Maybe. But I should probably also note that the only really descriptive text on its About page is “Fangames galore”. If you don’t believe me, you can check it out yourself. Once upon a time, “hack” and “fangame” were practically synonymous, but they don’t necessarily have to be that way anymore.
Really? You can’t imagine why at all? SRPG studio is essentially the GBA engine rebuilt but with many more features already implemented, infinitely easier to implement new features, and using an infinitely easier-to-read, easier-to-debug, and more supported language.
Don’t get me wrong. I 100% get why people hack rather than use SRPG studio, it has to do with the fun of the challenge. There’s something inherently cool about “hacking” a game, sure. But to say you “can’t imagine why” someone would want to use this clearly superior tool (in terms of technical quality) is extremely silly. I dislike that people are not taking issue with this perspective, especially for the average hacker who shouldn’t be concerned with how much documentation FE8 has or how much work there is left to be done on it and instead just wants to make a cool game. It really shows how little people actually know about SRPG Studio.
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I suppose, but uh… well, lemme just cut to the heart of the matter.
SRPG Studio games generally do not have very good presentation, and I think that’s something that matters a lot to the FE hacking community, especially since the game they’ve been modifying for nearly a decade has really nice looking assets. Comparatively speaking, most SRPG Studio projects give off an unprofessional vibe because of stuff like how menus are animated, the battle animations, and so on and so forth. But you already know this from the survey you conducted a while back.
In regards to what Pwntagonist has just said, I agree for the most part, but the SRPG Studio community needs to do something about its presentation and graphical assets before it attracts more of the FE hacking community’s audience and - therefore - feedback.
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I already acknowledged the struggle with SRPG Studio’s presentation earlier, in case you didn’t read the whole thread from the beginning.
Oh. Oops. Um… Well, in any case, imma roll back into the shadows. rolls away
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Sorry for the double post, but I realized I had more to say.
Pretty much everyone who has seen me lately knows how much I love SRPG Studio. It’s to the point where whenever the engine is on sale, I actively go out of my way to buy it for people. I’ve probably bought it over 20 times by now.
I want to clear up some misconceptions people have about the engine.
First. The assumption that GBAFE is going to surpass SRPG Studio seems… doubtful. To give you an idea, someone has already created an online PvP mode in the style of advance wars using SRPG Studio. You can buy units, deploy them, and the winner is decided based on how many castles you’ve seized. This was accomplished in spite of the fact that the SRPG Studio community is smaller, has far less high level programmers than GBA Fire Emblem, and is gated with a hefty price tag. And this was all accomplished in just the first two years of the engine existing. Programming for the engine is indisputably easier, and has less limitations.
Even me, a lowly programmer who couldn’t get anything besides basic programming done in FE7/FE8, was able to create custom skills, mechanics, and even presentation improvements (60 FPS battle animations via motion interpolation!) with only a few weeks of experience.
I don’t think it’s wrong to hack. It’s free, requires few art assets to look nice, and there is an excitement to breaking open a near two-decade old piece of hardware. Meanwhile, it’s easy to look at SRPG Studio’s $60 price tag, look at the presentation, and dismiss it. For those of you that do, I don’t blame you. However, there is a reason why I champion the engine so much despite having done FE hacking for over a decade.
I think the main thing holding the engine back is just that the base assets and presentation look poor, which is why I created a document detailing my plan to fix the issue. You can find it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dlvVVjVRW0zBI7hnD_bnYnGqprzawvNuf-CggGtu1Gw/edit?usp=sharing
Unfortunately, what Von said earlier is true. I am waiting on some artists of mine to finish working on something.
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This was a really interesting read, and I agree with basically everyone here (even as someone without FE8 hacking experience).
As far as my own project is concerned, I can understand why it’s received a lukewarm reception. It was first presented by a no-namer at an awkward stage of development (about 2/3s complete). Too long for people to have a quick try, but not worth committing to since it’s almost complete. As well as being recent and the apparent bias against SRPG Studio projects, it’s hardly surprising that it’s not the most popular thing around.
