I believe you should start with figuring out the game mechanics - first on paper, then with prototyping. You should figure out how you want to handle equipment stats, levelling up, spells, damage calculations, etc. Even more importantly, you need to figure out how you want to handle combat itself. Do you want to use the ATB system just like in FFVI, or do you want to take your own twist on it?

Next, you should think of what kind of story you want to tell. Most likely a large scale epic, but you will also need to think of the themes you want to explore. Afterwards you should figure out the overall progression of the game, in terms of story development, area exploration, and character development. Map out all of the important events first and fill in the smaller details later. Since combat is central to these kinds of games, remember to weave important battles into the story development.

You begin programming as soon as you start prototyping the game mechanics, and you continue to program throughout. Work out all of your ideas about the game mechanics, story, and characters on paper first - in fact, get a sketchbook going. I would advise against progressing the content in the code until you're fairly certain of your decisions. Art, sound, and music should come last. In the meantime you can use placeholders for all of those things.

Hi,

I'm not sure how developed your skills are but if you're starting out I would strongly advise you against making things harder than they need to be. Sure, a challenge is a great way of learning new things but it can also be very demotivating to get stuck on something you only half understand. I made my little game I'm working on "the hard way" and I've been at it for a year and a half now - In the end I'm glad I did but I wouldn't want to go down that road again any time soon.

As for the order of building: I lean towards figuring out how the game will look (atmosphere and theme e.g. "claustrophobic scifi platformer" or "funny steampunk adventure") before you start doing anything. However, the art is the last thing that actually gets made for two reasons: a) I am primarily a programmer b) during the process of making the game things may be taken out or put in and I don't want to spend time on art I'm just going to throw away.
Ofcourse, in an actual company these things would be planned ahead and developed simultaneously.

Note that we are talking about a game that has 100+ hours of content in it. Making a game even remotely resembling FFVI in features, art, story is a real challenge and could be consider too ambitious for a project in almost all cases. After weeks, months, quarters the further challenges you invited won't be remembered by anybody else than yourself and are not so much "for fun" anymore.

Regarding the order of things I have experience in similar task and my advice is not to try to plan the schedule too accurately in advance. You'll probably find yourself doing it in little pieces here and there rather than taking the task as straight-forward as it seems on paper. It doesn't make sense to stare at lines of code and move different colored blank squares for 4 months and then start painting all the pixel art in one huge go, then start planning the area layouts. You'll most likely want variance in your tasks and get to a phase where you have most core mechanics working such as 1-2 characters, a starting city/area that you can use to try and develop features, an "open world" system with fights etc. You probably won't do audio at all before you have an alpha version.

Everything will flow with your mood. There will be drastic changes, you will redo features, you will redo art and rewrite dialogue, cutscenes, story, but little by little things start to freeze because changing them would be too much work

Note that we are talking about a game that has 100+ hours of content in it. Making a game even remotely resembling FFVI in features, art, story is a real challenge and could be consider too ambitious for a project in almost all cases. After weeks, months, quarters the further challenges you invited won't be remembered by anybody else than yourself and are not so much "for fun" anymore.

Regarding the order of things I have experience in similar task and my advice is not to try to plan the schedule too accurately in advance. You'll probably find yourself doing it in little pieces here and there rather than taking the task as straight-forward as it seems on paper. It doesn't make sense to stare at lines of code and move different colored blank squares for 4 months and then start painting all the pixel art in one huge go, then start planning the area layouts. You'll most likely want variance in your tasks and get to a phase where you have most core mechanics working such as 1-2 characters, a starting city/area that you can use to try and develop features, an "open world" system with fights etc. You probably won't do audio at all before you have an alpha version.

Everything will flow with your mood. There will be drastic changes, you will redo features, you will redo art and rewrite dialogue, cutscenes, story, but little by little things start to freeze because changing them would be too much work :)

I think making it would have been harder than this new idea, Final Fantasy VI, a SNES game. Final Fantasy VI is, 25 hours long if I remember right. I agree that it is a lot of gameplay. We'll see though.

