Introduction: About Myself and Hacking FE

[Xambis Volvo]

TL;DR AT THE END

~INTRODUCTION

Hello, my (choice for) name is Xambis Volvo, and I´m here because I love Fire Emblem. Honestly, my objective in doing this is to set myself up for my own expectations to be completed. 

~WHAT I´M HERE FOR

Ever since I´ve discovered FE, I've brought up a different side of myself to the spotlight. You see, as a 17y old student, I´m still trying to decide what I should do in life and all that. I do have some basic, very basic programming knowledge, and I draw poorly, to say the least. I love videogames, but I don´t see myself having the luxury of being on a good enough position to live on only developing games, having creative control over most of the projects. I find manga fascinating, and I´ve tried to delve deeper into the world of drawing, though eventually I found myself without the motivation to keep improving my drawings.

I've got back into FE quite recently, and as such, began to form my own opinions of the games I played and always wanting to go "hardcore elitist" on every aspect of the games. Eventually, after getting fascinated and bored to death by Sacred Stones, I started thinking about what one could do to improve the base game of FE 8. It honestly felt like a waste, with me issuing some challenges and getting bored halfway through their completion. "How can a game with stupidly well-writen characters like these have such a drab story and easy gameplay; there´s so much wasted potential in here!". 

That´s when I came across the hacking scene for the GBA FEs. I was astonished. Suddenly, you could download a modification that changed every enemy stat, growth rates, map design, portraits, graphics; heck, someone even added SKILLS to the game! I´ve only ever heard of something like this in Skyrim´s modding scene, but I didn´t think this many people changed the game to fit their own ideas! Seeing some more hacks, I eventually began to think that I could do something like that too. Try to add my own spice into the mix, bringing out the true potential of something.

I realize now that this is building up to a "I wanna make a remix of FE 8", but that´s not what interests me. I´ve always been a fan of telling stories, and that´s what I decided I wanted to do in my life: Tell stories that rival and surpass my favorites (EVA, JoJo, Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, HunterxHunter), to have them analyzed by people so that they can see what I intended to do with each little segment of the plot, characters, setting and themes. What I want to do now is not to make FE 8 better, but to elaborate on what it did best.

So for that, I´ll start to study the hacking scene, so that I can master the tools and use them however I want; changing the intros, adding some music, creating entirely new classes, maps, supports, characters and all that comes with developing a GBA FE. I have no idea about pretty much anything, so I´ll start with FEBuilderGBA and Markyjoe´s tutorial on it. I´ve never been so excited about something in my life; I´m the kind of guy that prefers procrastinating to doing anything with my life. With such a clear objective, working on what I love to create even better results, I believe that I can turn this around. In 5 years´ time, I will have at least one hack developed with blood, sweat and joy and ready to be played and enjoyed by people like me.

~WHY DID I WRITE THIS

 Honestly, I´m wrtiting this for myself. To keep as proof that I am shit, and that shit can become something if you try. That´s why I put a TL;DR right at the beginning; I´m not expecting anyone but me to read this wall of text, especially if it´s riddled with gramatical errors and the like for still not dominating English. If, if you came this far, I´ve got nothing to say to you. It was your choice to read some noob´s introduction into this site. However, I do thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for "wasting" your time on me. Truly, I do.

 

 

TL;DR: Hey, I´m Xambis and I´m going to dive deep into the hacking community of the GBA Emblems. If you have any suggestions, please do post them, I do aprecciate it. I´ll start with MarkyJoe´s FEBuilderGBA tutorial, just warning so that you suggest something else. Don´t expect anything from me in about 1 year´s time, since I´ll be very busy starting January and ending in december of 2019. Cheers

 

[Von Ithipathachai]

As somebody who's been working on his own project since roughly September this year (though it's an SRPG Studio game and not a Sacred Stones hack), I can empathize with you.

I would personally recommend SRPG Studio because it's far more flexible in terms of customization (you can even do custom scripting if you know JavaScript), but you seem to be dead-set on doing a hack, so I'll respect that decision if that's the case.

Anyway, I wish you luck.

[Xambis Volvo]

I've never heard of SRPG Studio actually, it might be good to take a look at it. I think that I´ll eventually expand what I can do, especially because I´ve thought of modifying the intro and putting in music that surpasses the GBA´s limitations, things that I believe you can´t do by only modifying the ROM. Thanks for the advice and good luck with your game as well!

[Von Ithipathachai]

3 minutes ago, Xambis Volvo said:

I've never heard of SRPG Studio actually, it might be good to take a look at it. I think that I´ll eventually expand what I can do, especially because I´ve thought of modifying the intro and putting in music that surpasses the GBA´s limitations, things that I believe you can´t do by only modifying the ROM. Thanks for the advice and good luck with your game as well!

Thanks!  I'd ask you to play it, but right now I'm working on a new version with Support conversations that should hopefully be out by New Year's.  (The current and next versions are playable up to and including Chapter 7.)  Still, give it a look if you want a taste of what you can accomplish with SRPG Studio.  But be warned that the program costs about $60 on Steam.  I personally think it's worth the investment, but you may or may not have the money for it.

[Ycine]

Welcome to the Forest, Xambis Volvo!

21 hours ago, Xambis Volvo said:

However, I do thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for "wasting" your time on me. Truly, I do.

No, I do thank you, for taking the time to write this much.

I'm sure you know where to go to found stuff/ressources about hacking but just in case : https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/forum/8-fan-projects/

Good luck on your hack, have a nice day and enjoy your stay!

[Xambis Volvo]

Thanks! Really apreciated the warm welcome!