I completely agree that SRPG Studio is generally less aesthetically pleasing than FE8. I’m not going to pretend to disagree with this. But dismissing a game entirely because of this does seem a little biased, in my opinion. Of course, creating new high-quality assets will help, but this is something that will take time.
One thing I’d like to suggest is not to get too caught up on publicity. Of course, it’s great to have other people enjoy what you’ve been working on. But the main reason you’re making your game should be because you enjoy doing it, not because you’re desperately trying to make the next biggest thing. Make your game for yourself first.
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I agree with Robinco. I theorize that no project ever gets finished out of a desire to be noticed. There were many reasons why my GBA FE project, Chronicles of Lussaria, failed. But one of them was partly because after I had garnered so much attention and praise, I sort of had all this pressure I didn’t like dealing with. I had to meet people’s expectations now. The initial high of getting all that attention died out pretty quickly and I soon realized that I didn’t have any ideas or inspiration, and didn’t enjoy the process of making a hack as much as I used to.
I can get why you’d be bothered that people are judging SRPG Studio games by their looks, but… consider this for a moment. We live in a world of scarcity. Time is scarce. Money is scarce. People want to feel like they’ve spent their time well. You do not always have the luxury to play every game you find on the internet, or to carefully consider what games are worth playing, so you have to narrow down which ones may be worth your time based on the initial information the game presents. Often, presentation plays a big role in determining if a game “looks” good enough to be worth playing. It’s why the FE game people hack so much has good looking assets to begin with. Nintendo knew people wouldn’t wanna play a game that didn’t look good.
So with that in mind, if someone sees a shiny new FE hack with all these lovely looking screenshots, and then they look at an SRPG Studio project with the base assets, which one do you think is the safer bet to spend time on? Even if the SRPGS game has the best gameplay in the world, you can’t “see” that on the first glance, and not knowing that means you only have screenshots to work off of. Heck, this applies even when you compare FE Hacks to each other. People are going to play the ones that change the base assets (especially portraits) because good presentation suggests they put in the effort to make a fun game.
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I suppose in that case I’m just an exception to the rule. I’ve never really cared about graphics when looking for games to play in any case and have only just started to feel pressure to fix mine’s because of this trend.
Then again, I’m also the kind of person who finds Final Fantasy VII’s blocky, low-poly field models more charming than Final Fantasy VI’s sprites, so what the heck do I know, I guess.
I mean I was talking about myself “personally.”
To each their own by all means, but I’m just stating a bit of why I work with GBA over anything else. And saying SRPG studio is a “clearly superior tool” seems based in subjectivity.
What kinds of major advantages? I came into the community as a dumbass knowing next to nothing and made thumb the first language I learned. Anyone can pick up hacking for free: be it with buildfiles or Builder. I also don’t see how hacking has a higher “barrier” when SRPG has its hefty price tag.
No offense to anyone who uses SRPG studio, but this community is mostly hacking-focused, and it wouldn’t be easy to change that. Hackers normally don’t charge or pay money for tools and put in tremendous work into projects. I’m afraid SRPG studio projects seem like they paid their way to the finish line which doesn’t come off well. I’m not super familiar with SRPG, but that’s how it’s seemed to me.
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Alrighty this definitely went a direction I didn’t expect so I’m gonna say a couple things then scroll and reply/add to things I see
First off, NONE of the original post was meant as a diss against SRPG studio. I absolutely have more experience with ROMHacks, but I think the engine is a fantastic way to continue growing the fan game community. I’m aware of the growing efforts to improve the visuals of that. Frankly, the bigger issue I thought off when talking about aesthetics were maps, specifically tile-spammy ones in GBAFE. But I digress.
Gameplay is King.
Yes, but other things still hold importance. Visual novels wouldn’t be a gaming genre at all if EVERYBODY was a gameplay > writing person. Yeah, this is FE, and it’s a more gameplay-driven experience, but there are still people who are in it for the story so it can’t be completely ignored. Plus, if your promo screenshots look terrible or your introduction to your hack doesn’t intrigue people, most won’t make it to the gameplay to assess it.
Well, this post seems to be devoted to FEGBA hacking, not FE fangame making in general.
