[Lex Talionis] Absolution (22 / 32 Chapters)

Hey all! Here’s a tiny little progress report. I’ve realized that if I want to do some of the more wild things I have planned, then I need to begin tinkering with the engine itself. And that’s exactly what I’ve done! I’ve taken the past week to get adjusted to this development change and also better plan out map/objectives and story direction for Act 2, and I’m starting to feel confident enough to move forward with development. Here’s a look at some of the things I’m working on:

Skills for the far future are being written and tested…

Lex_Talionis_2020-03-21_12.17.21.161845 Lex_Talionis_2020-03-21_12.18.08.893918 Lex_Talionis_2020-03-21_12.20.03.903674

…while some old personals are being revised and new ones are being added:

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And I’m giving the bow units combat arts, some of which will be AoE!

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But I’m making use of the engine for more than just skills. Maps and map objectives will also become a bit more unique! Expect to encounter some crazy chapters. And that’s about it for now! Next post will probably be another small progress report or the next version update. As always, thanks for your interest!

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Hey all, it’s been a while! As I anticipated, I’ve been swamped with schoolwork the past several months and haven’t had much time at all to work on Absolution not to mention the burnout after doing so many homeworks, projects, and exams. Sadly this means I don’t have a lot to show you in terms of meaningful progress on Act 2.

However, this doesn’t mean I haven’t worked on the game at all! I’ve done some small cosmetic work in what little spare time I do have, take a look:
Hati (transparent) Malcolm (transparent) Raymond (transparent)
First: Hati, Malcolm, and Raymond have each had a portrait makeover! People mentioned these guys’ portraits needed work, so I went ahead and cleaned them up. I’ll probably refine more portraits as time goes on.

Here's the side-by-side comparisons with the old portraits

Hati Comparison Malcolm Comparison Raymond Comparison

Second: I’ve made a few new songs for the soundtrack! You can find them in the playlist linked in the OP. Some of the scenes in Act 1 will have their music updated with more fitting music as I develop the soundtrack, so look out for that!

Third: One Saturday when I was supposed to be writing a research paper, I became obsessed with adding a certain feature to Absolution…

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…Levelup quotes! Now when your units reach 100 experience, they’ll say something based on how good of a levelup they got! Every character has 4 possible quotes they can say. I hope you enjoy seeing all of them in future builds!

Thankfully, the semester is over now except I’m taking a summer class, so I’ll have a lot more time to work on Absolution. I hope to have a major release with new chapters and a tweaked Act 1 out sometime in the coming weeks (if FEE3 is still on this year, I’ll try and release it for that). Thanks for reading this long update post, I appreciate it!

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Version v0.1.9.5 is live! It contains a slightly revised Act 1, which I decided to release as I worked on Act 2. Here’s the big changes:

  • Enemy AI is now on the whole more aggressive, which means more enemies will charge at you as you approach. This was done to shift the game’s focus away from enemy phase to player phase.
  • More portrait makeovers! This time, Bennett, Evelyn, Lakshmi, and Trudy have all gotten a glow-up!
    Bennett Comparison Evelyn Comparison Lakshmi Comparison Rhapsody Comparison Trudy Comparison
  • I’ve added a Tellius-Style skill system to the engine! You will now find skill scrolls throughout the game that you can use in the Base menu to teach skills to your units. You can also remove these skills and set them to other units at will. In general these skills will be much less impactful than personal skills and mainly serve to add just a smidge of customization to your units. Some treasures in a few chapters have been changed to give scrolls rather than what they did before.
    Lex_Talionis_2020-07-02_20.41.24.855433 Lex_Talionis_2020-07-02_20.41.44.094793
Other Changes
  • Base experience gain has been slightly decreased to get the player to be more in-line with where I want them level-wise at the end of Act 1.
  • The Boss of chapter 5 will now move on turn 10. Speaking of chapter 5, the mages will now receive Defense/Resistance +4 buffs instead of +2. The boss also receives double the bonuses as her underlings.
  • Combat arts now charge by 10 points each round of combat instead of by the unit’s Skill stat. This was done so that you couldn’t charge them ridiculously fast in the upcoming mid-game (and eventually end-game). However, this does mean they are easier to charge in the early-game because most unit’s do not have 10 skill early on. As such, most combat arts have had their charge times increased.
  • Supports are now easier to get. If two units can support and they are alive at the end of a chapter they will receive a good amount of support points. If you want to access them faster, you’ll need to have them initiate combat while adjacent to one another. Speaking of supports, Myrtle/Samantha C and Myrtle/Zahir C supports have been added.
  • Bennett now starts with a Moonshock tome in his inventory as the one given by the chapter 4 village has been replaced by a new reward.

