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SquareRootOfPi

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Everything posted by SquareRootOfPi

  1. Howdy, it's once again time for an update on the project. Unsurprisingly, if you check the dates, I've needed to skip the Halloween update once again. For this update I've focused on getting more gameplay done, finishing up the core events for two chapters. Let's start with the first one: This chapter's gameplay is a pretty straightforward one, and if you're familiar with how this section goes in the original game, you may be surprised to learn I've removed a certain event involving Dew, since as far as I can tell, it's not interesting mechanically and doesn't seem to have any story relevance. The second chapter, on the other hand, proved to be quite the logistical challenge: If you're unfamiliar with the original game, at this point of the game, there are two major gameplay events that happen, which are hard to incorporate with the traditional chapter structure I'm using for the hack. First, there's a major NPC battle scene that is critical to the story, so I have to include it in some form, and at the same time there's a pseudo-escort element that occurs shortly afterwards. The problem with this is that the enemy NPCs have to stay around (unlike in the original game, where they leave the area), so I had to do a bit of juggling to make sure they wouldn't create problem with the escort portion of the map. I won't go into details of what happens, but you might figure it out based on the draft for the chapter. That's it for this update, thanks once again for tuning in!
  2. Hey, it's been quite a while, especially since I missed the usual Halloween update, but here's an update on the hack progress. First, regarding the missed update, October has started being an especially busy month for me due to several projects lining up with a Halloween due date. I also didn't have a huge hacking output by that time, so I decided to skip the update and save it for now so I'd have more content. With that out of the way, let's cover the updates for this year, with three major points. The first is some portrait work, with cleanups for Midir, Dew, Macbeth and Shagall. You can see the comparison between the old and current versions here: The next update is some UI work, which I've been putting off for a while, but I finally got around to laying the groundwork to change the info boxes: Finally, the last update to report is that 4-2's events have been sketched out, with the key enemies and reinforcements placed. I still need to playtest it more thoroughly, but due to 4-1 not being complete as well as needing to add several changes to the early game, and then replaying the entire game from scratch to get a better save, I'll be deferring that until the rest of Chapter 4 is done at the earliest. I've included a image of the current version of 4-2 below if you're curious about how it's coming along: As for future updates, I may have to skip Halloween updates, but I'll still be making an effort to try and get work done for those, since these updates are the main reason work continues on this project, as slow as it is. If you've managed to read this far, thanks for keeping up with the project for so long and I hope you'll continue to check in!
  3. Hey, it's time for the usual April update. March was unexpectedly busy, so I apologize for the slightly delayed update. The majority of the time spent on this project lately was getting more work done on the gameplay, so I am happy to say that 4-1 is in good shape; it has all the key events added in with some placeholder dialogue to remind me of what to write when I get back to it, and the gameplay for it is at a point where any changes would be balancing for pacing. As such, work for the Silesia portion of the game has started, although unfortunately the draft map I made for it turned out to be too big (which is a common issue when I draft maps) so there's a lot of prototyping happening to get it into better shape. Unfortunately, since this update was focused on gameplay, there aren't many useful screenshots I can post. I don't think I've actually introduced the last (new to the hack) playable character, so I may as well do it now: As you can see, the new unit is a pirate named Rusla (name subject to change if I find a better one). Also, If you look up the origin of that name you'll find out that contrary to the sprite, Rusla is a woman, as I've been considering adding some axe wielding children to the second generation as well. That's it for this update, so thanks for reading and continue to stay safe!
  4. Hello, it is once again time for another update. Since the last update, I've mainly been working on artistic endeavours, so unfortunately there wasn't much work done on the project for most of the time. However, I did manage to make some time on Halloween to get 4-1 out of alpha and into a beta state, so this update will show off a few things from it. The first major milestone of note is that all playable Generation 1 characters finally have a placeholder portrait, since 4-1 is the chapter where you recruit the last one. As such, here are the statscreens showing off Brigid and Tailtiu to give you a sense of their stats: My sense of balance has rusted since I last seriously playtested this, so these numbers are unlikely to be the final ones, but the stats will have a similar curve. The next update of note I have is a major gameplay addition, adding the Runic Staff to the list of staves: As you might suspect, this is a Light Rune that's been edited so that staff users can use it at range. The reason for adding this is partly due to the chapter; as the first screenshot suggests, there's a survival element at the start of the chapter where you have to judiciously use the staff in order to protect Claude and Tailtiu from incoming enemies. You can try fighting them all head-on, but their numbers will overwhelm them. The other reason I've added the Runic Staff is that I am currently experimenting with a revamp of the staff system. I can't share any further details at the moment but there are plans for a few new staves, and if the experiments pans out I'll be happy to share more information about them. In any case, with the Runic Staff added, 4-1 is now completely playable. I've done a few playtests and I'm very happy with how it plays out, so the next step now is to start drafting and testing the long overdue Silesia chapters. To wrap up this update, I've also been able to finish Oifaye and Shanan's portraits, so I will show them off as the final update content: Thank you for reading and following this topic despite the long hibernation, and stay safe in these trying times. The only major obstacle at the moment is just time, so it's unlikely I will be able to contribute anything on other projects..