No? Just because your fangame is in a new engine doesn’t mean you can coast slacking off on the things I talk about. Maybe the “continued attention” I reference isn’t as necessary in an SRPG studio game, but then again, I get the feeling there’s still good reason to rope in artists/musicians to help out.
I am sick of all the people saying to stick to vanilla as much as possible, going out on your own ideas is a good thing in my eyes instead of a bad thing.
Yes and no. Similar to gimmicks, changing things pointlessly comes across at pointless gimmicky and a lot of people will look at it and laugh. Changing vanilla class names without good reason, for example. If you’ve changed/rebalanced classes, go ham. Vanilla class names don’t make sense, but it’s what all of us are used to. We know what they do. Or changing certain item names for no real reason. While these can make your hack feel “fresh,” sure, they also make it feel more foreign, which can be a HUGE turn-off for many players. While this may not be fair, per se, it’s still at hing to keep in mind. While this isn’t a deal-breaker on the surface by any stretch of the imagination, I do think it tends to be why people think this way.
Do what you want with those, there’s nothing tethering you to any game’s standards since you aren’t hacking a game.
These are largely unrelated points. We’ve been pushing the standards of what Fire Emblem “is” in GBAFE just fine. Vision Quest, while structurally similar to a vanilla FE game, plays so very differently. Branching out in terms of what you can do within the game while still keeping that Fire Emblem “feel” is what makes VQ so great, and similar to what I said before, that “new familiarity” is what a lot of people love. SRPG and other engines will inherently feel foreign. They have all the “new” with none of the “familiarity.” This isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but it can explain why many people are turned off from them. Just throwing out ideas.
Gonna kinda gloss over some things here because I know I’ll end up repeating myself later
The main issue I have is that people undersell the engine’s benefits due to the graphics, when SRPG already has a lot of features GBAFE already has, and a lot more versatility in some features.
Even many SRPG projects use FE8 terms and design principles, for that matter.
This right here is part of the issue. Branch out. Find something new and unique to do with it that still plays as a fun game. If you have the versatility, find ways to use it in an interesting way. Part of why I love working on Avenir is because it’s very distinctly Fire Emblem, yet there is so much about it that is different. Maybe it pushes the “new” too much. That’s not a complaint we’ve received but I could see how we would. Problem is, you’re not going to be able to make an SRPG game feel as familiar as an FE8 Hack no matter how much you try. You can’t even make FEXNA games that “feel” like an FE8 hack.
I disagree - I think the reason FE8 is so standard is because you can do so much with it.
Even on the technical side this is more true than people give it credit for. Snek has yet to struggle with a single whacky idea I’ve thrown his way, ranging from “can we make this green unit get exp since he won’t be recruited until late in the chapter” (which was surprisingly easy) to “hey let’s make spellswords only able to use magic on THEIR turn, and thus, can only counter with swords on enemy phase.” I think the reason so many people don’t move over to SRPG is because we have yet to truly hit the limit with FE8. You can’t expect someone to move on from their current engine, whether creating OR playing, when they still have so much to expand upon within it. This is another thing that impacts the spread of SRPG studio, honestly. It’s the foreignness again, which isn’t something you’re gonna be able to fight against.
Like I said, trends can change. SRPG studio feels new so it’s only a matter of time until there is a high profile project that draws people in and that inspires more people to use it.
This this this. The FEHacking community has had YEARS to solidify their roots as what they are. Even though, as Von points out, the description is as a fan game community, I doubt that’s been updated in awhile and likely refers to FEXP/FEXNA specifically. SRPG Studio’s time will come, I’m sure of it.
Working with the challenge of a pre-assembled ROM is part of the fun, and I feel that our only limitations are those of the machine itself (and the work we’re willing to put in of course).
As I said previously, we still have no idea what the limitations of GBAFE are beyond a few things to do with size and memory bytes, and most of those aren’t limiting to the point of preventing you from making a large game.
So another issue is a lack of distinguishing gameplay features from FE8 hacks? I suppose there’s not much to be done about that other than continuing to play up crazy technical stuff that can be done with the engine.
