TOMBSTONE!!!

[lmalonsof]

Hi everyone,

I was trying to write more missions for Flash and Adam Strange but I was completely blocked. I knew I have not enough knowledge of the bakcground and motivations of Flash and Adam Strange and I was feeling kind of stressed about how these characters really are and their motivations. So I thought that it would be interesting to do a mod about the original FF - FFv3R characters better than comics characters. I could give them a background and more freedom and maybe a better story to tell.

In my oppinion Tombstone is one of the more interesting characters in FFv3R. He is a mix between the Spectre and Batman and is quite terrifying too. So I decided to write something for him.

In this mod you'll find out what was Nathan Grave's former job before being a superhero, something more about the story of Nathan and his wife and more things I can't tell here. I hope no one will be offended for using Tombstone in this way and if I'm breaking any 'canon' rule, please don't consider this mod as 'canon' for Tombstone.

I tried a different approach than the usual zap, plaff, crunch missions. I wanted my missions with a feeling and a reason to be acomplished and I don't know if I've achieved it. Anyway is a mod fun enough to play and I really hope you enjoy it.

Please report any bug, suggestion or just your thoughts about the mod, I'll appreciate it.

You can find the mod here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/82929524/tombstone.rar.html

[GGiant]

Cool, very impressive! :thumbup:
Also thanks for making a thread in the mods forum so that no people will "break the rules" of the releases forum.
I actually think he's a mix of Punisher and Ghost Rider.

[lmalonsof]

I actually think he's a mix of Punisher and Ghost Rider.

It's interesting how people see the same things. I would have never thought of those two but I must agree with you, and his background is also similar.

[GGiant]

BTW, Unkoman's Phantom Enmity has some kind of backstory for the guy who killed Nathan, pretty cool too. :lol:

[lmalonsof]

Really?! Where can I find it?

EDIT:

I hope it can be compatible with my story

[GGiant]

You can find the skin here.

Bill Benoni was a slimy lout of a man. He lived alone in the suburbs, with his big fancy house and his big fancy car. As if he wasn't enough of a creep, Bill constantly made eyes at his neighbour, Nathan Graves', wife. One day, while Nathan was out, Bill forced himself on her. When she rejected his advances he murdered her, and pinned the blame on her loving husband. Attending Nathan's execution, Bill thought he had gotten away with the crime; Energy X had other things in store. It caused Nathan Graves to become the ghostly Tombstone. Tombstone's first act was to make Bill pay for his misdeeds. What the ghastly vigilante didn't realize, however, was that some of his residual energy wore off on Bill's corpse. Later on, at the morgue, Bill awoke once more. Not quite dead, yet not quite alive, Bill was released on the world to cause misery for all he came into contact with.

I should thank this guy for without him, Tombstone will never arise.....maybe.

[Lunarman]

Wow. I wish I could play this, but last time I checked my EZscript wasn't working. I'll see if I can patch it up 'cos this sounds so great!

[GGiant]

I don't think it's an EZscript because I played it using campaign!

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

EZScript works with the campaign button too.

[GogglesPizanno]

I've been a big advocate of more custom FF Universe content, so I'm excited about trying this when I get home.

Nice job!

[BentonGrey]

Hey man!  You've been busy, I see.  I can't wait to try this out! :D 

[Epimethee]

Definitively looking forward to playing this. :)

[GGiant]

EZScript works with the campaign button too.

Wrong again! :banghead:
Anyway, nice use of words, "to the hell" :lol:

[HumanTon]

Those FF1 night maps are perfect for Tombstone!

[UnkoMan]

This was fairly enjoyable, since Tombstone is a cool character, however...
There were quite a few grammatical errors. They were easy to get past. Every single enemy group saying "Kill him!" was not, though. Also, fights tend to typically be all the same. Tombstone fights a tight group of about six guys. Wins. Moves on to another tight group of six. Once in a while there's a tiny change up (like one time a guy was on a roof),  but it isn't really enough. Maybe if the groups weren't packed so tightly.
It'd still be easy, though, due to Tombstone's possession power, but that's (what I see as) a character flaw, not your problem.

