[Tactile] F2U + F2E: ANB Toolbox (+ Game)

Dear FE-Friends,

This post is about the creation of a legal, standard high-quality content pack and other assets for the newly published Tactile Engine from BwdYeti.
Because this will probably take some years, I also included a project to keep this goal alive. In the end it should contain every important asset for the creation of a great FE-like fangame. But: 100% legal.

Tactile Engine and FEXNA Content Pack here
ANB Toolbox download down below.

Thank you for your support!


After many years of waiting, Tactile (FEXNA) it is finally here! But I think the recent FEXNA (Tactile) leak showed us all that this powerful engine is looking for its proper place. My hope is that Tactile can be used especially for legal FE-like fangames. This could mark “A New Beginning” of such FE-related games! Community collaboration seems to me to be essential for this to work. :slight_smile:

That is why I would like to start a community driven project to gather the required high-quality resources and assets which will all be available to all. While the resources will be developed with Tactile in mind, resources will most probably also be very useful for GBA hacking and other engines. Let us be honest: Original content is always great!

A new game with the name “A New Beginning” will be developed to give us a goal to work towards.
Even though I have not a lot to show so far, I want to provide everything that is usable. In this case there are some time-consuming layout changes:

Title screenshot18

Obviously it shows characters (and classes) taken from FE7x. Who doesn’t know the game yet should definitely have a look at it! These are only there as placeholders (hope you don’t mind me doing that BwdYeti).

More Screenshots

splashes1 splashes2
screenshot12 screenshot17
New simple battle HUD
screenshot13 screenshot22
Objective Screen (bg WIP)
screenshot15 screenshot14
New movement arrow and cursor
screenshot24 screenshot23
Layout changes
screenshot19 screenshot20
Color options (WIP)

As you can see, there is a lot possible already. And there are parts that really need some creative work done (tilesets, ect.). But it is possible.

Why Tactile?

Compared to the competing platforms (GBA and Lex Talionis), it turns out that Tactile doesn’t have too many advantages anymore. Especially compared to modern romhacking, there are some disadvantages:

  • Availability: GBA patch files are very easy to use and have many potential users– Tactile will need some XNA Libraries to make it work. It’s not always “hustle-free” if you are used to patching your ROM.
  • Usability: It is easy to jump into GBA romhacking with 7743`s awesome, lightweight FEBuilder – for Tactile you will have to install programs like Visual Studio and XNA libraries. Once it runs it is a bit up to taste – while FEBuilder comes with many available patches already.
  • Support: There is a massive community working on GBA hacks; “support” is granted. Up to this point there is hardly any support for Tactile. But this might very well change.
  • Compression: Let us be honest: There is a beauty in the fact that the whole game requires only a few MB. You will easily use over 150MB for Tactile projects.

But there are also very important advantages:

  • Gorgeous graphics and beautiful format (320x192) - It really does make a difference!
  • Detailed implementation and continuation of FE8 mechanisms.
  • No technical limits: Basically, almost anything can be programmed.
  • Responsive mobile version technically possible.
  • And the most important: A game development without infringement of intellectual property is possible! While this can be said for some GBA patches, at least Nintendo’s EULA is “violated” there.
Non-copyright reasons

I was looking for a way to tell a story as beautifully and excitingly as possible for a long time. The way that the FE series engages you in the action is perfect for me. To this day, I remember the sweeping stories of these games. And I think many of you feel the same way.

However, I was a bit more reluctant at first, knowing of Nintendo’s position and their handling of copyrights. It’s a shame that many a fan project has had to disappear. Unfortunately, there is little we can do about this company’s attitude.

While GBA patches (which contain little protected material) are probably hardly in danger of getting a supression order, this can basically happen with popular fangames if such legally protected material is included.
Exposing oneself to this danger is an unattractive thorn in the side of every fan developer. Only the use of non-protected material protects from such a lawsuit in the end.

Goal

I am convinced that we all come furthest when we help each other. The world cannot be conquered alone! At the same time, a project also needs goals so that goal-oriented work is possible.

I would like to combine these two aspects here:

The goal is to use assets contributed by the community to develop a game that does not violate any copyrights. I have already spent a lot of time writing a story. I would like to use this script as a template for this project (ANB). The name “A New Beginning” has been the working title for a long time - very fitting in my opinion.

I would like to invite you all to contribute to this project. Everything of high quality that is contributed to this project will be offered as an asset collection preferably as F2E (free to edit) or as F2U (free to use). This includes also and especially Mugs.

To give credit for every awesome contributor that adds to this project, I will add the name to the credit list (with description of the contribution). For me, I am fine with just “ANB” as an umbrella term for the community. You are also welcome to let me know how you prefer it.

Since so far only my own stuff is included in the package, “ANB” in the credits is enough (for anyone who wants to use this still very incomplete package).

A list of things to work on will eventually released in the 2nd post.

About me

Ok, the bad thing right away: Basically, I am not a real gamer. I have only played FE7, 8 and 13 - and all that many years ago. But my fascination for this genre has always remained. :slight_smile:

My time possibilities are also quite limited due to professional reasons. But I am happy to give this project the time it needs. But nobody should expect a project that will be finished in 1 or 2 years. Slow but steady is my motto here.

