Flames of Freedom 4/21 Update! Act 1 Final Version!

Alright, so some of you may know that for a while now, I’ve been making a FE8 hack called Flames of Freedom. It’s been in the works for a while now, with me dipping in and out of development to focus on school. Thank you to all the people who tested and gave me feedback for the train wreck that was some of my first builds. Namely, thank you to Fatih for pointing out all the flaws, I’m eternally grateful for learning that I had to get better. Now, I present Act 1 of my game. While this is my first hack that I ever started, I think it’s pretty good, although that’s for you to judge. If you want to play it, here’s the download. If you to talk about it or talk to be, you can message me via FEU or Discord, which I will have a link to my server.
Goodbye for now, and may the Flames of Freedom keep burning bright.

Screenshots

Download:https://drive.google.com/open?id=17-9btC_LOW7ou-taSW3KdySpUqsRt7RP
Discord:https://discord.gg/nacvPDS

2 Likes

Hey! I played your hack and I mostly enjoyed it. The plot wasn’t THAT spectacular, but I liked all the characters!
Except Colt. F*ck Colt.
Joshua the blind swordsman felt particularly interesting. I’d like to know how he lost sight of his goals :p.
However, there a lot of heavy flaws. I was writing them down in a document, and I’ll leave them sorted down here, but be warned, it’s a long post.
Despite anything I say here, please keep in mind that I enjoyed the hack, so don’t take everything too seriously. The maps were pretty fun. Anyway, here we go.

General stuff that should be improved or fixed
  • The health bar in combat is broken, for some reason. I’d recommend you check if there is something wrong with it in the patches section.
  • Trying to open the guide straight-up crashes the game.
  • There are small formatting issues with some of the conversations. Case in point:
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_26
    The dialogue cuts because you put too much. It would be way better like this:
    “Alright, sorry if I touched a nerve.
    It was nice to have a talk.[A]
    Let’s get back to the fight![A]”
  • The activated skills still use the default animations, which really sucks. There are a lot of cool skill activation anims in the repository, I’d recommend you use these. This isn’t really noticeable in the current patch (Only one or two archers can use them at this point), but still.
  • Cid’s basic battle palette looks pretty weird. Now, battle palettes are pretty hard to do, but I think at least the hair would look way better if you swap the lime green with the slightly darker green shade that is used in other parts of the hair. Try pasting this in the wanderer palette!
    5553007EFF6B1F4B2E190041E84200028019007E605D60594051E0388024A514
    It would look like this:
    Character Palette Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom.gba_123@7C Cid-Wan______0121B4AC (Not perfect but a little better.)
  • The font used in things like the intro screen or the “End of Act 1” background looks, frankly, really bad. I think you should switch it.
Prologue: "If my health is low I get Ultra Instinct!"

Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_01

  • Oh my god.
    This is the first line of dialogue and there’s already a typo (.-.). It should say “Undisturbed”. I know FEBuilder doesn’t have a spell-checker, so it’s really make mistakes like this when yore writhing rely fasst (I have made mistakes like this. “Theyprobably”, “beacause” and “renamaed”, from several chapters of Code of the Black Knights, comes to mind.) But you still need to be really careful.
  • The overall map layout is well designed. The woods are a viable option, but you cannot use them without aggroing the archers, which means you have to make a conscious choice. However, the village at the top gives you an iron sword to “speed up the process”. An iron sword that is less powerful, less accurate and infinitely less durable than the basic wooden sword (Wait what?). I mean, It’s not useless, You CAN use it, but…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2weNM4JtME
    It would be much better if it gave, for example, a steel sword, or if that’s too much for the first chapter, then a healing item. There’s plenty of chances to acquire iron swords later on.
  • There is no music for when the chapter ends, leading to the game playing “Near victory” for the entire end event.
Chapter 1: "I don't see the problem here."

Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_02

  • Being able to steal items from enemy tents is a great idea! The implementation itself, however, is not that great. Whenever you attack the tent, its animation quickly switches to pontifex. There is a way to change that from class editor.
  • Also, the bit above with no messages for this menu item? It displays for all enemies in the map.
  • Gallius palette looks like it need some serious improvements. If you’re having trouble figuring the color arrangement, then maybe you should just use Gilliam’s pallette.
  • This is a minor issue, but wasn’t there already a swordmaster named Joshua in FE8?
  • I really liked the bit where everyone is thinking about Cid, and then Gallius goes like “I just want my payment”. It was honestly pretty funny. In the good sense.
  • Now, about tabantha. Oh boi. She’s really overpowered. How much? She’s a dancer who has access to The. Entire. Magic. Triangle. Plus staves and swords. Her growths aren’t spectacular, but she has more speed and strength than the Jagen Swordmaster. Yes. She has higher bases than the Jagen. And if that’s not enough, she’s the only healer in the entire cast, and she can refresh units on top of that. There is nothing she can’t do. She utterly destroys the arena in battle preparations, especially if you have Rally Strength from Cid. No other unit can compare. (Also: Critting with magic at melee range results in a softlock.)
  • Also, some typos and a broken minimugFire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_07 :Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_04 Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_05
    (Uncaring, Separated.)
Chapter 2: "SUSAN GET BACK THIS INSTANT!" *Thanos snap*
  • The entire beginning narration is obscured by a fade to black event you forgot to lift .-.
  • The event breaks completely after the girl’s mother calls her back home. The sprites then break apart like some sort of creepypasta, and then the game crashes. The only way around it is by skipping the start event entirely. This also happened to me while Code of the Black Knights was in early development, but I don’t remember how I fixed it. Sorry :,v.
  • Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_08
    The objective text is messed up. It would probably be fixed if it was “Rout Monsters” instead, since it’s shorter.
  • Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_09
    Unless Cid is secretly some sort of hawk laguz, I think you meant “Pray”.
  • Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_10
    This happens for about a split-second. You forgot to close the brackets D:
  • Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_11
    Same as above.
Chapter 3: "Why are there so many zombies anyway?"
  • The name “Tabantha” doesn’t fit completely in it’s space during battle preparations. I recommend you install the thin fonts patch, then write like this: [_T][_a][_b]… It should make everything cleaner.
  • The fog wasn’t particularly annoying, but you have no way to counter it. A torch would have been nice.
  • It’s an escape map but, really, there is not much to run away from. The monsters aren’t that hard to beat, and there’s nothing in particular chasing you.
    Finally typos:
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_13
    “Weary” means tired. “Wary” means vigilant.
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_12
    In this case, it’s route.
Chapter 4: "The A**hole Pirates."
  • The chapter took a lot of inspiration from the Fargus chapter from FE7, it’s well designed, and that’s pretty cool. Colt’s music theme, however, isn’t. It’s horrible. It’s not even set up to loop when it ends. Sorry, but someone has to say it.
  • I can’t say much about the mage because he was killed before I recruited him, which is definitely my bad XD. However, the fact that he gets doubled by mercenaries is worrying.
  • The typos:Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_15 Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_16
Chapter 4x: "In which Joshua keeps an eye out on his friends."
  • I think there were no typos here! I actually enjoyed this chapter a lot, despite a very serious design flaw. Going into Joshua’s past before he joined the mercenaries is a cool idea. I really want to know what caused him to lose his sight.
  • Sometimes, during the chapter start event the music switches to “Near Victory”, but this bug doesn’t happen always. When it does, however, it results in being unintentionally funny.
  • Going into the inn is straight-up suicide. The enemy troops surround you and you can’t do anything even after the other units spawn. It would be better if it was in a slightly safer place.
  • Also, the person speaking in the inn is always Josh, even if you visit with, for example, Cid. I recommend changing the inn event in case you visit it with Joshua, and a generic conversation for anyone else.
  • The chapter end event music is still “Near Victory”.
  • Finally, there’s the fact that Cid is way stronger in the flashback sequence than he was at the beginning of the game. This is mostly a minor nitpick, but still :confused:
Chapter 5: "The even more A**hole Pirates."
  • There is a bug where you can replicate the items you get at the beginning of the chapter, by suspending and restarting. Several hacks (Mine included) have suffered from it. The best way to fix it is to give the items to you once preparations end, and not before. Another option is to check if the player has X items, and if they do, then don’t give them any more. There is a patch to check for items in inventory.
  • Typos: Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_17
  • This isn’t really a flaw, but Colt is such a horrible person that it loops back to being funny .-.
Chapter 6: "The terribly underplanned trap."
  • Like the other chapter, the narration is obscured by the fade-to-black.
  • This is very small, but I noticed Caroline’s sprite has no blinking frames.
  • The peaks can be improved, but making actually decent peaks requires a LOT of patience, so I understand if you leave it for later.
  • This isn’t a flaw, but I really liked what you did with the daggers. They behave like the throwable knives from Radiant Dawn, even restricted to thieves, with the added property that they’re brave weapons too. It’s quite creative. Anyway, moving on.
  • After a certain amount of turns, the enemies that were hiding suddenly spawn. They do so in player phase, so you do have a good chance to change your strategy. In fact, they spawn with horrible, horrible stats. Woah.
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_19
    One magic. I’m not expecting any 20 mag spooky shamans, but at this point of the game, this just hurts. Just buff these guys already, please.
  • The boss has absolutely no way to counterattack from a distance. I understand he’s a mercenary, but maybe he should have a light brand or a levin sword. He also doesn’t have a boss theme, like many of this hack’s bosses. To assign a boss theme, go to advanced editors -> Boss BGM.
Chapter 6x: "Batoru Purepareshonsu!"
  • Typos: Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_20 Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_21
    (Grateful, Ought.)
Chapter 7: "Where we finally do the thing."
  • The fort could really use some shading. It’s not bad as it is, but the shading would help.
  • The arrow signaling the thief escape point isn’t really necessary, and it’s more misleading than anything else (I thought I could leave there and get a different ending or something :p)
  • The longbow lady is just kind of there. She can be completely avoided and she’s trapped, which is weird. I would recommend having her wait a turn, then giving her a door key and the chance to open a door out of her square if she cannot attack right away.
  • Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_28 The dialogue box automatically skips.
  • Finally typos: Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_23 Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_24 Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom_27
Chapter 7x: "Goodbye JoJo"

