Fire Emblem: Scions of Kings

[Alusq]

Can... Can I steal the idea of strategists being able to refresh units? My project's resident strategist isn't a player-avatar, but she still needs a gimmick. Also, I love how Tacty's holding that open book~

And since you've got the name-able tactician thing going on, would you consider taking it a step further and letting the player choose what weapon he uses? It'll be heavy on use of animation/class slots, but I have documentation on how to do it if you think it's a neat idea. May as well offer an idea after asking to steal one, right?

Anyway, re:screenshots, good going! The map looks nice (I regret not being able to use the Sacae tileset very often) and Tacty should be really cool to play. His portrait has his hair really flat on his face, though— I get that he's meant to look generic/like he could be anyone, but he needs more of a shadow on his face.

[OreoStyx]

Wow, very nice! I can't wait to see it in action.

I might make a video of the tactician's animation when I get the chance. =3

Can... Can I steal the idea of strategists being able to refresh units? My project's resident strategist isn't a player-avatar, but she still needs a gimmick. Also, I love how Tacty's holding that open book~

And since you've got the name-able tactician thing going on, would you consider taking it a step further and letting the player choose what weapon he uses? It'll be heavy on use of animation/class slots, but I have documentation on how to do it if you think it's a neat idea. May as well offer an idea after asking to steal one, right?

Anyway, re:screenshots, good going! The map looks nice (I regret not being able to use the Sacae tileset very often) and Tacty should be really cool to play. His portrait has his hair really flat on his face, though— I get that he's meant to look generic/like he could be anyone, but he needs more of a shadow on his face.

Dude, you can totally use the idea of strategists being able to refresh units. TheErrantShepherd helped me with the idea and even the idea of making the tactician a playable character. Thanks for loving the open book. Didn't want the Tactician to kinda just stand there barking orders. Animation would look too boring.

Holy cow, that is a grand idea. Going to have to see the documentation and see if I have the skills to figure it out.

The map is all thanks to Prime. He offered to help revamp ALL of the maps I have made so far. So the credit goes to him. Thank you for the pointer on Tactician's mug. I'll definitely will work on adding more shadow.

[SilverHairedFreak25]

Will the tactician be able to use the rings(Ninis's Grace, Thor's Ire, etc.) or something similar? And will he/she beable to promote?

[OreoStyx]

Will the tactician be able to use the rings(Ninis's Grace, Thor's Ire, etc.) or something similar? And will he/she beable to promote?

I just tested it out and yes the tactician will be able to use the rings (although they'll be something else for this hack) and yes I plan to have the tactician be able to promote. =D

[Alusq]

Dude, you can totally use the idea of strategists being able to refresh units. TheErrantShepherd helped me with the idea and even the idea of making the tactician a playable character. Thanks for loving the open book. Didn't want the Tactician to kinda just stand there barking orders. Animation would look too boring.

Holy cow, that is a grand idea. Going to have to see the documentation and see if I have the skills to figure it out.

The map is all thanks to Prime. He offered to help revamp ALL of the maps I have made so far. So the credit goes to him. Thank you for the pointer on Tactician's mug. I'll definitely will work on adding more shadow.

Yay!

Also, turns out it isn't so much "documentation" as "a big ol' event". Oh well.

(text, character, and class slots are placeholders)

Opening_event:
BACG 0x5B
FADU 3
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x813    //text saying something along the lines of "Before we begin, what is your weapon of choice?"
RETB            //removes textbox, similar to REMA
_ASM0x42 0x83181
JUMP ChooseWeapon
ENDA

ChooseWeapon:
STAL 10
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x814    //"Are you a user of swords? [No/Yes]"
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x01        //if yes
ENUT 0x6A        //activates event id 0x6a. 6a/6b/6c/6d are activated by the choices of sword/lance/axe/bow
LOU1 LordMS        //respectively, so if you have an event that gives Tact a weapon, you can have it check the
ENUN            //event IDs to determine which weapon it's supposed to give him. This way you don't have
JUMP Alldone        //stuff like LanceTact accidentally receiving a sword.
ENUN
ENIF 0x01
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x815    //"Are you a user of lances? [No/Yes]"
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x04
REMA
ENUT 0x6B
LOU1 LordML
ENUN
JUMP Alldone
ENIF 0x04
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x816
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x06
REMA
ENUT 0x6C
LOU1 LordMA        //"Are you a user of axes? [No/Yes]"
ENUN
JUMP Alldone
ELSE 0x13
ENIF 0x06
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x817    //"Are you a user of bows? [No/Yes]"
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x08
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x818    //"... Do you have a death wish?" if you chose bows. Take this part out if you made
_ASM0x42 0x83181    //bows strong enough that someone would actually choose to use them.
ENUT 0x6D
LOU1 LordMB
ENUN
JUMP Alldone
ELSE 0x14
ENIF 0x08
STAL 10
JUMP ChooseWeapon    //goes back to the beginning of the event so the choice loops and asks you to select
ENDA            //a weapon again if you said no to all of them.

