TheKingBahamut

Play the hack here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D7yayrLJXeiCs0fmoum0OYS-b-nA4EvB/view?usp=sharing More details here: https://feuniverse.us/t/fe8-black-dragon-arc-1-the-wolf-and-the-swan-ver-1-0-in-progress/10477 This is very rough and not exactly great, but then again, this build of the hack was made in just over a month entirely by me. Hope you enjoy it, and even if you don't, I appreciate your feedback (provided it's constructive in nature). I'm frankly just glad to even be able to have made this.

I'm very new to the process of ROMhacking and fangames, and have only just started using FEBuilder GBA a handful of weeks ago. I'm really enjoying working with it, and it has helped me learn to enjoy a type of game making that I struggled with mightily for years. However, I have been running into a handful of issues with certain parts of the program that I don't know how to work around, and could use some advice from people who are a little more familiar with the program and how it functions. Normally I like to try and sort out issues I run into on my own, but I genuinely have no idea why some of this stuff is happening and feel like I need outside assistance with some of it. Issue number 1: Text box glitches This is one of the most common problems I've run into, and one of the ones I understand the least (images of examples below). Every so often, a dialogue bubble will refuse to display properly, resulting in text being absent and making the graphics look jank as hell. I initially thought this was the result of the speech bubble overlapping with a character sprite on the map, but have dismissed that idea on account of it not making sense. I'm also unsure if it has anything to do with the size of the speech bubble, the position of the portrait speaking, or what else. Issue number 2: Other portrait jank I'm convinced that the Move command in the text menu has a mind of its own. I've had instances where I attempted to move a character portrait off the screen, only for it to act weird, claim it has erased the character upon moving them, only to either not move the character or not erase them, causing a portrait freak-out. Again, I am completely at a loss for what the issue even is here. Also, I have one instance where two character portraits being erased causes one other character's portrait to decide it wants to turn black like it's about to erase as well, despite there being no instruction for this to happen anywhere in the conversation. (Screenshot of this below) Issue number 3: Unit movement jank I have one instance in one of the maps where two wyvern riders and a wyvern lord fly into the map as reinforcements, and for some reason, the wyvern lord moves ten times more slowly as the others in his group. The units movement is all handled by the Unit Placer in this instance, so I can't individually alter the speed at which the wyvern lord moves. Issue number 4: Boss unit palettes I have altered the classes of a couple of the earlygame bosses (I'm using Sacred Stones as a base ftr; in the base game the first boss is a Fighter, in my hack he's a Brigand), and in every instance where the bosses' class differs from what it's "supposed to be", the character's unit palette doesn't appear in the game even though I have set the unit palette to the correct class in the palette editor. This is not the case for the second boss of mine, who shares his class (Knight) with the corresponding boss from the original game. Not a game-breaking issue, but still annoying. Issue number 5: Issues with unit movement during cutscenes I have one instance in the first chapter of my hack where a cutscene triggers toward the end of the map that causes playable characters to move to different spots from where they ended their turn. When this happens, the sprite of the character who just took their last action stays on the field, running in place (essentially creating a clone of said unit), which while it doesn't majorly affect the gameplay, looks unpolished and really silly. This also happens at the end of another chapter, where the end of chapter story sequence takes place entirely on the map itself, with no portraits-over-background cutscene. This might be something that I can fix by just erasing playable units before the cutscene triggers, but I hesitate to do so as I'm concerned about the game "forgetting" unit EXP gains/level ups as a result of this. On a similar note, the mid-chapter cutscene I mentioned causes the boss of that map to spawn in, and he when he does, he immediately teleports away from the space I set him down on over to the space where the player cursor last was. Again, not something that massively affects the gameplay, but it looks bad. One last thing I'll mention to make diagnosis a little easier: I have not updated FEBuilder to its latest version since installing it due to the screwy way that the program handles updates (I.E., making you download a zip file instead of just applying the latest patch to the program immediately, which makes me afraid that I'm going to either have to reinstall FEBuilder, or something else will go wrong and make me lose a bunch of progress on this hack). If any of the issues I've spoken of here are fixed in updates to the program, please feel free to let me know. Thank you very much.

