My unofficial official question topic!

[Claude C Kenny]

Rather than keep asking questions one at a time in my other topic, I thought i'd play around with nightmare and FEditor for a few days and see what kind of issues came up. here's what i've got:

1. (nightmare) under weapon ability 1 in the item editor, which option would I choose to put the brave effect on a magic tome? if there is none, could the option that says "brave effect" be moved to weapon ability 2/3/4 to allow this to happen?

2. (nighmare) I want to give snipers the critical boost, but changing that means taking away ballistas. so, could ballistas actually be given to the characters directly, and the critical boost given to the class, to allow archers/snipers to keep ballistas, and snipers to now have the critical boost?

3. (FEditor) how would I take the sprites for Ephraim, Reginleif, and Siegmund from FE8 to be used in FE7?

4. (both) nightmare has a folder called "beta module". does that have the beta data for FE7, particularly lyns beta sprites with durandal, and how would I find them to use them?

I'll explain anything that might sound confusing, and as always, thanks for your help!

[deleted35362]

1: There's an option that says "hero". That's brave.

2: No.

3: I can't use FEditor, can't help there.

4: I don't know what that is, but if you get the FE7 beta, yes you can extract

Lyn's durandal animation. I did it years ago no problem.

[Crimson Red]

1. Either April or I am misunderstanding this, I'm thinking you want a brave magic tome like Hero's Flare (AKA Twin Flare) in Tactics Universe, just combine bytes in the weapon abilities to make an item have multiple abilities in one list (e.g. magic brave weapon... I'm guessing off of the top of my head that it'd be 0x43, because my tendency to remember random shit like that is very high).

2. See above post, you can add up bytes to combine abilities (hopefully you're not the only one who doesn't know this...). Btw, in case you didn't realize yet, that's partly (or maybe completely) why attributes are either 1 or multiples of 2, because all the bytes in between would be possible combinations of adding up the previous skills (e.g. 0x03 = 0x02 + 0x01, but 0x04 can't be made by adding up any numbers less than it without using the same number twice, so 0x04 is a new skill, then the same for 0x08, etc.).

3. You really need to be more specific because Ephraim is not a weapon icon but Reginleif and Siegmund are weapons (well what you'd be inserting is the weapon icons of the weapons) and the most confusing thing is that you label this with "FEditor" which doesn't add up because FEditor doesn't do this kind of stuff.

4. I'll try and help you answer your own question ^_^. The folder is called "Beta Module" as you said (or something like that). Knowing that the entire package is full of Nightmare Modules, and that the Beta Module folder also contains modules, should it contain Lyn's battle sprite animation data?

I think you can find said packages SOMEWHERE but who knows where--I'm too busy to update my site with such things... >_>

Btw April can extract the FE7 beta animation but s/he's probably awesome enough to manually import battle animations as opposed to using FEditor Adv (and I'm confident in saying that FEditor Adv does NOT support prototypes of games lol).

If you have any more questions, just spit'm out with as much detail as you canokay maybe not as much as you can... if you post a wall-of-text I'm going to go "tl;dr read my Ultimate Tutorial". A little hard work and I'm sure you'll get the hang of this. =D

Edited January 7, 2011 by Luffy

[Claude C Kenny]

alright, i'll try 0x43, and if it doesnt work, i'll figure it out on my own.

I also feel like i'm catching alot of flak from you guys, since I cant make my own sprites and portraits (no talent for those things), and instead have to import them/ ask people to make them for me. (ex. of course Ephraims not a weapon sprite, I need his attack animations).

I understand that it took alot of time to make these editors, but some of the responses i've been getting haven't been very helpful, some to the point of downright discouraging. I have looked, and I have figured out alot on my own within the past week, but you can't expect someone who's just starting out to know how to combine bytes, or how to import/export/extract data yet.

now, if anyone wants to actually help me understand these things, thank you. but if i'm getting these kind of responses now, i'd hate to see them when I do ask someone to make some sprites/portraits for me.

Alright, tried 0x43, nothing. did the math, got 0x42, nothing. experimented and got 0x3E and 0x3F. 0x3F gives it brave effect, but makes it indestructable. so im guessing its going to be somewhere between there, and 0x21.

and the magic byte is....0x37!

Edited January 7, 2011 by Claude_C_Kenny

[Nanami Touko]

now, if anyone wants to actually help me understand these things, thank you. but if i'm getting these kind of responses now, i'd hate to see them when I do ask someone to make some sprites/portraits for me.

The reason everyone is being discouraging and rude to you towards sprites, it because you haven't shown us that your hack is worth it. You have no screens of chapters, of events, of maps, etc. If you actually made a topic for it, and showed your progress, and it was GOOD, people would feel more inclined to help you make the hack succeed.

