A sad end to the hack

Been a while since I posted, I recently started up hacking again to find a... most painful discovery.

It was FEditor that killed the Fa animation, what that means is that I can't add animations to the game at all, or edit the text without breaking Fa's animation (and causing other errors because FEditor wasn't bug tested for FE6) that simply wont do. I can still release a minor Stat/Growths patch that still gives you Guinevere and Gale and lets you promote at 16/x. But that's all.

I wont stop hacking, I'll probably move the program over to FE7 or 8 (probably 8 because it supports Manaketes like Fa) or the new engine FE7x is being created on (FEXP was a failure to say the least, not supported by anyone, no way to save, no way to map transition) but given that I have very poor map making skills and no spriting skills what so ever. This will slow down to a complete crawl.

New Engine

Bwd Yeti just released his Fire Emblem engine for RPGmaker XP, and it is DAMN impressive, as well as being easier to use, so their is a good chance that 3.0 (which hasn't really been worked on except for the rewriting of the script, so no loss there) will be in that.

Spotlight

I've decided on another thing to improve upon the hack, Spotlight Chapters.

Spotlight Chapters are Gaiden chapters that focus solely on certain characters, for example Spotlight: Cath focuses on Cath doing her first job, playing as a level 1 thief (don't worry you wont lose your character) There isn't an experiance reward (maybe) but you are given quite a few items. I've had some help in figuring out things like how to end the spotlight and not have you recieve doubles of characters though I have to figure their best positioning. Anyway that will be a late addition but just updating on some concept stuff

2.0 may never come

Because I may have to start work over from the beginning. I tried every test I can think of and can't see why Fa wont work unless her Battle animation has somehow been deleted. And I can't access FEditor at all to check. with a fundementally broken patch I'm considering starting over and trying the whole 3.0 thing right now.

The reason I wanted to hold off is I wanted to get the games balance perfect first so people could play while I hammered out the new script, but it's looking like that's impossible. I don't know what will happen but I'll keep people posted

Update on progress

Well it turns out that weaknesses are handled in weapon ID codes, not class number. So I can fix that.

I also know that the magic/strength split didn't break Fa, on the downside I still don't know what DID break her, I'm guessing her animation got overwritten by the addition of some data (most likely me mucking with event assembler) or something else. I dunno.

I'm going to have to repoint the maps, even though I've never (except that one time) pulled off a successful repoint. This does NOT inspire confidence. I have a feeling if I ever get this all to work (not to mention how High Concept 3.0 is) I may have to move it into RPGmaker XP when Bwd Yeti releases a completed engine

Bugs Bugs everywhere this hacks gone to shit

New BUGS everyone because if theirs one thing this hack needed more of, it's bugs.

Bug the first. Did you know Master Thieves and Luna Sages were weak to Armor Slayers? What about the Sol series being weak to Horseslayers/Halberds.

Well this is due to that magical little fucknugget 'Class Numbers' See the way class numbers work is it carries the ID, movement sprite, weakesses, and other fun little details of each class. I at the beginning changed each class number to a coresponding one but that caused a little bug where every reset made the characters return to the class in their Class Number and NOT to their custom classes.

So edit the class numbers, you say? well guess what, no one has documented how to do this, the one tutorial that even mentions them just says "Ignore them" which is SO helpful.

So what's the other error? Fa is broken. Which is odd because I NEVER EDITED FA. AT ALL. this is utterly confusing since I never even edited her class or the classes around her, the game has just decided to up and die. This probably has something to do with the Physical/Magic split I just feel it in my bones, even though this doesn't effect OTHER Mamkutes in the game, man nothing makes sense.

Whats up

Well we have a thread on Serenesforest.net for one
http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=27091

Bugs I'm working on fixing
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~Making Joyeuse and Aureola drop in 16x as well as promotion without the game playing another chapters opening scene (Not game breaking, just unpolished)
~Making Joyeuse drop in 16 as well as promotion without the game going black when it fades out (Gamebreaking, this only happens if you go the 'Bad' End route though)

Techniques I'm trying to learn
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Expanding the Class Table (50% I know how to do I just can't do it successfuly), Support Table (25% I know how to do it, but not everything about it to do it successfuly), adding custom map sprites (0%), removing 'Ambush' Reinforcements (0%)