FE Clone Starter Kit for SRPG Studio

[Von Ithipathachai]

Greetings!  Have you recently bought SRPG Studio?  Developed an interest in making your own Fire Emblem-like game with it, but aren't quite sure how to make things like physical/magical hybrid classes or decent-looking maps?  Well, hang in there, because I've got a solution that just might help you get on your feet.

Introducing my new FE Clone Starter Kit!  This is intended to act as an in-depth alternative sample project for the engine which demonstrates the use of features such as complex databasing, custom assets including graphics and plugins, maps for both story events and gameplay, and more.  It provides a practical example of a game made in the engine which users can dissect and study to learn more about how the engine works and how to implement functionality commonly found in FE games.

Here are some things this starter kit includes:

• Popular custom assets (including graphics and plugins) individually labeled with their creators, assembled into a single convenient place, and implemented.
• An entire FE class tree (including melee/bow, bow/magic, and melee/magic classes) and common weapons, items, & status effects, databased in advance and fully ready to use or edit.
• Tweaked default animations that include casting animations for magical melee weapons and throwing sword/axe animations where they actually spin in midair as opposed to simply flying straight.
• Demos for implementing a customizable Avatar and Child Units.
• A short 5-chapter (or is it 6?) sample game entitled Golden Fools which shows off the above features in action.

Now, as much as I'd like to, I cannot possibly account for everything a user might want to do for a game made using this software.  Here are some things this starter kit does not include:

• A proper Support system like those in modern games.  Personally I've grown to find Support conversations in FE to be an overrated mechanic that doesn't lend itself well to organic character development.  If you're looking to make an FE-type game in this engine, I strongly suggest experimenting with other approaches to unit bonding.
• A difficulty that includes permanent death and the alternate scenarios and events necessary to accommodate permanent death.  Permadeath is another common FE mechanic I've soured on over the years due to it largely failing to accomplish its intended purposes and ultimately being little more than a nuisance (at least in my opinion).  Although you can easily add new difficulties that include permadeath, you should not feel pressured to include it in whatever you make if you do not feel you are creatively or logistically capable of supporting it.
• Graphical assets deviating significantly from the RTP (default) assets in art style.  If you have a specific vision in mind for how your game and your characters should look, that's great!  But that's something that should ideally come from yourself.
  • The GBAFE portraits included in this starter kit are mostly just here because I didn't want to use the RTP ones and I needed something I could more easily demonstrate the Child Unit system with.  Using them in a commercial project is a very, very, very bad idea if you don't want Nintendo's copyright ninjas breathing down your neck.  Don't say I didn't warn you!

I hope that this starter kit aids you on your SRPG Studio journey.  Hopefully it will do its job of helping new users learn their way around the engine kinesthetically.  Who knows?  Maybe even users who don't plan on making straight FE clones might get a little something out of this.

Dropbox link

Other helpful documents

Discord server

Additional screenshots:

Spoiler

Credits:

Spoiler

All RTP resources by SapphireSoft
All portraits originally by Intelligent Systems

All databasing, writing, and map design for Golden Fools by Von Ithipathachai

Custom Backgrounds:
senaka

Custom Class Graphics:
Fuwafuwa, gameandfun, JAPANWeb, Kashikoma, Maiser, Ojisan, Repeat, Von Ithipathachai

Portrait Edits:
BladerDj, Imperial, JeyTheCount, L95, LaurentLacroix, Levin, Lunatic, Nevrikx, NICKT, Sphealnuke, TactHack, Von Ithipathachai

Custom Weapon & Item Graphics:
Briver, Dankboi, EightWinds, JAPANWeb, miyabirakuda, senaka, Von Ithipathachai

Custom Spell Animations:
Fuwafuwa, Pipoya

Custom Plugins:
Aren, Balberith, Claris, Cube, Goinza, MarkyJoe, namaemitai, o-to, Repeat, robinco

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

EDIT: In the event I get further questions about GBAFE Support implementation, I'm just going to direct people to this tutorial: https://imgur.io/a/O2ak1Ih
Be warned that getting all the necessary stuff set up is going to be a massive pain.

EDIT (9/20/2022): Removed some excess animation types I'd forgotten about and added a link to some helpful development documents that might clarify a few things.  It might help you when making your own games to create documents similar to these.  Yellow cells are ones that should be safe to edit without breaking anything.

EDIT (3/16/2022): Released an update to the kit with a handful of new features.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Von Ithipathachai

[KoriCongo]

Nice work.

I will question the idea of creating something deliberately designed to replicate Fire Emblem, especially the modern titles, and then omit the frameworks to replicate two of the most major mechanics in FE. Not that it is difficult to create those frameworks by oneself, but it is kind of...self-defeating to the concept of it, even if I don't necessarily disagree with your reasonings (well, at least for permadeath...). I can imagine this won't sit right with a fair amount of people in the long run...

