UPDATE: This will become a demo to Mechanics Emblem. Pretty much a 2 chapter hack to show off the flooding idea.
Hi, MrNight here, long time search lurker, first time showcasing, releasing Rage Emblem beta to the community for feedback and beta testing. Going to give a rundown of what to expect, why I am doing this, and ultimately what I hope to achieve. Let’s begin…
Old crap
[spoiler]
What is it?
Rage Emblem is basically a gameplay focused hack exploring FE7 mechanics in depth and what they can really do. Also to experiment with what ideas I can make real as well as build on them without ASM changes. (That’s for my next series…eventually) This hack assumes players have cleared FE7 or any GBA Fire Emblems and will attempt to be Hard to Lunatic mode that is not punishing nor too luck based but Challenging and tests the players limits. Rage Emblem does have new maps and characters (except two that has more to do with the story and some old ones are mentioned for it is somewhat based off of FE7 but won’t go into detail for now to not bias it) but need to make sure the gameplay is solid before I really polish it.
Edited
What to expect?
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Only Prologue and chapter 1 is ready for open testing, Working on chapter 2 with 2 new modified classes fufufufu.
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FE7 classes (mostly), keeping things simple for now
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Simple Story, Main character wants to be a hero, that is it. Basically one thing leads to another, it will not be nothing you haven’t seen
before because I have never told a novel really. So I am sticking to what is reasonable of my writing skills. Which is generic levels -
Placeholder text’s and boss portraits, Character’s portraits subject to change.
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Multiple Game overs for bad play or not paying attention to all the information
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Old mechanics in new ways
+Some villages cause Gameover if not protected
+ Maps can be flooded or snowed in. (more on the show in a later chapter)
+ Transporter can detach wagon and heal. (if she dies you have a non movable wagon)
+ Unknown till ch.3 release -
Updates(v1.2)
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Introduced secret warning sign for the more observant. Will not say what the warning is for.
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Added a easter egg, sadly not able to keep it but its extra stuff for the obsessive among you.
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Chapter 1 is completely ready for testing with all the text. yaaaaaaay.
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More fixes with the text and various other stuff
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Slight buff to bandits so you get hit more and take a bit more damage. This hack needs to mock you a bit so it can push you to have your revenge after some deaths.
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Weapon adjustment to slim sword, should not be as strong as a iron sword but more like a weak killing edge due to its lightness.
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Updates(v1.3)
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Chapter 2
-Healing Transporter and wagon
-Theif AI that can escape (has its damn limits will explain below)
-Gameplay only at the moment (Theif AI frustrated the hell out of me)
Text changes and conversations coming soon.
Update(v1.4)
-Chapter 3 Maze of Madness can be played and it will be a grade harder than the previous chapters
-A new unit given in chapter 2, later on he will be the reward for saving the death village in chapter 1
(yes he is a playable generic unit, will have a custom color armor and palette later.)
-Eclipse short bows, beware for they can be nasty at the wrong time smiley-The girl whom you are suppose to save has Sophia’s face due to portrait i had prepared for her was not original enough and was too much like sophia to even bother with the effort of putting her mug in the game. Will change it once I redo it to satisfactory levels of being a placeholder.
-Temporary Rush blade fix, has 58 uses instead of 80 so it doesn’t glitch out. Just to be sure the player can progress, I made another rush blade in chapter 1 that you have to kill for.
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FE7 music for now, will get to that good stuff once gameplay is soild
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Roughly 10 chapters for the official, subject to change depending on ideas+story
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Forgiving Death for Miguel and Rye due to it only being prologue, After that its Perm Death for all. (not implemented yet so perm death atm and yes, even the merchant gets perm death. More on that when ch.2 is released) Should have clarified that but was nervous and didn’t think straight.
-Why play? To see other things FE7 could have done if they was given more time/budget. Honestly not sure if other hacks came up with the same ideas(and sorry if it does) but hopefully one or two may surprise you
[/spoiler]
Link and ScreenShots
RageEmblem:
Update: http://www.mediafire.com/download/3c8h0gv1z02fcln/RageEmblemv1.51.ups
only prologue and the original chapter 1. That is it to preserve what the flood chapter originally was. As for Rage Emblem, will be changing it to Mechanics Emblem and all the chapters will be redone to flex my new hacking muscles. Do note chapter 2 will break after that.
Let me know immediately if patch doesn’t work here or by pm.
What would I like?
Constructive criticism. Good or Bad with in depth explanation. I value absolute brutal honestly as long as it helps my hack to be just brutal on being good. Even If I shed man tears in darkness, I will use those said tears to make my creative furnace hotter to forge this hack to near perfection. The sooner I get this out in the open and played by the community, the faster I get feedback to make it better during its development instead of doing all this work and polish only to be told the gameplay sucks and is boring. (made that mistake once and was crushed). That being said I will not explain too much about it to prevent bias thinking so beta testers can tell me their experience as well as what they find.
A bit about my hacking background
So with all that said, I will discuss why I started making this. I came into fire emblem hacking due to seeing cool custom animations in 2012 and wanted to learn how to do them and I did just that. I googled like a madman and came upon blazer’s tutorial package and worked from there. While working on animations I was looking for youtube videos of fire emblem to watch and inspire me while working in MS paint. That is when I came across ragefest because there was few fire emblem videos that was longer than 10 minutes and wow did that series blew my mind. It showed me the possibilities on what FE hacking can do instead of just reskins and class changing. Sadly, the more I watched, the more I realized it was really not for newbie’s and tried to gain some skills before I tried to enter the contest. Later on I learned It was pretty much dead due to the “been there, done that” and the lack of interest which led me trying to make a submission for gaiden. This led me to make the horrible mistake of not finding dedicated FE experienced testers because the ones I asked to test were friends who did not want to admit to me they didn’t really care about my fire emblem hack nor was that good at it. (they admitted they wasn’t good after I sent it in) I took this as failure on my part and decided to really do some game design research while practicing key FE hacking concepts. The biggest thing I have learned is the mantra of “fail faster” hence is why I am throwing my hack to the FE community who is already interested in Fire Emblem and are more willing rip apart bad hacks so it can grow. I also found I am better at coming up with ideas and motivation if I designed chapters to be challenging to ragefest levels instead of basic fire emblem chapters that bore me to tears. I tried to do as much hacking on my own (the serenes search button has become my most valued friend) and to show the ideas I came up with to throw at the player to really make them think. (cathrine hard but chess style)
So yeah, feel free to say what you want about the hack or pm to make it private. Good Luck and Thank You.
(Also credits won’t be out until it is finished, A lot of FE hackers programs were super useful and would like to give proper credit where credit is due, same with testers.)
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