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The Serpents Entwined, V0.3 released!


Galap
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I've been working on my hack for a little while, and I've finally finished Act 1. So, I think it's gotten to the point where I should post it here so people can play it.

So here I present Fire Emblem: The Serpents Entwined, Act I:

Story: In the coastal nation of Actke, twin sisters Nicole and Sage live in Resharm village with their childhood friend Grieg. When the village is attacked, they are forced to defend themselves. In so doing, they become involved in something bigger than they would ever have imagined. Most matters are revealed gradually throughout the story, and it's a bit in medias res, so you don't need to know too much in the beginning.

General info about the hack/things you should know:

-there are 10 finished chapters (including the prologue), which constitute Act I of the story. A few chapters after that done in terms of gameplay but there is no text (only placeholder cutscenes). Progressively things descend into madness and unplayability afterward (as of v0.3, gameplay is complete to chapter 19). You can go for it with those chapters if you want, and I'd appreciate feedback on them, but be warned that after chapter 9 things get more rough.
-this hack is intended to be very difficult. Hopefully I've succeeded in achieving that. Hopefully the challenge is fun to overcome.
-I only really playtested with keeping everyone alive. Feel free to ironman if you want, but be warned that you may find yourself in an unwinnable situation if certain characters die. Likewise, I know that the game is beatable since I've tested it a good amount.
-This hack is for fire emblem 7, Venom rom.
-All of the chapter titles are odd or cryptic references. An extra challenge I'm putting out there for fun is to guess what all the chapter titles are referencing.
-The characters' stats and growth rates are not supposed to be surprising. If you guys really want I could post their exact growths, but they should be roughly what you'd expect them to be.
-That said, a lot of the order you get certain types of characters in and what you have to do to get them the right equipment is unconventional.

-With the story, i wanted to focus on ordinary people rather than nobility, and show the characters acting more out of desperation than anything else.
-I focused mostly on level design and creating a challenging experience, as well as the story. I haven't really done anything in terms of new visual content. I intend to add some new classes/animations, but that's down the road still.
-Some screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/nInCw

-Special thanks to everyone in the questions forum that helped me get past some difficulties.

Edit: V0.3 released!

V0.3 updates:

-The earlier chapters are polished a lot more in terms of gameplay and map visuals. The balance here should be a lot better.

-Gameplay is complete through chapter 19, but no cutscenes/dialogue after chapter 10

-There will ultimately be 25 chapters, so only a few more to go. The maps for all of them have been designed as of now.

Patch V0.3

TheSerpentsEntwined1_3.ups

Edited by Galap
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There's two issues I have with this:

1. I don't know if Venom is the common base game (anyone asking for/linking a ROM will be dealt with harshly - DO NOT DO IT).  I'm familiar with a different variant, which is why I mentioned this.

2. I'd stick to unedited mugs for the time being.  I'm sensitive to stark contrast changes, which means that the mugs will make the game especially hard to play for me (assuming I get it working).

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Well, I'm interested and will likely give it a try if/when I have a chance to do so. (probably next weekend). I like the setting of the story and I really hope the hack offers challenging but also enjoyable difficulty.

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I like it when people come out the gate swinging with screenshots and content. Good on you.

6 hours ago, eclipse said:

1. I don't know if Venom is the common base game (anyone asking for/linking a ROM will be dealt with harshly - DO NOT DO IT).  I'm familiar with a different variant, which is why I mentioned this.

Venom is the English FE7 usually used. That said, I feel like other rips would have to be really weird to not be compatible with patches.