Still, I appreciate what you have done and can definitely see this being something of a hit in the community.

[Von Ithipathachai]

19 minutes ago, KoriCongo said:

Nice work.

I will question the idea of creating something deliberately designed to replicate Fire Emblem, especially the modern titles, and then omit the frameworks to replicate two of the most major mechanics in FE. Not that it is difficult to create those frameworks by oneself, but it is kind of...self-defeating to the concept of it, even if I don't necessarily disagree with your reasonings (well, at least for permadeath...). I can imagine this won't sit right with a fair amount of people in the long run...

Still, I appreciate what you have done and can definitely see this being something of a hit in the community.

Thanks.

Part of my reluctance to include a full Support system also stems from personal experience working on my main project, Sanctaea Chronicles.  I'd initially gone with GBAFE's proximity system of Support building, which required a tremendous amount of setup and writing for the game's 38-unit cast.  Only to become dissatisfied with it and have to put in additional work gutting it and replacing it with Path of Radiance's deployment-based Support building.  Writing full sets of C to A or even C to S-Support conversations for everyone - conversations that aren't even always well-written - was also very creatively draining and by far the most difficult aspect of the game's active development for me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's okay if you do like FE's Support systems, but you really should put a lot of thought into how you want to go about implementing your own take on it before doing something you potentially regret and having to waste more time undoing it.

[King Marth 64]

You said that we can make custom graphics for SRPG Studio since you did mention about GBA style can be used in this game. Can we do like DS, NES, GB, SNES, etc. type style of Graphics for the game and we can use Paint.Net, Photoshop, etc. for SRPG Studio or is it just built in Graphics Editor in SRPG Studio and it can't import assets outside of SRPG Studio?

Edited September 20, 2022 by King Marth 64

[Jedicars]

2 hours ago, King Marth 64 said:

You said that we can make custom graphics for SRPG Studio since you did mention about GBA style can be used in this game. Can we do like DS, NES, GB, SNES, etc. type style of Graphics for the game and we can use Paint.Net, Photoshop, etc. for SRPG Studio or is it just built in Graphics Editor in SRPG Studio and it can't import assets outside of SRPG Studio?

SRPG Studio doesn't have a built in Graphics Editor. The only built in visual editor is one for Animations. And to clarify that, you will need to create the frames of the animation in another software like Aseprite, Photoshop, Paint.net etc. Then in the Animation Editor in the engine, you can play around with frames to get them into a animation. 

You can import a variety of resources, ranging from Character Chips to Map Chips to Character Portraits, Backgrounds, Music, Sound Effects, etc. Basically anything you'd normally expect to have in light genre specific engine. There are default resource formats, such as Map Chips being 32x32, Icons (Think FE Skill/Status icons) being 24x24,  and Character Portraits being 96x96, for example. But you can also work outside of those sizes too, however, you may need to write a plugin to accommodate the visual change. 

In other words, yes the engine can use other art styles out of GBA for graphics. You may have to adapt the code depending on the resolution of your assets, but if you stick to the default formats, you shouldn't have a problem. 

[Uriyahn]

May I use some of these sprites in my project, or would I need to ask the people that made them?

[Troublesome Knight]

Like, I get that supports can be a pain to make for a game with a big cast, but supports are still kinda important. They might not lend themselves to developing the main characters "organically" but the main characters already have the whole game for that. What supports do help with is characterizing the members of your army who stop being important after the map they're introduced in. That's why they've become such a major part of FE since the GBA era. I feel like it's not really a good idea not to include them.

[Uriyahn]

1 hour ago, Troublesome Knight said:

Like, I get that supports can be a pain to make for a game with a big cast, but supports are still kinda important. They might not lend themselves to developing the main characters "organically" but the main characters already have the whole game for that. What supports do help with is characterizing the members of your army who stop being important after the map they're introduced in. That's why they've become such a major part of FE since the GBA era. I feel like it's not really a good idea not to include them.

I sorta get it, a lot of support conversations come off as exposition dumps.  My idea for support conversations is to have the exposition heavy ones as straight up flashbacks, so you can see what happened between characters instead of them just going "hey remember the time we did a thing?"

[Von Ithipathachai]

On 10/5/2022 at 2:35 PM, Uriyahn said:

May I use some of these sprites in my project, or would I need to ask the people that made them?

Everything present in this starter kit should be free to use.  However, you will probably want to use different portraits if you intend on releasing your game commercially.

[Uriyahn]

11 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Everything present in this starter kit should be free to use.  However, you will probably want to use different portraits if you intend on releasing your game commercially.

I'm using TheFlyingMinotaur's GBA sprite maker for the time being because it's more of a passion project.  If it does somehow get popular enough to release commercially, I'll probably hire an artist to redesign the characters because I suck at drawing.