From my background I have a lot of experience with project management. This is another reason why I trust myself with this task. ANB will be developed in three languages: English, Italian and German (because I am blessed to know these three languages well enough). However, the focus will be on the English version.
I see myself primarily as a writer of this project.

As you can imagine, I can really use some help in almost every area: mapmaking, balancing, eventing, spriting and so on. Again: We will take the time it needs. :slight_smile: And thank you for your help!

Story

… no I will not spoiler it yet :stuck_out_tongue:

Special thanks

First of all I would like to thank snek (snakey1) for his help with my buildfile! Even if I now “move” with my project: This great wizard is really always available and humanly great!
Also from my buildfile time I want to thank Leonarth for his help with small tweaks.

Also I want to thank BwdYeti for Tactile and his decision, I am confident that this is the future!

Download ANB Toolbox (includes Assets etc.):
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c4nr0m0y2e53mgh/AABtLRuvM0Q6JrpS_WAcN02qa?dl=0

So, now I have really said enough. What do you think about this? What is your opinion? Are you willing to contribute things?

Merry Christmas from Europe!
Poridur

18 Likes

Up to this point we are still missing some key (F2E) resources to start 100% “legal” developement.

  • Tilesets (most important probably - if you know of any available, please let me know!)
  • Map Sprites
  • “Tactile”-sized mugs
  • Some class animations
  • Some map sprites

I’d like to see legal developement on Tactile as easy as GBA developement. That’s why I’d like to gather together with you those resources so that everyone can jump into it quickly.

1 Like

I’m not quite sure what this post is meant to be. Is it the announcement post for Tactile, or the announcement post for your project using Tactile, or what?

And is @BwdYeti affiliated/involved with this post?

3 Likes

And what about a Spanish versiĂłn?

1 Like

Yeti, you dumbass. You logged in with your alt! Now people will know you’re actually a small blue-haired lord! This is so embarrassing. Alexa, play Despacito.

6 Likes

wow, this reminds me of other project “fe7x”, very cool awesome men

10 Likes

I think that it’s meant to be a reskin project for the engine, based on the “Legal F2U Toolbox” description in the topic title.

1 Like

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! I just updated the header of this post!

As you may have noticed, Yeti’s engine has unfortunately not received much attention since the leak. Even though I have no connection to him, I want to show how important this engine can be for this community.

If I can make him happy by doing so, encourage him to continue, then I’m happy. I don’t intend to do anything against Yeti’s will.

And for the whole community I hope for a new upswing with this. I think the possibilities are unbelievably big - for this I would like to inspire each of you!

2 Likes

So A New Beginning is a project made in Tactile, and also an attempt to collect assets for Tactile?

In that case, why is it using FE7x portraits, maps, and other assets? Do you actually have much of anything not from that game to show for your project?

1 Like

that’s because there literally hasn’t been anything distributed since that point
i too question what this topic is supposed to be, as it’s listed as a project yet in the resources location, and the only resources I see are just yeti’s existing assets reskinned
if this was to try and say “hey fexna/tactile projects exist!” yeah we already know that, there are like 3 public ones
if this was to promote your own project… do that and not whatever that first post was

4 Likes

To be fair, a call to arms for tactile non-copyrighted assets is a noble goal, and as someone dedicated to making their fexna project, they should admit that they see personal benefit from this.

For me, I would really love to use a program like this to game develop. Ultimately it would be very cool to publish an app and reach a wider audience. But I see it as an unrealistic endeavour. Even with tactile I don’t think I’d be able to create something like that in my free time. So I use copyrighted material as a foundation and romhack instead.

I don’t think that the community here is going to make enough of a difference that producing standalone fangames will become more popular than romhacks any time soon. I would suggest compiling as many relevant f2u resources off the web as possible and to try to grow the tactile community that way. If new users see some resources they can use, they will want to make projects and create assets. It would probably take decades, but hopefully eventually it would get there.

I guess we’ll see how things pan out

6 Likes

Thank you very much for all your responses! :smiley:
To be honest, I’m a little surprised by some of the criticism, but hopefully that won’t stop us from achieving this goal.

Personal benefit

Do I benefit myself when we create assets together? Definitely! :slightly_smiling_face: We all benefit from making our work available to others. Why are the most important resources on FEU shared content? Why is rainlash so successful with LT that it almost overtook FEXNA?

My goal is to be able to work with you to create a legal toolset that is usable with Tactile. Am I the one who can do all this alone? Certainly not!
But should we get to this point, I expect nothing less than a growth of this community (thinking of my own experience).

Why the ANB game?

I introduced ANB as game in order to plan concrete steps.
I would not have come forward with my project for years at the earliest. But also to me the incidents with FEXNA showed me how important it is to share. And I had the urge to act, because for me the future of this engine seemed uncertain. Just posting something positive about it was also my intention. I also didn’t know what to expect here (and I still don’t). But I would like to share progress (which would be more or less progress for every party involved) and make progress with you guys. This way I thought to keep this topic and it’s goals “alive”.

