So,
I was wondering - calling the battlepreps is just another event instruction, right?
So, theoretically, would it be doable to have a chapter that has second battlepreps mid-battle?
Basically Scorched Sand from FE8 but you get to choose the other party as well.
I don’t know what it would do to blue units currently on the field but I’ve seen cases where people turn the blue units green and then do a second prep screen for deploying a separate group.
turn the blue units green and then do a second prep screen
This could potentially work, so long as you disable saving during the second preps screen. But if you allow the player to save at second preps, they could save there, then reload that save as a chapter restart, sending them back to first preps but with all the units who turned green wiped from existence
How to disable this saving?
By default tower and ruins disable saving.
I don’t know of anything else.
If you are using the tower/ruins and have enabled saving…
This thread may help… If you can do wizardry [I can’t].
This is the source FEBuilder list for it’s patch to allow saving in the tower.
I don’t see why this process to allow saving couldn’t be reversed to disallow it in chapters that normally allow saving.
I mean I still want it to be possible to save at the chapter start, I just want it so that you can deploy more units once Ephraim’s squad appears.
I don’t think the game is setup to support this, sorry.
I’ve thought on this and I have a few ideas, I’m sorry if they end up being redundant.
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Does the game not prompt a save between queen of white dunes and scorched sand?
If so adding unskipable system message telling the player that they will not be able to save in preps next map at the end of queen of white dunes and/or the start of scorched sand would be the best bet if you are willing to settle for the lack of preps saving.
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Alternatively if using DS style Save Points one could be placed right at the start of the map but then you lose the advantage of preps saving which is changing your preps.
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Another option would be to completely rework the save system but idk if that’s even possible, it might be but I can’t code or anything so I’m clueless on this topic.
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One final option, the radical option that is less radical than changing the whole save system option, I propose would be to split the chapter have Scorched sand 1 which is survive for two turns run the end event on Enemy phase to mirror when the Epharim squad shows up [keep objective display as rout [or whatever you changed it to if you did]] then without save screen load scorched sand 2, this would allow what would appear to be a mid map cutscene,
During this cutscene you could remove the units from the player’s army and add them back afterward using a tun 1 event in scorched sand 1 to set global flags that correspond to each unit to remove the deployed units in the end event by checking if the flags are set, this will make it so those units do not appear in deployment.
Then to deploy the same units on turn 1 of scorched sand 2 have the game check each flag and rejoin that unit as a reinforcement without panning the camera, and if scorched sand 2 is set to not save you would achieve a similar effect to the desired one, although enemy and player placement would be different if justified with the chapter end/start event it could feel alright, however this options appeal depends on how much you want to change the map.
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[also save states I know it’s generally not good to design around them but they do exist]
What I want is for one chapter (Scorched Sand) to have two deployment screens - one when Eirika’s party appears (chapter start) and another when Ephraim’s party appears.
Context: while hacking FE8 I merged both routes into one, larger game.
That would be doable even if a wild fix.
Try using LOMA before the second preparations. That way even if the player saves, it’ll be counted as a different chapter. And if there are problems with units disappearing, try using REMU on them instead, then REVEAL after preparations. I’m not sure if it’ll work, but if you don’t want to do ASM you have to go for solution attempts like this. If it doesn’t work, there’s no avoiding ASM.
REMU then REVEAL could work. The issue with the green units thing is that saving the game during preps doesn’t actually save red and green units, they just get re-loaded when restarting the chapter re-runs the start event, and as soon as you turn player units green they leave the party.
This can just actually work. I’ll have to just do a little switcheroo with the units (but well - I already do!)
Yeah, it worked!
But the saving is very broken this way. Restarting the chapter restarts a different chapter… This could be fixed with another LOMA I guess.
Eh, in general I’ll have to inform the player that saving in the second preps will break the game because there’s no going around it and there’s no patch for temporarily disabling saving.
Apart from this issues, mid-chapter battlepreps seem to work.
Part of the idea with LOMA is that you can prevent this. In the start event of the second chapter (which only plays if you saved on it and restarted) you can change to the first one and redo it properly, as if they restarted on the first chapter.
That said, there is something else you can do. Both preparations can be done back-to-back instead of mid-chapter, with the difference that you’d just disable moving Ephraim’s party until they’re supposed to arrive. You can do this with UNCM (hiding them or making them become greyed out on player phase) and/or Set Unit Status (by inflicting them with sleep/petrify for a duration). This way if they restart on the second preparations, they won’t have to redo turns.