FEXNA (Currently In Private Beta)

[NICKT™]

1. It comes with all the gba classes and hopefully I'll be able to release a class pack featuring all the best feditor animations.

2. No, it's more like FE4/5 where your units just have skills assigned by character or class. There's no system for adding/removing skills other than eventing, definitely no skill swapping or anything else currently.

2.

I sort of prefer it that way, so hopefully it sticks.

Don't wanna double post, so I'll chuck it down here.

Do the mugs for FEXNA all need to be the same size? Or can one mug have a bigger box than another?

Asking because Yeti mentioned that the mug size at the moment was made to work with the menus but you could have bigger ones for enemies, not sure if that means we'd have to increase things like the template sheet for mugs for playable characters as well if need be.

Edited September 1, 2015 by NICKT™

[BwdYeti]

Any size, the engine figures it out on the fly based on how many emotes you have set for a specific sprite

[NICKT™]

Any size, the engine figures it out on the fly based on how many emotes you have set for a specific sprite

Perfect.

[Klokinator]

Continuing from Yeti, the sheet assumes:

The bottom left corner will have a chibi of 32x32 size, and the entire bottom 32 pixels are for that chibi.

There will be a row that is 32 pixels tall for the first emotion face and three equally same sized rows above that.

At this point, the first second or third or more faces come in and you tweak a setting in the editor that says ok here's how many faces you have to work with, and it divides the number of pixels left in the upper part of the sprite by that many. You can add as many faces as you want, just make sure they all have the same amount of space in the box around them as the biggest mug needs.

[Nébulya]

I really wonder when FEXNA will be released and where is the progress of the engine now but I'll be patient, once in my life haha.

I've finished Immortal Sword last release and it was perfect, really. So many things implemented into it..:D

[Augestein]

I know this sounds crazy, but have you guys considered just changing this to SRPG Maker XNA? Just to keep away from Nintendo and their crazy aggression? it'd be a shame to get slapped with a C&D.

[Crazy Li]

Nope, sure doesn't. Can be coded by someone else on release though.

After many chat sessions with yeti, he convinced me it's entirely pointless to even have it so I don't even argue the point any more.

FEXNA doesn't, and as far as I know it has no plans to do so. It's not uncommon to see Yeti leave out unnecessary features in order to discourage bad design (and indeed, the strength/magic split is one of the most overhypedly useless mechanics in series history, with very few actual uses. Overall it's pretty hard to justify its inclusion at all, unless your entire game is built around it somehow) That said, though, I noticed the latest FE7x managed to find space for a Rating stat on the stats screen, and finding screen space is the second-most-difficult part of the entire split. Adding the stat to game systems shouldn't be difficult at all, so the only major inconvenience is that the Editor doesn't have anywhere to put an additional stat, meaning you'd have to edit all the character/class data in a text editor if you added it.

I see someone posted while I was typing this so lesse what they said lol

EDIT: yeah what he said

I understand that it's not gonna happen since Yeti doesn't want it, but I hafta disagree highly with the points. It's not "bad design" at all. Combining the two in one was just a cheap shortcutting that the GBA games took. Now while I agree it's not important to have in a game that doesn't utilize it, what about those that do? Awakening is a good example where your Avatar uses Swords and Magic, so this is essential to that game.

My issue with refusing to make it built-in is that it's WAY easier to combine STR/MAG if you don't want them separate than to code the game to separate it yourself. Why? Because of the database. This is my one issue with the idea that it can easily just be coded after the fact. How do you manage it? If a character's database entry literally only has one field for STR or MAG, how do you enter stats? That makes the whole process entirely more complicated. If every character had fields for both STR and MAG, you could use both if your game required such or just use the one that's applicable and make a simple code that ignored the one not used for that class. See how this is much easier?

This is assuming the engine is designed in a way where the character sheet GUI only has 1 field for both without any stat field flexibility. If stat fields can actually be customized to show up in the GUI itself to be easily managed, I have no problem.

[lonelyVoxel]

Y'know, you could just base magical and physical attacks off of the same stat if you had a unit like Awakening's Avatar.

[Dunal]

One thing I must state is that STR/MAG split is certainly not bad design. Just because FE has yet to incorporate it well doesn't make it bad.

Balance regarding DEF/RES and immunities/weaknesses is a huge factor in how it can play out. A unit with a capability of both weapons and magic just needs strong incentive to use both and if the game tuned well enough to accommodate that then there is literally nothing wrong with it.

