[FE7] Fire Emblem Book of Eden v1.23 *polish and bug fixes*

[Rickochet]

The land of Eldrahgo is home to stories of might, magic, and valor.

After centuries of war, its five kingdoms have managed secure peace that, so far, has endured even longer.

Yet nothing lasts forever.

In the blink of an eye, the whole continent is thrown into war again.

Its only hope is a young man not of this world.

A traveler who must learn to navigate this land if he has any hope of ever getting back home.

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Foreword

I've always been fascinated about the universe, space, other dimensions, the multi-verse theory, and other related topics generally considered the next frontier/final frontier. I believe in the multi-verse theory and wanted to create some sort of story based around that. And seeing as how there are a bunch of hacks out there set in what I consider parallel universes to the 'official' universes, I decided to go with using this multi-verse idea.

Book of Eden is about a traveler from another dimension that whines up in one of those fire emblem universes. I known and talked to many people and one thing that intrigued me was how people always wanted or likes to either put self inserts, or create an alter ego of themselves, or even personal characters and put them into their favorite games/anime/universe. So I'm taking that concept and exploring how someone with little or no prior knowledge end up in one of my favorite universes.

I love cross over between characters of different stories and finding out that in the official fire games, the dragon gate is an actual thing, I just might have an easier time bringing in other characters from different universes. So, in addition to the cast of Book of Eden, there will also be characters such as Ike from FE9&10 and Felix from Golden Sun TLA, just to name a few. Most will just be cameos but others will have both major and minor roles in the story.

There's a saying that goes a little something like: "Born too late to explore the seas, but born too early to explore the stars." that perfectly captures how I feel about the current state of our world. Nothing beats the feeling of exploring new places and having adventures with those closest to you. Maybe the only exception to this, is having your heroes alongside you for the ride. So, I hope to convey this feeling through Book of Eden.

If you would like to help with the creation of this hack, feel free to message me either here or on FEUniverse.

Download
Version 1.23 is out. Download

Screenshots

Patch Notes

v1.23

Just a few hot fixes, namely compatiblity issuses with a few weapons.

Fixed an error with Caela's death quote.

Fixed weapon lock with Richard's Shikita. (Recently changed Lyn_t to Lyn so the supports would work properly)

v1.22

This patch contains a few bug fixes and eventing errors.

The beginning of the support system is in place but dialogue yet.

Auto cursor and status screen may freak out, but not game breaking.

A few changes to character stats and rebalances.

v1.21

This patch includes fixes for a few spelling errors, text skips, several bugged death quotes, and some missing chapter goal events.

A few of the characters had their stats re-balanced, so additional feedback on them would be great. I had complaints of the hack being too hard and no way to recover from being RNG-screwed.

Further refinement and tweaks on the save system.

v1.2

This patch introduces my "save" system so ideally, you can resume with your current progress/characters when new future patches are released.

Fixed long load times.

NPC Lana no longer disappears when suspending.

"One year later" CG should no longer appear.

More polish done on chapter Prlg - 8.

A few new additions to aesthetics.

Total number of chapters is still nine, chapters prologue to eight.

v1.12

More "hotfixes".

Chapter Prologue working properly again.

Tweaked Chapter 2 positions

If you suspend during Chapter 2, "Lana" will disappear upon resuming. Only way to "fix" this currently is to restart the chapter. Not too game breaking but looking into it.

Other minor fixes.

v1.11

Fixed Chapter 2 not loading.

Fixed other chapters not loading.

Side effect includes long load times for chapter 3,4, and 7.(Currently still being looked at, cause unknown)

The "One Year Later" cutscene plays after chapter 7, this is not suppose to happen so ignore it for the time being.

Other minor fixes.

v1.1

This patch contains chapter 3 - 8, for a total of 9 chapters.

Minor story changes for consistency.

Custom spells no longer stalls the game while targeting snags.

Fixed world map issues.

Lowered Richard's luck growth.

Lowered Caela's initial HP.

Balanced enemy growths and stats.

And many more minor changes...

v1.0

First three chapters of FE: Book of Eden is released.

Demo ends after chapter 2 and will load The Berserker.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or constructive critism or if there are any bugs.

Known Bugs

-The Auto-cursor and status screen may freak out but nothing game breaking. It has been seen starting on a non Lord character so you may want to turn off auto cursor if it bothers you.

