2022 Retrospectives

[Darrman]

Normally I post these in the Under, but it’s probably better to leave it sleep.

Darr’s 2022 Retrospective

• Buy boxes of Cipher cards - this occurs fairly often.
• Become a moderator of FEU - now to deal with low-quality posting…
• Start watching Yugioh GX - get your game on!
• Begin working on Cipher of Destruction in earnest - it’s not like Nintendo will make a Cipher video game.
• Decide to attempt to travel every railway in Ireland - they’re there. I want to see them.
• Went off down one of said lines - the beaches were nice.
• Yell at people for double-posting - it’s not hard to edit your posts.
• Make a quick April Fools hack in FE5, Keith vs. Kempf - In America’s creator or the Fire Emblem character who took the line?
• Slowly wrote pages on Chalphy Castle - turns out making a website is slow going.
• Passed the hours reading Wikipedia articles - knowing things is good.
• Passed more hours reading fanfiction - maybe some of my weirder hack ideas would be better as prose. Oh well.
• Passed even more hours watching youtube videos - what I’m getting at here is I did nothing of real importance.
• Checked off another railway - things were rather hilly.
• Entered the Hack Jam, came second out of two entrants - finally, something to do with hacking. Evening Train Crash, I called the chapter - trains on the brain. I like to think the chapter was alright, though the time crunch was a bit of a pain to wrestle with.
• Officially entered Cipher of Destruction into FEE3 - procrastination resulted in a Powerpoint presentation instead of gameplay footage. I had a few drafts written, but the first entailed me getting on a soapbox and rambling on about canon pairings. After that I tried again, but it still wasn’t that funny and time crunch dealt with me narrating it.
• Made a chapter for the Three-Hour Blitz - Then I made a sequel. It was large, a bit annoying, full of doors that drained the three hours rapidly and I went a fair bit over time in the end, and was the only entry that didn’t receive an LP, which speaks volumes in of itself.
• Checked off yet another railway line - this one’s the quietest of them all: two trains a day each way.
• Made a menu patch for Yugioh: Monster Capsule GB - it’s an RPG but with a vaguely tactical battle system. Very slow though: your units only move one tile at a time.
• Finished Yugioh GX, or at least its dub - its greatest crime was never being finished. As an aside, the dub ending was a real sour note. Too bad I can’t hack an anime to fix it.
• Decided to catalogue my extensive collection of Fire Emblem books - you’d be surprised at just how many FE4 guidebooks are out there. There’s also a large amount of comic strips along with the multi-volume manga. I intend to put it up on my website when it’s finished.
• Checked off one more railway line for the road - travelling at night means you don’t see much
• Attempted to enter Hack Jam 2. However, I overestimated how much I could do in the space of a week, and so I ran out of time and did not enter.

2023 plans:

• In an ideal world I’d put some elbow grease into my unfinished hack pile - it’s grown larger than I’d like.
• I don’t make new year’s resolutions though, so I probably won’t - I find myself feeling like an idea guy sometimes. Most of them are things that make sense to me, and nobody else.
• I’d like to finish my would-be Jam 2 entry at least - it’s got a fair bit of progress, though I spent too much time formatting mugs and not enough actually making the hack. Making a requant takes longer than you’d think.
• Make the Engage parody hack - we’ve got tradition to uphold here, ideally without the crashing and burning. I’ve been burned by being influential but not leader of Ternon and I largely let Starfall go by. Either I’m the king or I’m a spectator, with no in-between.
• Partake in a MAFC or similar, ideally without any of the timer gimmicks prevalent in 2022 - if I’m given a month, I would rather have the whole month instead of being artificially limited to having a week. I’d like to host one myself at some point, though I probably won’t participate in my own contest.
• Make some April Fools thing - I do that every year. Maybe I’ll give it a good amount of time instead of a messy thing on the day of this year.

That should be everything from me. Feel free to analyse your own experiences below.

