I’m not currently in the process of creating a hack, other than a couple of ideas I have, but I’m currently helping with the music for a hack.
I mostly just take requests for free (at least for now anyway), but outside of that, I’ve mostly been doing FE5 stuff since the hack I’m helping out with is heavily inspired by Super Thracia (I may just remix the entire FE5 OST at this point). I also want to do more stuff from the Archanea games as well as Engage since those are among my favorite FE games alongside FE5. Other than that, I just transcribe songs I like (I rarely use fan made MIDI files or sheet music online).
As for choosing the soundtrack, it mostly comes down to the tone of the story and what sort of “emotions” for a lack of a better term you want to convey to the player, though there are plenty of examples throughout the series to choose from for different scenarios. Instrument selection is also really important as it can make or break songs. Either try to be faithful to the original or take some inspiration from other music (not just video game osts), particularly orchestral music, to get an idea of when and how to use specific instruments.
I’d just choose songs I like and think are fitting for battle/map themes. So a mix of Touhou, Falcom, Original Fire Emblem Tracks, Zelda, Castlevania, etc
(Sorry, didn’t read this thread until now, so catching up…)
As I’ve aged since playing Blazing Sword in 2005, my perception of Fire Emblem has become more of a critical focus on areas where I think the series could improve or evolve beyond where it has gone to this point. With all of the tropes and things which have remained consistent through a large chunk of the series’ history, I have found myself wanting things to change to breathe some life into the series and change things up, at least to test the waters. Not saying that the mainline series should deviate from its tactical RPG structure, just that I’d like some innovation that isn’t just a game-to-game gimmick or retooling. Change up how classes are typically structured or move away from them entirely for a game, play with different map styles (bring back elevation or go to a fully 3D battlefield where placement and distance matter, etc.), try out a new system for weapon stats (see the thread the other day about sharpness, for example), and so on.
There’s plenty of room for experimentation that isn’t so rigid. I’ve already played a bunch of games in the series which play the same and don’t have stories which completely wow me - I’m ready for something to catch my attention in a way that it hasn’t been before.
I skipped Three Houses since it dropped during a period of time where I simply did not have the time or infrastructure to dedicate to something that large in scope, but I am excited enough about the setting that’s been posited from the first trailer. Can’t say I’m a fan of the map UI (especially the movement squares), but I am intrigued enough to hope that maybe this will shake things up in the way that I’d like to see from the series.
It’s gotta have the right vibe for whatever it’s being used for. I don’t necessarily care about the source, just whatever the track is will have a sound which makes me think “oh, this would be a good Player Phase map theme” or “oh, that’s a good Support theme while two characters goof off”, etc. In terms of filling out the list… it just kinda hits as I listen to music and hear a tune which triggers one of those thoughts.
Eh. It doesn’t really look like a “me” game, but I’ll hear what people say about it when it comes out to decide whether I want to buy it or not. I don’t buy games on release anymore unless it’s Mario Party or the hopefully-upcoming FF9 remake. Either way, there’s a handful of fangames I’d much rather try out than Fortune’s Weave from what little I’ve seen of it.
I downloaded a bunch of songs from the music repo and put the ones I liked in a folder. I stuck to only series I knew well because…I don’t know, I think I didn’t want to use important songs in unfitting places, or something along those lines? I might just download more music and redo the soundtrack of my game at a later date.
Regardless, once I had the tracks I wanted to use, I made a document and first went through the songs and wrote down where I wanted to use each track. If there were any spots I was missing or forgot to write down, I went through the folder again looking for a fitting song. I mentally categorized the songs into things like “I really want to use this at some point,” or “this could fit in a lot of places, but I don’t care if it gets used or not,” etc, to determine where everything went.
This year I’ve gotten a little bit into portrait pixel art and paletteing and have made some very minimal effort to edit portraits. For example my pfp (which has a sword that doesn’t fit into a hackbox🤣) and also a spear that is smoll because I was trying hard to fit it into the hackbox and also sword that fits into the hackbox:
I’ve also learned a bit of splicing and made a splice of some Glaceo portraits from the repo and the splice may or may not be a disgrace to the original art (which are the skeleton berserker and skeleton great knight by Glaceo if I remember correctly):
Pretty cool! There’s a patch that’s called Hackbox Extend that allows you to use the bottom right corner of the frames for anything that may go beyond the standard portrait! I highly, HIGHLY recommend trying it out
Learnt how to use the basics of LT
Quit the project of lt because its too hard
Start usung fe builder
Start my first project
Get stuck on the prologue
Realized to not make my dream game first
Made something simpler i can reuse assets from (magvel but eirika and seth brutality die)
Reuse the mc of lt project as the mc
Upload it
Upload demo 1.2
Got demotavated and working other projects on other fandoms (lisa the painful)
Sins, though… I suppose I still need to work on getting the hang of the more high-piloting stuff in romhacking. Need to eventually level up beyond mere skillsys.
Well, I might have more sins than pros in this year, at least in this site, mainly since the beginning of the year was rough, to put it simply, and I haven’t actually done all that much hacking in the first place, especially since I kind of gave up after the emulator that comes with FE Builder didn’t want to work for some reason, which combined with the previous incidents made dismotivated to work on any stuff so…
Although at the very least I tried to help whenever someone needed help, and I improved my pixel art. It’s crazy to see how much I’ve improved from last year to this one. Just look at how much I’ve improved the portrait of one of my favorite characters, Lucario.
If nobody else ends up demotivating me, I might actually get more stuff done for the next year.
Hey, that’s really good! And that furry chest looks excellent! There’s a lot of pillow shading though and on the Lucario’s left side of his face the shadows are harshly horizontal in a way that doesn’t make sense with the implied light direction.
