[HIATUS] Fire Emblem: Lady of Masks [0.1.0 - Act One Complete!] {LT REMAKE ALPHA AVAILABLE!} (14/06/2023)

[KrashBoomBang]

Beat the demo. Pretty good overall. I think chapter 1, chapter 5, and chapter 6 were the standouts here, as they all made good use of their space and side objectives and didn’t have too high enemy density. I’d say chapter 2 and chapter 3 were low points. Chapter 2 was really jarring coming from chapter 1, being so much smaller and having way higher enemy density. The bosses start so close to you and move, so it’s really easy to beat the map fast and encounter that bug with the pegasus. Chapter 3 meanwhile felt like the top two thirds of the map didn’t matter. It could’ve been a 15x10 map and it would not play different. I think chapter 3 would be better off having the merchants start a little further up, and have the escape point be in the top of the map, so you actually have to chase them down.

Most odd thing for me was the structure of the first three chapters: prologue has one party, then chapter 1 has a completely separate party, and then chapter 2 has them merge but the assassin and wyvern are gone. It just felt like an awkward way to begin the game when I think I would’ve preferred if it started on chapter 1.

Special shout out to Keio who decided to only level skill. I don’t like you.

[Xilirite]

@KrashBoomBang

I think chapter 1, chapter 5, and chapter 6 were the standouts here, as they all made good use of their space and side objectives and didn’t have too high enemy density. I’d say chapter 2 and chapter 3 were low points.

This is very interesting, as during the playtesting period, chapters 2 and 3 were by far the most popular chapters in the game. I think enemy density in general is going to go down in the next update, so perhaps your issues with chapter 2, at least, will more or less resolve themselves in the process of making these changes?

[jellyunicorn]

i bet @KrashBoomBang didnt even go for janus. what a casual

i think a potentially more interesting way to tackle c3 would be to give the players a choice between punching through a strong enemy formation or taking an easier but longer route to the caravans. think fe7 c17x, but with less bullshit enemies and not having a flier just trivialise the whole map lol

[Permafrost]

Hi. I finished the demo a little while ago and wanted to provide my thoughts.

Gameplay

Overall, I liked what I played. Though my thoughts largely echo Pandan’s about how many different weapons show up in such a short amount of time. It was a little overwhelming that in such a short amount of time I had more different dark tomes than Ileana could even hold. I also think that facing so many silver weapons seven chapters into the game was a bit much, and I often felt like I had to slowly bait enemies out to not get all of my units killed. Most of my units were pretty squishy, with some of them being outright one shot if they did battle with some of the enemies in 1-6. By introducing end game weapons so early on, you might run out of new tools to both give to the player and to confront him with, which could make battle grow stale in the long run. Of course, if you have a bunch of new weapons in the works and tiers beyond silver, then I guess that doesn’t apply.

I don’t have specific thoughts on every chapter but I’ll talk about the ones that I do.

1-2: No one really had the stats to take everything that’s coming at the player in the first turn, so I felt like I had to spend the first turn retreating. While Janus’s army is only three units, the fact that its threat range intersects with the Fighter boss’s army made it unworkable to set up three fronts from the start. It might be a bit easier on the player if the map was extended a bit to the left and Janus’s units were further away.

1-3: The only thing here was that I wasn’t exactly sure what actions would end the chapter, specifically whether defeating all of the transports would end the chapter. The way to end the chapter wasn’t fully clear until Maeve showed up. I actually wound up pushing my luck and only barely made it out alive. This might be because this was the first game I played that made use of the escape patch, but I didn’t know if this was FE9 style Escape where having the lord escape would end the chapter, which got me into even more danger at the very end.

1-5: Nothing to really say other than that I didn’t take note of the Purge Monk at the start and got a Game Over from him killing Raph, but it wasn’t unfair.

1-6: Like I said, I felt like I had to take this one very slowly in order to not get my units killed. I was about a turn too late to get any of the map’s treasure. I saw that you and Pandan discussed that maybe the player shouldn’t be able to double so many enemies, but having numerous units that could double was just about the only thing that made this chapter feel possible on most turns, so I really wouldn’t speed up the enemies without reducing the power level of the ones in this chapter.

Units

If I don’t mention a unit specifically, then I thought he or she was fine without really needing comment.

Fane: A glass cannon Archer is an interesting idea for a lord, and you pulled it off well as far as I’m concerned. He was a lot of fun to use, and there were only a handful of times that he couldn’t get the job done.

Ileana: The fact that she’s slow but powerful gives her good synergy with Gael for getting her past her trainee class. She was a reliable powerhouse afterward.

Raph: He was one of my most reliable units for taking hits because I kept the Leather Shield on him. Nothing fancy but he was reliable.

