MarkyJoe1990

Aaaaaand part 1 is up!

Naaah. It hasn't caused any issues. Yet. I haven't uploaded it, so I don't know for sure that it will get content-ID'd by youtube.

Here's a little tip for future reference. As far as I'm concerned, they only care about the original version of the song. If it's some kind of midi or remix, they usually don't care. So uh. Yeah. Also I think if I alter the pitch of the video just enough, it bypasses the youtube copyright algorithm or something, but I'm not sure I wanna resort to that. I also don't wanna remove the music because I take note of it and comment about it here and there. Without the right music, the context of the jokes are lost. So... worst case scenario, I'm just gonna suck it up and let this video go unmonetized.

Oh, actually, if there is one thing I should mention... To those using FEXP and FEXNA, please do not put copyrighted music in your games. This one has some, and I'm worried it'll get blocked by youtube. Only one way to find out. If it gets blocked, I'll edit out the music... or get rid of the audio. Not sure what.

That would certainly be nice. I'm close to beating Old Fire Mumblem, which was 6/7 chapters long. We're already at 6 if you count the interlude... ... And discount that the last three aren't finished yet.

Finally got around to playing Avraxas's submission. So far, so good. Gonna edit the footage I have so far and upload it ASAP. Shouldn't take long.

Progress update: Episode 2: Gameplay is complete. I just need to finish the last ~10% of the cutscenes Episode 3 Gameplay is complete, but I haven't written any cutscenes yet. Episode 4: Nothing is complete, except for a map that I might use for it, and I'm confident on how I want the chapter to play. Episode 5: It's a little hazy from here, but it'll most likely be the same situation as Episode 4. Chances are, since Episode 3's the end of the first story arc, I'm gonna release the next patch once it's completely done, then I'll release the next patch when the second story arc is over. These will take a while, but not NEARLY as long as it was taking me before. The difference between then and now is that I now know how I want the overarching story to begin and end, and I feel a lot more inspired to design chapters. So yeah. I guess look forward or something. I feel more confident that I can finish this hack.

I plan for it to play for both ally and enemy phase, kinda like how Unveil The Mystery did in The Corruption Of Roy part 1.

*cough*

Here's a little fun fact for ya, Avraxas. Since your submission got the least votes back when I did that strawpoll thing, and because of how unknown you are, I considered playing your submission instead of MrNight's Moneyfest. However, MrNight is a very persuasive man, and that is why I did his instead. I am quite excited to see what yours is like, actually. I've been having this unexplainable hunch that it will be good. famous last words Also yeah. Titanwood was amazing. Trapped In Painful Places in general had some pretty great ideas.

And here's that bonus content I promised from Title Here. It's scrapped post-production commentary done with Mari. It was scrapped because I didn't give people enough details about how the chapter works, but was too funny to simply throw away.

Alright, how about I make it up to ya then. Yours is next. EDIT: I mean after Avraxas

So. Question. Who wants me to play their submission next? FIRST COME FIRST SERVE.

Alright, so in all seriousness... only 10 submissions left. We've reached the same number of submissions as Ragefest III (Sans the DQs of Ragefest III) and I can safely say that - on average - Ragefest IV has been a better contest. It's also managed to piss me off WAY more than any other Ragefest on average. >_< I should probably mention that while all of these submissions have pissed me off to some degree, none of them have been disqualified (I went back and played Alusq's submission and proved it was almost entirely RNG proof, and beat it without savestates. Might record the run and remove the current [Part 2] of it cause... man, I don't like that video.) I feel like I have more stuff to say... hm... I guess I forgot. Oh well. BUTT ROCK

Part 3 is up. I'm also gonna be uploading an outtake version of part 3 that I did with Mari, which is a lot more funny, but doesn't tell you all the info you need to know about the chapter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq5IXxRxjwI

This is incorrect. While robes can keep you warm from cold, they also keep you cool in places like the dessert (hence why robes are worn in the dessert like in middle eastern countries). Same with hair. In fact, that is one of hair's main functions. EDIT: Spoke it over with Ghast over skype. I'll concede that her hair is not beneficial, but it's not detrimental either. I'm not sure I understand. How do you know that's what Reisen wants me to think? >.> Apparently, sparing him would allow him to help you in the theoretical part 3/4 that didn't get made.

Oh... That would only work if it was ever established that Sophia/Reisen's source of power was her hair, but that's not the case. Practically speaking, I believe the entire reason Sophia's hair is so long in the first place is because she lives in the dessert, and hair absorbs heat and sunlight really well. That, and the dev team had to give her something that makes her stand out. >_> As for Reisen... I have a head canon reason that she grew it out as a middle finger to the Lunar Capital and its (again, head canon) rules of only letting its moon rabbits have short, easy to manage hair. The Capital is heavily based on ancient japan, so extremely long hair would be a symbol of high class/nobility, and moon rabbits are more or less slaves there. It helps that Reisen, the only known moon rabit refugee from the Lunar Capital, is also coincidentally the only known moon rabbit with such long flowing hair.

And now I just need to do the post-production commentary for part 3... Sophia being powerless is not uncharacteristic. OH DAMN. ZING. ... Also, I think you meant Reisen's, right? =X Also, what's the Samson plot device?

Video's up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsaLyOZkzmQ

Just dropping in to let you all know that I'm editing part 2 today. I might also do part 3, which shouldn't take nearly as long since it's a single, clean run of the chapter.