And that’s it for this update! For now it’s back to work on Act 2. As always, thanks for checking out the game!

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Hey all! Here’s a little progress update to show a bit of what’s in store for the next big release. I’ve got a whole lot of stuff cooking in the oven and I can’t wait to show it once it’s finished! For now, though, I thought I’d give a little preview. In no particular order, we have…

New Chapters!

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That’s a big one
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Escort quests!?
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Who the heck are these clowns?
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Talking? In my Fire Emblem?

I’m continuing the Absolution tradition of experimenting with map design and objectives!

New Friends! New Magic!

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Friends are nice.

New Skills!

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Expect to see more skill scrolls that you can use in base! And lastly…

Xenoblade?
Xenoblade
This’ll leave a mark!

I’d also like to mention that I’ve submitted Absolution for FEE3 this year! I hope to have all of this stuff released in a proper version update when the event is going on. Until then this thread will probably go dark as I crank out all the work that needs to be done. Thanks as always for taking a look!

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@ZessDynamite hay there, i got in touch with the maker of the engine that runs your fire emblem mod like a month or two ago, and today i asked him about adding a command option for the ally (green) units (like in path of radiance for the yellow (partner) units).
and i was wondering if you would be able to help me on this, would you please?
i don’t plan on releasing anything, just for personal offline use. but if i were to share, it would be on youtube and i would give credit to you for it. but for the commands, i was thinking the commands could be :Attack (when in a certain range), persue (charge at the beginning), heal (to the units that are able for the main character, i’m the type of player that likes only one blue unit on the field, easier to keep track of so only one blue unit to heal), defend (rally/ surrounding me/main character/the blue unit), and support (so like using rescue to bring me froma dangerous spot, or barrier, or any sort of boost from like a staff)… i only ask because rainlash (creator of lex talionis) that you did something similar to what i would like, for a tile that the player could visit to activate. (but for this, ithink it would be better as a skill, an item would still be better then a tile)

Hi! You haven’t posted any updates here in awhile so I hope the project isn’t in hiatus or anything. I downloaded this demo the other day out of curiosity upon seeing that the main character was a woman of color and I wasn’t disappointed!
I wanted to wait until I finished the demo to write a comment so here I am. It was a really enjoyable game, gameplay wise. To be honest, I’m used to an emulator (and save states) but this game uses the engine it’s on very well. The base mechanic, skill mechanics, and the fact that I could toggle and highlight specific enemy ranges were all things I enjoyed.
I tried my best to get everything but I can tell I missed a lot of characters. Would you be willing to include a character recruitment guide with the initial download? I’d like to enjoy all of the characters if possible, since I enjoyed everyone I used.
One of the rougher things I noticed while playing is the lack of exp gain (20 exp per kill is a little rough) and either I was really unlucky or the characters have pretty low stat growths. Most of my level ups were either 1 or 2 stat points and it was kind of frustrating at times. It made some levels (like chapter 8, which took me at least 5 tries and three days to complete) really hard. Then when I got three new characters at once (Ojala, Hati, and Genevieve) it made the next chapter a lot easier in comparison.
Worldbuilding and plot-wise, I loved this game. The amount of detail that went into the writing was amazing, down to little things like the expressions used by either country being based on the serpent versus the griffon. I loved Val and how compelling she is as a main character. She’s not ‘perfect’ like some fe lords, she has flaws that she recognizes and wants to overcome. I also just generally enjoyed the diversity in the character list! Plenty of female characters not restricted to support classes and plenty of characters of color.
I overall enjoyed this demo and I hope you’re still working on it because I can’t wait to play more of it! It’s the best fe fangame I’ve played and it’s not even complete yet haha. (Plus I’ve been raving about this game to my friends the entire time I played. I can’t stress enough how much I love this game so far.)

