Quick update. Mapping is still coming along. Made a Gaiden chapter around one of my favorite games of all time, SMRPG, using @WAve’s FF2 Pandamonium Tileset. Here’s a couple screenshots, complete with an imported battle background around the theme of the battle. Stars are actually traverse-able in this map!
Got a few more chapter maps to make, and then I’ll be back to the revamp of Chapters 13-16. Then it will be back to making chapters one by one until the hack is completed (which is still a very long ways off).
Will post periodically as I make stuff noteworthy of sharing, and I’ll probably release another beta when I’ve finished work through Chapter 18.
All but one of the playable chapter maps have been made and inserted into FE: Illuminated. The remaining map to be made is the final chapter, and while I have a good idea about how I’m gonna end the hack, I haven’t fully landed on how I want it to go down game play wise. Will probably make all components of the final chapter together as a result.
The Chapter 13 revamp is finished and I’ll be moving onto Chapter 14 soon. I’m feeling pretty good about where things stand in the game balance wise and I’m hoping that as I move forward with revamping and ultimately making new chapters, the balance of the game should stay in check with where I want to it be.
November of this year will be around the 3 year anniversary that I started this project. I’m starting to feel better and better about Illuminated, and while I can’t say with TOTAL certainty that I’ll be able to get it done by the end of the month, I’m going to do my best to actually get a submission into FEE3 this year. Would certainly be fun to have Illuminated in the showcase along with all the other great yearly stuff.
No real photos for this update. However, slowly but surely, progress is coming along.
Thanks for reading!
Quick edit: Ended up touching up Chapter 13 some more. If there is anyone following Illuminated that has completed the most recent beta, I’m interested in getting some feedback on Chapter 13 and would happily send you over the patch. I’d like to end up submitting Chapter 13 in FEE3 so I am just trying to clean it up as much as possible.
Quick update. Things are coming along for me to enter FEE3. Looking like I’ll be able to get it done. Really big props to @leche and @Ebgamesemployee for helping me with some playtesting.
I’m also releasing a patch (found in the OP above) that contains Chapter 13 in its entirety. I’m doing this more because of an oversight on my part found by @Ebgamesemployee in Chapter 8 that made it MUCH more difficult than it needed to be. Chapter 13, still named End of Beta, comes along with it as a byproduct. Essentially, in Chapter 8, the enemy AI was not functioning as intended and failed to target a particular character properly, making the chapter a nightmare. This should be addressed and fixed.
I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, but the game just pauses after the paladin’s dialougue after the first turn of the prologue after the sages appear (and I am staying on the red carpet…)
Glad we figured things out in the discord, but replying just for clarity for anyone else running into this issue. There was an ASM argument that ended up in one of the prologue events from who knows where, causing some people’s games to hang. It’s been removed, the OP has been updated with the patch, and things should (hopefully) be better now. The most recent patch is 3.0.2.1.
Spent a lot of today working on this, but in preparation for a FEE3 submission, Illuminated has gotten a fresh new coat of paint! From title screen backgrounds to menu windows, Illuminated now has a bit more uniqueness to it! It also comes with some FE8 recolors courtesy of @Goldblitzx!
Just getting the finishing touches on the submission. The last thing I’d like to do is change the preparations background as well, completing the custom background gauntlet.
After three years, I actually got an entry into FEE3. Looking forward to being a part of the showcase this year. Thanks to all the people organizing the event as well as to all of the community for helping me along the way in developing Illuminated. Still a ways to go but the project is coming along!
Also, the OP has been updated with the FEE3 Build. It has a host of visual updates as well as some tweaks along the way for some issues pointed out by @Ebgamesemployee and @Bartz. Also realized that both shop chapters were technically exploitable for infinite money and I’ve since fixed them.
With that, probably gonna take a small hiatus. Been super busy trying to get everything together for an FEE3 build and will take a bit of time off. Chapter 12 is something I still want to revisit and make better (and I have plans on how to do it), Chapter 14 is coming along, and once I’m back on the grind I’ll finish up 14, get 14x - 17.1 revamped, and be good to make new content.
