From Creators

• Posted on
• September 28, 2009
• in
• FFCC NEWS DIGEST

Hey everybody!

Shuichi Suwa here, and I still can't remember the full title for this game. I swear I must have an IQ of about 30 or something. Anyway, I was in charge of the 3D character modeling.

Towards the end of 2008 I was called into one of the meeting rooms at Square Enix headquarters. Mr. M, a colleague of mine from way back, basically told me about this new project coming up and made sure it was okay with me.

My job was to model a few characters. The schedule we were looking at was about one model every two weeks. Supposedly they didn't need them to be extremely complex, and Mr. M said he'd be supervising everything, so it wouldn't be a big deal. Well, everything seemed fine at that point, so I didn't think much about it when I said okay. Besides, Mr. M is the only superior that I couldn't say "no" to!

But!

This was the beginning of my nightmare. ;(

I was shocked when I saw the design for the main character. It was about as asymmetrical as it could possibly be...

Mr. M just smirked as I looked around during the meeting, my face pleading for help.

You see, modeling an asymmetrical character is extremely exhausting. If the character is symmetrical, you can simply model one half and have the computer mirror that half to get the full model. The same goes for texturing. Unfortunately, Darklord Mira wouldn't be so kind to me in that regard. How could she be?


Not to mention the fact that they also wanted me to take the image represented by the right half of the character (the Dark Dress) and the image represented by the left half of the character (the Radiant Dress) and make two complete separate models. I had my hands full... T_T

I somehow gathered up enough inspiration to get started, but I soon realized that it was going to be just as hard as I expected. I may have been working diligently on the outside, but I was crying on the inside. I have to be honest and say I didn't feel very much love for Yasuhisa Izumisawa, the lead character designer, as I was working that day. Well, I guess that's 90% not true.

This was the first project I've worked on with Mr. Izumizawa, but I have to say I was impressed with the lack of reserve in his character designs. I have to assume that he was thinking, "I don't care what the person who has to actually make this model thinks, I'm going to make this character how I want!"

Fortunately, I started having fun making the model once I got into it.
It may actually be the most fulfilling work I've done since I came to Square Enix oh-so-many years ago.

Anyway, there were some rough patches, but in the end this title turned out to be a game that I put a lot of feeling and hard work into. I hope you all enjoy it! Until next time!

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
3D Character Designer Shuichi Suwa

From Creators

• Posted on
• September 25, 2009
• in
• FFCC NEWS DIGEST

Hi everyone, are you enjoying My Life as a Darklord?

I'm Shin'ichiro Hamasaka, and I helped design the game's menus.

The one thing I was worried about when I was helping design the menus was whether I could make something that would go with the cute, fashionable feel of the game. I sat down and talked with Jun Kobayashi about this very problem and he came to the conclusion that maybe I should take a look at some popular "Gothic Lolita" fashion magazines.

I took a look at some magazines and found the fashion and style pretty interesting, so I decided to use some of those ideas as inspiration.

Kobayashi: Hmm, this doesn't look quite right.

Me: Oh, really?

Kobayashi: Yeah, I think instead of Gothic Lolita...

Me: Hmm...

Kobayashi: We should be going for more of a punk style.

Me: Ahh, yeah... Mira is kind of punk now that you mention it, her attitude and so on.

I mean, punk is like... those bands that pour chicken blood all over themselves on stage at their shows... right?

No? That's not right? Ah well, as long as I can get these menus made...



Speaking of which...
I think this is the first time since Threads of Fate that we've had a heroine like Mira who will just nonchalantly dropkick you for no reason. Man, Mira IS pretty punk...

So on that note, I hope you all like being tossed around by the cute, yet punk, Darklord Mira!

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Menu Designer Shinichiro Hamasaka

* Screenshots are from the Japanese version of the game.

From Creators

• Posted on
• September 24, 2009
• in
• FFCC NEWS DIGEST

I'm Jun Kobayashi and I was the planner for FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord and I was also in charge of menus and effects.

When making the menu frames, I came up with a lot of ideas based on Mira's personality and character design.

My first thought was that it would be good to give them an elegant, feminine image and decorate them with things like lace or icons resembling logos found on famous clothing brands, so I decided to look at women's fashion magazines for inspiration.


Up until then, the design was fairly simple as we were putting an emphasis on the specifications more than anything, but towards the end of the development cycle we started to change the design quite a bit.

Then, just when I wanted to put the finishing touches on everything, the effects work I had to do started to pile up and I had to shift my priorities. As a result, the final product came out cuter than what I had originally envisioned...

Oh well, I got too wrapped up in the production and effects. I really wanted to give it a more refined feel!

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Planner Jun Kobayashi

* Screenshots are from the Japanese version of the game.

Director's Voice

• Posted on
• September 23, 2009
• in
• FFCC NEWS DIGEST

Hello everyone! It's time for another on-the-spot interview! This time we asked Hiroyuki Kaneko to tell us about the many different monsters you'll encounter in the game.

---
Which Monsters?
 
The monsters that appear in this game were basically put into groups — such as "weak in battle," "strong in battle" — from a functionality perspective in regards to the game system.

Unfortunately, there were many monsters that the team wanted to add to the game but ended up having to cut.

For example, flying monsters all have huge wings, so it's hard to make them fit on the floor. Or, even if they can fit, if we try to make those wings move, they might run into the Artifacts or other objects... Basically, they cause a lot of problems.

So we played around with the size of the models and their animations and we decided to use only models that would not cause such problems.

At, first, we thought about having the Tonberry show up as a monster, but since we made them Mira's servants, we scratched that idea in the end. Although, now that it's all said and done, we think it might have been okay to have them show up as monsters, too.

After a lot of trial and error, the final product is an elite group of menacing monsters. We hope you like them!

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Director Hiroyuki Kaneko

From Creators

• Posted on
• September 22, 2009
• in
• FFCC NEWS DIGEST

Hello everyone! I'm producer Hiroaki Iwano.

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord has been available for some time now. I hope all of you who have gone out and purchased the game are enjoying it.

This is my third time writing this blog, and I think I'll write about a balance issue we had during the game's development again. (Is it really okay that I keep writing the same kind of stuff every time?)

Just when the game balance was getting interesting, I was nearing the end of the game and got to a certain stage.

However...

This certain stage was insanely difficult right from the start. I mean, seriously, this stage could easily win the "Most Difficult Stage of the Year" award. Before I knew it, I had retried over 20 times.

I objected for the second time to the director, Hiroyuki Kaneko, but he said that according to the QA testers, the stage was supposedly not all that difficult.

Well, I thought that was crazy, so we called in the QA testers and decided to hold a meeting to discuss our opinions on the balance of the stage in question.

During the course of the meeting, it was clear that the majority of the QA testers did not feel like the difficulty of that stage needed to be lowered.

I was pretty amazed by their skills to say the least, but still the fact remained that there were 20-30% of the testers that thought the stage was so hard that they would possibly quit playing. In the end, our meeting lasted over two hours.

The final result ended in the difficulty of the stage being lowered and I was finally able to beat it, but I have to wonder how the actual gamers will feel about it...

I suppose I'll have to wait to hear whether my efforts were for better or for worse. Until then!

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Producer Hiroaki Iwano

* Screenshots are from the Japanese version of the game.