Regarding all the bugs you've cleared, how the heck do you all work so efficiently and so fast?!?!
And how big is the team, if you don't mind me asking.
When I have a passion, I work nonstop on it. Every bit of of time I have goes into it. Sometimes on free days, I work on it until the early hours into the next day before realizing just how long its been. I had this same passion with other projects.
I have 3 dedicated artists for character creation, 2 artists for environmental construction, 1 animator, 1 dedicated reverse engineer, and myself.
Since my artists don't work directly with the engine's pipeline (because of the differences between the standard tools, and how FFXII handles its own assets and structure) I feel its best to allow them to create the models and assets in software they are most familiar with, so that they don't have any constraints or difficulties.
As they progress via updates to the design during construction if any changes or modifications are needed before reaching finalisation. At those times its critical for me to insure they are in line with the appropriate art direction, transforming the characters into fully realized, hyper realistic while also remaining true to their original art styles.
Animation is a bit more complicated as custom animations in FFXII is still very sparse. It requires a bunch of deconstruction and rebuilding via Zodiac Engine, in short not a simple or very clean process of handling animations.
My reverse engineer greatly assists in the development of the new battle systems, more so, AEM (Action-Esque Mechanic), working together to ensure it functions as it should and functions well and is fluid.
I handle the finalisation of assets, Q&A, scenario and scripts.
When the art assets are completed, they are sent to me to be finalised, the process of cleaning up the asset structure, preparing it to be game ready (specifically for FFXII's engine requirements) which Zodiac Engine closely follows.
Even though limits regarding the some structure with the game's high-model replace system, map structural meshes, collisions and terrain have been omitted, the general structure of the Phyre-standard asset structure (and ffxii's specific structure (for internal structure composition and external material assets) remains the same—such as mesh palletizing (mesh physics, which is still much limited in terms of what mesh have which physics in game, like hair, cloth and accessories), converting animation to the game's binary format (via Zodiac Engine), bone-to-mesh skeleton structure matching, IK solvers and polygon per mesh limits.
Since the improvements with game have allowed more freedom in terms of what can be done, I felt confident in rebuilding Chrono Vendian from the ground up, without retaining parts of FFXII for leverage. As before we had parts of the scenario (from start to the end) involving location and assets from vanilla FFXII, due to constraints, now are removed, allowing us to take advantage of the game's larger resources.
For advance technical assets such as cutscenes (FMVs) that prove to be too complex to emulate in game, I outsource to studio for pre and post production. Originally, I've outsourced to Snapper Systems, who generously offered me the quote of $10,000 for my needs with the project. With this, I too must be very careful to use this wisely and ensure the content that needs to be prerender (FMV) is what it is, and no others would come down the line when budget is limit is reached. This includes the trailer, which I have planned in production to be as such, along with gameplay shown along side it.
I've previously outsourced to Tokkun Studio with one of my (now derelict) projects-trilogy series: Veracity Kingsglaive Unveils.
I stated before of the capabilities of a bigger budget I could dedicated to this project. That also I must use it wisely.
So it's not a massive team, but a team sizeable enough to fit the budget and deliver quality assets needed to see the project to a successful launch.
