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Fire Emblem: Relics of Arcadia


aronnambre
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This is a hack a friend and I thought about making. We're not out to reinvent the wheel, but we do want to make a game with a compelling story, interesting villains, and more complex lords.

Fire Emblem: Relics of Arcadia(Updated: 5/9/2016)

“The Lords of old challenged the foul monstrosity that besieged their land.

Unfortunately, they succeeded.

From its corpse, malice and evil spewed forth. The Lords were swallowed by the inexorable tide. Their relics, drunk on vile blood, became vessels of the creature’s madness.

And so the kingdom fell.”

The story takes place in what was the kingdom of Arcadia. 100 years ago, Arcadia was a prosperous and unified kingdom, protected by five powerful relics and the lords who wielded them. One day, however, an otherwordly force appeared and started to ravage the land. The lords gathered their army and fought the beast. They succeeded, but in its death the beast spewed forth a corrupting miasma that blanketed the lords and their army. The relics were tainted, and the lords slew each other in madness. With no army nor leader, and much of its center now an inhospitable wasteland, the kingdom descended into lawlessness and fractured. Only two regions, Nearia, the seat of the Church of Awakening, and Oppidorum, who still retained its army through the foresight of its lord, kept hold of a threadbare order. The ensuing fighting elsewhere left most places desolate.

Time passed. The Capital and central Arcadia remain inhospitable and fallow. The countryside elsewhere now lives under the fear of bandit lords, who vie for control and demand feudalistic tribute from the solitary villages that survived. Most of them answer to a self-proclaimed “baron,” but others choose to independently maraud. The baron claims to provide “protection” from these rogue groups. The Church remained silent, and far to the South, ambitions for a ‘New Arcadia’ grew in Oppidorum’s new king.

All the while, the cursed relics, lost after the tragedy, await their new masters. And their new pawns.

So far, we’ve planned out the prologue and chapter 1 in detail, as well as the general flow of the story. We are planning at least three paths, each following a different ‘lord,’ branching at about ⅓ of the way through the story.

[spoiler=Characters]

So far, we've done the portraits of the main lords and the character recruited at chapter 1, so we'll show them here.

[spoiler=Avatar]

OpxP27b.png

The avatar of the player in the story. Interested in both studying and recording history. Their encounter with Annette marks the beginning of the tale.

Will be playable as a Historian class, which serves as the dancer class of the game. May also have access to dark magic, depending on how balancing works out.

[spoiler=Annette]

dXV2vxI.png

A young girl from a village in Serenica, the lawless part of Arcadia, with a strong sense of justice passed on to her from her father. Her father, who had been a deterrent to the bandits in the past, recently passed away, and her village is considering falling under the influence of the Baron to avoid being overrun by other enemies. She encounters the Avatar as she gathers wood outside the village, beset by the Baron's men.

The first 'lord' of the story. Wields Axes.

[spoiler=Egil]

R43OHio.png

A self-proclaimed ‘treasure hunter’ and outlaw of the Baron’s that had been a thorn at his side, breaking into his forts and stealing from his men. Encounters the party early on. Has an easygoing persona, but seems to have some sort of connection with the Church of Awakening.

The second ‘lord’ of the story. Wields Bows.

[spoiler=Ciara]

JutyODZ.png

A knight in her early twenties from Oppidorum. She is one of the King’s most trusted soldiers, and she is fiercely loyal to him. She highly values order, and wishes to help expand Oppidorum’s power and unify the land once again. The party comes to Oppidorum during their travels, and she is assigned by the King to accompany them.

The third 'lord' of the story. Wields Spears.

[spoiler=Jeremiah]

G2B6H8C.png

A local priest of Annette's village, preaching for the Church of Awakening. Though he had never actually been to the holy city in Nearia in his life, he remains devoted to the teachings of his childhood. He looked up to Annette's father, and followed the party following the events of the prologue.

He is of the priest class.

[spoiler=Yuria]

OI2W9zZ.png

A girl Jeremiah ran into that was being chased by bandits. Part of Egil's group but was separated after a botched attempt at one of the bases. Timid by nature.

[spoiler=Delwick]

XmQOz3S.png

A mercenary grudgingly under Geldgier's employ. He's a man of few words, and is generally dissatisfied with the status quo. Dispatched along with others in the area to chase after a girl who had been stealing in the south.

[spoiler=To Do]

There's probably a lot more, but I'm putting the pressing matters down here.

All the battle sprites for the lords. Going to try to do these myself like the portraits, but might take a while. I'll focus on Annette's and the Avatar's since they're there for the prologue.

