That sounds really awful, but it’s why we make frequent backups.
The thing is that those particular patches had been installed so early on that going back to a backup before they had been installed would have amounted to starting over. As for why they lived in harmony for over a year and only brought the ROM crashing down later, I couldn’t tell you. I just know how to use FEBuilder and don’t really know anything about coding the game.
I found this hack yesterday and am at Chapter 5 so far and I like it alot.
Making magic tomes and staves refresh between chapters is great and lets you save your money for other stuff. I also like that tomes are character-specific…
Chapter 4 is exploitable for EXP by using the boss.
Bertram is the best unit for me. He can level quite quickly without wearing his weapons down.
If you use Bertram (equipped with Paragon Sword) to block any of the doors and keep healing the damage he takes from the archers, he can gain quite a bit of levels before you run out of Mend.
Hopefully the Part 2 2.0 patch will be out by the time I finish Part 1. I am looking forward to it.
Love the nod to Tales of Symphonia with some of the spells.
1 Like
I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying the hack. As far as EXP exploits, I don’t really feel the need to try to plug every hole that might allow for power levelling units. Several of the official games have infinite EXP in some capacity whether that comes from arenas or optional battles, so if players choose to play that way, I don’t feel the need to take that away.
That being said, I kind of assume that most players won’t have the patience to go all in on EXP exploits. I can remember my old Prima Games FE7 guide suggesting grinding Rebecca by having her repeatedly take shots at the handful of early game bosses that don’t have ranged weapons, but I doubt that many would really want to do that.
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I like the exp exploit because most FE games tend to scale in difficulty so grinding earlier pays off quite well in later chapters.
It also gives you the flexibility to try out more units via this method:
- Exploit Exp and level unit
- Promote unit when close to 20
- Sideline unit and pick another unit in the next chapter battle prep
- Repeat
Ideally, you do this across multiple chapters. It would be too boring or tedious to do in one chapter.
The exp exploit is even better with Paragon Sword if the boss has a bow.
I am on Chapter 9 and have 4 - 5 units that can promote which means that I can try out different units in Part 2.
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Man, I’m really loving this hack. Just finished Part 1 of 2.0 really in love with Olga and Ivan. Wishing I had chosen the other patch, cause now I gotta TON of hype building up inside dreaming about Part 2. 
2 Likes
Thank you for the comment. I thought you were telling me there was an EXP exploit so that I could close it. My mistake.
Also, I referenced a lot of Tales spell names because I always liked how magic in the Tales series has actual spell names instead of just naming its element or effect along with an indication of its power. Indignation is so much more memorable than just calling a spell Arcthunder/Thundaga/Bolt3.
Thank you. Writing for Olga was always a lot of fun. I’m very nearly done making adjustments to Part 2. Then I’ll need to test that everything works the way it should, so hopefully you won’t have wait too long.
5 Likes
Hey Permafrost,
I played the latest update to part 1 recently. I was able to get through all 10 chapters in 3-4 sessions over the course of about 2 weeks.
Overall my impression is positive and you do a great job of innovating and making an experience unlike any other hack I’ve played. It’s unique and you should pat yourself on the back for creating something that stands out, especially given that this was a solo effort - no small feat.
I thought it’d be helpful to share some of my notes from my playthrough since the patch was recently updated.
Writing
[details=“Writing”]Overall felt the writing was terrific. I especially enjoyed reading Arachne, Jake, and Helen, and felt the scenes with the most punch were Jake/Helen oriented. Additionally, the scenes with Marius, Calista, and Glenn were also stand out. Cossette was also great and I def felt for her and her situation. Everyone felt distinct and had their own voice, which is nice.
