Divinitas

[Relentless Halberdier]

Setting:
Divinitas takes place in a world where Gods walk among man, ruling over them in nearly all aspects of life.
The mortal races are used as footsoldiers in a divine game of Chess, with warring factions such as
The Pantheon and the Usurpers forcing mankind to divide and choose sides in a conflict
with no end in sight.

Characters:
[spoiler=Flynn Luteus]
RADIANT DAWN STYLE:

GBA STYLE:

Credit to Jesse

The son of a renowned noble lord, Flynn has lived a sheltered, pampered life.
Having only read about the outside world in old tomes, he has an insatiable curiosity concerning the nature of the Planes and its denizens.
As he came of age, Flynn earned a reputation as an accomplished spearman, competing in numerous jousts and tournaments to honor his family name.
His father, impressed with his abilities, has made arrangements for Flynn to be drafted into a prestigious organization known as the Lucent Creed.
Eager to carry on his father's legacy, Flynn hastily sets out to meet his destiny, unaware of the truth behind the Creed's reputation.

[spoiler=Alistair of Udicium]
RADIANT DAWN STYLE:

Credit to Phoenix for undamaged Black Knight armor

GBA STYLE:

Alistair is a figure shrouded in both mystery and reverance.
As the undisputed commander of the Lucent Creed, he is renowned for his bravery and valor in the face of the Untouched menace.
However, those who know him personally understand that he is a deeply disturbed individual...
As one of the founding members of the Creed, he has seen a great many allies die before his very eyes.
Hardened by loss, he has grown cruel and malicious towards his enemies.

[spoiler=Caelen]
RADIANT DAWN STYLE:

Credit to Phoenix for fixing the hair

GBA STYLE:

Caelen, a somewhat atypical Luxan, joined the Lucent Creed not too long before Flynn.
Being the new blood, as well as being non-human, lead to a certain degree of bullying within the ranks.
Her sassy and sarcastic attitude has ultimately resulted in the mistrust of her superiors, particularly Alistair.
However, there seems to be more to her than meets the eye...

[spoiler=Barthe]
RADIANT DAWN STYLE:

Credit to Phoenix

GBA STYLE:

Credit to Dai

Barthe has quite a reputation.
Known by strangers as the Dread Pirate of Lympherda, he is feared and hunted by vigilante's seeking to claim a large bounty on his head.
Whether his reputation holds true is questionable, but regardless, Barthe seems kind enough to his allies.
He has a rocky friendship with Flynn, as he and the elders of the Luteus bloodline have a long-standing business relationship.
Hired by Flynn's father, Barthe is to take Flynn to the heart of Dibestia to join the Creed.

[spoiler=Reynald Greene]
RADIANT DAWN STYLE:

None yet!

GBA STYLE:

None yet!

Reynald is an eccentric scholar who authors a vast compilation of Planar knowledge.
He writes on a great many topics, ranging from metaphysical theories on the essence of the Planes to whether Luxan can dye their hair.
When he's not hard at work, he takes pride in sharing his expansive knowledge with those less wisened.
That said, he does have trouble knowing when to shut up.

Gameplay:
Divinitas has a few features that (I hope) set it apart from other ROMhacks or FEXP projects:

Adventure Maps: [iN THE DEMO] Free roam maps that give the player only one objective - reach your destination - and a host of sidquests to complete on the way, including...
Dungeons: [iN THE DEMO] Fully optional dungeon areas, sometimes with multiple floors, and all with their own self-contained plotlines.
Branching Narrative: [NOT IN THE DEMO] Though I haven't found a way to implement yes/no dialogue prompts into FEXP, I still plan to make player choice an important factor in the game with gameplay-based decision making.
Overhauled UI: [iN THE DEMO] This one has probably been done a lot, but I think it's a pretty nice addition anyway. Still a work in progress though.
Gameplay Variety: [NOT IN THE DEMO] One great thing about FEXP is that it gives you a huge amount of room to experiment with new types of objectives, or new ways to structure a level. I already have lots of ideas for some very innovative maps.