Gael: Training her felt rewarding, which is exactly what you want to do with a Trainee unit. By 1-6 she was one of my more reliable units.

Vera: I usually skip Myrmidons in GBA, but she had amazing bases and was very reliable. She was easily the best of the speedy girls.

Gregory: Gregory suffers from the same problem that I had with Fortress Knight Edelgard in Cindered Shadows: his high defense is undermined by him being so slow that enemies can often double him. A Steel Bow Archer in 1-6 was able to deal 20 damage to him by doubling for 10 damage a shot. In a chapter where I already felt hard pressed to deal with enemy damage output, it’s really scary when the tank will lose more than half his health to an Archer. Gregory has a ton of pressure on him by that point because everyone else only has 4-6 defense, so it halts the entire army when he can’t bait out the enemies.

Zoey: I just wanted to mention that giving the Cleric ranged healing was a really cool idea to prevent the player from ignoring her in favor of the the Troubadour. Granted, the chapters after she joins encourage splitting the army, creating the need for two healers anyway, but I still wanted to recognize it.

Peter: This kind of ties into a lot of my prior comments, but I was kind of shocked that he only had 5 Defense. It seemed kind of low for an Axe Knight.

Price/Bug: This isn’t really about them specifically, but dividing Thieves into a class that specializes in stealing and another that specializes in picking locks was an interesting idea. I can’t say I made any use of weapon stealing, but it was a cool idea. Another small thing to note. I think the way that the Scoundrel class slides to the right when hovering the curser over it indicates that it doesn’t have the right AP set on it, so you may want to experiment setting other ones.

Story/Presentation

I really enjoyed the story. There is some genuine intrigue as to what Tolman is up to, and I’m interested to see what happens next. You also have a good dynamic set up with Fane, Raph, and Ileana, who I assume are the main characters going forward. Fane is driven by emotion and his sense of justice while Ileana is a colder, more calculating person who seems to be keeping a lot from the others. And Raph is a highly empathetic person who gives his all to support his friends. I’m interested to see how they continue to play off one another and what kind of cracks might form as the stakes rise.

My main criticism is that it feels like too much is happening in 1-1 and 1-2. During this time, you’re trying to depict Fane’s traumatic experience that causes him to want to fight at the same time that you’re trying to establish Fane and Raph’s friendship and how they look up to Lionel as well as Lionel’s position as a disillusioned former knight who is afraid of leading the younger generation to their deaths. The narrative is being stressed to do too much at once, and it makes it a little difficult to follow how much is happening. After this, the narrative settles down into a better pace and is easier to follow.

I think that the story might benefit from a chapter with Fane and co set before the current 1-1 acting as their city’s militia. You could do the Fire Emblem thing and have them chase off bandits or they could be dealing with a smaller expeditionary force from Haloesia. But something like this would give you space to establish these characters in a more relaxed setting before the stuff is hitting the fan.

Another note about these early chapters is that they can feel a bit crowded with how many characters are participating in a scene. I understand that when you make a character that you like, you want to put them out there so that others will see them as well, but in GBAFE where only four portraits can be on screen at a time, things can get confusing when a lot of characters who the player just met are popping in and out. Maybe this is moot as the scene will be easier to follow when you make the full scene, but I thought I’d still point it out.

I’m also a big advocate of map events rather than doing everything with backgrounds. This is why I consider the end event from 1-6 the best realized event in the current build. Depicting what’s going on on the map gives the player context for what’s happening and where the characters are in relation to one another. It also breaks up the dialogue to help the player process when the scene is changing. Even when not doing map events, I think that using the STAL commend to provide a one or two second break when fading to black helps scenes to flow better.

This might be presumptuous since these are your characters not mine, but two instances where characters felt out of character come to mind.

Samantha seems more hot headed when introduced than every time that she’s on screen afterward. She drops a “damn it” several times, but she seems much more calm afterward. Maybe it was because of the circumstances of her home being under attack, but my idea of who she was changed after her introduction.

At the beginning of 1-2 Ileana seemed more snobbish and dismissive of the little people than she does at any other time, especially compared to her first meeting with Ramm and Gael where she just seemed glad to have someone’s help. Maybe this was because Ramm and Gael were fellow Haloesians.

One thing I’m curious about is how you’re handling deaths with so many units chiming in in main story events. A lot of them seem to have retreat quotes, but Malgrave, for example, seems to actually die, but he speaks in the 1-1 end event and the event doesn’t branch depending on if he’s alive.

I hope none of that came across as overly critical. Video games are uniquely suited to telling hero’s journey type story, more so than books and movies because the gameplay does the heavy lifting of conveying the struggles and growth of the characters in a way that other media simply can’t, and I think your story has a lot of potential.

