Lord Glenn

Yeah, here's a couple of examples: It happens more frequently with items than with weapons, but it can happen across the board. I don't remember if it's linked in the Resource topic or not, but this is a rip of all of the icons with the 16x16 "tiles" from FE8, done by the legendary Ice Dragon: As for the signature, the one on the left is just a mock up, done in a graphics program. The one on the right from Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2, yeah, that's hex modification (on a game with basically no documentation... ;_;).

Couple of things: 1) If you're using Paint, before you even start drawing, adjust the size of the canvas to 16 pixels by 16 pixels. On Windows 7, that's under the Image area in the Home Ribbon tab. (The correct sized item will end up looking like this: https://gyazo.com/b61e0af61f88bb8bb69aa0ab2747e147) (Done in my graphics editor, not in Paint.) 2) Icons don't need to be symmetrical. There are plenty of official icons from the main games that have less space on one side of the 16x16 tile than on the other. 3) If you're planning on inserting this into a GBA game, you'll either have to change the RGB values of the colors (each channel needs to be multiples of 8 - 0, 8, 16, 24, 32, ..., 232, 240, 248) and change the palette for all of the other icons to use the colors in this icon, or you'll have to adjust this icon to use the standard palette that all of the other icons use. Not to toot my own horn, but you can find basically everything you might need in this old (and, honestly, probably kind of out of date) tutorial post: There's also other free-to-use programs, tools, tutorials, etc. listed in the main Spriter's Resource thread:

I brought the topic I'm about to link up the last time scope of projects came up (some idea in Concepts, can't remember which), but it's not necessarily a matter of following or abiding by the discussion in it. All we as a community should be doing is encouraging people to at least pay attention to the idea and consider it - beyond that, it's up to the individual people to actually make up their minds. http://feuniverse.us/t/short-stories-as-fire-emblem-rom-hacks/907 It doesn't help that FE is largely sprawling epics like other works of fantasy fiction, so people naturally gravitate towards what they're familiar with and want to see more of. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is an extremely laborous undertaking. Just look at all of the crowdfunded games, indie and not, that have missed their deadlines because of just how much work those projects are - I mean, heck, how many years have Yeti and his crew been working on FE7x? I'm of the opinion that a sprawling epic is fine so long as it's planned out to a large degeee (no feature/scope creep during development) and it's not always one person against the world - having the map laid out and wanting control of the course is great, but it's a sure road to having yourself fall apart. But, it is always a good idea to get your feet wet and feel that accomplishment by finishing something - even better if it's "OVA"-length and would supplement your desired finished product (world-building through small chunks, doing your project in an episodic format (see something like the Telltale Games-developed series and NOT simply releasing patches as arcs are completed in a larger project - literally something like 6 chapters and then stop, then start anew and do another episode of X chapters), etc.).

I know it's something that multiple people have said in the past (and many more will likely say in the future), but it's honestly something like this that would be a great blend of FE and Advance Wars mechanics. FE4 does have the most natural fit to this by way of its larger maps, but imagine if you set it up such that each allied and enemy castle had designated commanders (i.e. an Arden to sit at the castle and direct troops), each commander produced Ally (yellow) units of a certain type or preference (picture the game Dragon Force (Sega Saturn or the PS2 rerelease)), you could still field your other characters to roam around the battlefield, and there would be neutral castles/forts/towns that you could capture/occupy/ally with giving benefits to your army a la capturing neutral (grey) buildings in AW. Keep in the territory control instead of just making it a normal AW-type of map where you rout or capture the HQ and it might be a pretty fun type of map. Maybe even mix it up with something like a Control Point or Attack/Defend nature where you have to secure certain groupings of points (and maintain them) to "unlock" the next one in the chain? It probably would drive the player crazy to do this in every single chapter of a game (especially if the enemy forces are large and there's a lot of Ally vs Enemy combat going on, given the lower ratio of player units to enemies), but it might be an interesting objective for the right game/project/story that could actually play into the actual plot so that you wouldn't just be throwing it in there to throw it in there.