Thanks for following everyone!
Quick Edit: Squashed a few more bugs, ended up updating Chapter 12 (which is much more fun now in my opinion), did a bit of balancing, and added gold to the amount given in the second shop chapter. OP has been updated. NOW for a bit of a break!
After submitting a FEE3 build, I did take a break. But it didn’t end up being long because I was just in one of those hacking grooves. As such, I’ve done some polishing of portraits and chapters over the past two weeks.
The more interesting component of the update, however, is that I am releasing a patch that now goes up to Chapter 15 (now named End of Beta as a placeholder). This is beta 3.1.0.1. In this patch, Chapters 13 and 14 are now entirely playable. Chapter 14 may yet see some revisions as I get more feedback, but I’m feeling pretty good about it. On top of this, there are three miscellaneous chapters after Chapter 14 but before Chapter 15, dropping a good amount of story through an interlude, a semi-gaiden, and a shop chapter. Don’t wanna spoil too much about these chapters, but I feel really happy with how they play out story wise.
Chapters 15 and 16 still need some heavy gameplay revisions and these are what I will tackle next. Once they are done, I will FINALLY be back to adding new gameplay/story content. It’s been a long, long road since I started the revamp, but I really feel like Illuminated has benefited immensely from it.
Chapter 15 is in a really playable state, though it hasn’t been playtested much just yet. For the few playtesters I have willing to give it a go, I haven’t released it to them yet as I’m trying to finish up work on Chapter 16 first. Chapter 16 is coming along. Due to the balance overhaul started long ago, I’ve had to change the layout of the map a fair amount to adapt for a few things.
Old
New
Outside of the size change of the map, I went ahead and added more sand tiles (rather than desert tiles) to make movement less slow but also still a consideration. Also, as a chapter that actually includes a magic seal, I wanted to incorporate some silence staffs as one of the themes of the chapter, which is when I learned how limited the StaffAI is. With a deep dive in trying like heck to learn anything I could about StaffAI (which took much longer than I anticipated going into it), along with some really nice help from @Vesly and @knabepicer, silence AI will now target any unit who has a magical rank, regardless of whether they were holding a staff or not. This makes the chapter, as well as future chapters that feature silence staff users, more realistic and a better challenge, with the small but interesting drawback that
Summary
It also means the AI can be duped into targeting hybrid units.
I’m hoping to be finishing Chapter 16 development soon and get it off to a few of the playtesters for some feedback. Might be able to have another patch by the next time I have a monthly (or bimontly) update.
So, I tried this hack until chapter 14, then it started to freezes and I was like “omg again, why I keep getting freezing rom lol”. Then I re-read this post’s title and “oh, only 14 chapters completed, okay”
My thoughts:
The story is great, it doesn’t follow that “always on justice side” stereotype rpg plot.
The Patch Up Kit thing is really unique, wish it could be animated, even just using staff animation, to make it more wholesome or, maybe, you could just make him using staff but with low mag stats and later make his canon class War Monk, which also depicts his backstory as combat medic as well. For the story side, you can just say he can only heal minor physical wounds, so they still have their reason to search for Lana.
The hard mode is difficult, but still reasonable. However, on chapter 10, it is outright impossible to reach the “armory” and the “shop” before the enemy destroy it. Maybe you could rework the AI not to destroy these?
Gerry (in my opinion) seems like meant to be an Est archetype character, joining late with low bases but with great growth. However, Gerry’s growth is super low considering his base stats upon joining your army.
I like how you give extra properties to various weapons, such as Breath of Life in Torrent.
For implementing Steal skill for the Lana the Cleric: In terms of lore/backstory, it’s amazing, absolutely brilliant. It really gives Lana her defining and unique trait amongst any healer in FE games I’ve ever played before. However, gameplay wise, its almost useless. You only have 1 healer, you will have to keep her safe from attacks as much as possible and she will need to heal your unit most of the time, especially in hard mode. Maybe if you have someone with Provoke ability, she can utilize this more. That way, she can steal enemy loot without being heavily targeted because the AI will target either the lowest HP unit or unit that cannot counter their attacks.