[Zane]

2020 2 2 was a year, alright. As always, I wish that I had accomplished more.

---

For International Hack Release Day, I published a small hack called Muscle Memory, designed to challenge veteran FE5 players. You can see it in my IHRD thread.

---

This year, I also decided that whining about code quality wasn’t enough, and I set out to rewrite community code in a style that I like. This, like a lot of other things, got tabled really fast, and I’ve only got two rewrites posted. You can find the thread here.

At the time of posting, the two things are a moving sounds fix (rewriting the hack linked here, by the ever-wonderful Tequila) and a hack to get around the vanilla game’s Huffman text compression (this is an alternative to the ubiquitous anti-Huffman hack made by Hextator and Nintenlord).

I’m actually really proud of these two. Writing hacks in C is a lot of fun and I feel like I’ve grown a lot since I picked up the EA buildfile hacking method.

---

For my WIP disassembly of FE5, this year saw a decent bit of progress.

Thanks to @Ultimage, a lot of AI-related code has been added (and with it, definitions for my library). There’s still more AI stuff that Ulti did that I’m in the process of adding, along with other cool stuff that he’s worked through, so stay tuned for that in 2023.

A fine-grained space usage/disassembly progress tracker has been added to the project’s build messages alongside a better section printer:

It looks a little something like this

...

Region: $018E98-$01901B $000184
  $018E98-$01901B $0184 DeploymentSlotTableSection

Region: $01A5B2-$01A5FD $00004C
  $01A5B2-$01A5FD $004C PickPhaseMusicSection

Region: $01CE64-$01F44D $0025EA
  $01CE64-$01CEAD $004A ActionStructSingleSection
  $01CEAE-$01CF2A $007D ActionStructUnknown83CEAESection
  $01CF2B-$01CFEC $00C2 ActionStructCombatStructsSection
  ...

...

Total:                 $0B7423 %17.90
  Freespace:           $017A84 %02.31
  Text:                $02CB68 %04.37
    Menu Text:         $0004CE %00.03
    Dialogue:          $02C69A %04.34
  Data:                $005EA1 %00.58
  Events:              $009DC6 %00.96
    Data:              $002865 %00.25
    Scenes:            $007561 %00.72
  Code:                $008920 %00.84
    Procs:             $00015E %00.01
  Graphics:            $05A8B0 %08.84
    Map Sprites:       $000000 %00.00
      Moving:          $000000 %00.00
      Idle:            $000000 %00.00
      Battle:          $000000 %00.00
    Battle Animations: $000000 %00.00
    Portraits:         $029508 %04.03
    Tilemaps:          $00547C %00.52
    Palettes:          $003458 %00.32

A lot of little misc. stuff was added, like battle backgrounds, some portrait stuff, world map markers, along with some big stuff like the trade, status, and options windows.

---

For my FE5 library, Volt Edge, the most notable thing added this year was my weird obsession with trying to mimic functions from other languages like Python.

---

And, finally, for my personal project:

Lots of menus:

https://i.imgur.com/gKN08wu.gif
https://i.imgur.com/lMzaoOc.gif
https://i.imgur.com/60CS4EI.gif
https://i.imgur.com/bNPWnSf.gif

And also, WIP breakable walls/snags:

https://i.imgur.com/OyEzsRl.gif

If you want to see more of this kind of stuff, check out my Twitter.

There’s a lot more that I need to do, and I’ve been struggling to find the motivation to do it. The unit list menu is next on the chopping block, probably with breakable tile stuff in the middle, and then I’ll push for more chapters.

---

Here’s to hoping that 2023 is more productive.

[Vesly]

this year I rommed some hacks

[BigMood]

2022: did not release a project
2023: will release a project

[Pandan]

2022 was a good year for [complete] hacks. Arguably one of the best in terms of both volume and overall quality. Y’all should be proud. Offhand –

• Bells of Byelen
• Sacred Echoes
• Souls of the Forest
• 7 Siblings
• Shackled Power
• Blessed Heart
• and others I am forgetting atm

On the hack front for myself, didn’t do much outside of contribute to Bells of Byelen.

