[FE8] Fire Emblem - Gilded Tales(NOT DEAD?)

[Crusticus]

Gilded Tales is a FE8 hack I started working on on and off while messing around with FEBuilderGBA and realizing I could maybe actually make something with the tool. Back in the Nightmare days I got very easily overwhelmed w/ trying to create hacks, but now I think I can actually go somewhere with it.

The story revolves around a young mercenary girl named Rana unraveling the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and saving the world of Grania from a powerful group of necromancers dubbed “The Unholy” along the way. (Honestly all of this is open to change because the story hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet)

Planned features:

• 3 promotion paths for every class.
• A new class: the bardbarian, an axe and light magic focused bard that “sings” to motivate their teammates.
• skills. (will try to limit their use)
• characters with nonstandard weapons for their classes, ie: a male pegasus rider that uses staves, and potentially more.
• 10+ chapters minimum (Prologue and chapter 1 are currently done, with chapter 2 about 80% completed.)
• Full supports are planned as of the moment, with a potential expansion on the limit of how many each character can have, with the tradeoff of weaker support bonuses.
• Supports are gained via deployment, not standing next to each other.
• a world map if I can figure out how to use it. This is something I REALLY want to do so I’ll be doing my best to learn how to manipulate the map.
• Standard weapons (sword/axe/bow/lance) that have infinite uses but are slightly nerfed. Non-standard weapons have less uses but are slightly buffed. Magic currently unchanged.

Screenshots

Credits

7743 for FEBuilderGBA.
Animations:
Nuramon - Ephraim Infantry, Villager, Dread Fighter
Jj09, Leo_Link, flasuban, DerTheVaporeon - Dark Knight
TBA, Spud, MeatOfJustice - Halberdier
Spud - Marauder
GabrielKnight - Oracle
DerTheVaporeon, Pikmin1211 - War Monk
Leo_link, Iscaneus, DerTheVaporeon - War Cleric
Flasuban - Brigand w/ clothing
Leo_link - Trickster
Eldritch Abomination - Beta Eirika edit
SixthousandHulls, MakeFEGayer - Male Pegasus
DerTheVaporeon - DS Style Pirate, Improved Archer[F]
MK404 - FE9 Fighter
Leo_Link, Spud, MeatOfJustice - Hunter[M]
TBA, Arch, Skitty, Temp - Phantom
Team SALVAGED - Cavalier, Mercenary, and Lancer
eCut, Skitty, belle, St jack - T2 Ephraim + more weapons
Ayr, Raspberry - Arbalest

Icons:
Orihara_Saki - scroll icons (for bardbarian spells)
Zelix - Levin Sword and Bolt Axe icons
Peerless - shortsword icon
Zane - sword icon
lovemachine - greatlance and poleaxe icons

Portraits:
Der (Holden)
Natsumi (Rana)
Peerless (Ysmira)
NickT (Terrance)
LaurentLacroix (miscellaneous portraits, Horvald, Ariana)
Levin64(Ronnie & Ariana)
Miguel-Rojo (Yuno)

Patches:
SkillSystem by CirclesEverywhere
Magic Axe fix - Midori
Modular Minimug Box - Zane
3 promotion branches - aera
show heal amount - Tequila
blinking portraits on status screen - Stan

Other:
CookieMaster - checkered status screen

Patches

Current Version - 0.0.1 - up to chapter 2

Current issues(all resolved in future patch!)

• The current version of the hack is using an outdated skillsystem patch and I need to figure out if it’s possible to switch to the new one without breaking everything.
• for some reason I can’t change the movement sounds of classes, so the peg has cavalry movement sounds. The editor has a movement sound tool that just seems to not work at all? don’t understand how to fix this one.
• Can’t get both visitable tiles to work at the same time on chapter 1. Trying to figure this out.
  Please share any issues you find in upcoming versions (or this one if there are any).

the hack is very early in development and I am open to any and all criticism and suggestions! All growths, bases, palettes etc of characters are subject to change for now, but I wanted to show off the little bit of what I’ve made so far.

[KrashBoomBang]

Gave it a quick playthrough. Seems promising so far. I’ll jot down some stuff that needs fixing or just to keep in mind:

• Seems like exp gain is unchanged (i.e. it still has FE8 earlygame’s increased exp gain). You might want to change this.
• The jagen is a halberdier with crit boost, which seems very weird. He’s clearly set up to leave enemies at low HP for others to kill, yet he constantly has a 20% chance to just crit whatever he’s chipping. I would remove crit boost and replace it with a different skill. Maybe Gentlehomme? Mirroring the lord’s Demoiselle.
• Lord’s personal sword is a little bit underwhelming. May wanna give it more of a purpose, since a +2 speed iron sword isn’t really impressive.
• In the second chapter, the red house could not be visited by anyone. I assume that’s where I would’ve recruited a new unit.
• Also in the second chapter, the objective is displayed as rout, but the actual objective is seize.
• Also also in the second chapter, I felt like my units spawned just a little too far back. Maybe move them one or two tiles forward?

Good luck with this. It’ll be interesting to see how the hack shapes up.

[Crusticus]

Thanks for playing!

• not to sound like I’m completely new to this (which I am) but what exactly would changing the exp gain entail?
• Yeah he’s kinda meant to set up kills, so changing the crit chance would probably help.
• Noted. I plan on making it not have infinite uses and maybe increasing it’s MT by a point or two, but iirc it is already stronger than a standard Sword.
• This worked right before I posted the patch. I tried adding another visitable tile and for some reason I can’t get both of them to work even though they have separate completion flags. Suppose I should’ve playtested it a bit more. Oopsie.
• That is a leftover from me testing win conditions. The map should end on routing enemies but I left a seizable tile in there for testing purposes, so that’ll be removed next patch.
• I can change that for sure.