Hey @Ysa12, firstly wanted to thank you for giving Illuminated a whirl, but also for giving some feedback.
I appreciate the thoughts about the story! Glad you are enjoying it.
I hadn’t ever thought of Sam as a war monk, but I really like the idea of it given the staff usage. Initially I put it in the game as a buffer for only having one real healer for the first 10 chapters. I could certainly make a class for him that is essentially war monk but rather than light magic usage, it would be staff usage. Would be a custom class and be one of his promotion branches. Will work with it but I like the idea.
For chapter 10, this is actually the first time I’m hearing the “villages”, being the armory and the vendor on the map, were unreachable. Can you give me a few more details about this one? There is a myrmidon at the bottom right who will take the armory down on turn 6, which should be enough time. The vendor on the left, I don’t think any units actually target it unless you leave the myrmidon alive. Not saying I’m doubting you, just trying to figure out if I messed up an AI somewhere.
For Gerry, I wanted him to certainly have some utility for building him up, but I didn’t want to make him too overpowered once he catches up to the rest of the group. He actually is tied for the highest growth sum of any unit (omitting pre promotes that you receive) and so far, by the time he promotes in all of my playthroughs, he is a really capable unit. I’m gonna write this down in my list of things to keep an eye on, however, because as the only “trainee” unit it should feel valuable to level him up.
Thanks! There are more to come!
I understand where you’re coming from with the healer being the thief. I’m glad you like the story integration of it, but it certainly can lead to some dicey times about how to heal AND ALSO try and steal things. I appreciate the idea of provoke, but any time I’ve tried it, it leads to some AI abuse that I don’t really want to introduce at the moment just because I’m pretty happy with Illuminated’s general balance. I’d like to believe that good planning and having vulneraries on hand can alleviate this, and I’ve tried to make it so that nothing that is stealable is outright necessary to progress.
Last thought: I’ve been in the process of revamping Illuminated on multiple different fronts for a while now (though I’m almost caught up!). When you say the game froze, was it specifically in Chapter 14? While the game has a chapter labeled “End of Beta,” there still shouldn’t be any freezes in the game up until about Chapter 17-2. Can you walk me through this freeze that you occured?
Thanks again for the playthrough and your thoughts! Hope to have you back one day when Illuminated is finished!
For the chapter 10, maybe because its kinda to get there without any casualties in hard mode and with Gerry around, I kinda trying to keep him alive too. Idk if my luck was really bad or it was meant to be that way, I’ve almost never seen any of my unit capable of doubling enemy unit in hard mode.
It was more like, the game just won’t proceed any further.
Thanks for that info. Found the problem. A long time ago I used to have exclamation bubbles show up in events, though one of the future FeBuilder patches moved the command to a different location. Any old instance now reads as an ASM argument that bricks the rom. I’ve had to fix this in one or two other chapters that I forgot to remove it in. This should be the last one that I missed. The OP has been updated with the new patch.
That being said, Chapter 14 is fully playable! Actually could use a playtest to be honest, so have a crack at it. The game will certainly tell you when the beta is over, as Chapter 15’s title name is END OF BETA, which is where you should stop.
Also, I’ll go ahead and use this post as an opportunity to give a shout out to @7743, @Fenriel, @WAve, and @ZoramineFae for the CG’s and Final Fantasy Battle Backgrounds you all released and recently released. I’m still in the process of filling in a few places that I’ve missed, but Illuminated now has custom battle backgrounds!
Quick Edit: Also worth noting, nothing of what I am using here is original art. All of it is from the Repo, or seldomly, from things found on F2U websites, though I still list credits to those authors in the credits section in the OP. Some PNGs I’ve edited a fair amount to fit the battle screen, but by no means do I own them. If there are any that you like, feel free to either ask me from the png file or simply download the patch in the OP and pull them from the ROM. I’ll eventually upload them for the repo as well, just seemed like a bit of overkill because most original pngs are already in there. Just be sure to credit the original people like the ones listed above if you decide to pull from my patch.
