Art polish isn’t that valuable in my opinion. I really need to make that clear, if that misconception arose.
Yes, it’s nice, but it’s not essential to what’s ultimately important: a fun video game.
The most important thing is a good work ethic, I feel. Just sticking to your own philosophies and preferences will take you far.
After reading your argument that things have changed, I’m only convinced that they’ve stayed mostly the same (except where things have gotten better). Ever played Curse of the Emblem, Decay of the Fangs, or Corrupt Theocracy? I’m confident that the creators of these three projects would have no issue with me calling them unpolished or just downright bad, even though they’re all from the “old era” where you had to learn everything yourself and the game was like a minefield and would crash if you so much as looked at it the wrong way, with no indication of what you did wrong.
Curse of the Emblem had an interesting idea with locking the player at 0 luck and forcing them to plan around generic enemies getting crits, but the story (all two chapters) and gameplay didn’t do anything compelling with it. Decay of the Fangs was a story taking place directly after FE7 about a ragtag group trying to keep the Black Fang alive. There could have been compelling themes about learning to leave the past behind, what was really important about the Fang was their mission of protecting people and not the name, etc, but the game didn’t go in this direction. It was straight-up fan fiction, with the main character getting a weird designated love interest, you fight Hector a few chapters in, and “oh yeah, this is Alan, the archsage. He looks like Athos, but he’s yellow. He’s super powerful but never appeared in FE7 because reasons”. (What I presume was going to be) The main conflict between the Black Fang and the White Fang (yeah) was entirely based on misunderstanding rather than something that might be interesting, like ideological differences. As for Corrupt Theocracy… I would hope that that needs no introduction because I don’t even know where to start with that one.
All three of these projects had some sort of inspiration behind them. You can see at least the tiniest nugget of potential in each one. However, having to learn to manually type out the events did not suddenly give the creators game design or writing chops. I actually remember that DotF got a very hostile public reaction back in the day solely because of the bad portraits, before they slowly started improving and people began to actually play the game and find it wasn’t all that great after all.
This brings me to what I think has changed, and for the better: the culture around resources. Sprites, music, programming, just everything. I remember when people who could make full custom sprites were viewed as artistic gods, people who could do assembly were wizards, and Agro was literally the only person who could make custom music (and zahlman, but he didn’t have as much of a presence to someone looking from the outside in). To someone new to the community, it was unthinkable to even approach these people (well, Agro and zahl are chill, but that’s not my point). You did not want to get on their bad side or else you could just forget about having any great-looking sprites or custom game mechanics in your game. If you brought a video of a game using the skill system back in time a decade and showed it to, I dunno, Hextator, he would’ve said “no, this is a doctored video. It is impossible for GBA FE to ever do this”. Contrast this to the incredible open source/free-to-use culture, and environment that encourages people to learn to do things themselves instead of hoping for someone else to make their “impossible” hack for them, we have today.
I originally learned to do everything with the FEditor/EA/Nightmare method myself because I was afraid to ask for help. I had a mindset that people wouldn’t take me seriously or give my games a chance if they already knew I was a confirmed oshiete-kun. I vaguely remember seeing a post saying “if you can’t figure out your problems and don’t have fun doing so, have you considered that hacking video games might not be the hobby for you?”. I only learned to do events after the Eventiel was created and I had a drag-and-drop sort of environment to play around with. And you know what? My first several projects were bad. A dumb FE7 reskin with OCs and crossover characters, and then seven or so chapters of all the same dumb story and gameplay habits that I encourage against these days. The high barrier to entry, technical and social, didn’t stop me from making bad things.
