Cycle of the Heavens, a -traditional, story-driven- fangame experience from @Adarya & @VonIthipathachai (Team MADMANMOON)
What is one thing about your project that you feel has had a lot of/the most time and effort put into it?
Adarya: For my part, it was definitely making the portraits and expressions for the characters. Even though they’re AI-generated, generating a good portrait can take up to two hours per character. And they still need more work to make them usable in-game.
For example, raw portraits usually come out with eyes that are blurry or distorted, meaning they need to be manually corrected and/or repositioned to look right. Clothing and armor details often require fixing too if they look too bizarre. Sometimes we even combine the best parts of different generations, i.e. putting the head of one and the body of another.
Expressions like closed eyes, crying, smiling, and blushing are also manually created for each character. And with over 25 characters in the first demo alone, this process has definitely been time-consuming, but also very rewarding.
Von: Whereas Adarya is primarily in charge of presentation and rough drafting of the story, my responsibilities mainly lie with the game’s internals, i.e. unit and map design and general balancing of classes, weapons, items, and Skills.
I also do a lot of heavy lifting for script revision and additional worldbuilding details to give the game’s writing a more professional level of quality.
What was/is the most enjoyable part of working on your project?
Adarya: Creating portraits has also been the most enjoyable part of the project for me. I’m a big fan of the Tellius games, so there’s something really satisfying about seeing the image of a character in my head come to life in my favorite artstyle.
I also really enjoy enhancing the maps! Von gives me rough drafts of the game’s maps made with SRPG Studio’s default tilesets, but I’m in charge of transforming them using the beautiful ‘Nekura Fantasy Map Chip’ tilesets. All the beautified maps are pre-rendered in Photoshop to make the game’s environments look more natural, immersive, and engaging.
Von: I’m something of a balancing nut and have spent hours on end fine-tuning units’ stats and growth rates, and this project is no exception.
Having gotten into Fire Emblem through Awakening, my design philosophy doesn’t allow for “bad” units; you’ll not find anybody as weak as Vyland or Gwendolyn if I have anything to say about it.
In my opinion, you should be able to use whoever you please without too many issues, but still need to keep in mind each individual unit’s strengths and weaknesses.
What is one thing about your project that you wanted to talk about that you didn’t have the opportunity to include in your video?
Von: I mainly would’ve liked to highlight mechanics such as fixed Weapon Ranks and the full Radiant Dawn Trinity of Magic, but there wasn’t really a good place to show them off.
The current demo doesn’t have this yet, but for later releases we’re planning on adding a proper Con system similar to the one used in Three Houses, but based on the user’s max HP instead of their Str.
What inspired your project’s creation?
Adarya: One of the driving factors for making CotH is a desire to explore a different storytelling perspective for this type of game. We’ve seen quite a few stories centered around a young prince or princess who must come of age after the tragic loss of one or even both parents, embarking on a quest to save the world. We wanted to turn that concept around and ask: “What if the central character was actually the parent?”
For this game, the focus is on a parent’s journey, with all the complexities and sacrifices that come with protecting their children and kingdom. This allows for a more mature narrative, exploring the lengths a parent may go to ensure their family’s safety. Heroism isn’t limited to the young or the inexperienced—it’s also about those who have lived, loved, and lost, yet still rise to face new challenges.
Von: Klokinator’s Klokgen AI model was released last year; being trained strictly on vanilla Fire Emblem assets, it provides a flexible alternative to portrait splicing which also respects the ethical context of creating free-to-play FE fangames. The model was quickly adapted for use with FE artstyles outside of the GBA titles, so Adarya naturally took advantage of it to start bringing her own character ideas to life in a style reminiscent of Radiant Dawn, her favorite title.
Since the MARTH (Make A Really Terrific Hack) contest was coming up and none of my ideas were coming together, and the premise she had in mind sounded compelling enough, I offered to help her make a game around some of the characters she’d created, which we could submit to the contest. Of course, the ambitions for the project blew up tremendously from there, and it is now planned to be a full-length game, the third such game I’ve worked on so far (Sanctaea Chronicles coming first and SRPG Studio Heroes coming second).
Compared to Adarya, my enthusiasm for generative AI is more muted, and I’ve made efforts to prevent this project from using it more than necessary. I am keenly aware of the processes used to train these AIs and the rampant consistency problems associated with AI-generated assets. However, speaking as someone who (along with one of his SRPGS colleagues) has had difficult prior experiences with professional artists and a creative vision that demands a tremendous quantity of custom halfbody portraits, the sheer power of AI is something I cannot simply ignore. And my intuition tells me it’s only going to become more advanced and omnipresent from here. Therefore I figure I might as well learn to live with it and make the best use of it that I can. This project is a critical first step.
What got you into making Fire Emblem fan games?
Adarya: This is actually my first time making a fan game. I’ve always wanted to make one, but never had the confidence to start, as it involves many aspects I wasn’t sure I could handle on my own. When Von offered to collaborate, I knew it was the opportunity I had been waiting so long for. Given that he’s one of just a handful of people who’ve finished a game using SRPG Studio, I feel confident that together we can bring this project to life.
Von: Fire Emblem: Awakening captivated me from the moment I first popped it into my 3DS, and as I branched out to trying other games in the series and took notes of what I liked and disliked about each, the creative gears in my head started to turn, and I resolved to one day create my own “ideal” FE game.
My ultimate ambition is to create a sprawling, high-quality fangame in Awakening’s vein, using a similar artstyle, a fully customizable Avatar, reclassing, and most importantly, Child Units!
BONUS QUESTION
Who is your favorite character from your project? Why are they your favorite?
Von: Barbi, your early-game Bow user, has been one of our favorite characters to write for her positive attitude and personality. Her Longbow-enhancing personal Skill also elevates her into an invaluable member of your army.
Adarya: I might be a bit biased because she’s the main character, but my favorite would have to be Selenea. Her design is one of my personal favorites, especially because it breaks away from the traditional color schemes we often see in Lord characters, like blue or red hair. Her black hair makes a striking and beautiful contrast with her red dress.