I hope that was helpful, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing more.

[Xilirite]

Hey, Permafrost! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the project – one of the romhacks I’ve been playing through while I’m on hiatus is yours (2.0 has been mostly a universal improvement, though I’ll give my detailed thoughts on that later once I’ve played more of the game), and I was hoping to hear some of your thoughts on the project, since it seems to me that the both of us care a lot about story but have very different game-design priorities.

@Permafrost

Most of my units were pretty squishy, with some of them being outright one shot if they did battle with some of the enemies in 1-6. By introducing end game weapons so early on, you might run out of new tools to both give to the player and to confront him with, which could make battle grow stale in the long run. Of course, if you have a bunch of new weapons in the works and tiers beyond silver, then I guess that doesn’t apply.

This is something I’ve been talking about a lot in the discord. Unit frailty was intentional, and the maps can be (and have been) played quickly while working around it due to how powerful units like Fane are, buuut I think now that I’ve seen a wider audience play the game beyond just the people in the #playtesting channel of the FEU discord, I think I’m going to be making changes to this to some degree. I still want to keep defence stats generally low (although I’ve been operating on a 10-30 growth range for most units and I may increase that to be closer to 15-40), but HP stats are likely to be higher and enemy weapon quality is likely to be slightly lower in general. It’s an in-progress change so details like this hardly matter bc they may change, but in general I’m dissatisfied with the degree to which minor mistakes on a first time playthrough can result in even your tankiest units just getting popped like balloons.

@Permafrost

I saw that you and Pandan discussed that maybe the player shouldn’t be able to double so many enemies, but having numerous units that could double was just about the only thing that made this chapter feel possible on most turns, so I really wouldn’t speed up the enemies without reducing the power level of the ones in this chapter.

To clarify on this, these changes to player/enemy stats would also necessarily coincide with lowering enemy density to a degree, and not just blanket nerfing the player units with no adjustments otherwise. Changing stats to need to combine to get kills early on will also mean there are less kills to go around, since the action economy is gonna be stretched thinner, which also means less experience, and so lower levels, a more gradual curve of power, etc etc. It’s a lot of changes, and feedback on the current build helps to guide where my emphasis is going to be on those changes.

@Permafrost

This kind of ties into a lot of my prior comments, but I was kind of shocked that he only had 5 Defense. It seemed kind of low for an Axe Knight.

I believe Axe Cavaliers (which is what you meant to say?) are generally higher power, decent speed, higher HP, lower defense when compared to Lance Cavalry (the ‘tanky’ cavalier class). He may be a bit too squishy with that in mind anyway, but it’s worth noting the role that axe cavalier plays is to be scrappier than the more speed-oriented Sword Cav and def-oriented Lance Cav.

@Permafrost

I think that the story might benefit from a chapter with Fane and co set before the current 1-1 acting as their city’s militia. You could do the Fire Emblem thing and have them chase off bandits or they could be dealing with a smaller expeditionary force from Haloesia. But something like this would give you space to establish these characters in a more relaxed setting before the stuff is hitting the fan.

So, you’re actually describing the original draft of the script – at first, Ileana and Maeve didn’t get the setup they get, and instead Fane, Raph, and Lionel had more time to themselves. The problem this had was, at the time, that the game was starting off on a relatively weak foot: slow, low stakes character building stuff at the very start with no real hook early on. The Ileana chapter was added at the start to try to immediately kick off a bunch of the more interesting aspects of the world – Ileana just as a character, Maeve and her betrayal, the complexities of Haloseian faith – to hook players better. The consequence to this in general has been that 1-1 is REALLY fast paced, which I personally like as it sells a lot of the chaos of the moment, but it does mean it takes until 1-4 for the protagonists to finally slow down for long enough to just sit down and have a chat about better times.

On the other hand though, I feel that Fane and Raph’s relationship comes through mostly in the texture of the dialogue and already gets elaborated on in 1-4, Fane’s trauma is the main focus of 1-1, and Lionel’s knighthood and his struggles with it are the focus of 1-2. Adding another chapter here would really only let me either split one of these ideas across two chapters or devote a whole chapter to a character relationship that I feel comes through strongly enough through the early chapters that you get what the deal is by the time the script devotes time to talking about it in detail. I think part of this will be remedied with things like supports.

Spoiler

Because he dies, Lionel has very rapid support growth, which will help to some degree in establishing that relationship over the course of the chapters he’s alive for as he gets chances to speak to Fane and Raphael both – their supports are very much about the entire unit of three characters and how their relationship with each other shapes their worldview, but in a way I felt wasn’t important enough to the script to actually make a mandatory plot scene. I feel that even if 1-1 is very fast paced, the script is already pretty long-winded, and I don’t want to devote too much more mandatory screentime to things.

