[From hack to indie] Path of the Midnight Sun

[Alfred Kamon]

@Acha: Thanks brah! ^^

@Wayward Winds: No, it's ok. I've read a lot of your comments and you seem reasonable and capable enough for this task. Welcome aboard!

We can discuss the details by PM.

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Okay, like your mugs are vastly improved, and this is a little nitpick but

Cross blonde guys jawline

Goes behind his earrrrrrrrrrrrr

asdfasadsd

I'd offer to proofread, but I think I'd notice more just playing it than reading the script or something so when you release the patch I'll be happy to complain about grammers to youThough I guess you'd already have someone read it by then :v

Edited December 12, 2013 by L95

[Alfred Kamon]

Hm, that's true. I'll tell her, thanks.

[Nanami Touko]

man this has come so far from when i was telling you how awful faratrass's hair color was

so proud of you alfred <3

Edited December 12, 2013 by I have opinions

[Alfred Kamon]

Thanks, Trent.

You once wrote me this:

I'm not very impressed by your whole project. Hopefully you can turn it into something, eventually.

as for why, it's a combination of the unimpressive sprites, the seemingly rushed story, and the tilespam map I saw in the video.

but hey, maybe you can make it impressive with some polish. Here's hoping; good luck to you.

While those words hurt me when I first read them, I really never forgot them. You were right.

And I acted like an ass who couldn't take any critiques and felt bitchslapped every time.

Being praised by you today means something to me, really.

[Crimson Red]

Looks awesome. I'm excited. Time to tweet about it.

[eclipse]

ACK. . .well, better the repointing problem be somewhere minor! If I do play this patch, I'll. . .figure out something so I can read inventories.

[Alfred Kamon]

^^ Sorry for that, eclipse.

In the meantime, I finished chapter 6. I'm currently making the map of chapter 7 (which takes me a considerable amount of time for some reason). It is linked to chapter 8 for plot reasons, and also because there are no world map events between chapter 7 and 8 (those would be the outside and inside maps of Renvall in the original).

Hmm.... maybe I can show you guys some sort of sketch I made?

Let's see... ok, here we go.

The map in the yellow square is the one of ch.7, and the other in the orange square is for ch.8. They both share the Midnight Shrine.

And yes, this is only a sketch. And probably I'll change a lot of things in ch.8 because the design of that map sucks and it's too simple as of now. inb4omgyourmapssuck

Btw, this is how some of my finished maps look like:

Hmm... truth to be told, I've encountered a huge problem in FE8 hacking: Tile Changes. As of now, I still am not able to have some properly functioning Tile Changes in my hack, nor I know someone who covered working Tile Changes for this engine.

Yes, having 8 chapters done (including the Prologue and ch.5x) without doors, chests, breakable trees and walls really sucks.

I wanted to have some breakable things and some chests in here since this should be some sort of abandoned temple, and I hope to be able to find out how this works anytime soon. If someone has any clues, please tell me. Any support would be precious.

And yes, I've already tried with Tiled and Blazer's method, but they aren't working. Fact is, Tile changes usually are triggered by events but, unless I'm reading them wrong, it seems they're missing in the Village events, for example.

Anyway I'm at a good point. Time to finish ch.7 and 8, polish some last things, and then I'll share the first patch.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Alfred Kamon

[deranger]

Solid maps, they look natural enough. The finished ones at least =P.

[Matt Snow]

I KINDA figured out Tile Changes in FE8 (using TILED), it's of annoying/tedious to do though it's not hard (IMO anyway). Want me to PM you the details?

Also I really like the maps XD.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Matt Snow

[Alfred Kamon]

*-* Matt <3 This is some great news!! Yes please send me that PM, I'd be glad to hear what you found out. :)

Btw the maps are nothing special, but at least they're enjoyable.

Also, finished the chapter 7 map. Wanted to put some mountains in there but their palette is kinda buggy on this tileset.

/some random update to not leave this topic die once more

Edit: holy cow, I'm having more problems than I thought with Tile changes.