Credits

Special thanks:

BlueDruid

Tequila

Alusq

General:

Agro

CT075

PrimeFusion

OreoStyx

Graphics:

BlueDruid

Maps:

Aura Wolf

PrimeFusion

Music:

Alusq

Writing:

Rickochet

Tequila

Sorry if I forgot anyone!

Edited September 17, 2016 by Rickochet

[Tequila]

Spoiler code is as follows:

[spoiler='Enter title here']
Your spoilered text here
[/spoiler]

In regards to your hack, all I can offer are my services as a proofreader; perhaps we can discuss your story as well, however.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Tequila

[Czar_Yoshi]

If you want a team... The only ways to get one of those is by paying people to work for you. If your project is sufficiently amazing, you can pay them with hype (and it'll need to be amazing prior to their contribution), but it takes quite a lot to get dedicated teammates and not just people who drop in and out, or even ones who just help with one (easy) thing and then leave.

Outside of that, showing commitment is the best thing to do. If you've been working on the story for several years, you should be familiar with that, so show the people here. If you've got a hack that's been in development for more than a year (and you've actually been doing stuff), it will get people's attention. Release patches that have not just been made, but been polished (short and good > long and rough), and people will remember them.

[Agro]

I'm happy to provide tutelage for music hacking (as I am to anyone with sufficient interest!) but you've gotta put the hard yards in yourself

Can't view spoiler tags on my phone so I'll check the rest out after

[Rickochet]

Thank you Tequila, I believe everything should be fixed.

I fully understand that time is precious and people would want to receive compensation. So with that said, is there any general rules or guidelines about how hiring help would work? Forms of payment?

And thank you for all the problems you helped me solve over this past year Agro, I'll be sure to ask if I run into any musical problems.

As for the more progress work, I uploaded the first patch/demo. Let me know if the link works, I tested it and everything seems to be fine so far.

[eclipse]

Next suggestion:

Offload your images to an image sharing site (imgur, etc.), so that I don't have to click on it to see it.

I will actually get to the hack later. . .when my brain isn't crispy.

[ghast]

oh hey! a world map.
That's pretty interesting even though it looks like you're having trouble getting it to display correctly :P

[Rickochet]

Alrighty, the next patch is out! Let me know if anything isn't working properly!

[Primefusion]

I moved this out of Concepts and into the main Fan Projects forum.

Welcome to the big show.

[magemane]

*comments because this will be a good one*

[MCProductions]

I'm willing to help with story writing and proofreading if you want me too.

I'll give 1.1 a whirl later

[Baldrick]

Feedback:

Prologue

The world map dialogue is the same as chapter 1's, and I think it's meant to show up then.

The spiders bit was pretty funny.

The bandits are going to sell the village girls, then immediately kill them?

Gameplay is OK for a prologue.

Chapter 1

Should've/should have, not should of

Gameplay is alright, but it feels a bit lacking. There's this big, elaborate map, but there's no side objectives or anything of interest so you just walk up to the boss, killing everything in your way. With two ranged attackers, the boss needs a Hand Axe or to move in order to not be a joke.

I don't know how the "from another world" thing is going to play out, but the dialogue about it just doesn't feel natural. They're talking as if they're explaining it to someone for the first time.

Chapter 2

After the world map scene, the game goes black and nothing happens.

[Rickochet]

Woo, big show!

Yeah, an extra set of eyes would be great! I'll PM you.

I have fixed the problems indicated Tricky, everything should be working properly now. If not, let me know and I'll get right on it. Thanks for the feedback! I think everything should make more sense now, the prologue world map event is suppose to give the audience background information on Eldrahgo.

[Radetzky120]

Tried downloading and testing, patching over a clean FE7 rom as usual.

However after the opening narration and the prologue splash screen I get a black screen. Any idea what's happening?

[Rickochet]

I fixed the prologue problem. Sorry for all the errors and bugs, don't have any testers except myself and its hard to keep track of everything. Let me know if anything else goes wrong.

[ghast]

its too bad that you're going at this project completely solo.

I hope you can find beta testers to help you out. I'm sure people here can help you with the project if you request it.

Idk, try changing your topic title to something related to beta testers needed, maybe that will take some of the load off

[ThatOneGuyWhoDoesThings]

Hi! I'm going to give my first impressions of this, if you don't mind.

