TheNiddo

Ya there used to be another patching program for Mac, but the guy took it down. I've yet to find another one, and I figured out a while ago there is just no way to patch a file twice with Multipatch. Despite its name its a one and done deal as far as I can tell. Was trying to put both a translation and balance patch on FE6 and just would never work. Could only get one or the other on there, never both and I was the only one with that problem. Apparently the patched ROM looks different to Multipatch and doesn't recognize it as something it can patch.

Heh. Unless you're on a Mac. On Mac only MultiPatch works for patching ROMs and it won't let you patch over a file you've already patched. I'm getting very good at the first two chapters now! lol.

Welp. At least I was only on stage 3 or 4.

Interesting. I don't know how much Jace is used by most people with Andrei having a rather noticeable level lead and a unique weapon. I always saw him more as a "Replacement Andrei if he got RNG screwed" character than anything else. But I'm aiming to give him a shot this playthrough so we'll see how it looks. Gemma I've never had any luck with but I don't see a skill reduction really hurting her much so eh. Very happy that Drake gets to be more consistent though. Edward should hopefully be good between more strength and more items to steal. Approaching chapter 6. I'm in final exam weeks atm so going a lot slower than normal for a playthrough.

Oh, rebalancing to Drake, Gemma, and Jace? I knew about Edward, but not about those three. What kind of changes did they get? (Very happy to hear that Drake is buffed hopefully. I like my knights.)

Found this after the first chapter: http://imgur.com/5RNXwmY Whoops!

Silly thing to point out: The start of the Read Me file says its version 1.3.1 still. I'll give it a whirl now though. EDIT: So far I'm liking most of the portraits. Josie though... you can see the corner of her eye blinking underneath the scar. She also seems to have a bit of a masculine face when seen in game and not just in a portrait topic. I mean she had a bit of one before so if that was intentional it succeeded. Its just more obvious/jarring at first now. I like the sounds of more stealable items. Helps to make the thief more useful in the long run.

Well if I'm feeling particularly crazy I might try my hand at writing a story for this even though stories are probably are a heavy disadvantage here (as that's the only media I have any talent at, lol). Is there a particular format you'd prefer written submissions to be submitted in? Google Docs, attaching a file in a PM, hosted to some other site? Don't know what would be easiest for you in terms of putting it up for voting later.

It certainly does allow for more potential freedom. I'm not too keen about having the two doors to the centre path locked though: that could potentially really slow somebody down in the worst case scenario of no keys + no thief. That's a long snaking path around it to the left. Maybe remove the left door out of those two, keep the right on there so you have to burn a key/lockpick if you want your thief to be able to move around quicker.

The horse is no longer red! Rejoice! I always thought it looked so weird but assumed it was due to colour count limitations + if Val was named after the horse it kinda sorta fit if it was red. Still. Much better.

My bad, saw the def and luck numbers as def and res numbers. Edward changes sounds good, makes for a good comparison to Nala. Somewhat looking forwards to the profile image changes. Some of them certainly needed work like Katarina, but I'm going to miss Andrei's mug. Liked that one for w/e reason.

Nope, it was Normal Mode. Had 14 or 15 Strength and Gemma S Support. I mean after 4 hits the Paladin had 1 HP but still. Kinda frustrating. Particularly since his crit rate was so high and he just refused to crit. I'm not expecting him to be great on the front lines either just... not feeling like deadweight because you decided to go after one of his supports that playthrough. idk maybe aim to make it on average that he should be juuuust capping strength at level 20/20? Right now at level 20/20 he should be at either 18 or 19 strength. Maybe like 1 more starting strength and an additional point of strength during promotion? Honestly besides Linda (who's already gotten a crit boost so I don't think there is much you can do with her and she's at least salvageable to me), none of the other characters have really stood out as bad to me. Drake can be underwhelming but he's always going to be useful for a little while. Layla has a fairly clear roll as back up Mage incase Alicia or Ash are turning out terrible and even beyond that she's certainly usable because magic is always helpful. Also I just noticed a mistake in the growth rate charts: Vincent's Res numbers are identical to his Def numbers once he promotes on the chart, but his Res growth is 10% less. Whoops!