I’m wary about adding things to the early portions of the script atm, especially an entire chapter, but I’ll keep on eye on this as potentially needing tweaks moving forward.

@Permafrost

At the beginning of 1-2 Ileana seemed more snobbish and dismissive of the little people than she does at any other time

I kind of agree that in 1-2 she’s a bit more condescending than she should be, but the disparity is intentional. The big difference between Prologue and 1-2 is that in 1-2, she feels that she needs to be in control of the situation, and this is informing her behaviour – you may notice Ileana does this somewhat frequently, acting dramatically different in moments like boss conversations, speaking to specific characters, etc… I’m glad it’s obvious that it’s happening, though it may just take more script time for it to be clear that it’s happening on purpose. I’ll look into tweaking this as well.

Thank you for the detailed feedback! I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the project so far, and I hope you enjoy the changes I’ll be making… soon-ish, maybe.

Spoilery Question

While I have you, what were your thoughts on the events of 1-6? Only a couple people have completed every chapter, and even fewer have had much to say about the plot itself, so I’m interested in hearing your thoughts. Creating that event and making sure it worked properly took ages, and you commented that you felt it was a well put together scene.

[Permafrost]

Spoilery Answer

I wasn’t expecting Lionel to be killed in a cutscene, but it also wasn’t something that felt cheesy or forced the way that a story can sometimes use a character death as cheap way to create drama or make the situation seem serious. Lionel jumping in the way that he did was very much in character with how he didn’t want to stand by and allow Fane and Raph to be killed. And the Druid monster created some genuine dread, not only in that scene but with how the heroes will deal with it going forward when it can seemingly appear and cause havoc at will. Though if I can suggest something, I wouldn’t use its portrait in other places, like for the generic mage gloating about Crush Depth in order to preserve the sense of mystery around that thing.

I will say that I wasn’t building supports with Lionel because I never plan to use a Jagen long term. Lionel’s bases weren’t even that high to begin with, and he was one of the first units that I benched along with Ramm. But I suppose since he dies early on, those support slots wouldn’t be wasted after the early game.

[BladerDj]

Funnily characters with hats are really cool. They can give them even more character. And I think you won’t recognize the splices as easy when you add a good hat.

[Xilirite]

Hey there, it’s been a while!

I’ve been slowly picking away at issues brought up by feedback from this first release (retroactively labelled 0.0.1) to address as many of them as I can in the upcoming 0.0.2 release – the list of changes is too long to really list in aggregate (many of them are minor stat buffs and nerfs, tweaks to class bases, changes to what items are rewarded where), but in general the experience and economy progression is slower, units are less fragile, one rounding is less common, and enemy density has been reduced in some locations.

This should lead to a map flow where your units are much more capable of taking damage, and minor positional oversights shouldn’t lead to units being immediately killed. This is by far my biggest problem with the current build – maps are fun when they go smoothly, but if a map doesn’t immediately click for you, tiny mistakes are so inordinately punished that it can be discouraging and often downright unfun, and I’ve seen a few too many people since the game launched have a particularly frustrating experience with some maps for my liking. By reducing the general quality of enemy equipment a tad, allowing for a slightly wider disparity between low and high bulk units, and raising player HP in general, units are far less prone to being two rounded.

The other half of the changes are towards player power. Several units in v0.0.1 join strong and stay strong, with nothing ever really challenging their ability to perform. Ileana can one round basically anything in the game with Heresy, Fane with Pathfinder is a cruise missile straight from lvl 1, and Keio only needs a couple magic levels to do much the same thing. Because of this, units that couldn’t perform to the same degree were often falling behind – units like Ramm stand out from the pack through the sheer power of their bases, but in general units that didn’t meet speed breakpoints were consistently under performing. Even Lionel isn’t useful for much besides killing mages and providing Charm buffs past his first chapter, so large was this disparity. Most of the changes in this update are about rebalancing units such that they aren’t so dramatically different from one another, and then rebalancing maps such that the lower potency of player units isn’t a major detriment. This means that not just 1-1, but every map is going to be reworked to some degree, primarily in regards to unit placement, stats, and equipment, hence the longer than planned development cycle on this update.

My first project transitioning out of hiatus was the 1-1 rework I’d been planning! Here’s a sneak peek at the WIP:

With a slightly larger cast, your objective is to race to save the three villagers from the brigands, then reconvene to secure the third village from an encroaching thief before taking on the boss, who charges your position. Unit placement is subject to some change – there’s some hectic turns towards the back half of the map, and I have to make sure I’m not the only one who has a handle on how to tackle them! With the increased margin for minor errors and more daring play, I find the new chapter to have a really exciting flow to it, with a lot of decisive moments and opportunities for all your units to shine.