I did get stuck, though. In fact, due to the guy on the roof. It seems that when the building came down, enough of it went over the top secret documents so that I could not pick them up. Drat! I will have to go back and play it again, since I am curious to see where this goes.

[HumanTon]

This was fairly enjoyable, since Tombstone is a cool character, however...
Also, fights tend to typically be all the same. Tombstone fights a tight group of about six guys. Wins. Moves on to another tight group of six. Once in a while there's a tiny change up (like one time a guy was on a roof),  but it isn't really enough. Maybe if the groups weren't packed so tightly.
It'd still be easy, though, due to Tombstone's possession power, but that's (what I see as) a character flaw, not your problem.

I would remove the Thugs With Bombs, since it's too easy for Tombstone to Possess one of them, then blow up all the thugs by throwing a bomb at his own feet.

The enemies being packed in tightly is due to using the basic EZScript location markers. It's possible avoid this by putting down a bunch of specific markers for an encounter instead of one marker for the whole encounter. More details are in the EZScript docs in the section "Doing more with maps: specifying where things appear."

A digression: I'd like to see more variety in thug and minion fights in everybody's mods, not just this one. There's no reason to stick with just the ones Irrational put in the game. You can make some that are stronger, or faster (a gun thug that runs as fast as a hero is a much bigger problem), have them knock you down, throw crates at you, use smoke grenades or tear gas grenades, etc. Just because they don't have a million powers doesn't mean they can't be fun!

Anyway.... Unko, it does get harder on the next map, where you have to deal with enemies who use a damage type that Tombstone is vulnerable to. That's where I'm stuck right now.

[lmalonsof]

Thanks to all of you who have downloaded and played the mod and special thanks also to Goggles Pizzano for his maps and to M25 and the rest of the FFX team (credits included in the Readme.txt).

The maps are simply great! They're dirty and you can even sometimes feel it is cold there! I think they're better for the story than the FFv3R ones with their colourist textures. Great job Goggles!!!

It was a pity I wasn't aware of Unkoman's work about Tombstone background, because I would have told him something about the mod and about including some of his stuff in it. I've taken a look at your work and it's impressive! Please send me a PM if you want to do something with your FF related characters (not the Liberty ones, I mean), they would be great for including them in a mod!

English is not my native tongue, and it's different to speak it... and to write it. When I'm speaking in english I'm thinking in english but when I'm thinking about a story, I'm thinking in my mother tongue so sometimes I maintain its structures... so please forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes (thanks Benton for your help with that in the mod we're working on). I could release a patch if someone is interested. Anyway, I will take more care in the next one.

I must agree: some encounters are repetitive and you're fighting groups of six enemies in the first two missions. There are a couple of questions about this. The first one is Tombstone is a nut though to crack, so I tried with some different numbers of enemies and after some tests I decided six was a good number if at least two or three of them have grenades. Tombstone's possesion power is quite powerful and makes the mod very easy, but I tried the mod in very hard difficult level and it improves.

The second one is their placements... They are packed in the standard Ezscript groups. I was going change this but I when I tested the missions it seemed me fair enough and if the thugs are surprised by the hero, they won't have time to look for strategic placements to shoot him down... and I'm extremely lazy, so I thought 'What the hell, I'll leave it as it is'. Anyway this changes from the Pinstripe's mission in advance, I've included specific markers for some en emies. In fact there are two different parts in the mod, until Pinstripe and from Pinstripe. Until Pinstripe you're playing the usual let's say 'Batman style' missions: Pinstripe's and Malone's story arc, fighting thugs in the streets... I wanted to use that part of the character because I thought he fits perfectly in that role. From Pinstripe's mission I tried to play with the personal and emotional part of the character, the struggle and tragedy surrounding of his life and his willforce of going to hell if it was necessary to save his loved ones. As I said in previous posts, I don't know if I finally achieved what I wanted (I know there are lots of things to improve) but I also think the mod it's fun to play.

