First Hack - Looking for Feedback

[Tsbrdain]

This is my first hack so, I'm looking for feedback on it. What I did right, what I did wrong, stuff you liked, stuff you hated, anything like that.

Features:

-1 Chapter/Prologue

-Custom Dialogue

-Original Map

-Terrible Writing/Story

-Bad Jokes (And not the good kind of bad jokes)

-And less RNG based combat (See more details below)

All in all, it's mostly just an interactive Fanfic.

Screenshots:

There are some known issues that I'll probably fix if this project is ever updated/expanded, but they mostly seemed like minor issues that wouldn't cause too many problems while playing this one chapter hack.

Known Issues:

-Yes/No answer box is completely broken. Appearance wise and functionally.

-Ballista can cause issues on the first turn you enter it, if you choose not to attack.

More about combat changes:

Weapons have been edited to be indestructible, always hit, and never crit. My hope is this will create a different type of strategic gameplay that relies more on the player's ability to strategize, predict, and learn verses a dice roll. Because of this though, I'm expecting replay value to be very poor compared to other FE games and hacks. Oh, and unfortunately I have no idea how to do set growth rates, so there is still that aspect of RNG.

I tried to make this chapter challenging, but not too difficult or dull. Despite having an indestructible staff, enemies come at you fast and can overwhelm you if you play too defensively.

Please let me know what you think. I'm eager to hear peoples opinions on the changes to weapons, map design, and enemy placement. The story is just something to get the action going, but feel free to give feedback on that too. I haven't really decided if I'm going to continue this project or not yet, but I had had lots of fun making it, so I'll probably do some more hacking in the future.

Thanks for playing!

Edited September 12, 2017 by Tsbrdain

[Czar_Yoshi]

I had had lots of fun making it, so I'll probably do some more hacking in the future.

And that's what matters most! If you had fun making it, how good or bad the end result is doesn't really matter, since it's just a bonus. If you don't have fun, then even if the end result is terrific it's not usually worth the effort.

As for character growths, they're in the Nightmare character editor module. If you haven't taken a look at The Ultimate Tutorial, you may want to do that as it's very comprehensive and covers all this stuff.

[Baldrick]

Mild spoilers, for those who'd prefer to try it blind.

You get a good variety of units, and the enemy intensity is just right. I also like the changes of the weapons; the RNG having no impact makes for a different game, and infinite ammo makes the ballista that much more important to hold. The combat can get monotonous; apart from a couple of archers the enemies are all melee infantry units (with RNGless, weapon triangle doesn't matter much), and you don't have much weapon variety. Since it's only one chapter, it's not much of a problem, but it's something to consider if you decide to work on it further. No problems with the map, though the bottom half is a bit underused.

Though it was short, it was fun to play. Nice work!

[Tsbrdain]

@Czar_Yoshi Thanks, but I'm already using that tutorial. By set growth rates I meant consistent growth rates. Like 50% growth would give you one point every two levels, 25% growth would give you exactly one point every four levels

@Baldrick Wow, thanks a lot! I'm sure that'll help me make improvements. I noticed the weapon triangle doesn't have much presence anymore, (just like a 3 point damage boost for effective weapons) but not really sure what I could do to fix it. Same goes for terrain since the avoid boost is gone. I planned on introducing mages in the next chapter, so hopefully that'll give more variety to the combat.

[Czar_Yoshi]

In that case, there's a fixed growths patch by Hextator out there somewhere that does exactly what you need. I couldn't find any working links, though, so you might want to try asking in the Resources section.

[Baldrick]

For the weapon triangle, one thing you could do is increase the damage bonus to make it more relevant. You would need a hex editor, but it's simple to do (I read a tutorial about it once, I can dig it up if you want)

The fixed growth patch can be found here

[Tsbrdain]

@Czar_Yoshi Thanks, that looks exactly like what I wanted! I think Baldrick even found the patch, so hopefully I can test it soon.

@Baldrick That'd be really awesome if you could link to the tutorial. I tried looking a couple of days ago but didn't have any luck. And thanks for the patch! Do you know if I can include it in my hack, or if I should just link to it and suggest people use it? I tried to find the original forum to see if the maker had any special rules for distribution, but I couldn't figure anything out.

[Baldrick]

http://feuniverse.us/t/weapon-triangle-advantage-table/285

I think you're free to use the patch as long as you credit the original maker, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Someone more knowledgeable than me could tell you the proper etiquette.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I'm not super knowledgeable either, but what I see most people do is just include a Credits section in their OP stating everything they got from anyone else.

You'd definitely want to apply the patch to the rom you're working with instead of having others go get it on their own, though. Doing the latter method means there are more links that break and must be fixed, more work the end user must do to maintain your patch, and more places in general for things to go wrong. It probably wouldn't even work in the first place if you tried applying it to a rom that was already modified enough.

[Orblet]

@Czar_Yoshi Thanks, but I'm already using that tutorial. By set growth rates I meant consistent growth rates. Like 50% growth would give you one point every two levels, 25% growth would give you exactly one point every four levels

@Baldrick Wow, thanks a lot! I'm sure that'll help me make improvements. I noticed the weapon triangle doesn't have much presence anymore, (just like a 3 point damage boost for effective weapons) but not really sure what I could do to fix it. Same goes for terrain since the avoid boost is gone. I planned on introducing mages in the next chapter, so hopefully that'll give more variety to the combat.

I don't know anything about hacking for FE or much about programming in general, though I know some basic ideas and here is something that might work if you can implement it

Try using a bunch of detectors for which level the character is at and you would have to determine yourself what level ups would give what stat increases. For example in Eliwood's Str growth lets say you wanted for every other level you wanted an increase in that stat, then you could set the growth rate to equal 100 for when he is leveling up to level 2, then have it be set to 0 when he is leveling up to level 3, and rinse and repeat.

Once again all that could be worthless because I only know the extreme basics of how coding works but from what I have done it seems like this could work