  5. Hello, everyone. Somehow, it is already April and time for another update, which comes with good news and bad news. First, the bad news: I don't actually have much material ready for a public update. The good news is that the reason for that is that I've been focusing my efforts on getting 4-1 into shape; I've been slowly refining the gameplay and map design this year. To get an idea of how much it's evolved, I'll post the map drafts I made: This is the original map I made at the time I made the last update in October. As you can see, the map is quite large (an even older version was even larger and causing crashes in the game) to balance the fact that player has a lot of mounted units. In comparison, here's the map as it stands in the current testing: Aside from being smaller, you'll notice that the flow is changed, and a bit more subtle is the number of playable units is reduced. I still need to decide the right pacing for the reinforcements and rebalance the exact enemy numbers, and I might also need to implement some new staff ideas I had in mind so that might make it into the October update. I might also have future ideas to reduce the size of the map as well. With that, I must unfortunately end today's update. Hopefully I'll have started significant work on the Silesia maps by October, or have some more interesting content for an update. Until then, stay safe. For now, yes. He may appear in a few cutscenes as I add some additional dialogue to Chapter 2. It is very difficult for me to actually predict this, so I can't give any reasonable guesses.
  6. Hello, it is once again time for the customary Halloween update. Unfortunately, due to 2019 being a very busy year for me, I didn't have much time to dedicate to this project (and even less for this update), but some progress managed to get made. For this year's update, I will cover two points. First, Chapter (tentatively) 4-1 is finally under construction. If you're familiar with the original game, you probably know why I am using the word "tentatively" to describe the number, as this portion of the game actually takes place during Chapter 3; however, since I'm breaking up the original chapters into sub-chapters, I felt this was a better point to mark the start of the next portion of the story. You can see below a few images of how it looks so far (i.e. very rough): The next update is a smaller one compared to this one, but still meaningful (at least to me), as Holyn has a new portrait. I've always been struggling to capture the essence of Holyn's character in his portrait and I recently had a breakthrough with it, so here is his new look: You can see a timeline of his evolution here: This concludes the update for October. I'm sure many of you are looking forward to seeing more substantial progress in the future, so hopefully working on 4-1 helps accelerate the pace. Glad you're enjoying the hack! The bug you're mentioning is, as far as I'm aware, a bug specific to the no$gba emulator. A post on the first page has what I presume is the same bug as yours. If you're also using no$gba, then I can't currently help with it as I don't debug with that emulator. The April update is not actually a patch update, just a progress update on the state of the hack.
  7. Hello everyone. For this year's April update I present to you the sequel to the Barhara Anime Club featuring Sigurd and Diadora. This shows off a new mechanical change to the game that at first glance may seem simple, but took some time to set up under the hood: If the video wasn't clear about what the new mechanic is, I'll explain it here: The game now supports limited inventory in shops! Shops are now able to carry specific items that can only be bought once, on top of items that can be bought repeatedly and items that can be repaired. There is still some minor work left to make it clear what category the items fall under, but the functionality is fully working (and let me fix some minor bugs that repairing introduced.) As you might expect, this will open up some new options when it comes to adjusting the power curve of the game. Unfortunately, I don't have anything else to add for this update. I may write a summer update if I have something interesting to show off then, but otherwise I will see you in October. Thanks for your patience! The lovers system will be implemented using the existing support system, similar to how the modern 3DS Fire Emblem games have handled them. Haha, the goal of the Kinbois chapter is that you need to kill Kinbois without letting him attack your units to get the handaxe. Now that the new shop mechanic is implemented, however, I will likely add some handaxes in later shops. There will likely be something once I begin integrating supports. Currently, the chapters cover about 25% of the original game content.
  8. Hello once again, it is the time of year for updates. As is the occasional tradition, I've made a video showing off the latest progress, although this one is only focused on the graphics. Give it a watch, and then come back for the rest of the update. I hope you enjoyed the eight new work in progress portraits shown off! As the video title hints, these are (almost) all bosses from the original game. Of course, if you have a keen eye, you may notice that one of the characters is not actually a boss! That person will in fact be a new playable character, filling in for the lack of axe users. Now, let's talk about some low-key but important gameplay changes going forward. The first is the introduction of "rusted weapons". One thing that's been worrying me in the back of my mind while working on this project is whether or not the player will ever end up in an unwinnable state. And with the repair feature, there's always the possibility that someone mismanages their funds and ends up in a situation where they have no weapons or money to buy weapons! (This has happened on someone's FE6 playthrough. Names will be withheld.) To handle this situation, the game will try to detect when you're low on money and weapons, and if you happen to be in the danger zone, you will receive a bundle of weapons free of charge! Of course, these weapons are not worth much, so don't bother selling them in an attempt to earn money. The next change is the removal of the Restore staff. At a glance this might sound like a controversial change, but there will still be ways of curing status effects in the game. The main reason for removing the Restore staff is that it's not a very interesting item, since you only deploy it for narrow situations. Instead, healing staves will now (tentatively) act as Restore staves if the affected unit is at full health. This is still undergoing testing, so it might not stick in the long run but I believe it's a push in the right direction. Another major change added is giving mercenaries (and heroes) waterwalking. This change is mainly to aid map design; having pirates as the only waterwalking option means there's little variety when it comes to adding seabound reinforcements. Having mercenaries as an option should shake things up a bit, and yes, this means that in future releases, Holyn will be able to swim. To cap off the update, the Swiftspear has been changed to give the Astra skill to the wielder, instead of Clarity. It turns out that very few lance users in the game actually benefit from having +20 avoid, and having it give Astra instead gives some incentive to tweak their inventories to make the most of it. Thanks for reading!