You did a nice job of characterizing everyone well, and they all felt like they fit in the universe. My two gripes with part 1 were that 1) one way talk convos were annoying and limited my freedom to play each turn as I wanted to without slowing down on occasion, and 2) the Erdus royals in ch9 and 10 get hardly any buildup before we fight them, and I think this is a missed opportunity to build up the conflict. While I get that this may not be the primary focus (clearly the emphasis is on the tension between Calista and Glenn, Calista’s role, Nathan’s disappearance, but given that they end the first disc, I would’ve liked to have seen more of them to make the fight feel like it mattered more. Given that we’re fighting rebels affiliated with them, there’s def an opportunity to highlight them more. Killing them off and seeing what happens to the ch9 bosses in ch10 loses a bit of impact because they come off more as “minor boss of the week” vs. a true rival. Something to consider if you ever want to add more scenes to part 1.[/details]
Aesthetics
Mugs could definitely use some clean up, but they do their job of illustrating who the character is and what they’re about well enough. As a solo effort, again, super impressive to have as many mugs as you did. None were bad and they weren’t distracting, which is a win.
Map tiles and palettes would be an immediate area of improvement though. Given that the game is so map heavy and the length of some maps will lead to players turning off anims, I’d strongly recommend investing in implementing some new map palettes to give the hack more visual flair. I found the default fe7/8 palettes to not look spectacular. I’d be happy to help here if you need any pointers.
Lastly, I want to emphasize that I think given how wildly unique your game is, you can better highlight this through some changed UI palettes and a custom stat screen. I recommend perusing some of the f2u ones or trying to make your own to help it stand out more or better fit in with the game’s tone. Happy to help here too.
Overall nothing negative to report here, but I def see opportunities for improvement and I’m confident with a complete game you’d be able to easily get talented people to help you out with some of these things.
Map Design
My feelings on the maps were mixed. I know that gameplay wasn’t a huge focus and that FE4 was a big inspiration, so perhaps my feedback here won’t be as helpful, but there were definitely a lot of instances where i felt maps could’ve been smaller or more fair. Generally, the first 6-7 chapters were straightforward and easy enough that I didn’t really have any issues progressing or playing. They all used the mechanics well and it was fun to romp around with big ranges.
Ch8’s gimmick with the switches was neat, but it fell flat when I 1) didn’t have an answer to sleep, and 2) didn’t know how many units would spawn on when i triggered a switch. I had to restart multiple times because of the lack of transparency here, and it wasn’t specifically because of units who were asleep. The horde of zombies in the last room messed me up a few times, and I had to play super carefully to not accidentally go on a killing rampage and “suffer from success” by taking too many hits in a single EP because they’d die fast. It would be a lot better if they were just in the room or didn’t load in immediately when the switch was pressed. Lastly, Glenn’s Aether messed me up a few times because of all the liquid ooze. It is stinky that he is force deployed yet is a huge liability because of how the skills interact - basically any time he enters combat there is a good chance he will die because of a random % chance. Was frustrating to lose runs because of this, too.
Ch9 and Ch10 both have really rough early turns where it is hard to do anything other than wait in place and try to deal with the onslaught of enemies. It felt awkward to be sieging a castle and immediately need to pull back to handle all of the enemies charging at once. I’d recommend spreading out enemies more so it’s easier for the player to move forward. The added bonus is that the maps won’t empty out so fast, either. I found that the first turn or two of these maps were really rough, and then it was very slow. The pacing and difficulty spikes phase by phase felt a bit inconsistent, and it made the experience less enjoyable for me. I think reorganizing enemies would do wonders for the map flow.
Only other item here is the deployment throttling. I know Vincent was a late add, but some maps force me to bench someone (I benched Jake because I was spoiled lol). It may be worth looking into letting the player run full deploy since it feels like an oversight at the moment.
Unit Design
The game places high emphasis on magic, but Helen and Arachne were leagues better than anyone else in my army, besides like Jake in the first few chapters and Gregory by the end. The amount of 1-2 range on enemies and the general power levels made almost anyone non-magical feel like a liability towards the end, where they could only meaningfully contribute to picking off weakened enemies who survived one of the three mages. Calista was also strong but her EP was shaky.