[CT075]

now, if anyone wants to actually help me understand these things, thank you. but if i'm getting these kind of responses now, i'd hate to see them when I do ask someone to make some sprites/portraits for me.

To quote Xeld: "READ THE DAMN DOC!!!"

Seriously. If you want people to help you, show us that you can help yourself. That means, read the documentation as well as any tutorial you may get your hands on.

And regarding the sprite issue, I think I'll just repeat myself:

i'm not trying to be rude with my message, but tl:dr - I don't have the talent to make my sprites and portraits, but yes, I can do everything else.

Okay, sure. I believe you. I just figured I'd let you know, because I've seen countless people on this forum start a hack that never finished, due to lack of dedication, or laziness, or just not wanting to do that much work. If you're not one of those people, more power to you.

And if you want to find a spriter for you, good luck with that. It's probably simpler to just make the sprites on your own (and don't tell me that you can't). I probably have less than half as much artistic talent as the average person you would find on the internet, yet I can make half decent sprites in Microsoft Paint (should come default if you have a Windows OS). Start simple, just recoloring sprites the way eclipse up there told you to. Then you can move on to splicing two or three mugs together, maybe joining the local splicing contests. And above all, make a spriting thread so people can give you criticism so you can get even better.

The only alternative would be to try to be as nice a guy as you can, and win some friends who are good spriters. Then you could ask them for sprites, although I still find it much faster just to make my own mugs.

tl;dr learn to make the mugs yourself.

EDIT: You also might want to read this thread to avoid responses like this in the future.

Edited January 8, 2011 by Kamui Gakupo

[Claude C Kenny]

So basically, i'm on my own then. apparently no one reads the parts where I say that I did/do read the tutorials and readme files, I have figured out alot on my own, and that the only problem I have is creating/editing sprites and portraits. no one will even tell me how to access the sprites I need. all I get is a cocky response of "its called the beta module". that doesn't tell me anything. i'm sorry if this is already mentioned in some tutorial that got lost among hundreds of others in the google search engine, and im pretty sure I haven't read anything about ripping sprites from one game and putting them in another in any readme file i've downloaded so far, and nothing I have says anything about actually accessing the beta data in FE7. when I did try to access it through nightmare, it froze the game.

if you can point out any file that comes with nightmare or FEditor that explains how to do this, or if you wind up linking me to one of 3 tutorials that i've already downloaded from the man himself, then i'll shut up and admit I was wrong. but as of now, i'm just looking at it as people who've seen this topic 100x over, and don't feel like answering it again. only 2-3 people have given me a serious answer, and they know who they are.

Then there's actually getting my new maps/sprites/portraits/etc into the game. that'll be another war in itself.

Edited January 8, 2011 by Claude_C_Kenny

[Nanami Touko]

Well, kid, I'm willing to help with portraits if this hack o' yers actually gets off the ground. I'm not a big hacker, so, can't help with those questions.

[CT075]

http://www.feuniverse.net/forums/index.php?showforum=48

If you can't find what you need in there, I'd be either very surprised or very unsurprised. FEU being the biggest hacking community there is.

Your question about inserting Ephraim's battle animation is done by opening it up in FEditor, then hitting "dump". You save it as something, then open up your other ROM. Find something you don't care about, then hit insert. Select your pretty little file created by hitting "dump". Congratulations, you have just inserted Ephraim's battle data.

As for icons and shit, that's not FEditor, dood. That's a little tool called GBAGE. Or straight hex.

The Beta modules are just that- Beta versions of the modules. That's all there really is to know. Nightmare doesn't deal with animations.

I thought you could do everything?

[Nanami Touko]

I thought you could do everything?

No need to be an ass, CamCam

[CT075]

Look, if, despite everything we've been saying, you're still having problems, click here. Download the file, then read it. I guarantee you it will answer 90% of your questions. The other 10% can be found in tutorials located on the site I already linked you to.

And I'm sorry for being an ass.

