Five years have passed since the War of Heroes concluded. Marth, the Hero King, defeated the Dark Dragon Mediuth, finally putting a decade of warfare to rest. The Seven Kingdoms of Akaneia were unified, and Marth became Emperor of them all. He also married his wife, Sheeda, making her Empress.
However, Marth has been missing for two years, and his united empire is crumbling at the seams. Akaneia is in a civil war, with the sage Marich and the hero Kris struggling for control at every turn. More distant regions dream of freedom, and rebel for independence. All claim loyalty to the absentee Emperor, but ambitious figures are more than willing to prosper from the chaos.
While Akaneia burned, Marth had gotten engaged with Alear, from the far-off Lythos. His former loyalties had been replaced with loyalty to Alear. But engagement wasn’t sufficient: marriage was on the table. Marth and Alear’s wedding day will prove to be fateful…
War of Lovers evolved from my attempted Hack Jam 2 entry. Though the story outline and basic idea of the gameplay was decided, they were completely unplayable and I chose not to enter. The only feature working was the unit randomisation: at certain points, a random unit will join the party. The fact that I failed to finish didn’t sit well with me, as I usually enter hacking contests. With International Hack Release Day rolling around, I decided to take what work I had put in and try to release something. It’s not 100% complete, but there’s enough to have something worth playing.
Features
Six playable chapters
Voice clips
Unit randomisation
Akaneian maps reimagined
Dismount
Unit variety
A close-to-FE1 Falchion
The Wing Spear
The FE3 soundtrack
Marth and Chiki animations
Known Issues
Mage knights, valkyries, and horsemen cannot dismount currently.
The one map with mount restictions temporarily restricts instead of blocking cavalry.
Other dismount issues include lacking animations and retaining mounted ranks.
Jigglypuff’s name is too long for certain menus.
Fixed the Marth animation crash (thanks to Wan and Abzel)
Fixed the Chiki animation errors (thanks to Huichelaar’s animation tool)
Added proper world-map narration in the vein of FE7 (Sme helped)
Fixed several Jam Mode oversights and placeholder text, including a Ch3 crash
Character endings play in Jam Mode’s ending.
v0.2 - Akaneia I: 18/10/2023
Finished the first story arc in Akaneia.
Chapters 5 and 6 added, and writing for Chapter 4 completed.
Replaced the battle frame with one inspired by FE3.
All random characters now have full-screen CGs when recruited.
Voice acting added for Super Smash Bros. characters.
Added “Jam Mode”, which alters the story to follow the plot planned for the
game jam the idea for this hack was first designed for.
Jam Mode ends on Chapter 5: playing on normal mode is recommended.
I’m happy to inform you that I have submitted War of Lovers for this year’s FEE3. My video this year is actually properly edited, as opposed to reading off a powerpoint.
Over the past few weeks, most work has gone into making the trailer. Have a few screenshots.
I’d at least like to get the first act (or a “fully realised Hack Jam 2” variant thereof) finished by FEE3, but I make no promises or guarantees.
This version goes up to Chapter 6, which covers the first story arc, set in Akaneia. Let me know if there are any bugs aside from the known issues, and have fun.
Your Tiki transformation issue seems like a very easy fix. It’s because Myrrh’s sprites for transformation and reverting are still in the game. I didn’t create either of the Tiki sprites you’re using, but I did mash together a transformation sequence between the two. It’s on the repository, feel free to use it. You just have replace the battle animations located at C5 and C6.
I did try to install that animation (your name’s already in the credits), but for whatever reason the buildfile Animation Assembler wouldn’t properly read them.
“ValueError: 23 is not in list” is the error message, but I don’t see any 23s in the scripts.
Really? Huh, that’s odd. I’ve just tried it myself by importing the animations I used in Fall of Thabes and it works absolutely fine. Maybe something went wrong with the upload to the repository. Though the FE1 Demake project used the same animations with no issue from the repository.
If you send me your most up to date version of the game by pm I can import the Tiki animations and send it right back. It’d only take a few minutes. Though I can’t do it literally this second as I don’t have wifi access on my laptop until tonight.
For what it’s worth importing it with FEBuilder works perfectly fine. It’s just the buildfile animation insertion tool is complaining, and since this is a buildfile hack, AA.exe is what I need to use.
There was a fair chance I was thinking of it. I do like my Akaneia, so I might play it one of these days.
Running the build script assembles the rom from scratch every time, meaning any change made in FEBuilder would end up being overwritten. I could in theory use a base rom with the transformation animation already installed instead of a clean rom, but that would be a very messy workaround and one I wouldn’t be willing to use.
How awkward. Well you could make the UPS file from FeBuilderGba for each release with the fixed animation implemented each time, but that would be a tedious process of uploading the file a lot. I wonder why it isn’t working, wether it’s an issue with the transformation mechanic in general or rather there is something specific missing from these specific animation files.
In the end, the problem was Circles’ animation assembler being unable to handle 32-colour animations. Huichelaar made one that can handle 32-colour animations, including your transformation animation. So that problem has been solved, thankfully.
I also decided to record the Chapter 1 opening as a bigger teaser. Here you go.
