Fire Emblem 6: Sword of Seals - The Divine War: Ontrack for a 2014 Release

[Jubby]

Use ultrasurf?

[CT075]

I'm curious as to how you're going to carry over all of Roy's promotion gains/stats/etc. with multiple character slots.

Not to mention that you only have two lord slots that can seize. That'd take some interesting ASM.

[shadowofchaos]

I'm curious as to how you're going to carry over all of Roy's promotion gains/stats/etc. with multiple character slots.

Not to mention that you only have two lord slots that can seize. That'd take some interesting ASM.

The work's already there. All he has to do is modify it to use an array.

[CT075]

but he's using FE8...

[shadowofchaos]

but he's using FE8...

Again, the "work" is already there. I'm pretty sure there's an ASM similar to it whenever the seize command is called and checks if you went Eirika or Ephraim route.

Edited February 29, 2012 by shadowofchaos

[CT075]

Shouldn't be too difficult to modify to use an array, even I could probably do that for FE7

actually if you could give me a fully source i'd be much obliged, rey

EDIT:

Well because of all the monster slots I probably have the character slots. but it would require a lot of IF routines.

Lets see... At the beginning of the game you have a map for selecting your Roy. Lets see... Since well, Roy is the main one we want, I would set it up with 3 Roys, each one with a mother. And selecting that Roy. Then I would have to set up IF functions (or the equivalent in Event Hacking) Where it looks for the Roy , and then deploys the correct Lilina, Hector, Lyn, Eliwood and Sigune (Since she only supports a specific Eliwood)

In prologue:
CharacterEvents:
TalkOneWay(RoyFiora,Player,chooseFiora,etcetc)
...

chooseFiora:
// It'd have to be a permanent ID, but why let that faze you?
ENUT	fioraChosenID
JUMP	end_chap
...

When loading units:

// You'd have to leave Roy out of every unit pool and load him/anyone else separately.
// Alternately, put a "dummy" roy in the "good" slot for cutscenes if you have a prep
// screen, since if it does things the same way as FE7 it should work perfectly fine.

LOU1	Good
IFET	0x0 fioraChosenID
LOU1	fioraRoy
JUMP	rest_of_chapter
ENIF	0x0
// No need for ELSE, if you do it right you don't need one.
IFET	0x1 ninianChosenID
etc.

// And then you need to do something similar for EVERY SINGLE ROY-DEPENDENT UNIT.

// Obviously, this'd take up a large chunk of your 255 condition slots.

For the Sigune event:

Talk_Sigune:
IFET	0x0 fioraChosenID
// JUMP out of here, and the rest of the convo never plays.
JUMP	RecrTalk
ENIF    0x0
TEX1	[...] // Eliwood: No... I can't forgive you (etc)
REMA
ENDA

RecrTalk:
TEX1	[...]
REMA
TurnAlly	Sigune
ENDA

I can't see it being plausible, personally.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Camtech

[Onmi]

Well it's 3 Roys, 3 Lyns, 3 Eliwoods, 3 Hectors, 3 Lilinas, 2 Sues. And the first 5 (Along side Guinevere) are all able to seize.

Deary me I'll just make 3 individual patches.

RoyFiora: Eliwood/Fiora, Hector/Current Winner, Rebecca/Current Winner, Nino/Current Winner, Rath/Lyn IF Current Winner isn't Hector

RoyNinian: Eliwood/Ninian, Hector/Current Winner, Rebecca/Current Winner, Nino/Current Winner, Rath/Lyn IF Current Winner isn't Hector

RoyLyn: Eliwood/Lyn, Hector/Current Winner, Rebecca/Current Winner, Nino/Current Winner.

Also the sooner I figure out how to stop FE8 from playing those stupid prologue events, I have shit I could do with that chapter... Also it's very awkward starting up the game to test every time and sitting through it.