Code Prologue events. already in the works. Done. Chapter 2 is in the works now.

Figure out how to do branching paths with fe 7 as a base. This is still a ways away, but I want to at least get a head start now, since it is crucial. Alternatively, I could always code 3 different versions of the hack, if this turns out to be impossible.

Get Music. I'll defer this to my friend, since I'll have my hands full with the sprites and coding.

Clean up Sprites and Battle Sprites. Yeah, avatar's

[spoiler=Current Version]

Relics of Arcadia demo ver. 0.2

Features:

-Playable prologue and chapter 1, with custom maps and events.

-5 characters (so far).

Planned/Unimplimented:

-Chapter 2 in the works for the coming month.

-Supports. Still the base fe7 supports, may incrementally ammend these as we go.

-Implement some sort of end-of-demo chapter so it doesn't awkwardly move on to the next chapter of the base game.

[spoiler=screenshots]

xY8j0FI.pngW95mokc.pngwQbA102.pnglaztvvE.pngI7r9gkL.png

[spoiler=Credits]

matrix_001, who kept me grounded with the story and planning.

Arch for his eventing tutorials.

Nintenlord for his tools.

All of you for reading and trying out the patch.

That's it for the time being. I'll keep updating this with new progress as they occur. If you have any comments/suggestions/criticism, feel free to post it here. I'm still learning through all this, and there's always room to improve.

Edited by aronnambre
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Branching paths should be very easy, although the execution may not be as smooth as you want it to be.

Looks promising but I'll refrain from further commentary until I see some screens!

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The plot is a rather interesting take on the whole "big evil war kill good guy win yay" trope and the setting sounds like a post-apocalyptic world, which offers endless possibilities, like the characters being refused entrance to one of the peaceful countries, outside forces and much more. My only complain is that Annette looks a bit too frail and small to wield axes.

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Alright, just gonna get some updates going on progress.

Coding the prologue is going. Still learning my way through but managed to get some real basic stuff down without crashing.

NoAdWIB.pngHs5SAk3.pngMOe44lV.pngiiVl5qC.png7leAT2w.png

If anyone knows of a way to in feditor control who smiles when without the entire group smiling, I'd appreciate the tip.

Using Hector as Annette's placeholder for now. Speaking of, also did a first go at Annette's custom standing sprite.

kva3aVJ.png

that's it for now. Hopefully the prologue will be all there by mid week, or the end of the week if school work gets rough.

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[ToggleSmile] and other toggles likes [ToggleColorInvert] and [ToggleMouthMove] need to be closed off by another toggle command, otherwise it will keep going for each character. So if you want to have a single characer smile, you do this

[OpenMidLeft][LoadFace][0x16][0x01][ToggleSmile]

I'm Lyn, I am smiling![A][OpenMidRight][LoadFace][0x02][0x01][ToggleSmile]

I am Eliwood, I am not smiling.[.]

But Lyn is still smiling.[A][X]

I'm pretty sure off the top off my head that's how it works. I forget If I'm not looking at the script

Edited by ghast
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There's a Female Hector edit you can grab for free at Klok's Animation topic, just read the rules on whether you should ask for permission or not.

Edited by Floral Pattern
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There's a Female Hector edit you can grab for free at Klok's Animation topic, just read the rules on whether you should ask for permission or not.

I may use it as a placeholder, but I do want to see if I can't finish that custom animation in the meantime.

Also, I tried to implement some tile changes with the village on my custom map, but... well...

7svO81l.png

that happened upon visiting, and when a bandit tries to destroy the village, the tiles stayed the same and he proceeded to continue trying to destroy the village till the end of time.

Edited by aronnambre
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Hello, I just wanted to introduce myself on this topic as well. I'm the other person working on this hack. Aronnambre is doing the programming, but I'm jointly working on story, character creation, dialogue, and some map design. I'm also attempting to compose some original music for the game. I look forward us being able to show you more of our progress!

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]Alright, finished with the prologue! Well, the events, at least. Still need to work on the map and battle sprites for annette and the avatar.

umDwjFz.pngOtgyNLd.pngzgSYlmW.pngkaH09WU.png

I've made a patch containing it on NUPS here if you all would like to tear my soul to pieces give some criticism on it. Still a bit unsteady with the code, but I feel I'm making progress.

Fire Emblem Relics of Arcadia prologue.zip

known issues include:

-crashing when using rouse with animations off (most probably because the avatar map sprite doesn't have the animation for it)

unknown issues are, well, unknown.