Vincent in particular, as a new unit, felt exceptionally weak. While early on his 5 range is nice, his damage output is lacking and once Helen gets solar ray, his long range niche is no more. I think he needs a buff to be worth using, because his chip became less valuable quickly. I tried to feed him kills and he still didn’t cap by chapter 10. It felt like you were worried about making the archer too strong and went out of your way to ensure he wouldn’t be that good. I think given the power of the magic users in this hack, Vincent being able to do double digit damage and having a few more redeeming qualities will go a long way.
Otherwise, the other physical units were generally useful on join. You can see my team below. Everyone who promoted did so at level 20. Towards the end, the enemy strength and density made using some of the units particularly difficult, and it became much easier to just throw out Arachne, Helen, and Gregory to quickly deal with enemies. They started to pull away in the last two chapters especially, where density and difficulty increased notably. Early on this is less of an issue. I’m hoping that early part 2 that physical units will start to catch up in terms of power, but the magic units felt leagues better.
Only time that magic uses were an issue btw was in ch9 for Luke’s healing, it was getting cut a little close for everyone, but I ran out of mends early which was a bit rough.
I hope this is helpful and I’m happy to share any more details. Looking forward to seeing the updates and the next part.
4 Likes
Thanks for the feedback Panden.
Story/Writing
I always find it interesting to hear which characters stood out to different players so thank you for that.
As far as the one way talks, when I’m planning things in my head it makes more sense to have the person who wants to talk to the other start the conversation. It would just seem weird to me to have the unit who doesn’t start the talk be the one using the talk command, but maybe that’s a hang-up I need to get over for the sake of playability.
As for the Erdus Royals, they were always meant to be portrayed more as victims of the hooded man’s machinations and Calista’s rage than as big bads, so I’m not sure that more screen time would be meaningful for them. As far as feeling like the fight with them matters, I was actively trying to create doubt that the player army was doing the right thing in the last two chapters, so I wouldn’t really want to build them up into something that the player feels like he needs to take down for the good of all. They would probably feel like they’re around for longer if Chapter 9 was split up into three chapters, but I wanted to create the feeling like Calista was pushing the army forward in a rage.
This reminds me that I made a few small improvements to Calista’s and Lailah’s (you haven’t met her yet) a while ago and never put the updated ones in the game. 
This is something I might look at, but right now my priority is to release a playable version of Part 2 2.0 so that players who started with the Part 1 2.0 can finish the game. I’ve actually never played without animations because I’m always paranoid about testing that the battle scenes are working properly. If you scroll a few posts up, you’ll see where I talk about a time where the game’s ability to load battle BGM broke, and I had to completely rebuild the game.
This is another area that honestly never really crossed my mind, but I might look into it at some point.
I typically find this part easy enough to player phase. I suppose I could give them “Summoning Sickness” by not letting them move the turn they spawn. I can’t really use turn based reinforcements on a lot of my maps because they’re built around location based progression.
I never really use Glenn in combat, but Chapter 8 is meant to feel like the player’s hands are tied. Games often have levels that take away an ability or strategy, and the player is supposed to be afraid to use Glenn against the zombies. I usually have him do things like stand by to rescue Lucy if she opens a chest within sleep range or use the torch.
This has unsurprisingly been said before, and I always feel silly coming back and saying “The physical units can do stuff, I swear,” but it’s the truth. The last time I played, Helen and Arachne were the last units I promoted, and I even felt like I needed to hold back and give them kills to get them there (I had all of my units promoted before the end of Chapter 9). I know that I’m going to be much more in tune with the game than a blind player at this point, but all of the physical units in Part 1 except Jake have at least one exceptional PRF weapon (though it’s possible that you missed some of these). The only one of these that isn’t 1-2 range is Victor’s Brave Lance (and it’s a 60 use Brave Lance). Ivan in particular felt like he might be OP in the current patch. It’s also possible that some players felt shy about over using the PRF weapons, but they all get repaired between Parts 1 and 2, though the player has way of knowing this ahead of time. It’s kind of difficult to work that sort of info into the game though.
