Desperate for help with Shadow Dragon revamp

[Inui]

This is too broad to just be put in the Questions board imo. I have spent almost a month working on a revamp of Shadow Dragon, which hasn't been easy with the extremely limiting and barely functioning Nightmare Modules paired with how damn fickle the game itself is. The only Unit Disposition Editor it has doesn't even work. I took drastic measures to fix half of the enemy bosses, for instance, by making Silver Lances 1~2 range and in turn buffing the other Silver weapons. Oddly enough, this actually added quite a bit more depth to the overall game, so it worked out well enough.

Despite the limitations, it is close to being complete. Units, classes, and weapons were all balanced to near perfection. Stat caps, bases, and growths are now much higher across the board, as well as most weapons being much better, especially the special ones. It's designed to get progressively harder instead of starting off impossible and becoming easier since I painstakingly playtested repeatedly to ensure enemy growths kept up with your team's growths. I present the player with challenging and daunting situations but always provide several options for them to win should they be smart enough to see them. Usually you'll get a good weapon or pre-promoted unit right before a difficult situation that said unit or weapon is ideal for, such as getting a buffed and very tanky Bantu right before you begin dealing with a lot of dangerous physical attacking reinforcements he can wall off. Pre-promoted units are also designed to fill specific roles that previous units or units you may have let die or got RNG-screwed in are supposed to fill so that you are never left without the tools to overcome the strong enemies and weapons I throw at the player.

I am very nearly done, but there are a few major issues I'm having that are preventing me from releasing the game and the constant trial and error to fix them is simply wasting my time. I have already spent this entire week alone simply trying to fix these things without anything working.

I need Caeda to become a Falcon Knight. The class is tailored towards her and I brought back a classic ability of the class by giving it access to staves. I do not like that Draco Knight is part of the female classes or that it is forced upon all of these girls who simply do not have the builds to make use of the caps and ram the Spd cap right upon promotion (I fixed this for the most part, but still). I think the player deserves an alternative and that mobile healing shouldn't be absent from the game. NOTHING WORKS TO GET HER TO PROMOTE TO A FALCON KNIGHT EXCEPT CHEATS. I can't get the Elysian Whip to both appear and be usable. I can't edit the classes to have Caeda promote to Falcon Knight even when I go into the hex. It just promotes her to a faulty Falcon Knight that has 44 Str and straight capped 0's in everything else. Turning another item into the Elysian Whip or vice versa creates something either unusable or something that does absolutely nothing.

Edit: the only success I've had is editing the Master Seal to have the byte that the Elysian Whip uses, but then it doesn't promote anyone else but Pegasus Knights

Related to the above problem, I also can't fix the Master Seal problem. The extreme rarity of Master Seals forces the player to use prepromoted units and bench many other units, if not neglect them completely. For some reason, even giving Master Seals multiple uses did not work, and that's not an idea I like at all anyways. I'm currently playing through it again and have Oguma, Caeda, Merric, and Hardin all sitting at or near promotion level but have only a single Master Seal after using one on Lena earlier. I don't think limiting a player's options like this is good game design.

I would also really appreciate it if someone could help me out with the battle sprites. If I see another stupid orange Paladin again I think I'm going to gouge my eyes out. I've looked into it but I just can't understand anything to do with art, even in the nerdy form of hexadecimal, and I'm scared anything I do will implode the ROM. Related to that, the initial map theme is garbage for such a dark and tragic game and I'd much rather use the other two for several maps. That upbeat, carefree map music playing while you're fighting to retake Archanea is just dumb. I've tried working with a few music editors but I can't figure out how to properly edit an SDAT file. Mixing up the boss music would be nice, but it's not as important.

By far the most important thing to me is getting access to Falcon Knight, followed by giving the player more promotion items in general, then the palette and music stuff. Working disposition editors would be sick but it doesn't seem to be necessary to make the game challenging yet rewarding from what I've been experiencing because I can still freely edit weapons and enemy stats any way I need to.

Direct help or being given the tools and resources to complete these tasks would be greatly appreciated. I have put so much effort into this and it really sucks to be stuck on these things at the end. This is like my masterpiece that showcases all of my genius for this series and I'd love to share it with everyone but I have too much pride to put out anything that isn't damn near perfect.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Inui

[Inui]

Here are a bunch of random screenshots showing some of the stuff I've done. I'd say the biggest ordeal was going through each chapter, enemy by enemy, ensuring that the difficulty increased at a fair yet challenging pace and that the enemies were never left behind by your team but also never became too strong. It's no wonder IS hasn't put out a game worth playing since 2007; doing this takes someone 100 hours easily.

[Peter The Cool]

Have you tried adding Falcon Knight to the female reclass options? I think the last time I dicked with Shadow Dragon that worked. You may not be able to make Caeda promote into a Falcon Knight directly but you can reclass her. As for anything else I have no idea. Good luck.

[Inui]

that doesn't work

I figured out a way but it makes it impossible to reclass back to Falcon Knight once she leaves it (though there is honestly no reason to ever leave it)

[Inui]

figured everything out and completed the entire thing with hex editing and self teaching myself everything

HAH

sometimes I am a god

[Lamia]

Here are a bunch of random screenshots showing some of the stuff I've done. I'd say the biggest ordeal was going through each chapter, enemy by enemy, ensuring that the difficulty increased at a fair yet challenging pace and that the enemies were never left behind by your team but also never became too strong. It's no wonder IS hasn't put out a game worth playing since 2007; doing this takes someone 100 hours easily.

well if your job was solely to balance units and you were the only person to work on it, it would be an easy matter as you say, cough

it does make me wonder how making a fire emblem progresses, though

and groovy work, who knows how far you can get! wish I could help you out with all that

Edited March 19, 2016 by Lamia

[Inui]

oh it's actually finished and posted to my Facebook already haha

I am very happy with it

feels like a perfect masterpiece

[Topazd]

Never mind

Edited March 26, 2016 by Topazd