50 replies to this topic

[Burning Gravity]

Anyone remember that old tutorial called the "Ultimate Tutorial" I made a few years ago that was supposed to be the end-all to Fire Emblem hacking tutorials?

Well, I restarted it some time ago, from scratch, although I admit I did borrow some parts of the tutorial from other tutorials. Anyhow, it now covers tons more stuff, including a majority of the Nightmare Modules, graphics, maps, and events. It is not complete yet, but it is over 180 pages ATM and I'm a bit tired of writing--hopefully you can see that 180+ pages for a tutorial is quite a lot.

I must warn you that this tutorial is highly detailed. Like, exceptionally detailed. In addition, it uses a lot of text, but I use screenshots where they are helpful or needed--not when they are near useless.

Also, this tutorial is Fire Emblem 7 oriented. I warned you. I don't cover all of the FE6/8 Nightmare modules, event codes, and other stuff, and my examples pretty much always use FE7. This is because I am most familiar with FE7 and some of the stuff is FE7-only.

Despite this, I am confident that people will make use of my knowledge and no longer have reason to ask silly questions. Of course, if they do, I'll simply link them to my website or the tutorial. :P

With that said and done...

Ultimate Tutorial [Online Version]

Ultimate Tutorial [DOC]
Ultimate Tutorial [PDF]

^_^

Spoiler - Update Log

July 8th, 2010 – I’ve remade the tutorial from near scratch (but included parts of former tutorials as well).
August 19th, 2010 – Updates, added more chapters (sorry, I forgot to record which things I updated).
February 19th, 2011 – More updates/chapters (see above).
November 6th, 2011 – Chapter 26 has been slightly updated. Chapter 45 and the Epilogue have been majorly updated. Added new JFP patching chapter, and renumbered chapters past it accordingly. Started and finished IPS, UPS, JFP, and XDelta patching chapters, as well as the Nightmare Module Format chapter. Also revised chapters 72, 73, and the final chapter. Only chapters 59-61 remain, which will most likely be finished in the next update.
November 7th, 2011 – Finished chapters 60 on weapon icons and 61 on map sprites in one fell swoop. Then, after several hours, finished chapter 59 on custom spell animations. This means that the tutorial is now complete—all chapters are finished. Any future updates will likely only be revisions, adding small details, updates, and adding more information to the archive chapter, chapter 72. Thanks for reading and waiting so long for this tutorial’s completion. I hope it helps many people make awesome hacks! - Blazer

Edited by Strawhat Luffy, 07 November 2011 - 12:20 PM.

[69']

Is it as long as the old one?

[Burning Gravity]

As long? Hahahahahahaha

Only like 5x longer. It's 185 pages and over 48,000 words. Over 70 chapters (well, not all of them are complete, but who cares...).

[69']

Great. More to discourage those noobs with
I mean lolwut? I'll be sure to link them this if i see any noobs aspiring hackers

[AstraLunaSol]

Great. More to discourage those noobs with
I mean lolwut? I'll be sure to link them this if i see any noobs aspiring hackers

It really depends on what TYPE of hacking you want to specialize in, if you just want to learn basic Nightmare, get that down first, obviously you don't want to learn EVERYTHING in one go, you need practice.

[69']

Eh. Feditor + Nightmare will give you a decent hack IMO. All this other stuff is too complicated...

[Ezra]

that's quite a lot of pages... you could write a book about hacking... they should have those at libraries.

anyway I'll be sure to look at it, does it cover event hacking? because that's the main thing I need help with, after I learn that I can make real progress in my hack, and if this tutorial is for fire emblem 7 I might switch my hack to fire emblem 7, but I'll still try for fire emblem 8.

[Burning Gravity]

FEditor + Nightmare = reskin hack

AKA not too great, maybe decent, but not great. It'd be like playing Pokemon but changing the names of the Pokemon and what they look like, then maybe changing some of the text here and there. Essentially the same thing, just makes you believe you're playing something different lol

@Ezra TBH a lot of is pictures (230+ images) so eh. It DOES cover event hacking. Meaning there are now 2 tutorials that do so, which is good. This tutorial is FE7-oriented but GBA games have a lot of similarities so usually just learning a few special things here and there and maybe not having certain modules (FE7 has way more modules than FE6 and FE8 ._.) and having some different offsets are the main differences. I mean, FEditor Adv works almost exactly the same for all 3 games, and Nightmare works mostly the same. Event codes work mostly the same, just sometimes there are codes only certain games have/altered formats for codes.

Yeah now I'm just ranting...

[Deliriyum]

Are you going to finish this in the future?

[Burning Gravity]

Hopefully.

Why, not enough info yet? XP

[CorruptDruid]

Sorry to bother you, but after reading your tutorial, and trying to utilize the Custom Battle Animation Editor, I've succeeded in Fe 7. No problems so far, except when I try Fe 8 the Class Editor Module's Battle Animation Pointer is a drop down box. Unfortunately I need one with a text box, and have tried searching for an editor for the past hour with no luck. Is there another way to to modify the Animation Pointer, and how? Or do I need an editor with a text box and where can I find one? If you could help that would be nice.

[Burning Gravity]

Bleh, that's a lame limitation that somebody put on the module.

Open up the FE8 Class Editor (assuming I'm understanding you and we're on the same page) and scroll down until you see this:

Battle Animation Pointer
52
4
NDHU
Battle Animations.txt

(you can also use ctrl+F and search for text)

change it to:

Battle Animation Pointer
52
4
NEHU
NULL

NEHU = Numeric Editbox Hex Unsigned, NDHU is the same but 'Dropbox', and NULL means there is no list. After you replace the old entry with the new one, save, and reload the nightmare module, it should just be an editbox, so you should be able to put any pointer you want.