I really liked the general theme for the chapter. However, there is a HUGE problem with this chapter.
Before being able to talk to Cid at the end of the chapter, the game checks for ~6 flags that are triggered when you talk to the other guys. However, the flags are only checked when you talk to the characters, and under NO other circumstance. Therefore, if a single unit dies… You get softlocked out of the game. If it wasn’t because this is the last chapter, this would be enormously critical. I literally had to go into FEBuilder to artificially mark the flag in order to be able to progress.
The way I’d handle it would be to have Cid ask you whether or not you’re finished saying goodbye, regardless of the flags.

That’s all for now. Please, don’t let this discourage you from completing the full hack! Everyone makes mistakes, and I tried to highlight them under a funny light rather than as negative criticism. The game does have a lot of potential and the characters were great!

3 Likes

Thank you so much for this, man! O’ll make sure to start patching these right away! Especially thanks on the typos, because I type fast and don’t pay attention. I like reading your bug notes, and in the next update, all of them should be gone! Once again, thank you! If I work hard enough, I may be able to fix them all tomorrow!

2 Likes

Glad to hear that. Good luck!

Ok, so I’ve been working through Act 1, and I do believe that I’ve finished it. Thanks to @Mycahel, I’ve taken care of as many bugs as possible. You can get it from any of the links. Thank you to everyone, and I might take a break for a little bit to finished another project. If I get enough support, I might make Act 2 early. I look forward to any feedback. Thank you all, and may the Flames of Freedom keep burning bright. Oh, and there’s also Discord if you want to talk to me. You can join the server below or message me at Gultykappa #4400
Patch:https://drive.google.com/open?id=17-9btC_LOW7ou-taSW3KdySpUqsRt7RP
Discord:https://discord.gg/nacvPDS

3 Likes

Hello again! My internet was failing again, so I decided to check out this hack again and it certainly looks way more polished. Most of the typos are gone, as well as the most critical problems that prevented progress. The guide segment is also a pretty nice detail. I’m happy to see that much of the feedback was taken into consideration!
Now, this post is going to be a bit shorter than the last, but there are still some things I’d like to point out:

  • Tabantha’s stats were nerfed to the ground, but still has that awesome magic coverage in a more healthy way. I like what you did here. She no longer crashes when critting in melee, but now she crashes when critting at range. The game also freezes if she dodges right after attacking.
  • The soldiers from the port chapter have too little strength. As a result, if they fight Colt, their strength is reduced below zero (Because of Seal Strength), and underflows back to crazy amounts, resulting in this scene:

    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom jojoke 2
    “I am inevitable!”
    “And I am a green unit.”
    Also, some of the typos I found:
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom (1)_01 (No punctuation)
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom (1)_03 (Two for one)
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom (1)_04
    Fire Emblem-Flames of Freedom (1)_09
    (Speaking of the rock slide trap: It is literally impossible to get caught in it. You can have tabantha dance on Joshua or something, and he still won’t be able to get there by turn one. This might be intended so that you let your guard down before they trigger the actual ambush trap though, so it may be fine.)
    As usual, best of luck with the next part!
2 Likes