Yes. It’s a defeat boss chapter in one of the maps. I’m sure you find out eventually.
Didn’t really get to that part of the hack, I was playing an older version.
Yaama, people. Well, I promised a devblog every week or two, so here we go. If you haven’t been following the DoW thread, get used to this: they’re rambling streams of consciousness, so unless you want to sign up for that, you’re fine skipping. The work continues, that’s the main thing, but it isn’t really a progress update.
That said, I can happily report that Act 1 is in pretty decent condition; I streamed a playthrough of it over a couple of days on the FEUcord recently, and hammered out most of the things I caught (which is pretty easy when it’s things like ‘the boss charges you on turn 1’, and ‘the three music cues are all for the same track, which isn’t the right track for any of them’. Ah, pre-alpha testing.)
At this point, much of the groundwork has been laid out. I’ve slotted in a bunch of old assets, a bunch of updated assets that weren’t in 7!Do5’s last public patch, a bunch of repo assets on top of it. In addition, I changed a lot of class bases and weapon stats. For a game that did so much to differentiate itself from FE7, it also kept a lot of the base stuff; my general philosophy is to respect and try to keep faithful to original Do5 decision-making, but have free reign to push the envelope further. For instance, enemy colours. No longer will Pale Red Guys beset you at every turn; now, I’ve taken cues from bosses to assign colours to factions. The Darkwright brothers’ minions wear their cool red and blue; Farrell’s goons are in cyan and red; Musain’s soldiers wear Uther’s purple; Ondurites wear orange because nobody else was gonna wear orange.
And that fits and expands on what does feel like one of the defining features of original Do5; the aesthetic flair, and the remarkable consistency of that flair. The bold, gold trim, the rounded edges. It made massive graphical overhauls to the UI - which I’ve implemented where I can, and happily I can report that epicer has succeeded where I failed and managed to wrestle the battlescreen into submission, so now that’s in too - and the almost universally FC mugs adhered to tight designs. When me and Lumi approached Astra, we got handed basically every graphical asset that had ever been thrown into any version of Do5. Even chapter bosses went through multiple iterations of design. Several had honest-to-God concept art.
I think this would be (the user) Amelia’s work; originally Everild, one of the legendary heroes, repurposed to Franseza, a midgame archer. You’ll see her on Musain route.
A side effect is that there were a lot of spare mugs floating around. Enough spare mugs that, taking the liberty of repurposing a few, I was able to staff the playable cast with a significant amount of characters, staff all new chapters with bosses and have a couple of NPCs without actually needing to make any new ones. Which is useful, given that I’m not capable of making Do5-quality mugs on my own.
And I had a lot of new characters to make. 7!Do5’s character list was scandalously small. It just wasn’t built around ironman. Nobody was talking about ironman in 2011-13! Our playtesters savestated, our audience savestated, I savestated. Biggest encapsulation of that: the post-C6 route-split? If you don’t drop a state at the choice, you just have to replay the chapter (or the entire first Act!) if you want to take the other route. So yeah, the assumption was that you would simply not lose anyone permanently. F1 is right there, begging to be hit! Skill issue, honestly!
Well, that’s changed - the routesplit choice is now its own ‘chapter’ - but I’ve done what I can to bulk out the cast. What happens if Chester dies in 7!Do5? Well, that’s your only thief until Chapter 16, so, consider not letting Chester die; and, yeah, you may as well train him in the meantime so he doesn’t. So, yeah, backup thieves were pretty much the first call I made. And in line with fortifying the general precariousness of earlygame, Cathale the armour - in the OP - has arrived to give you a bit of grunt… and I’ve done something with Tricia (Katrina). Probably not a good thing, but someone will do something with her.
Then the route split casts had to get bolstered. I wanted to pump things up so that you got ten route-exclusive units either way, giving a playthrough on either route some distinct flavour, but there was also a need for some more texture. A couple of prepromotes join on each route, now, offering welcome power-spikes just as Garath, theoretically, begins to tail off. Right now we’re largely in the guesswork phase for how units will actually turn out, of course; I’m using 7!Do5 stats as a starting line, but only that. Odd quirk of those stats: due to their origins as community hack submissions, you’d be unsurprised how the vast majority of units have stellar Str/Spd/defences and dumpster their HP/Skl growths… suffice to say I’m not staying beholden to them. No characters recruitable in the original run of 7!Do5 have been removed. Good news for you, single Bellona stan out there (it was me. I was the Bellona stan).
You don’t want me trying to compete with Do5 mugs. I don’t want me trying to compete with Do5 mugs.