I tried not to use too much thugs. I agree with HumanTon when he says that everybody is tired of fighting thugs (me too), but I couldn't choose between more characters for the first missions... Anyway as you have said there are more enemies than the usual thugs in the next missions and I hope they can make the mod more difficult.

As far as I can see you have not reached the point when the key of the story is told... I suppose there can be a vivid discussion in the thread when you read what is said there!

I've introduced a new villain in the mod, someone called Malone. Malone is not seen in the mod and his story arc is not completed here. I'll use him in other FF related mods. He's the typical Lex Luthor character but playing more in the politics field than in the scientific-business one. BTW Ggiant, I could use some of your skopes for my next FF related mod, we must talk about this!

And many many thanks to all for your comments!

[GogglesPizanno]

Might I recommend for future updates/projects a Yahoo group maybe (or even asking catwhowalksbyhimself for some web space).
Rapidshare is like pulling teeth out for me. It hates me.
Ive always had bad luck trying to download stuff from them.
It times out mid download, then when I retry, I have met my download quota for the day etc...

Maybe its just me...

Stupid Internets  :banghead:

[HumanTon]

Don't worry too much about your English, lmalonsof. Even though a native speaker might say things slightly differently, I had no trouble at all following the dialogue. And you captured the spirit of Tombstone, which is the important thing

And you write English much, much better than I speak Spanish, so I'm happy you wrote it in English!  :D

Edit: Just ran into a little problem. Nothing happened after I interrogated the Frost Warrior and he said he wasn't working for Nuclear Winter. Tombstone said his "You're rubbish" line and then ... nothing happened.

Looking at the EZScript it may be because there's no NEXT. (I'm never sure when NEXTs are needed and when they aren't needed ... so I always put them in.)

[lmalonsof]

Strange... I tested the mod several times and it worked fine (always on my laptop)...

I'll take a look at it

[lmalonsof]

I played the mod from the beginning again and I had the same error you're saying but in a different point, the end of the 3rd mission. Maybe is because there's no Next included, but I want to think that it's some kind of random error because I replayed it again and it didn't happen. So I would tell you try to restart again the mission and see if now goes ok, that's what I did and it worked.

[UnkoMan]

If you want a skin for Malone, and don't mind waiting a bit, I might give it a try. Is he just a fella in a suit?

Also, I'm willing to correct grammar on future mods, if you want. I'm pretty quick at that sort of thing.

This mod is pretty sweet though, and if you are looking to do more FF Universe things, feel free to use characters of mine. In fact, I just made a post in the Idea Pot thread...

Baroness, that reminds me... I had made a few random FF universe villains since I was planning to write a couple stories expanding their universe.
The majority would have focused on Blackbird. How she is sort of a loner, and only a FF reserve member. One part in paticular has her beat the hokey Double-Back, who would later team up with the more powerful Narwhal. That would prompt an appearance from some FF members. They ask her if she will reconsider joining full time. She declines again. Later on she gains her biggest nemesis, who I was thinking of calling "Moon Face." In day he is a law abiding citizen, maybe even a lawyer, but by night he becomes a psychotic killer, carving cresent moons into his victims. Yeah, sort of dark, but that's the sort of vibe I got from the character. Like an early Batman figure.

If you wanted to do something with this, I'd be more than willing to finish off Moon Face, and help with some story ideas.

[lmalonsof]

Great!
I'd better PM you about Malone... I don't want to spoil the thing before any other release.
I find very interesting FF universe so we absolutely must work together about this.

BTW, GogglesPizzano said something about having problems with rapidshare and creating a yahoogroup. If you couldn't download the mod, I'll create a yahoo group and upload the mod there. Could you finally download the mod?

There has been any other problems with the mod? HumanTon, did the mission work restarting it?

[stumpy]

Just finished. I'll agree that some of the earlier missions when Tombstone runs into a phalanx of thugs every block or so were a little odd. But, things picked up as we got more info on the plot. I had fun with this mod. Thanks.  :)

[lmalonsof]

You're welcome!