The capability of creating is far better than whether it results in “good” creations. I believe your original post and method of thinking about the community and its creation is wrong.
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The Age of the Buildfiles just keeps getting more advanced and bigger day by day really. If anything the increase in published hacks overall due to FEB gets more people into Buildfiles because of more people overall playing hacks and getting interested in using the various methods out there to create one.
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… Ahhh, good thing happenning…
… But what if good thing, actually bad…?
… Not saying good thing is bad, but one must consider the possibility…
Joking aside, I do not see the purpose to stir this sort of sentiment. Like, what do you expect people to say? “Yes, I agree, we must police these newcomers to make sure they don’t settle for their initial goal.” There’s little reason to police this. Do you want it to be like that? o.o
To my knowledge, FE Universe isn’t exactly swarming with “low-polish” complete hacks hurting the visibility of “high-polish” ongoing projects, so it’s not like these complete projects are hurting anything or anyone?
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Yes, of course, but it’s not what I’m necessarily intending to discuss. I myself am one of the people that FEBuilder brought in, so it would be not only elitist but also ridiculous if I were to think that FEBuilder is bad for bringing people in. I’m only making the observation of relative mediocrity and a change in the wind. Justice and Pride is a less than polished hack, yet it is successful, fun, and a success story in the community. This is a great thing. I would rather a project with a lot of love be poured into it be at the forefront than one that only emphasized looking pretty and having cool ASM, neglecting other areas and coming off as incredibly generic in the process. If that were the case, then yes, I would have something to complain about. I don’t, because it isn’t. This is just a statement on where we currently stand, and my current thoughts on it. It’s not in depth, though. It’d be far far longer if it were. My only desire was to see what other people think about how FEBuilder has impacted the community in ways beyond the obvious “it good. people come”. I don’t know what I’d expect, but at least I would most likely learn something.
This might be a bit bold of an approach but… remember when a month or so ago, you hopped into the Hacking Hel Discord? That probably was the best way to go and learn about our small FE5 hacking community. We had a pretty long chat about translation, translations of names, especially. It was pretty pleasant, I think. I enjoyed it.
Why don’t you try this again? I’d say that’s a more effective way to learn about the topics you’re worried about, rather than concern-posting threads that immediately came off as problematic. BigMood wouldn’t have had to come here and reply on the defensive if you had just DM’d them your questions (or interacted in their thread). And you’d probably have gotten the same amount of info.
If you’re curious about what these newbies mean for the future, just… go out and interact with them, y’all. Knowing what motivates them, what leads to this troublesome “lack of polish” will probably get you closer to unveiling the future of the community than doing… this. It’s probably gonna be more fun for you as well, honestly. =]
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Mostly because I have no strong feelings about the current topic at hand, and made the thread mostly to organize my thoughts. Still, you make a good point, so thank you for that.
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Possible, but why would anyone choose to release a full completed hack before rallying to gather a team in the community first, or at least testers?
The creator of the example given, The Dragon Herald, already gave their own defense, and I’ll expand on that.
There are plenty of reasons for beginners, who aren’t full of themselves for no good reason, to expect that they wouldn’t receive any help that requires a real amount of investment. What do the people who help get out of it if they don’t think there’s enough promise in your game, and why should you think there is enough promise in your game created out of inexperience without being any kind of well-known name yet for people to help for free in any way that demands much of their effort?
About the most that I can expect to see come out of it, is the “helper” interfering with what the creator actually wanted to get out of their project.
Conflict of interest is a huge deterrent to someone who just wants to make the game they wanted to have. Blazer doesn’t like Nayr but had to put up with his shit and suck up to him to actually have portraits of reasonable quality for TLP. Tactics Universe from what I’ve heard of its history started out as a community hack of sorts which would have completely died out were it not for Blazer trying to salvage the thing himself, and there was drama over that decision too.
When you only have one mind to have to appeal to, and only one mind to handle the direction, you’re not going to be slowed down or demotivated by anyone else’s evaluation of your product until it’s done.
