Intro to FR

 "FR", as mentioned in the previous post, is essentially a retro-styled SNES era RPG.  That means, among other things, that it uses a relatively low resolution pixel art visual style.  It taking some inspiration from games of that era, in particular the Final Fantasy series which was, ultimately, one of the main motivating factors in beginning this project.  Indeed, FR is intended to be a parody of the Final Fantasy series in particular and of various genre tropes in general and various other things along the way.  Even so I do hope it will manage to stand on its own for those who are not as familiar with the things that it is spoofing.

 


A Brief History of FR

The project began in the hazy mists of the distant past and work on it has proceeded off and on over the years - though more off than on, most of the time - and has evolved much since its early incarnation.  It's only really within the last three or four years that FR has seen new life, marking the first real progress since those early halcyon days of yore.

 

Since then the project has proceeded slowly but steadily.  As noted in the previous post this is a part-time effort which I work on mostly in the evenings and on weekends.  It is also a solo project.  And RPGs take a lot of work!  There are a lot of graphics, amongst other things, that need to get done.  A large chunk of development time goes into creating various sprites - NPCs, map tiles, scenery objects and so on.  Still, I enjoy working on the project and continue to plug away at it.

 Current Plans

The current goal is to produce a fully playable demo of the early portions of the game.  The section of plot planned for the demo is largely scripted and implemented and most of what remains is finalizing the design of and then implementing the combat system, and fleshing out some details (some side quests, additional NPC dialogue and so on).  It's hard to say exactly how long this will take but I'm hoping that within maybe a year or so to have something demoable.  We'll see - it's a goal to shoot for!

 


Next Time...

The next post (for which, as a reminder, there is no set schedule) will likely either be some thoughts on the Godot game engine or talking about how I make character sprites.  Whichever it is, I'll do posts on both eventually.

Asking the burning questions.


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