A sidenote on names: a number had to be changed, honestly. And then a further number didn’t have to be changed, but I wanted to, regardless. The Les Miserables references rife through Musain got pared back to just the name Musain itself; now Jolyon will be accompanied by Marin and Florent. Ilanice, which was the submission of a user called Princess Elincia and was chosen explicitly because it’s an anagram of Elincia, became Eilene; her mentor Celia becomes Sheila. Many other names are just tightened to fit more coherent worldbuilding; Juan is the Romanian Ioan now. And Onduris, well, that’ll probably be the next big devblog. I considered renaming Renair to Renira for a bit, but really, I don’t think I can fuck with the protagonist’s name; Arcus, Garath, Varkade and Farrell all stayed, too. Think of original Do5 as an old fanslation, and the new names as products of localisation. It’s about getting the spirit through, you know, not a literal transliteration.
I’d like to take a moment to thank people for their time and their interest. I’ve been inundated with support from basically the time I announced this insane ego trip of a project, evidence for which can be seen all throughout the thread, and I’m hugely grateful for it. So as I sit back at home, on Ngunnawal land, I hope that I can vindicate the faith that’s been put in me to get this done. Aiming to have it all wrapped up by FEE3 2024, but we’ll see.
That just about does it. Expect a bigger, beefier, more resilient cast less reliant on a handful of near-mandatory pivot units, able to roll with the punches that the game should still deliver. Next time: unclear. It’ll probably be either on Renair, Onduris or kiki vs. bouba approaches to game design… or something else will have caught my attention in a week.
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More unit options 
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Oh so new characters and units coming in?
This is like the heavens opening up and gracing the world with a remake of a classic game, letting it shine once again… Gee, we sure have gotten a lot of those this year already, haven’t we?
To be fair, it was a bit of a ‘snake eating its tail’ problem - the game was built around very strong enemies and low EXP, so people naturally felt the need to savestate, which led to more “well, people are savestating, so let’s make things hard”…
Honestly, my favorite thing about the resurrection of DoF is that it feels like fun is being injected into the game. As I’ve gotten older and my free time rendered more nonexistant, I find myself rather wanting to just enjoy myself and take in all of the cool new ideas of projects - new class/skill ideas (things to set classes apart, different stat caps than vanilla, nontraditional classes or promotion routes, etc.), new story beats, fun weapons to use… - rather than suffer through punishing difficulty.
Speaking of skills, now that this is running on 8, are you planning any skill integration at all? Even something as minor as a movement skill for each class/unit?
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To be fair, it was a bit of a ‘snake eating its tail’ problem - the game was built around very strong enemies and low EXP, so people naturally felt the need to savestate, which led to more “well, people are savestating, so let’s make things hard”…
Yeah, absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, savestating was the only sane response to 7!Do5’s gameplay loop. But philosophies of hack design have evolved for the better.
I definitely would like to think it’s going to be a lot more fun in its new state. I do want to keep the challenge and the character intact, but stuff like ambush spawns and the minuscule XP drip weren’t true challenges, they were just frustration, and I don’t think frustration was ever part of the challenge (or a desirable part of the experience). I want to be able to knock the player about a bit, but I want them to be able to get back on their feet… and them to have that trust in me that I’m not really throwing anything at them they can’t handle, or climb back from. That, to me, feels like the natural evolution of The Do5 Experience.
SkillSys won’t be installed, but I’ll be adding movement skills. Shove to all infantry, Swap to Tricia and possibly others. Toying with the idea of Halberdier getting reposition or swap and Marksman getting draw back; neither’s going to get a crit boost, and Berserkers - who get their own mobility perk through their movement type - will have theirs taken away.
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As someone who never savestates, the original was hell, yes
Although I don’t know about adding movement skills, they’re extremely easy to abuse. As long as your fine with that, go ahead, but without any of the limitations that modern FE added to them, you can do really goofy things with pretty much no drawback.
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Will the combat generics remain eyeless? En gee el, I’m not a fan of them.
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Recoloured to fit their factions, but no, I’m not slotting their eyes back into their sockets.
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I’ve always been a fan of eyeless gennies, really sells how little you’re supposed to care about a nameless/soulless character lol
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I actually would like more helmeted characters, specially when it comes to knights, cavaliers, paladins and such, more helmeted portraits been used for regular characters would be nice in general.
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We need more cute helmeted girls like Nephenee fr fr
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Well, it’s been a week. What better way to procrastinate on my various tasks and get my thoughts in order than another devblog?
(Watching the Women’s World Cup on the side. Alex Morgan just took the worst penalty I’ve ever seen, holy fuck.)
Today we’re going to be discussing Renair.
Something I noticed, going through LPs and the old ROM (I actually haven’t looked at the 2016 scripts at all, they don’t feel useful to me), is that Renair’s characterisation was kind of… a little layered, but a little straight-up inconsistent, too. She’s established very early as being a pretty firm, hardened leader. It’s made explicitly clear that she and Garath have survived for a while, but Kolbane is the latest in a long line of replacements (Discworld’s early Watch likely a conscious or unconscious inspiration). She clashes almost constantly with Enjolras in Musain and Seymour in Onduris, both being more idealistic, naive figures.
