Hi, I’m completely new to FE hacking but after playing some good romhacks I wanted to try it myself. Long story short, my main new feature is to implement a ranged weapon triangle which is an idea I had since I was a kid: Bow > Arquebus > Grenade (Greek Fire) > Bow. After toying a bit with FEBuilder I was able to create a completely functional system by repurposing Monster Weapon (0B) and Dragonstone (11) that I did’t intend to use, then by giving “Monster Lock” and “Lyn/Athos Lock” to the new items and classes.
As it is right now it works fine, however there are a couple of inconveniances I haven’t figured out how to fix and I wonder if that’s even possible with my current configuration. I could live with them and build an entire game around it, but it would look and feel better without.
Thanks to the “Monster Weapon display fix” by Brendor the new weapons’ info bubbles work, and I even managed to change the “Evil” of the monster weapon into “Bomb”, however the Dragonstone based weapons have no text at all. Does anyone know if there is a blank text somewhere that I can fill in or if it is just linked to nothing and can never be filled? https://feuniverse.us/uploads/default/original/3X/f/f/ff725ed28583194d0286a72109c5b5a8f7235907.png
The major issue is that the new weapon types don’t appear on a character’s “Weapon Rank” list. In fact, the weapons’ ranks don’t matter at all as the new classes can even equip S ranks from the get go, removing the concept of weapon proficiency for the new classes. Even with the “Only display the ranks of weapons the character use” patch they still do not appear at all. Ideally my main goal would be to have all 6 physical weapon types on the screen, or as an alternative turning the “Bow Rank” into a “Ranged Weapon Rank” for all three weapons if I could somehow redirect the XP to it. Is there a patch somewhere I missed or are these just impossible due to how the base game is programmed? https://feuniverse.us/uploads/default/original/3X/0/a/0ab601ab2d51ec6672e8a612f123d6f7a033f246.png
Linked to the previous problem, attacking with the new weapons shows a minor graphical oddity as the type icons are unrelated to anything (the cavalry and thunder affinity icons). It was to be expected and if I can’t fix the previous issue I imagin I will never be able to fix that one either. https://feuniverse.us/uploads/default/original/3X/f/a/faf0986de17f6f29b2b2ddcab29aed56ead72661.png
(I just thought about it, but I wonder how interactions with ballistas could work? Never considered the option until right now, I guess having catapults and canons for the new classes could be cool but isn’t my priority right now at all.)
Thanks for reading this, and if there are fundamental flaws with my current system that will bite me later down the line don’t hesitate to warn me. Also, most of the visual elements shown here are just placeholders with existing assets.
Far as I know, without that Arbitrary Weapon hack thing you can’t add new properly level-able weapon ranks.
Weapon types 08 and 0A are unused though (You need to set their IDs in the little text box next to the dropdown menu) and they should show the weapon type’s name, I think the Dragonstone type’s just got nothing in this game since it was tossed in with monster weapons. You ‘could’ also rename and replace the ‘09 Item’ type since it’s not actually used for weapons, but for animations there you’d probably need to set each manually instead of by weapon type.
Good luck! Hopefully you can find answers for the rest of stuff.
Thanks! This seems like a much simpler solution than my awkward “double lock” workaround, and they are “Item” and “Dragon” type so they’re easily changeable too. I have a followup question though: can you set up a base WLV for these types in FEBuilder since they do no not appear in the character/class editors? (now that I think about it, I guess that “monster lock” simply gives the character max WLV for monster weapons which would explain the S rank issue)
Thanks a lot for this too! It seems a bit out of my confort zone right now but looks very promising so I guess I am due for some homeworks on the side, especially if the WLV requires it too.
Nay, far as I know they also don’t use weapon ranks. …well, they might technically, since weapon ranks are read from the character’s data, but they would be… kinda weird, theoretically 08’s would use data from the character’s condition so if they’re poisoned for 3 turns that’d make them D Rank, and 0A would probably read from your first support. Guess if you don’t use supports though that one at least may be feasible.
In GBAFE, only eight attributes of weapons exist.
It is quite difficult to increase this number.
You can see why it is difficult by looking at the RAMUnit structure in the etc tab of the debugger.
You would want to be very clear about what it is you absolutely want to do.
You have to be clear about what you want to do and what you can compromise on.
That will help you find loopholes.
For example, in FE7if, a hack that was created more than 10 years ago, you will find a weapon attribute called stick and knife.
This weapon is made as a locked weapon (prf) and can only be used by certain characters.
The character does not have any weapon level.
These weapons have zero WEXP and do not grow in weapon level.
They do not interfere with the Weapon triangle.
In other words, the author of this hack used locked weapon to circumvent the 8-weapon limit.
In return, they lose WEXP and Weapon triangle, but they are able to do so.
In your case, it looks like you want to stick to the Weapon Triangle.
In that case, you will have to write your own ASM to achieve it, or override of the 8 weapon attributes.
If you want to write your own ASM, there is already a patch called anima triangle.
This is a patch to realize the Weapon Triangle within the magic of anima.
It seems to me that the shortcut is to improve the source code of this patch and realize it yourself.
If you can’t write the program, learn about computers or find another loophole.
Thanks for all the great help, this is incredibly insightful!
I suspected from the start that it wouldn’t be that easy or we would see more weapons types way more often in fan projects. I’ll see what I can do with all I learned so far, and if nothing works I could always go back to my workaround solution who is still functionning but inelegent from a UX perspective. Thanks again!
Well I decided to play around with it since I was a bit curious and this seems to be what came from it.
This is from the 0A weapon type, so I suppose you could technically like… replacean affinity icon and make a bit of an unused ‘dummy’ character that just has the name of the weapon type, although you’d only really see the C/B/A ranks and they wouldn’t line up with weapon ranks either. Leveling the rank up does allow proper weapon rank use though so it could be a fun little thing to add! Who knows.
That’s actually pretty funny! I don’t think I will use that for the ranged weapons, however I had another experimental idea that might get use of this quirck. Thanks a ton for testing that!
Even outside of my original plans, I could totally see a game using this system in a straightforward way where the main Lord has a weapon literally powered by the Power of Friendship™
Hmmm… I’m sure there’s a patch or something that lets you change exp requirements for weapon ranks, so you could also just make them line up with supports properly that way with only C/B/A ranks. For some reason I want to do something with this.
Still, I’m intrigued to see what happens! I’d love to see other hacks do more weird weapon type stuff.
