Alfred Kamon

Glad you liked it! Nope, not a death quote.

Pic of the day: I ship this.

So, this should serve as some "suggestions topic" for those who want to start hacking? Personally, I just tried to polish my hacking skills by experimenting stuff even if I still didn't know what to do with the project. The very first thing I did was a battle animation for Fa and Shiori! And in less than one month, I had pulled together some chapters like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtsNMJG1qDY As you can see, it's really bad compared to the actual MS, but it was something to begin with. OMG DEM MUGS I WAZ SO GUD AT SPRITING Everything was polished/changed completely later (story included) but if I hadn't even tried, I wouldn't have been able to make MS. So yeah, it was never a linear process like "project the whole game -> make". At least in my case. Just try, and try harder, until your skills get good enough to make something satisfying. But in the meantime, do not discourage yourself and keep trying and loving your work no matter what.

Man there is no patch in the current download link, only the readme.

Go on, bud. ;) Can't wait to see more Bloodlines content!

@Flareragnarok, @Mister IceTeaPeach, use the spoiler tags please!! Replies in bold. You're right, Ashley! There are four knight classes. Plus a couple "0 Mov" knight classes. Unfortunately, as Agro said, that weapon switching ASM isn't complete yet. I think Menmus' stats are ok, given that he has really good growths. Pic of the day: wat this is not exactly new, but I didn't have much time to work on anything else today

Man, just message me whenever you see me online haha. Anyway, I should have fixed those. It was some problem related to event IDs. GET YER GRENAAAAADES Uh oh, calm down, really. You did nothing wrong, and you were far from harsh. I'm glad you're liking Midnight Sun anyway! Pic of the day: (yeah Lindsy, that's your sword pegasus there btw)

Yup, I will do! I need about a week too to revamp the rest of the chapters, then I'll write something for the Tower (as of now it only has gameplay in it) and I'll pass everything to you. While you get back to ch.8, I'll try to come up with some other good ideas for the supports. (Hmh, he should have too. But they're quite ambiguous so it's ok. This page of the topic will be lost quite soon anyway)

XD that's actually Ceapana's room, not the inn in ch.6. Hmmm... I think it'll be ready by the end of April without supports or in July/August with supports. Ashley, if you pass by, please know that I'll need your help with some proofreading!

Interesting concept, I also had thought of something similar, but no... way too complicated and a simple turn limit does its work. See today's pic and guess again. Oh right. Totally forgot, it's down here. Omg u so good lindsy Thankies!! ^^ Gonna insert this asap Here I am, answering your comments finally. Replies in bold! Pic of the day: This pretty much completes yesterday's pic I guess?

Who knows~ How do you think this will play out?

Yeah, of course. Pic of the day:

No, and no. Sorry. I had to install a patch in order to expand the class limits, and said patch caused a mess with the saves, so yeah, v.1.0-1.2 won't be compatible with any of the future releases. My suggestion is to play the incoming v.1.5 from the beginning, or to wait for v.2.0 that will include a standard savefile for the Interlude so that you don't have to replay the game (that also means you won't have your own units, though).

Yeah, there are different knights. Hmh, no... actually Schwarz can still use only swords. Unless L95 updates the map sprite, I will keep it as it is.

Pic of the day:

Did you modify the battle animation pointer in the Class Editor to match your changes?

Version 1.5 is in the works. It will feature: - Chapters 0-8 + first floor of the Tower and a couple skirmishes - Polished gameplay (especially chapters 5, 6 and 8) - "Info" Command - Tweaked dialogues - New Secret Unlockables - Supports (maybe) - Difficult Mode balancing - Nerfed Andre, buffed Cristoph YOUR v.1.2 SAVE WON'T BE COMPATIBLE WITH V.2.0! So I decided to release this 1.5 version to make sure that people get a new save in the meantime.

Project Nomination -Best Plot: Midnight Sun -Best Animations: Bloodlines -Best Music: Midnight Sun -Best Characters: Elibean Nights -Best Project of the Quarter: Bloodlines Concept Nomination -Best Map Design: Chronicles of Lussaria -Best Music: Eternal Bond -Favorite Concept: A Sacred Dawn (revisited) -Best Characters: Eternal Bond -Best ASM: Chronicles of Lussaria

Oh I see. Cool! If the Wight is just a Skeleton recolor, I can do that sooner or later. W-W-What's that Griffon Knight in your signature OAO

That's really cool. However, it lacks the walking sounds. I wonder if somebody can add those?