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Thanks so much for checking out the project, I’m really glad you enjoyed it so much!
Don’t worry, the project isn’t on hiatus. I just took a break from constant progress updates to focus on actually making the game and preparing it for FEE3.
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Chapters 9x through 14 are essentially complete in terms of gameplay. I’ve just been slowly writing the story scenes as I have time. The next update should coincide with FEE3 and will include all these chapters. I’ll also attach a recruitment guide when that update goes up! If you were curious, there are 4 missable characters in the current version.
I’m sorry you had such a rough time with level ups on your run! Exp gain is definitely limited, but I wouldn’t say growth rates are low (you can check a unit’s growth rates on the info menu by pressing the A button on the stats screen). What I may need to do is adjust some of the chapters to be easier on unlucky players.
Thanks again for the kind words and feedback, I hope you continue to enjoy the project as it updates!

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One of Lex Talionis’s top three projects :open_mouth:

Excitement!

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Hey guys!

Absolution’s FEE3 video is up! TDAWS did a wonderful job let’s playing the project, I hope you enjoy watching the video.

Unfortunately, I haven’t quite finished the update. But it’ll be ready sometime soon :tm: ! Most of the work lately has been writing and implementing cutscenes, so I don’t have too much to show for it. For now, I’ll leave you with these:
Louis Comparison Samantha Comparison Spencer Comparison
With any luck, I’ll be back with an update in not too long! Thanks for being patient if you’ve been looking forward to it all. Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of FEE3!

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Surprise! New release time!

Absolution v0.2.14.1 is now live! What’s different in this build?
E V E R Y T H I N G.
Okay, not literally everything. But, y’know… a lot! Gonna say this up front: your old saves won’t be compatible. Here’s a brief rundown of all the new stuff:

6 New Chapters!

You know, the stuff you really care about! Chapters 10 through 14 have been completed, and I threw a Chapter 9x in there for the heck of it!

Act I Story Second Draft:

I’ve made some tweaks to the story in Act 1 to make it more engaging to follow and make the characters feel more proactive. In particular, the expository info dump at the beginning has been shaved down CONSIDERABLY. (Side note to my fellow FE game creators: chill with the intros. Half the stuff you think the player needs to know about right at the beginning can either be saved for later or removed entirely) In general, dialogue segments in the early game have all been shortened!

Furthermore, in an effort to improve the worldbuilding, several characters and countries have been renamed to fit the culture they belong to! Which brings us to…

Portrait Makeovers and Character Redesigns

Some characters were redesigned to look like they belong to their country of origin. Others just plain look better now! Here’s a taste:
CecilePortrait DayoPortrait IdowuPortrait JeanPortrait RamonPortrait SalvadorPortrait SanitePortrait ZahirPortrait

However, there is one portrait I have to spotlight in particular because it’s just so cool. And it’s this beautiful new portrait of Valentina by the wonderful @Atey!
Valentina (Atey) (Big)
They were so kind to surprise me with this after watching my FEE3 video, and I am still screaming in giddy delight about it to this day! Seriously Atey, thank you so so much!