Alldone:
            //the event that was formerly Opening_event goes here.
ENDA


// Units

LordMS: //sword-using tact. Replace 0x01/0x01 with the relevant char/class slots.
UNIT 0x01 0x01 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronSword, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT

LordML: //lance
UNIT 0x01 0x02 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronSpear, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT

LordMA: //axe
UNIT 0x01 0x03 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronAxe, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT

LordMB: //bow
UNIT 0x01 0x04 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronBow, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT



//Thanks goes to Aura Wolf for helping me figure out the first version of this. x_X
//You can add choices for magic/staffs if you want, but keep in mind that for each
//weapon you add, you'll have to set aside an event ID and a class slot for it.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Alusq

[Willie]

I love playable tacticians!

Is the gender choice going to change the mug or animation? The animation looks great, and so does the mug.

The choosable weapons thing would seem kind of difficult and/or time consuming to make, but I would love to see the turnout. (I would choose anima magic or swords myself)

I like the progress, can't wait to see more!

[SilverHairedFreak25]

The choosable weapons thing would seem kind of difficult and/or time consuming to make, but I would love to see the turnout. (I would choose anima magic or swords myself)

If it makes it easier on you, you should make it so you get swords and then magic based on your affinity. Fire & Amina = Amina, Ice & Light = Light, Wind & Dark = Dark. (If I had a choice, I'd totally go for Dark magic and Axes.)

[OreoStyx]

Yay!

Also, turns out it isn't so much "documentation" as "a big ol' event". Oh well.

(text, character, and class slots are placeholders)

Opening_event:
BACG 0x5B
FADU 3
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x813    //text saying something along the lines of "Before we begin, what is your weapon of choice?"
RETB            //removes textbox, similar to REMA
_ASM0x42 0x83181
JUMP ChooseWeapon
ENDA

ChooseWeapon:
STAL 10
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x814    //"Are you a user of swords? [No/Yes]"
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x01        //if yes
ENUT 0x6A        //activates event id 0x6a. 6a/6b/6c/6d are activated by the choices of sword/lance/axe/bow
LOU1 LordMS        //respectively, so if you have an event that gives Tact a weapon, you can have it check the
ENUN            //event IDs to determine which weapon it's supposed to give him. This way you don't have
JUMP Alldone        //stuff like LanceTact accidentally receiving a sword.
ENUN
ENIF 0x01
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x815    //"Are you a user of lances? [No/Yes]"
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x04
REMA
ENUT 0x6B
LOU1 LordML
ENUN
JUMP Alldone
ENIF 0x04
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x816
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x06
REMA
ENUT 0x6C
LOU1 LordMA        //"Are you a user of axes? [No/Yes]"
ENUN
JUMP Alldone
ELSE 0x13
ENIF 0x06
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x817    //"Are you a user of bows? [No/Yes]"
RETB
_ASM0x42 0x83181
IFYN 0x08
TEX6 0x1 [7,5] 0x818    //"... Do you have a death wish?" if you chose bows. Take this part out if you made
_ASM0x42 0x83181    //bows strong enough that someone would actually choose to use them.
ENUT 0x6D
LOU1 LordMB
ENUN
JUMP Alldone
ELSE 0x14
ENIF 0x08
STAL 10
JUMP ChooseWeapon    //goes back to the beginning of the event so the choice loops and asks you to select
ENDA            //a weapon again if you said no to all of them.

Alldone:
            //the event that was formerly Opening_event goes here.
ENDA


// Units

LordMS: //sword-using tact. Replace 0x01/0x01 with the relevant char/class slots.
UNIT 0x01 0x01 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronSword, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT

LordML: //lance
UNIT 0x01 0x02 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronSpear, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT

LordMA: //axe
UNIT 0x01 0x03 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronAxe, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT

LordMB: //bow
UNIT 0x01 0x04 0x00 Level(4,Ally, 0) [6,6] [6,6] [IronBow, Vulnerary] NoAI
UNIT



//Thanks goes to Aura Wolf for helping me figure out the first version of this. x_X
//You can add choices for magic/staffs if you want, but keep in mind that for each
//weapon you add, you'll have to set aside an event ID and a class slot for it.

