Fire Emblem: Death or Glory Version 2.5(12/28/2014) out!

[deranger]

http://gyazo.com/f70cf91b5235923e7eb6970f4593a9cc

Ragnar's Homyrius is described as being effective against infantry, but mechanically it's actually cavalry-effective.

If I'm not mistaken, that's what most of the lords' weapons (i.e. eliwood's rapier) say. It's a misnomer, but an official one.

[Siuloir]

If I'm not mistaken, that's what most of the lords' weapons (i.e. eliwood's rapier) say. It's a misnomer, but an official one.

...

I feel shame that I have missed this for a decade. Though I guess I haven't really R-clicked a rapier in who knows how long.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Siuloir

[NYZgamer3]

Other things I've caught, dialogue wise -

"Silvatica has declared war. Not a moment ago I received these dark news." (Should be this).

"It's a bit of a shock for them to pull such a perculiar behavior." - The sentence is somewhat awkward, suggestion "Their behavior comes as a bit of a shock." / "This sort of peculiar behavior comes as a bit of shock." etc.

"Pondering why the sudden change" - wondering why the sudden change.

Thank you for your critique/feedback.

I already have a writer/editor that's working on my dialogue as we speak.

I appreciate the help though. :)

[Siuloir]

Thank you for your critique/feedback.

I already have a writer/editor that's working on my dialogue as we speak.

I appreciate the help though. :)

Looking forward to seeing where it goes., and gazing in awe as the almighty god of war that is my current Vidar (Who I think is so beloved of the RNG that he's gotten Strength every level, and Speed all but..or three) essentially levels the countryside.

[Arch]

I'm playing this for the first time, dunno why I've waited so long to test this out. I guess I'll update this post with comments as I play?

Chapter 1:

- It was mentioned in the text that Ragnar doesn't want to kill soldiers, but I was a little irked by that game over in Ch1. I killed the soldier above the party no problem, so I didn't think twice about attacking the two to my right. If this is something you really have to preserve, you should give the unkillable soldiers something to distinguish them. Maybe have them using the generic soldier mug instead of the card? Alternatively, you could take out that one killable soldier. It's kind of misleading?

Edited March 5, 2014 by Arch

[Siuloir]

Jumping back in as I've had a fair measure of free time to play around with today -

Between the gigantic size of the map, the placement of the walls, and the wave after wave of reinforcements, Chapter 3 gets very tedious quickly, especially for an early game chapter. There's some fun to be had sniping over the walls with Kai and Tero (the former who I really enjoy - It's nice to see an Archer with decent bases), but it devolved into a great deal of turtling, followed by long trudges across the map to reach both the throne and the upper chest.

[Wayward Winds]

I'm playing this for the first time, dunno why I've waited so long to test this out. I guess I'll update this post with comments as I play?

Chapter 1:- It was mentioned in the text that Ragnar doesn't want to kill soldiers, but I was a little irked by that game over in Ch1. I killed the soldier above the party no problem, so I didn't think twice about attacking the two to my right. If this is something you really have to preserve, you should give the unkillable soldiers something to distinguish them. Maybe have them using the generic soldier mug instead of the card? Alternatively, you could take out that one killable soldier. It's kind of misleading?

You can tell which are actual Silvatican soldiers and which are press ganged civilians, but it requires careful observation. The civilians:

A) Don't move from their starting positions even if one of your characters is within their movement range (although they'll still attack you if you stand in the range of their weapon from where they're standing; but they'll never move to reach you).

B) Their stats are generally lower than the actual Silvaticans. They are untrained after all.

It's a valid point that you can't easily identify them if you don't know what to look for though. I believe the previous version of the hack also marked them as civilian/changed the "R" button text, so it appears to have been a concious decision to make it harder to tell them apart.

[Siuloir]

You can tell which are actual Silvatican soldiers and which are press ganged civilians, but it requires careful observation. The civilians:

A) Don't move from their starting positions even if one of your characters is within their movement range (although they'll still attack you if you stand in the range of their weapon from where they're standing; but they'll never move to reach you).

B) Their stats are generally lower than the actual Silvaticans. They are untrained after all.