EDIT: The question on everyones lips is probably "Why so many seizers?" and my only response is "There's enough maps with multiple castles that I felt this was important, not only from a logical point of view (I would throw Hells Gate out to the dogs if Roy had to jump around the map, seizing 7 forts and a castle by himself) but also from a tactical point of view. Take the aforementioned chapter. By bringing all 4 of the other available lords at the time (Hector, Eliwood, Guinevere, Lilina) you can, with creative use of your 3 flyers, and Risk vs Reward scenario, be able to hit 5 forts quickly instead of merely 2.

Now I mention Risk vs Reward because Ballista and staff enemies, and accurately judging whether throwing Thany, Thite and Miledy into that mess away from your army is worthwhile when they could easily be shot and killed. But also because if ANY of those units die, it's a game over. Well except for Hector, for obvious plot reasons... possibly, can you make a unit able to seize while also leaving them open to death? But regardless HG is a hard and dangerous map. FAIR Dangerous of course, no Ambush spawning, no fog of war you can't see through, you have access to a (quite frightening right now) amount of units (23 by my count, will change after testing) there's even an arena so you can easily bring units up to snuff if you need them too.

Going into this one chapter for a bit, because I always like to spurge, it's a good example of story and game-play working cohesively. Storywise the Etrurians made themselves a secure little peninsula/plateau of death for any unit dumb enough to charge them, with Ballista for flying units and sheer cliffs keeping out any sea bound force. A conventional army would never risk it, not without expecting massive loss of life. You are not a regular army, and this is where it merges well with the gameplay. The map looks like there's only one way to win. By doing what the Etrurians want and going slow and steady, letting them build up an army of reinforcements while you weather attack after attack. Except, you should have plenty of tools to utterly frag their established defense line. Warp Staffs, Sleep Staffs, Longbows, the Elemental Bows, Capturing enemy Ballista, Siege Tomes, the knowledge of Rescue/Drop with Canto as a passive for all mounter units after any action, You have pirates (now able to cross cliffs) multiple lords to take multiple forts, depending on how prepared you are, you can smash their defense in a near instant. It doesn't make it EASY mind you, but the big part of the map is that "The Etrurians built a box, think outside the box" in both story and game-play terms.

Everything is fair on the player. 20 Tier 3s with Killer Brave Weapons wont appear and attack on the same turn going "Sup hope you were prepared for THIS asshole!" but you will be warned "I can see Berns Wyvern Riders in the distance, they should be here within 2 minutes/hours/whatever the hell a turns time-frame is" and then 2 turns later having the Wyverns appear at the castle side of the map.

I wont hold your hand, I wont give you a warp staff on the map, I wont tell you to hold onto the Warp staff when you get it. But you will always have options, even if it is "Send my ground units up the corridors and hit them strength on strength."

Because of course some people like feeling like the God of war and slaughtering an entire army despite best laid plans.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Onmi

[shadowofchaos]

I can't see it being plausible, personally.

I could see making an ASM hack to modify his growth rates would be easier.

[Onmi]

One part of it sure, but them we have to look at the other problem. I.E. the unique content per mother. unless we have something else for the game to check against, maybe a 'Keepsake' item in your inventory that Eliwood can start with depending on a gaiden or a village you visit? like how the original FE6 determined if you would go to Route A or B on the Western Isles? or set it up as a talk topic for Eliwood, depending on who he talks to determines the item he gets.

IF FioraPendant

Then SiguneTalkEvent

But then we have to stop Lilina from accidentally winding up with the same mother. Same with Sue, and we have to consider variable support conversations. Lyn has 3 different sets with Eliwood depending on whether she was married to him, Rath or Hector

EDIT: And I'm out for the day, be back tonight My tonight that is, AUS time, which is likely your early morning, that's if it's your midday now and oh my...

Edited February 29, 2012 by Onmi

[CT075]

Conditions don't work the way you're thinking they do. GBA games have a very specific set of condition codes, and they're limited to -

If character (for villages)

If character deployed

If Event ID triggered

If character dead

etc., Arch has a more complete list.