Sorry for the late response, I haven't been online much recently. XP

[CorruptDruid]

Bleh, that's a lame limitation that somebody put on the module.

Open up the FE8 Class Editor (assuming I'm understanding you and we're on the same page) and scroll down until you see this:

Battle Animation Pointer
52
4
NDHU
Battle Animations.txt

(you can also use ctrl+F and search for text)

change it to:

Battle Animation Pointer
52
4
NEHU
NULL

NEHU = Numeric Editbox Hex Unsigned, NDHU is the same but 'Dropbox', and NULL means there is no list. After you replace the old entry with the new one, save, and reload the nightmare module, it should just be an editbox, so you should be able to put any pointer you want.

Sorry for the late response, I haven't been online much recently. XP

When you say to open up the Class Editor, do you mean the Nightmare file itself or open it through the program Nightmare? I also looked in the text called Battle Animation, which only gave me list of the class animations withe their corresponding pointers. I'm screwing up somewhere and have no clue as to what it is. I did use the search function and looked through all the results, and still got nothing. If it helps the keywords I used are NDHU, and Battle Animation Pointer. Sorry for bothering you,and late help is better than no help.

[CT075]

When you say to open up the Class Editor, do you mean the Nightmare file itself or open it through the program Nightmare? I also looked in the text called Battle Animation, which only gave me list of the class animations withe their corresponding pointers. I'm screwing up somewhere and have no clue as to what it is. I did use the search function and looked through all the results, and still got nothing. If it helps the keywords I used are NDHU, and Battle Animation Pointer. Sorry for bothering you,and late help is better than no help.

I think he means use Notepad to open the module.

[CorruptDruid]

I think he means use Notepad to open the module.

I just tried it, and it worked, thanks for clearing up the confusion.

[Burning Gravity]

Woops, sorry, forgot to mention that important detail. Anyhow, I'm glad you got it working.

[RNG Princess]

Luffy I have a question. Its about the Nightmare Module for Chapter 5: Battle Animation Editor. For FE 8 BTW .

I was editing it for the classes I inserted and I had two issues. In the drop down box I put
sword animation
All Axes/All items/Animationfor1-range
All Axes/All items/Animationfor2-range
disarmed animation..

Its weird because only either of the animations would play but never both. If I placed one on top of the other thats the one that would play. So I put instead of All Axes I put iron axe and hand axe respectively but the animation wouldn't work. So I just had the Female Hero replace one of the General Animations.

My second issue and the more annoying one is for the Bard animation I had it replace two classes the General(using a lance because the others were taken by the Female Hero) and a Mogall. I activated the play skill and in the Battle Animation Editor I put.

Dance item because I saw no Play item in the dropdown box
All items
and the animation... It didn't work and it would just freeze my game.

For the Mogall one I just went to the class editor module and gave it play skill and it still wouldn't work. Do you think that there is a way around this?

[Burning Gravity]

I find it very odd you say that, because the nightmare modules I am using don't have such options. It simply has:

+00 Weapon Type

+01 All weapons or a certain one?

+02 Animation Played

+03 Separator (always zero)

Where the weapon type has a dropdown with possible selections like this:

256
0x00 All Swords/ Separator
0x01 All Spears/ Iron Sword
0x02 All Axes/ Thin Sword
0x03 All Bows/ Steel Sword
0x04 All Staves/ Silver Sword
0x05 All Anima/ Iron Blade
0x06 All Light/ Steel Blade
0x07 All Dark/ Silver Blade
0x08 Poison Sword
0x09 Disarmed(required)/ Rapier
0x0A Mani Katti (DUMMY)
0x0B Hero Sword
0x0C Shamshir

So for an axe-user, you'd have "0x02", set the 2nd byte to "0x01 All Weapons for a Weapon Type", the 3rd byte to the animation to be played (select from the dropdown), and the 4th byte to 0x00 (which you can't shouldn't need to change).

Then you continue and make another entry for each ranged axe (yes, it's more work, but it must be done--default is only handaxe and tomahawk though). You set it to the specific weapon and set the 2nd byte to 0x00 because it is a custom animation for a weapon. Then you choose the handaxe/ranged animation for the 'Animation Played'.

Make an entry similar to the first one for the disarmed and a blank entry and use the rest of the tutorial to help you out.

...One thing that came to mind is that you tried to edit the text files in the nightmare folders, thinking they would change the program. Well, they don't. If you change the text to say "All Axes/All Swords/Disarmed" it won't become that. The text is just a label that says what it does, but it doesn't change how the program or the game works.

It'd be like putting a "Wet Floor - Caution" sign on the ground and expecting the floor to get wet. No, you just changed what it appears to be, but that doesn't make the floor wet (unless the sign is soaked in water, but hopefully you get my drift... T_T).

If you DID do that, don't feel bad, it happens all the time. I probably did it once too. Editing those lists is useful for relabeling stuff though, like if the guy who replaces Eliwood is "Tim", you could edit the modules to say that, so that you know which slot is Tim in case you can't remember. XP

EDIT: Forgot to answer the other questions. TBH I can't really determine the problem from what you've given me, plus I don't have much experience with FE8. One possible problem--although idk if this is actually it--is that the bard animation can't be imported to other games, but that sounds awkward. Then again, the bard animation probably has some special attributes with it... I'm pretty sure you're supposed to use the "dance item" slot or w/e although having a disarmed slot in there would probably be good as well. :\

Edited by Luffy, 13 September 2010 - 02:37 PM.

[RNG Princess]

the hero part worked thank you

as for the bard it worked too but I had it replace a lone animation...At first I replaced a left over general animation with the bard and it was giving me trouble but then I replaced a zombie animation with the bard and no trouble at all I didn't even have to use the custom animation module .

[Burning Gravity]

Huh, weird, well whatever, I'm glad you got it working...