To-Do List:
This is mostly for my convenience, feel free to ignore this:

1. Make used-up characters much darker, too hard to distinguish between active Lucent Creed units and used-up units. [DONE]
2. Polish cutscene at the end of Chapter Two. [DONE]
3. Soften outline around Alistair's face sprite, give him his own miniface. [DONE]
4. Find better panoramas for the first dungeon and the castle gates. [DONE]
5. Increase level cap to 100, increase stat caps accordingly. [DONE]
6. Port in a save system. [Done, but end result was undesirable]
7. Make dungeon re-visitable. [DEBATING]
8. Figure out how to disable autorange. [DONE]
9. Figure out how to disable minimap. [DONE]

Screenshots:
[spoiler=GBA Style]

[spoiler=Radiant Dawn Style]

Download Link:
Demo [OLD]
Latest Version Prior to Discontinuation [uNFINISHED]
If downloading the latest version, make sure to select 'play tutorial' in the main menu, otherwise you'll be taken to an even LESS finished version of the game.
Other Notes for Latest Version:

The actual dialogue box will not show up for certain cutscenes in chapter 2 and onwards.

The tutorial is unfinished and cuts out abruptly, but this doesn't cause any in-game issues other than being slightly jarring.

Reynald Greene never got a portrait, so it just shows the default villager portrait.

The 'skip tutorial' option takes you to a visually broken version of the game. This is because I needed to finish the 'play tutorial' version, then copy-paste the finished product into the 'skip tutorial' version before removing all the tutorial bits. As I never finished the tutorial, I had no way of doing this. For now, just select 'play tutorial', it's a much more interesting version of the first chapter anyway.

The 'safeguards' against players going against the tutorial's advice weren't coded in, so intentionally disobeying the tutorial will result in the tutorial messages playing out-of-order.

I really appreciate anyone giving this a try, and I appreciate feedback, criticism and bug spotting even more!

Credits:

Some images from games like Final Fantasy XII used in the intro.
God of Chaos image made by Wen-M, but will be removed from both the game and the thread shortly.
I THINK I may have used a face sprite from this forum of a hooded man, but I genuinely can't remember who made it.
(If you play the game and recognise this sprite as yours, tell me if you want it removed.)
Faction emblems credited to RisingSolaris.
Flynn mug credited to Jesse.
Barthe mug credited to Dai.
Almost forgot, SEXY UI credited to SuicuneSol!
Probably more later.

Edited May 8, 2013 by RiskyPLUS

[Crimson Red]

Positive:

An FEXP project, nice. Not a whole lot of people know how to work it, so good luck. Don't think I'll play it myself due to various reasons though. XP

Negative:

The recolors and bubbles behind the weapon icons could use some work, IMO. Like there's some black in the Forde recolor's eyes and the bubbles just... don't look all that great. XP

[Relentless Halberdier]

Positive:

An FEXP project, nice. Not a whole lot of people know how to work it, so good luck. Don't think I'll play it myself due to various reasons though. XP

Negative:

The recolors and bubbles behind the weapon icons could use some work, IMO. Like there's some black in the Forde recolor's eyes and the bubbles just... don't look all that great. XP

No, I actually agree. The bubbles were an experiment more than anything - I wanted to see how much I could change the UI, which, as it turns out, is a hell of a lot. I just don't really have the artistic skill to make it look good, so I didn't bother taking it any further than the bubbles.

The thing is, I eventually plan to change the resolution and the tile size at which FEXP displays. After doing that, none of the original graphical assets will display properly anymore, so I'd have to commission a whole new set of everything - face sprites, map sprites, combat sprites, everything.

Due to that, I'm currently operating on the idea that anything currently in the game is a placeholder, and so I shouldn't really mess with it too much - it's all going out the window eventually, anyway. That's also why I'm mostly working with recolors instead of custom mugs, it'd be a waste of time for me. If anyone wants to generously offer custom mugs, though, that'd be super nice, because it makes the game look nicer without me having to take a break from eventing to do it.