Opening Narration

This is kind of bugged. There's a stray "o." when the game starts talking about Norcrest. Also, when they show Richard, the narration regarding Norcrest is repeated. Art assets could do with a bit of sprucing up, but this is definitely not a deal-breaker. This is seen in the attachments below.

Prologue

I'll admit, that little bit of intro with the spiders made me giggle. Regardless of how much this changes over the course of development, please keep that scene. I also feel that maybe a tiny bit more writing for the villager girls would give the player some reason to slightly care about their death.

It reminds me of FE7 Lyn Mode... in a not good way, unfortunately. If this were likely to be played by someone who had no experience of the series, then it would be fine; a simple map involving a weapon triangle-advantaged main character against two bandits. However, because it's a hack, only experienced players will likely, meaning you can experiment with more than a simple (but nonetheless effective) sword-user v bandits + forest set-up.

Midnight Sun is a good example of a hack with a great first chapter. It subverts expectation (which is a nice extra) with a Shaman lord who is better at Def than Res. The catch is that while there are physical enemies she can do fairly well against, tackling them is pointless as they infinitely spawn and you have a Jagen-esque NPC who can deal with them for much longer. You're now forced into Shaman v Shaman combat where they hit hard, but you also have some free Avoid in the pillars on the map. This is all capped off with a Shaman boss who, if memory serves, can 3-shot your Lord. It's a really cool and novel first map and I feel that you could try something like that, e.g maybe add a few more enemies and make it an escape chapter?

FE6 also really puts you in the deep end with its first chapter. Sure, it's not hard (on Normal, at least) but it gives you a fair whack of units and expects you to use them well (e.g place a character you want to train on the upper side of the cliff, while Wolt also helps tink damage against the enemy, etc.). Something like this might also be cool if you decide to change to include multiple units in the Prologue.

Plotwise, it's fairly normal FE stuff here. I do love Richard's off-kilter personality and that he actually collapses when his friends find him at the end. I look forward to seeing him develop in the future.

Chapter 1

Before I go to gameplay, Maxim isn't mentioned by name in the Prologue unless you hover over his character, so you might want to fix that to clear things up for people who didn't check his stats.

Gameplay wise, Lee (IMO) needs some stat reductions, or Fiona needs some buffs. Looking at FE14's amazing archer classes (Archer's skills are OP, they've access to flying classes in Kinshi Knight, bows are as strong as axes, Outlaw has thief utility (and Capture utility with Niles)) made me realise exactly how awful Archers are in the GBA trilogy. Effectively losing EP hurts bad, especially in FE6 and 7 with no Ranger.

I like that a Mercenary-esque unit has trouble doubling right off the bat. That's good balance.

The worst thing about this chapter, though, is that it has no anti-turtling incentive. Players can take it at their own pace and don't have to make hard decisions. An easy way to resolve this would be a few extra enemies who are carrying some nice loot, e.g special weapons, maybe a statbooster if they're fairly far away; or to keep some villages untouched as bandit houses you raid for cash. These enemies would be running off into the blank spaces on the left-hand side. Players now have to rush their fairly fragile brigade through some bandits and mercs to get that sweet loot. Maybe if you're taking it really slow, Wilmark and Kormac show up early (this would probably require lots of rewriting but when the player sees actual promoted enemies' stats, they'd get ultra-frightened).

Give the boss a Hand Axe so the answer isn't so obviously "use Lee and maybe Richard to block him from attacking". Dory in FE6 Ch. 5 is a genuinely threatening boss because he has a Hand Axe which will really hurt your ranged, but he also has a Killer Axe so you can't really trust any 1-range unit except Rutger and maybe Dieck to withstand him in combat.

The seniority of Wilmark and Kormac isn't immediately apparent as to how it works. Are they close to the kings, are they simply provincial commanders. This could be made clearer in some expository dialogue.

In file 3 is the line I take most issue. If it turns out that our fantastic trio are from Earth and that vortex brought them to Eldrahgo, yeah, it's fine by me. However, otherwise I think that should be changed to be more in line with what fantasy people would tend to say.

The description of Richard and his actions in the last cutscene of Chapter 1 are still good. However, I feel that with him being pragmatic, a little bit more dialogue from him (even just 1 line) would help before going into the lovely spiders section.

