[FE8] Saga of the Sigilbearers (7 Chapters)

[LegendofLoog]

Hello, FEUniverse! Since my project has an FEE3 showcase tomorrow, now seemed like a good time to make a topic and share the patch. Download here!

Currently, there are 7 playable chapters. 5 of them are main and 2 of them are gaidens (4x and 4xx). All of them should be functional, but if there’s any bugs, please let me know so I can hotfix them. Currently, there’s only one difficulty mode, but I may make more in the future if there is a need for them. 4xx is currently using a placeholder map sprite for fish, but in the near future, I’ll make one that looks better (hopefully).

Screenshots

And a bonus gif:

Burying a Ballista

Story

The plot kicks off with Asgeir, the second son of House Falkr, receiving a letter from his father that forces him to return home. Along the way, he encounters a persistent group of mercenaries, who are hunting one of their group. Who it is, no one is sure, but their continued assaults bring to question their motives, and their employer…

The other two lords are Rune, Asgeir’s longtime friend who guards him during his journey, and Ragna, the young heir of the ruling family of western Norsaber, House Agilas. Eimund, commander of House Agilas’s royal guard and mentor to Rune and Asgeir, travels with them as well to keep Ragna safe.

Gameplay

Mechanics that the game focuses on are Capture, Fatigue, a hybrid magic system, infantry Shove, and Canto+. All mounts have Canto+, and all infantry can shove any non-mount that has less Con than they do. I just find these two mechanics to be fun, and the limitations added to Shove make it a little less abusable since they curtail or remove Shove trains. Some other minor features: this game has 1RN, so keep that in mind when deciding whether a hitrate is reliable or not. WTA is +2 Mt/20 Hit, a slight bump from vanilla to make WTA more impactful.

I liked the unit cycling that Fatigue brings in FE5 (outside of some specific issues like units that can be fatigued having to recruit others, i.e. Sleuf and Amalda), and it seemed to me the easiest way of making that happen. Other solutions to this, like having highly individualized units and maps that reflect this, seemed too constraining for what I wanted to do.

Capture is similarly usable on any unit with less Con than the user, and uses have been slightly reduced on many items to account for it. I liked the mechanic in FE5, and in particular, I thought the aspect of tying objectives to Capture, like recruitments, was interesting. Capture rewards currently are not quite as diverse as I’d like them to be, but as I add more items, I’ll try to make sure there’s always an interesting Capture side-objective or two per chapter.

As for the magic system, the goal is to have Gaiden magic and regular, tome magic coexist. In the current demo, you only have Gaiden magic users, but eventually, you’ll gain access to regular tome users as well. The planned trade-offs are that while Gaiden magic users don’t have to worry about durability, they can only access the spells they come with, gain no WEXP from those spells, and have to eat into their HP to use them. Meanwhile, tome magic users will have a wider variety of spells to choose from, but they will have to deal with durability and availability of tomes.

Down the line, I have plans to add unique personal skills for each unit and a limited number of combat arts, but this it for the current build.

Credits

GRAPHICS

SotS Specific
Portraits: MournfulRelic, RandomWizard, Citrus, devisio, sdaht
Battle Animation Palettes: sdaht
Map Palettes: pandan

F2U Mugs: Laurent_Lacroix, Levin, CapybaraInSpace, Melia

Battle Animations: Nuramon, MK404, HyperGammaSpaces, Raulster, Team SALVAGED, JeyTheCount, Pushwall, Leo_link, flasuban, Orihara_Saki, Warpath, Red Bean, Mikey Seregon, Alfred Kamon, PrincessKilvas, Spud, Blue Druid, Alusq, Maiser6, MeatOfJustice, EldritchAbomination, Skitty, GabrielKnight, Pikmin1211

Class Cards:
Aruka, Yggdra, N426, Rasdel

Item Icons:
Beansy, Celice

Map Sprites:
SALVAGED, flasuban, DerTheVaporeon, Alusq, L95, MeatOfJustice, Leif, Agro, Rexacuse, Peerless, Warpath

