Dedicated Fire Emblem Hacking Website Project - Help desired

[Celice]

I think the best way I can describe my goal is that I want to make a Fire Emblem hacking website that's as good as Super Mario World Central.

The thing is, FuSoYa began a lot of his research with a dedicated romhacking community, like acmlm, years and years back. It's had a historical foundation for building up its research, and a much, much, MUCH larger audience to give way to further research, development, and creation of projects and tools. The Fire Emblem community in particular has been incredibly niche, at times elitist, and quite often unwilling to work with newer members or international fans, all of which the Super Mario World fans have been the opposite of. Several foundational tools, such as the custom boss and enemy tools (via ASM) and the music editing were discovered and utilized in cooperation with many of its Japanese fans, such as carol.

The conservative nature of Fire Emblem's fans, for the past six years, affected the growth and sustenance of romhacking as a hobby. This wouldn't have been enough to drive it slow with a stake, but couple it with the stagnant and small amount of fans in comparison, and you have a recipe for stunted development of resources, tools, and projects. Even Sonic fans put the FE series and its fans to shame :/

EDIT: If one is to avoid Serenes Forest as a central hub, joining a larger, more interested romhacking site, such as datacrystal, might also be worth investinng towards.

http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/

Edited November 21, 2013 by Celice

[MarkyJoe1990]

that won't be very hard to beat thena lot of this comes down to your own abilities and patience for the tedious, e.g. I imagine you're going to need skills with HTML, PHP, and mySQL, at the least, on top of someone to actually compile all this, since otherwise it'll never happen (though having a system where people can automatically submit it themselves [EDIT: like ROMHacking.net, for instance] would be nice).

I built my entire website from scratch with PHP and HTML code. Learning MySQL and how to make a login page will probably be an exciting new experience for me, and it will possibly have other benefits. Maybe I'll finally figure out how to send notifications by e-mail.

There needs to be some sort of quality control though. But I guess MarkyJoe would act as moderator anyway.

Personally, I'm on the encouragement side rather than the pessimistic side. Most stuff is on Serenes already, but the odd thing does pop up elsewhere. Nothing wrong with putting a new signpost in and trying to safeguard resources for newcomers.

One suggestion though regarding tilesets; have a little info table saying which tileset is what. Both Mappy and Tiled give rather odd labels to the included tilesets, and trying to link eg 'Plains and Castle' to a specific tileset might be a bit difficult. A simple list of [Tileset label as it appears on your site] = [Mappy label] = [Tiled Label] would greatly speed up things for tileset importation.

Just an idea for when the important stuff is done, I'm in no way saying such a side project has to be done now. Or even ever, it's your site.

I'm a little concerned about quality control, since while I do fancy myself a man with standards, I don't feel I should impose my view of level design and the like on other people. For a long time, my ideas on level design were flawed, and they could easily still be. Stuff like that will just narrow the way people design levels, making them comply to the status quo instead of innovating. On top of that, it doesn't guarantee great design either. Here's an example: Due to Super Mario World Central's ridiculous standards, the original Super Mario World would not be accepted on the website.

I'll be sure to take your advice on the tilesets.

The thing is, FuSoYa began a lot of his research with a dedicated romhacking community, like acmlm, years and years back. It's had a historical foundation for building up its research, and a much, much, MUCH larger audience to give way to further research, development, and creation of projects and tools. The Fire Emblem community in particular has been incredibly niche, at times elitist, and quite often unwilling to work with newer members or international fans, all of which the Super Mario World fans have been the opposite of. Several foundational tools, such as the custom boss and enemy tools (via ASM) and the music editing were discovered and utilized in cooperation with many of its Japanese fans, such as carol.

The conservative nature of Fire Emblem's fans, for the past six years, affected the growth and sustenance of romhacking as a hobby. This wouldn't have been enough to drive it slow with a stake, but couple it with the stagnant and small amount of fans in comparison, and you have a recipe for stunted development of resources, tools, and projects. Even Sonic fans put the FE series and its fans to shame :/

EDIT: If one is to avoid Serenes Forest as a central hub, joining a larger, more interested romhacking site, such as datacrystal, might also be worth investinng towards.

http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/

I agree 100% on the elitism thing. One of my friends, who comes to this forum, has mentioned the dogmatic and unsupportive attitude displayed mostly on Serenes. People have got to be more accepting of mediocrity/terribleness. Myself included. It's hard to feel encouraged or even improve when you get ridiculed for trying to indulge your creativity and make something for others to enjoy.