The mages generally don’t do well against the classes that use the Sun Ring (at least in Part 1) and they don’t have much of an enemy phase against Pegasi. As for individual units, I feel like Helen and Arachne get let down by their power and speed respectively at times, and outside of effective damage in Chapter 8, Gregory can be lacking in power until he gets Ascension. Things like Victor’s Brave Lance and Ivan’s Pugi often feel like much stronger options. Calista is built as a glass cannon, so it would probably take feeding her all of the defensive statboosters and using her support and Luke’s skills to give her much enemy phase before promotion.
Maybe this doesn’t stand out to me much because of the way that I play Fire Emblem, especially the GBA and SNES games, but magic units have always felt better than physical units. When I play FE7, I’m running all of Erk, Serra, Lucius, Canas, and Nino (not because I think she’s the greatest unit but because I think Sage is the best class in the game). And FE7 is the start of when IS started trying to nerf magic by giving bosses silly RES stats. Maxim (Ursula’s goon) is a Paladin with more RES than DEF. But mages can still crush the maps up to the bosses. IS apparently thought magic was still too good and continued trying to nerf it. FE9 gave tomes stupidly low base power. It was also around this time that IS decided we can’t have fast mages who can consistently double anymore, except Elise I guess, but she’s very frail and has to deal with Fates’ silly weapon triangle (and the “amazing” design that is enemy Generals with Wary Fighter). Hypothetically, Elise could quash the GBA games like bugs though. I’ve never liked any of IS’s magic nerfs, so I didn’t implement any of them.
I know that was a long rant about the usability of magic in Fire Emblem, but I felt like I needed to say it to backup that I just don’t think there’s anything unusual about mages dominating combat in GBA Fire Emblem. Even in my current Vision Quest playthrough, as far as combat ability in my army, I feel like I have Lera way up at the top and then everyone else somewhere below her.
I guess beyond that, being a mage in Deity Device is supposed to be something of a superhuman ability, even for the more common Light/Dark users, and trying to use magic without the aptitude for it is dangerous. It’s a bit different from regular Fire Emblem where anyone can buy a book at a shop and draw magic from it. One of my biggest pet peeves in video games is when something is built up as something amazing in the story and then it’s mediocre in gameplay, so magic is a big deal in gameplay.
I wouldn’t say Vincent is overly weak so much as his 40% strength growth might not deliver for him. While it’s true that I was concerned about him becoming OP because bows are a strong weapon type in Deity Device, I think 9 base strength is pretty solid for a level 5 archer, and with a 40% growth he’d average about 15 by level 20, and his promotion gives him 5 strength, which leaves him fairly close to his cap. That’s without accounting for Chivalry making him slightly stronger and tankier than his stats in most situations. As far as a reason to use him, his ultimate weapon from his Gaiden is really strong (but can’t attack at one range). I actually haven’t used it in gameplay yet to decide if it’s too strong.
The only thing I think I might do with Vincent is raise the Might of his Sturm bow to help him through bad strength growth RNG. I don’t want to raise the might of Drang because that one is meant to be for emergencies when Vincent absolutely has to be exposed to direct attacks on enemy phase. I think that doing much more risks making him overtuned.
Thank you again for the feedback. I hope that at least explained where some of the design choices came from even if a response wasn’t fully satisfying.
3 Likes
I appreciate the detailed response. Personally I would love to see a recording of how you approach the maps and gameplay since it sounds super different to how I went through it.
Yeah that’s good to know that prfs restore. I’d definitely play a bit differently next time knowing this. I barely used any of the prfs since I knew the game was long. The big ranges on photon burst, the healing power of vamp, and not having to worry about magic uses def made it an easy decision to lead with magic mostly.
