited to such a thing in the first place.

As for the idea of a Shining Force platform, I'm all for it, so long as whoever uses it as the base for their own projects credits me appropriately. However, make no mistake, it would not exactly be a simple feat to use my project as the base for another project. It could certainly be done, but it would still require a great deal of effort. Much of my programming is rather convoluted, as RPG Maker 2003 was never strictly designed to do this sort of thing. I'm really pushing the limits of this engine.

It's quite likely that most people who might want to undertake such an endeavour might need to do a little bit of consulting with me personally on a few things. Although such consultation would be welcome. In fact, you say that you went through my project a bit in the editor; you may have noticed that I have many comment/note lines riddled throughout my code which attempt to explain what is happening therein. While those may be guidelines for myself so that I can keep track of what I'm doing easier, I do plan to leave them there after the project is complete, so that they might assist anyone else who wants to use my project as a base for their own as you have suggested.

I haven't done any work on this project in many, many months. Between my lung collapsing on me, subsequently quitting smoking, and the Tree of Savior closed beta test engulfing my existence, I haven't exactly had the time, energy, or headspace for it. But about a week ago, I had a dream that I was working on it again (although in the dream, it was glorious 3D lol), and I've been itching to get back to it ever since. I still have some concerns that working on it might make me want to smoke, but I'm going to have at her and see if I can manage. It's been nearly seven months now since I've had a cigarette, so I hope I've put enough distance between myself and that vice to a point where I can do this functionally without fiening. I still dream about smoking in my sleep... lol.

If all goes according to plan (though it seldom does to the extent to which I anticipate), I'll have the rest of the kinks of this battle system worked out, and several more elements of the menu system complete, and the second battle implemented, culminating in a full alpha demo which encapsulates the entirety of the initial Saraband portion of the game released some time in the next couple of months. That's my plan.

I've also been strongly considering modifying some of the sprite-based tile elements of the project to fit RPG Maker's 16x16 pixel tiles. Things like tables, boxes, barrels, beds, and the like. I'd like to get some input from people here in regards to what they think about that. I might make a new poll thread at some point in the near future about that.

In conclusion: Tor's back (maybe). lol.

EDIT: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... So I've been working hard on this project every day since I made this post... and now the database has become corrupted... This is a very rare error in RM2K3, and there's sweet f*ck all I can do about it... So everything I've done over the last week is all out the f*cking window. -.- I'm forced to go back to my most recent backup, which is the point where I started work on this thing again a week ago. I'm so upset right now, you guys. x.x

Well, I actually really enjoyed your 16-bit version of Shining Force 3, though I do also like the old crummy graphics of the original, it could be just nostalgia glasses talking but whatever.
I understand some of the errors you are having with RM2K3, I used to use that software in my High School days.
But just to let you know everyone hear supports you all the ways, and hopefully this incident was the one and only and that it will all be smooth sailings from here.

When you lose work, it doesn't matter if it's not hard to reproduce or if you remember what all you'd done. It's having to do the same thing again.

Oh hey look my competitio- I mean... Tor's back!

Like Earl said, its the doing it again that's always the worst. I've had this happen to me loads of times so I know the feeling. I've had a few hard drives die on me a while back so nowadays I tend to keep all my important data backed up across 3 devices and a flash drive to avoid any issues.

Nonetheless, glad to have you back! Looking forward to your next demo!

Kalagaraj wrote:Well, I actually really enjoyed your 16-bit version of Shining Force 3, though I do also like the old crummy graphics of the original, it could be just nostalgia glasses talking but whatever.

Thanks, bud. Glad to hear you enjoyed it. And yeah, I enjoy the old, crummy graphics too. Though I do still think it would have been better off as 16-bit to begin with. But then... if it was, then I wouldn't have this project. <3

Kalagaraj wrote:But just to let you know everyone hear supports you all the ways, and hopefully this incident was the one and only and that it will all be smooth sailings from here.

I certainly hope so. I'm going to start doing backups of the core game files every day that I work on it from now on so that this can never happen again to such a large extent.

Earl wrote:When you lose work, it doesn't matter if it's not hard to reproduce or if you remember what all you'd done. It's having to do the same thing again.

That is exactly it, yes. x.x

Chaoswizard98 wrote:Oh hey look my competitio- I mean... Tor's back!

Hahaha. This cracked me up.

Chaoswizard98 wrote:I've had a few hard drives die on me a while back so nowadays I tend to keep all my important data backed up across 3 devices and a flash drive to avoid any issues.

I keep it on a thumb drive, an external hard drive, and Dropbox. So yeah, I hear ya there.

Chaoswizard98 wrote:Nonetheless, glad to have you back! Looking forward to your next demo!

Thanks, bud! It's been righteously set back, as y'all know, but I'm workin' on it, and it's gonna' happen soon-ish. ^^

I hate to be that guy, but the demo doesn't work at all for me. It keeps giving me a "The RPG Maker 2003 Runtime Package is not present or not registered." error upon startup, even though I've installed the 2003 RTP straight from RPG Maker's site. I installed in the default directory, and even tried installing the RTP into the demo's directory (choosing to keep the demo files when prompted to override them with the default RTP files). I'm not sure what else can be done at this point. Unless the RTP that you linked to is slightly different than their official one. Nevertheless, I'd love to give it a try if I could. Hopefully it's an easy fix.

Rozekail, why don't you add me to Skype and we'll see what we can do about getting this working, eh? I'll PM you with the addy.

If we exchange ideas back and forth here on the forum, it could take weeks. lol. But on Skype, this should be far more manageable, I think.

Hello @Tor_Heyerdal

I have to say that I'm really impressed on how hard and how long you've been working on this !
As a huge SF fan, I must say thank you.