Edited November 21, 2013 by MarkyJoe1990

[Klokinator]

I was talking with Booton a few month back about making a project directory for hacking but we both decided it was a pretty bad idea for multiple reasons.

1. Hacking is a very niche activity.

2. Hacking is very iffy with the law. There's forum posts, and then there's actually having a site dedicated to it.

3. Fire Emblem hacking in particular is very niche and 98% of all its hacks are terrible. Yeah there's Elibian Nights and also Eternal Bond and FE7x and two or three others, but pretty much everything else sucks a lot.

4. We'd rather focus on FEXNA as we see it as being more legal and less iffy with the law. We also know (As betatesters) that it has way more potential than ROMHacking and is generally better.

I think romhacks could use their own listing, but tbh I think Blazer's hack listing is good enough (Could use dedicated dropbox links though) as well as SF's tools/utilities board. If someone wanted to make a site dedicated to -everything- about romhacking then go ahead and try, but Arch already put in monumental amounts of effort on that front and failed at least twice.

[Brendor]

Maybe this new website is just what we need to get the elitist attitude behind us.

Hopefully those links I spoiler'd helped you?

[Crimson Red]

There needs to be some sort of quality control though. But I guess MarkyJoe would act as moderator anyway.

yeah having submissions manually approved (again, like RHDN) is practically a must. anti-spam measures as well lol

Personally, I'm on the encouragement side rather than the pessimistic side. Most stuff is on Serenes already, but the odd thing does pop up elsewhere. Nothing wrong with putting a new signpost in and trying to safeguard resources for newcomers.

heck yeah pessimism w00t

you might be surprised to know how much isn't on Serenes or is hard to find or how much an elaborate hacking site could help... if hacking were still as popular as it were

or you might not, i don't feel like investing enough to make a point about anything *shrug*

tbh I think Blazer's hack listing is good enough (Could use dedicated dropbox links though)

I don't agree lol it's way out of date and too inconvenient, if I had time I'd revamp it but alas I don't and there's not enough of a push for me to bump it up on my list of priorities.

More importantly, I don't have dedicated dropbox links set up for two reasons. The first and most important is that if patches get updated, the link suddenly becomes old; it's more convenient if people can update the patch on their own wherever it's most convenient for them. So for a lot of hacks, I don't put static links to downloads. Also, that takes a lot of dropbox space, but I have my own server space so I could just host it there if I didn't have the first problem lol

but yeah there's potential for this to be cool it's just like... can you get it done reasonably well in a reasonable time frame. lol if it's going to take a year, FE hacking is going to be even more dead by then now that I stopped pumping hacks out *shot*.

and the elitism issue has been one for a while and while it'd be nice if things changed it's probably not and I gave up trying to change it some time ago, I used to get e-mails and skype messages from people and they'd always complain about how they didn't want to go on forums because they saw how unfriendly and unwelcoming people were and that they'd rather just keep to themselves since they didn't want to get shot down lol, well that sucks because I would tell them "don't PM me your questions, that's what forums are for!" and then I ended up answering them anyway because they didn't want to register on forums OR they'd register on my forum and I'd answer them there rofl

[Celice]

and the elitism issue has been one for a while and while it'd be nice if things changed it's probably not and I gave up trying to change it some time ago, I used to get e-mails and skype messages from people and they'd always complain about how they didn't want to go on forums because they saw how unfriendly and unwelcoming people were and that they'd rather just keep to themselves since they didn't want to get shot down lol, well that sucks because I would tell them "don't PM me your questions, that's what forums are for!" and then I ended up answering them anyway because they didn't want to register on forums OR they'd register on my forum and I'd answer them there rofl

I've had the same response. Mostly I've helped a bunch of people privately over PM or email, as they have no want of the community fostered in the romhacking section (some places have stopped sending members over directly as the hostility ended up shunting away interested people in the first place). Even staff members of Serenes Forest have agreed there is a problem, and yet do nothing to rectify it.

It is an ugly thing, devouring itself, yet without the elegance of, perhaps, progress.