Several units have new designs, as well. Vera, rather than joining at level 4 in 1-3, now joins two chapters earlier at level 1, and comes with a new toy to match Fane’s:

Eliza is now a Lance Cavalier, with an emphasis on speed and defense. As one of the only lance users in the early game, besides Malgrave and your trainee, she’s far more likely to see combat now… even if she’s still probably just gonna be a reposition bot

Lionel has had his class changed from Ranger to Outrider Knight – for those unfamiliar (they show up in 1-6!!!), they’re a similar class that uses axes instead of swords. He comes with his own version of Maeve’s Compassion, allowing you to offset his impressive strength stat and secure kills more easily:

Peter no longer has his bow ranks (they were an experimental idea anyway), and instead has wrath! He promotes into Outrider Knight eventually, so he’ll get his bows back in time, but for now his role is to fill out the otherwise fairly limited roster of axe users.

Bug has a new PRF and skill, the two of which combined are meant to move him away from the utility thief role and more towards the famous Combat Thief role. As I was designing act 2 (big secret stuff in the works there ) I realised that Bug would be far better suited towards the role given his, uh, proclivities, and I knew I wanted at least one. With his new set-up, he should be far more suited to safely engaging in combat, contributing meaningful and unconditional chip when he isn’t stealing blue gems.

This is just a slice of the more notable changes – smaller things include bugfixes (yes, the cursors in conversations are going away), a general update to all tooltips to make them more clear, some dialogue tweaks, a couple easter eggs (some less hidden than others), and plans to implement far more of the currently written support conversations in game, maybe even all of them!

I don’t have much of a concrete ETA on how long these changes are going to take, but I figured I’m making progress quickly enough that I’d provide an update on what I’m working on for anybody that’s interested in the project but not a part of the discord. Chances are the revised prologue and 1-1, as well as the revised player power curve (which together form v0.0.2) will be publicly released at some point this month barring major setback, and then it’s straight into finishing up the rest of the act 1 chapters with v0.1.0. For anyone who’s already played and given feedback, I can’t thank you enough for the wealth of insight you’ve allowed me to draw from, and for anyone who’s still playing or has plans to, I encourage you to leave any thoughts here or in my discord – even if much of the current product will look different in a few weeks’ time, feedback on this version is still valuable. I also encourage you to have fun! Please!!! ^.^

[Permafrost]

Making Vera playable in 1-1 sounds like a good change. She didn’t really serve any gameplay purpose as a green unit. I didn’t leave anyone behind to guard her when I played, but it was worried throughout the chapter about whether I should have.

[Xilirite]

Another development update for my forum friends ^.^

With FEE3 on the horizon, it’s gonna be a busy month coming up here, and so I figured now was the best time to talk about what’s been in the works, since I may not have much time in the near future. You might have noticed I missed my estimated “out by the end of this month” deadline on 0.0.2, and I have a really good excuse, which is that I was very busy playing Magic the Gathering.

The other, better excuse is that the scope of the update has increased substantially. As I replayed the game more and more to test the new stats, I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with certain chapters beyond the two that I had planned to rework. While some chapters, like 1-3 and 1-5, are far better than they used to be with the benefit of the more durable units, other chapters, such as 1-2, 1-4, and 1-6, are far weaker. I’ve been working on a pretty major rework of 1-6, while also working on a minor rework of 1-2 and being vaguely annoyed that I can’t figure out how to fix 1-4.

For 1-6, the tight quarters of the map were proving incredibly stifling, and the increased tankiness of your units lead to the chapter mostly being a bait-fest. It… kind of already was one… but it’s worse now. And so, a rework was needed. Minor tweaks weren’t cutting it, as I just ran into different flavours of the same map design issues, so I grabbed my sledgehammer and broke down a few walls.

The map functions mostly the same in terms of objectives, but the flow of combat has been drastically revised. Hopefully, this new version of the map is more engaging. Big thanks to RandomWizard for helping with the map aesthetics on this one, as well as for helping me with a few portraits for the 1-2 bosses ^.^

We also have a few rebalances: Wrath is updated to meet the 40 crit baseline of the hack. Keio’s tome is updated to reflect this value as well. Her purpose as a unit has been tweaked, too – she’s a little bit scrappier, with growths more oriented towards encouraging her to make productive use of her Hex skill, and her offences are slightly lowered as a result. She’s still got a bad case of coinflipitis, but there are now edge cases where she becomes vaguely tanky! Exciting!!