If you're doing another largish patch, would you be up for doing additional character balancing as well? Poor Edward is just so bad. He had the S Rank sword in the final chapter. He had to 5SK the Paladins there. And he wasn't strength screwed. Could he like, at least get the ability to open locks/doors without lockpicks upon promotion? Maybe some bonus critical rates?

I'll be upfront: this question is strictly for my curiosity. I'm not making a hack: I don't have the time and I've never tried any bit of coding in my life before. However I did have an idea pop into my head one day and it won't leave me alone until I find out if it would be theoretically possible or not. (Not 100% sure if it belongs here or in concepts, took a stab at which place it should be). Please don't go overboard digging through programs or the like to figure it out. We'll be using FE7 as the engine for this question. Lets say I made a hack, had Lyn Mode as the way to set the stage for the setting and the Main Character. Throughout Lyn Mode the Main Character is presented with two different paths, each one with a designated Pre-Promoted unit that is that path's guidance. We'll say a Bishop and a Druid for ease sake. During the last chapter of Lyn Mode, the Main Character would be forced to pick one of the two and stay with it. Then it would be the end of Lyn Mode before the Main Character actually makes a choice. Could you make it so that Eliwood Mode was the Bishop Path and Hector Mode the Druid Path? And more importantly in this theoretical question: could you make it so that the Main Character would be a different class between those two modes? Like say in Lyn Mode they were a player created "trainee" class that couldn't promote. Could you make it so they were a Monk or a Shaman depending on the path they picked afterwards? I'd image you'd have to make it two different units as far as the game's engine is concern (Like "MC #2 and MC #3, only have them show up in their designated paths) and it would be bests for the supports if they were separated like that as well. Would you be able to have stats transfer from that Lyn Mode Main Character (MC #1 according to the game engine) to the Eliwood or Hector Mode Main Character kinda like how stats between Nils and Ninian went back and forth? Would it have to be only one of them (MC #2 lets say) with MC #3 being SOL? Thanks to anyone willing to answer my curiosity.

Ya, that's one of the things with acting in LPs: you have to not care if anyone hears you. Its kinda the same situation if you watch somebody making a video and they have a character that needs to shout something, but the actor doesn't want to wake up the neighbours and does an awkward sounding "loud whisper" instead of a shout. The audience can pick up on it right away. Gotta throw away that embarrassment, go "Screw it I'm making entertainment. Who gives a rip if somebody hears me shouting in a high pitched girly voice because Val was surprised by something suddenly?" I put myself in that sort of mindset when it comes to public speaking. I'm a very quiet person, but I got tied of group projects with presentations going poorly because my teammates couldn't do the public speaking bit. So, I just kinda forced myself to stop caring about what others may think, became animated during presentations. Don't be afraid to do some test runs of the prologue lines if you have to. Start up a new game, start recording, just speak all of the lines up until you can move on the map, stop recording, go back and listen to yourself. Maybe have some other people listen to it as well if you can, try to figure out how to improve. Just go over that particular section multiple times until you feel that you've gotten better at adding emotions and the like in your acting. Can always save the footage as an emergency "I don't have time to do another map today but I still wanna upload a video for the LP" button. I've only watched the first video so far. I'll pick my way through the other two now, see if I need to add anything here. If there is I'll edit it in, if you see no edits assume that my first post covered everything I saw there. Good luck with the LP. EDIT1: Uh... are the videos only showing up in 144p for anyone else, or is my internet just being weird? (It does that on occasion)