Revamped Chapters 4 and 6

After playtesting through it again, I found that Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 were the dullest chapters in Act 1, so I redid them from the ground up! Take a look at their new maps, made using Zoramine’s and N426’s fabulous tilesets!
MapSprite_full MapSprite_full

The Forge and The Kitchen

More stuff to do in the base! In the forge, you can craft materials you find into powerful weapons. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to turn that heavy metal into an Armor Slayer, Heavy Spear, Hammer, or… armor-effective crossbow!?
Forge Final
Next up is the kitchen! Here you can cook ingredients you find throughout the world into food! Cook with one or two items to make a dish! You can give the food you make to your units to grant them a stat boost that lasts for a whole chapter! Be warned though, not every combination of ingredients makes for a delicious treat…

Notes Screen

Inspired by Three Houses and modeled after Runa’s wonderful implementation of it in GBA, it’s the character notes page! It’s a special page where you can see all sorts of info on a unit! I wonder what favorite items do…?
NotesScreenGif2

Weapon Rebalance

All the weapons in the game have been completely rebalanced! In general they were made stronger, so you and the enemy will be doing a bit more damage to each other! Additionally, the way the weapon tiers scale in terms of stats better fits with the growth of your units, so later levels hopefully won’t be too much of a slog!
Also, daggers and knives now apply different debuffs than before, so watch out for that!

More Music!

Well what did you expect? Absolution’s got an all-original soundtrack, of course I gotta keep making more tunes! Here’s a new theme that will play in a couple of the early maps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu3fkKrjIyk

And last, but most certainly not least…
Absolution now has a dedicated Discord Server! Feel free to join if you’re at all interested in the project, or just wanna say hi!

WARNING: There may be bugs galore in this update. Please post them either here or in the bug-reports channel in the Discord! Thanks in advance!

And that’s it for me! Thanks for being so patient guys. I know 6 new chapters in like 10 months is a… slow pace.

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Damn, good job! and glad to see this is still going.

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searching gives another counter to raze the fields.
making it where you dont need to raze all 4 for him to run away.

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Thanks for the bug report! I’ve gone ahead and fixed it in v0.2.14.2, which is now live; you can download in the OP.

v0.2.14.2 also makes the Holy Dagger in the prologue droppable like it was supposed to be. Sorry to anyone who played that chpater and had to slog through defeating the boss without it!

Refer to the section on transfering saves in the OP if you’d like to do that!

not sure if we are suppose to be able to have more then 5 support. shouldnt they be grayed out after getting 5?

Nope! There’s no limit on the number of supports a unit can have.


this causes the game to crash anges and Zahir

Thanks for the report! I looked into it, and this happens because of a silly mistake on my part. It’ll be fixed in the next update.


went from C to A in 1 chapter is that suppose to happen?

No, that’s not intentional. I forgot to set the number of support points needed to unlock some support chains to a number besides 0, so they unlock all at once like that. Thanks for the report!

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Rhapsody and Evelia support has the same error.

edit 1:

Ok i cleared all the way to chapter 14 and cleared that chapter as well. The rebalances you did to equipment and the first 6 chapters were much needed and now the game from there feels balanced compared to last patch.

Last patch it felt like a chore to clear chapter to chapter 5 and chapter 6, I couldnt clear at all.
This patch Chapter 3 to 5 was enjoyable and didnt feel like it needed all turns for chapter 4 to loot and then escape. Chapter 6 was a lot easier to push to get the 3 locations compared to before. Before it felt like it took forever just to make it to one of the 3 capture points and now it feels the right ammount of challenge to reach it. Chapter 7 the chapter where you have save the npcs in 12 turns or you lose full loot is a really challenge. healing them I noticed also doesnt count to full rewards. has to be 12 turn clear. Chapters 8 to 12 keep you on your toes but doesnt toss you anything you cant handle.
Chapter 13 tho, although this could be either I was rng bless or just had 3 promoted units this early, it felt way to easy. I pushed way to easily while grabbing loot. Infact I stalled towards the end to give Iduwo some healing exp for the small damage done to my units. Thats how easy it felt compared to the previous chapters.
Chapter 14, I problaly made it way to easy using up alot of food to get buffs for my more choice units. made it to Johanna in 13 turns and finished her on the 14th turn. meanwhile the bottom crew didnt even get to clear everything up before that happened.

Overall the changes you made is good. The Story of 3 different religions so far is interesting. Also like how everyone on all sides don’t get along with their own personal groups. I look foward to seeing this project finished compared to before where it felt like a slog to get through the chapters in the last patch.