I'm going to link this discussion from FEU from like a year+ ago because, honestly, it should be almost like a required reading text for aspiring new fan game makers when it comes to exactly this kind of topic. (Actually, any modbuddies reading this, it honestly might be worth tossing a link to it in a Resources-type of topic somewhere in Fan Projects since it's something that pretty much everyone should consider before starting a project...)

There was something else I saw (recently) while lurking browsing on my tablet that I wanted to comment on, but I can't remember what it was, so I'll just answer this one: The Aurora Bow hails from Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, just like Alex, Luna, Kyle, and Mel. (It happens to be based on the Starlight Bow, the strongest Bow-type weapon in the game, usable only by the playable character Nash.) --- Oh, there was a much older comment I wanted to reply about - the comment way back from Linoan Mode when Mel appeared. The reason Mel has yellow pants (and a yellow shirt as a Pirate) is because his battle animation from Lunar Legend (at the time, the best source of coming up with a palette for him for the game, due to the lack of sprite rips from the PlayStation version) features an all yellow outfit with a red cape (the cape being very large and taking up a majority of the area available for FE portraits).

I own multiple Exceed a Generation figures (Ayra, Sylvia, Taillte, and Lewyn) and the FE12 Marth Nendoroid. I really wanted the scaled Cordelia figure, but I can't justify spending that much money on it. As for the upcoming stuff, I'm not excited myself since I didn't pick Fates up. For now, Marth covers enough representation for the series amongst the stuff on display in my house. Unless your shop just gets stuff unreasonably late, Caeda should already be available? At the very least, she shipped out to comic book shops at the start of the month... (And they usually get stuff later than some other markets...) If Camilla is going to be anything like Cordelia, then definitely expect a pricey figure.

Without knowing genres of interest, I'll just list stuff that I've played that I enjoyed (that hasn't already been mentioned): Aerowings, Aerowings 2, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes (okay, this one is a guilty pleasure), Demolition Racer: No Exit, (As much as I enjoyed it as a kid, I can't recommend Evolution or its sequel - they don't even hit guilty pleasure), Fur Fighters, Gauntlet Legends, Grandia II, Mag Force Racing, MDK2, Outtrigger, Rayman 2, San Francisco Rush 2049, Slave Zero (very much a guilty pleasure), StarLancer, Super Magnetic Neo, Vigilante 8 2nd Offense (doesn't accept the VGA adapter though ;_;), and Zombie Revenge (again, probably a guilty pleasure).

Here's my fiddles: Lightest red/orange and blue shades darkened, weapon box reconfigured (not sure if the engine's tiling will actually allow this as I'm more in the "creator" camp than the "inserter" camp - and shadowofchaos can attest to this :( ), and filigree/gilding shading tweaked/spread out/smoothed. I didn't change the locations of the "highlights" on the gold, merely how they were shaded in those spots. (So, to sum up, pretty much everything that I mentioned in my post, just in actual image form.) Oh, and I GBAized the palette too, since it was coming up in non-multiples of 8 when I originally saved the mock up. (...After I remembered that this was a thing that needed to be done. So, my initial suggestions for brightness values to decrease the lightest shades by aren't strictly accurate.)

As a sometimes GUI aficionado, I love the overall theme and design on the frame - the silhouettes of the flowers on the boxes, the trim looking gilded, the red/blue roses in the center and the weapon box, and the "vine"-like parts that are in with the gilded filigree. That said, I think it has a bit of a "visual overload" with a couple of areas. Notably, I think the brightness/saturation difference between the red/blue backgrounds and the darker silhouettes is enough of a gap that it can slightly overwhelm the information above it (more for the HP number, HP bar, and name than the Hit/Dmg/Crt labels and numbers). For example, even dropping the brightness on the lightest blue from 156 to 136 can keep the silhouette effect, but the drop in brightness gap isn't as overpowering to the eyes. (Similarly, dropping the orange/red from 128 to, say, 110, achieves a similar effect.) In addition to this, as much as I love the thematic application of the dark red and blue pixels to give a "rose"-like appearance in the weapon box, as you can see in the mock up, those pixels blend in with the weapon icon and it makes both the icon and the "rose" a little less impressive looking (especially if you have a rad set of icons that you really want to show off) - they look great by themselves, but with additional graphics by and on them, it muddies the water so to say. I can't remember if each frame has to tile and mirror compared to the player's portion of the frame or if they can have their own tiles for the design, but I'd suggest limiting it to one "rose" per box, in the top right corner of both of them if possible. I'd also suggest using the darkest "gold" in the filigree to replace the dark brown - it's just a tad overpowering in the box. Lastly, as I mentioned, I like the gilding, but I think the shading could be smoothed out across the straight line pieces - the highlight towards the left side of the enemy name box and the right side of the player name box seems very stark in how it appears, the shading on the top of the Hit/Dmg/Crt box could probably have more of a focus and shine to it (I recommend 7 pixels of white in the center, 5 of the next darker shade on either side, then 4 of the next shade down on both sides and then 5 of the final shade (instead of the original 7)), etc. As I typed this out, I was making tweaks to the mock up, so if you'd like me to share what I was fiddling with, I can do that. I know that some people don't necessarily like other people posting edits of the original work, so I'll respect whether you'd like to see it or not.