Edited January 8, 2011 by Kamui Gakupo

[Claude C Kenny]

no, im the one being an ass. I haven't been very happy lately, so I think we started off on the wrong foot. a few things if I may:

for nightmare, I can do pretty much anything, as long as I know/can figure out how to do it. I figured out things such as attaching stat bonuses and effectiveness to weapons, changing which tome uses which animation, etc. the only thing left to look into is setting up events, which hopefully shouldn't be too hard. and thanks to luffy's advice, I now have the brave tomes I wanted!

for FEditor, I tried saving the portrait for wil, but I had to change it to a bitmap image, and now I can't seem to get it to revert back to it's original file. so now I have wil with pink hair sitting on my computer doing nothing. all I did was somehow got the spraycan option to fill in a few areas, and i'm still surprised that actually worked. and I did dump eliwoods sprites but....my god. like I said, i'll give a playable character spot to anyone who at least helps me with the sprites, because I think i'm on the right track for editing portraits at least, although I still can't design my own.

like I said, I understand it took alot of work to make these editors, so I am doing my best to search for whatever I need. typing "nighmare ultimate tutorial" used to bring up a link for a really good one that helped me get started when I tried this last year, but now I cant seem to find it. it was unfinished, went up to chapter 9 IIRC, so it must have been taken down to get finished.

tl:dr - sorry for being a jerk, but just know that even though I ask alot of questions, I am researching as well as listening to what you all say, and experimenting as well.

[Crimson Red]

alright' date=' i'll try 0x43, and if it doesnt work, i'll figure it out on my own.

I also feel like i'm catching alot of flak from you guys, since I cant make my own sprites and portraits (no talent for those things), and instead have to import them/ ask people to make them for me. (ex. of course Ephraims not a weapon sprite, I need his attack animations).

I understand that it took alot of time to make these editors, but some of the responses i've been getting haven't been very helpful, some to the point of downright discouraging. I have looked, and I have figured out alot on my own within the past week, but you can't expect someone who's just starting out to know how to combine bytes, or how to import/export/extract data yet.

now, if anyone wants to actually help me understand these things, thank you. but if i'm getting these kind of responses now, i'd hate to see them when I do ask someone to make some sprites/portraits for me.

Alright, tried 0x43, nothing. did the math, got 0x42, nothing. experimented and got 0x3E and 0x3F. 0x3F gives it brave effect, but makes it indestructable. so im guessing its going to be somewhere between there, and 0x21.

and the magic byte is....0x37! [/quote']

- sorry, 0x43 was magic damage magic weapon (weapon = 0x01, magic = 0x02, magic weapon = 0x03, magic damage = 0x40), the correct byte is 0x23 (brave effect = 0x20 + 0x03 = brave effect magic weapon). I'm not sure how you got 0x37 but I'm guessing that it would ALSO be an unsellable staff, so just please revert it to 0x23. lol

I've been doing nothing but trying to help you, dude. Please don't bitch at me. Especially when I just didn't understand the Ephraim thing and wanted clarification, you don't have to be an ass and say "of course Ephraim's not a weapon sprite". You could just clarify and we'll get along very well.

all I get is a cocky response of "its called the beta module"

you think that was a cocky response? Because I was trying to help you help yourself? You're a new hacker so I'm trying to familiarize you with terms so that you have an idea of what you're doing, but all you can do is bitch at me? Wow...

@Kamui eww, mirrors to my stuff, why mirror when I have direct links to dropbox that don't have shitty ads and wait times and other problems like mediafire? >____>

like I said, I understand it took alot of work to make these editors, so I am doing my best to search for whatever I need. typing "nighmare ultimate tutorial" used to bring up a link for a really good one that helped me get started when I tried this last year, but now I cant seem to find it. it was unfinished, went up to chapter 9 IIRC, so it must have been taken down to get finished.

tl:dr - sorry for being a jerk, but just know that even though I ask alot of questions, I am researching as well as listening to what you all say, and experimenting as well.

That tutorial was outdated, I've made a new one that is much longer and much more in-depth (but still incomplete >_>). I had the link on this forum but then some shit happened so I took it off, Kamui linked to it but I'll link to it again:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8875056/hacking/Ultimate%20Tutorial.pdf

I had the notion that you were actually trying to hack which is why I tried to actually help you (usually I just tell people very vague answers or point them to a tutorial... lol). Anyhow, apology accepted, and ignore anything in this post where I bitch about you bitching about me bitching about your bitchhacking.

Btw, don't linger around FEU too much... You can't get your questions answered there (well, not easily, even if you manage to get your post posted, they'll probably tell you to read the doc), their shit is even more outdated than mine (e.g. Nightmare modules, program/utility lists, etc.), and most of the moderatorsmembers who go there are either high-level hackers who can't be bothered to help you (or are too smart for you to understand) or low-level hackers who won't actually know how to help you.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Luffy

[Claude C Kenny]

I got 0x37 because I thought I had to add in for the one that says "magic damage", but if the regular byte for magic is 0x03, then that wouldn't be the case. also, why does magic need the byte for weapons/0x01 added to it? it got me thinking, because at some points while playing on GBA, im pretty sure my magic stat gets matched up against an enemies DEF instead of RES, and I was thinking that might be the problem (with the actual, legit cartridge).

i've also hit a major roadblock. apparently, I don't have the right programs on my computer to open your tutorial, or to run the GBA color picker, and when I try to install the programs neccessary, they will not install. im sure with some experimenting/exploring, I probably won't need the tutorial (but keeping it anyway), and maybe you guys know a way around having to use the color picker. haven't tried mappy or tile layer pro yet, i'm a little nervous to do so.

out of curiousity, would my original idea of taking an effect from one of the weapon ability options and placing it in another actually work?

