[FE8] Fire Emblem Deity Device: Saint's Blood (Act 1 Available 11/6/2022)

Hello! Just finished playing through the Demo, did two playthroughs first one in Mgba second one in vba (Since a lot of people use vba i tried to see if any bug was specific to it)

I really like what i see so far even if some of it is rough around the edges.I’ve only encountered two noticeable bugs so far.

The previously reported bug at the start of chapter four, were the portrait gets copied seems to only happen in vba.(It seems like Cathy’s portrait replaces Martha’s portrait until the scene ends, but then the same happens when theodore shows up.)

Screenshots and extra details on this bug


it starts when georgette leaves (On mGBA she zooms across the background from right to left), initially Martha’s goes black.

Then immediately this happens

Same happens with Theodore

Another bug i’ve encountered and has been mentioned before is during chapter 5. (and only during chapter 5, this does not happen to any other party or supply convoy), When taking items from the convoy, no matter if the unit had just stored the item away on the same action, the game will freeze once you back out from the supply menu, locking itself on the map movement animation of the character, playing in a loop, resuming the chapter will load you to before the action was taken, so it isn’t saved at all.
This bug happened to me on both vba and mGBA.

Other than this i haven’t seen (or heard!) any noticeable bug, even on the vba playthrough.

I’ll keep myself from commenting on the script for now as it’s very early into the story for it to matter, which only leaves us with:

A few comments about the gameplay
  • Ralph only having 4 move is greatly hurts his viability, i understand feeling the need to nerf your armor knight after what Harold turned out to be, but that was mostly a result of Provoke being the most overpowered skill in the fegba skillsystem.

  • As Mentioned by xilirite item uses are a bit too high for a game with Capture mechanics, since enemies are pretty weak and most chapters don’t have many pressures, such as Late enemy reinforcements being too strong, important villages/chest being in danger,etc to keep the player moving forward the capture system will result in the player’s supply being flooded with too many items, way too fast (This could be an issue if the bug with MIlton’s convoy continues to be present.)

  • Enemy thieves being able to steal weapons feels somewhat inconscecuential, and even a bit of a time waster, since there haven’t been thieves with watchful (Prevents stealing and capturing) as a skill, most of the items that get stolen can be captured back, this creates an issue since they seem to preffer stealing items over opening doors and chests, meaning thieves can be easily baited as you would do with a brigand who’s going to destroy a village.

  • Clarabel’s cell needing to be opened from the bottom slows down chapter 5 by a couple of turns, while not too big a deal it could be streamlined if the cell was moved to the bottom of the corridor, and it’s door was moved to the northern wall.

Other than this the game shows a lot of promise, i can’t wait to see more!

I see you

A tome spawns under Milton on the end scene of chapter 5, i understand this is a carry over from when summoning was planned to be a bigger part of the hack, so i just wanted to point this out in case summoning never made a comeback.

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Finally ready to give my thoughts.

Bugs are pretty minor, but I play without animations. The biggest one, was not being able to take stuff out of the convoy.

All the maps felt like they belonged in the story, which is what I love about your work. Still really good. The 2nd Leticia map, I believe chapter 3. Is the only one I think could be improved on. The layout is a bit odd, but still ok.

I think Adam needs to be buffed, he lacks the utility of Eve but still isn’t very good. Maybe give him bow access to give me a niche.

I love all the characters, even Theo. You can see him realize his bias when interacting with Sid. I don’t think you can improve on the writing much, it’s fantastic. A few errors, but nothing that is a big deal.

I’m not a fan of the capture mechanic, but it works.

I’m looking forward to your next update. I can’t think of anything else to say at the moment, but I may have more thoughts later.

Edit: another thought. The farm chapter, 4 I believe. Would be better imo if you move a chunk of reinforcements to the left side of the map. That way you can hold the bridges.

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Why not set the textspeed back to what it’s set to in the options menu?

From the Text engine rework README:

######### Set Text Speed
Syntax: [0x80][0x38][XX]
XX is the number of frames between characters. For reference, vanilla FE8 has slow=8, normal=4, fast=1, max=0 (table at D7F58). Use 0xFF to return to the default speed (whatever speed is selected under Options).
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I just hope that the difficulty will be named right (normal-> hard) and balanced throughout the game and that physical chars are relevant again in this hack, Deity Device was almost a perfect game for me except for those 2 minor things.

i think imma play it again when this 1 fully comes out.

Game Looks good btw.

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Thanks for trying both popular emulators. I added a note to the OP that the game works best in mGBA.

I think that with the text rework being fairly new, its limitations as far as overloading the game with too many commands aren’t well known yet. In the scene at the bar when Eve was trying to get out the word, proprietress, each of her hiccups originally used bold text, but trying to change the font that many times in one speech bubble was too much for the game and caused her speech bubble to be blank until I removed the font changes. I’m not even sure if there’s a full length hack out that uses it yet. The only other hack that I know uses it is Lady of Masks, which is still in progress, itself.

I might make Steal+ a personal skill for the player thieves and just give enemies normal steal so the AI won’t be so fixated on grabbing staves.

I guess I always thought it made sense for armors to have lower move. I’ve been thinking about giving all of the foot units Shove though, so that may lessen the impact of Ralph’s low move.

I’ve been looking into Milton’s convoy. I thought I had forgotten to run the patches that make 5x work properly since Chapter 5 is built on top of vanilla’s 5x, but that wasn’t the case. And Milton’s convoy isn’t working if I put it in other chapters. Then I found out that the combined convoys weren’t working either, so I thought maybe it had to do with having partitions that include both the vanilla 100 items and the 100 added from modular save, but I have the same issues with Milton’s convoy even if I have it start at item 100 or later. So right now only Martha’s and Leticia’s convoys work correctly.

If anyone knows anything about if there are extra steps to using convoy partitions with the 200 item convoy, I’d appreciate the help. This is my setup right now.

I know it’s possible to have partitions that include all 200 items because Vision Quest does it.

Because I only just realized that was thing while looking over the readme again last night. Using the text rework is like learning to walk again as far as all the extra things to keep track of when writing dialogue, and I’m still learning it as I go. Particularly, whether a command is global (like most any vanilla command that starts with toggle) or only affects the portrait slot it was invoked in is inconsistent and not spelled out in the readme. But thanks for the tip.

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On the topic of item use and capture, i think item use should stay high and make capture more of a thing to capture rare weapons you can’t usually obtain in shops, or stuff to sell, rather than necessary ala Thracia.

The main reason i honestly say that is because of the low inventory slots. With Thracia’s 8 inventory slots per user capture was ok and not a micromanagement nightmare. With just 5 item slots i can already see the micromanagement nightmare later on.

Just my 2 cents!

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I based item uses on those in Radiant Dawn for the most part, mostly because I decided to include the stronger but heavier weapons from Radiant Dawn. But I agree with reserving low item uses for valuable stuff. Comments have focused on the Heal Staff in particular having too many uses, but I don’t really have much interest in forcing the player to be all that judicious with Heal uses. The unarmed Priest with the Heal Staff outside Clarabel’s cell is pretty much there just to help get Clarabel equipped. By contrast the Physic Staff has only five uses because it’s meant to be a valuable capture item.

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Please don’t give armors 5 move, they lose all personality.

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It’s not that I want to be limited in how often I heal, it’s that 50 uses is pretty huge and I’ve collected a lot of extra staves for free. It may end up becoming not worth it to engage with capture past a certain point, between the number of PRFs (some of which even regenerate) and the logistical hassle of it. With capture, lower uses isn’t so bad, since the player can just grab new irons off any generic they come across if they so choose, and keeping the uses lower means the system is further incentivized to be engaged with dynamically since the player won’t build up a game spanning collection of basic weapons in the first ten chapters.

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Spilling some stuff that’s way off in the future, but each of Martha’s and Milton’s parties is only planned to have two units with regenerating magic (other than Georgette’s support abilities). And not only is Hammerne not going to regenerate this time, but it’s a PRF, and you have to do this guy’s Gaiden to get it.

Thomas PNG

So PRFs won’t carry forever.

Beyond that, the goal isn’t really to create a game where the characters become a bunch of packrats who strip every enemy they see. I think when most people play FE5, they only actually use capture a couple of times each map. I think it makes for better game flow if the player can decide: “I don’t need to take that Iron Sword because all of my sword users have one with 30+ uses” rather than “I’d better mug all of the Myrmidons because Iron Swords only have 25 uses.” I’m sure some players will try to mug every enemy they see, but there also players who will boss abuse all of their units to level 20 in a prologue chapter. In any case, I’m in the process of rebuilding the class data, and capturing will likely have a greater opportunity cost going forward because of higher base HP on generics. The goal is to have players capture when they need something or see something tantalizing, not to be playing as a bunch of bandits.

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Honestly, i have that problem with every (fan)game that has Thracia like capture, even if they have low uses. Even Thracia itself. Especially in games with low uses i just tend to go overboard with Capture. In Thracia aftee a while i had the nightmare of trying to sell stuff because my inventory was full because i captured everything i saw due to low number of uses.