Yes and no, I think. Again, the beauty of FEHacks and even FEXNA/FEXP-based fan games is the “new familiarity” (sometimes without the new). There’s no reason, if the SRPG engine is as advanced as I’m understanding it to be, to just make basic FE-type games. Push the limits, see what cool things you can cook up. But the design philosophy of making gimmicks work in context still stands, so don’t go too overboard without precise playtesting.
I agree that a big project would be helpful to give more attention to SRPG rather than FE8 hacking.
Not just big. Unique. High-quality. Something to show just the extent of the engine, and what sets it apart from what’s possible within FE8. I figure this is kind of what you mean by big, but just to reinforce the point lol.
Oh, I believe that the risk is that the hack may garner less attention, like the original post was talking about. From what I’ve seen, non-FE8 projects tend to be a lot less exposed than FE8 ones since SRPG and other FEs hacks are less popular.
I would agree with this, SRPG studio games do tend to get less exposure, but I would argue fan games (be they hacks or otherwise) are ALL getting less exposure these days. There’s a huge number out there now, thanks to things like FEB and SRPG, that make it hard for EVERYONE to get more exposure. Honestly, had SRPG studio come out prior to FEB, this could be a very different story. It’s fascinating to me how much growth has happened recently, but how much division has accompanied it (a discussion for another time, however)
Basically, any well-made FE hack/clone should have a chance to get the recognition it deserves regardless of the engine it’s made in.
Frankly, hard disagree. Sure, I made this post at the top, and those are all just tips, but NOTHING deserves ANYTHING here. People are free to play what they want and make what they want. I’m getting to Marc’s posts soon, but I have to agree that if you’re making your game for the attention, you’re doing it wrong. Getting the attention comes after. Make it for yourself, then shiny it up for the attention, but never EVER set your expectations high. It’s tough to get feedback on SRPG studio games, and that really sucks, but there’s no easy answer. This is a Fire Emblem community though and SRPG, while very similar, is still distinctly foreign which will turn a lot of people off no matter how you twist it.
Once upon a time, “hack” and “fangame” were practically synonymous, but they don’t necessarily have to be that way anymore.
This is largely due to the fact that all the fan games were FEXP/FEXNA-based, and so still looked like GBAFE and felt fairly similar. I agree with you, they don’t have to stay that way, but it needs to start off right. Make a product that you are truly proud of and that a few other people say is really good, then get people to play it. Just trying to get attention from YouTubers and stuff isn’t the way to go about it. In fact, if you ever got a chance to talk to Chair before his retirement, you’d learn that, sometimes, attention from the YouTubers is exactly what you DON’T want. Ask Arch, for that matter. Just some food for thought. Attention isn’t gonna grow the SRPG community like that.
First. The assumption that GBAFE is going to surpass SRPG Studio seems… doubtful.
I actually find this 100% believable. The engine is 15 years newer and DESIGNED to create things. It’s gonna be more advanced. But if it’s still only used to create things no more special than what we’re doing with ROMHacks as far as games are concerned, those technical advantages are kinda pointless tbh. I’m not gonna deny, I’m EXCITED as all HELL to see some of the things possible with SRPG. But when something looks like it’s just another Fire Emblem-type game with similar mechanics, what’s to encourage me from playing it over a ROMHack? Particularly when I know exactly how to quickly control Fire Emblem, I’m comfortable with the visual style, etc.
One thing I’d like to suggest is not to get too caught up on publicity.
This. I could have phrased this better with the original post, I admit. I made things sound like it’s about attention. You should always ALWAYS make something as a self-fulfillment first, and a thing for publicity second.
I agree with Robinco. I theorize that no project ever gets finished out of a desire to be noticed.
Pretty much everything in Marc’s reply that starts with this is a big ole YES from me. Obviously, the presentation thing is a work in progress, but with the engine still being relatively new, it’ll take time for it’s true flexibility and quality to be embraced. Look at FE Hacks from the EARLY days of hacking. Or even those that tried (and still try) to use the Nightmare/FEditor suite. SRPG’s time will come.