Actually I don't even know if FE8 has all of these. To do something like you're proposing requires even more ASM.

[Jubby]

Suppose you trigger a permanent event ID when you get the pendant or whatever?

Edt: Actually this'd be a huge bitch to frame out and use for the whole game, but you could have the player choose the pairings they like at the beginning and then trigger permanent event IDs based on that. Then whenever the topic of a mother comes up, check for the event ID and use the appropriate text slots or whatever. If you're not opposed to having 3 of each of those pairing-related characters, just load the correct one based on the ID, etc. <- that'd differentiate supports and such too

Edited February 29, 2012 by Jubby

[Onmi]

Conditions don't work the way you're thinking they do. GBA games have a very specific set of condition codes, and they're limited to -

If character (for villages)

If character deployed

If Event ID triggered

If character dead

etc., Arch has a more complete list.

Actually I don't even know if FE8 has all of these. To do something like you're proposing requires even more ASM.

You're right. That's why I think it's simpler to just stick to 3 patches. Stll, Just because it's not worthwhile for me to figure out a good system for this (after all I just have too many conditionals) it doesn't mean someone on the small scale wont have use for it. So I think it's worth exploring

Also apparently the block is only for hardlines? I don't know.

Also I've been thinking about what caused FEditor to ruin the first hack, from my experience with map-hacking with FE8 I have a theory I'm going to try testing. My theory is that FEditor is for one reason or another, not writing it free space and thus damaging the Storage System/Fa animation. Of course the problem with this is that you can still view Fa's animation in FEditor even if it's broken in game, so it's possible it just breaks whatever handles Fa's transformation? I don't know, if it hasn't become abundantly clear I have next to 0 understanding of the ASM programming language.

Detour over. Since I don't have my tools with me and I have 3 hours till class, I'll probably get some writing done.

@Jubby Again I'm going on my next to zero knowledge here, but would that work? I don't think it would outside of dialogue.

[Dr.Sholes]

The only problem I can see is having to expand the character slots eventually, because I have... Well plans for Roy's first promotion. Jubby knows them, Sholes knows them, and I'll need a few character slots because

HATE

Win...

[CT075]

You're right. That's why I think it's simpler to just stick to 3 patches. Stll, Just because it's not worthwhile for me to figure out a good system for this (after all I just have too many conditionals) it doesn't mean someone on the small scale wont have use for it. So I think it's worth exploring

Also apparently the block is only for hardlines? I don't know.

You're misunderstanding me again. It's perfectly doable and actually fairly simple. I could probably write a preprocessor that sets up/changes codes for it in like fifteen minutes (note: chances are i will not for this specific instance unless you're willing to pursue this).

Although again it'd be much much simpler to do it in ASM.

Also I've been thinking about what caused FEditor to ruin the first hack, from my experience with map-hacking with FE8 I have a theory I'm going to try testing. My theory is that FEditor is for one reason or another, not writing it free space and thus damaging the Storage System/Fa animation. Of course the problem with this is that you can still view Fa's animation in FEditor even if it's broken in game, so it's possible it just breaks whatever handles Fa's transformation? I don't know, if it hasn't become abundantly clear I have next to 0 understanding of the ASM programming language.

Detour over. Since I don't have my tools with me and I have 3 hours till class, I'll probably get some writing done.

FEditor does weird things with FE6 due to the fact that it requires the english patch. FE7/8 are almost 100% bug-free, and most of the big ones can be pre-emptively killed by saving before doing your editing (FEditor -> load ROM -> save before doing actions -> go about your business), since that re-updates the metadata (and therefore, the free space).

not to mention FEditor in and of itself uses almost zero ASM

[Onmi]

I'm willing to pursue it, I thought it would be hard to do because, again, I'm an idiot who doesn't understand. If it can be done, and it means that players DON'T have to download 3 patches simply to get all the content, then yeah I'll see this through to the end.

[CT075]

I guess I'm not explaining it very well.