Appreciate the feedback! I will do my best with it. Can’t promise things will move too fast due to my inexperience though haha.

[KrashBoomBang]

• So in vanilla FE8, exp gain is slightly increased prior to chapter 9. The biggest thing this does is make Seth (and by extension, any promoted unit) get way more boss kill exp than they should. Exp gain is normal starting in chapter 9. There’s an FEBuilder patch to edit this.
• Currently the sword has 6 Mt compared to iron sword’s 5, but I think a more interesting effect would be better. Maybe effectiveness against something, or a unique skill? Or a more noticeable stat boost.
• No, you should keep it seize! Seize would work much better for that map than rout. I think you should tweak the enemy composition a bit to compensate for it being seize, too. Maybe have some more enemies down by the inn? Or move the inn upward and have enemies down there.

[Crusticus]

• Gotcha. I will look into the exp fix patch.
• Originally I had the shortsword actually be weaker but gave it a brave effect. That’s actually why it had infinite uses to begin with. I’ll take it back to the drawing board for sure though and make it more interesting.
• I’ll dabble around with placement and enemy count. I didn’t want it to be too overwhelming for chapter 1, but there’s already 6 available units, so I could up it a little bit. As for making it sieze instead of rout, my original idea with the map was that they kill all of the enemies to clear out the village, but the way the map is set up seizing probably does make more sense.

[KrashBoomBang]

A weak brave sword sounds pretty appealing. I would definitely go with that.

[Crusticus]

small update.

• work on chapter 2 has started. Last night and today I polished up chapter 1 a bit. Modified dialogue for the talks so it’s no longer placeholder stuff from FE8. Figured out why the village event wasn’t working right, and it was due to me setting the same flag on a talk and the village, so that has been fixed.
• Rana’s weapon is now a brave sword with less Mt. and limited uses (60). I also gave Ysmira a new tome, Nightshade, which is a defensive/enemy phase dark tome that gives +5 defense. May mess around and give it Wary Fighter on top of that/instead to make it more interesting.
• Unit map palettes have been changed. Players are now pink and enemies have a more reddish brown hue as opposed to flat red.
• started messing around with the world map. May eventually replace the Magvel map for something original entirely, but frankly that is too intimidating for me rn lol.

Will post a new patch once chapter 2 is fleshed out.

[marththehero01]

is there a link to play?

[theghostcreator]

it’s under patches

[marththehero01]

thank you

[Blasteroid]

Is this hack still being developed?

[Crusticus]

It is not at the moment. My interests have kinda shifted & haven’t had motivation to work on the project since unveiling it, so you could say it was a bit premature. I do have a good bit of the plot and characters written out, so I don’t want to write off the idea of me coming back to it eventually, but I’d rather say it’s dead than to give empty promises.

I’ll also edit this and say my ideal goal is to make my own tactical RPG in the vein of FE + maybe just scrounge up what plot I have written for GT and put it into that, since I don’t necessarily want to be tied down to making mods of games and would rather create my own thing. Not sure if/when that’s happening though either, oops.

[Crusticus]

FEE3 gave me motivation to start working on this hack again. Do I know if this will last? Honestly, no, but I’m bumping with a couple of updates.

• Chapter 2 is about 80% completed. I need to flesh out the End chapter event and post-chapter map events/nodes, but the gameplay is there.
• I’ve redone almost every unit’s palettes, including animation and portrait palettes. Some were just kind of gross with improper shading, others needed small touch-ups. Even now I wouldn’t consider them perfect. Screenshots below.
• I plan to have a new patch within the next month (if motivation stays).
• I’ve decided the way I want skills to work is having basic class skills for all T1 units (grounded weapon users have Shove, Mounted units have Canto+, Mages have Reposition, Knights have Swap etc.) and grounded units gain a new skill upon promotion. I will avoid activation skills and defer more to passive buffs. I don’t want this to become just another skill hack™. That being said, each playable and boss unit will have something unique to them to incentivize using one or the other, and to hopefully add replay value.
• I am going to take a long hard look at where I want the story to go after chapter 2’s completion, because idfk lmao. Bear with me! That being said, I may decide to make this a shorter, “bite-sized” hack instead of the aforementioned 20+ chapters. Instead of a longer game, shoot for a cohesive ~10ish chapters. But we’ll see how things go.

screenshots

Alexis is now a Lancer. I felt like Rana and Lexy shared the same niche (fast sword user) so wanted to differentiate her.

Rana had a slight nerf to some stats. Want her growths to shine, and emphasize that she is an unskilled fighter.

Ysmira’s portrait had a slight touch-up in her hair. Also, considering trying out more skill-based weapons like her Prf tome here.

Some of the new repaletted battle anims. Terrance is no longer neon green LOL. Also, Alexis as a Lancer. Credits to team SALVAGED for the Lancer anims. New boss portraits by LaurentLacroix. (credits will be updated in description once patch drops!)
Will reuse beta Eirika in a future NPC maybe?

Finally, some chapter 2 screenshots. These portraits were made by LaurentLacroix and Levin64. HORVALD THE BARDBARIAN APPEARS. I’ve been holding onto this guy for years. Super excited for y’all to use him.

Hopefully my stupid ADHD brain will allow me to continue working on the project. Thanks for checking it out.

Edit bc I don’t wanna double post before the first post-hiatus patch is out: There’s a world map now!