When build files became a thing, I had no problem asking for help because I had seen the culture around it change before my eyes. I realised how powerful it was as a new method of doing things and wanted to learn it so I could get away from FEditor. I actually still made my Ragefest 5 entry using FEditor/etc back in the day because it was what I was used to and I could just crank it out quickly, but after I was done with it, I decided that would be the last time I ever used FEditor. In the Esperanto community there’s a phrase, „eterna komencanto” or “eternal beginner”, referring to people who start learning the language but never actually speak it with anyone so they get stuck at a beginner level. If I had never been willing to ask for help, I would’ve ended up an eternal beginner to FE modding, using a Frankensteinian method of things mostly being in build files but still using a hex editor, GBAGE, Sappy, etc to make a bunch of changes to the base rom because I didn’t understand EA logic enough to convert it all to buildfile form. I don’t even use FEBuilder as a game creation tool. I just use it for reference and it’s incredibly useful, and I’m glad to have access to it.
Additionally, the scenario you describe with a completed project coming out of nowhere has happened before with Requiem. Sacred Blaze made that with the FEditor/Nightmare/EA combo, dropped the complete patch on the unsuspecting public, and asked for help cleaning up the portraits afterward. I’ve already spoken at length before about how I wonder if it would have ended up in a better state (less gigantic maps and fewer enemies would’ve gone a long way) if its development had been more typical, but the creator himself told me that would have been unlikely because all he wanted out of the gameplay was “more FE7”.
Febuilder is a tool, and the hacks that are made from it are not the way they are because of it, but because the people that use it which can and does involve many people who do not yet possess the knowhow to do anything. This is not in fact a detriment to the program itself, but just a natural result that comes with this line of work. No person is born a natural-born hacker, and if they are it’s certainly not the norm. It takes lots of learning to make a project up to snuff with the other bigger projects out there. Projects like The Dragon’s Herald are just someone’s first or second attempts, it’s harder to hold hacks like this to such a standard, you should understand this more than others. It takes time to create a hack that can be held in such high regard, it’s going to take many attempts and lots of learning.
I would question why this post exists because it essentially answers itself, you mention experience and work, and if there are many hacks that are made by inexperienced hackers, if they seek to improve their hacks they will possibly learn new skills and try again. It’s not someone out here is going to poof a super-mega-ultra-supreme without lots of development time and struggle.
Tl;DR: it comes down to the creator rather than the program
also alusq said it perfectly go read his post
Reppin’ for the new school febuilder newbs here. We’ll get there. Those who are dedicated to making an enjoyable game will keep on polishing away!
(Also inb4 thread becomes locked in a couple of days lol.)
This is basically my point, and I agree with it. There’s no argument being made in the original post, nor problem being arisen. It’s simply an observation from what I see and what I believe is a result from the ease of access increasing.
As for Alusq’s post, it’s very very nice, but those projects are far before me, so it was very interesting, and does give me more to say. All I can say, really, is that the creators definitely felt passionate about what they made, even if they were the equivalents to what is made today. What I’m trying to say, ultimately, is because, as a result of a difficulty of learning the tools being used, the projects resulting from it have a greater incentive to be good. No doubt there are exceptions to the rule; people that make elaborate projects just to troll deserve my respect considering how much effort they went through just to screw with people, especially since there’s some of the creator in it because of their passion. What I want to see in the community is an understanding of the importance of loving what you do before we forget.
then I wonder what is the purpose of this post, aside from just hearing the same opinion shot back 'n forth at nauseam. It’s not like you needed to dedicate an absurdly long post to what amounts to: hey have you noticed that with new tech there are lots of newbie hacks around.
The point of the post was free advertising for me (since I don’t usually self-promote). Four clicks baybeee
(Sorry, way off topic but I couldn’t resist)
I don’t think you’ve actually meant anything particularly disagreeable in anything you’ve said, but the way you’ve said it is just, adversarial? I’d think more about how you’re wording what you’re saying in the future if you want to make further posts like this, as not to give off a vibe similar to this post’s.
Also are you sure this is a point in your favor
It sparks discussion since this isn’t a non-interactive medium. I wanted to see what other people could have to add to the topic at hand.
There’s a difference between giving opinion and inviting discussion, and giving researched criticism intended to be acted upon (or with the intent of changing others’ thoughts or drawing lines).