Totally get that magic in universe is really powerful and the game def does a good job of showing that. I’ll clarify by saying that physical units certainly can do stuff, it’s just magic users do it much better and at a lower cost. Ivan with pugi was good, but gregory, helen, and Arachne could do what he does better for the most part.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and explain. Always enjoy learning how devs see their own work.
3 Likes
Hi.
This hack is reallly amazing in term of soryline, chapter design, character and difficulty.
I’m at champter 21 and I0ve noticed that luke cannot use staves anymore. Is this a bug or is a game design?
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Hi. Thanks for the compliment. The issue with Luke is definitely not normal. As no one has ever reported such a thing happening before, I have to ask if you used save data from the Part 1 2.0 patch to continue in the original release Part 2 patch as the two are not compatible. Staves in the original release had higher rank requirements to keep them from being swapped around, but in 2.0, I was able to implement staff locks.
Oh yes this should be the issue. But it’s only for luke so I will manag to end the game without him. Thank you.
Just be aware that I can’t promise how stable of an experience you might have going forward like that. Certain items might not be the right thing when units rejoin as well, and you won’t ever see Vincent again because he was added in 2.0. Not sure if you’ve ever used FEBuilder before, but if you want to use Luke you can try loading the game in Builder and lowering the weapon level requirements for Luke’s staves to zero. Though this might also cause problems as the recent FEBuilder updates have been doing odd things to the game the first time that their loaded after the update. I had to reinsert a portrait into both Part One and Part Two after the most recent update because its data was somehow broken. Not really sure what’s been going on with FEBuilder lately…
I know I’ve been taking a while to get the 2.0 release for Part 2 out, so I wanted to just give a small update to show some small things I’ve done to hopefully improve the game and add to the flavor.
Firstly, I’ve replaced all references to characters (except Orville) using staves and replaced it with “White Magic.”
And the staff icon has been replaced with a white magic icon.
And all of the staves (again besides Orville’s Recover Staff) have received new icons.
Beyond that, I’ve implemented a system to help keep track of effective damage. Spells and weapons that deal effective damage now have icons to represent what they deal effective damage to, and class descriptions have icons indicating what type of unit they are.
Now if you ever had any trouble with the element system, you can match the icons to deal effective damage. And duel element spells will be more clearly labeled as such. PokeEmblem has never been easier.
Also the handful of bows that don’t do effective damage to fliers will be marked as such.
The icon won’t display on its own for whatever reason, so I had to write a description.
Monsters now also indicate whether they are Light or Dark aligned and the opposite will be effective. The general rule was always that undead were dark aligned and beasts were light aligned, but now it can be checked in game without targeting the monster.
I finally bothered to learn how to use Narrow Font as well, so the few instances of CamelCased items and abbreviated class names have been cleaned up.
I also figured out how to make a left facing quotation mark in the text editor, so no more ugly double right facing quotes.
Those probably aren’t the most exciting changes, but I thought that they were worth making. If you’ve finished the Part 1 2.0 patch and are waiting for Part 2 2.0, I ask that you please remain patient, and I hope that you won’t lose interest during the wait.
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This may be too large a change to bother implementing, but have you ever looked into Tequilla’s text engine rework? It allows you to do things like 3 or 1 line textboxes, change fonts, bold and italicize text, and various other customization options. I know the script is a major part of your focus on this project, so I was curious if you’d already weighed the benefits of retroactively implementing it.
I wasn’t aware of that, but from just going over the README and watching the example gif, it looks like some pretty impressive stuff. At this point, getting the most out of it might amount to an entire script rewrite, so I don’t see myself taking that on right now. However, I might try making use of it in future projects. I also write all of the dialogue text in FEBuilder’s simplified mode, and using the text rework looks like it would take learning to write dialogue in the source text area, which I of course could do, but it would be a hurdle to get over before I could really make much progress with it. Though maybe FEBuilder will one day have editors built around Tequilla’s text engine like it does for the Skill System.
