Is hacking FE8 much harder than FE7?

[Brendor]

Hey everyone. I've been working on my own hack for a while now using FE7 as the base ROM but recently I started wondering if FE8 might be a better base. I know doing certain things are more difficult and there are cool ASM hacks that work for FE7 but not FE8 but to my knowledge it doesn't seem drastically more difficult or more limiting but I have no FE8 hacking experience so I can't say for sure. I have about 3 completed chapters in my FE7 hack. Any comments on the differences? Is it a fair trade for skills a world map and branched promotions?

[CT075]

try it and find out

[Brendor]

I've heard you can add skills like adept and astra and vantage. How can I add them and make class lists for them?

[viyut]

It's not more difficult, but it's more limited on what you can do. There's less nightmare modules, and there's fewer people who hack it. So i think you should continue hacking FE7.

[Brendor]

the only things I personally notice is that setting up an event file is a little bit more involved as far as scripted battles and units and things of that nature but I don't really see anything you can't do in FE8 that you can in FE7. As far as the nightmare modules, nightmare is basically a user friendly hex editor so the missing modules can be made up for by just using HxD. The lessened support system kinda sucks but I think I can get past that. Is there anything else specifically?

[viyut]

Well if the lack of modules is not a problem for you then it's fine. The only other thing that could be troublesome it's the color palette. You'll need to recolour all the stuff you have on your FE7 hack (portraits, icons, sprites) to match FE8's colours. Or else they won't be insertable.

[Brendor]

actually i was using the fe8 palette to begin with

[CT075]

You'll need to recolour all the stuff you have on your FE7 hack (portraits, icons, sprites) to match FE8's colours. Or else they won't be insertable.

why the fuck would the color palette make a difference in whether something is insertable?

[viyut]

I had problems in the past inserting a portrait and after recolouring it to FE8's palette it worked.

BTW, i'm sure you know this already but don't forget to backup your work. And release it once it's finished!

[CT075]

I had problems in the past inserting a portrait and after recolouring it to FE8's palette it worked.

you're either doing it with the wrong tool or you fucked up the palette some other way because i can dump a portrait directly from fe7 into fe8 without a problem

that's not even getting into using custom colors on a sprite

[Brendor]

yes I learned that the hard way : [

so about those skills..

Edited June 29, 2013 by Brendor the Brave

[CT075]

you implement the skills with ASM and add them to the class manually, ideally by hijacking the existing skill check routine

[Brendor]

yes yes but where is the ASM? are there .dmp files or patches or anything around?

[CT075]

i think hextator or nintenlord had them (probably the former), go dig around the doc somewhere

[Brendor]

I've searched on this forum and on google but still nothing. It says in this video that Xeld made the patch but I still am unable to find them

[CT075]

i just told you where to look

[Brendor]

which doc exactly are you referring to?

[CT075]

this really isn't rocket science

who made the skills patch?

[Brendor]

apparently it's Xeld's patch

[CT075]

then who's doc would it be in?

[Brendor]

okay and where might I find Xeld's doc?

edit: found it but its in some unusable format, .jfp.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Brendor the Brave

[Blademaster!]

If you can't even read basic documentation, you aren't even ever going to figure out how to hack into FE8. .jfp is a patching format Xeld made himself to apply most of his patches and use for patching in general. It stands for "just fucking patch." You can use some simple program like dr java, open the .jfp file in it, and press run to get it to work (IIRC this is how I did it?). However, applying the FE8 skill patch causes a graphics glitch with long range weapons from what I've seen, and when I spoke with Xeld about it ages ago, I don't think he was too interested in trying to fix that, and I wasn't to keen on trying back then, and definetly not now since hacking takes too much time.

As for hacking FE8, from what I've seen from barely skimming the hacking community these last few years, it honestly looks like I was the only person who, to this day, ever tried to make a serious FE8 in this community, though I honestly hope I'm wrong on this count, so that should give you one idea about how much "harder" it is. Ultimately, the palettes, placement of units in the event assembler, and way to go about accessing chapters due to the world map makes hacking into it more annoying, but in exchange, you get all the superior features that come with FE8 such as skills, more spells, monster classes, branched promotions, and I think it had one more delphi shield pointer or something so that you could make two weapons for it. Or maybe that was for something else like Slayer, I don't really remember and I don't know where any of my old minor notes on hacking FE8 are anymore. Other than those differences, the two are largely the same for the most part, but chapter progression and palettes can be really annoying. I think boss/death quotes also worked a bit differently, but I don't 100% remember.

You're welcome to try hacking FE8, but while the difficulty between it and FE7 are arguably about the some, FE8 does require more creativity to get around certain things, so it is definetly the harder of the two to hack into, and you aren't even really able to make a true good final product because of the limitations in it thanks to the world map and all that jazz.

[Crimson Red]

If you aren't self-sufficient (which this thread gives evidence of) and have a hard time with FE7 then you're going to have a harder time hacking FE8. A lot of stuff figured out in FE7 hasn't been figured out in FE8 and the fact that FE7 has so much more doc/experience/etc. with it is prob taken for granted because it's already there and everyone leans in that direction.

In other words I say if you're a leader hack FE8 but if you're a follower hack FE7, keeping in mind that some people just aren't cut out to be leaders and some don't want to be~

[Brendor]

Thanks for all the advice and input. I'm going to make an attempt and if I fail I guess I can go back to FE7

[Celice]

Thanks for all the advice and input. I'm going to make an attempt and if I fail I guess I can go back to FE7

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/767/

Here is a program that the author of those patches created, capable of applying his .jfp patches to whatever you like. If you still need help applying the patches you found, this might be for you.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Celice