Gauging Support for a Tutorial Series

Whether I do this or not depends on how much interest there would be out there for something like this, so here I ask for your interest level…

Snek Makes a Chapter in Buildfiles
and More?

To elaborate, I would record myself working with buildfiles, making a real LoA chapter in the process. This could be just recorded and uploaded to Youtube or streamed and uploaded.

I could cover everything necessary for a new chapter and more important stuff:

  • Working with CSVs (focus on the more common ones)
  • Text insertion (maybe or maybe not formatting)
  • Map insertion (maybe or maybe not creation)
  • Essential graphics insertion (portraits, palettes, maybe more)
  • And of course FE8 eventing!
    ** The FE8 event format: Event IDs, memory slots, the event counters, the queue, the event pointer table, and essential codes such as ENDA and memory slot manipulation
    ** Location, turn, misc, traps, character events
    ** Loading units and managing your party
    ** Conversations with the different forms they can take: includes working with backgrounds, no backgrounds, chaining backgrounds and text, TEXTCONT, TEXTSHOW2, proper fading
    ** Other useful miscellaneous codes/macros: cursor flash, camera, ASMC, scripted battles, etc
    ** Other things loseley tied to events such as death quotes, battle quotes, etc
    ** Conditionals (I may put memory slot manipulation in here)

In addition, supplemental videos could be made (to not make one mega massive video covering everything and to help me practice :smirk:):

  • The buildfile format covering all EA codes, MAKEHACK, file management, etc (This would be necessary as a supplemental video: Watch this one before watching me make a chapter)
  • Text formatting: Probably not too extensive, but I’d cover what you’d need to know. The format, loading, moving, and clearing faces, event interrupts, line break and arrow techniques, and especially the textprocess format and how to use it (might be covered in chapter creation main video)
  • Mapping? I’m unsure if I should even cover this or presuppose that you know how to make a map and just pick up at insertion. This is an awfully niched thing, and I know other videos already exist about design, but I could focus on aesthetic? (Relatively low priority this one)
  • ASM no seriously maybe managing installed engine hacks and an overview of how the Skill System works. jumpToHack, basic concepts of assembly, callHack, (lyn?). Probably would avoid actually compiling ASM and ofc writing it and whatnot, but this could serve to show what’s in an installer and how to make sense of it
  • Music insertion? Likely the same deal as maps with presupposing that you have a working .s file. Unsure whether I would do this since it’s so niched (Also low priority)
  • Other graphics: battle animations, map sprites, etc
  • I’m open to suggestions! Lemme know if there’s any interest for something else or if I forgot something

These videos/streams/whatever would be pretty casual: No script, just a clumsy hacker working in buildfiles naturally and talking through what he’s doing in hopes to make a friendly step-by-step guide on how to handle buildfiles effectively. Casual means no pressure, no elitism; I just want to help people understand how these work. I’ll certainly make errors along the way, and that’s the beauty of it. Watch Snek screwing up and fixing errors!

Should I record some and stream the big one? Just record all? Stream all? If I stream, there could be a set time and date, and people could ask questions in Twitch chat in real time, which would be neat. Though again, how much interest is there? Let me know what you think.

I don’t want to step on any toes or do anything wrong here, let me know of any concerns or if I forgot anything. If I do this, I want to do it right. If there isn’t much interest, I won’t do it, but if you would like to see this happen, please let me know!

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This is basically how I did the Event Bootcamp way back in the day, and it seemed to work out well.

Looking forward to it! This would be great to help people to get into the buildfile method.

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Please yes I would love to see this

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Couldn’t hurt. Casualness helps with actually going through with it too.

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Do you intend on doing this soon? My new music installer that allows customization of instrument tables as well as installing songs is almost ready to go and I’d love to slip it into this video (series?) if possible. The only thing I have left to do is make it so samples can be assembled directly from the .wav files instead of the user needing to convert them to raw data first, but I can always just throw some pre-prepared samples from FE12 or whatever at you for the sake of demonstration.

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I’d be open to coordinating that with you yeah. This would probably be a post-FEE3 thing because I’d like to focus on LoA up until then. Plus, doing these at the same time as or around FEE3 would be a lot.