  9. Hello everyone, it's the end of summer and time for a small update! This year has been keeping me occupied with a large number of projects so I have been light on the technical side. Instead, I've been working mainly on writing (working out the timeline for Chapter 4-x), balance (tweaking experience formulas and some more subtle issues), and graphics. There has been a lot of graphics work and I'd like to show some of them off, but I'll be saving them for the Halloween update as they are tied to more important changes. Today I'll be showing off some of the less important changes. First, we have four portraits. Only one of them is a character that hasn't had a portrait before (Byron, top right), and the other three are updates. First, Tiltyu has gotten a much needed cleanup compared to her old version: Finally, the last two portraits are older versions of Oifaye and Shanan. If you watched the last halloween video, the portraits used in there are based off this version, and they'll be appearing in the 4-x chapters. Next, I've started working on updating the user interface to unify the style. This will be a long and slow process since there are a lot of UI elements to change, so I've started with the most impactful ones: Obviously, it's still a work in progress and the designs will likely change a bit, but it should give you a good idea of the art direction for future UI updates. (The non-white text in the battle frames is a side effect from testing.) Unlike the portraits, these *will* be polished up in time for the next release. Finally, I've started sketching out the maps for the next few chapters. If you haven't noticed, the Agustria maps can be stitched together to form a seamless larger map (although a certain section will be empty) and I'll be using a similar process for Silesia, as seen here: This is the combination of two chapters from the Silesia section; the midpoint is about where the maps would be divided. Thanks for reading, and look forward to the next update which will cover some bigger gameplay changes! I've added a Dropbox mirror below the Mediafire download link, give that a try. Glad you enjoyed it!
  10. Since it's April 2nd, it's time for another biannual update! Unfortunately, my real life duties are still keeping me occupied for a little bit longer, so there isn't an official April update this year. Perhaps the lack of update... is the real April's Fool update. On a more serious note, I do expect to start working on this again in the summer, so if I get enough progress by then, I'll have a summer update to make up for this missing update. I've penned down a lot of fun things to implement on my to-do list and my hacking fingers are itching to get working again. Thanks for reading and keeping up with the project! Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed everything so far! Right now the plan for animations is to make them myself, depending on the progress as 0.2.0 gets done I'll use some pre-made ones. Despite the lack of progress the last two years I am still planning on finishing this up. Thanks for the feedback, especially from the point of view of an FE4 veteran. You bring up a few good points regarding the original FE4 mechanics, so I'll respond to clarify my goals with the hack: For the large maps, I want to emphasize that hacking in the original maps is not a big concern; the choice of dissecting the original chapters into smaller chapters is intentional and not due to hacking limitations. There are a lot of reasons for this, the most important one is allowing me to create non-outdoors chapters. One major limitation of the original FE4 game is the lack of indoors chapters due to several game mechanic choices (several missions on a single map, castle guarding, etc.) This also creates some limitations with designing some interesting gameplay; for example Chapter 3-1 is challenging to set up in a giant chapter setting. One other major issue that bothers me with the giant chapter structure is that they don't necessarily end at the right places. My hack ends in the middle of Chapter 3 because the battle with Shagall is the right capstone for the arc. The section in the original game after beating Shagall is more suitable as the start of the next arc, but it wouldn't be possible to pair it with Chapter 4 since it takes place on a different map. Regarding individually managed gold, it makes more sense in a setting where each unit can reliably get gold (in FE4 this is village rescuing and the communal arena), but the problem with the arena is that you have no penalty for fighting in the arena so you're required to do a lot of legwork with no risks involved. I'm personally not convinced the system adds interesting depth to justify implementing it. Villages are also similar since you can usually wait to visit it with the desired unit. This is also why partial village destruction is gone, since its main purpose was to help individual gold reserves. The castle guard mechanic only makes sense in a giant map setting, and even in that case it mostly serves as a "Gotcha" to the player since castle capture attempts in FE4 are predictable. The fact that FE4 has a designated castle guard isn't making it any more interesting either. It's not hard to design similar types of objectives (Chapter 3-1 is close in that regard) so it's possible to recreate the interesting parts. Hopefully the explanations above will clarify to anyone else why I've decided to omit certain features from the original FE4. I'm glad you're enjoying this project despite these changes! The portraits are in various states of completion so there's not much to be said there; until they get done you'll have to get used to them! Glad to hear you both enjoyed it! I hope you'll still be around whenever the next update is released. It shouldn't be too much of an issue to make the music so it'll happen eventually. I am slightly surprised people have found Eltoshan's battle theme though, since I only gave it to him (the Cross Knights are also supposed to have it.) It's still a work in progress but I plan to upload a video of it to the project channel in the future. It's active in the sense that I'm still working on it, although not as frequently as I'd like. I also don't check in very often, the only reliable times you'll see any updates are during April and October, so tune in around then! In the current release units will die in the arena, but the next bugfix release will have non-lethal arenas. Thanks for the support!
