26 replies to this topic

[The_Purple_Knight]

Often, coming up with original plots or storylines in a hacking project is a difficult task. Luckily, for those out there that attempt to take this path and encounter problems, Stephanie Cottrell Bryant has written a series of articles as a resource for helping to produce your own fantasy world, located here. The main article covers various techniques and covers common devices that are used in many other works of fiction. She also has a 30-day "tutorial" that helps to cultivate ideas for a new world in "a few minutes a day" which is linked in the second paragraph of the aforementioned resource. Should you be stuck trying to create content for your project(s), this resource is an ideal place to start at to being brainstorming ideas.

(If anyone happens across other relevant resources devoted to this topic, please post them and they will be added to this post.)

Edited by Lord Glenn, 21 December 2011 - 07:04 PM.

[Ryrumeli]

It is amazing, we have so many guides on actual hacking, yet no guide on story-writing here. And yet most issues in today's FE hacks come from the latter and not the former. :)

Nice idea to share it, thanks a lot for doing so, think whoever uses that one and other meta-writing guides like that to improve will see soon enough many compliments arising in a field usually neglected by hackers. :)

[deranger]

"Dragonriders of Pern"
And here I was getting all excited Elibe/Switzerland was getting a shout out.

Edited by deranger, 17 June 2012 - 02:51 PM.

[The_Purple_Knight]

It is amazing, we have so many guides on actual hacking, yet no guide on story-writing here. And yet most issues in today's FE hacks come from the latter and not the former. :)

Nice idea to share it, thanks a lot for doing so, think whoever uses that one and other meta-writing guides like that to improve will see soon enough many compliments arising in a field usually neglected by hackers. :)

I've noticed that to and most hacks with good stories usually only build on existing fire emblem storylines. I'd really like to see some orginal hacks with all new worlds, i was debating making one myself but i have very limted knowlege on nightmare and rom hacking in general. I'm hoping some talented hackers will see this guide and get a few ideas.

[Ryrumeli]

That is noble of you, really. :)

And I agree, the ones which create settings usually don't really make said settings shine. So again, it will be good if they can draw some inspiration from guides like that one. Settings are important as heck, and I think there is more space for changes than has been done so far.

[CT075]

I've noticed that to and most hacks with good stories usually only build on existing fire emblem storylines.

I'm going to point you towards a hack called "Dream of Five" and walk away.

But anyhow, this is a good read, I'm bookmarking this for sure.

[Burning Gravity]

"most hacks"

Dream of Five is ONE hack

I agree that it's a good read though not very applicable to my own works, unfortunately

[Swordsalmon]

I'm going to point you towards a hack called "Dream of Five" and walk away.

lol

I think this is part of the reason that so many hacks use a pre-existing setting (Elibe is really common.) It's a lot easier to develop on an existing world than create a compelling story oneself.

[The_Purple_Knight]

I'm going to point you towards a hack called "Dream of Five" and walk away.

Dream of five was a very good hack but you can't say hacks like it are very common , like 2/3 of all hacks out there seem to take place on elibe. I'm not sure of it has anything to do with technically problems . For one, i have no idea how hard is to replace the world map.

[deranger]

Dream of five was a very good hack but you can't say hacks like it are very common , like 2/3 of all hacks out there seem to take place on elibe. I'm not sure of it has anything to do with technically problems . For one, i have no idea how hard is to replace the world map.

Very few hacks (even ones based on Elibe) actually use the world map currently, as far as I'm aware (Only ones I know to are Decay of the Fang, SL's FE6 remake, Road to Ruin, and Nintenlord's hack from forever ago). I'd guess that having the option wouldn't hurt, however.

Edited by deranger, 21 December 2011 - 06:23 PM.

[Lord Glenn]

I have several theories as to why Dream of Five is one of the only hacks that have built an entirely new world, etc.