[Uriyahn]

I just wanted to pop in again to say thank you for making this. I have been working on my game since 2019, and general clunkyness, And personal life problems prevented me from making progress on it.  I recently just out of the blue got back into Fire Emblem and thought "you know what? I'm gonna finish my fangame!" By dissecting Golden Fools, my game has already gotten much less clunky and actually feels like a Fire Emblem game.  I hope to have a demo out soon, but personal life problems are still slowing development.  But again this helped tremendously. Thank you, Von.

[Algrador]

Just came across this on the discord. Hopefully I can find something related to various means of recruitment where the character saves between maps because it's been a pain trying to figure that out.

 

 

[Von Ithipathachai]

3 hours ago, Algrador said:

Just came across this on the discord. Hopefully I can find something related to various means of recruitment where the character saves between maps because it's been a pain trying to figure that out.

I'm not sure if I understand?  What exactly is it you're trying to do?

[Algrador]

recruitment; here's an idea I tried.

Twas' an enemy unit who is recruitable when spoken to. I can do the talk/events, etc., but after they convert to the player's party/side after that map is over they're gone; they don't exist as a party member at all. I think at some point I figured out the enemy has to be an event unit and there has to be a specific "party member" unit created that's equivalent stats/equipment to the enemy unit, but yeah I don't know. it was all getting confusing for me at that point trying to make sure they actually continue between chapters.

 

Tried doing a prisoner green unit joining you too, and after the battle ends they're also gone; It's just a mess really.

 

Don't really wanna think about how a Gatrie situation would be pulled off till I understand the basics I guess, but that'd be a good test to make sure one's understanding of how recruitment works I suppose.

 

I was gonna check out your game at the moment, but I spent more time typing this out than I thought. I'll have to do it later, probably after you respond. Maybe you already a map that does this like a "rose's thorns map 2" or something. Thanks though.

[Von Ithipathachai]

4 hours ago, Algrador said:

recruitment; here's an idea I tried.

Twas' an enemy unit who is recruitable when spoken to. I can do the talk/events, etc., but after they convert to the player's party/side after that map is over they're gone; they don't exist as a party member at all. I think at some point I figured out the enemy has to be an event unit and there has to be a specific "party member" unit created that's equivalent stats/equipment to the enemy unit, but yeah I don't know. it was all getting confusing for me at that point trying to make sure they actually continue between chapters.

 

Tried doing a prisoner green unit joining you too, and after the battle ends they're also gone; It's just a mess really.

 

Don't really wanna think about how a Gatrie situation would be pulled off till I understand the basics I guess, but that'd be a good test to make sure one's understanding of how recruitment works I suppose.

 

I was gonna check out your game at the moment, but I spent more time typing this out than I thought. I'll have to do it later, probably after you respond. Maybe you already a map that does this like a "rose's thorns map 2" or something. Thanks though.

So if I understand correctly, you're trying to implement recruitable enemy/ally units?  I can explain how to do that.  Chapter 4 of Golden Fools includes an example of this in action.

In order to create a recruitable enemy/ally unit who carries over between maps, you first need to create that unit in the Players tab of the Database.  Next, on the map in which you want the recruitable unit to appear, open the map and enter Unit Mode.  What you need to do next depends on whether you want this unit to be present on the map from the beginning or be spawned later via an event.

If you want the recruitable unit to be present on the map from the beginning, you need to right-click on the space where you want to put them and click "Create Player as Enemy".

If you want the recruitable unit to spawn later via event, right-click on the space where you want to put them and click "Create Enemy as Event".  Next, right-click on the big white rectangle on the left of the window and click "Create Player as Enemy".

You can toggle between placing enemy units and ally units by clicking the appropriate option in the little Placement Mode window.  Placing recruitable allies works in the exact same manner as placing recruitable enemies.

I hope that this has helped you.  Feel free to hop onto the SRPG Studio University Discord server if you have any other questions to ask.  We'll be more than happy to help you and will probably give you answers on Discord more quickly than you can get them on a forum.

[Algrador]

Didn't know there was a "focus location". Got that from your demo, oh and it worked, thanks. I'll see about posting on the discord unless it relates to this specific game.

Edited October 29, 2022 by Algrador

[Von Ithipathachai]

Update.  It's come to my attention that quite a few users are using this starter kit more as a repository of labeled assets rather than building games off of it directly.

In light of this, I've taken the liberty of adding each of the individual .sani files for all of the reworked battle animations to the project files on Dropbox.  Hopefully they will save you some time on animating if nothing else.

Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or issues.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Von Ithipathachai

[Ludrik]

When I try to test play the game, following error message pops up.

could not convert character code.
C:\Program Files\test\Golden Fools\Plugin\namaemitai-stock_sort_ex.js

could not convert character code.
C:\Program Files\test\Golden Fools\Plugin\namaemitai-triangle-indicator.js
 

Could not launch game.
A-Phese 9

I'm suspecting javascripts with Japanese comments are somehow conflicting with my Windows setting (Windows 11 Home, Korean ver).

Is there a way to fix this somehow? I've tried redownloading specific javascripts from your dropbox and rewriting them to the respective folders, but that didn't do much.

[Von Ithipathachai]

On 1/24/2023 at 1:08 AM, Ludrik said:

When I try to test play the game, following error message pops up.

could not convert character code.
C:\Program Files\test\Golden Fools\Plugin\namaemitai-stock_sort_ex.js

could not convert character code.
C:\Program Files\test\Golden Fools\Plugin\namaemitai-triangle-indicator.js
 

Could not launch game.
A-Phese 9

I'm suspecting javascripts with Japanese comments are somehow conflicting with my Windows setting (Windows 11 Home, Korean ver).

Is there a way to fix this somehow? I've tried redownloading specific javascripts from your dropbox and rewriting them to the respective folders, but that didn't do much.

Is the encoding on these plugins UTF-8 with BOM or ANSI?  Try changing the encoding by saving over them with plain UTF-8 instead of UTF-8 with BOM.

I thought I'd changed them to use UTF-8 before putting them on Dropbox, but it's possible that the downloading process on your end somehow changed them back.  Let me know whether or not you're able to fix the issue.

[Ludrik]

On 1/27/2023 at 12:02 AM, Von Ithipathachai said:

Is the encoding on these plugins UTF-8 with BOM or ANSI?  Try changing the encoding by saving over them with plain UTF-8 instead of UTF-8 with BOM.

I thought I'd changed them to use UTF-8 before putting them on Dropbox, but it's possible that the downloading process on your end somehow changed them back.  Let me know whether or not you're able to fix the issue.

Thank you!!! I've used Notepad++ and used 'Encoding-Convert to UTF-8', then overwrote the aforementioned files. That fixed the issue and made test play possible.

I had no experience in programming so it took me a while to find the right program though. Thank you for the solution!

[ZombieFactor]

How did you show a characters weapon rank, I couldn't figure it out?

Edited March 12, 2023 by ZombieFactor

[Von Ithipathachai]

6 hours ago, ZombieFactor said:

How did you show a characters weapon rank, I couldn't figure it out?

You need to use Goinza's Weapon Ranks plugin for Weapon Rank display.

I'm working on an updated version of this kit as we speak.  Look out for it.

[ZombieFactor]

11 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

You need to use Goinza's Weapon Ranks plugin for Weapon Rank display.

I'm working on an updated version of this kit as we speak.  Look out for it.

I figured out what I was doing wrong, it was always there I just didn't know there was a extra menu, I'm now looking to copy what you did with your menu

[Von Ithipathachai]

Hey, all!  I've released a new version of the starter kit with the following updates:

• Class base stats and growth rates have been updated to more closely resemble those of SRPG Studio Heroes.
• Goinza’s Automatic Stats for Enemy Units plugin has been removed from the kit; all enemies now use fixed Level Ups and manually assigned Weapon Ranks.
• A Jugdral-style Trinity of Magic has been added which functions within the confines of a single Tome weapon type.
• The Re-Move Skill has been renamed Canter.
• All Armored classes now have WXP x2 as a class Skill.
• Soldiers and Barbarians now use new graphics.
• Troubadours now use new graphics and wield Swords in addition to Staves.
• Numerous .sani files that were missing from the original version have been added back in.
• The selection of provided monster classes has been drastically overhauled.
  • Bone Soldiers are now called Bonewalkers and can promote into Wights or Hell Knights.
  • Goblins have been added to the kit.  They wield Swords and Axes and can promote into Elite Goblins or War Goblins.
  • Revenants have had their Weapon Ranks changed from E Axes & Knives to D Knives and can promote into Legionaries or Entombed.
  • Bone Archers have been added to the kit.  They wield Bows and can promote into Deadeyes or Soul Hunters.
  • Bone Mages can promote into Soul Hunters or Liches.
  • Daemons have been renamed Gargoyles and can promote into Harpies or Deathgoyles.  The earlier bow-wielding Gargoyle class has been removed from the kit.
  • Kobolds have had D Swords added to their Weapon Ranks.
  • Minotaurs have been added to the kit.  They wield Axes and Bows.
  • Gorgons have been added to the kit.  They wield Tomes and Staves.
  • Death Riders have been added to the kit.  They wield Axes and Tomes.

[bremmelgod]

Amazing!

Just a quick glance was really helpful to understand some things about SRPG studio.

Keep up the good work, I'll have to check out and play your SRPG studio game too.