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I played until chapter 3 (not included), and I don't think the first chapter is beatable without relying on misses, that is bad design IMO. Also, ambush spawns on chapter 2 didn't caught any of my units off guard, but it's still a dick move

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Alright so I just finished chapter 3 and I'm going to tell you what I think as honestly as I can.
Starting with the prologue, although you said that map design was a key focus, the unit placement in the prologue was just very tedious (as is most of the unit placement so far). my strategy was to hand Grieg a vulnerary and stick him in the forest while the twins run around the village in circles pretty much. Grieg as a unit is pretty terrible because of his extremely poor con which means the iron lance he starts with weighs him down 5 speed. keep in mind he starts with like 3? He's level 5 right now and he has 5 speed which is a grand total of 0 speed with an iron lance, 4 with a slim lance. The twins are both lyn clones (which means they're pretty bad with those bases) and so far i can't tell much of a difference between the two besides their affinity.
Chapter 1 was pretty boring because the strategy is stick a twin on a forest tile and hope she doesn't die as far as i can tell. Andrew has a habit of getting screwed over by rng. Half the time he gets hit by a shaky axe hit rate, half the time he misses against the cavalier. Every time this happens you have to restart. This is not the game being hard. It's just the game being really annoying to play. I don't understand why there is so much empty space that you have to traverse to get to the fort. It just drags the chapter longer. Unit placement is still not very innovative. Just clumps of enemies.

Chapter 2 was a bit better, well that is until the ambush spawns come in. Ambush spawns are not fun. It's just an instant restart if a unit dies, and is that really what you want? I mean it's just frustrating. This chapter would be so much more satisfying  All the new characters are bland. I think it would be nice if there was an axe character introduced in this chapter. There's still a bunch of useless space to traverse which is annoying. The boss should have a javelin.

Chapter 3 was really frustrating. As far as I can tell, Ben and Inka are just left there to try to dodge as many hits as possible. Ambush spawn shamans until turn 7? Why is this a good idea? I was only able to keep them alive by getting super lucky with RNG (after many many many tries). It feels like you're encouraged to just stay in the corner. It's boring to just turtle there. The unit placement is just super dense and annoying. Basically all you do is turtle and then go over and kill the last four units that are guarding Ben and Inka. I wish that all the units close to the player at the beginning were more spread out across the map. It would be nice for the four units that guard Ben and Inka to charge after the main party, so they can escape with that door key that you gave Inka. Is that supposed to be a chest key or am I missing something because you can't open that chest. 

Overall, idk if I'm bad at fire emblem but this hack is just really tedious and annoying. Nothing makes me want to continue playing this hack. I'm going to try to finish the act just to see if it gets better. The story is kind of boring so far. I'm sure this hack could be very fun if fixed up.

Edited by Crystoffar
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Thanks for playing. I intend to post more later when I'm home and have time to focus but here are thoughts for now:

 

-the only difference between the twins is affinity. theyre identical after all ;)

-Grieg probably needs a buff. I don't want him to be a bad unit.

-in chapter 1, are you baiting the western soldier and fighter into attacking he main group rather than Andrew? the enemies you face are easy to kill if you dont put yourself out there but Andrew usually dies. From my testing, if you bait the soldier and fighter he rarely does. I would like to make this distinction better, though, so he can't get screwed even if you go out. maybe one less fighter on him.

-The intention with chapter 3 is for you to be pressured to expend a lot of effort to bulldoze past the main enemy group so you can take a lot of the dark mage heat off of Ben and Inka. if you turtle, yeah they're likely to die. Even so, maybe there's one dark mage spawn too many.

-this is something I thought i was being clear about in the text, but it's always hard to know what will or won't be obvious to people who didn't come up with it: Inka tries her key on the chest, but it is the outer door key instead. She has lost the chest key, meaning she has dropped it somewhere. If you want her to have a staff, you have to find it. Look for features on the map that could be likely spots ;)

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1 hour ago, Galap said:

-the only difference between the twins is affinity. theyre identical after all ;)

 

I don't like this reasoning because it very much comes off as lazy. They're the same unit essentially, which means there's no real point to using both of them in the long run since you're wasting a deploy slot on the exact same unit. 

And twins are still different people, they have different personalities, ways of doing things, goals, etc. It's entirely in the realm of possibility that the twins not only have different stats, but they could have a different class as well if you so desired. Look at FE6 for a good example on how to handle twins.

I've played a few chapters but a lot of the difficulty so far seems to be rng related, which isn't much fun to me.