Alright then: - You already mentioned the voice issues in your video. Certainly something to work on. Work on the male ones first, they're more monotone than the female ones. Try to get emotion into them when you're reading the lines. - I'd recommend not doing LPs while sick. While obviously you want to push through it, that first video where you had your cough and all are people's first impressions of your LP and its quality level. Fair or not, that's going to be the video everyone judges when it comes to deciding if its worth their time to continue watching or not. If you do want to continue, I'd recommend getting a mute switch for your mic. Keep your cough out of the way as much as possible while you're in the middle of talking about something. The moment you finish hit the mute switch, quickly cough while still doing something minor on screen, then turn off the mute switch again. Its a small change, but then us as the viewer don't hear you coughing. If done really well we might not even realize that you're sick or that you had to constantly mute for brief moments. - You're doing a quasi blind playthrough which makes this a bit more tricky, but LPs are more interesting when you can provide information about the game/hack throughout the entire LP. You started off a little bit like that: at the start of the video you mentioned how this hack came out of nowhere. Expanding on that during that episode would have been a good idea: explain more to your audience how surprising it is that this hack just suddenly appeared completed. Point out how when it comes to completely different stories (that are still trying to be serious and not 4 da lulz) and not just rebalancing hacks, really only The Last Promise and EN exist in a completed or mostly completed form. You can still find bits of information to give out: you could go over the changes Andrei and his weapon have gone through once you pick up his unique weapon for example. - Again rather tricky when you're doing a blind playthrough, but something I personally enjoy in FE or FE Hack LPs is the commentator's opinion on playable characters as they pop up. Its always interesting to hear them go on like "Well, we're recruited so-and-so now. They're kinda strange for a swordsman, less speed and more defence. I haven't had much luck with them, in my previous playthroughs they always got speed screwed on top of their lower speed growth rate and their better defence couldn't make up the difference. They ended up being a swordsman who tried to tank without enough defence, and couldn't double reliably." Even if you can't do that as well, you can still talk about recruitable characters once you have them, at least go over their base stats and your first impressions of them. Can also look up their growth rates ahead of time so you can comment on them a bit in the video as well. Sacred Blaze's opinion on each character could also be a very interesting bit of information to give the audience. Give the viewer something to chew on, just don't quote it word for word. People can tell when you're doing that, just paraphrase it. So unlike the bit of dialogue I made up before, yours would be more like "Well now we have Andrei. Compared to Val he obviously has more strength but overall they're looking rather similar. This will likely change overtime, his growths lean more towards HP, and Strength with okay Speed, Skill, and Defence while Val is more about Speed and Skill with okay HP, Strength, and Defence. His Con is a bit on the high side as well which is nice, his speed growth is right in that spot where its easy for him to be slightly under average and then have to worry about not doubling anything. Higher Con means he can use those better swords without a speed penalty on top of that." - Its also interesting to hear the commentator's opinion on character personalities. You did that a bit with Linda which is nice. To kinda try to combine this point with my previous one: you're not just showing us the game. You're taking us both into its world, and your experiences within that world. You can still do that in a blind playthrough; give us your honest reaction to things as they happen. If you don't play ahead at all and let the maps truly surprise you later on, I can assure you you'll have some interesting reactions to thing. Though I'd recommend save states for obvious reasons. Try to avoid using them whenever possible, but you want them when you need them. Make sure you plan to get all chests as well! People want to know whats in them. Same with support convos, though that won't happen until Ash Mode (should probably mention that in your videos: that what you're in is basically Lyn Mode atm). --- Also uh, I found out that the anti-arrow item thingy doesn't protect against the anti-armour bow. It still deals effective damage against flies, wheeeeee

@ Sacred Blade: are you submitting this for the FEE3 thingy? I don't see it listed in the OP over there, but it might be cool to have your hack shown off in there. @ Gryphon: Do you mind feedback? Do you rather it be here, by PM, in the youtube comment section?