And that’s after i went on a selling spree or put stuff on benched charas so that i can use them later. Of course i never did as that pic was taken from the final map preps^^

Having higher uses actually only makes me use capture when needed/on rare weapons, rather than capture spree

yup, that how i think about it as well.

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Normally I’m hesitant to play an author’s previous, rougher works, but sure, since it’s so nicely brought up, I’ll try it ! No guarantee I will like it though.

… Let’s see what we have here…

… …

Arachne

I WILL LAY DOWN MY LIFE TO PROTECT HER SMILE

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Deity Device is amazing, you are in for a treat.

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The epic return of the Device

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Hey guys. I went back and forth on whether to put this here, eventually deciding to just go ahead with it. Anyway, on Saturday I got and accepted a job offer for something actually in my field. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be really busy with stuff related to relocating and getting into a new routine where I’ll have to find time for stuff like hacking. So I might not be very responsive over the next few weeks, and it will probably be awhile before I make much significant progress on any of my projects. I’m not saying I’ll be disappearing from here or cancelling my hacks (I’m sure I’d go nuts without a creative outlet). It just might be some time before I have much time for FE stuff again.

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Congrats on the job. Relocating to a new place for work is exciting - enjoy it and I hope your new routine allows you time to continue hacking. Good luck.

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So do I, since I already made portraits for all of the playable units in Saint’s Blood. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hi everyone. I just wanted to give an update that things should be settling down for me soon, and I’ll be able to work on Saints Blood again. All I’ve really done over the past weeks is occasionally take some time at the very end of the day to review enemy balance and tweaking it bit by bit. I really want to be able to deliver a tighter gameplay experience after opinions on the original Deity Device’s gameplay have been so strongly mixed.

The next release will probably be a rebuild of the existing game along with at least two new chapters. The good news is after testing last night, all of the convoys are working, and I should be able to deliver on the familiar (summoning) mechanic I teased in the Deity Device thread.

I’ll also be rebalancing the tomes. No one would really know this without looking through the game in FEbuilder, but currently tomes go:

E: Basic
D: El
C: Killer Tome
B: Siege Tome
A: Brave Tome
S: Strongest Tome

I’m going to make the C Rank Tomes “mini siege tomes” that have 2-5 range and somewhere between 6 and 8 uses. This will allow for some more complex enemy placements without making the player face a Bolting too early on, and I already have a layout in mind to create a more interesting boss fight at the end of Chapter 2. I’m also going to make the Killer Tomes B rank, the Siege Tomes A rank, and get rid of the Brave Tomes. It’s honestly pretty difficult to include the Brave Tomes in a way that doesn’t make them flat out better than the S-Rank Tomes.

And I want to improve the script in places. Keep in mind that I held Deity Device back for nearly 6 months after it was complete in order to refine the script, and I’m honestly not used to putting out such early drafts of my work, so bear with me if it hiccups in places.

With that all said, I thought I’d put out a “how you can contribute” section. Yeah, I know requests tend to get laughed at around here, but if anyone genuinely wants to pitch in anything for the hack, I thought I’d say what would be helpful.

Artwork

I’m fairly happy with most of the character artwork I put together, but Erdrick is pretty bad.

Erdrick

The idea was to use elements of Cronus with Tartarus’s color scheme, but he just looks like a Noah recolor. I kind of struggle with Armor knights and axe fighters because their larger proportions make it difficult to find splicing parts that look good.

I’m also not really satisfied with Martha’s design, but I haven’t had any inspiration to improve it. So if anyone wants to take a stab at a new Martha with the same general color scheme, I’d be open to it.

Lastly, if anyone thinks they can do a better job at the blue highlights in Poseidon, and Lacus’s hair, feel free to give it a go.

Music

One track I’ve always wanted in a hack is “The True Mirror” from Baten Kaitos, but it’s such an obscure game, not many have likely heard of it. I found a midi of it, but it sounded like garbage when converted to GBA. I’m musically illiterate, but if anyone is into music and wants a project, I’d love to see someone take a crack at it.

Baten Kaitos has one of my favorite game soundtracks in general. I’m also a big fan of Chaotic Dance, but I doubt it would work without the vocal track. Another great track is Kings of the Nine Heavens

I also think the Battle Prep Theme from Custom Robo would make a good prep screen theme.

I know music is a big thing to ask for, so I fully understand if no one is interested.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading my update.

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I wouldn’t mind tackling some of that music, I haven’t played Baten Kaidos but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it

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That would be awesome. Anything you take the time to contribute would be very much appreciated. :slightly_smiling_face:

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