Staff users with physical weapons is most notably the concept that requires it and it isn't far-fetched to have those at all.

Y'know, you could just base magical and physical attacks off of the same stat if you had a unit like Awakening's Avatar.

Not so sure about that. Some units need to be counterbalanced around one thing or another. It would mean that to have a high STR character you would also need to give them huge staff range.

It basically doubles up on everything a unit is good or bad at.

Edited September 12, 2015 by DLuna

[Mr. Mister]

And that's not even mentioning skills based around Str/Mag stats.

[47948201]

Str/Mag split isn't bad design, FE just has yet to implement it well, you're right. Personally though, I suspect it will stay that way.

Some design concepts are just tougher to pull off, and/or have smaller benefit when executed well. The weapon triangle, once implemented, was immediately relevant to the majority of classes, adding a layer of decision-making to almost every turn. For units that aren't affected by the weapon triangle, whatever, they don't have to worry about it. For the strength/magic split to actually work well, you'd need to make a significant number of classes/units have uses for both stats--every unit that doesn't need both has a wasted stat space. It's different from resistance that way, because every unit has uses for both defense and resistance, if the chapters are designed well. And of those units who use both stats, there needs to be a lot of variance in the relative levels of them. Unless you have units with much higher strength, moderately higher strength, somewhat higher strength, about the same strength, and at least most of the reverses, for example, you're much better off building a fake magic stat into the mechanics or skills.

There's nothing wrong with the strength/magic split, except that in 99% of cases it adds noise for almost no benefit. The remaining 1% of cases need to be very conscious of it throughout their entire design, and will probably need to produce a ton of assets to take advantage of it. Overall, it's just not worth adding for the general user.

That said though, I've been thinking that upon release, we should open up a thread of unofficial changes and additions. Things that don't deserve to be in the engine proper, but that are wanted enough to warrant all being in one place so they're easy to find.

EDIT: @Li: I'm pretty sure stats are stored in a list, which you can add entries to without too much trouble. Organizing is probably the main issue there, and possibly rerouting things depending on how you handle that. It seems like it would take a significant number of insignificant edits if you know what you're aiming for.

Edited September 12, 2015 by 47948201

[lonelyVoxel]

Wold it be a bad idea at all to have units that calculate both physical and magical damage based on a single Power stat? That's how I'd do it.

[47948201]

That was my solution, and why I say there should be 3 unique stat layouts on either side of an equal. If you only had 2 on each side, you could handle it with, say, Mag=Str, Mag=Str/2, or Mag=0 (or the opposite, eg Str=Mag/2), and which one of those a unit uses depends on a skill it has (Generals likely have the lowest magic, unless you had a boss who needed magic or something; Myrmidons probably have decent magic so they can use Light Brands; Mage Knights, if they were to use weapons, could be expected to be about equally adept with both)

The best situation I can think of that wants the split is a player unit with great base strength but a horrible growth, and horrible base magic but a great growth, but even that is pretty easy to make a skill for (think about it~!)

[lonelyVoxel]

That was my solution, and why I say there should be 3 unique stat layouts on either side of an equal. If you only had 2 on each side, you could handle it with, say, Mag=Str, Mag=Str/2, or Mag=0 (or the opposite, eg Str=Mag/2), and which one of those a unit uses depends on a skill it has (Generals likely have the lowest magic, unless you had a boss who needed magic or something; Myrmidons probably have decent magic so they can use Light Brands; Mage Knights, if they were to use weapons, could be expected to be about equally adept with both)

That's a really good idea. I'll keep it in mind if I ever dink around with ways to deal with physical things on magical units and vice versa.

[Anouleth]

Str/Mag split isn't bad design, FE just has yet to implement it well, you're right. Personally though, I suspect it will stay that way.

Some design concepts are just tougher to pull off, and/or have smaller benefit when executed well. The weapon triangle, once implemented, was immediately relevant to the majority of classes, adding a layer of decision-making to almost every turn. For units that aren't affected by the weapon triangle, whatever, they don't have to worry about it. For the strength/magic split to actually work well, you'd need to make a significant number of classes/units have uses for both stats--every unit that doesn't need both has a wasted stat space. It's different from resistance that way, because every unit has uses for both defense and resistance, if the chapters are designed well. And of those units who use both stats, there needs to be a lot of variance in the relative levels of them. Unless you have units with much higher strength, moderately higher strength, somewhat higher strength, about the same strength, and at least most of the reverses, for example, you're much better off building a fake magic stat into the mechanics or skills.

