Hey, everyone! I'm not quite dead.
I've been sitting on some information for FE5 for a long time, and in the interest of keeping its interest for others (possibly), I've decided to release the Battle Animation Editor. Years back, I was given this information on the promise I wouldn't give it away, but it's been too long to keep it for myself now. I'd rather not die with it.
Here's the lowdown:
- It functions very similarly to the GBA series; each class and weapon combination MUST have a defined animation if the class uses it, otherwise it will just play on the map.
- The biggest difference is that compared to the GBA series, the Jugdral saga used its own system due to the special animations.
- Battle sprites and animations are separate bytes and data, going by the fact that several classes use the same animations, but different sprites.
- Also, mounted sprites tend to use another byte (Secondary Sprite). This is for the knight sitting on the mount; this byte is why your units don't wear full-covering helmets.
- I didn't make a list for the palettes and battle sprites since I didn't think it was necessary... Someone's free to make them, though.
Screenshots:
These two screenshots are from the title screen montage of my FE5 hack, you can see a video of them in action here:
- A big use for it as seen above is to give animations to classes that they didn't have before, yet have the right animations and sprites for them.
- When going from FE4 to FE5, IS didn't remove the sword-using animations for flying units, so you can give swords to them. Since axes share the same animations as swords, you can simply give them that animation, as well. They won't throw axes, though, and any attempt to try to convert it to the spear-throwing animation will only result in a lance with axe sprites (which is all jumbled due to different sizes).
- The screenshot of Jute using an axe is actually the female Mercenary's sword-using animation; I switched the sword and axe, so now she uses an axe one-handed, and a sword two-handed. She still throws axes two-handed, though.
- In my hack, Bridget's Archer and Ranger classes are unique in that she can use bows and Wind magic, and on promotion, swords. (She can steal, too, but that's not the subject of this topic) I gave her the appropriate animation for each, although she is a Sniper for bows, Thief Fighter for swords, and Thunder Mage for wind magic.
You can also do this:
- Yurius's Dark Prince animation was never removed, although his sprites were. His animation works entirely for most standard mage sprites (Magin Nichi here uses a High Priest sprite as a Dark Sage), albeit one frame of the sprites comes out glitchy. Give your girl mage an afterimage-dodge for the wins.
I wouldn't recommend doing this, though:
- Making throwing swords is cool and all, but when you throw them they fly into the air and never come back, taking the same path as Long Arch ballistae, locking the game up. There might be a way to make them work, I've seen as such in some foreign videos, but I didn't figure it out after like 5 minutes of trying.
- Also, another thing is that FE4 uses the same system; I wasn't interested personally, but you can easily move the editor to FE4 with some text box rewrites and repointing in the editor.
- Keep in mind, this module makes it possible to make a completely custom class! There are plenty of unused classes and/or classes you might not need. Go nuts!
Anyway, for the 3 people that hack FE5, enjoy!
Note: There's a ton of free space by default in the ROM for these, the editor has enough for 800 entries for battle animations. I think there's plenty if you decide to make your own, though make sure they don't overlap with existing ones. I think that, like on the GBA, custom character animations take precedence.
FE5 Battle Animation Editor.zip
