First time modder. Had the thought that this would be a “simple project” to get my feet wet. More fool I! But I’m really gonna try.
The plan here is just “Final Fantasy VI, but if it were done as a GBA-era SRPG instead of a SNES-era JRPG.” Or “FF6, but Fire Emblem,” if I force brevity on myself.
Initial posting: Version 0.02.09
It should be playable on Normal through the flight from Figaro Castle.
I wanted to have something to actually show before putting it up here.
It’s embarrassing how much of the time I’ve put into this so far was spent animating moogles.
Importing another game to Fire emblem is remarkably difficult. A few years ago @Vesly did some preliminary work on creating FFX in Fire Emblem. Additionally, someone also imported the interior of the Blackjack as a Fire emblem Map.
As far as assets go (aka moogle sprites), as much as you can rip from the original game or other sources is worth it. Creating custom music & art is a painstaking endeavor which can suck all the time and life out of a project before you even begin writing or level design. If you do intend to use custom assets its generally best to use placeholders until your project is far enough along that people will be willing to help with it.
My immediate concern for you in this project is the limited chapters gbafe has. The Sacred Stones (the base game you’d need to use) has somewhere around 63 available chapters. I’m not sure if there’s a hack to expand that number, but that is one of the very first things you’d need to work out. (It’d be awful if you got halfway through the project just to find you don’t have enough rom space).
And finally, for initial testing and proof-of-concept FEBuilderGBA is fine, but for a project of this size it is really best to use the BuildFiles method of hacking. This method (explained elsewhere) allows you to more easily use custom code and you will never run the risk of losing your hack file. With very ambitious projects it is very easy to corrupt your game or lose your data entirely when working with something like FEBuilderGBA. Buildfiles is more difficult, but with a project which would take several years and will likely need custom code, it is best to use.
Finally, don’t let what I just said or others say discourage you. Enjoy your projects, learn from them, know your limitations, and enjoy your stay. I wish you the best of luck!
I’m not immediately concerned about the chapter limit because there’s a fair bit of Final Fantasy VI that I feel comfortable discarding in the process of adaptation. I don’t feel like every cave and dungeon needs a map after all! Many of the areas you deal with in the original game are just places to go and explore on your way to the next story beat, and there just isn’t as much demand for wandering through South Figaro Cave and its like when playing a game like Fire Emblem. There’s a lot of room to pick and choose what events “deserve” a battle and which don’t.
Past that, I don’t think I’m going to need to make huge number of mapless chapters since the map sprites in FEGBA are so tiny and lacking expression that they’re poorly suited to doing much storytelling. I expect to lean more on backgrounds and conversations for most things.
I’m more concerned about the challenges of executing with FEBuilderGBA or BuildFiles. Fact of the matter is I’ve never done anything like this before, and FEBuilderGBA is just so much more approachable. It’s possible I’ll hit a wall at some point where I can’t progress without changing over to BuildFiles, and it’s possible that by that point there might be no way of doing that without starting over from scratch. I really hope it doesn’t go that way, but I know it could.
But as long as it’s playable up to the point in the story where I hit that wall – as long as I still have something to show for all the time – I think I’m willing to take my first pass at modding a game with the training wheels on. Even if it means the mod itself becomes a cautionary tale.
My immediate concern for you in this project is the limited chapters gbafe has. The Sacred Stones (the base game you’d need to use) has somewhere around 63 available chapters. I’m not sure if there’s a hack to expand that number, but that is one of the very first things you’d need to work out. (It’d be awful if you got halfway through the project just to find you don’t have enough rom space).
This is a non-issue, expanding the chapter list can and has been done for other hacks (ex: the FE7-based Heroes demake that has upwards of 200 chapters).
My FFX project is certainly a cautionary tale. It has some cool stuff, but it’s also probably got some pretty big bugs. It was as far I could get in febuilder without learning any asm.
If you haven’t read this guide yet, I think it’s a must read for you:
This is how pokemblem went. I realized after a few months that I needed asm and started learning it. Then a few months later with about 30 chapters in, I cut my losses and started over in a buildfile. It took weeks to catch back up but it was necessary for what I wanted my project to be.
You can make a unique project in febuilder, but the more adventurous your mechanics are, the more suited it is to a buildfile.