/rant.

I will go over the recolors, though.

[Klokinator]

Having worked with FEXP for a long time now, I'm fairly impressed with Risky's game. He has a lot of new custom things you wouldn't even think were all that inventive, like the open world method and the new narrarator textbox. I'm betting this is a project to keep an eye on.

Plus we helped him out a lot on Klokreations so I'm invested in this. Don't make me look bad, son.

[Relentless Halberdier]

Just bumping the thread with a pleasant endorsement.

Currently playing the game now. Not gonna lie, I've played dozens of hacks, and this game is better than any hack I've played to date. Very fun, the characters are fresh, the dialogue is informative but brief, the customizations you made (Like the narrarator/tutorial text especially) make this feel like an actual game, and I'll be damned if the maps aren't also pretty good.

Working on chapter three, should be done in a few days.

[Fateborn]

Your DL link is not validated now.

[Relentless Halberdier]

Your DL link is not validated now.

Whoops.

Thanks for pointing that out. I probably never would have noticed. Link is now not only validated but replaced with a newer version, including some additional cosmetic touches (and a lot of bugfixes).

Flynn now has a custom mug, courtesy of Jesse - not sure if he's only at Klokreations or if he comes here too. Other characters are still recolors right now, but that should be changing very soon.

[risingSolaris]

Just gave this a try, and for some reason when I enter the scene with Flynn and the pirate, they just stay there and nothing else happened. So all I was able to do was the Adventure Map. Your ideas are really interesting, and I'd definitely play this game once I actually can.

[Relentless Halberdier]

Just gave this a try, and for some reason when I enter the scene with Flynn and the pirate, they just stay there and nothing else happened. So all I was able to do was the Adventure Map. Your ideas are really interesting, and I'd definitely play this game once I actually can.

Really? Hm, that's odd. Hang on, I'll download this version of the demo myself and see if I encounter the same problem. Shame that I keep running into issues with these demo versions, can't be making a very good impression.

EDIT: Nope. Oddly enough, it works fine for me. It may have been a one-off error triggered by a very badly timed button press or some such, I've had that happen a few times while playtesting. Did you try more than once, and did it bug out at the same point?

Edited January 6, 2013 by RiskyPLUS

[risingSolaris]

I've tried it three or four times, but I do unintentionally tend to press keys when I don't need to.

[Relentless Halberdier]

That's really strange. Could somebody else possibly download the game and tell me if they run into the same problem? That'd be a big favor.

[SkyFalcon]

I downloaded it and i made it through the demo without any issues.

[risingSolaris]

Okay, so I actually managed to get through my problems, and I really like both Flynn and Caelen. But I seriously hope she doesn't desert or betray Flynn, because that would suck.

[47948201]

9. Figure out how to disable minimap.

Well gee, why didn't you just say so? XD

Head over to FE Scene_Map - Menus (Or RD's redux if you've got his save system) and around line 2460 is the minimap call. Just make that bit a comment and you shoouuld be fine!

[shadowofchaos]

I think I remember seeing some screenshots of this on /feg/

Like people have mentioned, the recolors of familiar characters tend to tone down the effect of the story you're writing... ESPECIALLY right after very nicely looking CGs.

This is what I mean:

That cursor with the pure black is also another little thing to nitpick at. It doesn't look particularly... good to be part of a cursor. It feels like one of the times when I screwed up palettes and the cursor on the GBA looked something like that.

The player phase music... is also a little off to be... player phase music. Is it "His World"?

Edit: The Flynn splice works for your purposes instead of a Forde recolor. XD

Edit: Another thing. On "Adventure Maps". Repeatedly moving a unit through obstacles that hinder movement, like say... the forests when going into that abandoned house for a short bow... takes a couple of turns to go through. It's a nice concept to get the whole RPG-like feel in a Fire Emblem engine... but it feels... a little unpolished somehow.

Edited January 7, 2013 by shadowofchaos

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Perhaps there is a way to give units infinite (or at least increased) movement during those portions?