It's a valid point that you can't easily identify them if you don't know what to look for though. I believe the previous version of the hack also marked them as civilian/changed the "R" button text, so it appears to have been a concious decision to make it harder to tell them apart.

That's really the issue - I imagine that nine out of ten players will only realize this -after- they've Game Over'd themselves once from killing a civilian, especially since Tero and Vidar can close on them very quickly and you may not notice that they do not move. It's not very fun for the player to be placed with a relatively obscure burden of knowledge. They also control the space of that first battle in a really weird way - If you end your turn adjacent to one while fighting something else, you can easily accidentally botch things.

Also, and this is just from a storytelling/authorial point, I think it's not very interesting to instantly game over at the death of a single civilian. If anything, the accidental death of a civilian provides the opportunity to add a bit of character development (and darken the tone) - If Tero/Vidar/Ragnar were to remark on it, for example. The Game Over feels a bit forced - What, does Ragnar fall on his lance in sorrow?

[X-Naut]

That's really the issue - I imagine that nine out of ten players will only realize this -after- they've Game Over'd themselves once from killing a civilian, especially since Tero and Vidar can close on them very quickly and you may not notice that they do not move. It's not very fun for the player to be placed with a relatively obscure burden of knowledge. They also control the space of that first battle in a really weird way - If you end your turn adjacent to one while fighting something else, you can easily accidentally botch things.

Also, and this is just from a storytelling/authorial point, I think it's not very interesting to instantly game over at the death of a single civilian. If anything, the accidental death of a civilian provides the opportunity to add a bit of character development (and darken the tone) - If Tero/Vidar/Ragnar were to remark on it, for example. The Game Over feels a bit forced - What, does Ragnar fall on his lance in sorrow?

It's not hard to tell apart the civilians provided you compare stats, the game warns you about the civilians in the opening scene, and even then a game over is only erasing what, five minutes of play time? Ten? From there you'd have to be careless to mess up again.

...But I will grant you that some of their positions are annoying (the first one especially), and that a straight game over is a bit extreme. Perhaps the game over could only come after killing a certain number of them, the funds you get at the end are reduced for each kill, and you'd get a cutscene telling you your mistake?

[Siuloir]

It's not hard to tell apart the civilians provided you compare stats, the game warns you about the civilians in the opening scene, and even then a game over is only erasing what, five minutes of play time? Ten? From there you'd have to be careless to mess up again.

...But I will grant you that some of their positions are annoying (the first one especially), and that a straight game over is a bit extreme. Perhaps the game over could only come after killing a certain number of them, the funds you get at the end are reduced for each kill, and you'd get a cutscene telling you your mistake?

A game shouldn't 'deny a player information needed to complete a task and then use it to punish the player, is pretty conventional game design, as I understand. Telling a carpenter to build something but refusing to give him his tools with which to do so is less than ideal. I've played Fire Emblem since the early J2E patch for Genealogy, and it certainly caught me off guard, largely because of what Arch said - Killing that one specific soldier is fine, but the rest are verboten. I believe there's a similar scenario in something I played more recently (Was it New Mystery? Am I losing my mind?) Where details are still somewhat obscure, but not to the same degree.

I think your suggestion is a lot more reasonable - Reducing funds, limiting rewards, etc. Not instant game over. What's particularly odd is that the game just drops straight to the Game Over screen - Not even a "Oh no, what have we done!?" from Ragnar to reinforce why it happens. You have to infer it. There's more nuance to what you proposed.

[Book of Ereshkigal]

I didn't have any trouble with the civilians (I didn't even know you got a game over for killing them). I like the idea of there being a reward at the end of the chapter for not killing them (they give you something as thanks at the end of the chapter maybe?) And give the civilians death quotes and remove the game over.

But srs, I didn't even notice this was a problem, had no trouble with the chapter at all. I just assumed they wouldn't move... for some reason. Maybe if nothing else is changed, hint it in the text? "The ones forced to fight are less aggressive, so they may not engage you" [/terrible writing]

[Arch]

There's only one other soldier that starts out right above the party; I killed him, and although you can tell that the other soldiers are markedly weaker, that initial soldier was what prompted me to attack the others. Could easily just change the class of that first one to make it uniform for all soldiers in the chapter.