Here's a biiiig INTERVIEW for you guys! It took me a while to answer all these questions, ahah. I hope you'll find it interesting! Many thanks to mmKALLL for creating this interview to begin with. Q1: To start off, can you tell a bit about yourself? What do you do apart from playing and making videogames? Is Alfred your real name? A: Sure! I’m a 21 years old guy from Italy. My father is Italian and my mother is Thai, and since I’ve inherited most of my physical traits from her, I don’t look European at all. I’m studying to become a psychologist, in particular I’m specialized in marketing, counselling and social media. Alfred is my real name, and I’ll tell you more: Kamon is my real second name too! So my full name would be Alfred Kamon [insert Surname]. Q2: I've understood that you had the idea of telling a great story using a game coming up for a while. Why did you choose to make an FE hack in the first place? A: I wanted to make a hack since I played MageKnight404’s “Fire Emblem: A Sacred Dawn” (the actual FE8 reskin, not the DX version). I’ve always liked to tell stories, and since FE was my favorite vg series, I decided to realise this little childish dream of mine in 2012, when I started working on my hack. Q3: How much of the current plotline did you have planned beforehand? Did you have prior experience in making hacks or designing games in general? A: Most of Midnight Sun’s plotline was created as the game was being built. When I started to hack, I had barely any idea of what I wanted to do with the story. Moreover, I had to follow The Sacred Stones’ original layout since I couldn’t hack the world map events. All things considered, it was really hard to come up with the plot. And no, this is my first project ever. Q4: The project was originally known as FE: Sunpath of Midnight - what happened to all of that? A: As I said earlier, when I started to hack I didn’t know where the project was going. It was literally just me experimenting with stuff and seeing if things worked the way I wanted them to be. I had even included an anime character in the game because I felt like doing it. So, when I realised that Sunpath of Midnight wasn’t up to my expectations, I decided to scrap it and make a more “serious” hack with the skills I had developed in the meantime. Q5: What were your expectations with announcing the project? How did you deal with the severe initial criticism? A: When I first posted the screenshots of Sunpath of Midnight, I expected people to write long comments about them, to be kind and gentle, and perhaps to offer their help. Oh man, I was so naive! The comments were short, quite harsh, and almost nobody wanted to join my team. I felt really sad because of that. Sunpath of Midnight wasn’t just a hack to me, I really had poured all of my soul into it. So I stopped posting updates for months because I was afraid of receiving other harsh critiques, and a bit ashamed of my reactions to some of them in the past. Even so, I tried to understand what people were saying in their critiques, and I took most of their suggestions in account when I remade the hack. That’s how Midnight Sun was born—it was all but easy! Critiques were hard to deal with but they definitely helped me grow both as a hacker and as a person. Q6: How were the first stages of building the hack? Were there a lot of things you had to learn from scratch? A: Since this was my very first game, I had to learn everything from scratch. I remember passing entire days trying to understand how something worked. I started with battle animations, then maps, music, and finally events. I slowly made my full-custom FE hack, and it was really satisfying. Overall, it took me a month of hard work (i.e. nerding without much of a social life) to build my first full-custom chapter (with a map, events, a couple animations and mugs, and custom music as well). It required a sheer amount of time, patience and dedication. Blazer’s Ultimate Tutorial helped me quite a lot! If it weren’t for that, I would have never been able to make this hack. Q7: Considering that quality games require talent from various fields, how have your artistic skills improved due to this project? A: Well, I had never sprited before starting my project. Since nobody was willing to help a newbie, I decided to make my own sprites. And since the critiques were that harsh, I wanted to be able to do pretty much everything, so that people wouldn’t have to complain anymore. I can’t say my artistic skills have improved that much since then, but still, I think I’m better than your average newbie splicer still, I’m no expert and nobody should ever ask me a mug because there are VERY talented people out there. I’m quite good at maps though—all of the maps in MS were done by me. I think it’s easier to create some good gameplay if you’re the one making the maps: this way you know what’s going to happen from the initial projecting phase. Q8: Have there been compromises due to technical limitations or the gameplay style of FE? A: Of course there have been, but I tried to overcome them and make one of the most original FE games ever. I hope you enjoy the fresh gameplay in Midnight Sun! Q9: How is designing a plot for a game different from other mediums? What kind of enhancements has the usage of FE made possible regarding the narrative? As for pacing and structuring, what problems or benefits does the chapter-oriented style have? A: I like videogames because they are a very complex form of art. In a book you have the story, in a film you have the story, the actors and the soundtrack, but in a game you have to deal with all of those plus the gameplay and the programming—it’s so damn hard! However it also delivers a lot of feelings. I like to see games as “interactive books” where the player has an active role and feels like a part of the story. Q10: What have been your biggest hurdles in creating a game like this? How do you go about designing the gameplay? A: In my earliest stage, my biggest problem was that I had no idea about how this shit worked. It was so frustrating to get errors and glitches and figure out what was going wrong. Sometimes it took me days to fix a problem! First thing first, in creating a chapter, I build the map. While building it, I get a lot of ideas about the gameplay or even the events or the story! Take chapter 5x for example. When I had to design it, all I knew was that “it was going to be Shiori’s chapter”. I created the map and I decided to put a river in the right corner—that was when I realized that an escape mission would have been awesome! However there still weren’t those cliffs next to the starting point, so the whole