Malgrave has also been tweaked. He exists mainly to fill the role of your tankiest unit in the early game, which was particularly important early on in development when units were even more fragile than they are in 0.0.1. This role is somewhat less important now, so he’s being tweaked to be almost more of a secondary jeigan – higher bases to help him leverage his strength early, lower growths that will likely lead to him falling off by the end of act 1.

Also, for my light brand lovers out there, terrible news! Not only has the light brand been USURPED by a pretender item, called the flame brand, but it has the GALL to have substantially lower stats! Even worse, your sword units are having their magic stats nerfed because of how consistently they were outclassing Keio at the whole dealing magic damage thing. If this makes you mad, please vote for a magi, warlock, sorceress, or another magical/magic-wielding being in your next local election.

There are other changes planned before the next release – 1-1 is being rewritten to provide a greater introduction to Fane as a character; 1-2 is going to be extended outwards to the east to give more room for less oppressive enemy positioning and to make splitting more of a necessity; there’s going to be some additional art and music that wasn’t in the initial release; the prologue involves two new units, an additional sneak peek into some of the units you’ll be playing around with in the midgame; and finally, even more funny village conversations!

As for when I plan to release this, absolutely no clue. I already massively underestimated the scope of the update earlier, and I’m not going to give an ETA when I so strongly suspect it’ll be wrong. I do plan on having 0.0.2 released before FEE3, though, such that anyone brought in by the game’s showcase will be treated to the best possible version of this build that I can manage for them.

Oh yeah, FEE3! Lady of Masks will be there, as well as a whole lot of myself in the rest of the event as I plan on helping a few close friends with their own showcases, while also serving on the LP committee. For anyone in the devcord who enjoys watching me play hacks, you’ll get quite a dose of that action at this year’s FEE3, so make sure you watch them all

As you may be noticing, that’s a lot of work that isn’t progress on 0.0.2 I just described. Once recording starts in earnest, I may find it quite difficult to find time to make meaningful progress, which is a contributing factor to that “no ETA” decision. I am very excited to be working on FEE3, and also very excited to have my project shown there, but for anybody who I’ve spoken to in the last month where I’ve said to them “don’t play my hack until my cool update comes out bc I don’t like where it is right now,” sorry for the delays!!

Aaaand that’s everything. I was really hoping the next time I’d be posting on this thread would be accompanied with a patch, but unfortunately that hasn’t quite worked out. With any luck, that post will be sooner rather than later. I’m gonna take the chance to shill my development discord again: beyond just talking about the development of the project, we also just have a nice little community forming in there, and it’s a good place to go both for getting updates on the progress of 0.0.2 and also for just hanging out – we frequently stream romhacks and various other strategy games in there and it’s a fun time.

[alexgalaxy335]

I’m definitely gonna play the game!

[Xilirite]

Yes, you definitely are.

[Xilirite]

Alright, the time has finally come: 0.0.2 is here! You can download it here.

Featuring a total stat rebalance, some updates to the script, a revamped item economy, multiple chapter reworks, and more! For a full list of changes, read here!

Being entirely candid, there are a few rough edges in terms of presentation I didn’t bother working to touch up yet. I’m more interested in getting feedback on this version of the game before I move any further. Among them; supports aren’t actually in the game yet, but the correct list of support partners is; some music is still missing; some placeholder assets are still in place; and you can technically load into 1-7, although it’s entirely untested and doesn’t actually have a win condition programmed in yet, so I’d advise against playing it unless you’re just super curious about what early stage chapters look like.

I feel like I should say more, but… it’s all in the changelog I linked, so I guess that’s all. Sorry for the long wait! Hope you enjoy the game, and please leave any feedback you have here or in our discord.

[Pandan]

Congrats on the release! Looking forward to trying this version out and seeing your FEE3 showcase.

[Xilirite]

I’m not gonna be able to update the patch for a few days but before I left I took care of a couple last minute oversights. Please let me know if you encounter anything odd while playing; it’s been a hectic week, and some details may have fallen through the cracks.

Now that this update is out and my involvement with FEE3 is concluded, I’m going to try to complete the remaining act one chapters in a somewhat timely fashion. I’m torn between updating the patch for each new chapter and waiting until I’ve finished the lot of them first, but ideally I’ll be finishing a chapter every couple weeks for the foreseeable future. We’ll see how realistic that goal is once I’m ready to return to work.

[Permafrost]

I just read through the changelog. It looks pretty interesting. I’ll give it a playthrough when I get the time. I have no idea what you could have possibly renamed the Goddess Icons to though.

[Xilirite]

It’s here! The FEE3 showcase is out! Give it a watch if you’re epic

FEE3 2021: Lady Of Masks by Xilirite

[Xilirite]

Putting out a quick update after some 0.0.2 playtesting. Most of the changes are focused on some minor map flow tweaks, unit balance, and some experimental economy changes to try to push a few gameplay concepts.