Alternatively, the scaling cash reward and added character development provide a strong alternative. I could probably event the scaling cash with relative ease, if desired/needed.

Also, as a hacker, the unmodified death quotes really irk me. Ragnar uses Lyn's, Agro uses Dorcas's (these are my only deaths so far). It definitely detracts from the otherwise solid presentation, and I'm sure it's just an oversight.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Arch

[Hawkeye]

a) I think the simplest solution is definitely to just change that killable soldier to a fighter/merc.
b) Guys stop trying to steal my job. I promise the grammar will be top-notch in the next release.
c) Death quotes: Totally agree, I'll hopefully be writing some up soon and I imagine between that and NYZ's own ideas they will hopefully be in the next release.

[Klokinator]

Nobody's trying to steal your job. Don't be a drama queen :/

[deranger]

Nobody's trying to steal your job. Don't be a drama queen :/

There's a possibility Hawkeye was joking. There's also the possibility you're joking. I hope everyone's joking, makes life and (in game) dialogue much more fun.

[Hawkeye]

Lol I was obviously joking. Nobody even knew I was working on it until my post just now.

[Arch]

I'm just spamming this topic with notes, lol.

But in Chapter 4, I was a little bummed that you didn't use a canned fight scene for Tero getting arrowed. He'd start the chapter with one hit already taken, but it'd be a nice touch methinks. It's a little odd that the text makes a big deal out of it, but he still has full HP.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Arch

[NYZgamer3]

Woah, mad comments lol.

Alright:

A game shouldn't 'deny a player information needed to complete a task and then use it to punish the player, is pretty conventional game design, as I understand. Telling a carpenter to build something but refusing to give him his tools with which to do so is less than ideal. I've played Fire Emblem since the early J2E patch for Genealogy, and it certainly caught me off guard, largely because of what Arch said - Killing that one specific soldier is fine, but the rest are verboten. I believe there's a similar scenario in something I played more recently (Was it New Mystery? Am I losing my mind?) Where details are still somewhat obscure, but not to the same degree.

I think your suggestion is a lot more reasonable - Reducing funds, limiting rewards, etc. Not instant game over. What's particularly odd is that the game just drops straight to the Game Over screen - Not even a "Oh no, what have we done!?" from Ragnar to reinforce why it happens. You have to infer it. There's more nuance to what you proposed.

For this, I have two options in mind that I can either do.

One: Try to reduce the funds and such as Arch stated. (I need to know how to code that properly lol).

Two: Do what Hawkeye suggest and change the soldier to something different.

Also for chapter 3, the map is changed into a smaller reasonable size. Less turns to beat with more options to maneuver so that won't be an issue for the next patch.

I'm just spamming this topic with notes, lol.

But in Chapter 4, I was a little bummed that you didn't use a canned fight scene for Tero getting arrowed. He'd start the chapter with one hit already taken, but it'd be a nice touch methinks. It's a little odd that the text makes a big deal out of it, but he still has full HP.

I actually might take that idea. Thank you for that :)

As for the death quotes, I didn't have time to change those. However, it will be changed once I get time.

Edited March 6, 2014 by NYZgamer3

[Siuloir]

Chapter 5 (I believe it is 5, I'm at a different PC at the moment - Melanie's chapter) could really use a Torch somewhere on the map, perhaps in one of the houses, for both gameplay and logistical reasons. In the case of the latter, think the following - It's a relatively inhabited village, presumably with light sources available to deal with individuals moving around after dusk. Grabbing a lantern or a torch in a situation like this seems only logical.

From the gameplay side of things, the chapter is a bit of a slog. Enemies are constantly running out of the darkness at you and you're basically forced into turtling up by the shop and killing wave after wave of enemies. It's also very easy to create a situation where Iivari suicides herself, or where Melanie dies to a random archer that bursts out of nowhere. FoW should be challenging, yes, but there should be counterplay and there should be a measure of tactics involved apart from forcing oneself into turtling.