[MarkyJoe1990]

I was talking with Booton a few month back about making a project directory for hacking but we both decided it was a pretty bad idea for multiple reasons.

1. Hacking is a very niche activity.

2. Hacking is very iffy with the law. There's forum posts, and then there's actually having a site dedicated to it.

3. Fire Emblem hacking in particular is very niche and 98% of all its hacks are terrible. Yeah there's Elibian Nights and also Eternal Bond and FE7x and two or three others, but pretty much everything else sucks a lot.

4. We'd rather focus on FEXNA as we see it as being more legal and less iffy with the law. We also know (As betatesters) that it has way more potential than ROMHacking and is generally better.

I think romhacks could use their own listing, but tbh I think Blazer's hack listing is good enough (Could use dedicated dropbox links though) as well as SF's tools/utilities board. If someone wanted to make a site dedicated to -everything- about romhacking then go ahead and try, but Arch already put in monumental amounts of effort on that front and failed at least twice.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't BwdYeti going to sell FEXNA? That's probably even less legal. If it's still using the IP stuff by Nintendo, like graphics and music, then it's hardly any less illegal than hacking.

It's because of these things that I'm not holding my breath over the project.

Another thing. SMW Central is a website dedicated to hacking as well, and yet Nintendo has not done anything about it. The chances of anything being done about a less popular IP such as Fire Emblem is slim.

Maybe this new website is just what we need to get the elitist attitude behind us.

Hopefully those links I spoiler'd helped you?

Yeah, they were very helpful! I didn't even know there was a Palette Assembler before. =X

yeah having submissions manually approved (again, like RHDN) is practically a must. anti-spam measures as well lol

heck yeah pessimism w00t

you might be surprised to know how much isn't on Serenes or is hard to find or how much an elaborate hacking site could help... if hacking were still as popular as it were

or you might not, i don't feel like investing enough to make a point about anything *shrug*

I don't agree lol it's way out of date and too inconvenient, if I had time I'd revamp it but alas I don't and there's not enough of a push for me to bump it up on my list of priorities.

More importantly, I don't have dedicated dropbox links set up for two reasons. The first and most important is that if patches get updated, the link suddenly becomes old; it's more convenient if people can update the patch on their own wherever it's most convenient for them. So for a lot of hacks, I don't put static links to downloads. Also, that takes a lot of dropbox space, but I have my own server space so I could just host it there if I didn't have the first problem lol

but yeah there's potential for this to be cool it's just like... can you get it done reasonably well in a reasonable time frame. lol if it's going to take a year, FE hacking is going to be even more dead by then now that I stopped pumping hacks out *shot*.

and the elitism issue has been one for a while and while it'd be nice if things changed it's probably not and I gave up trying to change it some time ago, I used to get e-mails and skype messages from people and they'd always complain about how they didn't want to go on forums because they saw how unfriendly and unwelcoming people were and that they'd rather just keep to themselves since they didn't want to get shot down lol, well that sucks because I would tell them "don't PM me your questions, that's what forums are for!" and then I ended up answering them anyway because they didn't want to register on forums OR they'd register on my forum and I'd answer them there rofl

I too have had to help people over skype or Youtube PM. It's helped me figure out good methods to teaching people FE hacking, where to start, etc.

I've had the same response. Mostly I've helped a bunch of people privately over PM or email, as they have no want of the community fostered in the romhacking section (some places have stopped sending members over directly as the hostility ended up shunting away interested people in the first place). Even staff members of Serenes Forest have agreed there is a problem, and yet do nothing to rectify it.

It is an ugly thing, devouring itself, yet without the elegance of, perhaps, progress.

I wouldn't be that pessimistic.

Hm... I'm gonna go learn MySQL, and look up tutorials on login page stuff. I'm really pumped about this, honestly.

[Klokinator]

He isn't selling fexna, and what he's doing with it isn't illegal either. It's just a deal him and I worked out so it can be publically released. There's no grey area with regard to it, as he owns all the code and properties in FEXNA. He also ownsabout 75% of the artwork (All the mugs, and a great deal of animations.). The things he doesn't own are just "placeholders" and he could easily swap them out for something custom if a C&D was issued. In that case the engine would be fully custom.

So yeah, less grey area than hacking there.

Another thing. SMW Central is a website dedicated to hacking as well, and yet Nintendo has not done anything about it. The chances of anything being done about a less popular IP such as Fire Emblem is slim.