Personally, it was a solid year and I cannot complain.

Onward and upward to 2023

[Melledoneus]

Truth.

Edit

Forgot to mention I loved all the attention my project got in FEE3. And I enjoyed squashing all the bugs. It was like a fun little puzzle every time.

[theghostcreator]

2022 was a pretty big year for me in terms of romhacking. This year was the year that I decided to rework the really bad original version of my hack and made it into something that I can be proud of instead of an embarrassing first attempt at a hack.

This year was also the second year that I was in the community in general and I’m definitely here to stay, most of the people here are great to talk to and gave me great advice on how to improve my passion project, I really can’t be thankful enough for how great this small community is.

This year’s FEE3 also showed off my new and improved version of my hack and I’m super grateful for that, I look back on last year’s video on it with a bit of shame and to have the honor of having my project shown in a much better form is great.

It was a great year for me in terms of Fire Emblem romhacking and I hope that 2023 will be just as good! I especially look forward to releasing the full 1.0 version of my project once it’s finished!

[Parrhesia]

DoW was a collection of vague memories and unused, decade-old mugs back in June. Either late June or early July was when I started poking at FEBuilder for the first time, discovering it was pretty comparable to the AoE2 Scenario Editor or WC3’s WorldEdit; aka, even an idiot like me could make use of it.

And then I rushed out Act 1 to be ready for FEE3, and the first patch I released already made my FEE3 footage look outdated. Currently the hack, with a 20-chapter target, stands at:

• 20 chapters conceptualised
• 17 chapters mapped
• 15 chapters can be played and completed
• 11 chapters have complete dialogue (with 15 fully complete support chains)
• 6 chapters currently released
• 14 chapters (including Act 1 polish) targeted for release in mid-January
• 20 chapters slated for beta release around midyear
• Fully polished v1.0 slated for release in time for FEE3 2023

Working on it has been what I’ve needed during a stressful period of my life. It’s been important to have something that can be poked at in bits and pieces, and I think it’s really starting to come together. It’s taught me a lot about managing things effectively, forced me to make the most of my mediocre graphical skills and allowed me to test my ideas for FE design generally. Mostly, though, it’s just nice to wash my hands of that lingering sense of unfinished business.

[Silver-Star]

The only highlight for me is the FEE3 of 2022 and the complete release of both Shackled Power and 7 Siblings. The One surprise that got me out of nowhere is Bells of Byelen. Hopefully, there will be new stuff in 2023 and some unexpected stuff out of the blue.

Another one would be the FE4 GBA and FE5 GBA in the works as well.

Now if you excuse me, there are ROM Hacks that are needed to play.

[Permafrost]

I don’t have nearly as much time for hacking as I did while developing Deity Device, so I’m just glad I was able to release a playable version of Act 1 of Saint’s Blood this year. I feel like there’s finally enough there to get across how the game works and what it’s about. Throughout development, I’ve been surprised by just how often I’m still learning how to do new things with the engine despite the countless hours I’ve spent on romhacking at this point.

It’s also been gratifying to see how Deity Device has continued to gain new players throughout the year even after the buzz following release has died down.

[SageHapuiaJDJ]

2022 was actually a decently productive year! I made many sprites and even started some animations! However, I was still too hard on myself and it hurt some of my productivity. I’m going in the next year with a positive outlook. I look forward to being a more powerful force than I was the prior years!

[DrGreen3339]

This was definitely a year for me alright.

• Realized I was a woman. (My username is outdated lol)
• Cancelled J&P Prequel.
• Began J&P Book 2 Remake.
• Took part in several telephone projects, including Bells of Byelen.
• Got into Pokemon, reinvigorated my love for Kirby
• Made progress on the potential of getting a job.
• Became old enough to drink, thus allowing me to access the full power of the Pandan-trademarked wine-and-cheese combo.