map was just a bunch of boring plains with a couple mountains... I had to redesign the map after testing it many times. Q11: The sheer willpower needed to get a hack this far must be immense. What drives you forward? A: At first, it was the desire to realize my childhood dream and to be acknowledged as a hacker and as a person. Now that I feel satisfied with the latter, the only thing that drives me forward is the desire to not leave things unfinished, and I believe I’ll always regret it if I don’t finish Midnight Sun. It IS hard to keep working on this, please understand me. To release patch v.1.0 I spent 4000+ hours working on this project, having very little social life for 2 years. I have a girlfriend now, and I also have to focus on my studies in order to get a job relatively soon, so I can’t afford to spend as much time hacking as before. This is a hobby after all, and I won’t get paid for it—I say, life takes priority now. But I WILL finish the hack someday, it’s a promise. The burning desire to realize that dream of mine hasn’t disappeared yet, and I doubt it ever will until this is finished. Q12: A project spanning multiple years must have its ups and downs. Can you tell more about all that? How has your motivation kept up? Have you taken longer breaks? A: As I said earlier, when you work for free for a project that lasts years, it’s very hard to keep your motivation high. Creating a videogame all by yourself is hard, you have to focus on the story, the hacking, the eventing, the music... Luckily enough, I get some help with graphics (thanks Regina!) and with ASM (you guys on FeU are awesome!), and that helps me quite a lot in keeping my motivation high—sometimes Regina shows me a new portrait that inspires me to make new chapters revolving around that character, or some new discoveries in the ASM department make me want to create some awesome, innovative gameplay. So, even if I was burnt out at some point and I have passed several months without hacking, in the end the community was able to give me new reasons to hack. Q13: You've said from the very beginning that creating this hack is something very special to you - why is this? Has that feeling diminished over time? A: That... is a secret! ;) Q14: The extremely positive reception of v1.0 was a huge contrast to the initial criticism. Again, what were your expectations when publishing it? Did the success surprise you? A: To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t that surprised of the huge success Midnight Sun had. When I posted the updates and the trailer some weeks before the release, I noticed that people were very hyped for it and I received a lot of enthusiastic comments that cheered me up. So I was glad that my hard work had been repaid in the end. Q15: How has development been more recently? Do you spend a lot of time with it? What is the actual creation process like? A: As I answered in Q11 and Q12, I’m a bit busy irl as of late, so I’m not spending that much time hacking anymore. I still try to work on the hack for one or two hours in the evening, so I get some progress done anyway. As of now I’m focusing on some features like new promotions, new items, and character skills. I can’t make new chapters if I don’t take care of those things first, so... it’ll probably take me a while before I start making new chapters. Actually, making chapters is the easiest part for me now! Q16: What does making an FE hack - or any game for that matter - require from the people behind it? What makes a game good in your opinion? A: Passion. Motivation. Dedication... and a brain. Because if you have all of those but you lack the latter, it’s hard to make some coherent story or good gameplay, and you can be as motivated as you want but your game won’t impress anyone anyway. Also, it’s good to see what people are expecting from the project, or what they think it would be cool to see in a later release. Sometimes some ideas might be far-fetched, but sometimes you can get some good inspiration. As I said, you need a brain that helps you decide what to do with your stuff. Most importantly, your teammates will be offering their help for your project, so be sure to repay them by making your project the best. Q17: Any words for future hackers wanting to follow your footsteps, or to the fans of this project? A: To the people who want to hack: don’t do it unless you really know what you’re doing. Be prepared to face severe criticism, to work some thousand hours, and to be pressured by time, people and/or your own conscience. And most importantly, you’ll be doing all of this for free. To those who enjoyed Midnight Sun: thank you! I’ll be sure to not let you guys down. V.2.0 will be awesome, so look forward to it! Q18: when will moar chapters come out please???!?!??!?!?! A: It took me 2 years of pure nerding to release 10 playable chapters. Consider that v.2.0 will include: - Chapters 9A to 15A - Chapters 9B to 15B - Chapter 16 - Three or four levels in the Tower of Trials - Supports So that’s a total of sixteen/seventeen chapters plus supports and other new contents. The amount of work is pretty much immense. I don’t have as much time as before either. So, I really don’t know. I’d like to say 2016, but I’m not even sure about that. We’ll see! Stay tuned anyway, because I’ll release some balancing patches and some new content every once in a while anyway, just to keep you interested. Cheers, Alfred Kamon

Thanks, Vorena! I'm glad you're liking the game so far. ^ This guy was the one who 3 years ago inspired me to actually name the infamous wyvern rider "Menmus". Yo! You can see that as some kind of yin yang stuff. Faratrass is a dark mage but she has a pure heart in the end. Shiori is a light mage but... well, you'll see. This is one of the messages I wanted to deliver in Midnight Sun. "There isn't such thing as pure good or pure evil. In the end, what we do defines the kind of person we are, but what we do is also the result of what others may have done to us." Is Moonie good or evil? Is Hoikade good or evil? Is Fa good or evil? Is the Demon King good or evil? Most of the times the answer is ambiguous, and I wanted it to be that. Most of the couples will be heterosexual, but there will be a few yuri and yaoi couples in the game if that is of some interest. Coming soon: - a veeery long interview to the creator of the hack - Some chapter 9B screenies yay~

inb4 Midnight Sun becomes an FE13 hack Well... wow. Good luck, I can't wait to see where this goes. I'm sorry I can't volunteer myself

You could refer to any animation that has been already submitted. This one for example is from the "Lilina mage" animation: