[FE8] Fire Emblem: Celestaris Book 0 v0.14.0 (WIP) Book II v1.0.3 (WIP), Book I v1.2.4 (Complete)

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Slight-ish update, all of the characters of Book II’s X-3 now have personal skills, yaaaay. Half of them don’t do what I properly planned for them since I’m still a dumb fox, but eh. Also Akeldama’s class has a skill that notes that she can Imitate allies, that too. I think I updated some descriptions but it’s been a pretty full week so I don’t remember.

Book II v1.0.2.20230722105701

  • Everyone in Chapter X-3 has personal skills.
  • A description update somewhere.

With the skills done I’m probably going to swap back to the PME now, swell. or i could have a break but who needs breaks. Hopefully everyone’s doing well!

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Lucas, Zorias, Medve and Yuki still surpass level 30 when restarting the chapter, the legendary weapons of Zorias, Medve and Shurei do not disappear and Yuki still gains exp as a green unit

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So, since I’ll be asleep when the FEE3 video for Celestaris is tossed up I’m just going to do this now to pre-emptively welcome anyone who may stumble upon this chaotic space, if you are one of these newcomers-- hello, wayfarer! And thank you for checking this out!

I don’t really have any sense in level design, nor do I have any sense in balancing so I’ll ask for feedback on those most specifically, please do note it like I’m a five year old if possible so I can understand the issue!

My hearing is uhm… inconsistent at best, so if music is too loud at points please let me know, it’s hard for me to actually tell.

The only thing I can really do with… any decency is character stuff, writing character interactions is so so fun, the lack of blinking for portraits is a deliberate thing so I can sprite characters with a little more freedom than if I were forced to try to account for blinking frame spacing.

A bit of an aside, but if there are systems within that are currently not especially used it might just be that I haven’t done a chapter to account for it properly yet, one of the chapters yet to be done should rely on the Capture mechanic for example. I s’pose if there are disliked systems let me know of that as well, while they might not change for Book II, Book III for whenever I can get to it will cull what systems and ideas didn’t work too well to perhaps make room for new systems to play with, part of why I’m doing these in books and not in a single hack for now.

As it stands now though I don’t especially have free time to work on it for at least the next two months, but I will try to write down any issues and feedback for me to read through properly for when I do have real time to do things. Hopefully everyone is enjoying FEE3! Thanks again for checking this out and please do have a good day~!

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Since both it and I are up now, I’m quickly just going to toss the thing up

Video thing was recorded by BigMood so go thank him for me… will that be annoying? Hmmm… probably, thank him anyway, unleash the annoying gratitude mwahahaha. Especially since it needed to done multiple times for reasons, so indeed rather large thanks to him, thank you!

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Ohhh so questions!! Does it have supports and or/PE annnnnd where can I find the first one I type in the name and nothing comes up? and iguess same question for that one.

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Dumb question time! What do you mean by PE?

There are technically supports but they’re preset like Louise and Pent in FE7. I did play with a support going up after completing a side chapter, so maybe more supports could be unusual like that, conversation-based supports based on what chapter they’re in for example, but for these books they won’t really be the usual ‘build up support points by turn’ deal, hehe.

As for the first one, it’s in the Mediafire folder with Book II! They’re both held in this topic for simplicity.

Edit: OH. Paired endings, nope, there aren’t really character endings in general, but if there were there might’ve been.

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lol no dumb questions PE is paired ending! Ohh I’ll try and find it so I can play the first one

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Hoy there! It is I, the weirdo who is obsessed with characters (especially cute ones) with fluffy ears and tails! I’m not restarting up on this quite yet, but a bit more of a planned addition of sorts, so if you have nabbed Book I, you may have noticed extra little comic thingies that give more character personality, interaction, and some more context, but… I can’t really just expect everyone to read those, can I?

So, point is, whenever I do return (Hopefully by January) I might also start working on a Celestaris Zero (Or Book Zero?) which would essentially adapt those into gameplay, and fill out a little more that’s missing so there’s more context for Book I and II.

Not yet sure if I’ll keep the current ‘chapter select’ format, or make it more of a standard ‘chapter complete, go to next’ thing instead, but we’ll see! I’d have to read through my million text files over again to check how much I can squish together or cull (Such as character introductions, I just introduced a bunch before in the mentioned supplementary reading material because I wanted to play with new character designs and personalities, poor reason, but if I toss them into something with gameplay that’ll give more of a reason to have 'em I suppose.

…Think that’s all I can say for now, no idea on gameplay right now-- to skill or not to skill, that is the question!.. I’ve done up a few personal skills so it might be a waste to not use them… maybe I’ll cull a few secondary systems like the extra growths and stuff instead. Who knows! Anyways! Hopefully everyone has an awesome day!