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Well, even though they have the same growths, the fact that growth is RNG related means that they will turn out differently. To me that makes sense since while they have the same starting point, they are shaped by their experiences and that's where the differences between them come from. In the story I did write them to have slightly different personalities. I don't know if it was too subtle, though.

As for relying on RNG, here is one systematic solution to the prologue, that relies on no RNG: there is a miss on grieg, but that one doesn't  matter. the edit is I'm replacing a different solution that relies on weird AI behavior.

 

 

Edited by Galap
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2 hours ago, Galap said:

in chapter 1, are you baiting the western soldier and fighter into attacking he main group rather than Andrew

I definitely did bait these two. It was just Andrew getting hit by a fighter or missing once against the cavalier with the lance that really got him. It only made me restart twice so I supposed it could have been a fluke. 

Also, one little thing that would be nice is if you changed the lord class to a different name. From what I can tell it's a pretty easy change, and you said yourself that you want the story to focus on ordinary people

 

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If I may?

From the video solution you posted for the Prologue, it relies quite heavily on turtling, which is counter-intuitive to the design of the map as it's rather open ended. Probably not the best way to hook a player in, they should be allowed to roam and experiment a bit without punishment. Seeing as you have twin swordies, you should probably have at least one axe user as a target to give them something to do instead of just cowering. (although if they're supposed to be running from combat, you should reflect that in the map better)

Greig having 3 Con is abysmal for a male foot lance unit, and doubly so if he's a major player. Provided you keep weapon weight the same as in vanilla GBA titles, he oughta be a 6-8, depending on how you have the character set up. (Ephraim's frame is a decent idea to build off of)

I also agree with Zim that having the twins being literally identical units in everything except for affinity is rather dull, especially if they're supposed to be our protagonists. We ain't no 1983 Mario Bros. anymore, give 'em some distinctions to set them apart, aesthetic or otherwise.

I understand the appeal of having a difficult setting for your project, but there are better ways of conveying pressure without it feeling superficial.

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Ok, I changed chapter 1 to make how Andrew fares more consistent. I deleted one of the axe users near him and replaced the baitable one with a soldier. If the soldiers are baited he should very rarely die.

Grieg's con has been increased to 8.

I changed the patch in the OP to reflect these changes.

I also should change the lord class name. I haven't decided what to call it yet, though.

Edited by Galap
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so i just finished chapter 3 after the new patch 

1 hour ago, Galap said:

 

Ok, I changed chapter 1 to make how Andrew fares more consistent. I deleted one of the axe users near him and replaced the baitable one with a soldier. If the soldiers are baited he should very rarely die.

 

This made the map a lot better imo. It gives Grieg more stuff to do during the chapter and removes threat from Andrew. Andrew actually died the first time, but ill just count that as 60% hit rates doing me dirty. 

1 hour ago, Galap said:

Grieg's con has been increased to 8

Grieg returns with a vengeance! He's actually not that great because of his low base speed, but at least he's not negative speed. He has the possibility of doubling in the future. 

Also on the second time doing Chapter 3, I felt like it was a bit better when I didn't turtle as hard. If Florimel can reach those shamans, they're pretty much done. I still haven't fouond the chest key. i have a habit of skimming over text so I might just be dumb. Keep up the good work.

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Currently progressing through chapter 6! I'd read through this thread and watched GhostWheel go through a bit of it before starting, so I was very excited to rise to the challenge of another rom hack. :)

I hope to give a more detailed opinion of it overall once I've completed more. But for now what I can say is so far I definitely feel that it's polishing to the point where the game's difficulty is not to be taken lightly, maps often look ridiculous and neigh unclearable, but are definitely within the realm of "clearable" especially once mistakes are made and re-tried. You are "forced' to use nearly all the units at your disposal, but it's not suffocating, rather you're glad to pick up and attack with any unit you are able. Magic feels fairly "broken" at the moment, I feel it was fair to have that bishop be the challenge to obtain another tome. 

I'm still rather curious to know what was in the villages to the southwest I was unable to get on that one chapter (the second I think, with the armory?) and might try to go back and see how difficult it would be to try to clear+purchase weapons+save those southern villages?

