#febuilder

[taco-ddr]

Oh gosh im making it happen

[vilkalizer]

Ok ok i did the goddamn neocities thing

Took the opportunity to finish up a tutorial i'd been procrastinating over for like 2 years. So, here's my guide to Everything you need to know about FE battle animations™. It's illustrated and has sections on the tools needed, how an animation is built and scripted, and notes on how to draw and animate it and finally insert it with febuilder.

Hopefully it's sufficiently comprehensive and easy to follow even for a beginner but if you think anything's missing feel free to point it out and i'll see about updating it.

Click the source link below to get to it, i'm not sure how weird tumblr is about external links these days.

[isat-script-project]

Your amazing work here has inspired me to want to try doing a script project for DQB2 and I was wondering if you had any advice for me?

I'm gonna assume that's some sorta dragon quest game?

Well, ISAT really is a blessing in this regard, because the game is not encrypted at all. Accessing files and all text via rpgmaker MV and VSC is incredibly easy.

okay this got really long i'm putting it under the cut.

But before you get started, there really are some things you need to ask yourself first:

How am I going to get the text from this game?

If your answer is "write it down by hand as I play" then already know that there HAS to be a better way. If you're choosing that method, get yourself emulation, save states, or endless patience, because hooh boy, I've done a little bit of that for a different project (no, I will not elaborate) but save scumming on original hardware to get different dialogue options is agony.

Is there a text dump for your game? Is there a file dump or decomp for your game? Do you have the technical know how to access it? If not, are you confident in your knowledge of the game to accurately identify where all dialogue may occur? If not, are you satisfied missing out on nothing lines and just focusing on the non-optional? Is your game linear enough to not need a closer look at the code to figure out what happens when, as isat does?

2. What's my scope?

Again, do you truly want every line from this game, or just what's "important"? I personally cannot rest until I've exhausted the fucking Menus (which is why there's a script page for those, too) because I'm a completionist with delusions of grandeur, but some people are satisfied transcribing the cutscenes and nothing else (MUCH TO MY ANNOYANCE WHEN I NEED THE OTHER STUFF.... nobody cares about the optional collectible npc dialogue BUT I CARE!!! I CARE!!!!!)

Anyways, what exactly your scope is is gonna significantly influence what your next step looks like.

3. How am I going to present this?

Making the isat script project an individual website mainly came down to how finicky the dialogue in isat is. There's conditionals stacked on conditionals and I wanted a space where I had total control over how to present these factors without influence.

For more linear games, like, say, that time I made all the fewiki scripts for Fire Emblem 6 from chapter 12 onward, it was easy enough to present the scripts on a wiki page just because the game is much more linear, there's less dialogue to begin with, and all conditional text could be nicely divided up into similar groups, like boss dialogue where the condition is just "fight boss with x character".

isat script project would not exist without my fire emblem fixation, fun fact. other fun facts include that as a child i attempted to novelize Mario Party DS by transcribing all story mode text into a booklet by hand, and I did not finish this for reasons that are hopefully obvious.

This is, as you may figure, way easier to do. There is significantly less burden on you to actually understand how a website works - I cannot stress enough that the current state of the script project is only possible thanks to Gold, and without them, we'd still be at all dialogue being formatted as <p><b>Siffrin:</b> Says some text.</p>

For a lot of older games, you can also find whole game scripts being put up into a single document. Tis common on gamefaqs, I've used those plenty. There I believe you're just working with plain ol txt.

The rule is always though look at examples and if they do something cool figure out whether you can copy it. i did not create the website layout myself, i used a base and fiddled with it for a whole weekend until it stopped exploding.