Chapters 15 and 16 are completed. @Ebgamesemployee was kind enough to play them for me and things went mostly according to plan, and afterwards, I patched up a few holes. The OP has been updated with the most recent patch. It includes 2 playable chapters (15/16) and an interlude. Please don’t progress past the chapter titled “END OF BETA”.
Also, as I may have mentioned and some may have seen, I’ve been working on a new battle screen. With some elements from @Fenriel’s, as well as a few additions of my own, here is the new one. It is not in the patch in the OP just yet as I am ironing out a few things, but will be in there in the future.
Thanks for reading! If you happen to play the newest chapters, I’d love to hear about it. The Chapter 16 boss is shaping up to be the “infamous” boss that people hate in the game. There’s always one!
After a long period of catching up Illuminated to where it was before a lengthy overhaul (with the release of chapters 15 and 16 in the last update), I took a little break. Between battle screens, trying to learn how to import music, and a myriad of other hacking stuff (on top of real life work outside of hacking!), I felt like it was a good time for a break. With that being said, there hasn’t been too much progress since the last update.
However, in the past month, I was able to write out and event all of the stuff for Chapter 17-1 (Chapter 17 is broken into three parts), and by doing so, it will make finishing the following two chapters much easier. Chapter 17-1 has by far the longest eventing file of any chapter in the game, but it’s not necessarily due to a lot of text. Moreso just due to a lot of events!
In any case, here is the map for this chapter as just a sneak peak. Don’t wanna give too much away about how it plays just yet, because where’s the fun in that?
(Yes, the tiles at the top right are a bit funky. There aren’t any roof tiles to cover a room in the desert bastion tileset, so I kinda hackjobbed a way into one.)
Other than that, excited for FEE3 around the corner. There is a fair bit more content in the current build than the FEE3 build (including battle screens, music, chapters, etc.), but it should still be a really cool thing to watch!
Thanks so much for the compliment! Always nice to hear it. Though truthfully, many of the battle backgrounds were taken and adapted from the repo with just some minor editing from me. We have many stellar contributors in the community and we are fortunate to have them submit the things that they do!
Hey everyone, update coming in off the heels of the FEE3 showcase! Big thanks to all the community who set up the event, contributed projects, watched projects, did playthroughs (thanks to @dancer_A for doing Illuminated’s showcase!), and everyone else involved! If you happened to miss the showcase, you can see it here!
Wouldn’t be an FEE3 update without an update about Illuminated, so here a couple things in the works since the last update.
The newer battle frame and battle UI has been implemented into the hack (FINALLY). Was putting it off because the new screen had a lot of repeat tiles that were a pain in the butt to find when inserting them. Here is the new screen in action. May go back and change some of the colors, but feeling like I may finally settle on this one. Note that has @Huichelaar’s HP Bar flip in it, and enemy HP bars will deplete from left to right.
Chapter 17-1 is completed and Chapter 17-2 is hot on its heels. Chapter 17-2 will likely be a divisive chapter due to the nature of it as it plays similarly to the stealth chapter from FEif: Revelations. Careful planning, full understanding of the landscape, and a keen eye for movement patterns will be the way to victory. Here is the sneak peak of 17-2 in action (hint, always stay out of range!).
In the process of working on a supply/convoy expansion. All three parts of Chapter 17 (and possibly Chapter 18, haven’t decided yet) remove access to the convoy for a spoilery reason, meaning I need to make some extra room. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal to implement, but because I’ve used a FeBuilder Custombuild for so long and made so many changes to the rom through the Disassembler, using another custombuild would undo MANY of the changes that I currently have made. I’m trying to avoid going this route if at all possible and I’m looking for alternative solutions right now.
I will likely release a build of the next four chapters (up through the end of Chapter 18) into the Illuminated discord for some playtesting once I’ve finished making them. No timeline on when that might be yet, because as always, I work on this when I can and have the time.
The new battle frame is nice, I also like that the battle plataforms are hidden now, did you remove them or they are behind the new battle backgrounds?