Thank you! I've never been much of an Ike x Elincia supporter myself, but a support between the two would be fun to make. I like to imagine that Ike does eventually grow to accept being a hero and even enjoy it somewhat, I just felt that at this point in his life, he's not quite so happy with it. He always struck me as the sort of guy who just wants to do the right thing, or at least what he thinks is the right thing, just because someone needs to do it.

Figured I ought to show this off for shits and giggles. This is an ongoing project of mine to write some custom support conversations for my favorite game in the series and then turn them into videos. Headcanons and hi-jinks ensue. This project is mostly just me giving myself something to do to flex my creative writing muscle while I do some brainstorming for bigger projects. I have ambitions to make my own FE-style game someday, so I might as well practice some character/dialogue writing in the meanwhile. Enjoy!

The issue I have with the EA Buildfile method is that building stuff from scratch kinda... makes my head spin. I don't really know how to explain it very well without showing it to someone, and I'm not sure how I'd show it off.

Yeah, I figured. MAKEHACK is probably better in the long run for full projects, but trying to track all the data in it makes my head hurt. And honestly, I'd rather work with just a test chapter for now.

Lol I actually do theatre in real life so that's a perfect analogy. A thought occurred to me: it's possible that the MAKEHACK method of hacking isn't the best way to start learning. Even though I've heard a lot of horror stories about FEditor, it looks at least a little more user-friendly in some ways.

Actually, I think that reading this helped me isolate the problem. It's not necessarily that I can't do eventing, it's that while I can do certain bits and pieces of it just fine, I have issues with turning those bits and pieces into a cohesive whole. Which is to say, I can write out the whole chapter events thing or do the "tell the game to put this text at this offset id" thing, but am less certain about how to turn those bits into a full-blown chapter. And that's probably a bigger problem to have than just simply not getting eventing at all.

There's a part of me that wants to continue learning about the technical aspects, if only because knowing at least a little of what to do yourself is kind of important. However, the issue I'm having is that for every one thing about modding I understand, I don't understand 2 more things. As for screenshotting what I've got... not much, honestly. I had an idea about posting the script for the chapters I've written so far (it's text only), and maybe putting some links to music I've written is an idea. But with no real visual aid... not really going to grab other people. Also, to quote InvdrZim: "Getting other people to do eventing for you is kinda impossible." Now this is an interesting idea.