It’s convenient to think about hacks as being some kind of passionate tribute of quality gaming to provide for a community through people coming together to make something great, but it completely forgets about what’s in it for the creators beyond at best reputation. Community hacks, which pretty much automatically have a team going for it, were a trend that virtually never made enough progress to be satisfactory, (the only exception I’m aware of is Void’s Blitzarre Adventure, which intentionally allows for cutting plenty of corners just to prove a point of getting it done) and I was part of one at a time. (not this community, but still)
Lots of big ideas were thrown around. Branching paths, multiple writers, distinct narratives depending on the player’s choice. Quality control for graphics being handled by spriters willing to clean anyone else’s messes up. Everyone pitching in with getting the stats balanced and bringing class variety onto the table via a first come first serve system that won’t let there be too many of the same kind.
The reality? Basically nothing got done, you couldn’t even rely on the idea men to care to give any details about their own OCs in the mix, “leaders” (writers) started to talk shit about people wanting their creations to be depicted as intended when they don’t have the skill or reputation to warrant jack shit beyond taking their mug to make who they believe is appropriate for their story, some asshole whined over a pirate centric narrative having good loot in it cause pirates be treasure hunting because they were supposed to be the ones who gave out good loot in exchange for harder chapters, anyone who wanted a prepromote character had to be bad regardless of when that character joins, and it devolved into procrastination in the form of revising the stats of things over and over because that was the least controversial element of the game and also the one that warranted the least effort in a vacuum.
It’s very easy to see why someone would want to just get what they wanted themselves, to get done on their terms, with their skill levels, so long as they can. Creators themselves are their own quality control to a degree, they often know how much people can hate their work, they know what people won’t let fly, and they know what will earn disrespect. I made an FE6 reskin with 2 OCs involved in it and I sooner expected death threats for daring to insert them (completely independent of who they are) than anyone thinking “cool shit, I’ll help out with something if you can’t do it.” I went through with it anyway just because all I wanted was my own FE6 and a thing I could expect to actually get done.
I probably won’t ever release the next thing I intend to make either and test it on my own or just let some select friends play it, because I’m too busy wanting it to turn out as I had intended for it to be. The more I want out of it for myself, the less I can afford for others to control it.
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I don’t really know how to cut in edge-wise to this maelstrom of different, seemingly unrelated tracts of community discourse. But I will say that only publishing hacks once they are completable (though not often officially “completed”) is very much the norm, at least in the circles I tread. The reason for this varies wildly depending on the situation, but basically the only reason this isn’t perceived as the norm is because very few hacks ever get to the point of being completable. The majority of hacks go unpublished, and an overwhelming majority aren’t posted here.
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I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say some people (or teams) care about their hacks more than others. Some people just want to design a game to completion without caring so much about atmosphere, some people want to flush out their story/characters to their full potential, etc. No amount of innovative tools/resources is going to change/fix that.
Also I don’t think there’s much up for discussion regarding hacks being “unpolished” nowadays. Hacks today (on average) are more polished than hacks 5 years ago because of the tools/resources introduced by this community (and select individuals). I mean if you wanna encourage and transform the community into further helping newcomers flush out their hacks (which it kinda already does), I’m all for it. Just know that there will always be people who “publish” their hacks without a care for that.
I have been working on a single hack in my spare time for the past 7 years (pathetic and disgusting) and have moved from FEditor to FEBuilder to Buildfiles and from FE7 to FE8. Yet I have never and will never ask anyone for help with my specific project. Why? Because I enjoy doing it myself and am so much of a perfectionist that I would not be able to let someone else have control over something in my hack. Even something so small as text or portraits or stats. I am 26 chapters in (out of ~44) and will most likely release a 100% complete hack in the next 25 years lol. But it will have been created by me and for me, and if people want to play it they may certainly do so. I think there may be other people like that out there… and FEBuilder certainly makes it easier for them.
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I can only say, Febuilder is the best tool ever, great functionality, great compatibility with other hacking tools, constant updates, great support from his very creator 7743.