[Rye_on_Speed]

2022 was a hectic year for me, but I don’t think I’d trade it in for another:

-Completed two hacks (Touhou Emblem, Grug 2) (one is released, the other one is currently going through extensive polishing to make sure it’s as solid as can be before release).
-Met many new people in the hacking community who are complete bros, as well as continued to work with other people I consider great contributors. (Shoutouts to my gang, Team Stoned Stoners, as well as Goldblitzx, Sterling Glovner, Vyland, Dood, Tezuka_Yamigami, and so many others who’ve made my time romhacking this year fun)
-Managed to explore my limits in hacking and finally decided to put a cap to my nonstop daily work.
-Witnessed some awesome releases this year like Bells of Byelen and the completion of Seven Siblings.
-Got back into VNs for some fun times, as well as picked up some new games like Len’en and Triangle Strategy that have given me hours of fun.
-Finally got accepted into a college of my choice.
-Schizo my way into expanding the Grug lore more and more to the point where I’m pretty sure nobody will ever understand my ramblings.
-Improve my febuilder and mapping skills.
-Learn how to compose some music thanks to the help of my friend MemeTzar
-Touched grass more
-Learned how to cook
-Reconnected with some friends I hadn’t talked to in a good bit.
-Grug 3 for 2023???

ngl don’t think I did that much this year gotta up it for the next one

[Xilirite]

A whole thread for slightly indulgent introspection-posting… it’s like it was made for me.

2022 was a big year for me, both in FEU and outside of it. I’ve managed to move in with one of my best friends, having a place to live where I can focus and be stress-free after years of the inverse, and I’ve made so much progress on projects in this community – both Embers Entwined and Bells of Byelen came out this year, and Lady of Masks is just barely missing that 2022 re-release with the LT port.

Even beyond that, I’ve been playing more games outside my usual wheelhouse, trying to build up new ideas about game design and reinforce (or replace) old ones. It’s been really satisfying, personally, to evolve my understanding of what makes a game “good” and then try to apply that myself within the projects I’m working on.

Embers Entwined was a fun experiment in bombastic high fantasy mania – any idea, no matter how wild, could be massaged into the game’s over the top plot, and I really enjoyed the experience as a way to try things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to try in the more limited context of my own work. Bells of Byelen, in contrast, was a far more structured experience; a chance to talk with, and work with, several hack devs more experienced than me to see how their design philosophies compare and contrast, and then try to meet them at the high bar of quality they set. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but it was so so valuable as a place to contextualize a lot of the ideas I was learning and/or employing.

In general, with the swap to LT for my project leading me to re-examine the way I’d designed the game, I feel like this year, more than the other year and a half of dev, I’ve grown a lot as a designer. I don’t think I’m all the way where I want to be yet – and, by the time I am, I think I’ll have moved those goalposts forward such that I’ll still believe this to be the case – but I feel so much more confident in the ideas I’m working with where before I would often feel as though I was guessing, getting lucky, or copying everyone else’s homework.

It’s also been exciting to watch how the community has grown and evolved over the last while. The growing number of telephone projects, where the community comes together to make these unique, varied, interesting projects; the increasing popularity of FEE3, and the ambitiousness of both the showcases themselves and the titles they’re showcasing; the creative ideas newer hacks have been working with to create interesting deviations from the norm – be it Eternal Winter’s varied skills, Cerulean Coast’s fascinating map design, and Saint’s Blood refinement of its predecessor’s magic system, or “humbler” deviations like Attempt 3’s trainee focus, A Vestrian Tale’s capture-based item economy, and Blessed Heart’s “FE8+” design that focuses on more interesting and varied promotion options. I could go on, of course; this is just a fraction of the interesting stuff being done in this community right now. That’s not really a personal reflection by any means, but it’s been deeply satisfying to see a community I’ve devoted so much time to grow and change in such positive ways.