WARNING: This will likely be a fairly long post. I'll try to trim the fat as much as possible, but I can't guarantee that I'll be able to get all the points I want to make across without a fairly long wall of text. But hey, I'm a 'Merican. Building walls is apparently a thing we like to do X( At any rate, a short story: some months ago, I got an impulse to try my hand at hacking/modding Fire Emblem games. What happened was, I started out by writing a short "blueprint" for a story that I thought could work well as the story for a Fire Emblem game. I didn't have a lot of specifics down, merely ideas for characters that I thought would be interesting to work with. I didn't exactly plan of expanding it too much at the time, but it was fun to brainstorm how such a thing would play out. Then, a friend of mine who makes content on YouTube posted a video debating about the quality of the newer Fire Emblem titles versus the older ones. Regardless of my opinion on the quality of the various titles (And I do like Awakening and Fates, for the record), after watching the video, I felt compelled to share the story blueprint I created with him. He said it was really good. Some days later, another friend of mine posted a similar video about what the FE franchise should do to get "back on track," so to speak, and once again, I showed him my blueprint I made. He also thought it was really good, but he also told me that it might make a good idea for a hack of some sort. He pointed me in the direction of Ghast, and watching his videos about Bloodlines, as well as Mangs' playthroughs of similar hacks like Staff of Ages, got me interested. I henceforth began looking into the process of creating FE ROMHacks, which led me here to the forums. Originally, I went in with the n00b mentality of "I can't do technical stuff. I should ask for other people to do that for me and focus on the stuff I'm good at!" That obviously did not end well. I made two separate threads asking for people's help and got nothing in the way of responses. Frustrated, I decided to ask for advice about finding help, and I got a pretty overwhelming response for it. The answers people gave me mostly boiled down to "start with a smaller project to learn the basics. Prove that you can do the basic stuff by yourself, and show that you are worth the time for others to invest into you." And I did take that to heart. It has been about a month since I made that post, and I've done just about everything I can to learn what I can about hacking. I started a small project with which to learn how to create a chapter and units and maps and the like. I've downloaded the tools I need. I've poured over many tutorials, including InvdrZim's FE8 eventing tutorial. And I have learned many things from it. And yet... some things just aren't clicking. The truth is, I'm just not that much of a tech guy. My aptitude is more towards storytelling, creating characters, and music (and even then, I'm not that skilled in those things). That doesn't mean I can't learn technical stuff, or that I don't understand the basics behind making a hack. Yet, with the project I'm doing, I find that even though I might know at least some of the steps I need to take, keeping up with all the data or trying to wrap my mind around certain steps makes my head hurt. I think at least part of it has to do with the way that I learn. When I started learning how to use Pro Tools, the way that I learned it was that my teacher showed me how the different aspects of it worked, and we started certain projects together, and then as I grew more comfortable with the program, I started doing more and more of the work by myself. That's how I learn best: with one-on-one tutoring, watching someone go through the steps, and then trying it myself. And I can't exactly get that from the hacking community, given that most of the knowledgeable people are already busy with their own projects. Hacking is, by and large, a do it yourself kind of thing, and that doesn't really click with me that much. It is entirely possible that hacking and programming games isn't my calling. And I don't have a problem with that, except for one small rub: I'm very passionate about telling this particular story. And I want to tell it as a game, not as something else. Even beyond this one story, I have other story ideas that I want to make into games, each with interesting gameplay ideas and mechanics that I think would be fun. But they are just that: ideas. I'm an ideas person, and as I've learned, ideas aren't worth much, especially if you have nothing else to back them up with. Learning how to back these ideas up is fine, but even with my best efforts, it doesn't mean I'm going to get it, especially if I'm learning by myself. I firmly believe that if someone's passion for something is strong enough, they can overcome any obstacle. It could be that all I need is just somebody telling me "nut up, shut up, and git gud" or to have my determination stoked by someone telling me I should quit and I won't amount to anything and feeling compelled to prove them wrong. The point is, I have a dream in mind. I don't want to give up on that dream, no matter what, but even taking the small steps towards it is proving difficult. I feel stuck. And I need advice.

So I downloaded Anvil Studio because I heard it was useful for implementing MIDI files into a ROM. For making actual MIDI files and songs, however, the program is incredibly frustrating to use. Anyone have suggestions on what programs others use to make music for their hacks?

OKAY! I figured out what it was. I needed to but the ROM Buildfile text document into the ROM with EA before using MAKEHACK to save the changes. Feeling stupid again, but hey. Sometimes you need to make obvious errors so other people can learn to not make them.

The buildfile comes with EA. Do I need to put it in the same place as the MAKEHACK program in order for it to work properly?

Sort of a follow-up to my last post here. Currently learning how to use the MAKEHACK command to apply changes to ROMS. I downloaded the buildfile demo and am currently trying to apply the changes made to it to a clean ROM. Originally, I was having trouble because thee .ups file needed to patch the game wasn't appearing, but after some experimentation, I discovered that it was simply a case of "wait around for the program to actually make the file before closing it." But now I've encountered a different problem. When I use NUPS to apply the patch to the hacked copy of the ROM, it says that the patch has been applied. Yet when I open the ROM up to test it out, none of the changes have been applied at all. I have tried this a few times and I cannot get any of the changes to work. Does anyone have any clue as to what's going on?