TL;DR
BASICALLY SRPG studio has a lot of strengths. I honestly think the biggest thing that holds them back, outside of the aesthetics, is twofold:
Inherent bias - Most of us are longtime FE fans. The feeling of playing something that is very clearly Fire Emblem but something new? One of the best feelings ever (the first time I got to play the earliest Avenir demo was seriously one of the coolest moments in the last four years of my life because I’d been playing FE8 and FE7 for YEARS and finally saw my own charaters and stories brought to life in the engine I’d grown to love)
Not using what you have - Most SRPG studio games are trying too hard to be Fire Emblem. Embrace what you can do with the program! Blow all our minds away! SRPG studio may be way ahead in what it’s capable of, but I have yet to see an SRPG studio game that actually deviates from standard FE-formula, which is a lot of what the first post of this thread was all about.
ON ANOTHER NOTE
This community has always had an issue of “us vs. them” from what I’ve seen. FEB vs. Buildfile. FE7 vs. FE8. Fan games vs. Romhacks. It’s not worth it for anyone involved. We all LOVE this series of games, and we should all do our part to help everything along. Trying to publicly beg for attention (which I’ve not only seen from SRPG studio creators, frankly) isn’t gonna encourage anyone to try your game out. Providing consistent updates, new attractive shiny thingymabobs, whatever? That’ll get people interested and engaged. Don’t point fingers when somebody doesn’t want to play your game. It’s their life, it’s their time. We shouldn’t try to bridge these gaps by pointing fingers. It won’t solve anything.
Create something. Create something YOU love. If you love it, others will come to love it in time.
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In all aspects besides aesthetics, it’s really not subjective at all. If your goal is to make a fire emblem game and nothing else SRPG Studio is miles better and probably always will be.
Because I know your feelings about reading long posts, as you so kindly stated earlier…
The tool is useless unless people use it to the full extent. A first year musician with no training with a ten thousand dollar instrument will sound worse than a seasoned professional with an 100 dollar instrument. So far, I have yet to see an SRPG studio game that actually utilizes the full extent of what’s said to be possible. Advocating for the tool by bragging about its superiority isn’t gonna win any recognition from hackers. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the product.
Also, Snek called me out, wizards are more aware of what the limitations of GBAFE are than I realized. This is what I get for not staying informed lol.
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My goal is not to brag about SRPG’s superiority, it’s to reduce the amount of misinformation in this thread.
That said, your analogy makes no sense. As you can probably glean from Markyjoe’s post, way more has already been accomplished in SRPG studio in much less time and with much less advanced programmers.
If this alone doesn’t say enough I don’t know what more to say. A “first year musician” accomplished within weeks what took years for “seasoned professionals”, who by the way only make up a microscopic fraction of the hacking community, to do. And the “first year musician” doesn’t “sound” worse by any means, I don’t know where you got that idea.
Again no one is stopping you from hacking GBAFE and it will probably be more popular for a long time, but to say that it’s better is frankly delusional in my opinion.
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Embrace what you can do with the program! Blow all our minds away! SRPG studio may be way ahead in what it’s capable of, but I have yet to see an SRPG studio game that actually deviates from standard FE-formula, which is a lot of what the first post of this thread was all about.
I have seen a few projects at various lengths and stages of completion that do this, such as Aren’s Siege of Lemond and Project Skye, Pike’s online multiplayer thing, and possibly even my own A Dangerous Game. It’s just that almost nobody has bothered to look at them (though to be fair not all of them have forum threads).
Yeah it’s not the only thing that matters, but if the game is not fun to play, good presentation and writing likely will not save it. I have to play the game to see the story, I can skip story to play the game. That’s why I say the gameplay is the most important aspect of a project.
Ultimately though hackers and game makers should focus on building something they enjoy making and playing. The first post has some helpful tips for getting your project noticed (which should really be for getting interested parties to help you improve your game, if you so desire), but this should all come secondary to having a good time building and playing your own work.
I firmly believe that if you are making an FE romhack or SRPG studio game for the sake of notoriety and popularity, you will be disappointed.
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This was an interesting little read.
So I guess I’m in the minority when I say that story > gameplay huh? The only reason I tried hacking at all is because I felt that the Fire Emblem structure has a lot of potential as a medium for storytelling. I’m intrigued by many of the thoughts on this thread nonetheless.