Another idealistic, naive figure: Ashton, later cut from the game to become Rena, ultimately renamed Bellona. I do not remember the rationale for any of these changes, though Bellona keeps her name, place and characterisation in the new version. I think the art is Sakusa’s.
There’s clearly meant to be a breaking point, after the dramas with Farrell in Act 1. She grows more cynical - ultimately the text seems to suggest it’s unhealthy for her - and there’s a sequence at the end of 7B that suggests she’s exhausted. Then turning to her supports, she expresses more self-doubt. Could she have stopped the guy before Kolbane from dying? Is she really a good commander?
Beyond this, she’s clearly more than she seems. She’s pretty strongly coded as coming from wealth (her Prf is literally the Gold Edge ffs), the grand surname ‘audre Draiche’ seems to suggest nobility… I genuinely don’t remember how it was going to resolve, but she wasn’t just a plain officer.
It doesn’t all quite align. Things aren’t resolved smoothly. She grows more empathetic in her supports at the same time she grows more cynical in the plot. And the hardened officer figure is already provided by Garath. Compounding matters, Kolbane also gets more sullen and cynical after the route-split; pretty much just each route’s Naive Reformer steps up as the foil.
Then another factor got added into the mix. A complication, on the surface, but actually it made things simpler. Because a year ago, I got a wild hair to write a Fire Emblem, with a firm, capable officer at the head of a small company, putting on a confident face but slowly crumbling inside.
In other words, Renair’s biggest problem is the existence of Roxelana Kallaste.
I will take any excuse to relink the Roxi that doingthangs drew one day. Was a nice surprise to wake up to!
In theory it shouldn’t affect anything, but it does. Media is a conversation, and the intertextuality between ‘the thing I wrote in 2012’, ‘the thing I wrote in 2022’ and ‘the thing I’m writing in 2023’ is pretty significant, and it’s pretty clear DoW was influenced by the original run of Do5. And that aside, I don’t want to tell the same kind of story again.
Better to take the other path.
Garath, as mentioned, already exists to be the hardened veteran who’s seen everything. Kolbane, with his bright eyes and House Season 1 Chase charm, continues to make sense as the newcomer. Renair, now, threads the needle; she’s cagey - which plays well with keeping a journal around largely illiterate company - clever, a survivor above all else. The kind of person who is going to lead the company through, well, the trajectory of early Do5. And when the situation changes, she’s going to be well-equipped to roll with the punches even as the worldview of those around them shatters.
A large part of that is giving her more agency in the story. Original Do5 had a lot of things happening and the Company just trying to survive within it (also a big theme in DoW!), but, with existing Do5 chiefly being in the route split (and pre-split being pretty basic), it really does just become someone else’s story, with the company largely, narratively, sidelined. Original Musain is about Enjolras / Jolyon and the rebels - and unpicking that is going to be a challenge. Original Onduris is about … well, I’m not sure what it’s about, really. Seymour’s / se’Mori’s weird attempt to kingmake xin’Khen / mir’Katal, and Katal’s eventual acceptance of this. The return to Aukema was maybe going to get to be Renair’s story, but we’ll never know how it was going to play out.
But you can’t wait 17-ish chapters for the player’s group to finally establish agency. While the above did give the sense of the world being big and the player being a tiny minnow - and I do think that’s an intrinsic part of The Feel of Do5, which will probably be the next devblog - there should at least be the sense the player is trying to swim against the tide. So a lot more of what happens is going to be, however forced her hand, Renair’s call, and I feel like that can only lead to a more satisfying story.
She listens to her orders. But she’s going to interpret them as creatively as she wants. … Ignore that the brigands are in Ondurite orange.
There’s a lot of realignment in the early stages of Do5, in general. Obviously, I don’t advocate for going through texts nitpicking things that aren’t given exact, explicit explanations, and some things should go unanswered… but things like ‘why is Renair in charge over Garath’ or ‘why are these soldiers swearing life debts to someone who just showed up at their village’ do deserve answers, so I’ve worked to try and provide them. The hope is that Act 1 starts to feel less like a series of coincidences and more a coherent line of events. Similarly, Farrell’s pursuit into Onduris, which was waved away with ‘he happened to be chasing after this other guy and got sidetracked, or more likely was a pretext for finding Renair’… it’s more prominent as it deserves to be.
So that’ll do for today. More rambling than usual, I sense, but hopefully it got the idea across. Renair needs and deserves her own voice, not just to drop a handful of good lines and otherwise be the flexible voice of The Party; she’s going to have more presence in the story, and more agency. Do5 will be hers, in a way the original never really was.
