[The Lunatic Club [Fates]]

Had three snipers (Takumi, Mozu, and Setsuna) during my Luna BR playthrough. Also used Felicia and Jakob/Dwyer.

Enemy phase sucked, but player phase was godlike. Mages were very easy to take out.

[how hard is the hardest difficulties]

I found CQ Lunatic to be far more difficult than FEs 3-10, hard modes included.

But maybe it's because they actually allow you to play Lunatic first (unlike earlier FEs where you have to unlock the highest difficulty). You can go in completely blind without knowing anything, which will make the game a lot harder.

It's a very different kind of hard though - earlier FEs were hard because of units having high stats. CQ L has that too, but there are a lot more annoying staff effects, and enemy skills that significantly debuff important stats like def by -6. I found this to be quite overwhelming and I didn't want to spend a month going through the game so I went down to Normal.

Even on normal I still found the game to in some ways be more challenging than earlier FEs. Towards mid-late game of other FEs, even on hard modes I could always get away with sending a couple of my strongest units supporting each other to dodge, tank, and/or wipe out tons of enemies. But even on normal of this game, I could never count on my units to dodge, and aside from two-three of them I could never count on them to withstand more than a couple hits. Even my fastest units sometimes had trouble doubling enemies, leaving several of my units who weren't necessarily slow nor fast to sometimes get doubled! I even had to bench a couple units because they were too much of a liability and were slowing me down.

I've never been so excited to beat a game on its easiest difficulty lmao

To expand on Conquest being hard for different reasons - mechanics of this game are very different with supports and items, and it fundamentally changes your decision making. That's probably where I struggled the most with this game - I was making decisions that would've been great in the GBA and Console FEs but didn't work in this game and didn't realize I was playing wrong. There are also lots of gimmicks on various maps you have to deal with. Now that I'm familiar with the game tho, I have ideas on what to do for a lunatic run so I'd be able to play through that and rate its difficulty much better. I didn't find the early game to be any more or less challenging than FE6/FE10 HM.

It's challenging don't worry.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

For some reason, I thought 2's complement had a different starting point for negative numbers. I originally thought FF was supposed to be -127, and -1 would begin right after FF/2. That's why I was confused. Looks like I didn't learn it well when I was supposed to. Well now that that's been cleared up I can keep going.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

One's complement! I haven't seen that since my introduction to electrical and computer engineering course which I took 3 and a half years ago. My original guess was 2's complement, but then I knew immediately that wouldn't be right. I completely forgot about 1's complement. Thanks for the reminder.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

hacking progress has been super slow (due to schoolwork) but I'm still able to do things here and there. Something I found interesting:

In the laguz character data, in the set of four bytes which are for their transform gauge, the last two bytes are used for the transform gauge lost per tern (transformed/untransformed). For Lyre (Lire), those last two bytes read:

FB FC

So it looks like they're using some form of signed integers to do the reductions. I changed those two bytes to 0A 0A and Lyre was gaining ten transform gauge per turn, whether she was transformed or untransformed. I haven't fooled around with it enough to figure out where the negative numbers start (I'm guessing FF is -1?) . But I thought I'd note it for future reference.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

Perfect. And duh, a pointer points to an address. Silly me haha, guess I just never connected the dots. Thanks for clearing that up. Well that was successful, I was able to change Ike's Ettard skill to crit + 25! Here's some snapshots of stuff I've done:

They made thunder magic pitifully weak in this game. I always felt like this should've been the relationship between the anima magics:

Fire - Accurate and Strong

Wind - Weakest and Most Accurate

Thunder - Strongest and Least Accurate

I gave it 1 more MT than fire.

Ike with critical+25.

Oh noez, no Ettard!

Here's a list of things I've been wanting to be able to do that I can do now:

-Adjust all the playable characters' starting info (growths, stats, level, skills, etc)

-Adjust item properties

Things left for me to learn:

-Adjust exp gained per battle for the laguz

-Adjust enemies: their stats and what they are (as in taking a soldier and changing them to a sword cav).

-Adjust enemy reinforcements (when they come, where they come, and their stats)

-Adjust battle preparations and character statuses on maps: # of units allowed per map, less/additional starting positions to accommodate the # of units, which characters are required (if any), which characters have commander status per map

The things left for me to learn are way more complicated than the stuff that I just learned, which is why I decided to do all the easy stuff first :D

Once I've learned how do do all or at least most of the stuff on the list, I'll start working on my hack.

Also forgot to mention: Vincent, in chapter 3 of your tutorial, under the spoiler where you go over Florete, you made a small mistake.