So apparently it DID make the file, it just took some time to do it. I hate when questions like this get answered immediately after posting. >.<

So I'm currently trying to learn how to use event assembler and MAKEHACK.cmd to make FE8 hacks, and I'm running into an issue. When I use MAKEHACK, it makes the ROM copy, but it doesn't make the ups patch file to make the changes playable. Help? I might need to actually download Event Assembler for this to work. That's the only hiccup I can think of off the top of my head.

Oh wow, did not expect people to suddenly start jumping on this thread. Not sure if I should be flattered or not. At any rate, I'd just like to say: I've realized that this project, which was going to be a full-fledged game, is too big for me to start with. I'm planning on cutting my teeth on a few smaller comedy hacks as a starting project before doing work on this. So if people are somehow interested in what's here, thank you, but just know that it's going to be a while before I start doing work on this. A long while.

Ok. That makes a bit more sense to my head. Was thinking I needed to rewrite large chunks of the story I had started anyway, so might as well use this "test hack" as a way to give my brain time to work on that.

To explain: I started with the story for this one. I had/have had it all planned out, only to be told I need to ditch it in favor of something small.

I did not say I wanted to start with a 40 chapter game. I said I wanted to start with a small demo and then build on it bit by bit as I found people

So I've been getting some good responses here, most of which I kind of expected. So I'd like to pose another question: The big goal I have with this project of mine is a full 40 chapter or so fan game. The plan for me was to create a small, 3 chapter demo by myself using placeholder sprites and animations, then find people to create assets, hack in the extra features I wanted but didn't know how to implement, etc. And I think that's ultimately what I'm going to do, but part of me is worried that the demo won't really show off the full extent of what I want in terms of features. Stupid fear, or no? ( Probably yes .) Also, not really sure how to go about making friends on these forums. Also, is there a way to delete my old posts? Cuz if they've failed me, I'd like to put them to rest.

So, I don't know how relevant it is for me to post this here, since this isn't really a tech question, but I have no idea where else I would ask this and I feel it is an important question for many newbie hackers looking for assistance in bringing their visions to life. I'm an aspiring game maker. I've had an original Fire Emblem story idea that I've been wanting to make into a hack for a while now. While I have most of the story and characters down, I know very little about programming, making sprites/animations, or any sort of tech aspect of making games. While I have been making an effort to learn more, it's a very difficult process for just one person to do alone. To that end, I decided that the best course of action was for me to start looking for people to help me with making the game. Some time ago, I posted a thread in the Concepts forum advertising my game idea and asking for any people who were interested to contact me. (Normally I would link you to this thread so you can read it yourself, but Serenes' link-paster tool is a piece of shit that doesn't work so I can't. Just look under my account content, you'll see it.) I got one response. One. And the guy wasn't offering to help create, merely asking me more questions. I could see that people were looking at the post, plenty of them, but no one was biting. So I continued writing the story and doing some of my own work. I learned how to create mug sprites by splicing pre-existing mugs together, which was cool, if not exactly what I wanted. I planned on putting a prototype of the game together to show off a rough idea of what it would look like, but impatience got the better of me and I decided to ask for help again. I made another post, this time with a more clear and focused vision of the game I wanted to make, as well as some of the sprites I had cobbled together. I even advertised the post on other websites and asked friends to help promote it as well. No one responded. Not a single person. Well one person, but he did so through direct message so it doesn't really count. I have it on good authority that creating a hack by oneself is borderline impossible, yet these experiences seem to be telling me that I need to do everything myself and that no one is interested in helping me. I like to think my idea is at least an interesting one, but of course I know the old expression that there are too many good ideas in the world and not enough good executions. And I'm sure other people who post to concepts with less of an idea as to what to make feel the same frustration when no one seems willing to help them. So what I want to know, from the hacking veterans here who have full teams working on their projects is: How do you generate interest in a project so that people will be willing to help you with it? Do you need to know how to do everything for yourself, and do you have to do it all by yourself, if only for a small amount of time? If an idea isn't grabbing interest, is it because the idea isn't very good, or because you can't substantiate it? And most importantly, if there's something I'm not doing right, what can I do differently to get the results I want? Because I can't make this game by myself. God knows I'd love to.