Hard to tell the difference sometimes so it’s better to be clear at the outset, I agree.
or Corrupt Theocracy? I’m confident that the creators of these three projects would have no issue with me calling them unpolished or just downright bad
I can confirm you are at least 1/3 correct. Even now I would say I wouldn’t know how to fix the issue with Lyn mode units carrying over.
But to be more on topic, speaking as someone who’s been around the hacking community since before FEditor was a thing and you had to use tile layer pro or Nintenlord’s tools for graphic insertion, FEBuilder, just like build files, is a god send. It’s the best hacking tool in the FE community and I probably wouldn’t be so close to finishing SGW as I am without it. It’s a huge boon to the community.
It sounds to me like the main thing to take away from this thread is that users should recognize the importance of critical feedback to their projects and maybe we as a community should do more to nicely push people in the right direction when they are showing off their stuff so they’ll feel comfortable enough to share and not just dump whole completed projects and miss out on critical input (for the record, this is how CT was released and we all know how it turned out). But beyond that, to be honest I don’t see the goal of this thread. We all agree that FEBuilder is a great tool and people are making projects with it. If people want to develop in their own way with the tool, while doing so can hamper their project from being the best it can be, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with that. And projects like Requiem have succeeded doing just that and I’m sure more, like the Dragon Herald, will continue to do after.
I for one welcome our FEBuilder masters. If I had access to that thing when I started, it might have cut my dev time in half. Unfortunately, it came out right when I was basically done, lol.
So if I use a knife to stab you, it’s the knife fault?
It is not about what tools you have, it’s how you use it
The impact of SRPG Studio
The impact of RPG Maker
…
There are many mature game engines in the world for different game types. They allow people without programming experience to create games and realise their dream. They make game creation much easier. Kaga also used SRPG Studio to make Vestaria Saga. You cannot play with many good games without those tools. As for game quality, you can make a choice by yourself. In general, fan game is in poor quality compared to 3A commercial games. It is good that many players enjoy your game. However, in my opinion, as long as one player exists, the game is meaningful. Many hacks lack testers and feedback, then you can help to contribute.
By the way, I don’t use FEBuilderGBA but my hack still lack testers and feedback.
Enjoy instead of comparision. Contribution instead of complaint.
FEBuilder has been a great contribution to the FE hacking community. Its accessibility is amazing, and its very easy for people who have very limited hacking knowledge to get into making their own fangame. 7743 did a great job on the tool, and his eagerness to fix any and all bugs and add features the community asks for should be commended, cause I know coding/hacking to create a tool that great can be difficult.
Lots of people have made great contributions to this thread already, but I would like to give my 2 cents as they say. There are many fans out there who just stumble upon a ROM hack, play it, enjoy it, and then want to make one of their own. When they do that, and a completed project comes out, the mere reason they post it here on a thread is to gain feedback/criticism on how to make their game better (as well as for others to play it). You shouldn’t be blaming the tool for this at all. Builder’s accessibility making it possible for fans with no hacking knowledge to make hacks is a good thing, not a bad one.
It’s kind of disrespectful to just call out a hack just like that and give feedback without even playing it. Scrolling through Discord I see you have done this before, asking for the plot and the gist of a hack/fan-game, then saying you will never play it.
Builder is a hacking program and it is meant to be used. The FE community has its up and downs, but, it’s a great place to get feedback for your projects. Most creators accept feedback willingly and make the tweaks to their hack after people point them out.
Hacking is seen entirely as a hobby, so people do it at their own pace. People have lives, people have work, that gets in the way of development sometimes. Nothing is wrong with a project taking a longer while than others to complete. Every team is different, and works as they can. Most of the time, it’s one person working on those projects you mentioned, that’s why they ask for help with playtesting and otherwse (aesthetic effects and such) when they make their posts.
Your initial post seems to convey that ‘newbies’ should not make or post hacks, and that’s a pretty bad message to put out. Every chief hacker was a ‘newbie’ at some point and got better through interaction with the community and hard work put in on their end. Maybe instead of making posts like this you should play more hacks and offer constructive feedback, as personally I don’t get why you made this post.
