Divine Attrition: An FE7 Hack (concept)

[Mistweaver]

Hey all! This is my first post on the forums, though I've been a lurker for years now. I've played through most of the U.S. released Fire Emblem games, as well as many of the Rom Hacks here, but I've wanted to make a hack for a long time now that highlighted Fire Emblem's medieval setting to its fullest extent. This hack will feature a strong story concerning conflicts between the different noble houses and lands, but still incorporate the spirit of Fire Emblem games. 

 

While this is still in the conceptual stages, the idea is that it will include:
- 20 something chapters, telling a rich story within the context of the world.

- Custom Classes (and omissions). I want this to be a very character driven story, and thus some generally playable classes may not be represented as it would be difficult to explain their role. For instance, I don't foresee there being a playable shaman/druid, and there won't be any heavy armored female characters. I will try to incorporate some custom classes. I also want to make some other class changes seen in more recent FE's, such as reducing the movement of all non-cavalier/paladin mounted units by 1. 

- New maps

- New weapons, including those unavailable on normal GBA FE's (hello Levin Sword).

- Custom mugs and new characters (previews shown below). I really hope that I can give my characters some real creative depth. For instance, your first healer will be a masochistic priest who looks like a thug, and the only pegasus knight you receive is a male. The goal is to have it so each playable character contributes in some way, however small, to the overall narrative of the story and not just feel like a throw-in.

Plot:
Long ago, the continent of Ishtaria was beset by constant war and fighting, until one day the Goddess Levinia descended from the heavens and put an end to the bloodshed. She entrusted a portion of her power to mankind through a vassal that would be known as the Apostle. The Apostle held immeasurable power and would be known as the voice of Levinia herself.  The Apostle would be reincarnated into a new vassal upon the death of a previous one, and this cycle would repeat until the day Levinia herself came down and delivered salvation upon Ishtaria. The first Apostle, Octavius, founded the Holy Empire of Orvel which would rule over the continent for centuries to come, until the War of Three Kings, which separated the continent into four Kingdoms: Orvel, The Marshlands, Merelden, and the Desert Kingdom of Tanaris. The Marshlands were subject to a bloody civil war that ended with the marriage of Lady Beatrice of House Stormholdt and Lord Gabriel of House McTyiere. Together, they had two children, Lord Markeith and Lady Christana, before Lady Beatrice passed away from illness.

The story follows Christana and Kellan, Gabriel's bastard son. While Kellan grew up separately from the lordly siblings, the three were close and often played together until Markeith's assassination some years prior. Kellan is accompanied by his longtime friends Colette, Jory, and Macveil.

Preview:
I've attached a preview of the portraits I've made below. The numbers denote playable characters in the order they are recruited. All others are NPCs, enemy characters, or characters I haven't decided if they are to be recruited yet. 

Spoiler

 

 

I've wanted to make this hack for a long time now, and I really hope I can show you guys some progress in the coming months. Please, let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback, any would be super appreciated.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2018 by Mistweaver

[Jotari]

I hope your Pegasus Knight has something more going for him than just being male, as Tsubaki has ruined that gimmick forever.

How do you plan to implement the Levin Sword? Going to try and split Str and Mag? Because the Light Brand is already there for plain old attacking RES.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Jotari

[Mistweaver]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

I hope your Pegasus Knight has something more going for him than just being male, as Tsubaki has ruined that gimmick forever.

How do you plan to implement the Levin Sword? Going to try and split Str and Mag? Because the Light Brand is already there for plain old attacking RES.

 

I'll be honest, I actually completely forgot about him. I've actually never played Birthright, only Conquest and Revelations (and I completely ignored him on Revelations). But yeah, I mean hopefully none of my characters feel like a gimmick.

And I may try to split str/mag, but again this is still in its conceptual stages and I'd rather not get overly ambitious. I was just listing the Levin sword as a weapon I was likely to try to implement, as well as like a physical ranged sword, I.E. dagger. I know the light brand is a thing, but more choices never hurt anyone haha. 

[Von Ithipathachai]

The face colors don't look very good.  How did you end up with them?

Was it some kind of special program?  There's a hack here called Heaven's Bloom that did that and it seems to have a similar problem.

[Mistweaver]

14 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

The face colors don't look very good.  How did you end up with them?

Was it some kind of special program?  There's a hack here called Heaven's Bloom that did that and it seems to have a similar problem.

This is what I used (btw I'm not sure if he has a Serenes account, but huge shoutout to TheFlyingMinotaur for this.) It's a little difficult to get the palettes perfect since every color under the spectrum is there, but could you be more specific about what's wrong with the face colors? 

[Von Ithipathachai]

8 minutes ago, Mistweaver said:

It's a little difficult to get the palettes perfect since every color under the spectrum is there, but could you be more specific about what's wrong with the face colors? 

They look pale, weirdly shaded, and just kind of unnatural compared to those of the original portraits used to make them.

I think I'd be better of just pulling skin tones from the original, unedited FE7 portraits and replacing what I see up here with those.

[Mistweaver]

4 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

They look pale, weirdly shaded, and just kind of unnatural compared to those of the original portraits used to make them.

I think I'd be better of just pulling skin tones from the original, unedited FE7 portraits and replacing what I see up here with those.

Hmm, alright. I'll look into fixing some of them. Thanks for the feedback!

[Von Ithipathachai]

6 minutes ago, Mistweaver said:

Hmm, alright. I'll look into fixing some of them. Thanks for the feedback!

That said, I am playing around with this a bit and I will admit that everything else about it is pretty impressive.  I might find it helpful myself, given I edit the skin tones and add other little things like body accessories manually.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Von Ithipathachai

[Fortron]

this looks cool i would help you or something but i have no hacking experience but i do recommend fe builder

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, Mistweaver said:

I'll be honest, I actually completely forgot about him. I've actually never played Birthright, only Conquest and Revelations (and I completely ignored him on Revelations). But yeah, I mean hopefully none of my characters feel like a gimmick.

And I may try to split str/mag, but again this is still in its conceptual stages and I'd rather not get overly ambitious. I was just listing the Levin sword as a weapon I was likely to try to implement, as well as like a physical ranged sword, I.E. dagger. I know the light brand is a thing, but more choices never hurt anyone haha. 

More choices are good, but they should be useful choices with gameplay in mind more than aesthetic. Don't throw the Levin Sword in just because it's cool. Make it fulfill a niche in the g gameplay that the Light Brand doesn't. As far as other potential weapons go, I've put the FIresweep Sword from heroes into my current FE6 balance hack and it's pretty cool. Just set the item to be uncounterable with the same variable as siege tomes.