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Event Bootcamp is what really got me to understand how all this stuff works! I think this is a great idea.

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A good up to date thing about events would be a godsend for new hackers. Events aren’t really that hard once you get into them, but having an explanation and some examples of best practices would be great.

What if you show people how to edit skills in the skill system? Nothing so complicated as ‘make a new skill that requires a new hook’, but show people how easy it is to tweak numbers in skills, or do other small edits. I think something like that could make people more willing to customize skills, since in the vast majority of cases it’s really not hard (but people hear ‘asm’ and run away).

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Yeah that’d be good. To elaborate on what covering the Skill System would be would include editing numbers, editing description, editing icons, skill lists, class skills, and also just kinda the organization of it. It looks pretty daunting when you see it without experience, but I hope to clear up what everything does and what one should focus on for making simple edits.

(Also added misc graphics to supplementals like battle animations and map sprites because I completely forgot about those.)

This is a great initiative. Think it’s worth doing if you can swing it.

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This is a fantastic idea and I’m wholly in support of it. A lot of people follow videos way more easily than they’d be able to follow a text tutorial.

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Seeing someone else do it from scratch is a great way for others to learn and follow along. I think a lot of people are intimidated by buildfiles for various reasons and this would be a great way to make them more accessible.

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I for one would be very interested.

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so is this going to be a thing or…

The plan is for it to begin maybe 2ish weeks or so after FEE3 after that hype dies down. There’s no specific timeframe yet, but it will take place in the near future.

I’ve been thinking about how I want to split this up and what I want to cover:

  • Prologue - Buildfile Basics: This will be an introductory segment that will almost certainly be a pre-recorded video (not a stream).
    • Benefits of buildfiles/What is a buildfile?
    • Obligatory String("Hello, world!")
    • Data types and pointers
    • ORG/PUSH/POP
    • #include suite (including #inc[t]ext rip #runext)
    • #define (definitions and macros)
    • Organization tips and MAKEHACK
    • Miscellaneous (Scopes, other helpful commands like MESSAGE, ASSERT, and PROTECT)
    • I’m probably forgetting something important since this all isn’t totally off the top of my head
  • Text insertion (Gonna omit details on the rest since I haven’t really thought too hard about those yet)
  • CSV tables
  • Graphics (This would be a really big one. I’d hope to cover all the big stuff like battle animations, portraits, map sprites, palettes, spells, etc. I may or may not split this up. I may stream the whole thing as one for ease of viewer access then release videos split up for organization’s sake.)
  • Map insertion
  • Music insertion (Hype for @Alusq’s thing. I’m still open to incorporating your new system.)
  • Handling (not writing yet) basic ASM and a tour of the Skill System
  • Eventing (This would be really big. This may only be in the “I stream me making a chapter”, or I could have that in addition to a more tutorial-focused “How to event and what the codes are” precursor)

I’m still open to suggestions!

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As someone who is interested in getting into FE hacking, but is both alone and unfamiliar with all but the most basic principles, literally any amount of documentation or tutorial would be super helpful.

Of course, being so unfamiliar means I don’t really have any informed suggestions to make.

Looks super comprehensive!

I agree eventing is huge and could probably be its own separate tutorial in a similar format. I would argue that in the context of buildfiles, I’d focus on basic event structure and how the buildfile works with events, versus getting into the nitty gritty of events themselves.

As someone who attempted buildfiles a while back and ultimately built something, I found eventing much more intuitive than understanding how buildfiles uses event files. But I may be alone!

Let me know how I can help / support.

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I remember that, heh heh.

Honestly, I would put eventing before ASM and skill system stuff. I feel that a lot more people would be interested in making chapters to use their ASM in. And in my experience, a bit of event terminology and basics helped me understand a bit of ASM stuff.

ALSO!!! Honestly elaborating a bit more of EA stuff like creating custom macros and stuff, I feel, will be pretty beneficial for making people begin to use EA a lot more when it comes to inserting stuff via macros instead of tables. A lot of people don’t like tables and having a tutorial capitalize on the strengths of EA will make n00b hacking a lot more approachable imo. (sorry if i just kinda rambled on and made no sense i just thought of this 2 minutes ago)

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