  11. Dang, I've been away for longer than I thought. Progress is still basically non-existent and will continue being that way until near the end of the year, so in the meantime I put together a small video for the Halloween season. Enjoy! Now, although I haven't done any hacking I have been doing some prep work for when I get back, which mainly involves working on the details for chapters 4 and 5 (and the leftover of chapter 3). Most of it is has been planned out and I've worked in some more detail than what was in the original game, so expect to see things get more interesting. Also, although the video doesn't show off any new hacking progress, it does show off something I'll be adding to the second half of the first generation, which is having Oifaye and Shanan get older! I haven't actually checked the timeframes to see how much time actually passed, but entering Chapter 4 they will likely be getting older portraits. Dew will get one as well, and maybe Sylvia too. Finally, I'll be aiming to push the 0.1.4 bugfix out for April 2018 (I will definitely not be able to push out 0.2), which will feature a bit of new content. For example, Chapter 3-3 *finally* has a proper map... There's also a few small things I tweaked and there may also be... a new playable character??? We'll see how the winter goes. Thanks for watching! I'm not sure why saving wouldn't work, I don't remember making any significant changes to it. Unfortunately, I can't test it out myself so it'll remain unresolved for a while. They show up in the next chapter. The prologue has enough units in it so I decided to delay their arrival since it doesn't affect the story.
  12. Dang, two whole chapters! 2-2 is also my personal favorite chapter, it has a lot of moving parts to keep the player busy, and introduces my favorite skill, Sword Dance. As for the new shop mechanic, you might have already noticed it while playing but you haven't mentioned it: You can repair items! (The repairable items appear at the end of the shopping list.) There are a few visual bugs with the interface I need to squash, but nothing serious. The weapon triangle weirdness you pointed out is actually a different mechanic I added to prevent avoid from being too good (since you can now get very high amounts of avoid), you're actually the first person I've seen notice it! Basically, every unit has a "Minimum Hit Rate" stat which guarantees their hit can't below a certain in case they fight a high avoid unit. It's not too noticeable since it's very low for most units; at the beginning generic units tend to have single digit Minimum Hit Rate and it's only possible to see it if you stack a lot of avoid (like attacking with Alec on a Forest), in the later parts of the release it tends to hover around 10-25 hit. The actual calculation is relatively simple: the value is Skill plus either Weapon Hit/8 (if the unit has a C-rank with the weapon type), Weapon Hit/4 (if the unit has a B-rank), and Weapon Hit/2 (if the unit has an A-rank or S-rank.) There's no bonus from Weapon Hit if the unit only has a D-rank. So that 13 hit you're seeing is a combination of the 6 hit from the Steel Axe and the 7 skill the unit probably has. 2-1 comments: The first half of this chapter is also very exciting, the NPCs do a good job keeping the situation tense. I think with the current balance, if you just sit back Nodion will eventually be routed, but they put a good fight. In older versions they were alternately either too strong and didn't need the player's help outside of Elliot, or too weak and got routed instantly. Of course, since you can't actually save all the NPCs there's no reward for keeping them alive. Instead, Eve is recruitable! The Arden event can actually be accessed by anyone, since there's not really anything specific to Arden, unlike the Golden Axe event whichc only makes sense if the unit can use axes. The house near the shop gives a vague hint about it. It looks like you're using an older version of the patch; in the most recent version Eve has a skill. If you want to, you can patch it over and continue your save on the latest version (although loading a save state might freeze!) More on Eve: Paladins don't actually get Light Magic, it's an Eve specific thing. I kept her as a mounted unit for now because that's what she was originally, but I might change her if I think of something interesting since the player already gets plenty of mounted units. She's also promoted because I feel it's weird to have an unpromoted unit with access to both physical and magic attacks, which is why she has such bad stats. She'll get updated at some point... but in the meantime the skill I gave her gives her some unique utility. Funny story with the ballista archers: One of my playtesters actually went out of the way to steal a Ballista using the Thief Knife, so I had put some emergency code to prevent that from happening. The archers are programmed not to move otherwise. Elliot ends up being a pretty interesting boss because depending on how you play, he'll either approach from above Castle Nodion or from below. Combined with his glass cannon stats and his retinue of cavaliers, it creates some interesting situations to puzzle out. Boldo on the other hand is filler though. By the time you reach him you've already played through the interesting part of the map. I might rewrite the ending and have him live if I can think of something interesting... The Golden Axe's gimmick is straightforward: You get +1 might for every 500 gold, capping out at +8 Might (for a total of 15.) It's fairly expensive to repair though, so you'll need a steady income if you want to use it liberally... The Knight Sword counterattack at range is actually just a bug from how I coded it. Nothing actually happens, haha. Unfortunately, you missed the Arena recruitment! The village next to the arena has