Again, like, using an existing structure like a wiki or gamefaqs or just google docs or a spreadsheet is a significantly eased burden. One of my favorite things ever is actually a text dump on github, of all places. For this one, the person putting it up chose to leave all text in as close to original state as possible, doing no trimming of things like character emotes and leaving in all original string titles of every line. This is also incredibly useful, even if it is more difficult to use for your average schmoe! (This has fucking saved me doing wiki stuff for engage. engage text dump i ADORE you)

Do you want to be as accurate to the code as possible, or as accurate to the game? Do you have the time, energy, and skills to make the visual presentation nice? Or do you want to keep it rudimentary to streamline your process?

If you ARE doing something like making your own website, it is crucial that you figure out your visuals early, lest you be like us, and be stuck in Reformatting Hell for several months, because someone figured out how to make a thing prettier and nicer to read, and now you need to update the 100+ pages you've already created.

Reformatting code like that takes just as long as making a page in the first place, by the by, because you're just not getting around copy-pasting everything line by agonizing line.

This stuff takes HOURS. If I went at it alone, I doubt I'd have finished by now, or within the next like, two years. This is a really time consuming hobby, and I love doing it a lot, it scratches my exact fixation itch, but if your game is huge, consider seeing if people would be interested in joining you? I will also say being autistic about your game of choice is also a bonus in the sustainability department.

Many a times there were just no updates (as they are now) cuz I am just. Distracted by something else. Like yes on one hand I'm going to uni now and have less time but it's not really less time if I can still put 17hrs into a new video game in three days.

Stuff like this is ALWAYS a long-term project and you WILL need to take time off from it or else you'll start seeing html in your dreams and get burnout.

STREAMLINE YOUR PROCESS!!! FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS WITH AS LITTLE EFFORT AS POSSIBLE!!!! Gold introduced me to Espanso, which is a program that lets you set up keyboard shortcuts to insert phrases, which was a MAAAAAASSIVE time saver in the html department, as it allowed me to just rapid fire paste in all the many html classes we stacked for the presentation of the site. even if you are doing a script on a wiki where everything does look like ['''Siffrin:''' says a thing] you will still be doing yourself a favor if you can shorten that '''Siffrin:''' to just typing :s .

As a side note, I also wanna say like. The popularity of isat script project is a complete outlier. Other game scripts may be used by a maniac like me to overanalyze the plot structure of Sonic 06, but you're very likely not going to see that recognition. I love doing this, because I want these resources to exist for myself. I don't do this for the good of the fandom, but because it is useful to me. I started this because I was writing isat fanfic, and got tired of looking up dialogue on youtube or booting up my own game.

Do I know if anyone found my FE6 scripts useful? No. Do I know if anyone is going through Veyle/Quotes and appreciating that I transcribed all the fucking battle voice clips? No. Do I know if someone appreciates me accurately labelling all voice lines from the ring polishing minigame in engage? Hell no. I don't know, I'm never going to get feedback on that. Those are wiki pages, anyone can edit them, they don't have viewcounts or comments I can look at, and the fandom just isn't as prone to taking screenshots and posting about them line by line as isat.

Isat blew the fuck up on tumblr. I'm not saying you'll get no recognition at all, but if you are relying on external motivators, you are probably going to peter out. There are pages I've worked on for other script things that I've genuienly not touched in two years because I just didn't feel like it, and that's also okay.

TLDR:

Figure out how to get the text you need with the least effort possible (and figure out whether doing that is even possible at all!), figure out what scope you're actually willing to put up with, and present it with the least effort possible, because everything else just isn't sustainable. Streamline streamline streamline. Be prepared to spend hours on this and maybe like find a new favorite podcast to just copy paste text to, because honestly, doing this is also pretty zen.

And most importantly, sparkle on, don't forget to have fun! Even if it seems big and intimidating, you can still make it just a fun side project, and slowly chip away at it over time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and with all the advantages going for isat script project (additional manpower, unencrypted files, easy tools for game examination) it still took over a year to complete.

