You remind me of another member who was on the forum. You have very similar stories. It seems like they caught the bus using SN. Obviously can't say for certain but they did essentially leave a goodbye thread before closing their account. I kind of hope they found a way to go on because they had a lot of potential and it was a sad situation they were in. Aside from their significant homelife problems they had a project called Final kismet that didn't reach finalisation. It was a labour of love for them from what they said. A game they worked on and did various work on. Programming, story writing and artwork I think. Shame you guys can't speak with each other. It would probably be good for both of you to talk over the things you share in common. I think they could have used a friend. Maybe it would be helpful for you to read some of their older content. I'll link their profile below. Unfortunately it has been closed (that's why theres a line through their name) but you can still read their posts and threads.
This was their most recent account...
https://sanctioned-suicide.net/members/want2dienow.41433/
Their previous account was named Orniter199 but I don't know if any content from that account still exists.
This is only few of us teammates, Shiki, Jorge, Hoang and myself. Shiki, pixel background artist, Jorge, Hoang another programmer. This user, I know, he writes the scenario for world 1, I write the scenario of World 2. He constructed characters, Ariya, Freyja and Tribal. These where remnants of his other projects 'Facing Fate', I was not part of. I know from our time working together on past modding projects,「ゾディアック・トリロジー」"The Zodiac Trilogy (Discontinued)" and various other fan-projects for Chrono Trigger, FF6, FF9 and FF12. There is info on that. For the sake of this and his privacy I will use one from ZT project, "Sir/Mr. Branford".
ラストフェイト "Last Fate" in Japanese, 'Final Kismet' in English was the first commercial game we worked on together. Since all three of us had extensive programming history in various fields, Mr. Branford in C syntax, myself in MIPS architecture, CIL, C++ C#, Hoang in ARMS architecture we formed this small team.
We thought it too complicated to make a jrpg in real time 3D, so collectively we settled to make our first game in 2D, following a mix of art styles, Chrono Trigger, FFBE, FF6 and FF4. It was collectively amongst which was our favorite. Personally for me I like Chrono Trigger pixel art style, Mr. Branford really enjoyed FF4, FF6 and FFBE style pixel art, in fact it was his idea to go above our measures and attempt to recrate some features of special attacks to similar execution as FFBE.
I remember, at the start the scope and narration of project had not yet been formed in 2020. Around this time, the Zodiac Trilogy project had defunct, and Mr. Branford was going through a lot of pain during this time in his personal life. as myself I understood, he also kept in communication. He had a suicide attempt on his birthday 2021 year and the most of us and the community at the Chrono Compendium all showed support in his assistance. Sometime passed before we started tossing the ideas around of our commercial game project.
To start, Mr. Branford reminiscent his older project, 'Facing Fate'. It was a story he had written almost 10 years ago. In remember him showing fond for it, but also not some resentment because of the tone of it and how it was written. Forgive me I cannot remember all, but he felt has if it was written 'too childish'. So for most of the events and overall thesis of the world precis was to be quite serious, the conversation and dialogue and how each character presented themselves did not match that tone. So instead of building from that project, we decided to pull a few elements from it and reconstruct it in a whole new story.
This translates into a few major event terms in Last Fate: "Mist", "Life", "Thuja", "Pulse", "Blood", "Steward". There is a world constructed by the gods who once raged in a dreadful war. In an effort to cease and balance, the gods created an apparatus as an artificial valve support for the planet. This value is a cycle to maintain life and balance, flow through its course within roots.
Since we both had ideas for the project, as it grows along the way we decided to split the formation of the scenario and its lore between us. Mr. Branford would write for characters Ariya, Freyja, Tribal, Vincent and Narujin, handle their progression, arcs, define their personalities and traits, construct their wills, motivations and drive. He would handle the events that occur during World 1 involving this characters. Because he had written in such a long time in such a way before since the hiatus, he would primarily write in this fields of study. He also wrote the lyrics for the Hymn of Ecthar, a song by villagers.