a fun conversation where two villagers talk about their arena favorites. Of course, one of them is Holyn... but who's the other one??? Some extra things about the arena: It's simiilar to FE4's arena. All the fights are fixed, so you'll always fight that same Fighter as the first round, and there's a limited number of fights. You also get different sets of fights if you bring a ranged unit. Unlike FE4, you can only fight each fight once. I'll have to improve the Arena's interface in the future for providing information. Philip's advance is another neat puzzle since now he actually take a few hits. Unfortunately, he can be cheesed since his reaction is just a location check: he'll only advance if you step in a specific area. Charisma doesn't actually work yet, which is why the description just says ???. I think I temporarily removed it in the latest update until I get around to making it work. The village in the north can't actually be reached, the thickets block your way! 2-2 comments: I was trying to develop Zane some more, which is why he has so much screen time in the intro. Unfortunately he doesn't get a lot of time, so it feels pretty rushed. Something to fix in the future... Sarka is actually a woman, even though the sprite doesn't make that totally clear. It'll look more obvious when I actually clean it up, I hope! Writing Levin and Sylvia's dialogue is fun to do, because Levin is selfish at this point in the story and Sylvia takes every opportunity to mess with him for it. Wind Spirit is a very simple skill, it adds Enemy's Speed/2 to his damage. I'm not very fond of the design since Azel can also kill fast units easily since his skill lets him hit with high damage and high accuracy, so expect it to change in a future release... Sword Dance on the other hand, is a very fun skill to play with. It's very challenging to set up situations where you can get 3 units into position for the effect and have them actually be useful, but it's extremely satisfying when it happens. The thieves don't bother doing any thief-ish things, especially since there are a lot more useful items that can be stolen. I think at one point I had a thief steal a ring and it annoyed me so much I stopped them from stealing in the future. Now their main purpose is being a high dodge unit. In fact, the two thieves at the start are there to make sure the player understands that, as the moving boss of the chapter has two thieves following her. It would be a rude surprise to find out that certain units have trouble hitting them while they're blocking for the boss! I just made up MacBeth's stats so that he isn't too much of a pushover. Like with other throne bosses he's not the real challenge of the map. The Gust Scroll doesn't actually work with Azel's skill, since it's a Wind magic item. It does work with Levin, though! I'm not sure if you play with sound on, but when Sarka appears on the map she actually yells! It's the dragon roar sound effect. I didn't realize the magic triangle was the opposite of the official releases, so I ended up fixing it in the (currently unreleased) 0.1.4 update. Sadly, the Swiftspear ends up being not a great idea because all the lance users either already have high avoid, or don't get any serious benefit from the avoid bonus to justify using it. Back to the drawing board with that one... Beowulf's gimmick for the hack is that he's supposed to have better stats in exchange for having no skills (he's the only real playable "vanilla" unit), but getting the balance has been tricky, especially since the experience curve gets out of control around this point. I'll figure it out one day!!! A little detail about Beowulf's recruitment: one of the villages gives 3000G, which is enough to recruit him (with some money leftover!) if you don't do it with Lachesis. I put that there just in case some players don't have the money for it and don't realize Lachesis can recruit him.
  13. Take as much time as you need, I'm pretty busy myself so a slower update schedule works well for me. To answer your question:
  14. Yes, it's straightforward to add events based on support levels (after all, that's basically what the second generation is!) Did you have suggestions in mind?
  15. Alright, I'll withhold the growths for now. If you need any specific information about the ROM let me know and I'll scrounge it up. To answer your questions: When I meant forests don't have defense boosts, I was comparing them to the original GBA stats. I don't remember what their FE4 stats were. I can make gold stealable with a full inventory, but it also lets other items be stealable and the game doesn't actually steal items properly if you have a full inventory so I'd need to do a bit more work to fix that. I could theoretically make a second steal command but I want to let players steal with a full inventory anyway. The shop's new features will be obvious if you go shopping so you'll find out eventually! I should put a village in 1-3 explaining it, though. the WTA bonuses/penalties are +/-2 damage and +/-15 hit rates. And comments on the latest update: You actually can silence Sandima! I haven't done a full change on how staves work, but for this release the Silence staff is guaranteed to hit Sandima and the throne won't cure him. I actually forgot about this in 0.1.0 and had too quickly update it, so now you can land statuses on throne bosses, heh heh heh... Actually, none of the villages in this particular chapter work. There's a conversation in the original game that explains Diadora's history and it's really, really, REALLY long. I was planning on cutting it up and putting it in several villages but haven't had time yet. I really like the Golden Axe conversation, it's still funny to me. Looking forward to Agustria! It has a lot of my personal favorite chapters gameplay-wise, so I hope you'll enjoy them too!