Wow, thank you for posting this! It's going to take me a while to make animations for all of the melee weapons, but it's totally going to be worth it when I do finish making them!

I love playable tacticians!

Is the gender choice going to change the mug or animation? The animation looks great, and so does the mug.

The choosable weapons thing would seem kind of difficult and/or time consuming to make, but I would love to see the turnout. (I would choose anima magic or swords myself)

I like the progress, can't wait to see more!

I think I will leave the mug/animation as is for now. I think it could be possible for animation and mug to change depending on the gender of the tactician, but I would need to study the event that Alusq posted to understand the setup to see if I can pull it off. I think it's feasible, but so far with only the melee choices being chosen, I would need a total of 8 class slots for the tactician alone. Adding the gender option would require another 8 as well as more animations. So it might be a lot to add so many classes just for the tactician. I think it's easier to have the gender of the tactician be known through conversations since that's easy enough using events.

But, I will say that it's a pretty neat idea to have animations differ depending on gender. It honestly never crossed my mind, since I was just going to have the tactician be a lanky kind of guy or a girl who doesn't wear tight clothing or something.

Anyway, thank you for liking what I have so far. I think I'll make a video showing the tactician using all of the melee weapons once I have them completed. So far I have the sword and rally (dance) animation done, so I have three more to go.

If it makes it easier on you, you should make it so you get swords and then magic based on your affinity. Fire & Amina = Amina, Ice & Light = Light, Wind & Dark = Dark. (If I had a choice, I'd totally go for Dark magic and Axes.)

That's a pretty cool idea. But I haven't come across a way to have the affinity on the stat screen show up as the affinity that was chosen at the start of a new game (unless I didn't look hard enough). I did originally planned the tactician to use swords as a strategist and then be able to use anima magic upon promotion. And even before I planned that, I didn't expect the tactician would be a playable character at all. I still find it awesome that I was able to make this happen.

Wow didn't realize I rambled quite a bit here, sorry! Blame it on the flu and the meds. Anyway, going to continue working on those animations and get them completed as soon as I can! Apologies for any typos, grammatical errors, or gibberish that I just typed out. =p

[Alusq]

Wow, thank you for posting this! It's going to take me a while to make animations for all of the melee weapons, but it's totally going to be worth it when I do finish making them!

I think I will leave the mug/animation as is for now. I think it could be possible for animation and mug to change depending on the gender of the tactician, but I would need to study the event that Alusq posted to understand the setup to see if I can pull it off. I think it's feasible, but so far with only the melee choices being chosen, I would need a total of 8 class slots for the tactician alone. Adding the gender option would require another 8 as well as more animations. So it might be a lot to add so many classes just for the tactician. I think it's easier to have the gender of the tactician be known through conversations since that's easy enough using events.

That's why I stopped at physical weapons in the original version of my project— I didn't want to use ten class slots and event IDs for a single character in the original version of my project. Funny thing is, ever since that character evolved from a generic everyman-type to having his own personality, I didn't even bother to add the weapon choice when I restarted on a new rom (he just gets swords and bows now).

Food for thought: since you can recycle the same magic-casting animation for all types of magic (i.e. you can use the mage anim for light magic, monk anim for dark, etc, with no glitches), you would only need to make one animation for casting magic. This brings another suggestion to mind: giving the player a choice of what magic they want Tact to be able to use when he promotes. This means that you would have to force-promote him in an event and have someone make a "give unit a rank in x weapon" ASM (guessing it isn't hard to do; in fact it might already be out there somewhere iırc...) to give his promoted class the right weapon rank and not have to use another four class slots for it, though (if you promoted him with an item it wouldn't be able to call the give-weapon-rank event).

Edited April 23, 2015 by Alusq

[Czar_Yoshi]

If it makes it easier on you, you should make it so you get swords and then magic based on your affinity. Fire & Amina = Amina, Ice & Light = Light, Wind & Dark = Dark. (If I had a choice, I'd totally go for Dark magic and Axes.)

Well, the hard (or more of tedious) part is having different weapon types in the first place. Having how they're assigned not be up to the player wouldn't make things easier (it would actually make it harder because then you'd have to figure out how to assign them yourself instead of having the player do it), but it still could be a cool idea.

