Parallel Emblem ~ Twist and Étoiles Tale - WIP Part 1 completed

Hello everyone,
Retro here. I have a little update.
Over the last month we started to rebuilt the entire hack. The reason for this was the Skill System we used in the earlier versions. It turned out that it was the oldest version you could possible get and I still don’t know how but it got installed before we started creating the project. There was no way to uninstall it otherwise. And it was the reason for a ton of bugs so it had to be gone.

The rebuilding process is nearly done plus edits we did to the earlier chapters.
Before we release a new version however we wanna change some numbers/rebalance the enemies to make them more challenging. So the new version won’t contain completly new chapters but there will be changes in every chapter that’s already been released.

I can’t name a certain date when the next patch will be released but if everything wents well it should be in april.

Have a good day.
We’ll read us later ^^

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Hello everyone!
The Rebuilding Process (Or at least the majority of it) is finally finished and a new version is now released.

You can get it here on our Discord

https://discord.gg/mBJpmqmNUP

The first eight chapters have been edited. The final adjustments were mostly balancing the enemy unit levels. But we decided that the chapter that would be the next one needs a complete restart because I personally felt it was not fun and after so much time it took up, I realized this would not work anymore. It was supposed to be a stealth chapter where you hunt down a boss and depending if he escapes or is defeated you would get different results. In other words, it will be something different.

After a long time without anything new I wanted to show the stuff that we managed to finish since. There are no entirely new chapters but those who have been there since the first demo back in November last year play different now. Some more, some less.

We do have some plans for improving the beginning chapters again in the future based on the feedback we got. Some of these changes should be bigger than what we did during the rebuilding process. But for now I want to do one thing more than anything else: continuing with the game. I fear that if I don’t do something new soon I’ll keep trying to make the early parts of the game perfect without ever working on anything else.

I won’t do a detailled changelog of everything this time, I said the most things in the text above. But in short:
-The first 8 chapters have been edited.
-All playable units received improved portraits.
-Explaination Texts have been added to give details about important things in certain chapters.
-A new enemy type, „Robbers“ has been added. (Sword-Wielding Bandits using animations from Monkeybard, Miguel-Rojo and Rasdel.)
-Some Units got Personal Weapons.
-The Skillsystem is now up to date.
-Lags and Bugs caused by the outdated Skillsystem are no longer present

While it was not always fun to do this process, it was neccesary and gave us more options.
If you are interested in checking out the hack so far, you can get the patch in our Discord.

Have a good day.

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this is like a fire emblem game already! Green units suck!

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Hello there o/

It’s been a while and idk about you guys but for some reason the may is always the time of the year, where I kinda struggle with my projects. Maybe it’s a point where I need a little break or anything, or the timing of influence from outside is always the same - I dunno. However, unlike last year we managed to use this month to it’s fullest. After only spending time with rebuilding stuff it was awesome to get back to actual progress. The trend continued in June so far… but it’s soooo hot. :hot_face:

Because of the silence I wanted to drop a little update. No new patch, no date for when you can await it, but a little overview of what we did during this time and what will be included in the next patch so far.

-We redesigned the Prologue Chapters 1-3 and are currently working on 6. I did say that I want to continue with future chapters first but quickly figured that it’s not a good idea to do that if you don’t know how the playable party could turn out at this point. Especially since we will add two new units at this point and new unlockable items, etc. It’s a completely new situation that needs to be investigated. Luckily that process went by fast. I won’t go into details but the chapters are much different now, and better compared to our very first maps. The Feedback from you guys is the reason for these improvements. Also since the chapters changed you can expect some new and changed up dialogue here and there.

-As mentioned above, two new units will enter the party early on. One of them is an old man from the Starkeeper-Realm who fills his role as a healer for the early game: Eld. He knows our protagonist since his childhood and could become a personal favorite for me. Retrogamer even made some custom animations for him. The other one is a Thundermage from Ragnarök: Helga. She is interested in fashion and fights in the same squad as our Earlygame Fighter, Lars. Both Potraits are from Retro, the potrait from Helga has parts of SqrtPis work in it.

-Reaver Weapons are now usable at Rank D and a bit weaker than in the OG games. This combined with the Breaker-Skills which we gave them with the last update, makes them to good tools for your units to reach high avoid against certain weapon-types.

-Since yellow coloured and small houses are usually places that remain unvisited after your first playthrough (and some people avoid them at all), we decided that the visitor that enters them the first time will get a little bonus in form of Exp. We are thinking about using the Fates Exp Patch in the Future which will balance out the overall Exp-Gain, so those could become even more valuable.

-Retro put the title on the title screen. The game will finally tell you it’s name and that you have to press start to play it \o/

Also I practiced splicing a bit. But that’s just a sidenote.

