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FEXNA (Currently In Private Beta)


BwdYeti
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Yes, FEXP sprite sheets will work in FEXNA, and the frame timing is the same(also the same as in FEditor, so if you have the animation data files for that, you can copy it from there), so if you have the animation in FEXP, it will be tedious at worst to import it. Probably the easiest thing with importing new animations into FEXP/FEXNA versus hacking is if you have some random stray pixel to make your color count 17, it won't just explode on you. Also, animations can be set up in parts, so if you have an animation like the Hero where there are a ton of frames of a projectile moving off somewhere, you don't have to make a whole new sprite for each frame--you can actually even do scaling/rotation/etc. in-engine. Likewise, FEXP map sprites can be almost directly-ported, maybe just changing the filenames.

MIDI isn't music, it's basically a score that you give to the conductor that is your computer who then leads the orchestra of probably really bad fake instruments supported by your soundcard. MP3 I think is proprietary, so you need a license to use it commercially--not that you'd want to, because its encoding is actually not great, so it has to be decoded (probably to something like WAV?) by the game engine and streamed from that. Looping in particular, MP3 doesn't like. OGG cuts out that step, is free to use, and generally will have a better quality-filesize ratio.

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Ending a chapter is entirely controlled by events, so anything you can do with the event system (or edit into the events system by modifying the code) you can use as a victory condition.

Hm... That doesn't really answer my question, but at the same time, it does, lol.

I'm guessing that it wouldn't be too hard to take the code/event that controls 'Lord Death=Game Over' and add it to another unit for the duration of the chapter, and then set the Chapter to end after a set number of turns. (I believe that's how defend chapters work, anyway...I've never actually messed with events in the GBA roms.)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just out of curiosity, how are mandatory or banned characters for deployment handled? I may end up doing something with those.

In particular, is there anything that would overly complicate mandating at least/at most x number of a given subset of characters? I have (very rudimentary) coding knowledge, if that helps.

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Here we go, time to ask the millionth question! I truly am sorry, but my curiosity cannot contain itself.

Is it possible to have a character's portrait permanently changed after a certain event in the game? For instance, say there's a character who is blind and has a scar over his/her eyes and some rando ass witch comes 'round and heals his/her scars and blindness, could it permanently remain that way? Obviously it could be done in cutscenes, but I mean for their profile/menu portrait, during supports and what have you (obviously that would imply different support convos depending on that fact, but that's beside the point right now).

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Here we go, time to ask the millionth question! I truly am sorry, but my curiosity cannot contain itself.

Is it possible to have a character's portrait permanently changed after a certain event in the game? For instance, say there's a character who is blind and has a scar over his/her eyes and some rando ass witch comes 'round and heals his/her scars and blindness, could it permanently remain that way? Obviously it could be done in cutscenes, but I mean for their profile/menu portrait, during supports and what have you (obviously that would imply different support convos depending on that fact, but that's beside the point right now).

inb4 "yes" because if you know how to code, you can literally make the program do anything you want.

I do believe I've seen this asked before, earlier in the thread, so you might want to go read through and see if you can find it. They asked if it was similar to have an effect similar to Ike's promotion in FE9, where he changed portraits.

My question: Does the 256 color limit for portraits apply to ALL images, or just portraits? And items--they don't all share the same palette, do they?

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I don't think the 256 color limit is official anymore, it's more of a recommendation of mine(EDIT: for portraits, that is. Character battle sprites might still cap out at 256, but I'm not positive). But it was per-image, so you could have 50 portraits and 50 battle sheets, 256 colors each(meaning you could have alternate colors for a given portrait or battler weapon by using different images), plus infinite colors in all your backgrounds and UI elements (including items).

As for permanent portrait changes, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happens to Uther, so it should be supported already. But even if not, it's right that it wouldn't be too complicated to code.

(EDIT2: Sorry I can't answer the question about banning characters, I've only made a single-chapter game, so I guess we're waiting on a Yeti answer for that one)

Edited by 47948201
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Thank you for replying!

I'm so glad I don't have to make all the items fit to one palette. (I figured I wouldn't, but I just wanted to make sure.) Now I can FINALLY make these weapons look like they're supposed to look!

I would also like to know about the character exclusion topic. Some chapters like FE8's 5x would be very interesting to have.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Yeti! I think I'm the one that prompted you to make this topic a couple years back when I asked if I could help with the programming while I was just a freshman going into college...

Fast forward and I'm about to start my first software development internship, and though I'm sure I'm nowhere near you(or your team) in terms of programming experience, I'd like to offer any help that I can if your team wants an extra set of hands. Love what you guys are doing for the community with this project, and good luck!