[OreoStyx]

That's why I stopped at physical weapons in the original version of my project— I didn't want to use ten class slots and event IDs for a single character in the original version of my project. Funny thing is, ever since that character evolved from a generic everyman-type to having his own personality, I didn't even bother to add the weapon choice when I restarted on a new rom (he just gets swords and bows now).

Food for thought: since you can recycle the same magic-casting animation for all types of magic (i.e. you can use the mage anim for light magic, monk anim for dark, etc, with no glitches), you would only need to make one animation for casting magic. This brings another suggestion to mind: giving the player a choice of what magic they want Tact to be able to use when he promotes. This means that you would have to force-promote him in an event and have someone make a "give unit a rank in x weapon" ASM (guessing it isn't hard to do; in fact it might already be out there somewhere iırc...) to give his promoted class the right weapon rank and not have to use another four class slots for it, though (if you promoted him with an item it wouldn't be able to call the give-weapon-rank event).

I was thinking on the same train of thought as you. I just didn't know how to execute it. I'm going to have to look for that ASM if it does exist.

Well, the hard (or more of tedious) part is having different weapon types in the first place. Having how they're assigned not be up to the player wouldn't make things easier (it would actually make it harder because then you'd have to figure out how to assign them yourself instead of having the player do it), but it still could be a cool idea.

I agree with you there. With the event script that Alusq posted, melee weapon choice is doable. It's just a matter of getting things set up in nightmare to load up the tactician with the correct weapon and weapon rank. Now it's the magic part that I need to work on.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I have a feeling it would be possible to use ASM to actually create classes on the fly using user specifications and then re-point the tactician's class to them. It would solve all the issues with having to set up dozens of separate classes in Nightmare, certainly.

The hardest part would probably be saving them, since you'd basically make the new class entirely in memory, meaning it wouldn't be part of the ROM. Of course, you'll have to save which class the tactician is currently in using Nightmare and multiple classes anyway, so that might be nothing new.

Also keep in mind that I know next to nothing about ASM and am just spouting random ideas so these might not work at all.

[Alusq]

I have a feeling it would be possible to use ASM to actually create classes on the fly using user specifications and then re-point the tactician's class to them. It would solve all the issues with having to set up dozens of separate classes in Nightmare, certainly.

The hardest part would probably be saving them, since you'd basically make the new class entirely in memory, meaning it wouldn't be part of the ROM. Of course, you'll have to save which class the tactician is currently in using Nightmare and multiple classes anyway, so that might be nothing new.

Also keep in mind that I know next to nothing about ASM and am just spouting random ideas so these might not work at all.

It's a nice thought, but given the failed experiments that people have performed with trying to get mounting/dismounting systems working in FE7 before, RAM is just not conducive to juggling around whole classes and writing the ASM would be more trouble than its worth.

If you really need to save up on class space, the best bet would be having one tactician class and then using a "give weapon rank to character" ASM. This would mean that you could only have one map sprite, palette, and set of bases/growths for the tactician across all weapon types, though.

@Doing stuff with the tact's affinity: the hardest part about that would be making a "check for Tact's affinity" ASM. I have no idea whether or not that's difficult. Probably not, provided that we know the location of the tact's affinity within the rom (or RAM?).

@Oreo good luck!

[OreoStyx]

I don't have much experience with ASM, so I would not know how to use ASM to assign the tactician a weapon rank. It's been a while since I last updated, so I guess I should show what I've been working on lately.

Screenshot #1: Changed Rai to a cavalier since he's waaay too op as a paladin and he'll just steal exp. Also the stat screen will show all of the weapons that the character uses. So I can potentially have classes that could use both melee and magic (credit goes to jjl2357 for this).

Screenshot #2: I've used the event script that Alusq has posted to let the player choose the weapon that the tactician will use when starting a new game. The tactician has a choice between the melee weapons, so between sword, lance, axe, and bow. The animations for the sword, lance, and bow are done. I'm currently working on the axe frames atm.

Screenshot #3: I had some trouble getting the knife animation working but I figured out what caused it to be glitchy last night. So I now have a working knife spell animation! =D (Well sort of, just need to work on aligning the frames a bit.) I'm going to play around in nightmare so that I can set up knives to be locked to the thief and assassin class. I'll most likely will make an animation for the assassin to throw knives sometime in the future. So you can expect some knives in this hack, whoo!

