Hello, everyone, and welcome to the announcement of FEE3 2024!
For those who may not be familiar, Fire Emblem E3 (FEE3) is an over decade-long tradition in the Fire Emblem hacking community wherein Fire Emblem romhacks and fangames are showcased for fellow hack creators, players, and Fire Emblem enthusiasts to view to see the community’s progress in the past year.
The formal mission statement for FEE3 is as follows:
To showcase ROM hacks, fan games, technical tools for hacking, animations, and other related materials to Fire Emblem fangame creation to an audience of like-minded creators with the goal of building awareness for and recognizing our work.
In short, it is an annual event celebrating and showcasing FE romhacks, fangames, and hacking tutorials in a video format. FEE3 has been held annually since 2011, making this the fourteenth FEE3!
For a taste of what FEE3 is like, a link to the playlist for last year’s event can be found here.
This year’s deadline for submission is August 25th. Before creating and submitting your video, please read the guidelines below, as there have been multiple changes since last year. If you are unsure or unclear about whether your project or video is eligible before creating your showcase, please reach out to me personally via FEU or Discord DM and we can address the issue.
Submissions are open at the link below!
FEE3 2024 Submission Form (NOW CLOSED)
What can be submitted to FEE3?
- Project type
Eligible products include any Fire Emblem fan work, asset/animation showcase, hack-related technical demo, and hacking tutorial. Rebalances, weapon reversal, reverse recruitment, or other “minor” edit hacks, of either mainline Fire Emblem games or romhacks, are subject to rejection from the committee for acceptance. If you are interested in submitting such a project for a non GBA FE game, please contact me beforehand to make sure it will be eligible. However, reskins, rebalances, and PMEs for the GBA Fire Emblem games (FE6,FE7, FE8) are strictly prohibited. Furthermore, ports of a GBA Fire Emblem game into another GBA engine (including fanmade engines meant to replicate GBA FE, such as Lex Talionis and Tactile) are also prohibited.
- Inappropriate content
The FEE3 planning committee reserves the right to reject any project that has inappropriate content in violation with site Terms of Service. This includes, but is not limited to, extreme profanity, nudity, sexual themes, and gore. Additionally, content requirements for video showcases, including both showcased content and commentary, will be stricter than site rules; please keep in mind that younger audiences will be watching this event, and design your showcase accordingly. Projects with inappropriate content, regardless of whether this content appears in the video showcase, are subject to rejection based on the discretion of the organizer.
- Stolen work
Any work with stolen assets will be removed and will not be allowed in the show until this is remedied. The planning committee reserves the right to blocklist your entry from the show if it had stolen assets in it at any point.
- Backgrounds/Overlays
Videos with moving backgrounds/overlays or backgrounds/overlays that cover more than 40% of the screen will be rejected.
- Game Existence
If your project is a game showcase, there must be proof of its existence, whether this be gameplay footage in the video or a thread. If neither of these things exist and you are not otherwise able to produce proof of gameplay, your submission will be rejected.
- Video length and quality
Video submissions must be no longer than one hour and no shorter than one minute, and have a resolution of at least 360p, but shorter videos and higher resolutions are strongly encouraged. If your submission has commentary, please check your audio balance beforehand to make sure the commentary is audible over game audio. If your video does not meet the standard of quality for audio balance, video quality, audio quality, or being off-center, it will be rejected.
- Good Standing in the Community
Any member participating in an entry to the event must have good standing in both the FEU forum and FEU discord. If this is not the case, the submission will be rejected. A ban from either the discord of the forum constitutes bad standing and will result in a project rejection. However, if a person is not actively involved with project development or the showcase, they do not need to be in good standing. If the person has contributed a F2U asset, for example, they are not a large or direct contributor to the project.
If you have some sort of uncertainty about this I would ask that you contact the mod team as they are in charge of determining any user’s standing.
- Music & Copyright
This is more of a guideline. We would ask you to try to tend towards copyright-friendly music such as video-game music, though this is not a hard rule as videos simply being claimed is not an issue, rather if you think something you put in the video will get the video stricken from the channel we would urge you to reconsider. If possible, a test upload on a personal youtube channel is recommended to be sure of these things.
Any videos that pass all these guidelines are still subject to moderator and admin approval and rejection.
If your video is rejected, you will have two weeks to resubmit from date of rejection. Please do not treat this as an excuse to be sloppy with your first submission, be sure to check it closely.
Video Creation
We will be opening a thread soon where project creators can link with those who are willing to do work for people’s showcases, as well as a discord channel on the discord later on. However, the event itself will not be coordinating anything, it is on the project creator to make sure their video is created and submitted.
There is a guide located here for those who would like some direction with their showcases. Videos well under the time limit of an hour are encouraged as it has shown that viewers are more receptive to shorter video lengths.
If you need help with your video submission or would like for someone else to LP your project, please check out the FEE3 2024 help thread.
Submission Details
Here is an example from a past year of a video thumbnail. For the main image, an aspect ratio of around 9:5 is recommended, as anything else is likely to be cropped, though you can submit an emulator screenshot or 3:2 image if you wish. The side image is completely optional and can be whatever you desire; it is often a portrait or animation frame.
The title of your video will be “FEE3 2024: <Project Title> by <Username>, and the video description will be what you submit in the form. If you would like your project thread to be linked in the description, please include the link in the submitted description. For the sake of readability, it is recommended that you omit “Fire Emblem” from the submitted project title, but ultimately it is up to you. Videos will air every six hours, starting at midnight EST. You may submit one or more time slots that you prefer your video to go up at. While we cannot guarantee that everyone gets their desired time slot, desired timeslots are a high priority when creating the schedule.
Once again, the deadline to submit your video is August 25. If you are interested in helping out with this event, please let me know either by replying to this thread, messaging me here, or messaging me on discord. We are currently looking for volunteers to review videos and create thumbnails for videos (a template will be created by Levin), and also to unofficially create showcase videos, whether they be LPs or trailers. If you are interested in the latter, you can advertise your availability in the help thread.
I would like to thank the whole community in advance for making this event such a joy every year. Looking forward to seeing everything the community whips up this year!