To play devil’s advocate for the sake of discussion. Arguably one of the many potential core factors that makes a Fire Emblem game “fun” for a given person is seeing units that you like wipe the floor with enemies. How the player decides who they “like” is obviously a case by case basis, but there is a definitive non-zero percentage of the playerbase population who judges which characters they like – and simultaneously, which characters they find the most fun to use – by their writing.
If I’m not enjoying the characters of a hack, I’m going to have less fun defeating enemies with them in-game and am less likely to stick with it, regardless of the quality of gameplay. Same goes for the opposite – if I like the characters I’m more compelled to finish the hack even if its gameplay quality isn’t up to par. But maybe that’s just me lmao.
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Why? What has FE structure that others JRPGs do not have?
I fail to see what can be accomplished only in an FE-like game in terms of storytelling.
I don’t see what my statement had to do with other RPGs, but it’s late at night and you got me thinking about it so I’ll try to address your question nonetheless. Truth be told it’s been years since I’ve played JRPGs tho lol.
You’ve got a point – both of these mediums are pretty inclusive towards gameplay and story integration and are able to blend their narrative and mechanics through their own ways. I guess you could argue that “even if the way they do this differently, it still creates the same effect at the end of the day and therefore FE games are no different”… but from my point of view, saying that “FE doesn’t do anything drastically different than other RPGs” is like saying “this bar of gold isn’t worth more than that one”. They’re still bars of gold that have quite a bit of value – both mediums are still very gameplay/story integration-friendly regardless of how they compare to each other.
Though I might be wrong, I don’t think JRPGs are quite as good at conveying larger-scale settings. As an example, how about Asaello’s story in FE4? To recreate it in a JRPG fashion, you would theoretically need…
this is really friggin' long so I'mma folder it to save space
- a way to create a grand scale of setting in the game – a feeling of an enormous war with lots of soldiers. This is difficult to do in a JRPG since the games often focus on small parties of 10 or less people, and rarely, if any, allied mooks seen fighting with the player from a gameplay perspective. I can think of like, Banon from FF6 being an ally who fights with you but examples like him are just one person and not an entire army, and therefore fail to convey this kind of scale through gameplay.
- establishing a power caste system through gameplay where the higher caste can flatten entire armies on their own. Conveying a JRPG army-flattening power in a compelling way would, in theory, require you to show the characters actually flattening an army with it, which leads to another issue of scale when you fight maybe 4-6 enemies per battle. You could do this with a flashy cutscene, which isn’t as compelling gameplay wise since it isn’t really gameplay and story integration… or you could do something like LISA: The Painful’s endgame where you solo waves of soldiers on your own, which could work, but even then that’s like… only about 24 enemies total – is barely anything in a large-scale war involving 1000s of people.
- game design that sufficiently alters the player’s playstyle and strategy regarding a character dependent on which power caste they are in. When you play FE4 you’re going to use your Holy Bloods in a different way than you will with the commoners. In a RPG setting this is conceptually the same – using your stronger characters to wipe the floor while your weaker ones contribute in the few instances where they can – but translating Holy Blood into an RPG setting could lead to your Holy Blood characters soloing enemy hordes and funnelling EXP into your weaker characters, meaning that you don’t need to strategize with your weaker characters at all which is counter-intuitive to the idea of “different strategies per caste”. In FE4 there’s no shared experience so you actively need to work to find ways for Asaello to contribute and gain EXP, otherwise he’s just going to fall behind even moreso than he already is.
I consider all these gameplay elements to be essential in detailing Asaello’s narrative and growth throughout FE4. Is it possible to replicate this in an RPG setting? Yeah, most likely – it’s certainly not impossible. But I don’t think it would be quite as compelling as Asaello turned out to be.
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Of course, and I’m not out to say you can totally ignore story, either. Gameplay can be fantastic, but if the writing is truly awful or offensive, I probably won’t want to bother. The reverse also holds true. Ideally, you have both where one informs the other symbiotically. FE is def a great storytelling medium, but it is also a game that needs to be satisfying to play.