Edited by EldinnerPlate
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I think we're still not currently looking for anyone to add to the private beta, but you may note that there are some things that people have been wanting that aren't planned, so helping implement those promptly once the public beta comes out would probably make some people happy☆

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Phrasing this so that it is NOT a yes/no answer because I know the answer will always be "yes it's possible," LOL

Precisely how hard would it be to narrow down conversations scenes so that people who cannot do quarter bodies don't have to deal with how tiny their sprites are in comparison to the huge screen?

For example:

dA4V46F.png

Something akin to this. (I was just slapping some things together for display, here.)

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There are a couple very easy ways to do that. You can letterbox the conversation backgrounds themselves, or create a portrait that's just two giant black bars. In either case, though, animating the appearance/disappearance of the bars would be tricky (though for just putting them on conversation backgrounds, maybe you could get away with not animating them). If you're totally insane, you could make them move by making them the portrait's expressions, and scrolling forward and backward through expressions at the start and end of every conversation.

Arguably the better way would be to code it, so... I don't imagine changing the height everyone appears at would be too hard. Drawing the bars would also not be super hard. But again, animating them coming in and going out would be slightly less trivial. Maritisa's had more success with conversation scene coding than me so she might have ideas, but existing timers in FEXNA are so insanely optimized they're honestly sometimes hard to work with, and adding new timers can be pretty tricky, at least I find.

I like the idea though, so with any luck, someone (maybe a certain Plate?) will get it in!

EDIT: Actually, I'm thinking about it, and you could probably handle it in a totally custom method that just gets called from the display text event thing. If that works, you could(I think...?) make the bars appear before the portraits in any way you find comfortable to code. Maybe.

Edited by 47948201
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Animating the bars coming in would be cool, but I was aiming towards the bars already being there when the background loaded. (or just being part of the background, period.) The main issue would be getting the portraits to load at the correct height, which I dunno how FEXNA even handles that.

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Alternatively, if the important thing to you is making it so that the normal FEGBA-type portraits don't look disproportionately small, you could always go for FE9~12-style dialogue windows, with a big fancy box at the bottom of the screen, but that'd probably be more effort than just putting in the black bars.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry if this has been answered but I ctrl+f'd through the topic and found nothing. I also looked around for general XNA stuff and didn't find any clear answer. Will I be able to make it play a video file without having to code that in, or am I on my own here?

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Videos are currently unsupported. Your best bet is probably to sheet all the frames and make a battle animation for it... Or wait for Yeti to add it officially, because he really should. I know of no such plans, though.

EDIT: Actually...it's the same general idea, but you might be able to code a custom event that just shows a bunch of images in sequence, so the same result but without having to use a scripted battle. But again, let's hope it we eventually get official support for playback of actual video files, because if they have audio you'll probably end up hardcoding it for every different video you use otherwise.

EDIT2: Yeti recommends

uh

like, whatever you find.

Edited by 47948201
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Okay with FEXNA I know "All things are possible" so what I am wanting to ask is precisely how difficult would it be to add something akin to FE7, where when you finish one person's story, you get to play from a different character's PoV? Very difficult, I'm sure...

I also want to know how possible it is to make EX/Gaiden chapters where the characters you control are not your normal units. (Similar to Chapter 5x in FE8.)

If anyone can answer these questions, I'd appreciate it. :D

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So basically, for the first 10 chapters you build a Lyn-army, then on chapter 11 all those units get put on hold and you start building an Eliwood-army, and units from your Lyn-army occasionally join? I'm pretty sure FE7x already has that, it's called the battalion system.

Likewise, I'm sure you can temporarily switch to some battalion you never use otherwise for a gaiden chapter, to make your normal units not join in it, then swap back to the battalion you were using before, and even pull units from that gaiden battalion in later chapters for something.

I haven't used the system much, but I have kind of a vague idea of how 7x uses it so this all sounds like it's probably already implemented.

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So basically, for the first 10 chapters you build a Lyn-army, then on chapter 11 all those units get put on hold and you start building an Eliwood-army, and units from your Lyn-army occasionally join?

My idea was more like something requiring two different playthroughs, as once you beat one file, you unlock a new mode that stars different characters and different maps, and also a side of the story you don't get to see in the first. So I guess more like Eliwood mode and then Hector mode? Or FE8, minus the first 8 chapters.


Likewise, I'm sure you can temporarily switch to some battalion you never use otherwise for a gaiden chapter, to make your normal units not join in it, then swap back to the battalion you were using before, and even pull units from that gaiden battalion in later chapters for something.

I haven't used the system much, but I have kind of a vague idea of how 7x uses it so this all sounds like it's probably already implemented.

Ah, this sounds great, and just what I need for the EX chapters! Thank you for replying. Now I can start planning.

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Are the people working on FEXNA still looking for someone to make generic portraits or animations? I have messaged Yeti twice in the past few months but he has not responded yet.

Edited by Shaman
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