• Cylean has had her speed slightly increased and has had her starting inventory totally changed. She now comes with a new prf, and her javelin has been replaced with a magic lance. (Don’t get too attached to the PRF, it may end up being removed and added later into the game, but this is a sort of… experimental update )
  
• Vera has had her sword rank increased to C at base, and there’s a new droppable C rank sword for her to play around with early on.
  
• Price has had his sword rank reduced to D at base, and his offenses have been slightly buffed.
• Gregory has had his defense based increased significantly, and Ramm has had his defense growth lowered.
• Malgrave has had his defense and speed growths reduced slightly.
• There are probably other miscellaneous changes I’m forgetting, but are mostly along these lines; trying to focus units into where I want them to be relative to the rest of the cast.
• The 1-3 convoy now drops a Flame Brand in place of a Steel Sword. Price has historically struggled to get experience unless you drop a hefty chunk of change on buying him a Flame Brand before you can even be sure how strong he’ll be with one. Now, he gets a freebie.
• The 1-4 armory has had its contents adjusted; the Slim Sword and Wyrmslayer have been removed, and in its place is a Storm Point and a Quicksilver Sword. The Wyrmslayer was a hard to justify purchase with how strong your archers are, and the Slim Sword… I mean, who’s buying Slim Sword, really?
• Minor script tweaks to 1-5 and 1-6.
• The Tyler1 requant has been removed from the game’s files…

UPDATE: I have literally already removed the Cylean PRF. Experiment complete

[Xilirite]

It’s been a while, huh?

So, 1-7 and 1-8 are both just about done and are ready to go public. I’ve been struggling to get them feeling juuust right, but after multiple months of fiddling with it I’m just hitting diminishing returns, so I’m settling for “good enough” instead. This should be out very soon, as all that remains is to finish one of the portraits (or, worst case scenario, release with a WIP portrait instead) and do the text insertion.

The actual work I did

After a brief time skip, the resistance has expanded into a slightly larger operation, with a tip from your network of informants kicking off the hunt for Karth in earnest. The first map is a combination kill boss / escape map, with a new recruitable locktouch pirate who’ll help you to secure intel on where Karth is.

The second is a confrontation with Janus, running concurrent with an objective to escort a caravan to safety as you flee from your hideout in the city, where you can recruit a lance user with very high speed, as well as find your first promotion items – a Holy Seal, used to promote one of your healers, and a Master Seal, which can be used on, of course, anybody you like.

I’m also going to be releasing this patch with another pass over the script, this time primarily adjusting a few scenes that drag on too long, like parts of 1-2, 1-4, and 1-6, while also adding a few new talk conversations to the game and adjusting some character relations now that more parts of act 2 are written and certain characters have been more fleshed out. A lot of these changes are just to make characters more consistent, especially characters I hadn’t quite figured out yet such as Ramm, with their later appearances, or else they’re to rectify parts of the script that were left somewhat vague (such as the disparity in how Ileana behaves between the prologue and 1-2). Ideally, these changes will trim more of the fat, preventing dialogue from going on for toooo long while also giving it more weight and meaning, especially once the second act starts to really develop the themes at play.

Some bullshit about myself

On a more personal note, sorry I’ve been so busy! I got really into FF14 last month, and that ate up a couple hundred hours of my time (game is good), so I didn’t really spare any time for hacking for a while. I’ve also felt a bit stuck in a rut on some of the assets I’ve been trying to create, especially Scarlet’s portrait, so I really needed a break to clear my head and stop feeling like I was banging my head against the wall getting nothing done. I’ve also been involved in the creation of other projects, as well, which while they don’t take up a ton of my time, they do take up some of my mental / creative bandwidth, so to speak. After my nice refreshing break, I’m feeling pretty energized to get back to work – I just needed time to let the motivation come back and get all the engines revving up again.

One of the things I’m learning is that I’m frequently dramatically underestimating how much time I’m going to spend finishing my chapter playtesting process. A lot of the maps I’m designing now how several moving parts, tight timers, and can easily be tipped into being too difficult with minor things like a couple enemies having too strong weapons or a turn having one too many problems to deal with. When I set out to finish a chapter every couple weeks, I did technically succeed – 1-7 and 1-8’s map design and unit placement process were both very quick, and their scripts already exist. However, I didn’t account for the amount of other factors that go into each chapter – playtesting for these chapters is much more time consuming than playtesting for the community projects I’m participating in, as the sandbox is much tighter and the scope of the maps generally much larger.