Chapter 2

OK, getting the backstory here is good, although it does risk turning Desmond into Exposition Guy. Thankfully, we see enough human interaction between him, Kraig and Wilmark that he doesn't quite come off as such.

YES YOU DID THIS GAMEPLAY CUTSCENE THING WITH WILMARK. I'm a really big fan of when games show powerful NPCs through gameplay, so keep that no matter what.

Liking the early playable Soldier. Now the player has full WTC, bows, magic and staves. Kraig suffers from Fighter Syndrome and +1 to base Spd/-1 to base Skl would solve that. Makes him more Gonzales-y, where the issue is whether he will hit as opposed to will he double or how much damage will he do. Alesha is already better than Ellen and looks good with those stats.

The odd thing now is that you seem to have learnt to threaten objectives. The brigand being one tile away from the village on the 1st turn can be killed if you move forward with Richie and Lee, but the side effect is that the player is now worried for all the villages as opposed to just the one. Good job!

Quite like Alesha's battle sprite. It just doesn't really match with her portrait that well.

That last village doesn't contain quite the reward I hoped it would. Given that the brigand rushed the first village, I assumed all brigands would chase after villages, meaning that last one would have something really cool. Then again, they were stationary, so you probably chalk that up to me being thoughtless. A cool FE14 mechanic which might be useful to you is distinguishing between Village-killing and non-Village-killing thieves and brigands with different move values, e.g in Fates Outlaws who can shut down Villages have 3 or 4 move as opposed to 6. This would require repositioning the first brigand to make sure he still nearly reaches the village on Turn 1, but it's a neat idea that I don't think most people would think of for their hack.

Again, give the boss a Hand Axe.

Like the dynamic of Alesha and Richard. Gives character to the normally character-less first healer.

Overall

The script needs a fair bit of proof-reading, but this is a minor issue that can be fixed later.

Transitions are jarring and sudden. It always made me wonder whether the chapter would end now or if it would have another cutscene.

Definitely shows promise. These are the issues I found when I was specifically looking for issues. The only other complaint is that you could increase the enemy density on all three maps by just 1 or 2 enemies. That would probably make it more of a challenge. Good job, and all the best on your continued work on the Book of Eden! :)

[Rickochet]

Thanks for the very much in depth review! Most of the things that you have mentioned have already been fixed. The simplicity of the early chapters were done like they are for the purpose of making it easier. I know that majority of people playing hacks are experienced players but when I designed them, it was originally for my friends, who aren't experienced players, that were beta testing it.

The team of testers is growing, albeit very slowly, and I would love to have you on the team if you want. Send me a PM if you're interested.

[Rickochet]

this patch just has some minor changes, namely a "save" system i'm testing so players will be able to use their characters in future patches. some new aesthetic changes and upgrades and all the old bugs and errors should be gone now, but if they're not, let me know and i'll see to it that they're gone! see the patch notes for more info.

[LogRhythm]

I played a good portion of the hack. I like it so far. Just beat chapter 6, which is definitely the best one yet.

The biggest problem occurs at chapter 7. It won't load. After the opening cut-scene, but before the transition to the actual map, the screen goes black, there's a buzzing sound, and the game is stuck. Can't play past a frozen game. I saw another glitch in a couple of maps, where the cursor had loaded outside of the actual map. I got around this by pressing L, but before that I couldn't move or select anything. It happened on chapter 6; I don't remember which others.

Regarding the Prologue, I agree with the previous poster. Establishing the main character is important and all, but there's virtually no gameplay here. You can win the chapter easily by just taking no actions every turn. Chapter 1 works much better as a prologue, gameplay-wise. In fact, pretty much all of the maps are well designed. However, I will complain about the reinforcements. Having reinforcements appear and move in the same turn isn't necessarily a bad idea, but on small maps, this means they'll almost certainly spawn near a vulnerable player unit. Having to restart a chapter because I can't see the future isn't fun.

The lack of a Jeigan characters means there isn't much the player can do if enough units get RNG screwed. Especially since I don't even keep the same units for every chapter. Unless the chapters are made way easier, I would avoid nerfing anyone. Several times, I was only able to complete a chapter thanks to some lucky dodges.

Chapter 6 is great. Even though the enemies are easy to deal with, the strict time limit means the chapter is still challenging. It's also a good opportunity to give some levels to the units that have fallen behind. The boss summoning a bunch of units as soon as you get near him is really unfair.