Edit2: Alright! Tile changes: done! And with this I've covered pretty much every aspect of GBA FE event-related hacking in FE8.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Alfred Kamon

[Crimson Red]

...

so when's the secret gonna be out

at least now part of my PM is redundant/I don't have to look into it myself, yay

funny because I was going to ask Snow how to do it anyway and then tell you the result Alfred lol

[Alfred Kamon]

Oh well, that's not a secret at all. :3

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=35944#entry2827125

Well then, I can finally work on events for this chapter now.

[Lord of Gabriel Knight]

I'm glad you're making this hack. You're pioneering the way for FE8 hacking, it seems.

[Alfred Kamon]

Yeah, I should really write a guide to FE8 hacking someday.

I also have custom skirmishes if that's of any interest.

[mmKALLL]

Oh wow.

So going to follow this. Again.

[cyron]

Yeah, I should really write a guide to FE8 hacking someday.

I also have custom skirmishes if that's of any interest.

Can you set them to trigger when certain conditions are met

for example if characters a and b achieve a rank support a certain skirmish would trigger

or alternatively have it be based on if a pc is live or dead (or even a enemy unit)

[Alfred Kamon]

Can you set them to trigger when certain conditions are met

for example if characters a and b achieve a rank support a certain skirmish would trigger

or alternatively have it be based on if a pc is live or dead (or even a enemy unit)

It's good to be able to quote people again... damn computer

Unfortunately I can't do that via events because skirmishes are nothing more than a "load one of this three groups of units at random"-- making some kind of condition for that to happen would require some heavy ASM.

... I can do that in the Tower of Valni / Lagdou Ruins, though.

I had plans to transform the Tower of Valni in some sort of military base where you must pay a fee to enter and you can stay for a good amount of turns in order to have characters support or to buy some special item. I can probably make conditionals there, so that speaking with a certain NPC with a certain character will make some event occur in that map or also in actual chapters of the game. I suppose I will just need to use Permanent Event IDs... though seeing how broken Elibian Nights was when it abused them, I don't know if that's a good idea.

[cyron]

It's good to be able to quote people again... damn computer

Unfortunately I can't do that via events because skirmishes are nothing more than a "load one of this three groups of units at random"-- making some kind of condition for that to happen would require some heavy ASM.

... I can do that in the Tower of Valni / Lagdou Ruins, though.

I had plans to transform the Tower of Valni in some sort of military base where you must pay a fee to enter and you can stay for a good amount of turns in order to have characters support or to buy some special item. I can probably make conditionals there, so that speaking with a certain NPC with a certain character will make some event occur in that map or also in actual chapters of the game. I suppose I will just need to use Permanent Event IDs... though seeing how broken Elibian Nights was when it abused them, I don't know if that's a good idea.

ok, thanks, that makes sense

[Lord Glenn]

How have I not already replied to this topic? That's a disservice which I intend to rectify.

First, some of the recent-ish comments that I wanted to touch on:

The menu backgrounds are distracting; I have problems reading the the non-highlighted items. Would it be possible to make the background darker?

@eclipse: Hmm.... I think most people don't have a problem with that, but in any case... even if I took your critique in account, I wouldn't be able to edit it at this point. There is some repointing problem that I'm not able to fix.

Couldn't you just edit the existing palette? It should already be stored in the hex, so it should just be a matter of darkening the colors in like Paint, getting the new colors' respective hex byte representations, and changing them with your hex editor, right? (While I can personally make out the text, I can imagine that after an hour+ of playing, it might start getting harder to read against the background.)

*-* Matt <3 This is some great news!! Yes please send me that PM, I'd be glad to hear what you found out. :)

Btw the maps are nothing special, but at least they're enjoyable.

Also, finished the chapter 7 map. Wanted to put some mountains in there but their palette is kinda buggy on this tileset.

/some random update to not leave this topic die once more

Edit: holy cow, I'm having more problems than I thought with Tile changes.

Edit2: Alright! Tile changes: done! And with this I've covered pretty much every aspect of GBA FE event-related hacking in FE8.

I have to say, I really, really like this map. So much so that it actually inspired me to grab one of MageKnight404's old RP maps that used the tileset and modern-ify it for him for A Sacred Dawn. It's got a nice visual appearance, and a nice theoretical flow to combat on it.

