Project: Final Fantasy - Dark Reign

By the way, anyone who already knows about this need not harass me about my slowness lol.

First off, I know most of you are going to say "zOMG Final Fantasy has been done to death". When I first imagined this project at the beginning of war3, I thought of that. I saw what the editor could do and what most people would do for their maps. Several years later, these predictions have come to pass.

This map uses a combat system very similar to that of the console Final Fantasies prior to X. I have expanded it so that it may be used for multiplayer purposes. How does it work? Your ATB gauge (set in a multiboard) charges depending on your Speed (SPD) stat. When it fills up, you (or your enemies) are allowed to select an attack. Say you are a Black Mage and select Fire. If you are the first entity to queue up your attack, your attack will be executed. If there are others in front of you in the queue, your attack will not be executed until theirs are. What this means is that players can be slow, afk, or straight up griefers and it will not affect the flow of battle, except that their positive impact on the battle will be minimalized or removed. Some have theorized that the combat would be very slow, however, they retracted this statement upon testing it with me. The speed of the battle is greatly dependant on the length of the various spells and attacks.

More Info: Your character has stats just like in the console Final Fantasies. These stats are: Level, HP, MP, Strength, Magic, Speed, Luck, Defense, Magic Defense, Evade, Magic Evade, Weapon, Fire/Ice/Lightning/Poison/Earth/Water/Wind/Gravity/Holy resists, Blind/Silence/Poison/Sleep/Slow/Stop/Stone/Small/Toad resists and several "hidden" stats, including Cure resistance ("200%" for living creatures to heal them, "0%" for undead creatures to damage them), several levels of Instant Death resistance (some of which can be modified by items), blah blah blah.

Saving works similarly to that of Final Fantasy Forever by Xalterax (also a TDG member). In fact, the layout of the output text is the same as in that map (so that Chriso's "getcode" program will read my codes, and it does). In my map, the following things are saved: EXP to the exact digit, GP to the exact digit, equipped items (main hand, off hand, head, chest, gloves, boots, relic1, and relic2), items in your normal and virtual inventories (at the moment, 30 total items... I may have to reduce this number due to savecode length), linear quests, nonlinear quests, "special" modifier (for the Blue Mage, it identifies which spells he has acquired etc), your steps to the exact digit, and possibly other things may be added.

Okay so what do I need?

Storyline Ideas: Well, for starters, I have been having trouble getting a suitable storyline off the ground. Because I would not be content modeling the actual story around the entire world envisioned by another person, I am mostly looking for storyline "scraps", such as how the story begins or what the primary antagonist of the story is and how it relates to the protagonists (the players).

Skill Ideas: Although I am more than capable of creating spells based on Final Fantasy spells and ideas, there are not many non-magic abilities that I find suitable.

Modelers and Skinners: Although public releases have been semi-suitable for a few of the characters, I am still in need of many custom models, ESPECIALLY low file size variations (as this map contains many custom models/skins/music files). Currently most of the classes need a good model or skin that pubbie crap cannot help me with.

Samurai: Already has near perfect custom model. Small file too.
Dark Knight: Could use a better skin/model, though it is okay as it is.
Paladin: I have yet to find a suitable skin/model for this. Something useful that uses a one handed sword and a shield would be perfect.
Dragoon: Desperately need a skin/model for this! I have found NOTHING that holds a 2 handed spear and doesn't look like dookie.
Black Mage: Only found one suitable model, but it's a very aged man, and I want a younger character (not typical FF young, but not Tellah old).
White Mage: Same as above.
Summoner: Same as above.
Blue Mage: Same as above.

Any other useful ideas: Anything you can produce would be great. Credit will go to anyone who contributes a useful idea or object.

I have a sample map I could provide, but it is over a year old. I will release an Alpha version of the map on the primary project forum within a week or so.

Edit: Some screenies included.
Edit2: Removed screenies as they were doing bizarre things to the margins and some of them were auto-resized by photobucket making them too small to read.