That’s it for the update. I wish everyone a good day. And remember to stay hydrated. :milk_glass:

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Hello there, everyone o/

First of all we submitted Parallel Emblem to this years FEE3. It will be our first time in this event and we are excited to present you new gameplay material and to see other peoples reaction to it. We hope both you and our Let’s Player will have fun with the show!

I’ll use this moment for a small update too:

We’ve finished two chapters and started with another one. Once it is done, we will release a new version. I wasn’t as active in july than usual but that didn’t affect the work of Chapter 1-5. I was back at full energy during 1-6. I also decided to make some sprites to improve on that (some look better, some worse) whenever I wasn’t really into the project itself. Currently we make progress and the enemy placement and eventing of chapter 1-7 is about to begin.

As for a new patch - It’d be great if we finish our target during or before FEE3. But I don’t want to give promises. The time should be enough but I don’t have the power of the monado to look into the future.

Speaking of time… Damn this year flew by fast. Still 3 months to go but especially compared to 2020… Soon this thread celebrates it’s first birthday.

Have a good day everyone!

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Nearly another month has passed. The FEE3 schedule is out and it’s pretty big this year. 80 Projects in total. I am already excited for many of the upcoming videos.

As mentioned above, this project will be part of the event. If your interested in watching the presentation of Parallel Emblem, make sure to mark October 30th. 12 PM will be the time. \o/

This month I had to step back a bit due to technical issues on my end. Overall I have less free time that I can invest in the project for now. But that doesn’t mean we made no progress this month. I’d say that 50% of the last chapter are done. After that there are some smaller things to take care of before it’s ready for a release. I don’t expect that time to be before the FEE3 presentation though.

Well then, have a nice day, everyone o/

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How many Chapters?

@alexgalaxy335 How much Chapters?

Don’t you mean how many chapters? And yes, how many chapters are there going to be in Parallel Emblem?

The new Demo will have 13 chapters and 1 Gaiden. I can’t 100% say how many chapters the final game will have but we planned more than 30. It will be a long journey.

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Ok. Thanks for the info. At least it put our minds at ease.

Hello

This month was another wild ride let me tell you.
Because of several reasons… Ah you can read it above if you’re interested let’s go straight to the best part:

A NEW DEMO IS OUT. FINALLY. YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT HERE!!!

As announced earlier it will feature several changes to the early game, improved and slightly altered/extended dialouge, polished potraits, new animations (some entirely new made by Retrogamer) as well as a total of 3 new chapters. But I’d like to count the 4 chapters that have been changed heavily as well since those aren’t the same as before. So basically there are 7 new scenarios waiting for you. \o/

With this the game has a total of 13 chapters plus 1 Gaiden. It should take around 10-12 hours to beat depending on your playstyle, choices and if you read the dialouge.

We’re also using this moment to celebrate our first year anniversary. That’s right, today this thread has its birthday. Of course this was totally intended… Cough, cough.

We want to thank both JBR Channel for playing our Hack on the FEE3 as well as everyone who watched it. Almost 1700 views is more than we expected.

For those who missed the presentation you can watch it here.

I’ll admit the original post wasn’t the best start from our end. But we’re moving forward to improve. I wonder how long the entire development will take but I’m even more interested in how the game will look at the very end. Hopefully the days where we have to rebuilt stuff from the ground up are now in the past. There are one or two things I might want to improve in earlier parts of the game. But more than ever I want to build new chapters.

This was a great year and we hope to continue with progress in 2022.

With that being sad - Have fun with the game. And take care of yourself o/

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Hello there.

Just a quick update. We finished another chapter to 99%. With that we officially reached midgame - hooray!

But if we’re talking about this year, we’re in endgame. The Christmas Arc was rushed but, compared to my recent years, a lot more relaxing and… welp. It felt a lot more like christmas, haha…

In general this year flew by a lot faster than 2020. I’m still processing a lot of what happened there. And here I am trying to process 2021 as well and even wondering what the future of 2022 will await. One thing is for sure. It’s going forward.

For this project specifically, while being in “Rebuilding-Hell” from January to April, it was big. Awaiting and watching our first time in FEE3 alongside so many other projects was exciting even though I forgot about time differences first, woke up way to early and then sat sick in my bed during the day of the premiere and overall learning more about FE and the design of it as a whole. With the first part being done, I wonder how far we will come in terms of chapternumbers. I wonder how much the project will change from the original script. I wonder which characters we can introduce to you next time. And if and how many new faces will join the cast. Time will tell but one thing is for sure - Parallel Emblem will continue.

We wish you a merry christmas, relaxing days 'til the end of the year and… welp a happy new year!