I would write for narrated scripts, war-torn events that occur during World 1, the events for World 2 and recently, the events for World 3. I would write for the remaining player characters: Raian, Etoro, Kīsu, Maku, Jīje, and Wen-rī. I would also construct the lore for recurring terminology used in the game.
When the rebel insurgence group, Murakami, was formed it was here we decided to create a new language that would be in relation to them and the citizens of Machiyume. キュビヘント (kana syllabaries to speak and translate 'Cbyheynt') "Cbyheynt" in English substitution.
In part, the characters that would utilize this language would be considered bilingual as part of their diverse culture and ethnicity, often speaking in their native tongue amongst each other, their personal thoughts or for their snide remarks towards their foes.
For character and animation production, we outsource to サンドストーム (Sandstorm) based Japan, with マニアカルタ (Mania Carta) as the primary character designer.
Mr. Branford decided for the specific design of Raian 'Ryan', Kīsu 'Keith' and Maku 'Mark', all other character where conceptual of Mania.
When we started there was only about 6 or 7 player characters formed. The remaining character where added gradually as the story grows, with the last character so far written, Wen-li. Despite this, it was without incident due to where she had her roles in. Early, but not much focus.
Originally, the role of a single protagonist had been negated to Kīsu, one of the notorious empire's high class soldiers. I remember the early drafts where Kīsu was to be a mentor and father figure for Tribal, another one of the empire's special soldiers. This was due to Tribal's origins and his missing of a father, growing within the walls of Tochi Empire and raised as a soldier born and bred to destroy. This however changed after sometime went by.
As it would be very clear what my personal inspirations were for Last Fate, I know I wanted to construct my own primary character, a soldier who strived to be a hero, but had his own defining traits, troubles and obstacles to face. I formed the character, Raian, he's will, tasking and motivation would be a continuous reflection through his development. A young soldier who joins the Tochi military with a initial goal of becoming a hero. But to be a hero, one has to have something to protect, something to fight for. As his time as a rookie soldier, he meets Kīsu, one of the empire's renowned, he connects with him, seeing him as a mentor, striving to be like him. In his younger days he was often bright and cheerful, but also repressive, shy and cool-headed, mostly carrying himself as a professional. As time goes on we would start to see a shift in his character; from shy to stoic, while still maintaining his innate traits such as emotionally repressive. Even with these changes, cracks in his hardened persona can be seen, recognizing he is still softer deep down.
When Raian was formed, Kīsu had taken a step down as a potential protagonist. Instead, I mitigated his role as supporting character. I take a great deal of time with these two character in correlation with Tribal, I felt neglectful of the remaining characters. As of this moment I take more time with the rest, Raian and Kīsu have had the majority of their development formed.
We also enjoyed adding easter eggs from our favorite games here and there. There are many allusions and homages, I would love all players to find them.
About other parts of game, previously I had worked with different game engines, so more common than not: Unreal Engine, Unity (so through modding): Phyre-engine, Crystal Tools, ティーエディションff6. But as most of the games worked with in Zodiac Trilogy project was with Unity or old rom-hacking (FF6/Chrono) it was familiar enough to use Unity for the type of game we planned to make. I used RPG maker in past but I did not to like it so much.
The idea to craft our own engine was a very bold thought, but Mr. Branford wanted it to be so unique of sorts. I personally disagree due to the potential complexity. Hoang is our only paid programmer on the team. He handles most of the ground work on the engine. If it was not for the help of Hoang we would be using Unity I have no doubt. But over the year its been thus far I can say its has been coming along well enough as we keep the scope small enough to build, tests and improve, and keep the additions to a minimum, in a way to grow it with more stability.
Originally Mr. Branford named the engine 'Zodiac-Engine', a homage to our tools used in the Zodiac trilogy project, but I felt Hoang did not care either for it.
It is witnessing, seeing how project grow so much over the years is the reason there is so much love and pain associated with it. His reason for CTB, similarly myself. We have all had our hand deep into this project, all three of us. But, unlike the Dream Team we are not too well fortunate in the one area most needed. Hoang almost leave but my last attempt I keep him not abandoned at my own costs.