Chapter 3 felt like it did rely on quite a bit of luck. The run I had where Ben did enough damage to 1-cycle some of the shamans really helped versus the ones where I was unlucky and Inka and or Ben got hit multiple times without kills. That being said you created the level very well I'd say, to where if you try your best to safely plough through the units standing initially in your party's way, you will make it in time with /someone/. I was scratching my head about where the silly girl could've dropped the chest key, happened to place Florimel where I did while making my way over and found it. Wasn't in an unreasonable place. 

All in all it feels like you made the maps very well matched to your current party/units' levels and it feels rewarding to clear each one. Well done! I can't wait to keep playing. ^^ My last broadcast was cut short due to computer issues, but if you'd like to stop by and giggle at how poorly I struggle with my tactics I'd be very happy~

I streamed from Chapter 1 to partway through 6, and plan to go as far as I can.

https://www.twitch.tv/sayuha

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@Sincronicity: Thanks for playing! I watched some of your playthrough, and I plan to watch the rest later tonight. I'm glad you liked it for the most part. From your comments in this post and in the video, it seems like your experience was mostly in line with my intent when creating this thing, which is good to hear.

I think the biggest problem I really face is making things like Ben+Inka and NPC related things more consistent. The problem is if I back off they usually just win, so there's no pressure, but if I put the gas on more they just die. I'm thinking about how to improve these kind of things.

I haven't gotten to that point in the stream yet, but in ch4, going for the southwest village is... ambitious. It contains a Wo Dao. I'm thinking of making it give 2 of them, one for each twin, since they're the only units you have at this point that can use it. Either way, hopefully making an extremely difficult goal is OK for a side goal like a village.

From some things, (like the castle placement in ch2), it looks like you're using an older patch. The one up here now has more content and some issues fixed. Your saves should work with it, but check to make sure people's stats don't bug out.

Look forward to see what you think of the rest of it!

 

@Crystoffar: 

I am aware of both of those and they're on the to-do list.

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On 2/3/2017 at 10:33 AM, Galap said:

@Sincronicity: Thanks for playing! I watched some of your playthrough, and I plan to watch the rest later tonight. I'm glad you liked it for the most part. From your comments in this post and in the video, it seems like your experience was mostly in line with my intent when creating this thing, which is good to hear.

I think the biggest problem I really face is making things like Ben+Inka and NPC related things more consistent. The problem is if I back off they usually just win, so there's no pressure, but if I put the gas on more they just die. I'm thinking about how to improve these kind of things.

I haven't gotten to that point in the stream yet, but in ch4, going for the southwest village is... ambitious. It contains a Wo Dao. I'm thinking of making it give 2 of them, one for each twin, since they're the only units you have at this point that can use it. Either way, hopefully making an extremely difficult goal is OK for a side goal like a village.

From some things, (like the castle placement in ch2), it looks like you're using an older patch. The one up here now has more content and some issues fixed. Your saves should work with it, but check to make sure people's stats don't bug out.

Look forward to see what you think of the rest of it!

Ahh okay, I thought so! Glad to hear for the most part I'm getting the experience you intended! :D

I completely understand. It's a very delicate balance, and really the only thing you can do now is try to make it more consistent since you know that the pressure you were intending for is clearable and there. You got this!

And oh GEEZ NO WAY D8 A Wo Dao...man that's...awwwww okay, I'll try sending someone down there someday. ;  ;

Oh no, an older patch really? Darn, that was the one that was pinned in GhostWheel's Discord so I was just using that one. >< I've had some difficulties with save files before with th VirtualBoy when switching patches/files and whatnot, so I'll probably just finish the run with the older patch and then get the newer one when I've reached the current end. :) Thanks for letting me know!

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  • 3 years later...

@Pandan

Ah, glad to see interest in this again! I've updated the first post with a new patch. I've been working on it on and off, and now there's a lot more material and  polish in earlier chapters. Now is as good a time as any to publish the newest version I guess. I have updated the OP to reflect this. 

Let me know what you think!

Edited by Galap
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