Well, Nintendo and Bandai Namco are pretty cozy these days (given Smash Bros., etc.), so a Soul Calibur-infused Fire Emblem spin-off (much like TMS#FE, just stick Atlus in place of BN) could be something that would actually be a reasonable endeavor. That said, I think Soul Calibur 3's Chronicles of the Sword might actually be the best mode to build on instead of a straight fighting game (of course, regular battles, especially multiplayer, could still be your standard matchmaking fare) since it would be like a "best of both worlds" scenario - granted, it would very much need to be modified to suit FE's slightly more tactical nature (since CotS was more RTS like), but the idea's there. And, everyone's referencing Street Fighter as a 2(.5)D frame of reference for a fighter (and not being that suitable), but don't forget about most of Arc Systems Works' franchises. If a similar structure to SF can work for those and they often feature weapons in combat, it could end up being something that would still work.

I'm biased, but I'd always be down to see a game featuring the Oracles in a starring role. Their limited appearances thus far have left them in relatively helpless capacities, rarely doing anything on their own, so it'd be nice to actually circumvent that a bit. (Why couldn't we just get some Oracle saga representation in Hyrule Warriors for crying out loud?)

I think an adapted take on Australia and/or New Zealand would be cool and could give a good ratio for nature and biodiversity. Alternatively, there's plenty of countries in South America that could probably work too.

Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have found a large set of players with Awakening and Fates that they previously did not have, whether it was because of the removal of forced permadeath, the grinding + reclassing + skills, the Avatar, the return of the marriage system, the art style, new fans looking into the series because of amiibo or the increased presence of Fire Emblem characters in Super Smash Bros., or any or all combinations of those. In typical (common sensical) corporate fashion, they're going to do everything that they can to keep and grow that player base. And, given that the uptick in sales happened with Awakening, it's extremely clear to me that they going to look at what it and Fates have included and make sure that they continue to include them. So, the Outrealm will continue to be a thing, DLC will continue to be a thing, the Avatar will continue to be a thing, marriage and progeny will continue to be a thing, reclassing will continue to be a thing, and so on and so forth. Will they tweak things to improve them? They should, considering it's foolish to think that something can't be improved. But will we see wildly fluctuating elements like the earlier days of the series? I honestly don't think we will. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have found a formula that works better than what they used to have so it would make sense for them not to throw that out of the window. Maybe they'll experiment a bit here and there, but I think that they'd have major trepidation from going outside of the comfort zone that's been established for fear of alienating the new crowd and bringing the series back to the supposed dire straights of needing to reach a number of sales for the series to even continue. I highly doubt we'd see something as crazy as going from a "core" experience to a game with completely different mechanics back to a core game to a core game that completely changes things up to a core game that changes things again to a normal core game like what happened with FE1 - FE6.

Considering that Fates sold 300,000 copies already in North America (not even counting whatever it sold in Japan or what it might sell in Europe if it ever gets a release date), I don't think that any of stuff that Awakening popularized and used to draw in the crowd that hadn't been into Fire Emblem previously are going away any time soon. The sales numbers speak volumes that this is what the overall consumer base wants (or is ambivalent to) going forward.