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Well, hit sort of a major snag, I suppose.

been putting in the custom battle sprites into the game for Annette, one for normal axes, one for hand axes, one for unarmed

game worked when it was only normal, but when I put in the animations for unarmed and hand axes, it now freezes when I attempt to dance for Annette.

The indexes that I replaced were hector's 3 animations respectively. Any ideas on how to fix this?

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Hmm, I'll keep that in mind moving forward. I managed to fix the problem by closing and reopening feditor and re-inserting the animations for now.YQyyDjD.pngje2P7VC.pngWPvghby.png

it's all still a bit clunky, and I need some fine tuning on the frames and sounds, but it's in there now. I'll work on the avatar's while getting chapter 1 going.

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Alright, some progress updates.

Almost ready to progress with Chapter 1. Just need to finish the map for it before coding can begin in earnest.

Finished 2 more portraits for characters to appear in Chapter 1.

OI2W9zZ.pngXmQOz3S.png

also finished the avatar's animation. It's bare bones at best, but should fit the portrait at least.

mvZEbX3.png

I'll practice putting this in free space instead of replacing like I did with Annette and see if I can do that without causing a major meltdown.

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Open up a thread in Sprites, if you haven't already. For a very short patch, what you have is okay. For a longer run, you'll want someone to help you polish those mugs up.

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your a sprite maker? Well, the only thing i have been able to do with sprites are just recolors.

I wouldn't consider myself a sprite maker per se. I'm more inclined for programming and have been mostly just splicing stuff together.

Open up a thread in Sprites, if you haven't already. For a very short patch, what you have is okay. For a longer run, you'll want someone to help you polish those mugs up.

I'll do it once I've finished chapter 1. I know my limits in spriting, but I want to have some more groundwork done first, at least.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Open up a thread in Sprites, if you haven't already. For a very short patch, what you have is okay. For a longer run, you'll want someone to help you polish those mugs up.

Honestly, the female portraits are the only ones I really have problems with. The male ones look pretty solid in my opinion.

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Honestly, the female portraits are the only ones I really have problems with. The male ones look pretty solid in my opinion.

Much as I'd love to provide a good critique, all I can do is spot things that are wrong. I have no clue how to fix 'em, and I'm kinda unhappy with myself because of that. The stuff that catches my eye:

- Anette's hair needs polish.

- Not a fan of Yuria's color scheme. One of her hair/shirt could be a lighter color.

- Either Jeremiah's head or face is a little too big for his frame, and I can't tell which one it is. It's driving me nuts because something looks off, and I can't put it into words.

- Shading around Egil's bangs could use some work.

- Like Jeremiah, something about Ciara's proportions are off. . .whether it's her head being a bit too small for her armor, or her neck being a bit too long (though I'm not sure if the yellow thing is playing havoc with the length of her neck).

Most of these fall under "somewhat distracting", not "pile of pixels" (otherwise known as what I used to splice). It'll work for a demo, but if this project really takes off, the sprite guys can give him a hand. . .and do a better job of it than me.

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I'm actually anxious to see how this hack turns out

I've already played the prologue patch, I didn't have any real issues with it other than when the prologue map was revealed that there was a one split second (maybe even a half a second) of certain tiles being completely black, but it corrected itself as quickly as I seen it happen.

Honestly though, I didn't think you had done any changes to the map during the prologue (unless my remembrance of FE7 fails me), so it may have just been nothing and could've been just my emulator or computer because I play most of my emulator games on a old desktop computer. (E-Machine in fact)

Nevertheless, I figured I'd mention it just in case, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this game as I like the story/beginning so far :)

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I'm actually anxious to see how this hack turns out

I've already played the prologue patch, I didn't have any real issues with it other than when the prologue map was revealed that there was a one split second (maybe even a half a second) of certain tiles being completely black, but it corrected itself as quickly as I seen it happen.

Honestly though, I didn't think you had done any changes to the map during the prologue (unless my remembrance of FE7 fails me), so it may have just been nothing and could've been just my emulator or computer because I play most of my emulator games on a old desktop computer. (E-Machine in fact)

Nevertheless, I figured I'd mention it just in case, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this game as I like the story/beginning so far :)

Huh. The map should be different from the base game's prologue one. I'll look into it.

On another note, Chapter 1 is done.

Here it is. Use a clean fire emblem 7 rom for the patch, since I also tweaked the prologue a tad.

I've done some play-testing myself, and for the most part it functions as intended. Still, any suggestions on improving any part of it is appreciated.

Chapter 2 is planned out, though might take a bit since I'm working on Egil's battle sprite at the moment. Also, if anyone knows how to point a chapter to the title screen, I'd really appreciate it.

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