  16. I'm not sure what you mean by that, but the way the game handles level ups is mostly the same. It looks like I did add a re-roll feature to try leveling up again if the first attempt was below average.
  17. There haven't been any recent updates yet (sadly), I'm working on getting most of the bugs fixed in one final update before starting new content. Missing animations are going to be a recurring theme since I wanted to get something playable out first, haha! It'll be interesting to see what you think of certain chapters too. Some Chapter 1-1 addendum: You can actually recruit Ayra during the map. If you seize the fort that Shanan is in with Sigurd, he'll be able to recruit Ayra. That's why there's a group of enemies near it. One of the houses actually explains (really badly) that nearly all Verdane units have the Bloodthirst skill. The exceptions are certain bosses and bandits. There's not enough space in the r-button area to explain how Astra works, so here's the details: You get extra attacks based on the attack speed difference; you get the normal double bonus at 4 AS, and then every extra 2 AS gives an extra attack. This caps out at 4 bonus attacks (5 total) at 10 AS difference. Cuan will be getting a bonus to fix his low Con and speed. I think this was pointed out in MageKnight404's LP originally. Whoops! The Lady sword should also be effective against Pirates (and of course Warriors and Berserkers.) Alec's magic stat will be relevant in future releases (hopefully)!!! Forests only give +20 avoid (no defense bonuses compared to the original.) They're good for evade-focused units like Ayra. Chapter 1-2 addendum: Stairs cost 3 movement for mounted units to slow them down in indoor maps, and in fact most tiles have been upgraded to slow mounted units by 3 movement (forests and pillars.) Poison has several changes from the normal game. The most important one is that you can't die from poison damage (the unit will just sit around with 1 HP instead). Of course, that kind of change makes players less likely to cure the poison so poison also deals more damage as well as giving a global -3 stat penalty. I think it currently lasts 5 turns like normal poison. The inability to steal gold with a full inventory is indeed annoying, so it'll hopefully be fixed in the bugfix patch when I also allow thieves to steal with a full inventory. Chapter 1-3 addendum: Just ignore the Merlinus behind the curtain. You haven't show off the new shop feature?! Bandits have been changed to be nearly as fast as myrmidons. (Slightly lower base speed, but roughly the same growths) Of course, unlike myrmidons they have trouble hitting things... Archers are indeed bad if you don't let them activate Bloodthirst, but if they do they'll be troublesome... This chapter is basically a test to manage Bloodthirst activations, I guess! Mercenaries are still in a weird place statwise, they're supposed to be fighters that trade strength for speed, but it's not working out yet... Weapons have generally lower hit rates because I increased the amount of hit/avoid you get from stats. For reference, Skill now gives 5 hit per point. Avoid is a bit weirder to calculate, it's 5*min(Speed,Luck) + 2*max(Speed,Luck). Basically the worst stat between Speed and Luck gives 5 avoid per point and the best stat gives 2 avoid per point. Jamka is supposed to have a second skill, but I haven't coded it in yet so I removed it for the public release.... I can't wait to see how Finn becomes a problem, haha! I think you're just getting strange luck with growths, Azel is supposed to have bad defense. Jamka's AI is set so he won't attack Edain even if she's in range, so she can easily recruit him. Speaking of growths, I don't think it was explicitly mentioned,but the stat screen shows a character's (non-HP) growths by colouring their text. The breakpoints are Dark Grey (<21%), Grey (<36%), White (<51%) and Glowing Green (+51%). If you want the exact growths, let me know and I'll post them for the characters that have shown up so far. EDIT: I actually went back and looked at my level up code and apparently I changed it so the game will re-roll a level up if the first attempt was below average. That means all those bad level ups are worse than normal because there was a secret, second level-up that was worse, haha! Definitely some interesting growth luck going on...
  18. Thanks for the praise, it's good to know people are still keeping a eye on this!
  19. Nice, another LP! I'll add this to the media section of the project's thread, if you don't mind. I don't have too much to add so far, but here's some commentary: For the prologue most of the dialogue is essentially the same as the early translation, I just did some edits like removing dialogue that doesn't make sense anymore (Alec telling Arden to guard the castle, for example) and cleaning up some of the stiffer parts of the script. Later on, things get more... involved. You didn't show it, but Fighters have noticeably different stats from bandits (and they have the Bloodthirst skill that archers have): they tend to be slower, more accurate and slightly tankier. The Acrobat-esque bonus for Arden is actually available to all knights (and Generals, but there are no moving generals in 0.1.3). It's an interesting way to give them a movement advantage without actually increasing their movement. EDIT: Actually now that I think about it there might be one general that moves. Finally, here's the full list of stat-ups you can get from the village: Arden gets 3 Magic and 3 Resistance Alec gets 2 HP, 1 Strength and 1 Skill Noish gets 1 Skill, 1 Speed and 2 Luck Azel gets 3 HP, 3 Strength and 2 Def Sigurd just gets 100 experience! In retrospect, I should probably lower Arden and Azel's bonus by a smidge.
