hian
Purist
First things first - I've been kinda swamped lately, too much with both my day job and my game development project to spend the time I want to on my interview and my translation project, but I'm hoping to get things sorted out sometime this week. Sorry guys.
In the mean time, there's this thing that's been sitting on my mind as of late while I worked on my own game, and it has to do with the game-play trailer and how many parts/size of parts we're looking at for the remake.
In the trailer, the combat scenes are obvious done using a test set-up - where both Barret and Cloud have their HP set to 2000.
There is no reason to assume this is going to be their base HP level since their MP levels, attack power and the attack power of the enemies remain pretty similar to that of the original game.
This is common when test-playing RPGs for a couple of simple reasons -
If you're running around testing mechanics, you want to be able to do that at a comfortable level and pace without having to risk dying and having to start over and over again from check-points, or using the console to revert stuff which can often lead to unfortunate ticks in the game-play.
Having your HP at max/infinite, with your other values set to normal, you can work on balancing your game and take your time seeing how it plays out in real time.
However, thinking back on my own game-development, and most of what I know of the industry with beta testing I've done etc. what people usually do, is that they access the data-base or whatever file the character stats are stored in, and they simply set it to max.
Put simply - why does Cloud and Barret have 2000 HP as opposed to a 1000 HP? Or 3000, or 9999 for that matter?
2000 certainly isn't the first number most people would land on opening the character stat editor to create a template or set-up for a test-run.
Which leads me to my hypothesis -
2000 HP is the HP cap for the first part - at least for the moment I.E
Going into the file, and setting the character HP to maximum defaults to 2000.
9999 divided by 2000 = 4.9, which means that we're looking at, at most, 5 parts.
However, considering that 9999 is the max HP of the original, and not at all an HP level necessary to beat the game, and that there would be no point in having an HP cap on the last part of the game (which would probably be completed at anywhere from 4000-6000 HP for any ordinary player), I think we're looking at 3 (at most 4) parts.
First part 2000 HP, second part 4000 HP, and third part 6000+ HP.
So how much would each part cover? Well, I think the most probable way of extrapolating that would be looking at, following the flow of the original, what HP levels most people would be on average at the various parts - meaning that the first part probably covers a large portion of disk one, although not necessarily all of it, since 2000 is the max value after all, with the second part covering the rest of disk 1 and half or so of disk 2, and the third part covering the last part of disk 2 and all of disk 3.
This is an extremely rough lay-out though, and I'm doing all this off of my memories of my average runs with little to no concern for narrative structure and without account for changes in content and pacing of the game-play that will probably occur in the remake.
With that being said, I need to stress that this is an extremely shaky hypothesis because it's based on the flimsy assumption that somebody didn't actually set the HP levels to 2000 for some other specific reason, or that they just landed on that number on random - both which are perfectly viable alternatives.
It also assumes that regardless of whether 2000 is the cap at the moment or not, it's going to stay that way for the release.
However, it's been bothering me for days now, and I just needed to get it out there - also, so that if we do end up with a first part with a 2000 HP cap, and 3/4 parts divided roughly by the metric I proposed above I get to say "I called it". =P
Anyways, have a nice week.
In the mean time, there's this thing that's been sitting on my mind as of late while I worked on my own game, and it has to do with the game-play trailer and how many parts/size of parts we're looking at for the remake.
In the trailer, the combat scenes are obvious done using a test set-up - where both Barret and Cloud have their HP set to 2000.
There is no reason to assume this is going to be their base HP level since their MP levels, attack power and the attack power of the enemies remain pretty similar to that of the original game.
This is common when test-playing RPGs for a couple of simple reasons -
If you're running around testing mechanics, you want to be able to do that at a comfortable level and pace without having to risk dying and having to start over and over again from check-points, or using the console to revert stuff which can often lead to unfortunate ticks in the game-play.
Having your HP at max/infinite, with your other values set to normal, you can work on balancing your game and take your time seeing how it plays out in real time.
However, thinking back on my own game-development, and most of what I know of the industry with beta testing I've done etc. what people usually do, is that they access the data-base or whatever file the character stats are stored in, and they simply set it to max.
Put simply - why does Cloud and Barret have 2000 HP as opposed to a 1000 HP? Or 3000, or 9999 for that matter?
2000 certainly isn't the first number most people would land on opening the character stat editor to create a template or set-up for a test-run.
Which leads me to my hypothesis -
2000 HP is the HP cap for the first part - at least for the moment I.E
Going into the file, and setting the character HP to maximum defaults to 2000.
9999 divided by 2000 = 4.9, which means that we're looking at, at most, 5 parts.
However, considering that 9999 is the max HP of the original, and not at all an HP level necessary to beat the game, and that there would be no point in having an HP cap on the last part of the game (which would probably be completed at anywhere from 4000-6000 HP for any ordinary player), I think we're looking at 3 (at most 4) parts.
First part 2000 HP, second part 4000 HP, and third part 6000+ HP.
So how much would each part cover? Well, I think the most probable way of extrapolating that would be looking at, following the flow of the original, what HP levels most people would be on average at the various parts - meaning that the first part probably covers a large portion of disk one, although not necessarily all of it, since 2000 is the max value after all, with the second part covering the rest of disk 1 and half or so of disk 2, and the third part covering the last part of disk 2 and all of disk 3.
This is an extremely rough lay-out though, and I'm doing all this off of my memories of my average runs with little to no concern for narrative structure and without account for changes in content and pacing of the game-play that will probably occur in the remake.
With that being said, I need to stress that this is an extremely shaky hypothesis because it's based on the flimsy assumption that somebody didn't actually set the HP levels to 2000 for some other specific reason, or that they just landed on that number on random - both which are perfectly viable alternatives.
It also assumes that regardless of whether 2000 is the cap at the moment or not, it's going to stay that way for the release.
However, it's been bothering me for days now, and I just needed to get it out there - also, so that if we do end up with a first part with a 2000 HP cap, and 3/4 parts divided roughly by the metric I proposed above I get to say "I called it". =P
Anyways, have a nice week.
