Programming Burden for FFT or Tactics Ogre Game

It depends on a lot of things. Some programmers could probably write it in a couple weeks, others might need a couple of years. Depending on what you consider to be a suitable concept demo, you might be talking about a trivial project or a huge one.

More specifics of your design concept would be very helpful in assessing how complex an undertaking we're talking about here.

Also are we talking 2D or 3D? Do you want real art or just programmer art? Pre-existing engine?

Wow, sorry it took so long for me to get back, had no idea I would get responses so soon. You programmers are fast.

A suitable concept demo would be a functioning combat system. Doesn't need to be fancy or high graphics, though I would imagine one would at least need to alter the sprites/terrain to keep from blatantly ripping off any core game. So maybe 6-12 classes and 1 or 2 levels, simple as possible, both FFT or Tactics Ogre style.

Key changes to the gameplay I would want to emphasize are as follows:
1) Removal of the random system, such as attacks having a 60% chance of success. Either you can hit your target or you can't, and repeating the same action will produce the same results.
2) Alter the effects of abilities (such as the Break skill for Knights in FFT, I would want it where it removes the effectiveness of the weapon/armor, not destroys it)
3) Increase the number of abilities capable of being equipped (such as counter, support and movement skills/abilities in FFT)

These are just examples of what I'm aiming for. The feasibility of such changes is what I'm asking. Would it be easiest to start with the basic structure/programming of an existing, old game like FFT or Tactics Ogre, or would building it from scratch be more efficient? And what would the programming burden of the easiest method be? Again, I'm an artist, not a programmer, so forgive any blatant ignorance.

Thanks again for the help.

If you have access to the original structure and code of the old games, then modifying it would be a hell of a lot less work than writing it from scratch.

You don't have that access, so scratch is really your only option, frankly.


I'd say expect an average of about 6 months of relatively steady work to produce the demo you're talking about, for a moderately experienced programmer and a newly formed team. A group of highly experienced people who have worked together in the past could probably crank it out in a few weeks.

Yeah you're probably not going to have access to the original code. A lot of the complexity is going to depend on whether you want 2D isometric (SNES/GBA style) or 3D isometric (FFT for PS1)

Thanks for all the help.

Why don't you google around for opensource FFT's clones. Then you see if you can get a programmer on your team that can modify the open source clone to your specs. After a quick google search I came up with Tethical, it looks like its being actively developed... look into it. Hope this helps.

Will do, Infinisearch, thanks.

Just to be clear, though, opensource means the game programming can be altered/rewritten?

http://opensource.org/docs/osd - Number 3 is what you're interested in. However that is just a definition of opensource, what you'll have to do is lookup the license for the project you're interested in and see if it suits your needs. The four I'm used to seeing is the GPL, LGPL, BSD, ZLIB but there are alot of other licenses'. I'm afraid I don't know much more, having never really read one of them completely..