However, I've not been able to run the demo as I can't put a hand on the RTP for Rm2k3 : /

Did you manage to overcome any further difficulties ? Do you think any final version will see the light one day ?

Best of luck with your project

Edit: found RTP here but still does'nt work.

I'm a real noob at this : /

Hi, Bambix. Thanks so much for the support. And welcome to Shining Force Central.

Firstly, to answer your question: Yes, I do firmly believe that a final version will see the light one day. That day is still several years off, no doubt. But it will come. There are only two things that could potentially bring an end to this project: 1) a C&D order, or 2) my death. Aaaaaand I'm not even 100% sure that I would let the former stop me. lol. This project is like, my baby. Well, one of my babies. The other being my conlang (constructed language).

EDIT: Oh, and to answer your other question: Yes, I have overcome *SO* many difficulties. I haven't put all of them into practice yet, but I at least know how I'm going to solve virtually every problem at this point.

Anyway, I've encountered this problem that you're having before. I'm really not certain as to why, but I do know that there seems to be different versions of the RTP (which are all essentially the same thing), the most recent of which will not work... for some reason. So, as an alternative, why don't you uninstall that non-functioning RTP, and then install this from my Drop Box. In addition to the compatible RTP, it will also install RPG Maker 2003 itself. You can uninstall that afterwards if you'd like, but it's pretty small.

I'm also pleased to say that since the release of this pre-alpha demo, the project has come a *very* long way, and all future releases will no longer require the RTP at all. All future releases will no longer require you to manually install the font, either. Oh, on that note, here is an updated version of the font. This revised font makes the old one look like poo. The archive password for the font is "sfc" (without the quotes). You will still need to manually install either the old font or this one I just linked to you for this pre-alpha demo, but the next release will be more self-contained.

I'm also pleased to say that there will probably be a new release fairly soon, at long last. Likely even in time for Halloween. When I release that, I will have the admins here unpin this post, and pin the new update instead.

EDIT: I think I'm gonna' go edit the OP to change the RTP link to my Dropbox. lol. Since I'm fairly certain the link I originally had there is long since dead now.

Thank you for taking some of your time to answer my questions.
And thank you for updating the links to your dropbox

But I have to admit that I feel pretty dumb here.
Again, I must say I new at this kind of stuff, so forgive my lack of knowledge, but after installing rm2k3 (and thus, the RTP), I go in the SF3 folder and click on RPG_RT.exe, and I get this :

Spoiler

I don't get it x)

Anyways, I'm glad to read that we will have the luck to have a glance at a new version in the upcoming weeks, and I hope you'll find the easy way to make it happen

Some video cards really don't like it when RPG Maker goes into full screen. You probably have such a video card. I can't recall if I included AFM in that build or not. AFM stands for "Another Fullscreen Mode", and it's kind of like a patch that should solve this problem. If I did include it in this build, then there should be a file in the root directory called "afm_game_starter.exe". Use that instead. If you have a widescreen monitor, then AFM will cause the picture to stretch, which is unfortunate, but it's better than not being able to play it at all. While you're using AFM, you can press F6 to toggle between windowed mode and fullscreen. AFM also provides some nifty video filters, which you can toggle with F8. When you're *not* using AFM, the normal button for toggling between windowed/fullscreen is F4, but you won't be able to access that because the game starts in fullscreen, and I'm not sure if there's any way to get it to start in windowed mode, because that's not covered in the pitiful little .ini (not really my doing; this is just a fundamental flaw in RPG Maker). If the AFM starter is not there, then let me know, and I'll get you a download link for it. It's just a couple of small files.

Alternatively, it might just be that you need to update your graphics drivers.

"afm_game_starter.exe" is nowhere to be found : /

And my drivers are all up to date ^^

I went out looking for the normal download link for this thing, and I can't find it anywhere. So I've packed it up into a .rar myself and uploaded it to Dropbox. The main reason I wanted to find the original download was just in case I was mistaken about it only being the two .EXEs and one .TXT file. But I'm fairly confident that it's just the three files. So here you go. Shouldn't be any password on this one. Just extract the archive to the root directory of the game (so that the three files contained in the archive are in the same place as RPG_RT.EXE). https://www.dropbox.com/s/xkp0ddgk1w987y1/AFM.rar?dl=0

If you're still having problems afterwards, let me know.

EDIT: Future builds will come pre-packaged with AFM. I'm also planning on adding a thing which will allow windowed mode to be made larger than 640x480, but that's not implemented yet.

Man, thank you so much ! It's working like a charm

I don't know how to thank you for all your work and your patience.
Maybe I can buy you a beer ?

No self-respecting Canadian would say "no" to a beer. :V lol. Cheers.

When will you post a video?

Pappets wrote:When will you post a video?

I don't know. There's a big part of me that doesn't think it's a good idea to ever post any videos. I'm not trying to put it in the spotlight (yet) because I don't want the project to get shut down. I guess $ega's rampage against SF videos on YT a few years back and all the fan projects that have been shut down over the last few years have still got me wary about releasing anything outside of this niche forum.

That said, there's going to be a new, updated demo release coming out here on this niche forum in the immediate future. I want to say it'll just be a few more days, but my projections always seem to be wrong in that regard. lol. Either way, you'll be able to play the most up-to-date build very soon.

Tor_Heyerdal wrote:

Pappets wrote:When will you post a video?

I don't know. There's a big part of me that doesn't think it's a good idea to ever post any videos. I'm not trying to put it in the spotlight (yet) because I don't want the project to get shut down. I guess $ega's rampage against SF videos on YT a few years back and all the fan projects that have been shut down over the last few years have still got me wary about releasing anything outside of this niche forum.

Yes, you're right. You better be cautions with Sega because you never know when they will have another neurose attack over Shining Force videos or fanworks like yours.

Do not call it shining force 3 and do not include any scripts