Polinym

While the idea of a Geneaology movie is fantastic on paper, in practice it's virtually impossible. You'd have to have Kaga himself or someone extremely dedicated to being faithful to recreate the story the right way, none of which Intelligent Systems seems to have at the moment. Moreover, I don't want the Disney/Lucasfilm of today getting anywhere near it after what they've done to other beloved franchises. At least, though, a film studio might be able to get actually good voice actors for the characters though. 🙂

The AI byte is actually the enemy's first usability slot, which is determined by the "AI Byte" passed when the enemies are added onto the map. Editing AI is easiest when you edit it in the ROM where enemy units load from, which starts at 0x20AE5. Change the AI Byte for the enemy, then load up the chapter and the unit will have the new AI. Enemy units are structured in the ROM as follows: 0 = Name 1 = Class 2 = Level (Unit stats are scaled by this) 3 = Equipped Weapon 4 = Dropped Item 5 = Y Position 6 = X Position 7 = AI Byte 8 = Spawn Turn (As a reinforcement unit) 9 = Destination Y (Used by AI) 10 = Destination X (Used by AI) Some of the AI values I've noted are: 0x1d = Guard, attack when enemy in range, move to Destination X and Y if they're not (0, 0) 0x38 = Thief, find shortest path to villages and loot them 0x4 = Follow Mars, don't attack (Minerva) 0x35 = Charge forth and attack like Sigurd 0x2e = Healer AI, heal allies, run from enemies 0x50 = Cuddle? Get close to enemies but don't attack

I wrote up a quick guide to the structure of units as unit_guide.txt. I also threw in the item/name/class lists from Darmann's note, with some updates to the names. Also, if you add a cheat in FCEUX to $7674, it acts as a "chapter warp" code if you need to change locations for some reason. The player and enemy unit stacks stay in the same location in RAM for every chapter. classes.txt items.txt names.txt unit_guide.txt

Which English patch you use probably won't matter. I know mine is fine, and I'm pretty sure any of the other ones haven't messed with unit data. As an overview, units in FE1 are represented as a set of 27 / 0x1b bytes, with each byte representing a property of the unit. For example, the first three bytes are Name, Class, and Level. All the units of an army are arranged one after the other somewhere in RAM. The stack of units ends with a "unit" whose name is 0x00 (the first byte being 0x00). The player unit stack begins at $6a90 in RAM (also called NES Memory by FCEUX), and the enemy army begins at $7008. In the below image I've highlighted all the bytes that represent Mars, the first unit in the player stack. Right at the end of Mars's data you see one sequence, 05 00 00 00 which represent his four items slots (Rapier, empty, empty, empty). The following sequence 1c 00 00 00 represent the remaining uses on those items/weapons (28, 0, 0, 0). You can change Mars's Rapier to any item of your choosing by typing over its byte (0x05). Falchion's index number is 0x0b if that's what you want to try. You can find all the items in the game by simply changing this byte and checking the menu. If you want to make Mars's first item unbreakable, change its uses (0x1c) to 0x00 or 0xff. This is the enemy stack. I've highlighted the set of bytes that represent the Thief who spawns close enough for Mars to attack him. You can change his stats to your liking by just typing over those values. What you'll probably want to do is set a save state (Shift + F<number>) before you start messing with the values. Then, change either character's stats, test what you want to, then load state (F<number>). You can also enable Mars to move again after he's taken his turn by typing a 0x00 at his "moved" flag byte $6aa0. He'll still appear grayed out, but you can select and move him again. Hope that made sense! 🙂 If you need to know more index numbers of things, I can give them or even just link you Darmann's public doc that has all the info.

The easiest way to test this kind of stuff quickly is to use an hex editor in an emulator like FCEUX. The quickest way would probably be to use Mars and the thief in Talis Chapter 1. So Prince Mars's data is the first of the unit data stack, starting at $6a90 in RAM. His first inventory slot is at $6aa3, which is set to 0x05 for Rapier. You change that to 0x0b for Falchion. As a fun fact, Falchion's Mars-exclusivity property allows him to use it as any class in the game. Trying to use it with some of them will crash, but it's fun to play around with. The Talis thief's data starts at $71aa in RAM, and his first item slot is at $712d (0x02 for Iron Sword). If editing RAM in an emulator isn't an option or you need more explanation, let me know. You can also change the starting data in the ROM or I can even make a patch with the changes you need.