It’s no secret that the recent Fire Emblem titles – Awakening and Fates – have been… polarizing to the fanbase. While the games were critical and financial successes, many fans have expressed extreme disdain for the “mainstreamification” of these titles in comparison to older games. Personally, I think that each style of Fire Emblem has its strengths and weaknesses; the older titles have stronger stories while the newer games have more streamlined and accessible gameplay. As I turned these thoughts over in my mind, an idea came to me: why not make a fan project that combines the strong plot and character of the older games with the newer features of Fates and Awakening into a game that everyone can enjoy? And so I present to you Fire Emblem: The Black Dragon, a FE8 hack designed to take the best aspects of each style of Fire Emblem and combine them into a single game. I plan to bring back certain important or interesting features from some older games as well, along with some new ideas. I wanted to wait until I had a proof of concept put together before properly posting here, but impatience got the better of me and I decided to post here anyway. I'm not entirely without things to show off, though; I have some sprites and really early script already created. So without further ado... The Story: The continent of Rhoden has long been the site of a perennial struggle between two major powers: The Holy Empire of Damaria in the north, and the Kingdom of Maridia in the south. The Damarian Empire is a theocracy ruled by the Church of Valkyrion, while Maridia is a constitutional monarchy ruled by a king and a council of nobles that values logic over religion. The two kingdoms have been at war with each other for decades over ideological differences, and have pulled the other smaller nations into their conflict several times. The start of the story takes place five years after the last war between the two kingdoms ended in a defeat for Damaria. Now, tensions are starting to run high for the two kingdoms and war is imminent. As the kingdoms move towards war, a wandering mercenary named Zean O’Drake is dragged into fighting for Maridia. As he travels the continent, Zean and his friends discover that the war is part of a larger plot that threatens to destroy the entire continent, and that Zean is the only one who can stop the forces that threaten the world. Structure and progression: The story centers around three major Lords: Zean, a wandering mercenary with superhuman powers, Mikaela, the princess of the Damarian Empire, and Richter, a powerful Maridian general. Each Lord will have their own party and path through the game, and the player will be able to switch between the different paths at will to ensure that each party remains competently levelled. The overall structure follows a similar style to FE8 and Awakening, with a traversable world map that players can explore at their choosing. In between chapters, players can also access a base camp, where they can manage units’ equipment, equip skills, buy weapons, items, and skills, and access support conversations. In addition to the destination chapter, where the player must go next for story progression, the player may encounter skirmishes on the world map, where they may go in order to grind experience and money, or boost support levels between their units. To compensate for this ability to grind, I intend to make this a much more challenging hack than most FE games. Gameplay features I want: Revamped skill system: Skills add a lot of variety and utility to Fire Emblem games. My personal favorite skill mechanics come from Radiant Dawn, where skills could be un-equipped and re-equipped to different units at will. Skill mechanics will work similarly in this particular game. Skills will be divided into two different categories: class-specific skills and equipable skills. Class-specific skills will be certain abilities locked to certain classes. For example, Thieves will always be able to pick locks, cavalry classes will always have the Canto ability (specifically FE9/10 style Canto that activates regardless of action), Berserkers will have an extra 20% crit, etc. Equipable skills can be bought at the base camp shop and equipped to units regardless of class, and will remain equipped regardless of what class the unit changes into, which leads me to my next mechanic… Multiple promotions and reclassing: While I like the reclassing feature of the newer Fire Emblem games, there are times when it could be a bit intrusive using it to obtain new skills with units. To solve this problem, I’ve decided to revamp the system a bit. Instead of units having different sets of classes to switch between, each unit will be stuck to one base class, but every base class will be able to promote into one of three different advanced classes, which the unit can switch between at will in the base. For example, a Fighter will be able to promote into a Warrior, a Berserker, or a Hero. Each of these classes will offer unique strengths and weaknesses, as well as small increases to a