(loop voice) Don't make the same mistakes I did, okay?

oh, yeah, one last thing, if you're not putting it on a wiki and ARE making your own website, ABSOLUTELY PUT IT ON GITHUB!!!! setting up so any changes to the main branch on github get reflected onto neocities is pretty easy and you only need to do it once, and what this allows is to just have random strangers show up and fix your problems for you. sometimes someone will just show up and fix five bajillion typos and then leave. or they'll stick around and help with more stuff and wowie you have a semblance of a team now.

if you're doing it on a wiki, find like, the wiki discord, if someone is interested in chipping in. if you're doing your own website, put it on github. do it. do it do it do it.

[luuxxart]

lmao remember when I had FE3H fankids, haha , well. here they are again

[iucemon]

(has an idea) tee hee

(realizes I can make it a reality) uh oh

[godmodebeginswithlesbians]

yknow this was originally gonna be a radiant dawn hack, cus i wanted to use the terrain effects that so far have only occured in radiant dawn, but i was so intimidated by it that instead im hacking the much more hacker friendly gba games. what the fuck is a nightmare module

[owlphaace]

A fucking fog of war desert map?????? What the actual fuck I am going to kill you person who made this rom hack

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

In a couple days I’ll be done with this semester and possibly college, so I’ll finally have the free time and peace of mind to start learning how to use FEBuilder and make my hack a bit less hypothetical.

I was just wondering if Mod Goldmary or anyone else knows any good resources for an aspiring hacker like myself that they can share. Tutorials, forums, sprite/music downloads, that sort of thing.

theres the graphics repository if you're looking for specific animations

for portraits, I'd recommend FECC + any pixelart focused program (I use MS Paint)

on fe universe, theres loads of advice to help you

hope that helps <333

[furrylibrarian]

Oh yeah since the semester is almost over I’m finally gonna start learning how to use FEBuilder pretty soon, so expect me to post about my hack more than usual in the near future

[luce-speaks]

i'm learning how to use FEBuilder so i can give joshua his hat

[sacredechoes]

I'm thinking of trying my hand at some GBA Fire Emblem ROM hacking, and I was wondering, what software/program/whatever was used to make Sacred Echoes?

My workflow for Sacred Echoes ended up being pretty similar to how the original devs built FE8 - meaning I was mostly working with source code and the compiler with various command-line utilities to convert my asset files into a data format the GBA could handle. When I started the project in mid-2018, I already had some formal education and work experience in programming, so I was past the steepest part of the learning curve for these specific tools.

Please note that my methods are NOT the methods I would recommend for a first project unless you're already familiar with the software development process and using command-line tools. I went into Sacred Echoes knowing I would need to write a bunch of custom code to modify the game mechanics beyond what the beginner tools at the time allowed me to do, so I chose the more complex path. If you're looking for an all-in-one graphical editor that's more friendly to beginners, FEBuilder is amazing and constantly updated with new functions. Whichever method you decide on using, the FE Universe forum and discord are full of resources, tutorials, and helpful people, and I wouldn't have been able to succeed without them. Best of luck on your project!

That said, here's all the technical details and links to all the tools I used:

Sacred Echoes was built using a combination of GNU make (a build system used to automatically detect and compile changes to source code in large projects) and Event Assembler, a utility primarily built for editing the GBA Fire Emblem games. Event Assembler is used with a method called the buildfile, which is essentially a fancy text file with instructions for Event Assembler to insert source files into a ROM and linking different parts together. This meant I used different tools for creating each type of data. Unlike with a ROM editor (such as FEBuilder), I wasn't constantly saving my changes to the same ROM file, but instead freshly building it each time I made a change and wanted to test. This meant that if I messed up (very common when writing custom code), I could just comment out the relevant code or instructions in the buildfile and rebuild from source, rather than try to pick through the ROM by hand to fix issues.

There were cases where I would need to view and edit raw binary data with a hex editor (usually to find a pointer to compressed graphics or a data table); I prefer HxD for that.

For graphics, use any program that can edit and save .PNG files (I used MS Paint and GIMP), and then a tool for game graphics called Usenti to put them into a format the GBA can read. If you need to find and rip graphics from a ROM to edit them, GBAGE is the gold standard (and comes built-in to FEBuilder).