Gotta say my second playthrough has been rather amusing so far. -Andrei is still mad at me for trash talking him last time and decided he wanted to be strength and speed blessed -Val only had Luck and HP in double digits at rank 10 (That's speed about 4 points below average, aka she got speed in 9 level ups once) -Keiran has been absolutely terrible and barely has enough speed to avoid being doubled. -Katarina pretty much spent all of Val mode getting 5 or 6 stats every level up. Only the last level up had defence and only half of the time did she hit 6 and got to have HP. -Drake got Strength, Speed, and Defence all in his first level up, and continues to get at least 5 stat ups every time (but no more speed yet) Hit rate of 70-85% for me might as well be 50%. That range just does not like me. That chapter where you get Andrei's special sword? Ya I kept missing in that range so badly I got trapped by the reinforcements and had to hide in the treasure room. With an enemy thief who was surprisingly chill and never attacked me. Instead kept dodging 80% hit rate arrows from Linda as I waited for the two prepromotes to come down and bail me out. Also, axe magnetism is alive and well! Particularly one legendary hand axe that kept hitting my guys with a 27% hit rate.

Well, I finished the game now. [spoiler=General Breakdown] Fairly fun for the most part. I think my RNGscrewed units heard me complaining, they all decided they wanted to be getting good level ups in the 3rd last and 2nd last chapters. Except Hawke, who was never anything more than strength: the character. Got a few points of speed and def at least. Plot was pretty solid overall, no serious complaints. I really thought that having an A-Support with Alicia would save Ash. I've read through the topic and saw why that isn't the case. Kinda sucks. I was expecting her to find his spirt during her two months of travel and at least figured out a way to get him able to speak to everyone, with their ending suggesting that she would continue to try to find a way to get him back to life. Would be a nice reward for going for the canon pairing. Supports... they were very much hit or miss to me. I liked Ash/Alicia's, and Skye/Nala's. Val/Kerian was just... weird. Seemed platonic, then started building up to being otherwise particularly during the A rank, and then it went right back to platonic. Val ended up looking rather... clingy/desperate I guess during the A support? idk, just really felt off. Em and Kenrick just was kinda there, didn't care either way. Got a chuckle out of Alyssa and Drake. Surprised nobody had anything to say to Legato when he came back in the final chapter. I kinda feel like Isaac and Kane, along with Ordanze and Laraya kinda got left behind by the plot. These are two countries lending troops to Ash and Val's cause. Would have been nice if at least Isaac and Laraya chimed in every now and then to remind us that hey, they were rulers helping us out. I do have to kinda agree that the last battle was anti-climatic. I was expecting the final boss to have a second form. [spoiler=Silly nickpicky suggestions] Halbringers. You have the file in the game for Em. I would have loved to see a few of them as enemies. Maybe have them blocking the choke points to Bran and Shel, set to "do not move" mode with some Rangers behind them also set to that mode. Make them have super high stats and ranged weapons, make them be the "mini-bosses" for those two key chapters. Continuing my favouritism towards Andrei: his promoted class type should have been Hector's! Same weapon variety as Heroes, wouldn't need to change the stat caps or anything like that. You already have several lord animations in there, why skip the coolest one? D: Val thought that some people might not know who she was, despite her rebellion being heard of all over and her being the one who invited them to her castle? Nerves I guess! Off to start a second playthrough on a fresh patch. Which means no Alicia Mode for me yet. *kicks Multipatch*

*sigh* Mutlipatch doesn't seem to let you repatch a file once it has already been patched. And as far as I'm aware that's the only option Macs have for patching. I'll try out the newest version on a fresh file once I finish this current playthrough. No Alicia mode for me yet.

Cool. Will you be able to patch over your current playthrough no problems, or will it have to be a fresh copy?

Well, that's not particularly obvious. Particularly when you're playing late at night without any lights on except for the game on TV in front of you, and the computer screen dialled down to low brightness.

So, I've ran into a small problem near the end of the game.

Mine was only level 14 by Chapter 8, and she was on healing duty quite a bit. Are you guys like, healing every little scratch or something? I tend to heal once they hit 75% HP.