Howdy! As it happens, I have a lot of experience hacking FE1! I can easily set up any scenario you wish, or tell you how to do it. For example, the playable unit data during gameplay is just past $6a00 in RAM, and the enemy data a few scrolls after that (can't remember the exact addresses but they're easy to find). I've also got a ROM map of all the data in the game. What are you looking for?

I filled in the text for the two Chapter 4 houses in a recent update, among many other things. Also, all characters get access to the convoy in that version. I'm not sure about what happened to Samto, though. Perhaps try downloading the latest version from RHDN and see if that's better...? I'll have to go add prices for those weapons when I get the chance.

That information is secret. It's part of the fun! 🙂 I tried to give every unit in the game at least decent growths, unlike the original. The only character with deliberately poor growths is Morodof, as he's your Jeigan.

Good news! The link should now work and the patch should be up-to-date with a whole bunch of bugfixes!

The Vahi is a bow unique to Thomas. It's basically a rapier for archers. It gets bonus damage against Armor Knights and Social Knights in addition to fliers. It's also got a slightly higher Might and crit rate.

Alba is one of the knights that accompanies Fin in Thracia.

Why make a Fire Emblem hack in FEBuilderGBA when you can build it on the NES instead? Time For Tom is apparently the world's first complete Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light hack! This is a 18-chapter new story featuring a great number of improvements to bring the oldest backwards FE game up-to-date. A full list of differences from the original can be found in the readme, but noteworthy improvements include: Weapon Triangle New weapons/items Hunters and Generals can promote Magical attacks use the Magic/Strength stat The protagonist always has access to the convoy; storing items is free Updated overworld sprites and portraits Units have Resistance and Resistance growth rates Stats now cap at 50, and damage caps at 99 The Akaneian archer Thomas, and his buddy Jake, find a forgotten Time Orb which they plan to use to prevent the War of Darkness and stop Hardin from receiving the Dark Orb. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to use it! So, they travel through some other games in the series on the way.. How will they right the wrongs of history? Play as some of the most popular characters in the Fire Emblem series, like Glade, Roger, Alba, Morzas, Samto, Claude, and more! Download link: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6827/ A guide for which units can recruit someone in each chapter is included with the zip. Let me know if you run into any issues!

Here's an update on things so far: All 18 chapters for Project Time, or Time for Tom, are complete. It's currently in the testing phase, as I'm having Mareeta play through the game right now and fixing bugs as she goes along. It shouldn't be long before that's ready for a public release and I can continue work on the original War of Darkness mods. In the course of Time For Tom I've added some improvements which I'll migrate to WoD later. Notably... Enemies can now get Resistance! It's based off the base stats for classes in Monshou for all classes. However, Mages, Clerics, and Bishops with levels 10 or greater receive about double Resistance. I can remove this if you other people think this is a bad idea. There is one special case for Resistance for one particular character in Time For Tom, though! Playable characters can now have Resistance growth! This'll be a thing in Time For Tom, but it might not be appropriate for Akaneia. Stat caps have been raised to 50, and Level caps have been raised to 30.I'll have to add some protection against overflow later. I may revise this for War of Darkness though. I'm not sure if the game needs it. Heck, does Light Blade and the Dragon of Shadow even need any of this...? I cleaned up the font a bit so all the letters are the same size. - Bishops and Paladins now have updated sprites! I plan to many of the others too. You may have already also seen the updated Archer sprite in a previous post. Battle sprites aren't updated though. I may get around to those if I feel like it. I don't think anyone'd care that much. I may also use the Monshou sprite for Bishops in War of Darkness. A few other tweaks here and there as well. I've decided that Mamkute weapons are going to be infinite-use, so as to encourage players to use them. Plus, infinite-use weapons get a few extra characters for their names! Also, I made the SUSPEND and SEIZE buttons green like they appear in later games. Anyway, Time For Tom will be out soon. Then, I'll focus on making a mod-free translation patch, then eventually get around to adding more features to War of Darkness. For now, though, feel free to enjoy the Randomizer and existing patch in the first post!

There's some out there, but they've got some bugs. I'll get to it after I finish Project Time. It's gonna take some work to undo all the adjustments I've made to the game, so hold tight until then.