[NYZgamer3]

Chapter 5 (I believe it is 5, I'm at a different PC at the moment - Melanie's chapter) could really use a Torch somewhere on the map, perhaps in one of the houses, for both gameplay and logistical reasons. In the case of the latter, think the following - It's a relatively inhabited village, presumably with light sources available to deal with individuals moving around after dusk. Grabbing a lantern or a torch in a situation like this seems only logical.

From the gameplay side of things, the chapter is a bit of a slog. Enemies are constantly running out of the darkness at you and you're basically forced into turtling up by the shop and killing wave after wave of enemies. It's also very easy to create a situation where Iivari suicides herself, or where Melanie dies to a random archer that bursts out of nowhere. FoW should be challenging, yes, but there should be counterplay and there should be a measure of tactics involved apart from forcing oneself into turtling.

Yes, you have a point. I'll take that suggestion into play and put a torch or a torch staff in the vendor shop for players to obtain.

[Siuloir]

Ew.

Like a god bestride the earth.

In all seriousness, without Agro, I think I'd have turned back long ago. Chapter 7 could use a complete re-design - The map is gigantic, and the reinforcement spam makes it incredibly tedious. I believe I spent at least a dozen turns no more than 10 squares from the front door, due to a combination of wave after wave of reinforcements (who grant minimal EXP) + recruiting Kiowa.

Edited March 11, 2014 by Siuloir

[Hawkeye]

It's not fair to NYZ for me to be delaying editing so much, so if anyone wants to edit some chapters you can send me a pm and I can send you the text, or you can go ahead and extract it yourself, or you can just transcribe and edit directly from playing the hack.

[Crimson Red]

*pokes head in*

So I'm playing this hack and LPing it with a friend and it's pretty awesome.

I'd like to take this moment out to first apologize because we're sort of total jokes when it comes to LPing and we may have inadvertently offended you or someone elseduring it. We only do this because we're just being silly and having fun. The hack is great and our actual complaints are very few--everything else is just poking fun at stuff because we're trying to keep it interesting and have something to talk about.

You can find the LP uploaded later on my channel (won't link but just saying).

Next, one of the things we... more specifically, I did was point out some grammar issues or hint towards them. As it turns out, thanks to years of writing experience, tutorial-writing, and proofreading game scripts (the FE12 translation, The Last Promise, other hacks) I cannot help but notice all the small problems in a script, even if I don't want to (believe me, I am TRYING to just enjoy the game like a normal human being). That being said you might find it useful if you haven't already fixed them.

At the same time, we're sort of lazy and don't want to accumulate all the instances of mixing up your/you're or a line skip or something, so it'd sort of require you to watch the LP.

Furthermore, we thought that chapter 1 might have some bonus for not killing the soldiers, but didn't find one, and were honestly a little disappointed since the hack seemed like it would like to give one or something. Did you not think to give one, or were you unable to come up with a way to check if those soldiers were killed? If it's the latter, I suggest giving those soldiers a unique character ID (the stats etc. don't matter) and then tying a special death quote to them--the death quote needs to have an event/trigger ID attached to it, and then at the end of the chapter, check if it was activated. If it WAS, that means at least one of those soldiers died--if NOT, then it means none of them died.

I say this because we sort of went out of our way and I think while it's not necessary, it might be a cool future. You may have already implemented something, intended to do so, or had a reason for not doing so, in which case we apologize and hope you ignore our suggestion. :)

...

Moderator or Mini-Mod: Look at the date of the last thread! When was this topic last posted in? Indeed... it was over a month ago! I believe this fair member has just earned himself a penalty for necroposting! Time to lock up this thread, too!

Me: You'll have to do better than that. You see, I happen to have an excerpt from the Code of Conduct right here...

Necroposting (post in a very old topic) is forbidden.

If a topic has not been posted in for 1 month AND has fallen outside the first page of a board, any posts made in that topic will be considered necroposting.

Moderator or Mini-Mod: What? No one reads the rules! How could you?!