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So anyway, how many foxgirls are th…
Velvet: YES! Now that i know you get inspiration from Tales and seeing you name yourself “Velvet”, I can’t not like you inmediately (Velvet is one of the best main characters in Tales, if not the best). I didn’t see supports in the features, which is a pity… That I can just excuse if the story is good enough. Let’s give this thing a try…

Edit: by “saved data that carries over”, you mean it like Fire emblem path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, correct?

Edit 2: why in heck am I so overpowered and with such weapons in Book 1 chapter X-1. Am I going to be this broken for all the game?

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Okaaaay, now I understand what I am playing. Yeah, this is really not my cup of tea. I hope you guys enjoy it.

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Might I ask what types of things were on your mind for this? When I said I have no sense in balancing, I do mean it quite literally and deeply, and I don’t especially get any feedback on a lot of stuff, especially not on balancing and all that so I’m a bit of a derp flailing blindly in that direction. No real need to hold back at all if you don’t wish to-- thanks for trying it though, either way!

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Well the problem I saw was that your units were too strong during all the chapter, specially after getting their antimonster weapons. It made no sense to me because I though this game followed 3 different stories, being X-1 the first chapter of many. But after finishing the chapter, you are done. I didn’t expect it to be just one chapter per story… And that made me confused because I was seeing killer weapons, high stats and way too many characters for a chapter 1. Now I understand and it makes sense to be so strong from the beggining.

As for that chapter I played… Well, nothing really felt like a challenge, specially since you can get monster weapons and bows are 2-3 ranged. The only exception was the supposed demon king, but not even her was that difficult. Keep in mind that I was playing in normal difficulty though.

You know, I feel like you could do an entire hack with those characters and an actual storyline, instead of a one chapter hack (or well, 3 individual parallel chapters). And after reading some of the comics you uploaded, some of them could pass as supports or chapter conversations. In the end you do you and I won’t tell you what to do, but I’d like to plant that idea, in case you want to water it.

That’s all on my part, Miss Crowe.

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Ah, to get into it, there’s also another ‘end chapter’ unlocked after doing the others, so it’s not strictly one each, (And… others unlocked in general, I forget already but there’s… 9? in all, so hopefully that’s a bit of context!

Still, thank you!
Due to how the setup is for that little comic series-- Book 0, it would perhaps make a bit more sense as a proper chapter after chapter thing and would definitely need to expand on events more, so… that might be the decider I needed, thank you so much! Hopefully you’d be willing to play again when I can get to that!

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It is now the 26th (Australia) which means it’s also been an entire year since starting this topic! YEY anniversary of a sort. Oh right Merry Belated Christmas for those who do that, that too. Anyways, now that I’ve got more free time again I shall hopefully begin to play around with this again! I should probably fill out Book II’s X-3 more, but I have completely forgotten what I wanted to do as proper side stuff for the chapter and apparently I didn’t write it down. Well done you fluffy-tailed derp. I’m getting sidetracked again. Brain more stupid.

Okay, let’s see what we’re getting into-- Book II X-S3 and X-4 will probably happen, then I might switch over to playing around with the potential Book 0. Or Book 0 first… would be a pretty nice refresher, as well as being able to update some events so I could reference them better later… Hmmmm… But yeah, current layout for chapters I’m thinking is uh… normal chapter progressing for normal chapters, but bigger moments that spotlight different characters would probably be considered side chapters, not sure if optional yet or not though.

Since the intent for Book 0 is the ‘start of the journey’, most characters will start unpromoted and low level, I might be lazy and keep the class names for these unpromoted versions of ‘Lord’ characters as well as animation, but dunno yet. Chapter count may be pretty low, I’ve got around 10 main chapters in my head right now thinking of general events offhandedly, depends on how much can be condensed or, conversly, expanded upon.

…Ohright, since it’s proper chapters it also means proper pairings can happen, yey. I’ll probably have supports just be whatever the player wants for gameplay purposes unless totally vital to story (Only… three? pairings are like that, and one of them likely isn’t completely playable so it shouldn’t be too limiting). Supports will probably also go up faster due to having less chapters to go through. …I’ve just noticed I need to do more spritework for character portraits because I’m an obsessive git who needs to do old costumes for characters with sprite updates. Can never make it easy for myself.

Anyways, look forward to upcoming updates… maybe? I have no idea of… stuff… Will I make a new thread? Will I just keep Book 0 here as well? Prologue and the first… two? chapters shouldn’t take too long to make with what’s in my brain currently, though that also depends on the setup and if I’m forgetting anything important. Hopefully everyone’s enjoying themselves, I s’pose!

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Bored! …Yep, that’s it.
…Okay, not totally entirely. SO, Book 0-- just rewriting and doing spritey things and stuff, and as per usual my impatience leads me to just ramble about random stuff before I lose my mind! Right now I’ve written most of the stuff 'till chapter 2, set most character sprites up, aaand done a bit of planning 'till chapter 4, which is hard with how little my brain plays well with planning, spontaneous things need to happen! Gimme weird random stuff that make no sense!

There’s a lot of character respriting that needs to happen, so for now, a few bosses and some characters use placeholder sprites, using other peoples’ portraits for this feels so bloody weird, but that’s all on me just being a weird git. On sprites, it seems one, tiny fluffy tailed derpface is going to go through at least six portrait variants because I always need to make things more complicated than they need to be, it should make sense whenever I get a demo up, said demo will probably go up to chapter 3 or 4 and will mostly be setup for the main trio and stuff.

Skills… I think aside from what I already have I am going to completely ignore until after things are done, that ‘10 chapter’ thing was quite the underestimate, because the prologue stuff and first three chapters are set before the comic series even starts, yay, lots of stuff.

Said (main) variants~
Costumes
Stick to one outfit, you derp! At least the neat portrait change hack will make this a lot easier to deal with, a few other characters will also have variants, but nowhere near as many as this dork. Hopefully everyone’s having fun with their holiday time! Happy early new year, since I likely won’t post anything on this for a bit!

…Oh… right, I may also post up portraits for everyone for free use at some point, we’ll see, there are… quite over 100 I have sitting about, lots of randoms, some variants, all that.

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boredboredbored

What can I prattle on about today? Uh… Well, 2024, so that’s neat!

So, the uh… age rating will likely be upped from 13 to 15 due to some things that Book 0 delves into, it may again go up from 15 to 17 depending how far I delve into things, but, we’ll have to see how far I go with it.
…Oh right, on story, I updated the first post a bit so it has a synopsis of sorts, so that’s nice.

Aaaand, some random stuff in terms of some system things for Book 0
(In relation to Book 2’s systems)
Shove and Capture are no longer a global thing
No more Leadership and Movement stars
Gaiden Magic has been tossed

And because I’m an incomprehensible git, in place of the Gaiden Magic I have used that free space to add even more random stuff to page 4 of the character status screens, oooh.
Infos
…
Is adding a character’s sexuality/preferences in the character profile page a bit too on the nose? Everyone’s basically bi by default though. There’s only one ‘strictly straight’ character I can think of, and only one I can think of that’s probably just ‘gay’. There are a few more that are somewhere within ‘ace’, but I doubt any’ll be playable.

That should cover today’s random chattering. would be nice if i wasn’t just talking to myself all of the time.
Have a good day, everyone!

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I like reading your random chattering and updates about Celestaris! Have a good day VelvetKitsune and everyone else here!

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Things seem to be happening a bit faster than they were, that’s good! Well, having said that I’m likely going to get distracted by like a weird fish or something and just continue to stare at that.

Anyways, prologue’s basically done. Few more chapters to slap together and then a demo to see if there is interest in how I’m doing this or something. Dunno!

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What is this vile creature insulting cheese for?! I disown you!!

Context? Who needs context, you’ll see whenever the demo’s up!

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~waiting~

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Okay, so because I am still an insane git who does not follow logic or conventions, I thought it might be neat to have supports go up for characters during both some story moments, and some being special talk events, some special character events would then only trigger at the ends of chapters if ‘unlocked’ with those talk events, that sorta thing… although that may also make supports rather time-sensitive and missable, although, I dunno, having them be clearly possible at a point instead of waiting for supports to build up and then suddenly ‘hey these two can talk!’ out of nowhere mid-chapter might also make it more… sensible?

Then maybe like, the last chapter or some semi-final ‘reprieve’ chapter you get a chance to talk around, pick up some more possible supports maybe, as well as setting characters’ “S Supports” which would of course lock you off from doing so with that character from others… unless they’re poly, maybe…? But I doubt anyone I have is poly. Just a random idea though, so I haven’t put too much in-depth thought into it… this is secretly so i can be lazy for support writing in not having to write too much more than necessary and things.

Aside from those weird late-night thoughts, still basically just having done prologue, I was also trying to learn more about doing music and it seems I have somehow wandered into looping music, so yay, hopefully I remember to do those non-looping Book II songs later. Battle music is going to be handled differently from Book I/II in Book 0, since the usual ‘different music per chapter’ for something with assumedly at least 15 chapters would be a little much.

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