[FE8] Full GBA Class Support Package[Canceled]

Projects Concepts
1

This is my first time posting a topic here while using this particular software so I apologize if this post ends up not being formatted properly or hard to read.

Thanks to @icecube and @Brendor’s discoveries in their FE8 class expansion patch and Battle Animation topics respectively(I’m not really sure how to link them), unless I am mistaken, it should now be possible to add in almost every GBA FE class plus many of the new ones we’ve seen over the years such as the SNES armor knight classes and Halberdier. Due to how the classes are formatted, the only GBA classes we can’t add in yet are the Fire Dragon from FE6 and FE7 and the Dark Dragon of FE6 I think? Fa can technically be added in at the cost of Myrrh’s transformation, though Fa can still be added if you don’t mind not having a transformation animation I believe. With the addition of Team UNDERTROLL/ @Venno’s discovery in regards to expanding the portrait array, we can also add in more class cards for these classes as well.

I managed to test out both the patch and method of animation expansion today, and I was able to test that both work (as long as you also remember to change the class number, which I forgot to do at first for @icecube’s patch…).

This first image takes a class slot that normally would not work in old FE8 class expansion, class slot 0x82. For demo purposes, I just copied the FE8 class table all over again, so this class is just Eirika’s class with Ephraim’s standing sprite(note the class number is wrong in the nightmare images because I took them before realizing the mistake).

This next image is meant to show @Brendor’s class index expansion discovery working properly. At index 10A in the class array, I added in Hector’s animation(originally I did Lyn at 100 but that didn’t resize the array unlike 10A did). The row where the mouse points to the custom animation code format thanks to Arch’s new module. That 0A 01 you see in the third and forth byte line are where the animation is set as it should be. And the nightmare screen next to it is the same class spot showing that the animation has been repointed for the class.

Finally we have a picture of vanilla Eirika’s class for reference. If icecube’s patch does not work, we’d see Eirika become this class again instead of the new one with Ephraim’s map sprite.

These three images below show the class working just fine with new animation. The image where the map sprite disappears is because I didn’t set 0x82’s movement sprites so it just goes to blank.

I only realized while typing this post up I could make a video to better showcase icecube’s patch, but it does indeed work.

With all this, we should now be able to add in full support for all GBA classes plus more in FE8. I’m not ready to show anything off for it just yet, but I have gone back to work on my old hack Sun God’s Challenge so I was planning on making something like this anyway for that hack. However I figured I should take this a step further and add full support for all, well, everything and release it publicly.

The goal of this topic is to:

  1. Check that I am correct in my assumption that we should be able to do this

  2. Discuss where to place and how to organize this new class table+animations/text/map sprites (both in the array and space wise in a rom)

  3. Decide what stats to give each class and what they should promote into.

  4. For classes that are missing sound effects in FE8, ask if it should be possible to port most of them over and what would be the best method to do so.

  5. I don’t know how to really use Nintenlord’s movement patch. I’ve never been able to figure out how to get new sound effects to play (other than for mounted units since I think giving a class the mounted move again skill gives them horse sounds be default?)

  6. I think there’s something else I need to ask and check, but can’t remember right now, along with things I may not have thought of so please add anything I may have missed.

I’ll personally do all the labor work for this. I believe this should only take… a week for me to do depending on how fast we might be able to reach a conclusion on organization? Maybe less?

My initial thoughts on organization are as follows:

  1. The vanilla FE8 table will remain the same and all new classes will be appended to the bottom of the table. I recommend all new classes be ordered alphabetically.

  2. In regards to inserting new animations, I also recommend ordering them all alphabetically.

  3. Not to sound like a broken record, but new map sprites should also be added in alphabetically.

  4. For space management, I was thinking of just applying the FE8 all instrument’s patch, using the space from 0x1000000 to where the patch begins for FEditor, and then placing all the map sprites and sound effects below that. This gives FEditor control of range 0x1000000 to 0x11c39ff for a total of 1c3a00 bytes. I think this should be enough space for most users purposes yes?

Uhh… I think that’s everything I can think of for now. I’ll also add in all the spell animations to. Those will also be done in… alphabetical order.

tl;dr: I don’t really know how to tl;dr this… I’m offering to add in every possible FE class/spell we can think of to FE8 since it seems to be doable now and want some feedback on the matter to make this a public patch or know if this is just a pipe dream.

And this will of course include new nightmare modules as well, which I will also reorganize. Thoughts?

1 Like
2

I’d just advise you tread lightly as modifications like these can make the game behave in all sorts of unexpected ways

3

Yay Sacred Shell production.

4

Is there a particular thing that comes to mind that you think I should take extra care with or anything specific you’d like for me to try and take note of while I work on this? I won’t be editing any of the original code besides re-pointing tables, the auto patches, the movement patch, and icecube’s patch since I’ll use the added free space for FEditor. The instrument’s patch only adds in bytes and expands the rom to my knowledge, and is already compatible with FEditor if I remember right. I’ll need to count how many animations are available to add, but I won’t try and immediately expand the index to something like the full 65536 slots.

The only thing I can really think of that might cause any odd errors is working with animation entries above FF and any undiscovered glitches from icecube’s patch since they’re the two things with the least amount of real testing/documentation due to how relatively new they are as discoveries, and I could just always add in icecube’s patch after all the animations are in. Re-pointing and expanding the class table never caused me any errors beyond the original one icecube’s patch fixes at least. FEditor’s animation editor has only ever caused me problems when I would overwrite existing animations which I won’t have to do with this patch.