Spell Anims: HyperGammaSpaces

Tilesets: Flasuban, N426, Zoramine Fae, Vennobennu

Title Screen: Title Scroll by Rivian, Background from Majin Tensei (ported by Fenreir)

Battle Frame: Hypergammaspaces

Status Screen: SD9K02

MUSIC

SaXor the Nobody, Sme, Pikmin1211, MrGreen3339, pandan, RSflame

ENGINE HACKS
SkillSystem: Circleseverywhere, Colorz for debuffs, freeze, and dragon veins, Monkeybard & Black Mage for most of the skill icons; Blaze for Stances skill icons; vlak for Drive skill icons; Pikmin1211 for miscellaneous icons; Zaim for Indoor March icon; Reds for Quick Riposte icon
Tequila, Rossendale, StanH, Leonarth, 2WB, Teraspark, Darrman, SD9k, Kao, blademaster, Snakey1, Zeta, Kirb, Sme, Ganzap for skills, 7743 for various bugfixes
Primefusion for the test map, Str/Mag Split based off of Kirb’s FE8 version which is based off of Tequila’s FE7 version. RobertFPY, Pikmin1211, and Snakey1 for finalization

Other Engine Hacks: Tequila, hypergammaspaces, Sme, 7743, Pikmin1211, Clendo, StanH, GratedSchtick, Huichelaar, ZaneAvernathy, 2WB, Aura Wolf, Snek, Scraiza, Vennobennu

Event Assembler: Nintenlord, Crazycolorz5, Vennobennu, Gryz, Circleseverywhere, Camdar, Zahlman

Playtesting: Rivian, Warpath, Pikmin1211, Addam

[Rivian]

I playtest, it good.
Happy early Christmas fellow Thracia fans, it’s the capture hack season.

[Pandan]

Fish gaiden hype!

Congrats on the release, Loog. Looking forward to seeing the update since it’s been a while since I played the opener.

[Beansy]

Poggers item icons. I wonder who made them Excited to look into this.

[LegendofLoog]

The FEE3 showcase is here! Big thanks to Pikmin1211, bpat, and epicer for recording this on short notice. Also, I made a small update to the patch to fix a few bugs, along with some minor stat changes on enemy classes to make them feel more distinct.

FEE3 2021: Saga of the Sigilbearers by LegendofLoog

[LegendofLoog]

Just wanted to put out an update post since a few significant changes have been made since release. First, I quashed some bugs, a few of which made 4x and 4xx unvisitable or unfeasible, so the full 7 chapters are now definitely playable ̶u̶n̶t̶i̶l̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶u̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶w̶ ̶d̶a̶y̶s̶.̶

Onto a few more updates, I’ve replaced the vanilla status screen and battle frame. The status screen is by SD9K02, and the battle frame is courtesy of HyperGammaSpaces.

I’ve also added more spells to Eimund and Ragna’s spell lists. In an attempt to distinguish anima magic, the goal is to make each of them have their own “thing” with a couple of side tomes that have other effects. In thunder magic’s case, this is range, but also, each tome type will have one effective tome (similar to the Tellius scheme except just one spell instead of all of them). Ragna, level 10 in this image , has access to both a 2-3 tome and 4-6 one, giving her a lot of reach (as long as she has the HP to cast them, that is).

Feedback I’ve gotten so far has largely had one constant point: a few characters have a bit shaky hitrates in a 1RN game. As a short-term stopgap, I’ve given Asgeir, the lance lord, Charisma to boost these. My eventual plan is to give a few initial supports that help boost hitrates. Aside from that, another goal is to give every character a unique personal to help differentiate them a bit more.
After this is done, I’ll play through the hack again, make tweaks, and then add two more chapters to finish off the arc. No hard ETA on when that’ll be done, but I’m hoping to have another larger release by the end of the year.