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Hello everyone,

Small update about the development. Due to recent events and a lot less time on my end for the foreseeable future, the progress during the last two months was smaller than usual. Same goes for Retrogamer who was really busy but will continue his work on sprites and animation soon.

We might focus on smaller updates but in general I wanted to announce that we have less time to contribute for the project at the moment and that… actually nothing changes about the update schedule lol.

On the other hand I decided that I would like to polish some parts of the story. The way I phrased some parts and the general length of some dialogue isn’t ideal for me. (Plus I keep making the same grammar mistakes because my brain refuses to learn.) Which isn’t too dramatic if you primarily want to enjoy the gameplay. But I would like to improve this part and fix my mistakes. I won’t do this in a big take (because I know I’d take way too long) but little by little since I also want to work more efficient whenever I have time for the project now. I might not succeed to reach what I would personally call a good story. But I want to learn as much as possible while continuing Parallel Emblem.

I wish you all a good day.

Edit: Isn’t my scanner cool, I no longer have to take photos lol

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New Update dropped. This time it’s around two new chapters and a bunch of polishing here and there. Small but with a lot of text.

The other changes involve new fancy spritework and a new Skill for Morten that boosts his movement when he is close to Ètoile.

As usual you can find the new patch on our Discord.

See you there.
We wish you a great time in the future o/


(Due to technical issues I have to use photos again… Karma is a twisted joke.)

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Congrats for the update ! :tada:

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Hello everyone!

The Schedule for this years FEE3 is out and Parallel Emblem will be showcased during the 5th day. Which should be October 20th around 12PM EST.

Tune in for a spooky presentation featuring old mans, wolf boys and monsters!
Played by the one and only Epholo8 and directed by our two most favorite code-searching-machine-guardian-co-hosts once more.

I also have news about the next update.
Our current goal is to finish Part 1 of the game during this year. That means Parallel Emblem will be divided into different story arcs similar to Radiant Dawn. And in the next update the first of these arcs will be completed, counting 19 chapters. You could count the prolouge itself as Part 0. The full game will be divided into 3 Parts in total.

This process will take ~2 more chapters, one of whichs map is already done. And the second one will have a bigger focus on story rather than gameplay. It is doable and I really want to publish this by the end of the year but I don’t want to settle on an exact date because time always showed how the tables can turn. There are going to be some adjustments in previous chapters of the game as well. But our focus right now is to go forward rather than falling down the spiral of eternal polishing. Expect new animations, classes and travelers and maybe you will be able to find a new alternate ending I’ve hidden in an earlier chapter. :sunglasses:

Anyway I hope you all look forward to the best time of the year for FE Hackers and that your week is going to be awesome. o7

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Epholo will be streaming Parallel Emblem tonight around 8pm EST!

Sadly not the best time for us to watch (it will be like 2am around here T-T). So we will prolly not be present in chat. But if you have time and interest into diving in the beginning of Parallel Emblem make sure to tune in and send him some #Baumkuchen from us! :brown_heart: :cake:

Either way I wish everyone reading this a great Weekend. The best time of the year for FE fangame creators will begin tomorrow, don’t forget that. :cup_with_straw:

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Will the game have supports?

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Yes they’re planned. They still work like in GBA atm but I’d like to change them the way FE9 did. Except some special cases if its possible.

Some are already written and implemented. Gears Supports for example are complete for no particular reason. I decided to focus on the Main story first. So most are placeholders atm I don’t know if the cast is fully completed yet and if I might find unexpected chemistry between 2 characters. 75% of the pairs you can see via support option are save though.

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Just finished the demon, I really loved a lot about the game. I love the full fan fic energy getting characters from tons of games and with some really unique mechanics that are super exciting. I loved being able to do summons, I loved 3 range magic and the merchant class and a lot more.

I think the game could use an easier mode because the like fun fan ficy vibe does get blocked off by some of the harder maps. Like the final map of the demo felt like I was really just playing the RNG game trying my best to not let the boss just utterly wipe the floor with me thanks to his heals.

Character wise for the original characters I think Etoile is a major stand out lord, I think Gear is cute, I like Ferrum, I love Helga and I found the Isaki characters funny. I think there is a lot of good goofs throughout the game which helps even out the harder drama moments.

I was going through the supports that are already written and I am wondering why you decided to make Heather Bisexual when she is a lesbian in the games? It’s like super mega confirmed that she is only into women. This is my biggest problem, I downloaded the game because Heather is one of my favorite characters in the whole series so I Wanted to like max her out as much as possible and come in with an ultimate heather but that was a major disappointment, I’d love to see that changed since that support isn’t even normally accessible right now.

Overall, it was a really good experience that I think could use some tweaks to but that I want to see hit it’s end.

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