The solution I'm hesitant to outright state involves very little ASM (someone needs to code the multi-lord seizing, and that someone will not be me because I have no idea how). Rather, it manipulates the event system to change things based on decisions made at the beginning of the game.

(also, if you're going to be off of SF for a while but want to keep discussing, my skype is in my profile)

[Onmi]

No still 2 hours until I need to be off, but if you rather this be handled in PMs I'm willing to take it there.

[CT075]

I dunno if this constitutes going "off topic" or not since we are kind of discussing technical issues here, but...

Anyway. Depending on how much conditional stuff you have already, I didn't feel that it was a worthwhile solution due to the tedium of keeping track of all this shit manually.

On the OTHER hand, I remembered shortly afterwards that I never do things manually these days and this would be a simple task to write a text preprocessor that kept track of all this for you. Now, obviously, there'd be some kinks to work out, but if this is actually a method you would like, I would be willing to code something for you to get it done.

Note that this doesn't address the multi-lord seizing at all - that stuff is a bit beyond me atm

[Onmi]

Keeping track of all the conditionals would be wonderfully useful, since the main fear is the sheer size of doing everything manually. As for kinks to work out. I lost an entire project to worse before, I can handle working out a few kinks.

[Onmi]

If this is going ahead I think I'll go ahead and pull down the poll, and put up a new one. I'll wait on what Cam has for me of course, right now I'm really just trying to set up the frame work of Chapter 1 (5 Villages, 3 Thrones, 8 Houses, 5 Forts, Ally Starting Location, Enemy Placement) and then assembling the map events. Also writing the script while I do so, And the C->A Supports for all the Chapter 1 characters.

There has to be an easier way for event assembling than whatever the hell it is I'm doing. Not just bitching I seriously think I missed the proper method and am doing it wrong.

Anyway, Thanks to Dr. Sholes and shadowofchaos, We have Blink Sprites in FE8 Colors. Which means new palettes for each unit of course

Now, Mask I still need to wait on for 9 (I.E. Lycia-FINAL) And I'm still not sure what to do about the Western Isles beyond importing FE6's Tileset (Though Feaws has a Tileset collection that contains the Isles, would that work? or is that simply for FEXP?) but other than that, everythings moving pretty smoothly. Well as smoothly as these things do

We also have Roy's new description, I felt the original was... how do I put it into words?... That's right, dull. "heir to Pherae, the protagonist, and that's all we got folks!" Those not in the know on the whole 'Young Lion of Lycia' thing, that's Roy's ending title, and I actually thought it made for a pretty kickass title. (well minus the young part, but the fun thing is I can turn it into a story element for extra development) And I fixed that missing comma you all undoubtedly noticed

Finally, Music. Though hacking music will happen last Don't want to risk breaking the rom with all the other risks at the same time I intend to do something interesting with the music in this hack, I'm not going to speculate because if it turns out to be impossible I'll just wind up depressed. But needless to say I think the players will enjoy it.

[Jubby]

You have to import the tileset unless you know how to code tile data individually :P (I don't think anybody else does, so yeah :/ Feaw's don't work for hacks unless they're palette swaps)

[Celice]

Most people who have tackled the emulation of the Isles have created a custom palette. You can import the tileset and its tilemap data, but no one' shown an interest in this and as such there's no documentation. It's not especially hard, as things like this are usually just tables saying "tile 0000 is like X and tile 0001 is like Y" and so on. But, if it's not that important to you, you could just recolor a map palette as mentioned.

[Chocolate Kitty]

You an just rip and insert the tiles from FE6, it's been done before.

Idk if I still have the dumps on me, but I can check

[Celice]

Graphically, yeah, but will the properties of every tile also carry over? It's not enough to just have the visual tiles! Also having a correct palette entry will be needed too.

[shadowofchaos]

Graphically, yeah, but will the properties of every tile also carry over? It's not enough to just have the visual tiles! Also having a correct palette entry will be needed too.

Yes. It does. We've inported Tower of Valni tiles to FE7. I don't see why it won't work importing stuff to FE8.