You can complete the game in 25 hours or a bit less but with sidequests and additional bosses, areas, collectible items etc the game offers content for more than 100 hours and some people have their save files clock even considerably more. The total amount of work translates to even more because FFVI has branching story with multiple options throughout the game which increase replay value.

In my opinion all of that is part of the assumption that people have when you flash the FF card around.

In my opinion all of that is part of the assumption that people have when you flash the FF card around.

With all due respect, good faith and benefit of the doubt I will give to you,

Producer

Hironobu Sakaguchi

Directors
Yoshinori Kitase
Hiroyuki Itou

Main Programmers
Ken Narita
Kiyoshi Yoshii

Graphic Directors
Tetsuya Takahashi
Kazuko Shibuya
Hideo Minaba
Tetsuya Nomura

Music
Nobuo Uematsu

Image Designer
Yoshitaka Amano

Battle Planners
Yasuyuki Hasabe
Akiyoshi Oota

Field Planners
Yoshihiko Maekawa
Keita Etoh
Satoru Tsuji
Hidetoshi Kezuka

Event Planners
Tsuka Fujita
Keisuke Matsuhara

Effect Programmers
Hiroshi Harata
Satoshi Ogata

Battle Programmer
Akihero Yamaguchi

Sound Programmer
Minoru Akao

Effect Graphic Designer
Hirokatsu Sasaki

Field Graphic Designers
Takahara Matsuo
Yusuke Naora
Nobuyuki Ikeda
Tomoe Inazawa
Kaori Tanaka
Takamichi Shibuya
Shinichirou Hamaska
Akiyoshi Masuda

Monster Graphic Designer
Hitoshi Sasaki

Object Graphic Designer
Kazuhiro Ohkawa

Sound Engineer
Eiji Nakamura

>

a college student studying Game Development (My major is art but I have a lot of other courses) who has at least a couple of years experience making games.

FFVI was done by a development team consisting of experienced professionals working on it for their living.

It's totally okay for you to try it, by all means. But it is risky and you shouldn't probably publicly invite additional challenge that could be viewed further ridiculing your goal. Remember that while interacting with the community it is wise to stay humble, as always :)

With all due respect, good faith and benefit of the doubt I will give to you,

Producer[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, 'DejaVu Sans Condensed', FreeSans, sans-serif] [/font]
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Directors
Yoshinori Kitase
Hiroyuki Itou
Main Programmers
Ken Narita
Kiyoshi Yoshii
Graphic Directors
Tetsuya Takahashi
Kazuko Shibuya
Hideo Minaba
Tetsuya Nomura
Music
Nobuo Uematsu
Image Designer
Yoshitaka Amano
Battle Planners
Yasuyuki Hasabe
Akiyoshi Oota
Field Planners
Yoshihiko Maekawa
Keita Etoh
Satoru Tsuji
Hidetoshi Kezuka
Event Planners
Tsuka Fujita
Keisuke Matsuhara
Effect Programmers
Hiroshi Harata
Satoshi Ogata
Battle Programmer
Akihero Yamaguchi
Sound Programmer
Minoru Akao
Effect Graphic Designer
Hirokatsu Sasaki
Field Graphic Designers
Takahara Matsuo
Yusuke Naora
Nobuyuki Ikeda
Tomoe Inazawa
Kaori Tanaka
Takamichi Shibuya
Shinichirou Hamaska
Akiyoshi Masuda
Monster Graphic Designer
Hitoshi Sasaki
Object Graphic Designer
Kazuhiro Ohkawa
Sound Engineer
Eiji Nakamura

>

[font=helvetica, arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]a college student studying Game Development (My major is art but I have a lot of other courses) who has at least a couple of years experience making games.[/font]

FFVI was done by a development team consisting of experienced professionals working on it for their living.

It's totally okay for you to try it, by all means. But it is risky and you shouldn't probably publicly invite additional challenge that could be viewed further ridiculing your goal. Remember that while interacting with the community it is wise to stay humble, as always :)