Squeegee Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) This is the first chapter I've made, so I want to get a few opinions on how I can improve future chapter construction. Anything from storyline, to grammar, to enemy positions. Here is the download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6xd0t4tel6ynrx/morvahackprologue.ups?dl=1 Though I will warn you, I don't think it has many new, cool things like other hacks do (although I suppose since its a prequel to FE7 it doesn't really have to be all that original). I just want some advice on how I can make future chapters so that my hack doesn't look like it came out of the toilet. I personally think my chapter is decent, but I don't think that the creator is an appropriate judge of his/her work. Also, I apologize if this is the wrong section for this. Didn't think it would fit well in any other section. Edited August 13, 2015 by Morva Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maritisa Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) its a prequel to FE7 God DAMMIT. Not another one of these things. Why do people act like it's so damn hard to make their own original setting and story? Holy fucking shit. Elibe has been absolutely done to death. Give it a rest. ...Anyway, that aside... The map suffers from a huge amount of unused space and is literally "plains with some forests plopped down, a village, and a single river tile in the corner". There's nothing interesting about this thing. Enemies spawn from the south in an extraordinarily predictable pattern with absolutely no enemy variety. It takes absolutely zero strategy to beat, aside from realizing you have to keep bandits from entering the village, but even then it's trivial. The biggest problem is just how much space goes entirely unused. There are almost no tiles used except those directly south of the village and a little to the sides. The extreme lack of enemy variety just basically makes the entire chapter 100% trivial. Just equip a sword, sit on a forest, spam end turn, win. Even BigNose Joe doesn't stand a chance. The protagonist is a standard "I'm a hero!" 14 year-old who reflects the attitude of "Adults r stoopid". The dialogue feels rather stilted, as in, it sounds very forced and unnatural. There's some formatting problems, a couple cases that lack periods, and way too many god damn text skips. (When there's no pause at the end of a line and it skips over it.) There's plenty of weird graphics issues, like Dalton having a strange battle palette, Not!Lowen having a wtf bad face palette... There's also some questionable balance, in that, why the hell does a level 1 lord unit, a Mercenary build, at that, have freaking 10 speed? I mean sure, the steel sword nerfs that speed, which is kinda interesting, but the cavalier dude has an iron sword you can trade away instantly. Also it might just be me but it feels like mister cavalier dude has really high stats for his class/level? I won't complain TOO much about only having a few units, since FE8's prologue had literally just Eirika and Seth, but that prologue only had like 3 enemies and a tiiiny amount of tiles you could even go on, making an small map even smaller. This map is trying to be more like FE6's prologue, but that kinda doesn't work here... And can I just emphasize how ridiculous "I'm only 14 years old, I'm gonna single-handedly protect my village from like 10 armed and ruthless bandits! ... We win! Okay, let's go be heroes and hunt bandits! I don't gotta ask permission because I'm a rebellious teenager!" is as a plot? I took a video to kinda show my blind reactions, but I'll warn you that I'm rather harsh in it. Watch it if you want. I mention a few things I don't mention here, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP7w85fmGRo Edited August 13, 2015 by Ritisa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghast Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) ^ Sheesh, hella vicious. I'll give it a spin tonight and tell you my thoughts. -- * awesome use of the open source gallery mugs btw~ alright, so the opening is pretty basic. Dude wants to guard his village, that's cool. Though, I feel like hero boy needs more context to being there. Maybe a more descriptive introduction rather than just like 5 lines. Maybe something explaining this guy's background? Then, after that; you can have the Rhino gang swoop in and be all bandit-like. I know its your first go but you should consider changing his dad and sister to something less generic. -- Your text bubbles[.] only have like three[A] words to them.[.] you can stretch out those bubbles a lot more so the flow of it reads better. Doing that also serves to pace the reading better if you catch my drift. -- As for the map itself, I don't really find a problem with it. you should cut down on the enemies, though. or place the village in the top left-ish area and give the map more terrain for the young lion. Speaking of which. A steel sword at 5 CON is pretty unfair lol. If you want to maintain the childlike build to him (since he's 14) you can give him 1 more con and start him with an iron sword. I wouldn't recommend giving him a steel sword/ 10 speed. That's weird design IMO. -- There are a lot of bandits here. If you're using two allies, I'd have at most 5-6. And I'd spread them in a way that they wouldn't dog pile the player. -- You should have his sister give him an item or something because having him visit his village with no return back is kind of a waste of a turn lol. If lowen/not lowen (you should replace this mug!) visits the village, the same talk event comes up. You should look into conditions and make it so Dalton gets a special event of his own. -- the ending event is kind of rushed as well. You may want to cut the instances of 'dweeb' and more modern sounding words of that nature. I'm not sure Elibeans would say stuff like that haha. -- try applying the suggestions you get here and give it another spin. Don't get discouraged either. These are pretty natural rookie mistakes, we've all been there ~ Edited August 13, 2015 by Uncle Ghatsu! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squeegee Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) I guess I expected angry criticism, but I really do need it since this is my first hack, so I'll take whatever I get :P. And can I just emphasize how ridiculous "I'm only 14 years old, I'm gonna single-handedly protect my village from like 10 armed and ruthless bandits! ... We win! Okay, let's go be heroes and hunt bandits! Wheeeee!" is as a plot? The protagonist is a standard "I'm a hero!" 14 year-old who reflects the attitude of "Adults r stoopid". He's meant to have flaws, a lot of them. It annoys me that Roy, Eliwood, and Lyn are 100% goodies from the start. At least Hector had a little characterization. Also, isn't "WEEEEEE" how Lyn started? Things are going to take a turn a bit later. As the plot goes on, he's slowly gonna change, I have a few plans on how I'm going to do that. There's some formatting problems, a couple cases that lack periods, and way too many god damn text skips. (When there's no pause at the end of a line and it skips over it.) There's plenty of weird graphics issues, like Dalton having a strange battle palette, Not!Lowen having a wtf bad face palette... I'll take a look at my text again. And can I just emphasize how ridiculous "I'm only 14 years old, I'm gonna single-handedly protect my village from like 10 armed and ruthless bandits! ... We win! Okay, let's go be heroes and hunt bandits! I don't gotta ask permission because I'm a rebellious teenager!" is as a plot? Well a protagonist has to have some flaw, right? I guess this is a little hubris. That's not going to be the plot though. Its going to be more... I shouldn't spoil it. But the whole bandit slayer thing kind of dies out shortly (like in Ch.1 or Ch.1x) The map suffers from a huge amount of unused space and is literally "plains with some forests plopped down, a village, and a single river tile in the corner". There's nothing interesting about this thing. Enemies spawn from the south in an extraordinarily predictable pattern with absolutely no enemy variety. It takes absolutely zero strategy to beat, aside from realizing you have to keep bandits from entering the village, but even then it's trivial. The biggest problem is just how much space goes entirely unused. There are almost no tiles used except those directly south of the village and a little to the sides. The extreme lack of enemy variety just basically makes the entire chapter 100% trivial. Just equip a sword, sit on a forest, spam end turn, win. Even BigNose Joe doesn't stand a chance. I'll think of either buffing some guys up or placing reinforcements differently, although I think since its the first chapter, it shouldn't be too hard or unpredictable. Anyway, thanks for reviewing. I'll take another look at stuff, especially the text (and perhaps fix the crappy Dave). --- I know its your first go but you should consider changing his dad and sister to something less generic. Hmmm... There's probably something like that in your open source gallery contest :P If lowen/not lowen (you should replace this mug!) visits the village, the same talk event comes up. You should look into conditions and make it so Dalton gets a special event of his own. I was intending for Dave to be his father, but that kind of backfired. I'll replace it. I'll also look into making conditions to check whether its Dave or Dalton. the ending event is kind of rushed as well. You may want to cut the instances of 'dweeb' and more modern sounding words of that nature. I'm not sure Elibeans would say stuff like that haha. I'll replace it with "blackheart" or something I guess. You should have his sister give him an item or something because having him visit his village with no return back is kind of a waste of a turn lol. I think I'll do that, but first I'll look into conditions to make sure its not an infinite source of items (since I made the village doors unclosable). A steel sword at 5 CON is pretty unfair lol. If you want to maintain the childlike build to him (since he's 14) you can give him 1 more con and start him with an iron sword. Heh, I sort of borrowed Lyn's stats since I wasn't sure what to make his stats. I'll take another look at his stats. Thanks for giving me good tips, Ghatsu. I'll make sure to work on your suggestions. ghast edit- i merged your double post :D Edited August 13, 2015 by Uncle Ghatsu! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squeegee Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 · Hidden by ghast, August 13, 2015 - No reason given Hidden by ghast, August 13, 2015 - No reason given I know its your first go but you should consider changing his dad and sister to something less generic. Hmmm... There's probably something like that in your open source gallery contest :P If lowen/not lowen (you should replace this mug!) visits the village, the same talk event comes up. You should look into conditions and make it so Dalton gets a special event of his own. I was intending for Dave to be his father, but that kind of backfired. I'll replace it. I'll also look into making conditions to check whether its Dave or Dalton. the ending event is kind of rushed as well. You may want to cut the instances of 'dweeb' and more modern sounding words of that nature. I'm not sure Elibeans would say stuff like that haha. I'll replace it with "blackheart" or something I guess. You should have his sister give him an item or something because having him visit his village with no return back is kind of a waste of a turn lol. I think I'll do that, but first I'll look into conditions to make sure its not an infinite source of items (since I made the village doors unclosable). A steel sword at 5 CON is pretty unfair lol. If you want to maintain the childlike build to him (since he's 14) you can give him 1 more con and start him with an iron sword. Heh, I sort of borrowed Lyn's stats since I wasn't sure what to make his stats. I'll take another look at his stats. Thanks for giving me good tips, Ghatsu. I'll make sure to work on your suggestions. Link to comment
47948201 Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) I'm in the middle of watching Ritisa's video review now, and I don't think it's a fraction as bad as she's making it out to be, on one condition: remember that it's a work in progress! Frankly, as a first chapter, I think it's pretty good, actually. I actually really like how you handled starting inventories, and all that, there seems to be way more strategy here than most chapters I've seen, period. (speaking of periods, yes, the graphics and text have a serious lack of polish, but really. That's 100% excusable considering how far you've gotten. As a concept, though, the main character is kinda Marysue and might want some thinking through.) Visiting your own village is one of the not-so-great choices in the level design: it wastes your turn for absolutely no benefit, actually I think closed villages don't even give you the avoid bonus anymore? You should definitely make it useful somehow, or so you can't visit it at all, serving as just a point to defend. As for enemy variety lackingness, I can tell what you were going for, but just throwing a Fighter into the mix would help quite a bit. And definitely making them last for less rounds, since once you've got the chapter down, everything beyond that is the waiting game. It would also help make it more believable, the random 14 year old taking out all the bandits alone. Maybe make it just last for 2 turns, and give the boss the "move to attack after 2 turns" AI? In this case probably make the boss less pathetic statwise, too, since currently he's barely better than the generic bandits. Just a thought. Also, agreed, Dave is kinda super powerful compared to Dalton. Cavaliers are already a great class, so making him basically have better stats too is, um, not a great idea. At least make him much slower, so that later on Dalton has enemies he can double but that double Dave? Or something, whatever you want to do to nerf him. EDIT: Also yeah, Elibe games are no. Unless your entire game REALLY needs to be set there, and ties into the events of FE7 in multiple meaningful ways, just drop that and make your own world. I don't hate the lack of a worldmap if you make it your own world, or even if it's Elibe, really. We all know Elibe, no point reiterating on that, so I'd actually give you points there. If you plan on making the main characters do lots of traveling across the land, though, then briefly introducing the world isn't a bad idea. EDIT2: Suggestion for the village, I don't know if FE7 lets you do this, but maybe the first time you visit, you get an item or some actually genuinely helpful advice, so then the player's curiosity about visiting has been sated, and further visits don't do anything. EDIT3: Oh yeah, the map. the entire left half of it is never used, so I suggest at least making it more visually interesting, maybe a mountain range or thicker forests or more than one river tile. To reduce the amount of work you have to do there, you can move the important parts of the map a bit to the left, and fill in the rest on the right; this will also help balance the screen from a composition standpoint. Look at FE8's prologue as an example: you're not expected to go on most of the map (you generally can't, anyway) but they filled it in with interesting graphics, and it looks way better than FE7's prologue as a result. But even FE7's prologue, which takes place on the plains, and doesn't want the player to have to worry about all the different types of terrain yet, scatters geographical features across the borders to make it not boring to look at. You're definitely ahead of many beginning mappers in this department, but there's plenty of space for improvement. Edited August 13, 2015 by 47948201 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghast Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 cool, looking forward to the changes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nintales Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) I didn't try that out, but