[Teapot]

One of those screenshots feature art that looks a lot like Wen-M's style. It's considered art theft unless you commissioned him that art for your use, or he gave you permission to use it. That being said, I'm fairly certain that it's licensed to Anima, and they're liable to take legal action if they're so inclined. Either way, you probably shouldn't be randomly throwing random art into things without having specific credits.

[eCut]

One of those screenshots feature art that looks a lot like Wen-M's style. It's considered art theft unless you commissioned him that art for your use, or he gave you permission to use it. That being said, I'm fairly certain that it's licensed to Anima, and they're liable to take legal action if they're so inclined. Either way, you probably shouldn't be randomly throwing random art into things without having specific credits.

Interesting... I'll contact Wen-M and ask him but RiskyPlus is innocent until proven guilty.

Like Jelly touched on, you really should have more specific credits than what you do. That could be his work and you could have permission/paid for it but no one can tell since you have no one credited for that art. Art theft is no light matter so it is worth the effort to make sure it's clear that you haven't stolen anything.

[Relentless Halberdier]

Jesus, barrage of comments while I was asleep!

Head over to FE Scene_Map - Menus (Or RD's redux if you've got his save system) and around line 2460 is the minimap call. Just make that bit a comment and you shoouuld be fine!

I figured there would be a way to just turn off the minimap, but what I really want to be able to do is turn it off for a single section of the game, then have it be functional again after that. Commenting out that line would just disable the minimap at all times, I imagine. Thanks, though.

Like people have mentioned, the recolors of familiar characters tend to tone down the effect of the story you're writing... ESPECIALLY right after very nicely looking CGs.

Yeah, I know. Sadly, I only really got into this hacking/FEXPing business a few weeks ago, so recoloring is the extent of my spriting abilities. However, I've noticed people in this community tend to be very generous with their own mug splices/FCs, so I figured just making the game with recolors (and then swapping them out whenever someone comes along and offers to make a few splices for me) is the best way to go for now.

That cursor with the pure black is also another little thing to nitpick at. It doesn't look particularly... good to be part of a cursor. It feels like one of the times when I screwed up palettes and the cursor on the GBA looked something like that.

Really? Usually I'll just automatically assume a criticism is valid but... DUDE I LOVE THAT CURSOR.

I THOUGHT IT LOOKED SO BOSS.

I'll look into changing the color, though.

The player phase music... is also a little off to be... player phase music. Is it "His World"?

Yeah, all the music in that first mission was kind of a tribute to NemesisTheory, the artist. I asked her if she'd consider composing a few original songs for the game and she said she could work something out, so I put some of her old songs in the game to prepare for that, if that makes sense?

But it's not fitting, I agree, and lots of people have said that. What I'm planning to do now is replace all the tracks with songs from the Radiant Dawn OST, so the placeholders will at least be high quality and consistent.

Another thing. On "Adventure Maps". Repeatedly moving a unit through obstacles that hinder movement, like say... the forests when going into that abandoned house for a short bow... takes a couple of turns to go through. It's a nice concept to get the whole RPG-like feel in a Fire Emblem engine... but it feels... a little unpolished somehow.

I believe MarkyJoe also brought this up. I agree that traversing the adventure map, especially with forest tiles, seems clunky. I'm looking into ways of fixing this, but I can't just give Flynn infinite movement during that section. A lot of events require the player to reach a certain portion of the map and then end their turn, so you could easily just go right to the village on your first turn and then Caelen would never pop out. I could probably just adjust the eventing to accomodate this, buuut... I don't know, I kind of want the adventure maps to be something you have to progress through rather than something you can just teleport around in. However, I was originally planning to have a small skirmish take place in the fields after the village/dungeon section. This might make limited movement in that area less of a problem, because you'll have a combat situation to deal with while advancing. The idea with an adventure map is to make every turn have something worthwhile so as not to bore the player with travel time, I just haven't fully implemented that yet.

