Hey @MercuryMerc, thanks for playing and for providing the bug report. I just looked into it on my end, and for whatever reason, I couldn’t reproduce this issue. However, I will add this to my list of things to look into further and see if I can nail it down.
In other news, it has been a long time since I’ve updated the FEU thread! I’ve been keeping the discord updated here and there, but works continues on Illuminated. Thanks to a huge help from @Pikmin1211, I’ve recently been able to add a whole slew of custom graphic UI to the game which is something I always wanted to do. I’ll likely put out another this post this weekend with some screenshots of the new UI in action as well as a general update because I am overdue.
It’s been a while since I did a proper developer post. Progress continues on Illuminated and Chapter 22 is completed. Chapter 23 is in development. After Chapter 23 is finished, there will be one shop chapter and 5 more gameplay chapters to go!
Following up from my post the other day, Illuminated now has a fresh new coat of paint! Custom UI, with some very generous help from @Pikmin1211, has been added. Here are some screenshots in action!
I will likely be uploading a patch after Chapter 23 is completed because it will have some pretty big story drops in it. For anyone who would like to keep up with a slightly more regular stream of updates, be sure to check out the discord and pop by and say hello.
Hey, I just checked this hack after stopped playing it a year ago and I saw some new faces in this post, how do we recruit those “recruitable mercenary”???
Hey @Ysa12, thanks for your interest in the hack. Right now, there is a mode that is unlockable after beating the main campaign called “Mercenary Mode” where in many of the chapters, there is a recruitable mercenary. When just starting the game, this option is locked, however.
I’m sending you a DM with a way to start the game with Mercenary Mode, however. There are one or two cheat codes in the game and this is one of them.
If anyone else would like this “cheat”, feel free to DM me and I’ll happily pass it along to you.
In other news, Chapter 23 development has stalled just a bit as I went back and added some features to New Game + and generally procrastinated. However, in Mercenary Mode, there will now be an option to grow all of your benched units by 1 level in each numbered chapter so as to keep them somewhat up to pace to your other units. Pretty excited about this change and will be released alongside the next patch.
Thanks for reading! Have a screenshot of Chapter 23!
Hello, I played this hack some months ago so dont know whether things have changed or not, but I wanted to leave some opinions on bits.
The first one is regarding a chapter, so I’ll mark it under spoiler.
Spoiler
Its about that chapter where the mc has an existential crisis. I would suggest you reconsider this part. The chapter was about his group running for their lives, they were getting ambushed. And amidst that mess, if the main char just raises his hands and refuses to participate just cuz he cant digest that he killed people, you’ll repulse anyone playing. You can introspect, have a moral conflict, while still acting mature. The way he acted was like a spoiled princess brat tbh. And given the background you wrote for him, that he was from the slums and was a thief, this is really hard to believe. The fact that he never killed or had so much problem from the concept of killing itself is hard to believe. From my pov, it feels like you’re forcing the modern world morals onto the char and then showing the inner conflict, which doesnt fit the setting of the world in any way. But even with that conflict, that he could just see his friends die in the ambush and not act seems insane, and you’ll have the players lose all favorability for the mc [was the case with me at least, I couldnt bring myself to like him after that]. I would suggest a different route than this.
If you really want to show his conflict’s impact on the gameplay, you can have him participate in the map with some debuff on stats, like lowered speed or skill, that could translate to him not being able to focus much. But anyway, its up to you, take my two cents or leave it.
Other than this, I would also suggest giving mc a unique look and animation for his class. I read in your chat that you’re planning on doing this once you find something unique. But I would suggest you pick something from the repository instead for now, would be better in the short term. As it is right now, it feels kinda meh, with the monk setup. Unless you already did since I last played. In that case, ignore this.
I cant really remember any other point right now besides these two, so I’ll end it here. Its up to you whether you want to consider what I said. But anyway, nice job on the hack, I mostly enjoyed the bits that I played. Im a fan of mage types, so it was nice to see a mage mc here.