Yeah you have a very good point. That being said, I'm fairly certain hacking will become obsolete with the release of FEXNA anyway so that's another reason for our choice to prefer it.

[Miacis]

I'm an admin on a website entirely dedicated to SSBB Hacking ever since people found how to hack that game. We have a hack gallery which allows users to freely and easily submit their productions, and "no quality control" has ever been applied. If you can get over the personal shame of seeing the gallery populated with numbers of mediocre productions, having no quality control and just a basic approval system is pretty much required to make it a successful hacking hub, unless your site had a very hyperactive community already.

In a few months, most of our "competitor" websites ended up linking their hacks to our gallery. (Though the coding is kinda breaking and outdated nowadays.) So yeah, you should really go for it. You'd be surprised how many people a project like that can get into the hacking scene.

Also, despite a specific SSBB hacking team not even affiliated with us making a big media fuss (gettin' interviews on various podcats and on IGN and all that), we've never ever had any sort of trouble with Nintendo despite us hacking a very popular game that they're still selling. Nintendo mainly targets ROMs/ISOs and big media portals like YouTube. I've rarely heard of them chasing the hundreds of fan-hacking websites dedicated to their games.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Miacis

[fuzz94]

Everything in the FEditor Animations V2 thread is open sourced by now. I have a dump I'm finally getting around to today (i was waiting on some stuff for it) and it'll be up to date. Take all of those. Some of them are missing screens unfortunately, but I'll eventually get around to those.

[Lamia]

>FE7 only

discrimination!

[MarkyJoe1990]

>FE7 only

discrimination!

I'll include FE8 and FE6 if/when things get far enough. For now, FE7 is the most commonly hacked of the GBA games, so it's best I focus on that for now.

[Lamia]

I'll include FE8 and FE6 if/when things get far enough. For now, FE7 is the most commonly hacked of the GBA games, so it's best I focus on that for now.

well actually I was just saying that because I only know FE4

but yeah those are good too I guess...!

Edited November 26, 2013 by Lamia

[zahlman]

I built my entire website from scratch with PHP and HTML code. Learning MySQL and how to make a login page will probably be an exciting new experience for me, and it will possibly have other benefits. Maybe I'll finally figure out how to send notifications by e-mail.

Do you actually have control of this stuff on the server side? I can definitely help with all sorts of web-dev stuff.

[MarkyJoe1990]

Do you actually have control of this stuff on the server side? I can definitely help with all sorts of web-dev stuff.

I'm guessing I do.

[Crimson Red]

If it's free hosting, you probably don't.

Might want to check into that (i.e. whether you have all the capabilities you need to even do it).

[MarkyJoe1990]

If it's free hosting, you probably don't.

Might want to check into that (i.e. whether you have all the capabilities you need to even do it).

I'm lookin' stuff up on google and I ain't getting anything. >_<

How would I check to confirm this?

[zahlman]

I'm lookin' stuff up on google and I ain't getting anything. >_<

How would I check to confirm this?

If you show us where you signed up for the hosting, Blazer or I could probably figure it out.

[MarkyJoe1990]

If you show us where you signed up for the hosting, Blazer or I could probably figure it out.

x10hosting

[Crimson Red]

Our free hosting includes PHP 5, MySQL 5

Seems like they do, not sure on limitations (as good as it sounds I'm reluctant to believe it has as few restrictions as it implies) but I think you're good to go; check your cPanel to make sure you have an open database and access to phpMyAdmin

EDIT: sorry for being so negative, I've become really skeptical. I think you found a good host here. Now just get a fancy domain name ;)

Edited November 28, 2013 by Blazer

[MarkyJoe1990]

Seems like they do, not sure on limitations (as good as it sounds I'm reluctant to believe it has as few restrictions as it implies) but I think you're good to go; check your cPanel to make sure you have an open database and access to phpMyAdmin

EDIT: sorry for being so negative, I've become really skeptical. I think you found a good host here. Now just get a fancy domain name ;)

Here ya go.

I'm allowed to have, like, four databases or something. That seems to be the limitation.

Edited November 28, 2013 by MarkyJoe1990

[Booton]

If you don't want to build a CMS yourself, you could look into Wordpress or Drupal and find some plugins to accomplish what you need.