In order to make room for knives and other weapons/magic that I'm planning to add, I'm thinking of removing the separate promotion items and have only the Earth Seal/Heaven Seal be used to promote units.

I'm still working on the gameplay/pacing of the chapters, so I can't say for sure when I'll release a patch. I remember I told someone that I wanted to release a public patch by late April or so. But that was before including the tactician as a playable character. So that kinda pushed the date a lot later than I had originally planned. So I'll just make it a more general idea of when, hopefully sometime in the summer or something.

[Eliwan]

You CAN just repoint and expand the weapon table to add in the knives.

[Alusq]

Rai unwittingly gives me FE7 nostalgia because Rai was what I named the tactician on my first playthrough. Looks like a cool guy~

Looking forward to seeing the animations! @ш@

[Toa]

One way you could give the tactician different weapon types would be to give them no weapon ranks at the start but make the weapon you give them not require a weapon rank so they develop one. You'd probably want to prf weapons so not anyone could get more weapon ranks.

[Alusq]

One way you could give the tactician different weapon types would be to give them no weapon ranks at the start but make the weapon you give them not require a weapon rank so they develop one. You'd probably want to prf weapons so not anyone could get more weapon ranks.

...

... Toa yuo are of genious. @_@

[OreoStyx]

You CAN just repoint and expand the weapon table to add in the knives.

Oh right, I remember there's a tutorial on repointing. How would you go about expanding/repointing the weapon icons though?

Rai unwittingly gives me FE7 nostalgia because Rai was what I named the tactician on my first playthrough. Looks like a cool guy~

Looking forward to seeing the animations! @ш@

Haha, nice! Rai is indeed a cool dude. I'll try and finish the axe animation ASAP so that I can make a video that shows all of the animations.

One way you could give the tactician different weapon types would be to give them no weapon ranks at the start but make the weapon you give them not require a weapon rank so they develop one. You'd probably want to prf weapons so not anyone could get more weapon ranks.

That is such an awesome idea! But what about getting the animations to go with the right weapon? In the custom animation editor, there's only enough slots for four animations, but with the tactician's rally ability, that ends up with one too many animations. Unless there's a way to do it that I don't know about.

And then there's the tactician's promoted class to think about too. I'm hoping to have the tactician also have a choice in what magic to use upon promotion. Going by your idea, I could maybe set up an event to force promote the tactician and then have the player choose which magic they want to use and then give the tactician a tome that will help develop a rank for the chosen magic. Don't know if that will work out or not, but just throwing an idea out there.

[Agro]

the animation editor will keep reading until it hits a STOP code, which means it will even read into the next entry if you don't put one at the end

[OreoStyx]

the animation editor will keep reading until it hits a STOP code, which means it will even read into the next entry if you don't put one at the end

Really? So how do I remove the STOP code at the end so that I can have five animations for the tactician?

[Blademaster!]

four animations, but with the tactician's rally ability, that ends up with one too many animations. Unless there's a way to do it that I don't know about.

The stop code Agro was referring to is just four 0x000 entries (maybe less). In the animation editor, the next entry is still part of the previous one so long as you don't have the four 0x00's in between. So you can have an animation for all your weapons and stuff that goes over the four entry limit since the entry after will still be a part of it and it'll keep looking until you reach the four 0x00's.

[OreoStyx]

Oh I see. I should take a look at the custom animation text. I think I can get the animations working by manually adding the STOP code at the end of the five animations to separate it from other custom animations.

[OreoStyx]

Bumping cause it's update time!

It's finally here! A compilation of the Tactician's animations (technically the class name is Strategist, but I digress =p).

I apologize in advance for not having the greatest quality. =/ I'm still pretty new with editing videos so I'll hopefully figure out how to make videos look more crisp for future animations. Please enjoy and any comments, tips, and/or feedback is greatly appreciated as usual!

The other update I would like to mention is that the tactician now only requires one class slot (originally I had to use four class slots to cover all melee weapons), thanks to Aura Wolf's Tactician Weapon Rank ASM hack that he made for me. So there is a potential that some time in the future, players may also choose what magic the Tactician will use upon promotion. So to SilverHairedFreak25, there is hope that you can have that dark magic/axe tactician that you wanted.

Now that the Tactician's animations are FINALLY completed, I can now put my focus back on gameplay and continue with the beta testing to spruce this baby up and put out a public patch for everyone to play.

[Blademaster!]

I'm looking forward to what the promotion animation looks like if this one is so neat!