Hello all! My name is Rice. Not really, that’s just what I go by online. I’ve been a massive fan of Fire Emblem ever since I was a little kid, my first FE game was Shadow Dragon. I’ve been in the rom hacking space as a player for about 5 years now, but have never made one myself. I’m looking to change that.
I’ve been writing short stories for a long time though never fan fiction, but I suddenly had an idea after seeing a meme. I want to create a rom hack. Specifically, a fanfic esque hack that follows Leif (from Three Hopes) rebelling against Faerghus and trying to take back the land that was conquered. I’m a huge Three Houses/Hopes fan and was always a little dissapointed at how Sreng was almost totally ignored in the story despite how it plays a similar role in relation to Faerghus that Almyra plays to Leicester. I was originally thinking of making this based on the SNES engine using FE 5 as a base (it’s my favorite one and also because of the very obvious parallels of a prince named Leif trying to reclaim his homeland which was invaded and conquered) but I have never made a rom hack before and don’t know if using the SNES engine would be harder than GBA.
I’m hoping to get some advice on how a total novice like me can make a decent enough rom hack, which engine to use for my idea, and maybe perhaps get in contact with someone who can make portraits and sprites and wants to become my work partner since I’ve always been bad at visual art despite my best efforts. Any help is much appreciated, and I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on my hack concept.
From what I know in bits and pieces, FE5 hacking is extremely painful to do and there’s limited documentation. GBA has the most documentation and support, albeit you’d be losing the Thracian mechanics unless you dig deeper and set up the patches for it.
FEBuilder is the program that I’d highly recommend if you want to delve into GBA development. Ultra created a FAQ for common FEBuilder problems you may find during development. And of course, I would recommend joining the discord server for additional help and whatnot
Welcome fellow newbie. I would also second Hatsuru’s suggestion of using FEBuilder. I’ve personally only been using it a couple days and it’s made creating my own idea for a hack so much eaiser. I’m in a similer boat when it comes to visiuals, so here’s to our mutual growth.
As for your story idea, I think it has potential, there’s a few things in Three Houses that are a bit underdeveloped, but it allows us to fill in the gaps ourselves.
I would further reccomend working based from FE8 as opposed to FE7. It’s commonly considered to be more feature complete, and in my experience is less janky to work with, Rath. >_>
.