00 C8 0E 5F 0F 05 2D 04 01 02 01 - Cost per use (first two bytes), Might, Accuracy, Weight, Critical, Uses, Weapon Exp, Min range, Max range, Unknown

The bytes are in the right order (since I was able to search that string and find it), but the way you labeled them is not. Weight and critical should be switched.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

I saw those actually and messed around with them, they were pretty cool. Is there any way to lock/unlock a skill slot?

Also, do you think you and/or Goldie can find RAM hacking codes that adjust the exp gain for the laguz when they're transformed/not transformed, and eliminate the exp penalty for wildheart? I was gonna do this myself by running dolphin in debug mode, but unfortunately it was way too slow. It ran at around 5 fps :x

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

Ok cool. That just made a lot of things about character skills make more sense. Now for that list of skills you posted, how do you determine what pointer value (or what set of 4 bytes) points to each of the skills?

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

Funny you talk about replacing files in real time. I actually just set that up with riivolution. It loads files on my computer through an internet connection instead of loading files on the sd/usb. It works, but there's still one big botleneck to replacing files in real time, and that all depends on when the wii loads those files into the RAM. Here's a quick example for the FE10Data.cms file.

It loads the FE10Data.cms file very early, even before the health screens that warn you to make sure you have space around you when using the wiimote! So if you choose to modify things through the FE10Data.cms file, you will unfortunately have to restart the game entirely every time you change something.

Theoretically, I could put all the FE10 files somewhere on my computer and have riivolution load all of those instead of reading off the disc. I'll do that later and report how it goes. Also a quick thing about Ike's data in the FE10Data file:

00 03 36 24 Pointer -> SID_EQ_A - Skill ID, another skill

I changed the 24 to a 25 and Ike was no longer able to equip his Ettard.

Edit: Changing the 03 and the 36 also seemed to disable his Ettard. Changing the 00 in the beginning crashed the game even before the very first screen. I guess I had the pointer point to something completely invalid haha. I'll look more into this later as well.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

Did anyone figure out how to adjust the exp for the laguz? If not, can anyone give me some pointers on how I'd go looking for that information?

Also, progress on FE10 hacking: I was able to successfully edit stat growths. Just for giggles I gave Leonardo all 100%s for his stat growths, and whatddya know, he got an all stat level up! I also decided to get my hands on a retail disc and use riivolution. I figured it'd be better to test via riivolution b/c if I do fully get my hack going, riivolution would probably be the easiest way for people to play. Wrote a really simple template for riivolution where as long as you just put the files in a folder called "FE10Hack" at the root of the SD/USB, the files will replace the ones on disc. No need to worry about putting the files in the same folder structure as on disc. Just put any of your edited files in that folder and they'll be used instead of the ones on disc. I attached the .xml that tells riivolution how to handle the data, in case you want to see how it works.

I'll eventually make my own topic, once I've figured out more stuff.

Edit: Updated the XML, just renamed a few things.

<wiidisc version="1">
<id game="RFE">

<options>
<section name="FE10 Riivolution">
<option name="File Replacements">
<choice name="Enabled">
<patch id="FE10Hack">
</patch></choice>
</option>
</section>
</options>
<patch id="FE10Hack">
<folder external="/FE10Hack" recursive="true">
</folder></patch>
</id></wiidisc>

Fire Emblem RD Hack.xml

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

I got the whole loading gamecube games from an SD card working. I have a black wii so back-ups aren't possible unless I replace the optical drive with an optical drive from the older wiis. Unfortunately it's slower than reading from the game disc. The games are stored as .isos so unfortunately no direct file access unlike sneek/uneek + DI, which keeps FE9 hacking very cumbersome with iso recompiling. Maybe someday the guys will update the program to store the games in the respective file systems so you have direct access to the files.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

Yeah it's just not worth it. Definitely wouldn't have done it otherwise. Getting this to work with FE9 is a different issue altogether though. When the Wii loads a gamecube game, it pretends that it's a gamecube and the usb ports shut themselves off, so no hard drive loading. I recall people getting really close though, then giving up because there was some conflict with memory addresses.

Now there is a way to load gamecube games off an SD card, but I haven't gotten that to work yet.

[FE10: Radiant Dawn Hacking Notes]

Started hacking FE10 actually. I come from a background of hacking Brawl, where I've changed music, characters, stages, etc. My wii is set up with UNEEK+DI, which means not only are my games stored on a hard drive, but they're stored in the exact same file system as the disk. In other words, you have direct access to all the files. And it gets better: saves are done on the hard drive, and load times compare (but don't quite match) cartridge loading times. I also don't have to deal with recompiling the ISO :P all I gotta do is plug my hard drive into my computer, drag/drop the file, then put the hard drive back into my Wii and I'm good to go!