Hey Aleth, thanks for playing and taking the time for some feedback. Means a lot that you would think of ways to improve Illuminated and to provide some constructive criticism. I’m going to spoiler my answer to your own spoilered stuff (and I appreciate you doing so), but at least for the Jay animation, yes I still really do need to import new animations for him!
Anyways, spoilers:
Summary
I do understand where you are coming from with your point. It does seem a bit out of the blue that after having effectively killed his way to where he is in Luxin, why it is then that he decides that he is putting his foot down and not killing (during a time where they are ambushed and really do need him to fight)? If anything, I think I could do more to certainly demonstrate a growing uneasiness with his perspective on it so that it doesn’t seem so sudden when he makes his decision not to fight.
However, Jay’s past wasn’t necessarily filled with much killing. It is possible that too much is portrayed as if Jay was a murderer in his past who survived only from killing people, but Jay up to the point where he gets Candescent has never killed anyone, only stolen. Finch did kill people but kept many of the details from Jay. I could certainly do better to emphasize this though. He does mention this to Finch during his existential crisis that when the shoe was on the other foot and he was the one actually doing the killing (and not Finch), it affected him in a way that he had taken for granted. This hits especially hard when, as he describes it, they killed someone (Simmons) that did not want to fight Jay to begin with.
For what it is worth, I don’t believe you have to agree with his decision. I wrote him and I still don’t like his decision because you’re right, he let his friends down at a crucial moment. However, my perspective is that Jay was never a MC but his own character (though misguided in what exactly his goals and ambitions are). Maybe he made this error because of his naivety, his upbringing, whatever it is. But you don’t have to necessarily like him or his decisions because I never wanted him to be perfect.
Long story short, I think I can do more to demonstrate more as to how that uneasiness manifests itself eventually. I think it is a warranted point and I appreciate it, but I also think it allows for him to take a look at himself, his goals, and think critically about what exactly he wants.
Once again, thanks for the inputs and I really do appreciate them!
I see your point. I would argue that unless he grew up in a peaceful society where murder only happened in the news, or in a sheltered castle where he never faced any hardship, his crisis wouldnt happen or would be much more muffled. I get your point that you didnt want him to be perfect, but having flaws and making the players actively dislike him are two different things. He must have flaws, it’ll make him more endearing, but flaws are not under the char’s control. Here what we have is an active decision, it cant be called a flaw. He could choose to put aside his conflict and fight for his and his friends life, but he chose not to.
But I’ll leave the writing part to you since its your story, I dont want to interfere too much.
I would still suggest on the gameplay side though that you reconsider his part in that chapter if you’re going with this plot. Like I said in the last post, you can even deploy him with crippled stats [Im not an expert on fe builder, so dont know how this would work, Im just an author so I focused more on the writing and char]. Its up to you now, I’ll leave it at that.
Hey everyone, hope this message finds you well and enjoying the new year!
I wanted to get a post out for anyone who might be interested in the continued progress of Illuminated. Been trying to keep up with updates every month or two which also keeps me a bit honest in working on the game.
As of now, Chapter 23 is entirely finished, the interlude after is finished, and the shop chapter directly after is about halfway done. I would also say that the core structure of Chapter 24 has been created, though all story events and the back half of the chapter still need to be made. Happy with the current progress. The plan, after Chapter 24, is to basically push onwards to the endgame, which include 24x (the only realy gaiden in the game), 25, 26, and Final.
Along the way, I’ve gone back and made a few changes to Illuminated. None of them are world breaking changes, but sometimes I’ll get small ideas in my head and think it would be cool to find ways to implement them in game. Here is a few noteworthy ones:
Changes and WIP changes:
Poison has received an overhaul. Because I wanted poison to be more of a threat, I have upped the damage per turn a good amount. Now, while poisoned, units can expect to take anywhere between 4-6 damage per turn. However, while poison hurts a good deal more, poison can no longer kill units. This is also true of traps (specifically in a certain chapter).
The “Skill” stat has been pretty majorly buffed, and with it, there has been a large amount of rebalancing of weapons. The ideology was to make the skill stat something that was actually exciting to see ping when leveling up, and with this change (and its ongoing implementation), I feel happier with it. Basically, each point of skill on a unit now grants +4 to Hit instead of +2. I’ve gone back across the board the changed the hit rate on weapons to accommodate this change while still keeping Illuminated feeling the way it used to. What I have found is that this change has made the early game ever so slightly easier, it rewards units with high skill growths (Danielle is a very viable unit now), and it also has changed my philosophy on weapons that require higher weapon ranks. Before the skill stat change, skill was no longer a relevant statistic at all past midgame because you would be hard pressed to ever find player units with less the 100% hit rates. With this change, my plan is to have weapons with higher weapon rank requirements provide less hit, so that there is a real incentive to value skill as a stat to maximize effectiveness. Here is a quick example of how this will end up looking (note that Danielle has 20 Skill and 8 Luck in these pictures):
Story is something that I value in Illuminated and I’ve done my best crafting something that is character centric at its core. However, I am aware that there are two interludes in particular that have a LOT of reading. Right now, my plan is to reclassify these interludes as “Intermissions” and offer a choice to hear an abridged version of the story vs. the full story. The alternative would be to add chapters to the game, but I’m running out of ROM space pretty quickly and don’t think I have this option (at least until I finish the hack).
With that, I’d like to thank you for checking in with development. I know timelines are always a very hard thing to judge with development, but 2024 is the year that I want to finally finish and release the hack. In an ideal world, I have a full build ready for FEE3. I post slightly more frequently in the discord and also post playtesting builds, so if the discord is something you might wanna join, feel free to come on in. Also note: I will put out a post when the current build is playtested and ready to go. The patch in the OP is a fair bit outdated and does not include any of the changes outlined above.
Just stumbled across this hack…
What a wonderful bunch of music themes is included!
Title screen and music is perfect.
I like the intro, looks highly professional, with the background of the regions.
Prologue was great, nice maps so far, need to play some more…
OP was updated with the newest patch which goes through Chapter S-5 (basically through Chapter 23). OP was updated to include a lot of new information and updated screenshots to make the first post look nice and shiny. For anyone that was waiting to play a build of Illuminated, this would be a great build to either continue your playthrough or start a new one!
Thanks for tuning in! If you happen to have any thoughts about the game, feel free to let me know either here or on the discord. Until next time!
Edit: For anyone that gets to Chapter S-5, it is fully playable. You cannot complete it, but you can “finish” the chapter by having Jay speak with all of the required allies (placeholder events for now). After that, go to the inn, at which point you will be given the end of beta prompt as well as a interesting little secret .
Hey @Popman08, this was an error on my part and it is an extra tile. You should have 11 slots when deploying in Chapter 14, not 12. I’ve fixed this on my end and it will be updated in the next patch. Thanks for pointing this out and thanks for playing!
I am very new to ROMS and I made an account just to ask, is there a way to increase a unit’s growth? I am using cheat codes, looking for the Metis scroll (or the equivalent to it)
Hi! So, I’m not sure if I soft locked the game, but in chapter 8 there’s a myrmidon that I cant reach and it wont move into the range for my mages/bow unit/fighter to reach?
Hey @Kanatsugu, I’ve honestly never seen this happen before and it certainly isn’t intended. Is it possible for you to send me a photo of where the myrmidon got stuck? Also, if you have a save file, I’m happy to progress it forward for you if you’d like.
@kittenlover, there are currently only one of those items in the game. It is in Chapter 6, though I’m racking my brain trying to remember if there is another one (I don’t think there is). I may go back and add one though in the early to mid game. Celice is also right, if you have access to FeBuilder, you can change the growth rates however you might want to.
Edit: Found the issue Kanatsugu, don’t know how it happened on my end but that myrmidon was never supposed to be there. My fault. I’ve uploaded a new patch (3.9.0.1) with this fix, though unfortunately you may have to restart the chapter. Like I mentioned, I’m happy to progress your save file if you’d like. Also, while I was at it, I’ve added a few other things (like a secret Aer Distillate item, but you’ll have to be pretty clever to get it). Thanks for reporting!
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