Maps are built from the tileset graphics using a program called Tiled.

For music, the GBA uses MIDI sequences, so any audio program with MIDI support works fine for that. (I used Anvil Studio). The MIDI file is then converted to GBA with a utility called midi2agb.

For unit data and other large data structures, I used a spreadsheet in CSV format, which can be edited with a program like Excel or LibreOffice Calc.

For map events and loading units, the GBA FE games use a scripting language called Event Assembler Language, which just gets written in a raw .txt file. A good plaintext editor like Notepad++ or SublimeText can help keep track of language syntax and keywords.

For assembly code, it is also written in a text editor, and then compiled to bytecode with devkitARM. Most of it I wrote in raw ARM assembly language (which is specific to the GBA's CPU), but in more complex cases towards the end of the project I wrote the code in the C programming language and compiled it with devkitARM.

To keep track of my source files and changes, and to make backups and version control easier, I just used GitHub because I already had an account, but you could also use GitLab or Bitbucket instead.

Finally, I used some tools made by the FE hacking community specifically for automating some tasks and formatting data - most of these are Python scripts, but some can be downloaded as compiled executables. I used "lyn", "TMX2EA", "C2EA", TextProcess and ParseFile, and AnimationAssembler. Ask on the FEU discord or check the forum's toolbox tag.

[sunsickle]

ykw gacha life is fun acc btw what if i started posting more oc shit wouldnt that be crazy (wanna make a romhack at some point but im still trying to figure out how febuilder works)

[zeldary]

(Elaborating here as to not clog art blog)

Below is a novel im sorry

Also like full disclosure: this is purely a self insert that came of my undying love for Sonya fire emblem and the need to kith her. At the same time I got the delta emulator (and finally got around to play sacred echoes) I saw YouTube recommendations for FEbuilder (by XPGamesNL ) and though “wait…. Can I modify SE and just…. Insert myself 😳”

So backstory wise: Ary (we share first name because, again, self insert, and I was feeling lazy) was originally a dragon in archanea. However, after the whole FE1 events, they decided to flee to Valentia.

I do not know if that’s supported by canon, I haven’t played any version of fe1/it’s sequels, but I personally think that after medeus’ actions and dragons commonly degenerating, people generally began to distrust dragon who aren’t divine dragons (like tiki). Ary is a fire dragon though, and they kinda started to degenerate, BUT did decide to use dragonstones to avoid getting worse. That’s why they have horns/wings constantly, they can’t really get rid of them in “human” form.

(Again I don’t know if there’s precedent in favour/against this happening. I don’t care tbh I just like horns.)

So the combination of looking constantly /like that/ plus Medeus’ bullshit, humans are double distrustful of them. They also lost their family in the mist of everything (whomp whomp fe character is an orphan who could’ve thought) so they just decide to up and leave to Valentia.

(I also think that they /knew/ they could have done something to help Marth, obviously they heard about him and his mission at some point, but they were too cowardly to do so, even if they felt it was the right thing to do (if that makes sense). I feel they feel remorse for it and that’s also part of why they’re running away).

Thing is the ship they got on got caught in a storm. They survived and landed on a beach somewhere in Zofia.

Meanwhile, Sonya was waiting on some books. I think she was already researching Cure-For-Witches-101, and maybe tried to get books from archanea, see if they could be any help. Those same books were on the same ship Ary was on.

And that’s how Sonya stumbled upon the washed up dragon (them being near the port where she was waiting for the tomes). I think she would have felt somewhat conflicted on wether or not she had to help, or if this wasn’t her business, but she’d eventually have decided to try something to help.

Now, reading this someone might be thinking; hey that’s AWFULLY. Close to Zeke and Tatianna, and, I cannot stress this enough: Yep!! Oops!!!!!!