5

Just my two cents here, if you were thinking of making this an actual thing, I’ll warn you right now it’ll be mostly redundant. For FE8CM I already planned to not only add essentially every class and animation in the fandom (Barring uniques, such as Lord-characters from hacks, character-specific fan animations (Like the animal characters from Bloodlines), mainly just all the generic classes plus all gba lords, etc) but also to give it full randomization abilities. The only reason you should do what you’re planning to do, is if you plan to make a patch that ports it into a vanilla rom. Mine will obviously be for FE8CM, so it’ll be a hard-type hack, not the vanilla FE8 that we’ve come to know and love. If you’re thinking of just making a sort of Sacred Shell like Crazy mentioned, that’d be the way to go.

6

That’s exactly what this is going to be, hence this topic otherwise I’d just make it myself without any community input. If there is some part of the topic that doesn’t make this clear you think I should address and fix, please let me know. Unless you’ve already started on something like this as well, I’d think me doing this would actually save you some time in your case then.

7

Nah, not in my case. I have a specific implementation for my own planned. I’m also already well underway haha

But here’s to hoping Sacred Shell kicks ass ‘3’

8

FEU: actually tempting me to maybe switch over to modding FE8 since 2014.

9

you definitely should, it’s much better

10

I’m probably not going to be able to work on this today, so I wanted to give a small update on progress.

I’ve decided on all the animations that will be going in. This brings the total number to about 414. Added animations are as follows:

I believe all the credits are correct, but if they are not please let me know. Thanks to Venno’s custom animation patch I’m not too worried about duplicate animations and the like existing.

The following animations may not be included due to errors with them:

Less religious Cleric
Less religious Bishop

The following animations need improvements to make them run smoother:

True Blade
Troubadour with Magic
Sword Berserker

The following animations have sound issues that are currently being looked into(this is what I have mainly be working on lately, and I may have run into a slight problem. I’m looking into it a bit more before I ask anything about it):

Michaiah
Sister
Warmonk

The following animations need to be scripted:

FE6 Male sage
Nino Sage

Other animation troubles:

The Ishtar animation doesn’t seem to want to insert into FE8?

Athos and the Dark Druid are done, but the former needs refinements plus sound edits. The latter is going to be slightly reduced in replication of the original due to the lack of the dark cloud and what I believe are OAM limitations? The current version I have is pretty decent so far IMO thanks to how well Cam’s .dmp converter works. I’m a bit short on time today otherwise I’d upload a demo video. I also haven’t fully decided on how SFX will work with the dark druid since IIRC the critical sound is tied in to the dark cloud sound in a separate track just for criticals.

I’m currently working on adding in sound effects before I start working on inserting animations. This, the dark druid, and Athos are what I had been working on these past few days.

Also, since the name seemed to be catching on I’ll be calling this project Sacred Shell for the time being.

1 Like
11

Mm, someone else posted in the SF FEditor topic about Ishtar not working a while ago. Probably need to ask Brendor about it.

12

yeah I just checked and apparently it doesn’t
I’ll look into it

13

I tried using the troubadour with magic animation in my most recent project, and to be frank, it’s pretty bad. I ended up just using the staff animation for both staff and magic because it’s more dynamic with the horse moving than the really lazy arm movement of the troub with magic anim. I would like to see more tier 1 mounted magic users, though, so I might take a shot at it myself (I was thinking of making the horse rear up like Eliwood’s for the crit) and toss it at you if successful.

As for the FE6 sage (FE6 has a different female sage as well) and Nino sage, can those be dumped/re-scripted via FEditor Render Edition or do they mess up with the cape-flapping frames?

14

The FE6 female sage didn’t seem too different in design to me compared to the FE7 one when compared to the FE6 male sage and FE7 male sage, but I’m pretty blind and have trouble noticing finer details such as that. If there is a larger difference that I’m missing other than what really looks to be palette differences then I’ll try and script it and add it in.

Any new animations made while this is being made are of course welcome additions to this or any other FE project so go for it. The list I made so far includes what should be all the working animations in the community I’ve seen.

I don’t know if the render edition fixes problems with the cap flap animations when you reinsert them? To my knowledge all the render edition does is make the image preview in the class animation manager display more smoothly. Either way, all you have to do for them is make the frames and then use the output from Cam’s converter as the script. It doesn’t take too long to do.

I should probably post this over in the Japanese community communications page, but has anyone ever looked into adding in any public animations their community has made before? They use a lot of the English speaking communities stuff so I don’t see why we can’t do the same if it’s available for us to use.

15

One has frumpy Lilina legs, the other has sexy Sonia legs. duhhhh.

16

http://i.imgur.com/hqZCd0q.gif
The differences are pretty much on par with those of the male sages. The outfit has prominent shoulders (like the male counterpart), the hairstyle is different and has Lilina’s hairband, there are bracelets instead of gloves, and the color scheme of the dress is reversed so it’s predominantly white instead of colored.

I brought up FEditor Render Edition because it can dump frames (Cam’s thing as a standalone only dumped scripts beforehand) along with animation dumps.

17

I wouldn’t necessarily call this a part of Sacred Shell per se, there’s a few important things.

  • We don’t want the shell patches to be modified by FEditor at any point in development.
  • These sorts of additions, new classes and extensive graphical assets, were initially in FireShell too but since then we’ve reconsidered that and basically feel the shells should take a minimalistic approach to nonmechanical additions.
  • Since FEEditor 2k15 will have a package manager, something like this could be developed as a package.
18

*FE Suite

19
  • FE Editor Suite, aka FEIDE, aka FEEditor Suite 2k15, aka FE Editor Suite 2015 Deluxe Pro Edition
20

*Sweet FE