  20. Hello, readers, and apologies for the lack of annual April updates. I was originally planning on releasing the 0.1.4 bugfix patch today, but there were too many features I wanted to add that I didn't have time to finish due to real life. Instead, I'll give a short update on the current progress. First, thanks to MageKnight404's LP of the hack, I've found and fixed several outstanding bugs and typos. There were a lot of little things to catch, and his playthrough was very thorough! I still need to go back and finish watching it. On the graphical front, I've cleaned up Chapter 3-3's map. I still need to work on a new palette for it, but for now here are some screenshots of how it looks now: Finally, I've started working on adding some supports to the hack. This is mainly for Sigurd's benefit, as supports will be giving experience and stat bonuses as rewards (along with some other goodies.) The challenge, of course, is writing something interesting for Sigurd and his pals... In any case, my time should be freeing up in the coming weeks so hopefully I can wrap up 0.1.4 and get started on actual, new content! I've spent quite some time thinking about how to develop Chapter 4, and I'm excited to actually write progress updates for it when I get there. See you... next update! She has white armour on her torso (which is also present in her portrait) which is why I went with the white colouring. Myrmidons will be getting a new battle animation at... some point in the future anyway so it'll be more accurate there. I'm not sure which item drops you're talking about, but I'll keep an eye out the next time I get around to playtesting (it might even be an intentional thing from an old design...) If you can be more specific about which item drops you're talking about too that would be helpful! Portraits are basically updated as I have time. There are a lot of portraits to make! Glad to see you like it! I'll keep the map sprite in mind. I haven't made any final decisions about the translation, but currently it's on a personal veto basis (i.e. which one sounds better to me.) There are plans to redo the experience system so that you can't really "lose" experience from overusing characters like Sigurd and Cuan. Basically it'll be easier for units that are below the level curve to catch up. I've been drafting up the details of this and will be adding it in when I have the chance to get back to hacking. Promotions will be more like the GBA's system, in the sense that promoting will reset your level to 1. There are plans to make it a bit more interesting though...! You're in luck! The 0.2 release will cover the remainder of Generation 1, and likely a bit of Generation 2 so that players can immediately see the impact of their choices. The current schedule is to push out 0.1.4, which will clean up the 0.1 release, and then work will begin towards completing version 0.2.0. Supports have not been implemented yet, but as you mentioned they will be how the love system is implemented. In fact, I'm currently working on setting up the foundations for this for the 0.1.4 release. When a patch with supports is released, I will post the list of support options along with it. The deed is done... Most of the conversations from the original game will be moved to supports, as supports will be filling in a similar role to them. The youtube channel has a video demonstrating this! Haha, you should try the hack out yourself! The gameplay has been changed significantly enough that there has been some rewriting to accomodate some of the more drastic changes, and there is much more added compared to the original game. If you have any specific suggestions to improve the script, feel free to post them in this thread as well. Just keep in mind that while suggestions will be considered, I may choose not to follow them.