Next year (this year, now!), I’m hoping to make big progress on Lady of Masks once it’s caught up to the FEGBA version of the game (which it very nearly is!). I’m also hoping to be a part of more telephone projects, and to try to playtest more often since I’ve been too busying to do so in the last little while – I really like trying to keep a finger on the pulse of the community, and it feels like I’ve fallen so behind on playing the new stuff coming out that I’m losing the plot a bit

On a personal level, I’m hoping now that I’ve moved out to try to make serious headway on all the things I’d been stuck on due to the environment I was in. Getting medicated, eating healthier, being more social… these are things I’ve already been working on prior to now as well, but I hope to continue that into the future.

[Mystic]

2022 was a year for me, I guess. Nothing much changed for me personally aside from me looking at other non-FE games since musou’s can only keep for me so long and I haven’t been in the mood to play too many FE hacks of late. I lost like 10 kgs over the year and then appeared to have 5 back on over the course of a month so whoops.

Xili, dieting and losing weight is so much easier when you’re in control of your own diet. Be sure to hit the weights, that stuff is very effective for losing weight although controlling your diet is the main thing.

I’ve been pretty busy with my new project which I’ve yet to formally reveal but I’ve dropped a few chapters to people in private, Contro and Lusq have had a chance to play it a little. I’ve done 9 chapters so far and after the next chapter, I’ll be cleaning up my new project and pushing ahead for a public early release so look forward to that. I’m not exactly a guy who’s good with polish so that’ll be a little fussy to clean up.

[Goldblitzx]

2022 was a mixed bag for me all things considered.
Some positives include:

• Realizing I was Non-Binary
• Getting to know some great friends like Moris, Drgreen, Retina, Vyland, Sterling, and others.
• Getting to work on the fantastic hack Embers Entwined
• Getting really into the trails series, it was a blast.

But besides that, 2022 kinda punched me in the gut; after completing the 11th grade, my mental health took a massive dip, culminating in me attempting to take my life in the summer. Among other feelings of general self hatred and the likes I also had(have to still) face the leap of moving to college after this school year finishes. Basically, uh, fuck me?

Other things in this mixed bag was that I’ve started to get into making mugs and portraits for FE hacks, and have finally found a hack concept to stick to, so look out for that.

Here’s to hoping 2023 can be a better year for all of us.

-Aurora/Gold.

[StanH]

2022

FE stuff

• Decompiled some fe6
• Fixed fe8 decomp huffman tree generation by doing basically nothing
• Looked at more gbc FE bootlegs for fun (gb fun system don’t listen to Zane and/or Leo’s lies)
• Made something jank for the “Asm Telephone Hacc” which probably very few people experienced because of how much of a nightmarish slog the entire thing ended up becoming but who cares it was fun to make
• Oh ye I did some fe6 unicode support stuff
• Continued to be dissatisfied with current buildfile tooling and paralyzed myself again because of it

Other stuff

• Failed to go to school but passed anyway, then successfully went to school
• Got even more way too much into the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG
• Started slowly changing my online handle to an androgynous derivation of the previous one
• Ported existing C fomt decomp to C++ because that’s what it was written in (and added some extra)
• Messed around with Pokémon disasms (gen 1/2) they fun
• Messed around with Pokémon decomps (gen 3) they suck

Mixed feelings about the year. On one hand I actually am getting somewhere in ““real life”” , which should mean that I finally got my mental health somewhat under control: that’s good. On the other hand, I feel like I (again) failed to contribute enough to what I actually used to be proud of: hacking and/or reverse-engineering, and this community.

No particular goal for 2023 except to not fall apart.

Love u all

[Vesly]

Real answer time

Since my son was born, I’ve been working part time (20-30ish hours a week): my mum or step mum will watch him when I’m at work, and other days I’ll watch him myself. He’ll usually take a ~1-2 hour nap in the afternoon, which I often use for hacking when I’m with him. My wife works full time so I’m responsible for our son on weekdays (eg. dropping/picking him up, preparing his lunchbag and restocking his clothes/diaper bag, etc. when I’m working).