First thing I've done so far was change the music, which was actually easy because FE10 handles music exactly the same as Brawl. So the tools I used to change the brawl music I used to change FE10 music, but I had to do a few extra nitty gritty steps. I haven't run into any issues (including loops) but I'll do some more exploring.

Also read through the whole thread and decided to answer some questions (some very old, but were never answered). This should give everyone more info:

I really want to modify Radiant Dawn, but this seems like more work than I care to do. Is it possible to hack FE similar to how the Smash Bros community hacks Brawl? They run .GCTs off an SD card through Homebrew, and have some programs that allow for really simple editing. It's a whole lot quicker and easier than going through all the crap it takes to edit FE now.

Only through Riivolution. A file patch code to use through Gecko (which a lot of Brawl hackers use) wouldn't be possible for FE10, because FE10 never uses the SD card. Unless FE10 does read the SD card and I missed that. So all you can do with gecko is use codes; you can't actually load content off an SD card through gecko.

Gecko has the advantage over riivolution that it works with back-ups and games stored on a USB drive, whereas riivolution only works with retail discs. I prefer loading off the usb drive because load times are significantly faster and I don't have to worry about discs getting scratched.

Is it possible at all to import different 3D models and put it new battle animations?

All of it is theoretically possible, but that just requires more knowledge about FE10 than anyone has at the moment. If FE10 handles all that data like Brawl does, then with the tools we have now, yes, but with exceptions. Long story short, the models and animations should not be bigger than the originals (although there are cases where that's ok too!), and they have to replace old animations.

Also, just for future reference I plan on doing my own hack of FE10 where all the unfairly weak characters (like Astrid) are beefed up, and one of the difficulty levels is changed to work like this:

-Easy mode exp.

-More characters per map.

-Hard mode reinforcements.

-Enemies have at least hard mode stats, and in many cases they will be stronger to offset having the easy mode exp and more characters.

Some of the stuff for my hack is already very much possible thanks to work people have done in this thread, mainly the easy mode exp and the buffing up. The others will be a challenge to figure out.

Looking forward to working with you guys. I would love to have this game to at least the same level of hacking as Brawl.

I've done away with most of my social life for the last two-three months and plan on continuing at least for the next 6-8 months, so I should have the time to figure some stuff out. I'm already used to sacrificing my social life so this won't be a big deal. I mean I'm not sacrificing my social life specifically to hack FE10, but I'll have time.

[Sup]

Yo.

Mathematics because it gives us (at least, from what I can tell), a much more educated view on the world and the laws by which it operates. I'm especially interested in some disciplines of applied mathematics, such as game theory.

Your reason for liking math absolutely demands that you take physics class. Mathematics was developed by physicists trying to solve real world problems. I've found applications for almost every single math concept I've learned in physics that applies to every day life. It's actually kind of scary but awesome at the same time. Take my word for it.

[Hey everyone]

Thanks. Your avatar is full of win, btw ^^

[I never formally introduced myself]

I remember you Chainy! Good to see you again. I was Fei Long at FESS if you don't recognize this account name.

[Hey everyone]

Hey everyone!

Anyone who was on FESS might remember me. I was a vet there and while my account name was this, I went by Fei Long.

Just due to stuff happening in life I kind of disappeared from those forums, and then recently I wondered how everyone was doing. I went to the most recent FESS, frowned that the place closed down, but was pretty happy to read that people have been relocating here.

I don't really play fire emblem anymore because I don't have the systems the games come out on, but I've had so much playtime with the SNES and GBA ones that they've become a permanent part of me. So naturally I want to be around people who have similar feelings. I've just gotta have a place to go to thats filled with fire emblem lovers, you know?

The most relevant you thing you should know about me though is that I am a ROM hacker. In fact I got into ROM hacking 5-6 years ago when I was at FESS. I stopped because I wasn't interested in devoting the necessary time. Recently though, after taking a class on hardware design and computer architecture and learning ASM, my interest in ROM hacking has shoot through the roof. If youre curious about the ASM I learned, I learned MIPS, which is the ASM that the processors in the N64, GCN, PSX, PS2 and PSP use. So theoretically I can program all of those systems :D If you're curious about what major I'm in which would force me to take that class like that, I'm in electrical engineering.

I am fully devoted to learning how to hack the SNES. I've spent the last few days learning its ASM and its been going good. I actually wouldn't mind doing a hack for the SNES FEs somewhere down the road, but I am currently working on revamping Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, because the Power Rangers series actually needs a good game.

Anyway, its great to be back on a board full of fire emblem people. Looking forward to meeting some new fans of the games and reconnecting with old friends.