You are missing shadows on the tiles immediately below the chests and on the one to the right of the pair in the southern part of the map, though. ^_^

Yeah, I should really write a guide to FE8 hacking someday.

I also have custom skirmishes if that's of any interest.

Seconding this motion, for the sole, selfish principle of the fact that it would most likely help MageKnight404 out a ton when he's working on ASD. Or, at the very least, a collection of documentation for FE8 equivalents of FE7 stuff or FE8-only new stuff.

(And, to go on a slight tangent of a topic for a moment - in regards to incorporating tile changes in FE8, is there any way to make what worked for Tiled work for maps generated in Mappy? I'm not exactly wanting to port over all of the maps I've done to Tiled just to get working tile changes. :/)

-----

That stuff aside, I'll be keeping my eye on this. With how much I work, my own projects and projects that I'm helping on, and my gaming backlog, I probably won't ever get around to playing this if/when it finishes, but it's flashy, looks impressive, and is technically advancing FE hacking (given that it's got stuff for FE8 that no one's had previously, even if it was always there in the system). The icons are swank (or at least the ones in the screenshots so far - including the new Affinity/Weapon Level ones), the new statsheet background (minus the brightness) looks great - I can only imagine what you'll have for a new battle template and the other remaining graphics...

[Alfred Kamon]

Thanks for your post, Lord Glenn! ;)

Couldn't you just edit the existing palette? It should already be stored in the hex, so it should just be a matter of darkening the colors in like Paint, getting the new colors' respective hex byte representations, and changing them with your hex editor, right? (While I can personally make out the text, I can imagine that after an hour+ of playing, it might start getting harder to read against the background.)

Indeed, I could, thanks for the suggestion. I'll put that into my "to do before releasing" list. As of now, it isn't my top priority, though.

I have to say, I really, really like this map. So much so that it actually inspired me to grab one of MageKnight404's old RP maps that used the tileset and modern-ify it for him for A Sacred Dawn. It's got a nice visual appearance, and a nice theoretical flow to combat on it.

Oh, thanks. ^^ I'm glad you like it so much!

And... uh, derp. I didn't realize chests had shades too how dumb can I be since it's the first time I actually use them.

Here's the final version of the map. I've also fixed another shading problem to the entrance of the hall where there are those two chests, and I've added a breakable wall.

(And, to go on a slight tangent of a topic for a moment - in regards to incorporating tile changes in FE8, is there any way to make what worked for Tiled work for maps generated in Mappy? I'm not exactly wanting to port over all of the maps I've done to Tiled just to get working tile changes. :/)

As far as I know, no.

But I must admit I know very little about Mappy since I've always used Tiled.

Seconding this motion, for the sole, selfish principle of the fact that it would most likely help MageKnight404 out a ton when he's working on ASD. Or, at the very least, a collection of documentation for FE8 equivalents of FE7 stuff or FE8-only new stuff.

Ray gave me some precious hints last year. I don't forget those who've been kind to me. I'll be glad to help him now, if he needs anything. Anyway, I suppose it'd be more practical if he just asked me what he needs-- If I had to write a summary of my discoveries I wouldn't even know how to get started, honestly.

As far as I remember, he had problems with the world map events, somewhere between chapter 1 and 2-- the screen displayed the prologue title despite being in chapter 2, or something like that, right? That's because he used MNCH 0x2 instead of MNCH 0x38 in the Ending Scene of chapter 1.

On the left: ASD ch.1 Ending events

On the right: Midnight Sun ch.1 Ending events

0x38 is the chapter used for events, like that one in Frelia Castle. From 0x38, the game proceeds to 0x2, for example.

I can also remember that some people got walking corpses in their chapters because Ray didn't implement the Prep. screen in said chapters but he also didn't use conditionals to check if some units were dead or alive. Since he was the one who told me about that code in the first place, I won't even bother writing it here.

Also he had a problem with the stairs in ch. 5x.