Well that's the thing. Because of the way Fire Emblem is, You can have a very well thought out submission be completely ruined by a single small variable. Hell, if you were to fine tune a submission to require a very specific strategy to work, it can be utterly ruined by a single point of speed preventing you from 1RKOing an enemy you need to 1RKO. That's kind of what happened here. You can tell that this submission uses the Corruption Of Roy/F. EXE approach to design. I think the difference is that CoR had Iron Runes and way more leeway, and F. EXE completely removed randomness. Ah, speaking of which, the authors told me that they used The Corruption Of Roy as their main influence, and to that I say... God dammit. I really hope it didn't influence other submissions. The designer doesn't need to go to these extremes. They just need to know the worst-case scenario enemy stats and accommodate for them. Take note that high luck = high avoid + high hit, which might be something the creator wants to avoid. There's really nothing about the submission that is explicitly bad. If you ignored the luck factor, it's at worst extremely rail roady and the dialogue is... well, I'm kinda surprised people are receiving the dialogue so well. I wasn't fond of it. As for brave-axe-whatever-person, let's just chalk it up to me being stupid. Very slight dialogue changes. The most notable being that Ciraxis is surprised by my decision of choosing Sophia over Reisen. Sophia is statistically exactly the same as Reisen, but starts two spaces right of her. The only benefit to choosing Sophia is that you get to skip the opening cutscene, since it defaults to her if you skip the decision. It's one of the main points I look at when judging the writing as manipulative, because the characters get almost no screen time to make me organically care for them, and hinges on the assumption that I will be emotionally invested simply because "Oh no, Reisen and Sophia are in danger." Thing is... If Reisen doesn't act and feel like Reisen, I can mentally separate the pixels from the emotional attachment I have to her.

The only unit with 100+% growths is Reisen/Sophia, and it's her HP growth. Everyone else has high growths, but yeah, in theory, nothing is truly guarenteed. Marc has a 65% magic growth, and he needs at 11 procs minimum to kill Ciraxis in 2 rounds with Elfire (Ciraxis has 10 res +5 due to throne bonus, and 80 HP, plus the healing factor giving him 8 HP each turn, which means Marc has to have at least 37 attack). Marc has 15 levels to get those 11 procs. You can use the energy ring you get later on if he only got 9 or 10. If he fails to get the neccesary procs, you have to use Reisen/Sophia (0% Luck growth, which means 8% crit from Ciraxis) to kill Ciraxis since no one else can damage him nearly enough except maybe Jimbob's unreliable ~55% hit w/ Hammer, and the enemy reinforcements (triggered by stepping on a tile in Ciraxis's immediate range) force you to clear the chapter right then and there. It's uh... I mean, I got pretty lucky, all things considered, but yeah... I guess I'll let that speak for itself.

The stats do go beyond the creator's intents by 1 one or points. Because he fine tuned the stats down to the T, this is enough that it completely invalidated his winning strategy when he went back to play it again. He confirmed this to me. This is a perfect example that even the smallest detail can have extreme consequences. This goes on for the entire chapter as well. No matter how good your strategy is, you are very likely to get screwed over at some point due to the RNG, which is against the rules and, even more annoyingly, could have been avoided entirely. I checked the weapon stats. The creators gave some weapons perfect hit rates, but it didn't cross their mind to remove that unavoidable +5 crit from the spear, or the +8 crit from shine. I also want to point out that without animations, and with speed running tools, the resulting footage was thirty minutes. That's more than three times longer than the other submissions I speed run. Now imagine how long it takes playing at normal speed. All those crit chances, all those unexpected movements, all that length, as well as the fact that the submission actually demands you play it fast due to an optional boss with super high stats showing up, build up to make this submission unplayable, and any challenge it had completely unfulfilling. And that bit about crits being a fact of life... what does that even mean? You can't excuse poor gameplay with "that's life", especially when they could have - and should have - fixed it and made it not a fact of life. Ragefest has a "no excessive luck" rule for a reason.

For this segment, most of the stuff I cut out was me failing constantly at the first segment, complaining because I was having zero fun, and then saying I'm gonna take a break because I'm not making progress. None of it was worth watching. They were prepared for me to not like it, so they listened to my advice and said they'd heed it for the future. Eh... you're welcome. I'm glad some people can enjoy the footage, even if I don't. Sorry for all the issues. I did the best I could. The video took me, like, 8 hours to finish...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iajLUHlaEzs ... *sigh* So... I think because of prior events, I've been scared to be honest with my opinions when they are harsh, but as much as I have tried and tried, I simply could not bring myself to like this submission. I want to make it clear though that I think the people behind this submission are very talented, and if not for its faults, this could have easily been a great submission. The art looks nice, and the enemy positioning was very carefully thought out, and there are some creative ideas here and there. It's just that this otherwise fair map is ruined by the fact that any effort you put forth can be negated by circumstances out of your control, such as stray critical hits whose chances build up due to the length of the chapter, enemies moving into spots that change how you play each turn even with proper planning, and the fact that even the intended strategy requires the enemies to have specific stats for it to even work. That, and I find the writing forced, forgettable, and kind of manipulative with the whole choice thing at the beginning that doesn't change much of anything. I still managed to beat it in under three save states in an offscreen run, but I was really hoping to feel the full satisfaction of conquering this beast without any.