So far, Lee is definitely my best unit. However, he's still fragile enough that I can't let him get attacked multiple times in a turn. Richard and Fiona are weak. I'm not looking forward to Richard being in every chapter of the game. Kormac may overtake Lee as the best unit. Kraig is ok. The healers can take a hit.

[Rickochet]

Oh chapter 7 not loading was my fault, I forgot to re-insert something, but it's working properly now. Thanks for letting me know!

You're the first person to mention the lack of Jeigan as a negative as most people I talked, seem to hate jeigan characters in general. Do you have any suggestions on what I could do? I have gotten word of the player being shit out of luck in the earlier chapters if they were RNG screwed but I haven't come up with or decided on what to do about that yet.

Chapter 6 is meant to be challenging, as you're suppose to choose between completing the chapter or risk losing a unit for extra experience when you approach him. I do believe I have a little convo between the characters warning of that. Let me know your other thoughts on this.

Theres a lore reason that works in my favor when Richard is RNG screwed but also okay if hes not. But Fiona I haven't figured out how to make her more powerful/okay without breaking the lore. She's suppose to be an archer that excels in speed and skill but everything could simply be because you were RNG screwed. What do you think?

And Kormac is meant to be a good unit also because of lore. I have nerfed the healers a bit since the last patch but good to hear they aren't weak as shit.

So let me know what you think for the rest of the patch from chapter 7 onward, I think chapter 7 is the highlight as thats the part I worked on the most in terms of from start to finish in this alliteration of the patch.

[CobyTheGoober]

It's probably just the rom im using, but for some weird reason, when I finished the world map text, the chapter ended, and it skipped me straight to chapter 9???

[Rickochet]

i just re-uploaded the patch again, that shouldn't happen anymore, let me know if it does

[LogRhythm]

Thanks for fixing it. Just finished chapter 10. I like 7 as much as 6. So far, those are the best part of the game. I also found another major bug. When Richard is supposed to get the Shikita at the beginning of chapter 8, Kormac gets it instead.

I'm sure there's a compromise between being at the mercy of the rng-goddess, and having a Jeigan. Perhaps make one of the early-game units start at level 8ish, and give them better bases, but not too much. I would actually suggest Fiona. The inherit weaknesses of being an archer should keep her from being overpowered. Alternatively, change the make-up of enemy units. Make most enemies weaker, but add "mini-bosses" that are more dangerous.

I like chapter 8, though if animations are turned on, the turns can take a while.

Chapter 9 needs to be restructured. There are too many ways for it to become impossible to beat. The 2 caretakers aren't onscreen enough for their deaths to matter to the player. Plotwise, this could probably be merged with chapter 10.

Chapter 10 is a fun chapter. I was forced to use up the lancereaver, however.

Edited June 26, 2016 by LogRhythm

[Rickochet]

That's an interesting thought. I've been told that chapter 9 is potentially too easy. Maybe the bug with Kormac getting the Shikita instead of Richard is why. That weapon is suppose to help a ton as well be there due to lore reasons.

Hmm...making Fiona a tad higher level would help...at least from a story standpoint. Richard and Lee are the lazier ones while Fiona actually focuses on her training. Think the Harry Potter trio. So you think making her level 8 would be good? Or should I go a little lower or higher. Kind of like Leo from FE10? He's a little bit higher level than the rest of the Dawn Brigade and is considered to be in the more experienced half of the group, lore wise.

But about the inherit weaknesses of being an archer, could you explain why you think this in a little more detail? I feel that most people are spoiled with how units and classes are from the newest entries in the series.

Oh, I'm not sure how that happened but the patch is suppose to end after chapter 8. So for those who have managed to download the version that goes past chapter 8, I'm actually curious to hear what you think of the chapters after 8. Keep in mind that anything after chapter 8 isn't polished and can be extremely buggy and is still a work in progress. Chapters 9 to 20 are the next batch of chapters when they are ready to be released. So LogRhythm, I would very much like to hear your thoughts, should you choose to keep playing.

I fixed the bug of giving the weapon to the wrong character, so feel free to re download, but keep in mind the new patch won't have access to the chapters after 8 as they weren't meant to be released, let me know if anything else comes up!

And if you're interested, LogRhythm, I could use more beta testers.

Edited June 26, 2016 by Rickochet