There's nothing wrong with the strength/magic split, except that in 99% of cases it adds noise for almost no benefit. The remaining 1% of cases need to be very conscious of it throughout their entire design, and will probably need to produce a ton of assets to take advantage of it. Overall, it's just not worth adding for the general user.

One might say the same thing about the Luck skill, which rarely has any impact aside from the small minority of situations where your luck is so low that you can face a chance of being critted. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that you could remove Luck entirely from the game and just figure out another source of critical evade, or abolish the stat entirely. Another stat you could potentially remove from the game is Resistance, since most units tend to have really low resistance anyway, it would be easier to just abolish the stat and instead give traditionally high-resistance units like Clerics or Pegasi a skill that specifically reduces damage from magic attacks.

I note that FEXNA doesn't remove CON. What is it that makes CON essential and the STR/MAG split optional, given that more games feature separate str/mag stats than a dedicated CON stat? What about affinities? Or for that matter, separate Wind/Thunder/Fire/Light/Dark magic types, each with their own associated weapon rank stat? I'd consider all of these to be just as extraneous as the STR/MAG split, if not more so.

[47948201]

I agree about luck, as do many people. Yeti's solution for making Resistance useful is tying it to staff power, which makes no sense, but does a great deal to make it more useful and differentiate Bishops from Sages. Constitution, however, is a great stat, allowing Rescuing and potentially Shoving (or, if you're Klok, Capturing) and being much, MUCH more mechanically sound for AS calculation than strength could ever dream of being. I'll leave out little things like Colossus calculation because that's not really a big deal, but it's still not extraneous in the least. (random fun fact, I intend to do away with both luck and resistance for my own game, doing exactly what you suggested, but I'm keeping constitution just as it is)

I do also agree about the triple anima magic types and aren't really sure why 7x has them other than visual variety. Affinities are in the same boat as the split, IMHO, but the difference is that every FEGBA has had those, and FEXNA was from the start based on FEGBA systems.

Edited September 13, 2015 by 47948201

[Klokinator]

I say forget the dumb STR/MAG split, and instead implement a universal POW stat. Then, add a new stat called SPI (Sprit, you can also use ENG for Energy but SPI works better for magic and physical) which is used for Skill effect calculation. Say you want to have a unit with Renewal that regains SPI% HP every turn, or you use SPI as the activation rate for a skill, or for some skills you divide SPI by 10 and the result is how many times in a row you can activate a skill, and heck you can even have like an energy bar based off SPI.

STR/MAG split just makes a unit either OP because they can attack RES or DEF at will, or it makes their magic or physical attacks useless since one stat will likely lag far behind the other for 'balance' reasons. (Who cares if I have swords and anima if the magic damage is always so low due to a low MAG stat?)

There's no way to balance it. I say just use the POW stat and find a way to give enemies effective counters vs a unit that can dual wield both (Of if you make that class enemy only, give the player counters for them, like mageslaying weapons, or horseslaying weapons assuming a mounted mageknight, etc.)

Either way, after hearing Yeti explain it, I think a split is useless and pointless entirely. A Spirit stat would be FAR more interesting to use.

[lonelyVoxel]

What Klok said is sorta what I was thinking

But I'm gonna go the FE3 route and just call it Str

[47948201]

(didn't FE3 just call it power (as opposed to power/magic power as they were later branded) and the fanlation decided to call it strength, which really can refer to magical strength anyway, that seems like the simplest solution and in reality what most people may as well use)

[lonelyVoxel]

(didn't FE3 just call it power (as opposed to power/magic power as they were later branded) and the fanlation decided to call it strength, which really can refer to magical strength anyway, that seems like the simplest solution and in reality what most people may as well use)

I don't know whether or not it was originally called Power, but the fanslation called it Str and it's common joke in LPs. All in all I was joking.

[47948201]

Ah, sorry, Twitch faces aren't my thing sooo *rolls away*

(In all seriousness though, if people are so desperate for a split, they can go ahead and implement it. But it won't be in standard 7x or FEXNA)

[lonelyVoxel]

Haha, it's alright. Personally I don't see how I'd implement a split. It'll probably be a while before I work on a project of my own creation, so that'll give me some time to think over how it should work in other projects.

