SoV3 Post Mortem #2

Hello everyone,

Please wait a little longer for the TH2 posts. You'll understand why it took long when you'll see everything. With the whole thing about SoS, Fanbox etc... the next TH2 update is going to be very big so it takes a bit more time ^^'

Anyway, I saw a bunch of people subscribing to the lowest tier when I released the first post about SoV3. Looks like it interests more people than I though :p

So I'll make you wait for TH2 with those SoV3 posts :D

There are many things I can talk about. To be totally honest, I might repost stuff I already post back before the first release of the demo. It's been 2 years since then. Please forgive my memory -_-

Because the last post was a bit heavy, I'll make this one lighter. So let me show you this.

Isn't he cute?

You have to understand something about Slice of Venture 3: It was meant to be placed under the sign of Final Fantasy IX.

I love FFIX and wanted to implement a few elements in SoV3. Notably, the fact that you learn skills through weapons (which is a mechanic I really dig). But gameplay isn't necessarily always the only thing we can inspiration from. Do you guys remember Steelskin? The traveling moogle you meet throughout the game. Well SoV3 was supposed to have its equivalent as a walking axolotl that was kinda serving the same purpose :p

Let's talk a bit about the characters.

Among the things that people disliked in SoV3, was the fact that Yuki looked too young. At some point I ended up agreeing with it and thought that I might ask to redraw every piece where she appears if the project got back on its rails. Might as well share some art for either newcommers or people who have forgotten about it.

I already said it, but we shat and pissed blood to reach that version of Yuki with PeakJump. You have no idea how my respect for video game character designers skyrocketed after the SoV3 chara design session :x But damn. It's been 2 years and I'm still in love with the design. Everything's awesome about her. Even if the game is cancelled, that design alone makes me utterly proud.

As you probably understood it, Yuki was supposed to be the summoner of the party. But being a summoner only is a bit lacking. After all, in FF (yeah I apologize to DQ fans but when it comes to gameplay I'm more of an FF guy ^^') apart from FFV, summoners can do other things (usually use black/white magic.) So Yuki was also supposed to be able to use both black and white magic.

And to show you that, I'm gonna share my excel tabs 8D

Those are the spells Yuki was supposed to learn through the game. The fact her orb represents an ice one isn't innocent. She was supposed to be an ice-focused black mage with healing spells.

As you can see, like in FFIX, the spells show which weapon is needed to get the spell.

You can also see the "Tentacle Pet" line at the bottom. Those skills are the actual summoning skills. Back when I wrote that, Nuru didn't have his name (nor his design) yet. I won't detail how summoning worked because it'll need a post on its own ^^'

Here you can see the list of orbs. Orbs being the weapons Yuki could equip. I didn't write the prices because I needed some elements to determine anything linked to money so I'd have chosen those price when I included the first shop in the game.

You can see "Skill List" written. If you've played FFIX then you know what it is. For the others I'll quickly explain. In FFIX you earn AP in battles to master a spell or a skill. When you've earned the required amount, you know it and can unequip the weapon, you'll still know it. But skills and spells are two different things. Basically spells are actives and skills are passive (it's not technically the case, I know skills are active for non-magic users but keep in mind that all that documentation was written by me for me only so it was clear for me ^^').

Those passive skills can be "equiped" with points you earn with level. As you progress, you have more point and can equipe more passive or bigger ones. The whole thing being that those can be equipped/unequipped at will in the menu based on your current need.

So the orbs allowed both spells AND skill to be learned. The bold green ones are the skills unique to Yuki.

You can find them here. Each member of the party had 5 unique skills they didn't share with the others. In addition to that, there's a list of 30 skills they can learn (not necessarily the same 30 between the girls, there's a total of 86 passive skills). Of course the stronger the skill the more expensive it was. The column with the number shows that.

Now that I've started with Yuki, I think the next posts are going to detail the other party members. The only other one you know is Aleksia, so I'll start with her and then I'll reveal one by one, the other party members you were supposed to gather in the game. I'll detail their class, weapon, design (when they have one drawn I'll show a pic) and the general idea behind it. I won't make one post per character though. Probably two characters in the next post and then three then three. After all, the more we progress the less I have stuff to share.

That's all for today. I'll see you in a couple of days for the next post o/