you can make the first chapter hell, if you want, as long as the others follow, of course. What's most important in game design is map pace. I'd advise you to play FE13 HM without using duos, it's really interesting. If your map becomes a bait&kill kind of setup, the game will start to grow boring. For the first chapter, you could still fool players by giving some of the bandits swordreavers or even swordslayers. To give a good map pace, a few things work : - Time limit. Giving to the player a 15 turn limit on a big map will make him move. - Huge swarm of reinforciments coming. Awakening's chapter 16 is the best exemple. - Rushing enemies. Awakening's chapter 12 is the hardest due to all enemies rushing at you. - Objectives. Chests about to be looted, village about to be destroyed... I'd say map pace matters even more than difficulty. It can even create it handled well. And even if this is a FE7 prequel, no reason for you not to be original. You could add class skills a la FE8, give characters prf weapons to make them original... Another thing : if you want class balance, make the game player-phase based. Else Archers and knights are not gonna make it. I'll give it a try once I get back home (i.e Monday). Here, those are just the advices of a FE-fan who'd love to start making bis own hack once he'll overcome his laziness. Edited August 13, 2015 by Nintales Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squeegee Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 I'm loving all the feedback. I am definitely going to take a look at the text, portraits, and stats (I agree, Dave is way OP and Goros is pretty pathetic). The only reason I made the "visit your own village" thing is so that the bandits had something to target, so I'll probably make it give an item on the first visit to the village. Also, I think I'm not gonna base this in Elibe, considering that, at second thought, there was really no need for it to be in Elibe in the first place. I might also add mountains or interesting terrain to the left side of the map. I might also give the last wave of bandits some swordreavers to catch the player off guard. So I guess I have quite a bit to do. Hopefully I can apply these suggestions to future level design as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nintales Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) For Balance's sake, I'd say making the game more player phase oriented is by giving the player tools to only deal w/ the enemy on his phase. This means foes must always be on the same LV as tout characters. Also. Cavalier should be weak all-rounders. GR around 30-40% for all stats minus HPs (duh), Luck, and Res. Game design must also make foes advantaging SPD min-maxers, Str min-maxers, and most of all tanks. Knights should be delegated to tanking role, but will need a good res base in order to do so. If you get attacked by a 23 mt Mercenary, a 17 mt Swordie, a 19 mt pegasus and a 14 mt mage, you'll like to have an unit who can tank most of them. To improve archers, there are two ways : - A : Giving them top-tier bases. I'd sée them more as glass cannons. - B : Putting a good amount of strong enemy fliers. I might be saying too much, I guess. =D But characters balance w/ game design is one of the most important points imo for the game not to be boring. Stomping ennemies is not funny. Edited August 13, 2015 by Nintales Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
47948201 Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 In my opinion, there are few (if any) "must"s in game design. But this is obviously a Fire Emblem for people who've played Fire Emblems, so while much of what Nintales is saying might not be immediately relevant (I count zero archers and armors at the moment), absolutely keep it in mind if you're planning out the general schemes for future chapters. I wouldn't worry too much about growth rates at the moment, as long as they're not ridiculously high or low, since for the first few chapters they won't be having a huge impact on things. Base stats are where it's at. But really, it's probably not the most efficient time to be doing too much fine-tuning on character balancing right now. It's hugely important, since unbalanced characters can trivialize good level design, but it's the kind of thing that will change a lot as you add content. What I said before about making the first chapter much shorter, though, does relate to that point about making the game more player-phase oriented. Giving the player too few PCs is a very dangerous trap because it limits the amount you can do on player phase--it's fine for the first chapter, but be sure to keep up a good pace with character introduction, at least in the beginning. (Also, I like the idea of Swordreavers at the end, though I might have only one instead of two. It's enough for Dave to chew on with his iron lance without making Dalton useless for a couple turns. But try it, maybe 2 work out well) Alsoalso, a small note about Archers, they can be made more useful through tweaked exp formulae or just less enemies, or levels where attacking through walls or other units is really helpful. They can even be made relatively more useful by reducing the availability or effectiveness of thrown/magic weapons, and so on. But I'll shut up now~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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