One of those screenshots feature art that looks a lot like Wen-M's style. It's considered art theft unless you commissioned him that art for your use, or he gave you permission to use it. That being said, I'm fairly certain that it's licensed to Anima, and they're liable to take legal action if they're so inclined. Either way, you probably shouldn't be randomly throwing random art into things without having specific credits.

Unfortunately, yeah, that probably is Wen-M's. I've said this a few times, but everything in the game right now is a placeholder - due to that, I just took the intro images from google and video game render sites (thus why Gabranth is the God of Order), never actually thinking I would be showing anyone a version of the game with these images in it. I didn't know Klokreations or Serenes existed at that point, so I thought I'd have to finish the game completely and commission new, original art before I got to show anybody... In other words, it kind of slipped my mind that I essentially stole the intro art. My bad. I never intended to take people's personal art, though, I thought all the pictures in the intro were from video games. I'll go look at Wen-M's DA page and see if I can find the picture you're talking about, and if I can, I'll take it down.

Once again, wasn't my intent to steal art.

EDIT: I feel it's important to note, though, the intro is the only part of the game in which this issue is present. I intentionally isolated the copied art in the intro sequence with the intent of fully re-doing that part once I had the funds to commission personal artwork. I've been extra careful to credit everyone who has contributed to the main game, which, granted, is only NemesisTheory and Jesse so far.

EDIT2: Sent Wen-M a note myself and said I'll take the art out of the game if he tells me to, as well as offered an apology, should clear things up. Also, contrary to the above statement, I just realized there may actually be one thing in the game I haven't credited - the mug of the Shaman guy in the first dungeon. I could've sworn it was in the original Fire Emblem games but I can't find it anywhere on the official mug sprite lists, so I must've found it elsewhere. Gonna scour the internet now to see who it belongs to.

Edited January 7, 2013 by RiskyPLUS

[fuzz94]

Problem I found. After going through the side mission in the ruins, the old guy who you return the glasses to says "thanks here's your gold," but never actually gives you any gold.

[47948201]

So as for the minimap thing, why not just have the call dependent on a variable being 1 (or some term you make up in System Config), then have certain chapters switch that on during the cutscene or chapter change or something?

[CT075]

i forget if ruby is as intuitive as python about checking for single elements in a list but you could probably just set up some kind of if-thing in the minimap generation function (assuming i'm not way off here and there is actually a generation function being called) that looks like

NO_MINIMAP = [1,3,7,9]

# ...

# in ruby you would use unless (does ruby even support the 'in' operator for lists?)
if CURRENT_CH not in NO_MINIMAP:
   generate_minimap()

[Relentless Halberdier]

This is Wen's reply:

hiya

thats pretty cool. haha

i wouldnt have a problem with it, but yeah, if the game gets popular and my studio finds out, thats when it could be trouble. so hopefully you get funding for your game, and get something official done for your need.

cheers

wen

So yeah, he seems pretty cool with it. I'm still gonna remove the image as soon as I can (don't have access to FEXP for a few days, which also means it might be a little while before the current demo gets updated) but it's nice to know he's not angry.

Problem I found. After going through the side mission in the ruins, the old guy who you return the glasses to says "thanks here's your gold," but never actually gives you any gold.

Probably just a simple oversight on my part, I'll fix it as soon as I can.

As for the minimap thing, I'm gonna experiment with that when I get the chance. Using a variable to determine whether the call would be deactivated or not was my first idea, I just couldn't seem to implement it correctly. It's pretty simple though, I'll probably get it sorted soon enough.

Also, Jealousy - disregarding the issue with the art, which I think is more or less sorted now - I'm assuming you've played the demo? I don't suppose you've decided whether or not I can use the Aeorys sprite yet, based on what you've seen?

Edited January 8, 2013 by RiskyPLUS

[Teapot]

I haven't actually tried the demo, but feel free to use it. I just needed to know that the project actually existed and was being worked on to some degree.

It's not a finished mug, though, and I haven't made frames yet.

[Relentless Halberdier]

Oh, I could probably make try to make the frames myself. It's one of the things I'm saving for last anyway - even Flynn and Caelen don't have frames yet.

And thanks!