Edited January 9, 2011 by Claude_C_Kenny

[CT075]

Not really sure what you're asking here. Perhaps you could be a little more specific?

EDIT: And if you can't read the PDF file that Blazer linked to, use the mirror I already gave you. Yes, it irks Blazer, but it's a .doc file instead of a PDF.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Kamui Gakupo

[Claude C Kenny]

what I mean is that the brave effect is set to weapon ability 1. rip it from there, and insert it into weapon ability 2 instead. so, you would use weapon ability 1 to set your weapon as physical or magic, then use weapon ability 2 to set the brave effect. if it is possible, its probably more trouble than its worth, since we now know the bytes anyway.

also, I was thinking about maybe posting the base stats and growth rates for my characters, and seeing if you guys could help me balasnce them if neccessary. apparently, 20-40% isn't as low for some growth rates as I thought. maybe i'll post their names/equipment/join chapter as well and see what you think.

[CT075]

No, you can't rip bytes and put them into a different slot without heavy ASM hacking. Besides, there's no real point. As long as you can add in hex, you should have no reason to need to.

[Crimson Red]

^^40% for a growth rate can be pretty good. for def/res, it's AMAZINGLY good. For speed on a myrmidon, not so much (60's~).

I got 0x37 because I thought I had to add in for the one that says "magic damage", but if the regular byte for magic is 0x03, then that wouldn't be the case. also, why does magic need the byte for weapons/0x01 added to it? it got me thinking, because at some points while playing on GBA, im pretty sure my magic stat gets matched up against an enemies DEF instead of RES, and I was thinking that might be the problem (with the actual, legit cartridge).

i've also hit a major roadblock. apparently, I don't have the right programs on my computer to open your tutorial, or to run the GBA color picker, and when I try to install the programs neccessary, they will not install. im sure with some experimenting/exploring, I probably won't need the tutorial (but keeping it anyway), and maybe you guys know a way around having to use the color picker. haven't tried mappy or tile layer pro yet, i'm a little nervous to do so.

out of curiousity, would my original idea of taking an effect from one of the weapon ability options and placing it in another actually work?

You shouldn't have to add in the byte for magic damage, that should be included with the magic byte, and I'm pretty sure your personal experiences are just flukes.

Adobe Reader is a pretty basic program, I'd be surprised if you couldn't get that working on your computer (heck it might even be installed automatically on newer computers...), .doc files should be openable with MS Word or another program, heck you could open it with Google Docs... >_>

I didn't know GBA Color Picker needed any special files... I don't even know why you need GBA Color Picker at all. You probably WILL need the tutorial if you plan on making a decent hack without figuring everything out yourself, no one knows what you're using GBACP for, Mappy is kinda important to get working (are you using a MAC??? O_O) and tile layer pro is a shitty, obsolete program, so I don't suggest using that (or know why you would use it...).

Oh I forgot to mention the 0x03 thing, I really don't know, those labels are just man-made, it says "magic" but that doesn't actually detail what about magic it controls, if anything--I'm guessing that at the very least it recognizes the weapon as attacking res but 0x40 does that too so as I siad, I really don't know, but IIRC if you just do "0x02" you won't be able to attack with the item. IIRC if you look at the bytes of other tomes, it uses 0x03, so naturally, if you're making another tome, you use 0x03, that's all there is to it, and no need/point to/in question(ing) it. >_>

[Claude C Kenny]

I saw GBA color picker and tile layer pro suggested in a tutorial I read a while back. if you say I don't need it, then I believe you. but what were they used for in the first place?

what I mean about my characters is that I may have made then a little too good. as in, not that many have any growths below 25%, except for prepromotes. if you want, I can post my archers stats so you can see what I mean.

[Crimson Red]

GBA Color Picker was used for palette editing. I can still kinda see it being used but it's an older method of doing things and is used in more... obscure palette edits. lol

Tile Layer Pro was used for editing uncompressed graphics, a while back that meant portrait frames (but FEditor does those now), after FEditor Adv was made it was only really used for weapon icons, but now we have GBA Graphics Editor by Nintenlord which edits uncompressed graphic data a lot easier, and makes editing weapon icons a lot easier (and less confusing).