I can only say, many of the new hacks may be their very first hack, and I believe, while pretty much a develper level hack is the best, the small hacks, not very polished hacks are needed for newcomers to learn and have something finished.
Even the original 3 games from the GBA series had a lot of unused content, a lot of things that could not be finished in time, and in the DLC era, you almost always buy an incomplete game lol.
So, I think the hacks would get better and more numerous with the time
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I’m late to this party but I want to echo what @Pandan said actually.
And this is coming from someone who actually started with the FEditor/Nightmare/EA combination.
Every project is bad when it first comes out.
This is just the nature of how hackers in this community work. I cannot think of a single exception to this rule. And it makes total fucking sense. Excited hackers released their “1.0” version generally aren’t that great at map design or even story building.
We can even talk about the hacks in OP. TRTR started out as like a reskin of FE7 and I helped Uncle Prime with the writing. EN has gone through a ton of changes since its first version. Zim’s SoA was pretty garbo when it first came out for fe7 too. Do you know how shit Bloodlines was when it first came out? Good lord, I made half the sprites and they sucked and the gameplay was incredibly rough and the story was hammy with a bunch of exposition that was poorly placed.
The reason why hacks get good eventually is because the creator becomes more and more aware of how to make their game better, how to make their story better and how to make their characters better.
FEBuilder sure as shoe shine opened the floodgates for a bunch of novice hackers, so naturally there are most “First-Tries” than ever before. But if they stick to their project and accept feedback, no matter how harsh it seems, and apply it, they’ll really have something good in a couple years.
Y’all have it easy i swear man.
Granted its just the latter 2 but dang this was the first page LOL
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Yeah, no kidding seeing those messages. Unrelated to the main topic, but was the FE Hacking community more assholish by then, did it grow softer over time, or did you just somehow nab all the rude ones (though it is possible you cherry-picked your examples, but I’ll discount that for now).
Cause those critiques, although mostly fair, seem downright mean-spirited, and to me seem like they were there to just put you down, rather then trying to add in valuable criticisms.
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As for the topic itself, I don’t have much to say since my opinions were already echoed by several others. What I will say though is that no matter what genre you’re in, lowering the bar of entry will always somewhat lower the level of quality, purely on the basis that those of less experience than others are now contributing.
This new lifeblood however, breathes in new life to the scene, and with that spreads new ideas, new concepts, and eventually in the context of FEU, new ASM’s Hacks or even smaller communities. And eventually the level of quality one can expect from the scene will only improve, eventually reaching levels one could have never dreamed of without tools such as FEBuilder or Buildfiles. Of course this is somewhat hypothetical, but it still stands that with every new addition to the community, whether it be new ASM, a new hack, or just new people, it enriches the environment (unless you’re dickholes such as the infamous Aramais).
I’d also like to say the accessibility of these tools should also never be undermined, even if it does by virtue lower the bar. I’m not sure the state of other communities when it comes to this sort of thing, but I recently attempted to make just some simple edits of Pokemon Black & Black 2, but not only were the editing tools difficult to come by, several of them were separated by specific uses (Trainer editors, Wild Encounter editors, Evolution editors), and some of these editors such as ANDI, didn’t even have workable links, so it was impossible to nab those and make use of them.
With FEBuilder and Buildfiles, all it takes is some browsing and a download, and you’ll have multiple means of hacking, to the point you can create an entire game out of it. I find this type of accessibility and availability is amazing. It invites people to try their hand at rom hacking, and some of those people stay. Some of those people end up using the tools to make something special, whether it be ASM, graphics, or otherwise. Some of those people end up releasing that to the public, and it becomes a nice feedback loop of production.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should embrace the new influx of people coming into the community through FEBuilders, and not push them away, on the basis that their projects are less polished than ones of yore. If one has critiques of those individual projects, levy them at their creators.
(Also I’m not directing this comment at Zoisite, or anyone in particular; this thread’s just sort of spiraled into it’s own discussion and these are my thoughts and addendum to it).
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