If you'd like to watch the in-game tutorial about the sphere grid, here is a YouTube video showing it. This allows for a fair amount of customization through selecting the path to traverse the board, but has the somewhat strange (although not particularly uncommon in RPGs) side-effect of the characters becoming less unique as they progress, as a result of increasing crossover in their spells and abilities. The characters each begin in different sections of the board, but can eventually move into each other's sections and activate the nodes there as well. The Sphere Gridįinal Fantasy X's leveling system is known as "the sphere grid", and involves moving cursors representing the characters through a board of interconnected nodes, most of which boost the character's statistics or grant a new ability or spell when they are activated. Many fans consider FFX to be one of the best in the series' lifetime, for reasons including its cast of characters, the large amount of side objectives, and even its unique character-leveling system. The journey involves visiting a number of temples to increase Yuna's summoning repetoire, with the final objective being an attempt to defeat Sin, a massive creature that periodically attacks and destroys cities, but can be forced into dormancy for a 10 year period if defeated.ĭespite the numerous sweeping changes to the traditional Final Fantasy formula, FFX was still extremely well-received, and its popularity resulted in becoming the first game in the series to receive a true sequel ( Final Fantasy X-2) involving the same setting and characters. He joins up with a summoner named Yuna and her guardians, and the game follows the group on her pilgrimage across the world of Spira. Plot-wise, the game follows Tidus, an ace blitzball (a fictional underwater sport with similarities to soccer and water polo) player who finds himself thrust 1000 years into the future. "Sideline" characters could also be swapped into the active party mid-battle for the first time. The Active Time Battle combat system that had been used for the last 10 years and 6 games was replaced with a new turn-based system with turn order and frequency being determined by a character or monster's speed. Voice-acting was introduced, and for the first time since the start of the series, the entire soundtrack was not composed by Nobuo Uematsu, with Junya Nakano and Masashi Hamauzu contributing almost half of the songs. Areas were truly 3D, replacing the "3D character superimposed over a pre-rendered 2D background" approach that the three Playstation entries utilized. The traditional free-roaming overworld map was removed, requiring all areas to be traversed linearly for most of the game, with a menu-based "jump to location" system becoming available just before the end of the storyline. The game introduced a number of innovations and changes to the franchise, many of which proved to be rather controversial among fans. About the Gameįinal Fantasy X is the tenth game in Square-Enix's long-running Final Fantasy series of console RPGs, and was released in 2001 as the first entry on the Playstation 2. If this is new to you, or you just want a refresher, carry on. If you're already familiar with Final Fantasy X and its sphere grid system, please feel free to skip down to the section where things will get interesting. Luckily, I was able to recruit my good friend Matt Wilson to tell me what to do, and the resulting polish of this diagram is entirely due to his guidance.Įvery GameInternals article starts with a fairly detailed description of both the game and the mechanic that are that article's subject, so that readers unfamiliar with the source material won't be completely lost. You see, as a programmer, I am by my very nature completely incapable of creating a visually-attractive diagram or interface. But after spending a ridiculous amount of time experimenting and tweaking, I finally managed to generate some diagrams that looked… absolutely hideous. ![]() It involved learning GraphViz, a lot of data entry, generating some initial diagrams, desperately searching mailing lists for ways to, er, "encourage" GraphViz to actually do what I thought I had told it to do, and so on. ![]() After this, I kept wondering how it would look if you separated the underlying system from the convoluted interface, and it also seemed like a good opportunity to finally learn how to generate diagrams using GraphViz.įrom there, reaching this point has been a fairly long process. The idea for this post began about two months ago, when I made a comment on reddit that turned out to be a little controversial - I said that I didn't like Final Fantasy X's leveling system.
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