Lastly, the text area in Deity Device is kind of an ungodly mess. For some reason, editing in one text ID can “spill over” into another and random bits will just show up elsewhere, and deleting it there also deletes it in the area it’s supposed to be. Sometimes editing in other areas causes random strings of text to show up in unused text areas and deleting that text will break the ROM. The game runs fine, but if you loaded it into the text editor, you would see that it isn’t pretty. I really don’t know why that started happening, but the text area is very fragile, so I don’t want to do too much to it.
I do as well – you just have to add the dialogue tags at the end of each serif whenever you need to change things. It does have the unfortunate side effect of forcing you dismiss several errors from febuilder after each dialogue is modified, but after a short adjustment period, it’s pretty easy to use.
Obviously, not easy to implement this late into the development, especially given the issues you’ve described, but if you plan on doing more script-heavy work in the future, this is an incredibly powerful tool. Figured you’d be interested in it, in some capacity – it was definitely a game changer for my own project.
That aside, I’m excited to see progress on part 2 is progressing! Hopefully by the time I’ve got more free time on my hands, I’ll be able to return to a fully upgraded DD experience ^.^
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Hey everyone. I’ve had a few members of the community reach out with updated mugs of the characters in Deity Device. This has been greatly appreciated, and I honestly never imagined that the other users would volunteer their time to contribute to Deity Device. So I’d like to offer a big thank you to the community. Since there seems to be interest in this, I thought I would list the mugs that I have already been sent in order to prevent overlap.
Carson-Citrus
The Matriarch-Citrus
Adelle-knabepicer
Harold-knabepicer
Eponine-knabepicer
Genevieve-knabepicer
Victor-DainnOfGungnir/hypergammaspaces
Vincent-DainOfGungnir
Helen-LegendofLoog _All alts done.
Arachne-LegendofLoog/hypergammaspaces
Lucy-LegendofLoog
Luke-RandomWizard
Ivan-Sterling_Glovner
Orville-Sterling_Glovner _Alt Done.
Marius-MrGreen3339
Max-Relic
The Patriarch-Relic
Cosette-Scraiza
If you are interested in making a mug for Deity Device, feel free to message me or reply here. I’ll update this post to let others know which characters are being worked on. I’ll also be happy to answer any questions about the characters.
Please don’t take this like anyone should feel obligated to make a contribution. This is only for those who have some sort of interest in doing so.
Edit: Here is a list of characters who have some sort of alt mug that would need to be done alongside a revision for it to work (just so you know what you’re getting into):
Calista
Cosette-She also needs at least one free color in her main mug to accommodate two of her alts.
Glenn
Midge
Olga-Sort of
The Patriarch
Please message me for details if you don’t know/don’t remember what one of the alts was. A lot of them were pretty spoilery, so I don’t really want to list them here, even in a spoiler tab.
9 Likes
I saw a few of these and I got the bug to sprite for the first time in a long while.
I’m a scrubby artist and I was fortunate that folks were willing to lend a hand to clean up my rough concepts. I feel compelled to pay it forward, even if my own art skills are not really anything speical.
These def could use further clean up and fixing the frames a bit, but I thought I’d share my progress if anyone else in the community is willing to give it a go.
Gave her Ursula’s eyes and recolored a bit to make it look nicer in GBA. I wasn’t sure how to handle the hair and the shading though. Shading around the near eye and far side of her face needs some clean up, too, but I was struggling. I realized after posting I forgot to give FE8 outline too, so that’s my bad.
Something was up with the hair outline on the original. I also replaced the eyes but don’t know how to shade eyebrows so I covered it with some hair. I took the colors from new Victor that Dainn and Gamma worked on so I could match.
Deity device is an awesome project and I can’t wait to see it with spruced up art. I hope someone sees these and can help get them over the line since I am a n00b.
Permafrost - happy to help w/ map palette updates too if you need.
4 Likes