Nice work on that other hack! I think, if I recall correctly, the Devil axe and sword are actually special cases when the combat script is run (a CMP #$09 and CMP #$0a, if you will). You could probably modify one of the existing tables to determine the curse effect for every time. I actually couldn't figure out how to use the Nightmare modules. I heard about them halfway through my translation project, tried them, couldn't do anything and gave up. Nevertheless, I now just use my own program "Basilisk" in Python to extract all the relevant data to text files and insert it again. Also, I updated the release of the Basilisk Jr. program, which is the randomizer for War of Darkness, in the first post. Version 1.1 allows you to compile it multiple times without re-opening the program, and makes playable Generals use the MOV 7 - SKL 4. The patch is updated there too.

I think that, for maybe one or two ballistae, that could work. Yeah, Ballistae are pretty useless anyway. Right now, Project Time has Elephant set to 1-2 range.

The original game defined usability for weapons based on what range a given weapon's index number fell into. There's a table at 0x1A3E1 that defines where each range ends. This means that all values less than 0x0c are swords, all less than 0x11 are lances, all less than 0x16 are bows, and so on. The threshold determined which usability pointer the weapon would then use, which points to a list of all class values that can use that weapon. The list pointers start at 0x1A3EA. This makes it very difficult to add new weapons of a given type into the game, as it would have to be within a new index range which would require you to then adjust all other item data down by one. For War of Darkness, I added a new Weapon Type table into the game, where the game instead gets the index for usable-by-classes list from a table with a type value for every item in the game. 0x00 value means sword, 0x01 means lance, 0x02 means bow, and so on. This means you can change the type for any item without having to move any data. I also added at least one more usability list, which is Royalty, for Rapiers. Weapon exclusivity is determined by a weapon's Weapon Level, the table at 0x3D6C3. Weapon exclusivity will override the type value in the usability table, which can be seen in the base game by changing Mars's class and having him wield one of his three unique weapons.

Here's the current status on the "War of Darkness" project: Improving the base game is kinda on pause right now, because I want to focus on finishing the original game "Project Time" first and foremost. It'll have a lot of the improvements I've made thus far in it as well (minus the recruitments, as there's a new set of characters this time around). Those sprites for alternative weapons look fantastic! I'm not sure whether they'll work with the game or not. I still have yet to learn how the game handles sprites for animations. The general stat stuff is easy! I added the movement boost to the latest improvements. I'd have to look into movement penalties, though. For portraits, I'm probably gonna go ahead an revamp as many of the portraits as I can. I've learned from Project Time how to change portraits properly, so no more of the old derpy art! I could probably make all those bosses recruitable. The game is actually okay with adding more of anything at all as long as I rearrange the data and find space. It turns out, if I expand the ROM, I can basically make space a non-issue. I'm not sure whether there are mappers to support playing it on a real cartridge, so I'm holding off for now. Finally, after working until midnight, I was able to get a functioning executable of the randomizer! You can find the patch with the latest improvements, and the randomizer program, below: The randomizer is actually my first-ever compiled software, so bear in mind I'm no expert. Instructions are in the readme. Improvements Patch: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C2K7SsLOMksapd6CR4Z0fRUmlBoRomsM/view?usp=sharing Randomizer Software: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kq2He1szaTP8Y9OFE6T_daD_KqfGhoDg/view?usp=sharing The randomizer should only work with War of Darkness, so I included it in with the software.

Increasing the movement for Generals sounds like a great idea! For ballistae though, I'm thinking of keeping it to 2-range-only for the sake of emulating the long range behavior from later games. Of course, I welcome to be convinced otherwise! I haven't changed any of the animations for the new equips. Generals still use the sword animation for everything, but at least the game doesn't crash. I still haven't learned quite how battle animations work with the way they manipulate sprites. It'd be pretty funny of some of the random bosses were recruitable! I can keep that in mind. ...who do I even pick? Since the last post, I've added more features: You can now deploy less than the unit cap for any chapter. Misheil is recruitable by Maria. Mars can now access the convoy from anywhere, Storage shops are replaced with forts. The Weapon Triangle is now a thing. Swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords. Added the Swordkiller sword, bonus damage against mercenaries and heroes. For the randomizer: Added Yune mode, which removes any balancing for a truly random experience. Optional "buff archers" mode to so archers can deal more damage. (Initially added new code to have all female characters use the female version of the cleric sprite, but this broke Bishop staff animations for some reason). Options are defined in a .txt file per each project. When I release the software for it, you can edit this for most of the settings. In the past few days, however, I've decided to use all the tools and knowledge I've gained over the many months of working with this game to make a new story out of it. It'll have all the adjustments I've made here, and I'll eventually get around to an "official" release of all the improvements in the base game when this game's done. Of course, if anyone is interested in testing out some of these improvements in vanilla or some randomized roms, I can put another beta path of it here. These screenshots are from the new adventure I'm working on. Thomas has the convoy option here because he's the protagonist. Perhaps I might make a separate thread for it sometime. As always, I'm open to any and all suggestions for improving Shadow Blade and the Light of Dragon!