1 other note. I feel mend gives way too much exp. might tone down the cap exp it can give to about 30 or 40. getting a couple of 50+ exp heals was a bit overkill.

now for the troops i used.


A balanced lord gameplay wise. I hope to see her get over her past and the lost of her friends towards the end.


he is a bit slow but otherwise solid. I wouldnt want him as a friend tho because he tries to be too helpful towards others and cant say no.


For someone who a slacker he is pretty speedy of a unit. one of the best units I used. was my mvp most of the times. Promoted him at level 17.


all i did was give this guy a speed wing. dude was doubling a lot of things after that. promoted him at level 16. Forgot what his personality was like. he wasn’t that memorial.


mend is a major life saver in lex talionis games. problaly would of been suffering a lot if it wasnt for mend and its early access. I dont blame her getting upset being the only healer for 6 chapters as it is a lot work and she really cares about her group and is grateful what she does have.


I benched her after Chapter 4 iirc. her personal skill is more for finishing up units and makes her a huge liability for starting up fights when having counterable enemies.


also benched after chapter 4. she is just too glass canon to be of any use and way to low con that she gets slowed down by the lances. really dont like how she too eager for glory of battle either. if it wasnt for that I would tap her because she a really cute redhead.


dude can tank pretty well granted he does get doubled a lot he really doesnt take that much damage even while getting doubled thanks to his personal skill. this is a dude i would also consider a bro personality wise.


Solid mage cant exactly 2hko without food but he does a solid job debuffing so others can finish up.
Also like his thirst for knowledge to help others.


he really does a good job stealing and debuffing. I really like how you made theives/spy useful besides stealing. dude a bit too serious for my likes.


really wished I had more unit allowment to use him. he is pretty solid and does pretty good crits but i benched him in favor for other fliers. He wasn’t memorial enough to remember his personallity.


the better of the 2 early flyers. a bit slow but strong enough to deal with most problems a flyer needs to deal with. was really helpful in the escort the wagons chapter as he flew around 1 shotting all the Troubours with the Zan. A bit overprotective of his few friends tho imo.
his battle animations do feel a bit wonky.


a little weak on the offensive side but pretty solid at weakening or finishing off units.

I also tried Dayo and wish I also had the unit slots to use him to end game he is pretty solid for the 2 chapters I did use him.


his extra range is really useful. really sucks he cant use mend staff. really should give the player another saint icon soon imo it should be earlier then getting it in chapter 15+. 2 healers is enough to allow split pushing. I would also love to swap recipes with him.


the better replacement for Lakshmi. Lakshmi is just way to slow to be useful imo mine got hella rng screwed and got very little speed.

Ojala is just superior in every way and really encourages in keeping her weapons at low supply for that extra oomph which really helps her to 2hko a lot of mobs.
if my Lakshmi didnt get speed screwed I would of used her more.

I can feel the rng screwage here. benched due to rng.


Her personal skill is great. had plenty of times in chapters 10 to 14 where she got to +4 of those stats and once +8. very solid sword users. a bit rough of an early game tho.

Nadia is super useful more so if you can prevent anyone from meleeing her thanks to the wonderful personal skill you gave her. dancing has always been useful and you made her very useful with an agressive playstyle.

I wish I could of benched femi on his forced chapter. He felt like a huge liability for slight buff boosts in a small area. Protecting him is pretty hard.


her personal skill is more useful then her combat skills but she does hit pretty hard even tho she is slow and can take some hits.

her personallity a bit too dank for me tho. for once I would love a cheerful dark user besides canas.

I would of used Hati, Sanite, Mitzi, Rhaspody, Mackenzine as they all look solid but due to lack of unit slots and i already had a too many sword users to use both hati and Rhaspody they got the boot.
the other 3 were just due to lack of unit placements and I was using my most rng blessed units at that point.

Storywise I give this hack an 8/10.
Gameplay I also give an 8/10. before it was about a 3/10.
OST is also an 8/10.
Animations I would give a 6/10 there way too many of them that are a bit wonky imo.
spirtes I would give a 9/10.

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