I have thought a lot about this over the years: the idea that lowering barriers to access would necessarily result in a decrease of quality in projects. While perhaps in the past I might have agreed with that sentiment, I’ve come to view the notion as fundamentally elitist.
The problem isn’t with FEBuilder making hacking more accessible, the problem is with the culture of the hacking community. Improving accessibility is something that has been necessary for years, and FEBuilder finally did it. That’s a good thing. For years, I’ve advocated for the advanced hackers in the English community to place more a value on GUI-based hacking to no avail. In retrospect, I think that was a symptom of the larger problem that we’re talking about here: for a long time, we didn’t really care much about actively trying to make the hobby more inclusive. The lack of tutorials for the much-ballyhooed buildfile method is evidence of this. You should just get it, or try to find someone who already gets it to tutor you in the intricacies of how it works. I think that the “technological marvel” of buildfiles essentially gave people tunnel vision. If you want people to adopt your “superior” method, then maybe you should spend time finding more ways to make it accessible to the general public.
Another problem with the community’s mindset bubbles up in the original powder keg of a post that kicked off this whole discussion: “hacks dead, hacks not finished.” The necessity of “we must do everything we can to finish hack” has been so ingrained in the psyche of people that I believe it’s become detrimental. We place more value on “completion” than on a refined, well-thought out final product. What needs to change is how we talk and think about hacking. When people think of an incomplete hack as a failure, it completely devalues the endeavor. If you think that EN has no value because it exists as an alpha version of a final product, then that’s your problem. Every project is “value added” to our community in its own unique way.
One good way to address these problems would be to provide newcomers with some insight into the development process, perhaps some write-ups by more experienced hands with “polished” products, talking about how to balance the desire to complete the project with incorporating feedback, revising things over time, and basic techniques for quality assurance. They say that practice makes perfect; it’s natural that someone new to this medium will improve over the course of working on a project, but I think that the “completion culture” can prevent people from going back and refining early chapters with newfound knowledge and skills.
On another note: I’ll admit to being a bit dismayed with the “thing bad” v. “thing not bad” arguments that have been popping up over the past few weeks. I understand that everyone is a bit more on edge than usual due to the circumstances in the world right now, but let’s try to tone down the incendiary rhetoric please. There’s no point in having an argument where people just talk past one another.
I want to make this VERY CLEAR. I am not going to repeat myself again.
This is not a criticism of FEBuilder whatsoever. It is simply an observation of how it has introduced more newbies to hacking.
I do not know if this is simply an issue of my wording or a matter of people skimming instead of actually reading, but I am sick and tired of this miscommunication and I must make it extremely clear that I believe all of that has happened is overall a good thing: I only wanted to take a focus on possible negatives because I believe they do exist and are significantly less obvious. I apologize for any misunderstandings, and I’ll be sure to be more clear if I make any more essays like this. Perhaps I will edit the original post later.
Have a good day.
I appreciate FEBuilder and everything it does for our community. It’s definitely a huge milestone and its accessibility ought to be praised.
When I first brought Nightmare to the community 14 years ago, I didn’t ever think it would become so integral. It was a random program that had barely any notice up to that point and was relatively unused. It came with a demonstration table for Final Fantasy 1. But that program made editing the games a lot more accessible to so many people over the years, and was even built on by others to achieve even more things.
It didn’t matter if it was a basic edit that anyone could do. It was someone’s edit, and it was their creation.
FEBuilder makes me excited the same way every early hack did 13 years ago, the way the very first translations steps did, and the way huge completed hacks continue to do.
Anything that delivers more Fire Emblem, more fan projects, and more joy is something I want. I appreciate FEBuilder for delivering on these and more.
I completely agree that FEBuilder is good, as well as much of what you said about it. I use it myself quite a bit because of its accessibility and immediate feedback.
For that reason, I must ask what it is that you’re responding to.