Progress report: With most of the groundwork in place and Act 1 looking pretty robust, we’re solidly working on Onduris at this point. I don’t want to just release Act 1 publically yet, because it isn’t really meaty enough to warrant it in my view (wow! brigands!). I’ve done basically all the writing for 8B and 9B, and like half for 10B; “not 7, Parrhesia?” No, I don’t quite know what to say for it, yet. Units have been placed for all four of those chapters, but it hasn’t properly been playtested. For that, I’ll need to run through Act 1 again; as those who watched the stream could see, my playthrough was pretty fast and loose, and I don’t think that run’s team would be an accurate reflection of a Chapter 6 clearing side.
Oh, and 9 doesn’t have ambush-spawning wyvern knights in a 2-vision fog anymore. I know this change will prove controversial, but you’ll just have to trust me: it’s for the best.
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Yo dream of five’s revived, let me know if I can help through playtesting or something. I’m looking forward to it
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from what i remember with onduris, i feel a large part of the problem was that sey’mor read as way too naive and idealistic both accounting for his circumstances and accounting for the fact that he was suppose to parallel enjolras as the alternative route and enjolras was also naive and idealistic [both so that reinar could dunk on them for being naive and idealistic essentially]. it made it so that there never really felt like much incentive to pursue the onduris route outside of completionisims sake because the stories/characters overlapped too much and the onduris route was just less polished on the whole [or atleast felt that way].
now, im not quite sure how to fix that but my own personal gut tells me that it might make more sense to push sey’mor into being more of a… navarre lord hybrid if that makes sense. especially if the plans to soften up reinar a bit, having sey’mor being a more cynical and standoffish figure would offer a sharper contrast with enjolras and test her beliefs in a different fashion then enjolrases naivety does, adding more of a unique flavour to how the story plays out on a character basis.
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Yeah, revisiting Onduris through the Pandan LP definitely made it pretty clear it was the weaker route narratively (though I was also thinking this back in 2016, when the attempt to salvage Do5 involved cutting Onduris entirely) and also generally less distinctive in gameplay. What didn’t help is that the narratively important chapter where se’Mori visits mir’Katal (xin’Khen) was a difficult-to-attain sidestory; the Onduris revisit will flip it, now the ship is the sidestory and 11x becomes 11B.
Yeah, some of the Renair dunking on se’Mori / Jolyon dialogue is undoubtedly the most ‘17-year old writing aimlessly cynical stuff to be cool’ edge that is the second-cringiest OG Do5 gets (behind ‘every Crowe line’, which I unfortunately can’t even partially blame on anyone else). It’s excruciating. Your suggestion would fix that well, though I ended up going a different route.
The thing with Onduris and Musain is that there’s such difference in the density of plotlines. What really underlined it to me was when I was pencilling out plot-relevant recruits on each route, the ones who would make it to the other route after the split. Settled on four in the end. Musain? You have to have Arcus and Jolyon, but then Meliza’s involved as Fleur’s sister, Marin and Florent as Jolyon’s guys, Annelise is the connective tissue to the Svanhild subplot (“what Svanhild subplot?” yeah 7!Do5 never got that far lol), even Seren (and now Franseza) gets the spotlight on her. Onduris? se’Mori, vi’Shen (Vixenk), uhhhhhhhhhh
Giving se’Mori someone around him to say things like, well, this, was an important addition to the dynamic. Her mug is supposedly an old, rejected design - listed as ‘Ethina’ - but I don’t actually know for what character…
Musain’s characters feel heavily embedded in the plot. Onduris has people that mostly just rock up. That is also probably an issue with Musain going forward, actually; I’m trying not to write an overwhelming amount of Words every chapter, and in general, side characters are having fewer opportunities to talk. Musain’s got a lot of Things That Happen to put over the course of ten chapters that include multiple party splits, a chapter just dedicated to reunifying the parties, two chapters that are explicitly the same jailbreak… Onduris was a different challenge, and an easier one (in large part because the eventing’s far less complicated), so I handled it first. Onduris needed its skeleton aligned and filled in. And even that process leaves room for a lot more character beats.
Oh, and while I’m here making effort-posts…
Immense thanks to Epicer, the majority of the original interface elements have now made it into the game.
(… I should say, that isn’t a new playable brigand poking out above Sileth’s MMB. The battered test file accidentally went through the Frelia Castle event and dumped Adrian into the party as a Brigand.)
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Dang that MM is looking Sick!!! Absolutely loved the gold style flair from the original and glad it’s coming back even classier 
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Hello umm i am newbie. Where i can find download old DOF? I read this look fun. I try play this. Thanks. Sorry i am not good talk 