Turns out I made this entire thing up, after not playing echoes for like 6 years, and most of what I remember is celica’s army and Mathilda and Claire existing. Straight up, I forgot about Zeke. Oops!

And by the time my friend pointed it out, I was too invested and had written my supports so I decided to roll with it. As far as I’m concerned, Ary and Zeke(whatever his name is in FE1 I forgot) got read as shady people, they got put on shady ships and those shady ships were particularly vulnerable to shady storms.

Anyway After having Most Perfect Woman On Earth heal them, Ary just decided to follow her to hell and back, and Sonya mostly went “all right why not lmao”. (As such, they are recruitable at the same time as Sonya in my Sacred echoes version). If you fight sonya, you also have to fight them!

Gameplay stuff:

So I stole most assets (aside from the portrait) from the repo!

Map sprites here:

https://github.com/Klokinator/FE-Repo/blob/main/Map%20Sprites/Monsters%20-%20Dragons%20and%20Special/Manakete%20(U)%20Morva%20%7BEA%7D-stand.png

https://github.com/Klokinator/FE-Repo/blob/main/Map%20Sprites/Monsters%20-%20Dragons%20and%20Special/Manakete%20(U)%20Morva%20%7BEA%7D-walk.png

Battle animations here

https://github.com/Klokinator/FE-Repo/tree/main/Battle%20Animations/Monsters%20-%20Dragons%20and%20Special/%5BManakete-Custom%5D%20%5BU%5D%20Red%20Dragon%20FE10-Style%20by%20Nuramon

I also had help from hypergammaspaces, Sacred Echoes’ original creator, and the YouTuber who has those really extensive tutorials on feBuilder!

https://www.youtube.com/@XPGamesNL

OG sacred echoes related links:

https://github.com/HyperGammaSpaces/SacredEchoes/blob/master/README.md

[FE8] Sacred Echoes [v1.1] [COMPLETE] - ProjectsFire Emblem Universehttps://feuniverse.us › fe8-sacred-...

Also I need to point out Hypergammaspaces had to do extensive work to code from scratch (febuilder having its limits), and I have 0 coding experience, so all I could do was limited to fe builder, which caused some glitches and quirks which I don’t care to learn fixing!

Some of those quirks are;

I had to replace (postgame spoiler) playable berkut :( replacing any other placeholder spot resulted in a character who for some reason could NOT attack. I tried Nuibaba at first but (I think because she’s a magic user) it simply didn’t work. That’s why in game, my character apparently has lance experience. I don’t dare touch that in case it might break it now that I got it working!

They’re playable in Alm’s army too. Oops!

I genuinely thought that simply recruiting them in celica’s army would be enough to get them to stay there, apparently not.

Again I have 0 coding experience and I don’t dare play with a lot of stuff, so I decided to have a story-related excuse. Ary learns about Celica’s and Alm’s *thing* going on (rumours spread fast in the army?) and offer to celica that they might fight with him and watch over him. Celica however (this happening after their reunion turned sour) makes them promise not to tell Alm she’s technically sending them. I think Ary proposed it because they do got a massive crush on Sonya, so they kinda empathize with Celica, and figure they might as well help out since they can fly long distances quickly.

It’s a wonky excuse but it’s the best I could come up with.

Their Echoes design is based on the sprite actually! That’s why they got that kind of robe and small hood! As for dragon form, I usually prefer bigger Myrrh type dragons but again I didn’t want to push my luck when I saw it worked fine so I stuck with POR/RD looking dragon.

The gaiden design is more akin to FE1 enemy manaketes and Bantu more specifically, as he’s also a fire dragon (I think). The horns look more like a devil’s horns because I figured a Japanese game out in the 1980s would be more likely to use Christian-like imagery as inspiration (see first Zelda games and castlevania and whatnot)

I also inserted some supports! At first I only did Celica’s army supports but since I story-inserted them, somewhat, in Alm’s army I wanted to include at least one there.