[Augestein]

I say forget the dumb STR/MAG split, and instead implement a universal POW stat. Then, add a new stat called SPI (Sprit, you can also use ENG for Energy but SPI works better for magic and physical) which is used for Skill effect calculation. Say you want to have a unit with Renewal that regains SPI% HP every turn, or you use SPI as the activation rate for a skill, or for some skills you divide SPI by 10 and the result is how many times in a row you can activate a skill, and heck you can even have like an energy bar based off SPI.

STR/MAG split just makes a unit either OP because they can attack RES or DEF at will, or it makes their magic or physical attacks useless since one stat will likely lag far behind the other for 'balance' reasons. (Who cares if I have swords and anima if the magic damage is always so low due to a low MAG stat?)

There's no way to balance it. I say just use the POW stat and find a way to give enemies effective counters vs a unit that can dual wield both (Of if you make that class enemy only, give the player counters for them, like mageslaying weapons, or horseslaying weapons assuming a mounted mageknight, etc.)

Either way, after hearing Yeti explain it, I think a split is useless and pointless entirely. A Spirit stat would be FAR more interesting to use.

Spirit stats also sound like they can be kinda dangerous if done. Some games like Final Fantasy 9, spirit pretty much does everything in the game making it pretty much the best stat overall in the game for a ton of characters and still a stupidly powerful one for people even when they aren't using it in a ton of forumlas. If spirit were a stat and skills were still like Fire Emblem, spirit would pretty much be one of the most sought after stats as soon as you started getting skills. Personally I'd rather skills be based off of various stats rather than just one stat. It's pretty lame in Awakening for instance that most proc skills are based off of skill. I'm fine with universal power stat, as you could ultimately have skill passives and the like for characters to "specialize" in stats. IE, you have a warrior and sniper that can both use bows, but the archer has a +25% damage boost passive with bows and a 15% critical increase because it's a sniper, and it's clear that even if the warrior can use bows, the sniper will consistently do more damage with the bows than the warrior even assuming that the warrior has a higher power stat. If done correctly, it could serve to actually make classes and characters MORE unique in that regard.

I wouldn't say that. I think people are just used to seeing how awful it's done in IS' Fire Emblem games. Some characters like Libra for instance? Were done fairly well with it. He was a fighter with the ability to heal. The issue is that Fire Emblem often gives hybrid units a forced path. Like Lissa for instance, rubbish strength base, lame growths for that base. The end result? A terrible fighter for physical attacks. The whole point of hybrids is that they are supposed to be decent in both situations but not better than a specialized unit in either. They aren't pointless, they just aren't done well in this series sans Libra and maybe Elincia in RD. Elincia was mediocre against lance units, great against mages, but then could put on the Imbue skill to make usage of her magic stat (though that might have been an error to allow her to equip it) to recover more hp than a fighter giving her some pseudo durability which allowed her to last quite a while by herself even if she wasn't as strong as say Tibarn in a straight up fight. It can be done, people just need to stop doing stuff like Mark strength base strength of 2 20% str growth with magic base being 7 and then giving him 65% magic growth.

There is a way to give balance to it. You just said it, but changing up things with enemy formations. With effectiveness weapons for instance, a hybrid could do perfectly fine in various situations with more variety as well. A singular POW stat is not necessarily going to fix this. And I like the singular pow stat idea too.

Or you could just circumvent the need for a spirit stat at all and just make skills based on various stats all around and avoid the need for a potential "useless/useful" stat. The issue is that I believe both of these systems need to be fleshed out and fully utilized and IS won't commit to any system which is what's happening. They have good base ideas and no finesse with them.

[lonelyVoxel]

Maybe instead of adding a separate Spirit stat, re-configure Luck? That still wouldn't change a ton, though. A mix of Skill and Luck for most skills wold make the most sense, though other stats certainly could be utilized for activation rates as well.

[Augestein]

Maybe instead of adding a separate Spirit stat, re-configure Luck? That still wouldn't change a ton, though. A mix of Skill and Luck for most skills wold make the most sense, though other stats certainly could be utilized for activation rates as well.

Me personally, I'd like to see them for more stats too though. Like maybe a skill like called Iron Will or something that let's you bypass constitution and use the strength = con for weapon weight. I'd honestly like to see less proc like skills, and a spirit stat sounds like it goes against that very idea...