RELEASED WIP: The Viera of Ivalice 0.3.2

You're asking the questions I've been asking myself lol ^_^ I figured since [I think] crystal is already a default ore in game that I'll call it an energized crystal of some sort, and I don't know where I want it to spawn exactly. I don't know that it would work best on moons, but I was definitely playing with the idea of making it spawn on many planetary types, most likely in underground microdungeons. Again, I'm just playing with ideas, so if anyone has any more ideas to throw out there, please do! I'm open to anything ^_^

Anyway, perhaps it's time to shed some more light on the future of the Viera.... I'll post again shortly with some more info that makes me giddy to share!

 

May be it can spawn with the village? Like they gather around the crystal and build a village near it. It can also spawn in Viera containers. Craft the energized crystal with batteries/core fragments and vanilla crystals? If you can't decide which biome, you can always put them around the planet core.

 

I love building structures with the blocks from this mod, but may I suggest increasing the amount of blocks you can craft at once? Crafting 4 blocks at a time is a bit tedious compared to the vanilla blocks which crafts 10+ at once. Perhaps 5 wood for 10 blocks, or a higher exchange rate would be nice to have.

 

Alright, so I planned to do this much sooner, in fact shortly after the 1.0 update, but I've been swamped with updating my other mods, and splitting my work between the Viera ship, and our first Chocobo mount. I figured I would take this time to speak about my aims in the next few updates, and how it will create a new experience for the player.

How and why did the Viera depart Ivalice for the stars above? I don't want to describe too much, as I want players to go out reading the codexes I've started work on lol. I'm setting the events shortly after that of XII, or sometime thereafter, as I would prefer Fran (and others) to be present and have some part in the story. In my story, the Viera have been chased from their home world of Ivalice by a dark entity (a familiar being from the FF series). With the aid of the Wood (who will take much more focus in the future), the Viera construct crystal-powered ships to escape. By the start of the player's story, it's been circa ten years since fleeing Ivalice, and the Viera are good at hiding. They've taken up homes across many planet types, hiding in the hills and forests. However the Viera cannot hide forever...

I've begun planning out an opening mission to properly begin the character's story, but I'm going to remain secretive about it for now ^_^ I have a ways to go before it's ever implemented, but it is definitely something I aim to do.

What I'm most excited to share are my design samples for the first three job armors. These three will be unlocked by default from the start, and just as in the original Tactics games You can remain in the job from start to finish, taking you respectively from tiers I-VI. Each set of jobs that I add thereafter will also be tiered, of course, but they will be added bit by bit, and unlockable from tier to tier. There will also be special jobs, which I will go into later on, but here are Tier I's first three female job armors: Fencer, White Mage, & Archer (Keep in mind that certain aspects may change):


I used their original color palettes, but I wanted to do something new. As a fashion design major, I had lots of fun coming up with them. Keep in mind that you'll still be able to craft the originals as vanity armor too ^_^

-The Fencer's armor makes more sense with the body being actually covered lol. The Fencer sports a leather diadem, leather shoulder armor, her typical purple and white-trimmed tabard (this time with front and back panels). The Fencer also has a utility belt, matching gloves, leather boots with iron accents, and billowy pants. However this design is my newest, so expect at least some color changes (I'm really not sold on the pants & shoulder armor color).

-The White Mage was a slightly modified version of the White Mage robe from FFXIV. I want to have several hood options: cat ear hood, hood with flowing hair (above-not sure how I'll make it dye-able though), and basic White Mage hood. The White Mage also wears a convenient utility belt.

-The Archer is one of my favorites. I love the aesthetic of the classic archer hat. A Phoenix feather adorns the side ^_^ She wears cuffed thigh boots, a leather bodice with pleated skirt, and dark leather armor accessories.

-Male versions are in the works!

Updated version of Chocobo Preview. It now has a perspective slightly closer to Starbound's, although it is subject to change still, as I may turn the body a bit more:


Again, keep in mind all of these designs may change before their initial release. I'm not 100% sure if I want to share my entire job list yet, but I'll post it in time. I'm never sure how much is too much as far as what to reveal as plans, and I want to put out more content before I talk too much about where I aim to go with the mod. I am really excited for it all though!

Anyway, let me know what ya think, everyone! I'm curious to see if anyone has any ideas to share ^_^

 

GJ on the class gear sprites! Really like what you did to the Fencer to offer it a bit more practical logic to it, cus yeah, Tactic Advance's Fencer was certainly a thing ^^;

For the hairdo thing, you may have to wind up doing what some other modders wound up doing elsewhere- doing a selection of hoods with a short selection of haircolors. Unfortunately you can't cover every hair color, but you can probably go for the major Viera hair shades at any rate. (white, black, blonde, toss in red and brown for good measure) and cover a good 50% of your white mages.

 

so you don't start with the diamond sword and crossbow evidently.

?I do like how this mod is going direction wise myself though!