Anyways, this game project is years away so you can also ignore it if you want. I consider it a community project, so contribution to this would be appreciated too! Since all created art ect. is F2E it does not really make a difference if it has been created for this game or not. Some might want to contribute with a specific concept in mind. We’ve got you covered! In the end the main goal is not the game itself but the collecting of crucial assets. The ANB game could therefore be considered a “side-product”.

Standalone fangames

I think Vesly’s comments sum up very well what I also share to a large degree: Potentially, it would be great for many to develop a standalone fangame. But the effort is not worth it to many.

At the same time, there’s not much missing to make this dream come true. The bigger the Tactile community gets, the better! (And as I said before, I also hope for positive effects on romhacking trough new, original content). Maybe, as Vesly suggested, the missing resources are already available somewhere on the internet. Great! Then let’s bring them together here! :slight_smile:

I also don’t think romhacks will disappear: You will probably see more traffic there in the future than for legal fangames. GBA emulators are just very well established.
The probability that a fangame will become more popular than a good romhack is very low. Of course everyone is happy about traffic; but even that doesn’t satisfy us in the end. It’s just nice to have a creative hobby and share your ideas with others. This will have to suffice.

Resources available

As I said before, I hardly have things to show at this point. That’s why I showed FE7x assets in the first post (with clear reference to this game - by the way, these pictures also show what is already possible).

But at the same time I think the resources provided are not insignificant: Everyone can now use them as a basis for their development. And I think here especially of people who are not immediately able to do everything themselves, but still do not want to violate any interlectual properties. Since the FE7x layout is based on FE7, you unfortunately cannot use yetis ressources.

Image Comparison

Here is a small comparison (both sides featuring fe7x chars):
fe7x-2 screenshot2
fe7x-3 screenshot8
fe7x-4 screenshot25

I really hope it will be helpful for some! :slight_smile:

We are in this together! :slight_smile: I hope that I can contribute a little.

5 Likes

In my search for a good tileset, I came across a very interesting thing:

I present a 32x32 tileset from CMagister:

He even created buildings:


yes, the tower is jumping :slight_smile: Oh and yes I placed the buildings somewhere :wink:

Castle, Desert, Hills

Desert Mountains

I talked to the creator and he told me that his resources are CC-BY-SA licensed. In our terms it means its F2E (free to edit).

Reply from CMagister

Thanks for bringing this to my knowledge. I’m not involved in the SRPG making scene currently but great to know FEXNA/tactile got released. Sure the tileset is CC-SA licensed so you can do whatever the license permits.

Regards
CMagister

personal note Poridur: I told him that FEXNA got leaked and is soon to be released. Since it seems that such details bother some, I try to prevent it.


Unfortunately, the format is not perfect for the Tactile Engine. I don’t know how difficult it would be to implement 32x32 tiles. Personally, I still think that the classic 16x16 is the better solution in the long run (also because it’s basically easier to edit and create). But with this we have material to start working with. Especially the buildings will be very useful!

From now on the files are available via the above mentioned link (main post) under “Redistribution”.

also interesting

worldmap locations by AlbertoV
Some worldmap locations.
Unfortunately you are not allowed to make derivatives from this work by AlbertoV (so it’s only F2U; since it might be useful for some, I’ll also add it to the Redistribution Area.

That’s it for me for now. I’ll probably have an update every month. If there is nothing to talk about then there will be no update.

Take care!

7 Likes

… aren’t these tiles just scaled up from the 16x16 gba/snes tiles
so we have the exact tiles already?

don’t get me wrong, these are nice tiles for 32x32, but in terms of 16x16 we already… had all of this

It would seem that these are original works, though based off GBA tiles, so they don’t belong to Nintendo?

@Poridur, you could even consider upscaling the map sprites by simply doubling their size so you’d have 16x16 map sprites on 32x32 tiles. It might look kinda cool. Alternatively, you could just change your game to have 32x32 tiles and upscaled map sprites to match.

1 Like

no i’m aware they’re original, i meant they’re essentially scaled up remasters of the 16x16 tiles, so any attempt to reduce them back to 16x16 would result in nearly the same as the original tiles (excluding the non-gba/snes tiles in the spoiler).

But I don’t see where anyone said to try downscaling them to 16x16?

1 Like

seems implied but i could be mistaken

I assumed they meant that it’s better not to try and do more stuff at that resolution, and instead stick to GBA-style, but I see how it could go both ways.

Sure, they take a lot of inspiration from FE5-8, but they are not just upscaled. I have upscaled some Thracia assets and they don’t resemble the details of these assets nearly as much. The closest mcmagister’s tiles get to being upscaled is the indoor tile set (which is very, very similar to the GBA castle assets in places). I still agree that downscaling these assets isn’t the best idea, though. They were designed to be 32x32, shrinking them to 16x16 would throw off their scaling when compared to tiles designed to be 16x16. I don’t think it was implied to shrink these to 16x16, but it is something free to use and start with. The outdoor assets can probably be fine as is, albeit with some tweaks.

3 Likes