Hello people! I hope you can humor me and my obsession with hacking Shadow Light and the Dragon of Blade or whatever! I've decided to merge my three different "projects", pure translation, improvement/modding, and a randomizer into a single project I'm calling "Fire Emblem - War of Darkness". The goal here is to add improvements to Blade of Light to bring it up-to-speed with its remakes. I also thought I'd open it up to the public for ideas and testing. Currently the script is as bug-free as it's ever been. Here's a list of all the things I've added as "enhancements" so far: - Camus is recruitable by Astria - Mages use their Strength/Magic to attack - Stat window shows MAGIC for Mages instead of STRENGTH - Crossbows are short-range only weapons for Archers - Thunder/Tron tomes deal bonus damage to Dragon Knights - Nyna replaces Biraku in Chapter 5 - Generals can wield Swords, Lances, and Bows - Gradius, Parthia, and the Miracle Rapier are unbreakable - Mars starts with a Vulnerary - Vulenaries are 3 uses instead of 5 - Some units have Resistance now (based on Monshou). - All units promote using Master Seals now - Knights promote to Generals - Hunters promote to Horsemen - Iron Lances have 6 Might instead of 5 - New Usability table - Added Steel Lance - Enemies use Steel Lances like in Monshou - Added Killer Lance - Added Killer Bow - Added Slim Lance - Added the Nothung (randomizer only) - Miracle Rapier is no longer Mars-exclusive - Added Intro - Added different song for some chapter intros Here's my planned additions: - Healers get EXP from healing - Map compression (better support for map changes) - Fake Maph tomes / redesign of Chapter 23 based on Shadow Dragon - Conversion of Commando class into Starlord (Mars can promote, just need to change animations) - Shaver tome (again, need to handle animation bug with Mages for this to work) - Randomized chests/village items I'm open to feedback from you guys on things to improve or whatever you may want modded in. The program I'm using to make these changes and randomize the game is not at a point where I could release it, unfortunately. Nevertheless, if you want more randomized seeds let me know. I threw in some randomized patches as an example with the "just-improvements" patch with randomly named seeds. I also tried to have the randomizer balance everything so you shouldn't get screwed over. There's still a very rare chance of getting a Thief with the Falchion or a Bishop with the Maph, though! 😄 If you happen to get any item in a randomized patch with a name like ???, don't use it. This can happen as since enemies have a rare chance to drop anything in the game. These ??? items may be turned into working things later. Test it out here: Latest Patch: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C2K7SsLOMksapd6CR4Z0fRUmlBoRomsM/view?usp=sharing Latest Randomizer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F-cBeiVcHY4ZJAjJQ6m6MbQJRU2o_Qx7/view?usp=sharing

Alright, finally got it done. I made a series of patches that should shuffle around the classes and items for playable units and enemies. The patches themselves have completely arbitrary names. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work with the Japanese ROMs, so you'll have to patch them to a translated English version. Ultimately, this should give you a fresh experience. I also made sure to that the randomization tries to make the items and classes assigned are fairly logical so you won't get swarmed by Mamkutes in Talis! The randomizer I wrote in Python isn't quite polished enough for to me to release it, so if you want more randomly generated patches let me know. Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kkyAuCvsll_5mn2vrm_23LhCDTmrQFYV/view?usp=sharing

There's probably a combination of character editing cheats that can add those particular characters onto your team, but it might be simpler (possibly more fun) to warp to and play the chapter where you get them and warp back to the chapter where you were. The code 7e0e11xx should be a chapter warp code to change which chapter loads when you load a profile (replace xx with the hex number for the chapter). I don't know if there's any documentation as to which chapter has which index, though. Edit: I don't know if the game will like you sequencing breaking, so be sure to make multiple save states as backups.

I've just released a major update to the translation patch. It's now hosted in an edit to the first post.

What are you looking to do? I've spent a lot of time figuring this game out, so I can make a patch that does just about anything you want. You could get maximum anything, change character classes/items, change item properties, even play as somebody like Camus if you want! What would you like?

It looks like there's a Messenger feature that's indicated by an envelope icon next to your profile icon here on Serenes. RHDN has a very similar feature in its forums. You can use whichever you perfer.