The first one is obviously Sonya. I gave them an À support ending, but i didn’t want it to feel TOO indulgent so I had it be somewhat ambiguous romance-wise. Sacred Echoes also gave Sonya an A rank ending with (spoilers) Saber. Hopefully the two can coexist? I’ll know when I get there I suppose. Sonya has two hands anyway. (They also get an ending specific to the scenario where she dies! So they got 3 endings total)

I also gave them one with Jesse. I read, somewhere, once, if I’m not misremembering, that Jesse in Sacred echoes is trans. Hopefully I didn’t misread/misremember. That support is just meant to be trans joy and support between the two of them and silly wacky antics or whatever.

I also have one with genny. Since my character is mostly the lonely brooding type, I wanted one fluffy support, and genny is one of my favourites. It just reveals Ary (like their namesake) collects small figurines, and genny and them bond over making up silly stories for them.

There’s one with Leon, because “haha gay characters devoted to someone”. I wanted a support where Leon kinda calls them out on the fact they need a social circle outside of Sonya, and they bring up how Sonya feels safe to be around, but they constantly feel on edge around others, like any social interaction they can try will go wrong by their own fault. Basically they ostracize themselves to avoid others doing it. Kinda wanted to add mentions of my own traits.

Second to last is Est. At first it was with Mae, but I figured having a support with another Archanean (and one in Marth’s army) would be more interesting. This one is mostly exposition about their past. I didn’t want that to be like clumsily inserted in the story

Last one, and the one in Alm’s army, is Tobin. I really wanted someone to say “hey so who are you?. What are you doing here?…” at first it was Alm, but he has the max number of supports. Zeke was considered (similar reasons to Est) but I didn’t want to potentially deal with support that would destroy his amnesia backstory and make his relationship to tatianna weird, plus I find it unlikely they actually met before. I considèred Kliff, but since he can be recruited by celica, that whole “what are you doing in alm’s army” bit wouldn’t work in this situation. I picked Tobin because he’s Alm’s childhood friend and one of my IRL’s friends favourite characters.

I also added some battle quotes against Jedah because of course they’d hate his ass enough to curse him out lmao.

As of right now they lack conversation where they hype up celica in her Duma trial. Hopefully I can fix that someday, but does involve minor coding in feBuilder. I also would like one of those “oh no my bestie died nooo don’t die ur so sexy haha:((“ echoes does but same applies. Maybe I’ll try to add one at some point, but that’s like the least of my priorities.

The final battle has all the characters say something when you pick them, I couldn’t implement it for ary so it happens when they attack any enemy instead. It felt like a fair compromise.

That’s basically the gist of it lmao! Thanks for giving me a chance to rant about silly self inserts^^

And I’m so sorry if this is especially annoying to read it’s 3am oops

Also wanted to include I did ask for permission to modify! And I made a new more accurate portrait! The first art I made of the character was the OG portrait, but it’s not as accurate now that I made fullbody art

Made a fire emblem echoes OC! Decided to try out art styles similar to echoes and gaiden’s art!

(The gba portrait is cuz I inserted them in the sacred echoes demake!)

[ljreflet]

I’ve never actually played any of the GBA FE games, but I suddenly got this weird desire to mod them because FEBuilder is so expansive it’s kind of insane.

I have no idea if I’m actually gonna use these, but I edited a couple of sprites from the FE repo to create male Pegasus Knight sprites. Out of the whole repository, there is only literally a grand total of //TWO// sprites for male Pegasus Knights (and ZERO for male Falcon Knights and Dark Fliers? C’mon now), so of course I had to jump in and make more LOL. And trust me, the repository is fricken HUGE.

If I ever have the desire to play the games, I’ll probably make more, but let me tell you, these are NOT easy to edit oh my god

[lasoonaofthefireembull]

Hahaha. someone take febuilder away from me.

[godmodebeginswithlesbians]

just remembered l'arachelda

i should remaster all of those and put them in febuilder to get the Real™️ gba experience (and possibly gifs)