• Today's youth are inherently lazy and would prefer to do as little work as possible.
• People are too enamored with given games/characters and find them so "fascinating" that their first thought is to want to do something with them (see: absurd number of hack ideas devoted to The Scouring, Black Fang, etc.).
• Most people do this as a hobby and thus don't have the time to devote to coming up with as much material as would be required when making everything from scratch (plot, scripts, graphics, etc.). (IMHO, if you're going to go so far as to come up with an entirely new set of, well, everything, you might as well put it to better use than a ROM Hack. If you're willing to commit that much time, you might as well go a step further and try to design your own game. - Of course, the large issue here is that 90% of hacks don't even finish anyway, so the added effort of doing everything from scratch could be viewed as detrimental, knowing the high "failure" rate.)
• Starting with a hack that uses an existing setting gives the hacker some experience in figuring out what all needs to be done in order to actually make a quality hack. From there, they could then plan out a more fleshed out project. (However, this then goes back to the previous point that most projects don't finish anyway, and thus those fleshed out projects likely won't see the light of day either.)

You also have to consider that many hacks are done by small numbers of contributors (often 1-2 people in total). Dream of Five has a larger than usual number in that they've got graphic artists, writers, etc., giving it the ability to have more content generated for it.

As for the link, it does seem like a good starting point (I'll need to actually read through it fully though); hopefully more hackers will make use of it and produce more creative projects down the road.

EDIT - If you don't mind (@Topic Creator), I'd like to clean up the first post a bit, change the topic title, and sticky the thread so that hackers may hopefully see the thread and make use of it months/years down the road.

Edited by Lord Glenn, 21 December 2011 - 06:39 PM.

[FalconVegeta1986]

If I ever get off my lazy ass, there would be another non-elibe hack out there.

[The_Purple_Knight]

- If you don't mind (@Topic Creator), I'd like to clean up the first post a bit, change the topic title, and sticky the thread so that hackers may hopefully see the thread and make use of it months/years down the road.

You may edit the post. The purpose of this topic was to expose a nice resource to hackers . So if you could pin it that would be fantastic ! You can even add some more relevant resources if you would like .

[Ryrumeli]

I'm going to point you towards a hack called "Dream of Five" and walk away.

Lol, advertisement much. XD


And my personal theory on how hacks don't develop on non-elibian or non-magvelian worlds is complementary with Glenn's; It comes from the genesis of hack ideas; Most hacks out there come from pretty much the idea of a single hacker which is playing the game and simply goes "Why this doesn't go like this? Were it me I would have done it like that. Oh wait, there is hacking." Most hacks start off very unambitious and the inspiration generally comes from the actual game and it's gameplay, and just "what you would have done differently". Hence why actually leaving from the comfort zone is more than just laziness or love, it is just starting out the wrong way with your thing.

Plus, I personally don't see this generation as particularly lazy; In fact just the effort of making your own hack is in itself work, so someone even getting to a certain point in a hacking project which is such a technical thing has already passed the lazy test. As long as you do more than FEditing and Nightmaring that is. :D


Also, I support your idea Glenn. This is easily a tutorial like any other, a guideline for hackers in general. If someone else has another link which could add to this subject, I recommend posting it here to help the inspiration to come for new projects. :)

[deranger]

Making your own world for a hack is quite, perhaps even unnecessarily, risky. Canon Elibe hacks have a certain amount of credibility to them, in that they are easier to accept as "true". Creating a new world requires filling out, and communicating, and getting the audience to accept every detail of said world, which, as Glen said, is often too much work, and, if poorly done, detrimental to a game.

[Lord Glenn]

You may edit the post. The purpose of this topic was to expose a nice resource to hackers . So if you could pin it that would be fantastic ! You can even add some more relevant resources if you would like .

Edited and, instead of pinning it in the main ROM Hacking board, I moved the thread to the Hacking Tutorials board. (Should the need arise and people ask questions in the main board about this type of topic without looking in Tutorials, I'll move it back and pin it instead.)

Lol, advertisement much. XD


And my personal theory on how hacks don't develop on non-elibian or non-magvelian worlds is complementary with Glenn's; It comes from the genesis of hack ideas; Most hacks out there come from pretty much the idea of a single hacker which is playing the game and simply goes "Why this doesn't go like this? Were it me I would have done it like that. Oh wait, there is hacking." Most hacks start off very unambitious and the inspiration generally comes from the actual game and it's gameplay, and just "what you would have done differently". Hence why actually leaving from the comfort zone is more than just laziness or love, it is just starting out the wrong way with your thing.