  21. Yes, but it's also an actual side project I'm working on! The topic has been edited to reflect its true nature.
  22. DOWNLOAD v0.a HERE War Room Hack 3 is a hack for Advance Wars 2 (U) that adds new War Room maps and new, custom (that's right, custom!) Commanding Officers to the roster, along with classics from the DS games. Each new Commanding Officer is added with the design goal of forcing the player to think of new strategies to approach each map. Keep in mind: this hack is currently in early alpha, and uses placeholders for several assets, like graphics and music. The patch can be applied using NUPS or Tsukiyomi. For Mac users, Multipatch may work too. Remember to patch it on a Fire Emblem 7 (U) ROM! Important note: This hack is a side project I'm working on when I have downtime from my main project, Fire Emblem IV (which you might be more interested in...?) As such, don't expect any regular update schedule, and only major updates will be announced in this thread. If you're interested in following the project more closely, see the links in the Media section below. Features: Five, (that's right, five!) new commanding officers join the cast: Monet: A general who manipulates the economy to her advantage. She can order her units to steal funds from the enemy by resting on their properties, increasing her own income and decreasing theirs. Her CO Power Bankruptcy stops enemy from receiving income, while her Super CO Power Blood Auction allows her to use her cache of funds to destroy enemies with ease. Roxanne: An Orange Star hot shot officer with the highest attack bonus! However, her units have severely reduced ammunition and cannot resupply them normally. They depend on her powers, Reload and Full Stock to resupply. Julia: The silver-tongued propaganda leader of Black Hole. With her guile and wit, she can lure the enemy to her side. Her CO Power, Ruthless Grasp allows her to instantly capture any city (but not other property types...!), and with her Super CO Power, Dark Salvation, she can convert any enemy to her side, as long as they survive a round of combat with 5 HP or less. Perry: A dynamic aerial specialist from Blue Moon. His air units are the toughest around, at the cost of being slower. His Powers, Airstrike and Bombing Run summon a frightening air force to the battlefield. Jugger 2.0: An upgraded form of Jugger that is truly unpredictable. His CO Power RAM Corrupt will randomly transform his army, making them potentially stronger, but also possibly weaker. Meanwhile, his Super CO Power ROM Scramble embodies the essence of randomness, shuffling all units on the map to random locations. 7 new maps to test your strategic mettle! Sunburst: Fight against the power of the sun itself! You start surrounded by Grimm's forces, and if you don't hurry up, you'll be bombarded with silos too. Brook Trio: Navigate across three rivers in this map against Eagle. Wild Curve: A three pronged map pits you against Grit in mountainous terrain suited to his skills. Eel River: A challenging Fog of War map that pits you against the queen of strategy herself, Sonja. Spann Air: A twist on a classic map versus Adder. Bad Dudes: Are you a bad enough dude (or dudette) to defeat Julia on this strangely familiar looking map? Bean Isle: Fight against Grit on this Bean Island variant. Of course, many of the old War Room maps are still around if you want to test your might against them as well! Updates to old favorites To promote more fun and diverse gameplay, several mechanics have been overhauled: CO Powers charge much faster than before, and reward a more aggressive strategy. Defense calculations have been changed. The net effect is that very high defense is less effective compared to the original game. Sonja now summons Fog of War if she's active on the map. Andy heals 3 HP from his CO Power, and 7 HP from his Super CO Power. Eagle's CO Power is now his AWDS power, which is a Lightning Strike effect that weakens his units for the turn. Kanbei's units are 120/120 instead of 130/130. Grit's gets a lower indirect firepower bonus. Why? Because... THE GRIMM IS IN. Straight from AWDS, the 130/80 wonder can be selected! Media, Links and History Want even more details? The main project page can be found here. The youtube page collects various videos relating to the hack's progress.
  23. Hello, everyone. It's been over four months since I checked in... Dang... Where has the time gone... Normally, I would have a special update video ready to show off new things I've added to FEIV, but if you've read my previous post you'll know that I've been busy with non-FEIV things, mainly providing ASM work for Maiden of Darkness. The good news is that all this time spent on Maiden of Darkness will be helpful for FEIV, as I've learned a lot of new tricks! (Expect a few to show up next year...?) A good chunk of the ASM work for Maiden of Darkness is done too (look forward to a Str/Mag split, Fates mechanics, personal skills, and much more!!!), so I expect to resume working on FEIV again by the end of the year. (I've also been slowly polishing up various portraits...) Although I haven't done actual hacking, I *have* been planning a lot for the near future and written down quite a few changes that will be appearing in the next bugfix release (expect this next April!) alongside the actual bugfixes. Since most of these don't require too much work, I can outline a few of these updates: Buffs for Sigurd! Probably the most important update... Slightly related to the above, a small selection of supports! Also related to the above, some new items to play with... Based on all the feedback I've seen so far, some rebalancing of the experience curve. Player units are too strong compared to their enemy counterparts... Rebalancing a few chapters. Chapter 3-3 obviously needs polish (both visually and gameplaywise), and from what I've seen, 1-2 is rough in the back half. The experience fix might also mess up the balance of other chapters. I will also be wrapping up a few of the ASM hacks used in FEIV for public release, hopefully before winter rolls in! Stay tuned... Nice! I'm glad to see you enjoyed the hack enough to play it multiple times! Thanks for the kind words, good to hear you like it! I would personally recommend at least playing the 0.2 release (once I actually release it), which is planned to be the complete first generation of the original game. FE4's original design makes it play out like two normal length Fire Emblem games, both length-wise (there is a lot of content to cover for the first generation), and cast-wise. I'll admit, Chapter 3-3 is much less polished than the rest in this release (hopefully I'll be able to update it for next April) and is very enemy dense, especially near the end. In any case, I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying all the touches I've given the playable characters. Regarding the limited deployment slot, I added that in partly because of the split maps, but I would probably keep it even if I did large maps. Having a lot of units for the player to use creates a lot of issues, such as power creep: you need to deploy more/stronger enemies to keep up with the growing player army which can spiral out of control. Having every unit deployed also forces the player to make more decisions. For example, if you have 20 units deployed and a player spends even 1.5 minutes per unit, a real possibility if they're in a challenging situation, then that's 30 minutes spent per player turn. Given that a typical map can take between 5-15 turns casually (ideally hovering around 9-12), that's between 2 and 7 hours spent on a single chapter! And this doesn't take into account resets.
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