 

I actually have those disabled for the time being. The reason is that due to the protectorate starter quest in 1.0, characters get their first weapon at the end of the starter quest. I am thinking of adding them in again somewhere, but I'm not too sure where I want them to be at the moment.

 

I've seen a couple mod makers add them to the ship locker instead of on creation. probably would be the easiest place to add them all considered.

they could also be in the basic teirs somewhere, like the crossbow could end up at the anvil. then again i have no clue how annoying that might actually be

 

I have an idea frey!!! Materia Crystal o3o or some variation... Inert Materia? Because we all know Materia = Crystals in the FF universe Well, other than the primary cornerstone crystals >_> maybe have it spawn in harsh environment biomes and the microdungeons (if those are the ones that you go through the randomly generated dimensional doorways) and the crystal material is in the chests or something. Chest spawns having a variable randomizer between 2 - 10 depending on how rare you want to have it of course.

Also great look with the armor classes and the chocobo Can't wait to see the variant armor types you cook up for it ^^ because I know everyone wants the main variant black gold and white chocobo's along with knight chocobos

Maybe have it set to a Viera specific starter quest? After the Vanilla starter quest that is. Have the Viera S.A.I.L. system give it to you upon fixing the ship maybe? Pretty sure that is actually an easy thing to code in, even by my standards. Again, if you start something up I can help as best I can ^^ I will enjoy watching the progress this mod has because of how ambitious it is ^^

 

Searched several forest planets and still can't find any Viera village. The village spawn on suface or underground?

 

On the surface ^_^ There's a handy way for everyone to check as soon as you land on a planet. Once your character lands on a planet, go to common>Starbound>storage and open your starbound.log. Scroll to the bottom, and you'll see a list of the major locations that spawned on the planet you just landed on. If you see "vieravillage" listed, then you've got reason to scour the planet. If you want to find more, just keep going to one of their planet types, and reload/refresh your Starbound.log each time you land on a new planet.

 

The spawning chance is so rare. Did anyone find a Viera village?

 

Do you have any other mods that add spawning locales? It could be that the villages are competing with spawn rates of other mods as well. I wasn't have too tough of a time with just Viera vs vanilla, but they were still somewhat rare >_< Sorry, if I can make them spawn more frequently, I definitely will.

 

Finally found one! The vision dust surely did its job. Much like a mansion than a village? Oh, by the way. When I open a door of a toilet an acorn light breaks and drop to the ground.

Will you add the Vorpal Bunny to the game? Since salve-makers need to harvest the vision dust from the bunnies' tail.

I have used a mod call Extra Dungeons, don't know how much it affects Viera village from spawning. It only adds microdungeons which give quests.

 

I'd really really really like to add monsters like the Vorpal bunny! All in good time ^_^ Ok, I'll look into making them more frequent spawns. I don't want it to be too much of a pain to find a village.

 

What about something similar to earlier renditions of FF, where there are elemental crystals on the planet? Also someone mentioned materia and that could also work out quite well for planetary spawn, and you could also have variations of such similar to ore tiers. That said it would also be neat if similar to the Avali mod we could craft Viera specific weapons and mod them with said materia.

Going back to a thought I had earlier, since summons are also a big part of the FF world, after you finished with all the main points of your idea, would you consider implementing monsters similar to the summons to be made into pets with the capture pod? This could go hand in hand with your thoughts of developing Viera dungeons. It would be super interesting to go around capturing the FF XII summons, cause the content of the game itself is very short at this time.

 

Ooooh using the crystals to craft Viera weaponry....I like that ^_^

Actually, I hadn't thought about making summons pets. I'm sure I can do something cool with that ^_^ Speaking of summons, I did have big ideas that the Summoner job would unlock quests for the Summoner to gain the power of the Espers. Implementing something of that scale is of course further down the road, but I do want to tie in quests and dungeons into the job armors. If I can do it, I'd love to implement hunts into the mod as well!

 

For the Crystals/Materia idea, I think it'd be easy to implement. While a part of me wants to suggest using Prism ore for the base of it all, Prism biomes are a bit rare, so not sure if that'd work well. Perhaps putting blank materia into the monster drop pools, and then being able to enhance them with ore and other things. Perhaps with enough Materia, you could craft the crystals?

Hell, that would also help with the concepts of White Mage, Black Mage and Red Mage, using a mix of monster drops and user-created Spell Materia. Something like mixing Blank Materia, Core Fragments, and maybe for later ones Scorched Cores and Solarium to make Fire, Fira, Firaga, and Firaja spells. Similar for Static Cells, Cryogenic Extract, etc etc etc, mixing it all together. The spells themselves could also have levels, so you could even have a variant of Fire for Solarium tier even if you have created Firaja during that tier.

 

I would like to see healing and buff staves be a craftable thing myself...same with the other things availible...all on the backburner beside nailing basics down though I would think.

 

To be fair, the system I described would work well for creating other spell items, so no doubt we'd be able to see stuff like Cure series and maybe even a vanilla debuff remover via Ensuna. Hell, maybe even Shell and Protect to reduce damages.