These maps, in particular, aren’t even particularly complex maps, but they required far more scrutiny than I’d expected, and I found that after intermittently testing each chapter several times, I felt no closer to nailing the feel I was going for each time. This makes it really difficult for me to provide an ETA on the work I do – if I nail the feel the first time through, then all it takes is playtesting to solve the easy parts like difficulty tuning and map pacing. If I miss the mark, then it can require a lot of restructuring to get things where I want them again, and that takes time; time that I can’t always predict will be needed; time that I may not be willing to spend right now. Delays compound into further delays, as the fun part of hacking gets sapped away by the need to redo the same things over and over again to get it right.

The scale of LoM itself, as a project, has steadily increased as well. As of the time I’m writing this, my best estimate is somewhere around the 36 chapter range, with both act 2 and act 3 needing far more time to resolve than I’d initially planned. When I started this, I had only planned it to be 10 chapters, encompassing the hunt for Karth and ending on an open-ended note so I could continue dev if I felt like it. It became very clear that I very much felt like it, but even then I only predicted around 24-26 chapters. By now, what was once going to be the end point for the whole project is now just 1-E, the first of three endgames, barely over a quarter of the way through the hack. I’m not put off from finishing it by that idea, but rather just grappling with trying to find a workflow that allows me to make progress as a steady pace, rather than in fits and spurts, in order to do so comfortably. My workflow when the game was younger and less plotted out was very unhealthy, generally made up of shutting myself in my room for weeks, leaving only to eat meals, mostly ignoring discord messages from friends, and doing nothing but work, finishing several portraits, music pieces, and chapters in just a handful of days before needing months to decompress each time. Now, I’ve found a way to avoid having those manic fits of productivity, but I haven’t found a way to decompress in a more timely fashion in order to keep working consistently.

Part of this stage of development, and why things have been so slow, has been me trying out different ways of approaching those issues and seeing what works. I can officially confirm that dumping 200 hours into an MMO does NOT help your productivity but I can also confirm that hacking hasn’t felt overwhelming for me in a long time so much as it’s just felt somewhat frustrating as I’m reaching a point in a lot of my various skills where I can recognize in deficiencies in my work very easily, but I can’t recognize how to actually fix them, leading to me shelving portraits and music pieces for weeks or months, unable to confront actually finishing them.

If all goes well, this patch should be ready to go before the end of the month. If I fail to reach that deadline, just know that I’m probably wasting my time on a silly MMO and will be back to work before long

[Xilirite]

Hey there! I said it’d be out by the end of the month, and I consider this to be meeting that goal. 0.0.3 is here! With TWO NEW CHAPTERS, the first steps in a major visual overhaul of the game, a slew of balance adjustments, and some small changes to the script, we’re that much closer to the end of act 1!

You’ll be seeing some new item icons, a couple UI tweaks, and a few more palettes added to the game, with the rest hopefully ready in time for the next update: 0.1.0, when we finally finish the first leg of the game and can dig in to the real meat of the story.

Some screenshots:

In the next update, you can look forward to seeing a new stat background, a full set of brand new custom weapon icons, an updated soundtrack, and the conclusion to Fane’s hunt for Lord Karth. Afterwards is the part of the game I’m most excited to show you guys: act 2, and the many, many complications therein. I’m energized, I’m excited, and I’m ready to get right back to work and bang out the last of the work necessary to reach that point… as soon as I get to the end of the FF14 story

A quick but important aside: I have to give a huge shout out to the people in my discord who’ve been keeping me sane and focused as I work on this project. All the little stories and in-jokes we’ve built up through hours upon hours of playtesting, iterating, and retooling have formed the heart of this project for me, and this update goes out to all of y’all ^.^ Thank you so much for keeping me company and providing me with feedback, support, and assistance.

Known Issues

• Scarlet still uses default pirate anims.
• Sometimes, icons will appear on units during prep screens for no reason. I don’t know what causes this.
• Talk conversations will sometimes linger on a black screen; usually, pressing B resolves this.
• With promo items now in the game, you may notice broken palettes, improper master seal availability, or uneven promo gains/caps; I haven’t finalized these things, and a lot of things aren’t where they’re meant to be.
• 1-7 and 1-8 are still using Spirit of Rebellion as their map OST. There is a new song, Old Man’s Legacy, which is meant to replace them, but I have to do some hard drive spelunking on a drive that’s no longer plugged in to do so, and then I have to retool it to make it actually insertable. This will probably just be done alongside the soundtrack rework, where I’m gonna be reorchestrating a few tracks, generally making them a bit quieter and less in your face.

Please let me know, either via Discord or here on the forum, if you encounter any issues not listed here; There’s a lot that can slip through the cracks, so this is likely not an exhaustive list of oversights.