In terms of hacking, highlights of mine include CharacterSelect menu, knockback weapons, generated maps, patches to speed up slow things, QoL things like stealing with a full inv, an improved battle stats with anims off window, and longer weapon descriptions, NewGame+flags, and finally AoE version 2. Lots of fun toys in my asm thread to play with. (Pester 7743 if you want things as patches!)

I also achieved the [Complete] tag for Pokemblem in 2022. If nothing else, this is a unique experience: the Call command keeps the game moving, Area of Effect attacks vary things up, the trainer battles feel like micro puzzles to solve (where failing them on lunatic will just send you running to a pokemon center), and the gym battles are fun and challenging, where you might get your party wiped the first couple of times. This combined with equippable accessories, TMs, and 151 Pokemon to collect creates a fun experience suited for anyone who likes Pokemon or Fire Emblem.

Real-life wise, my son (almost 2 years old) went from saying a few single words to mimicking everything he hears and saying the occasional 2-4 word sentence eg. “Outside! Outside! The door is stuck! Help!” (he just wants to be taken outside to play all the time lol).

We finally caved and got an ipad for him for xmas. He’s allowed to use it for an hour a day (parenting is hard!). Overuse of technology is a big problem for developing children, so we’re trying really hard to be consistent about this.

Finally got the job position I wanted on the 4th time interviewing for it. I was getting pretty annoyed and feeling a bit down about “failing” the first three times, but it does seem like it’s an institutional strategy; they advertise a job, then fail everyone on their first tr(ies) and then offer them basically the same job for much lower pay. It’s a really shitty thing to do. I work as an elementary school teacher, btw.

We moved into a new place in Dec. and assembled and arranged some of our things. Gotta keep working on that when we get back from my wife’s mum’s place, where we’ve been staying for the holidays.

What’s planned for 2023? Well, I’ve been generating some ideas.

[monk-han]

2022 was a year I worked my ass off!
Did illustration work for brands I never imagined I would, experienced some huge opportunities for me. Also participated in Brazillian Comicon, overall a great year professionally. But at the same time I learned that even when everything is going well, work is NOT the most important thing in life. Learned this getting so burnouted that my brain got all bananas, still trying to recover and understand where my passion is exactly

Fire Emblem games really helped me out, and also this community and all the hack games I played. FE is not a huge thing in Brazil, so its been a lonely obsession for me since I was a kid. In 2022 every time things got kinda overwhelming I always immerged myself in a Fire Emblem hack you guys made. Its like a comfort game I guess. That really helped me going foward, so I also wanted to contribute in a way and started doing some portraits and animations for some projects here in FEU

In 2023 I really want to focus more on me. Working out more often, learning new stuff in music and in art, and also keeping up with what everyone is creating here on the server! My resolution for this year is probably getting a more balaneced life-style, working in a healthy manner and focusing in what makes me happy

hope you guys also find that in this year!

[TDAWS-Megapikman132]

Heya all, first off I just wanna say this thread has been lovely to read. I’m pleased to see where everyone is happy, and wish everyone strength and good luck in where it is needed!

Outside the hacking comunity, my year has been mostly pretty bad. Money issues, issues holding a job, my living situation has changed pretty dramatically, and worse that I won’t go into here. I’ve had no energy to work on anything creative, let alone my or another hacking project, and I’ve stepped away from the community on places like discord for the most part.

However, this year may have also been my favorite year to be aware of and involved with FE hacking. I’ve continued to enjoy old friends, made some new ones, and the quality of project updates and releases this year has been incredible! In particular, FEE3 this year was an awesome experience, and I was fortunate enough to be one of several contributors on Bells of Byelen.

I wish everyone the best in both their real life and hackrom indeavors, and I hope to see you all again more frequently in better days. Be kind, and stay excellent!