Given that FEU is allowing discussion and use of the leaked FEXNA beta, I’d like to make a thread to concentrate the discussion into one place. Please be civil with each other. Additionally, at BwdYeti’s request, please don’t post download links to FEXNA.
Important links:
BwdYeti’s Special Notice: Special Notice
Neat I can lurk for context
My gosh, this person seems very upset at BwdYeti. I’m sorry to hear about their struggle with this engine, but leaking someone else’s work is completely inappropriate. Is the leaker anonymous?
Oh boy, here we go.
The leaker is Maritisa, who had worked with FEXNA for a long time. From what I can gather, she leaked it out of contempt for the project’s lack of progress? Not everyone knows she leaked it so I don’t know how I feel about making her identity known because I don’t want to incite a witch hunt against them, despite what they did.
Fair enough. No need to stoop to their level. I shouldn’t have asked.
Being an ancient man here. Can someone please explain to me what had happened? Since I’m not in Salvaged and FEXNA Discord?
A beta build of FEXNA was leaked by a former team member and has been floating around the internet currently.
We’re not here to talk about why it was done or whether it was right to do so. As per Yeti’s announcement, you’re welcome to discuss the engine and its use, but I’m not interested in watching this become a flame/defense thread of that person’s actions.
I have edited out the links to the guilty party’s self-explanations, but won’t be locking edit history if anyone really wants context.
Wholeheartedly agree. I wanted to make this thread to discuss the engine, not the leaker or their actions. Thank you.
On another note, I think it’s safe to say the assets like portraits and animations are not free to use, yes?
If that’s the case remove @Maritisa’s 4chan posts from the first post, it’s only going to muddy the discussion by having it there.
I’ll do that immediately. Thank you.
That’s almost certainly correct. Yeti generally doesn’t release things as free-to-use unless stated otherwise.
I can honestly imagine that nothing major will actually happen with it being on the net early. Through I am often times very wrong.
There were some people on a FEXNA(?) reddit that were very interested in FEXNA. Maybe they’ll be interested.
Would anyone be so kind as to give me a very brief summary of some of the key differences between Lex Talionis and FEXNA?
I’ve heard some interesting things about both of them but I know very little. Thank you!
I’m in the same boat, I know very little about both but it would be great to not be limited by the GBA’s abilities.
I’ve used both extensively, so I can TL:DR.
FEXNA is, in my opinion, the superior engine. For now. The gap isn’t super wide though, and I feel LT has enough extra bells and whistles that you could make a convincing argument it is worth choosing over FEXNA. Similarly, Romhacking has made huge leaps and bounds forward, even though for my needs, FEXNA still is superior to romhacking.
For the sake of this post, I’ll stick to LT/FEXNA comparisons.
FEXNA has a lot more polish than LT. It has a fantastic set of visual gui-based editors. LT currently has only one minor editor, but as I’ve seen in the LT beta, that’s about to change.
FEXNA’s GUI editor:
LT’s upcoming editors:
So, needless to say, Rainlash will eventually, and probably sooner than most expect, catch LT up to FEXNA in terms of their editors. Naturally, LT’s editors are still WIP, so there are improvements that can and will be made.
Next, the general “feature-set”.
FEXNA and LT both have a lot of unique features. This is where the breakdown and comparisons get fuzzy.
FEXNA’s eventing system is fantastic. I cannot stress enough how even I, the third dumbest person in this community, managed to make several full playable chapters with FEXNA effortlessly. The third FEXNA screenshot above shows a taste of that editor. I consider this a big feature, since eventing in gbafe has always hugely annoyed me. I cannot speak to LT’s eventing, but I certainly hope it manages to match FEXNA’s editor.
FEXNA has a bunch of Yeti-specific systems. As an example, it has FE7x’s equivalent to the FE9 BEXP system, with each unit getting three levelups, but needing to pair up to ‘train’ with one other unit and a healer.
Likewise, LT has several volunteer coders helping rainlash. They actually directly coded the FE9(And 10?) BEXP system directly.
There are a bunch of other systems each engine has independent of one another. I can’t actually remember any right now, and I’m lazy. I’ll just say you can ask on the LT discord if you want. Since Yeti has generously decided to release FEXNA sooner rather than later, ahead of schedule, I assume he’ll open up the FEXNA discord eventually, too.
One thing I will point out about LT. It has a lot of… quirks. FEXNA is extremely accurate when emulating FEGBA. The way movement arrows function, the little things you’re used to but never think about, those silly little itty-bitty quirks are all there, while LT is a bit looser with some things.
As an example, in LT, there are no ‘text blip’ sounds when characters speak or dialogue occurs. You don’t think this matters until you actually play any LT project, but it do be grinding my gears. Not only are there no text blips, but every time a line of text finishes, the loudest ‘confirm’ sound in FEGBA plays, and I personally find it obnoxious. I’ve talked to Rainlash about this one specific thing before, and he informed me the lack of text blips was an engine limitation, so I can only assume it will never get changed.
That being said, some people probably don’t care and won’t care if LT never fully perfects FEGBA emulation. It’s already ‘damn good’ and will eventually end up being ‘extremely solid’, if with a few quirks.
Summary: FEXNA is the better of the two engines now, but I can’t say with any certainty that will be the case a year or two from now. I personally think Rainlash will mostly match, if not exceed FEXNA in the future with LT.
…But I’m getting old. I don’t have time to make FE fangames for fun anymore. I’ve got bills to pay. So, I pretty much already missed my window of opportunity for using either one to their fullest extent. Only the community will decide which one they prefer, assuming y’all don’t just stick to GBAFE.
Grandfather Klok, out.
That video was the most 2020 thing I’ve seen this year.
What is done can not be undone…
Me 2020