unit’s growth rates. If the Fighter becomes a Warrior, they will gain a small increase to their Defense and Skill, and gain access to the Warrior’s unique class skills. If the unit becomes a Berserker, however, they’ll get the Berserker’s unique skills and an increase to HP and Strength. This will give the player the option to customize their units as much as they want, and since many other skills can be equipped, it means that the reclassing feature is entirely optional to give units all the skills the player wants. FE13/14-Style support system: One thing about the older FE titles I despise and one of the reasons I refuse to acknowledge them as superior to the new is the way support conversations work. Not only is it unclear and unintuitive as to how support levels are increased, but it takes way too long for the support level to actually increase. Newer games also allowed for characters to support with many more other characters, giving them more opportunities for development. I want to take a page from the new games in terms of how supports are accessed by making the requirements for accessing them A) be more obvious, and B) take less time. Also, support conversations will take place at base instead of the battlefield because that makes more sense. Since I doubt I’ll be able to implement a pair up feature in these games, increasing support levels will be done by having characters stand next to each other on the battlefield. The difference is that each time these characters battle together, a heart icon will pop up (as it does in the new games) to indicate the increase in support points. The amount of support points required will also be lowered so that it only takes about two battles to increase two characters’ support level one stage. S rank supports will return, but I’ll only have characters be able to S rank one or two other characters based on story circumstances. Since I’m not putting children characters in this game, S rank supports will instead allow the two characters to be able to access each other’s skills in battle. Example: Two S ranked units stand next to each other. One is equipped with the Adept skill, giving that unit an extra attack. The unit that does not have Adept equipped will be able to activate the Adept skill regardless as long as they stand next to their S rank partner. Battle saving and other small conveniences: Battle saving, which allows the player to save their progress in the middle of a chapter and reload back to that point at any time, gives the player a greater margin for error. Granted, since players will be using an emulator to play this, it might not be necessary, but I feel it’s something every Fire Emblem game should have. It can potentially prevent players from needing to reset the entire chapter if they made a mistake, and anything that prevents that is a good thing to have in my book. There are also some other minor features that are convenient to have that other hackers have brought out. These include being able to see if enemies can move or not, checking the attack range of every enemy on the map, and seeing if an enemy has a weapon that is effective against a particular class. These are minor, but can make quite a bit of difference for players. Equipable items: This has sort of been done before, but I’d like the give units the ability to equip certain kinds of armor and relics to give them additional skills. These would be given their own inventory ala Path of Radiance, to avoid clutter and make them easier to use. You can probably see that this is an ambitious concept, which is a problem since I have little to no experience. I cannot stress enough that I need people to help me with making this. Script/story editors, sprite artists, hackers... ANYONE. But that doesn't mean there aren't some things I can do and have done myself. Here's a small list of sprites I cobbled together for this project. And yes I know they are really obviously spliced together but I don't care. Here's Zean, the main hero of the story. A rugged, handsome fellow. Princess Mikaela, heir to the throne of the empire and second of the three lords. Horatio, one of the first people Zean encounters on his travels. And finally, Brida, a young Fighter girl who joins the mercenary troupe. If you are even remotely interested, you can read the first draft of the script I've written here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ukIBQnvch-0zS5B5ioyR4QS3qSA0d8MQJ-nLQaJNmmg/edit Thanks, Bahamut

Got it. Thanks!

Hey, So I'm sure this question has been asked and answered before, but... I've been trying to get into the hacking business, and I've started doing my research by watching Ghast's tutorials. He recommends using Eventiel as a way to help newbie hackers learn how to event maps. However, to my knowledge, Eventiel is a FE7 program only, and I'm thinking of using FE8 as the basis of my hack. Is there any program like Eventiel available for newbie FE8 hackers out there? Or would it be wiser to start learning using FE7 to learn and then transition to FE8 when I get more experience?