In order to make the event triggerable only by allies, he has to write something like this:

stairs:

_SETVAL 0x2 0x0 //Loads 0x0, the ID of the player allegiance, into memory slot 2

CALL check //This sequence is the check for the unit's allegiance

[stuff that happens if the unit is an ally]

_0x0228 0x7
ENDA

check:

_0x3325 0xFFFF
_SETCONDITION 0x0 0xC 0x2 //Checks value loaded into memory slot 2
[stuff that happens if the unit is NOT an ally] // this part before the ENIF can also be blank if you don't want anything to happen

// though I'd suggest to insert this CALL before, to reset the event ID

CALL reset
ENIF 0x0
_0x0228 0x7
ENDA

reset:

_0x0221 eventID // this makes the eventID associated to the code "unused".
_0x0228 0x7
ENDB // this way the code stops here and you won't get back to "stairs"

I hope this helps.

Anyway I shouldn't be writing this on the Midnight Sun topic, so if Ray wants to know something, he could just ask me for it directly.

-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-

Back in topic~ Let's take a look at monsters, shall we?

Monsters in Sacred Stones were weeeak. Too weak. Boring.

I redesigned their stats for Midnight Sun.

Zombies

High HP and Atk, average Skill and Def, low Speed, Res and Luck.

Also, I've worked around the description of monster weapons since they didn't display any info back in Sacred Stones.

Not exactly good-looking, though... But it works.

Skeletons

High Speed and Def, average Skill and HP, below-average Str and low Res and Luck.

Most weapons that are effective against armored Knights are now effective against Skeletons as well.

Swing dat Bonecrusher axe!

Luckos (Mauthee dog)

Basically the same. A monster version of the myrmidons, with low Str and HP but very High Skl and Spd, average Luck and below average Def and Res.

Big Eye (most original name ever)

High Mag and Res, low on everything else. Can fly. Now uses Dark and Anima tomes instead of the "Eye" weapons.

Phantom

Now are common monsters rather than summons. Some sort of melee counterpart of the Big Eye, but with higher Atk. Is considered a promoted unit so it won't appear until lategame.

Centaur

Well-rounded stats, with high Str.

Aaaand.... they now have a female counterpart which uses Swords and Staves! Here's the F. Centaur (Centauress just sounds ridiculous).

*battle sheet made by MrStarter, coding and insertion made by me* ... I should probably polish the timing and all, but here's a preview, at least.

F. Centaurs are considered promoted classes and will be available only in few chapters of the story.

I still have no plans for Gargoyles, Baels, Gorgons or Dracozombies, but they'll obviously be in the game.

I don't know about Cyclopes.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Alfred Kamon

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Ooooo female centaur is fabulous. Maybe change the hair color so I can unsee Tethys but looks nice.

[EldinnerPlate]

This hack is looking really good. One question, will there be playable monsters? Since Faratrass is the vassal for the Demon King and all.

[Vennobennu]

So what about Gargoyles and Baels? :D

It's really nice to see a fully custom FE8 hack being made so all the cool stuff that FE8 has can be shown off better. A few comments:

I don't know how well using permanent Event IDs will go - the base game uses tons of them for the world map system for creating paths and skirmishes, and things like that. I don't know how many are free to use.

[Alfred Kamon]

Ooooo female centaur is fabulous. Maybe change the hair color so I can unsee Tethys but looks nice.

Ahah thanks! Well that's the basic enemy palette, I still have to make other/better palettes in order to un-tethys it.

This hack is looking really good. One question, will there be playable monsters? Since Faratrass is the vassal for the Demon King and all.

Thank you.

Yes, there should be two, one per route. Probably you'll get the first in chapter 13A/13B and the second in chapter 15 when the two teams reunite.

They'll be quite special though, not common monsters.

So what about Gargoyles and Baels? :D

It's really nice to see a fully custom FE8 hack being made so all the cool stuff that FE8 has can be shown off better. A few comments:

I don't know how well using permanent Event IDs will go - the base game uses tons of them for the world map system for creating paths and skirmishes, and things like that. I don't know how many are free to use.

derp

Oh, that's a shame. I hope to find a few which are still free to use, since I'll probably need them for some things I've in mind.