Plus, I personally don't see this generation as particularly lazy; In fact just the effort of making your own hack is in itself work, so someone even getting to a certain point in a hacking project which is such a technical thing has already passed the lazy test. As long as you do more than FEditing and Nightmaring that is. :D


Also, I support your idea Glenn. This is easily a tutorial like any other, a guideline for hackers in general. If someone else has another link which could add to this subject, I recommend posting it here to help the inspiration to come for new projects. :)

I'll concede that actually taking the time to churn through the tutorials and make "significant alterations" (as that is easily a relative phrase) is work; however, I'm sure that you've seen or heard cases outside of ROM hacking of, for example, students writing papers using textspeak or people going to interview for jobs in completely inappropriate attire (t-shirt and jeans, etc.). I'm sure there are many other examples of cases where people that are college-age or younger are applying themselves at sub-par levels.

Also, I added a note in about posting other relevant resources to the thread in the first post.

[Ryrumeli]

Oh I sure do, don't get me wrong. I think that today indeed laziness is the usual way, and common sense is a rare skill. I don't see this generation as lazy in the sense of NEETs though, I see it as a bunch of "misdirected workaholics". They actually work way more in silly stuff such as customizing their Facebook pages and managing all relationships they have in a shallow social network than people in other generations worked in other personal projects in their spare time. I think this generation is known for working too much on it's spare time in unimportant things, while at the time they should actually put their minds to it like their actual jobs and school and college, they put it in second level and don't rationalize as deeply with it as they would with their "Free time jobs". And it is so much of a norm today that it actually is one of the main issues companies and organizations alike face this day with employees.

So I personally think this generation actually works more, learns more, and does more than any one before it, in part because we do have many more tools to accomplish things than any other generation ever had, but simply in the end this generation does way less effective things, and accomplishes less useful things for the mid and long term. We live in the era of customization, the FE hacking phenomenon is but one symptom of a international wave of customization of things, an era of changing our surroundings ever so slightly, but the work we apply in things like customization and the like is time we don't focus rationalizing about more important matters. A certain level of "Intellectual Ignorance" if you may.



But yeah, this isn't part of the discussion on romhacking's case, but more like me showing I completely agree with what you said; While I think it takes tons of work to make a rom hack in particular, and to work on a romhack in the level we do is something which deserves to be commended, I do understand completely what you mean about our generation and I agree 100%.



And yay, if I find anything useful for text writing, I will be posting a link here ASAP. :)

Edited by Ryrumeli, 21 December 2011 - 07:38 PM.

[The_Purple_Knight]

More resources i enjoy : This website offers links to website directories of a wide variety of names and origins. Perfect for any hackers struggling with naming characters i believe i even saw a post in the hacking board about just such a dilemma . http://www.writing-w...nks/names.shtml
-
The great net spellbook: http://www.istari.or.../html/gnsb.html although many of the spells are useless for a fire emblem game many can be adapted for use.many would make really good staves if adapted

Edited by The_Purple_Knight, 21 December 2011 - 08:40 PM.

[Burning Gravity]

Well normally I wouldn't side-track but since some other people are doing it I'll use misguided logic and make it seem okay to do it too. :P

Today's youth are inherently lazy and would prefer to do as little work as possible.

I disagree if you are implying that the youth of older generations were not as lazy--I think that people have become so obsessed with the notion that the more recent generations are lazy, spoiled, and technology-dependent that they've gotten carried away. I think that as humans we usually don't choose a harder path over an easier path if the merits of both paths are the same. I don't think that part of human psychology has changed over time either. If anything, technology allows us to do things easier and give us more leisure time, which should be seen as the luxury of living in modern society--but this appears to be "laziness" simply because the consequences of both laziness and using technology tend to be similar in many aspects.

Well anyway I mainly just wanted to say that I disagree since I felt like giving out my opinion for some odd inexplicable reason. I'm confident you'll disagree with my opinion so I'm going to leave it at that, assuming you respond I will not respond back :\

[kdanger]

I'm just gonna take that link and bring it over to the Creative section, don't mind me~