After having fully enjoyed FE4 properly fantranslated, I wanted to be able to enjoy FE5 in the same manner, but as of yet, we are still not there. I’ve also been learning how difficult in particular it is to actually translate Thracia due to its file structure. I was still able to enjoy the game via HUD patch and 2 FE5 vets guiding me through the story, but I have also seen how it can be to suffer through FE5 with the old and sometimes buggy story translation and can imagine how bad it would be without a person to guide you…
So the end goal of this project is to remake Thracia 776 via GBA romhack faithfully, the gameplay being functionally the same as the original SNES game. The one exception might be starting map repositioning, as recreating Thracia’s positioning system might be more of a hassle than it’s worth since it appears that most people, even some of the most diehard fans of the game, are not fond of it and would be fine if it got replaced with GBA-style positioning.
I’ve made myself some Trello boards to keep track of what would be needed for the project. I’m currently learning and using FE Builder GBA with FE Midori as the base to test and make proof of concepts of applying the things needed. Final main build will probably use FE8 as the base.
The project sounds very interesting, I really have not played Thracia because its patch does not have any patch that solves everything at once and it’s annoying to try to play it and with even a year of Japanese I can not play it yet, so I really like the project, .
But I have 2 suggestions, the first is to use Buildfiles, I think with FEBuilder if you break the rom it is difficult to fix it as with the old methods, and with Buildfiles you can fix it avoiding bugs (I do not pretend to advocate the superiority of the buildfiles, I just think that for the type of project it is better option since to imitate the engine of FE5 it is necessary to make many mechanical changes), and the other one, although a little obvious, that you use FE8 for the advantages that it brings, including the skill system.
Art-wise, the main thing would be having the sprite-work done, mainly character portraits right now.
Stuff like class animations, and any CG such as the opening CG shots are not the most important thing at the moment yet, and the former can be done with most available custom animations and other animations like Roy and Echidna as placeholders for now.
if you can do animation edits, two things that would be a pretty big help right now actually are female mercenary battle sprites (for Machyua, I know FE7 has female map sprites for female mercs in the code), this being the main one,
and maybe the male mercenary sprites but with axes instead (for Halvan and Orsin). This one is more optional since I can make do with the fighter animation instead for now.
The main reason I want Machyua with female mercenary animations is to make it immediately clear to anyone not familiar with FE5 but familiar with the other games that she promotes into the modern Hero equivalent and not a Swordmaster like Mareeta or Shiva.