Me: Whether anyone reads them or not is irrelevant, now isn't it? Because the fact is, the rules dictate clearly that if a topic has not fallen outside of the first page of the board, the conditions for a post being considered a necropost have NOT been met!

*epic music*

Thus me, the accused and the defendant and my own defense attorney, am NOT guilty of necroposting!

EDIT: Just poking fun, plzdon'tkillme

Edited May 23, 2014 by Trails in the Blaze

[NYZgamer3]

*pokes head in*

So I'm playing this hack and LPing it with a friend and it's pretty awesome.

I'd like to take this moment out to first apologize because we're sort of total jokes when it comes to LPing and we may have inadvertently offended you or someone elseduring it. We only do this because we're just being silly and having fun. The hack is great and our actual complaints are very few--everything else is just poking fun at stuff because we're trying to keep it interesting and have something to talk about.

You can find the LP uploaded later on my channel (won't link but just saying).

Next, one of the things we... more specifically, I did was point out some grammar issues or hint towards them. As it turns out, thanks to years of writing experience, tutorial-writing, and proofreading game scripts (the FE12 translation, The Last Promise, other hacks) I cannot help but notice all the small problems in a script, even if I don't want to (believe me, I am TRYING to just enjoy the game like a normal human being). That being said you might find it useful if you haven't already fixed them.

At the same time, we're sort of lazy and don't want to accumulate all the instances of mixing up your/you're or a line skip or something, so it'd sort of require you to watch the LP.

Furthermore, we thought that chapter 1 might have some bonus for not killing the soldiers, but didn't find one, and were honestly a little disappointed since the hack seemed like it would like to give one or something. Did you not think to give one, or were you unable to come up with a way to check if those soldiers were killed? If it's the latter, I suggest giving those soldiers a unique character ID (the stats etc. don't matter) and then tying a special death quote to them--the death quote needs to have an event/trigger ID attached to it, and then at the end of the chapter, check if it was activated. If it WAS, that means at least one of those soldiers died--if NOT, then it means none of them died.

I say this because we sort of went out of our way and I think while it's not necessary, it might be a cool future. You may have already implemented something, intended to do so, or had a reason for not doing so, in which case we apologize and hope you ignore our suggestion. :)

...

Moderator or Mini-Mod: Look at the date of the last thread! When was this topic last posted in? Indeed... it was over a month ago! I believe this fair member has just earned himself a penalty for necroposting! Time to lock up this thread, too!

Me: You'll have to do better than that. You see, I happen to have an excerpt from the Code of Conduct right here...

Moderator or Mini-Mod: What? No one reads the rules! How could you?!

Me: Whether anyone reads them or not is irrelevant, now isn't it? Because the fact is, the rules dictate clearly that if a topic has not fallen outside of the first page of the board, the conditions for a post being considered a necropost have NOT been met!

*epic music*

Thus me, the accused and the defendant and my own defense attorney, am NOT guilty of necroposting!

Thank you Blazer!

As for the writing situation, I have a full-time writer coming out with full scripts. He is a very good one indeed so that won't be an issue anymore.

As for chapter one, I couldn't figure how to do that. But I will learn how to so it can be implemented.

There are lots of changes/upgrades to this. I promise come along FEE3 2014, you will see all these changes.

Just one thing, if there's another spriter out there that is willing to help out with portraits, please send me a PM and we will take it from there.

Edited May 23, 2014 by NYZgamer3

[Siuloir]

Thank you Blazer!

As for the writing situation, I have a full-time writer coming out with full scripts. He is a very good one indeed so that won't be an issue anymore.

As for chapter one, I couldn't figure how to do that. But I will learn how to so it can be implemented.

There are lots of changes/upgrades to this. I promise come along FEE3 2014, you will see all these changes.

Just one thing, if there's another spriter out there that is willing to help out with portraits, please send me a PM and we will take it from there.

Bring back purple haired Ragnar! ;)

I look forward to seeing the next release - I enjoyed the direction that Death or Glory was going, and my only real quibbles with it were the fact that the number of enemies + reinforcements made the gameplay into a slog in later chapters. I think the supporting cast (Esp. Tero and Vidar) were well done, even.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Siuloir