Fire Emblem Engage: GhostCow's Mod

[GhostCow]

I have no idea why I did this, but for some reason I ended up spending hours yesterday learning how to mod Fire Emblem Engage. There are a lot of things that annoyed me with the game on my first play through so now that I have a rough idea of how modding works, I've decided to make my own mod to remedy this. I'm still in the early stages and it will probably be weeks before I've finished play testing and tweaking it, but here are the planned features so far:

Diverse tiddie sizes: Boob sizes in the game are controlled via an xml file and the numerical values used in the game range from 0.8 (Anna) to 1.75 (Ivy). Despite this, 90% of the girls in the game are set to 1 and many potential sizes are left untouched. I think it's weird that most of the girls have the exact same chest size, so I'll be mixing the numbers up a bit.

Rebalanced characters: I think it really sucks that as you progress through the game and pick up new characters, the old characters are made obsolete by how much better the new characters are. I will be rebalancing stat growths to make some of the earlier characters remain high tier throughout the game. Mostly because I like to play with an all female team and many of my favorite girls are just flat out trash. Etie and Lapis are prime examples. Etie will start with Alcryst's lord class, Lapis will have Diamant's lord class, and Anna will start as a mage instead of an axe warrior since she is awful for that class and it's a complete waste of 5 levels.

Deniggerfication: All negroes will be made white except for maybe Zelestia who is probably just a darker skinned Japanese.

Would anyone be interested in playing this once I'm done with it? Also I'm open to suggestions for anything you guys want to see that doesn't require new models or anything like that. I'm basically just tweaking values in xml files for all of this. Technically I could add new classes or change existing ones, but that's a huge can of worms that I don't really want to open.

This is currently made to work with the following mods:

Battle Outfits and More
Class and Amiibo Outfits for All
Dragon + Exclusive Classes for Everyone

I may also include my own version of the adult Anna mod since it's a shame that they turned one of the sexiest girls in the series into a loli. I also dislike that the only dancer in the game is a dude because that's just fruity and I don't want guys on my team. One of the girls will probably be changed to start as a dancer and have her personal skill changed to Seadall's Curious Dance. Probably Goldmary.

[WhiteShark]

Those sound like good ideas generally but they shouldn't all be one mod. Modularity is good and someone may not want every change you intend to make. Is there already a mod that makes stat growths non-random? Or is that how the game already works? That's always put me off of Fire Emblem.

[GhostCow]

You can't really make mods modular because everything is done via xml files that are packed into these .bundle files that Unity uses. If two mods edit the same file, they aren't going to be compatible. The only two ways around this are to either have the user unpack the xmls from both mods, look at the differences between the files, then manually copy the differences from one to the other and repack the files, or to just base your mod on someone else's and add your features on top of theirs. Most mods are built on top of the changes from Battle Outfits and More because of this.

Stat growths are random unless playing on maddening/lunatic difficulty and there is no way to change that as far as I know and changing the growth rates will change it for every difficulty.

In maddening difficulty, if you have 40% growth (added between class and personal growth), You just gain .4 of that stat every level. Since stats are rounded, you’ll only see the whole number of the stat though.

For example, let’s say you start with 3 str at level 1 with 30% growth. So next level you won’t grow strength but you’ll have 3.3. Then next level, 3.6. Then 3.9.

I'm not sure it the game rounds up at .5 or just rounds down though. You’ll get your stat up either at 3.6 or 4.2.

[rusty_shackleford]

You can't really make mods modular because everything is done via xml files that are packed into these .bundle files that Unity uses. If two mods edit the same file, they aren't going to be compatible. The only two ways around this are to either have the user unpack the xmls from both mods, look at the differences between the files, then manually copy the differences from one to the other and repack the files, or to just base your mod on someone else's and add your features on top of theirs. Most mods are built on top of the changes from Battle Outfits and More because of this.

Stat growths are random and there is no way to change that as far as I know, but you can change the chance for each specific stat to go up per character.

I think stat growths are fixed in Lunatic/Maddening difficulty, but I'm more of a Hard difficulty kind of guy.

Since it's Unity, you could make a C# mod to dynamically load the bundles at runtime depending on which parts you want.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ ... mFile.html

Would have to do that before whatever part of the game is loading the needed files tho

Good example of why I vastly prefer games use Unity over Unreal Engine 4/5, I consider modding to be much more important than any 'improvement' UE offers.

[GhostCow]

Since it's Unity, you could make a C# mod to dynamically load the bundles at runtime depending on which parts you want.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ ... mFile.html

Would have to do that before whatever part of the game is loading the needed files tho

Good example of why I vastly prefer games use Unity over Unreal Engine 4/5, I consider modding to be much more important than any 'improvement' UE offers.

This is all greek to me tbh. I'm going to guess there is some reason that no one else is doing something like that, but I'm a complete noob with no programming skills trying to mess around with this stuff with barely any tutorials and next to no documentation. I'm having to read the xml files myself and try to figure out what things in them mean to accomplish anything. On top of that, a lot of the stuff in the xml files is written in Japanese, such as item IDs and class IDs. I'm not particularly great with hiragana or kanji so it's been pretty rough.

These two guides are all I've had to learn from and they don't really tell you a whole lot:

https://gamebanana.com/tuts/15687

https://gamebanana.com/tuts/15702

This is the guide on how to merge mods and is the only way to do it that anyone has talked about: https://gamebanana.com/tuts/15731

Here's an example of one of the files I've been messing with, it covers most of the class and growth related stuff: https://files.catbox.moe/tmoj8f.xml

[WhiteShark]

On top of that, a lot of the stuff in the xml files is written in Japanese, such as item IDs and class IDs. I'm not particularly great with hiragana or kanji so it's been pretty rough.

If you want help with this, you can send me the file/upload a screenshot/copy the text and I can translate.

[GhostCow]

On top of that, a lot of the stuff in the xml files is written in Japanese, such as item IDs and class IDs. I'm not particularly great with hiragana or kanji so it's been pretty rough.

If you want help with this, you can send me the file/upload a screenshot/copy the text and I can translate.

So far I've been able to get by with my 野蛮人 level Japanese and Google translate, but I'll definitely hit you up if I can't figure something out.

[rusty_shackleford]

DeepL machine translation is far ahead of the competition FYI. Only things that get close are services dedicated to specific languages e.g., Yandex's RU→EN/EN→RU.

[GhostCow]

DeepL machine translation is far ahead of the competition FYI. Only things that get close are services dedicated to specific languages e.g., Yandex's RU→EN/EN→RU.

DeepL is pretty good and definitely better than Google translate, but Google translate is good enough for simple things like class and item names. Japanese is so context sensitive that neither is great for any serious TL stuff though.

[KnightoftheWind]

This game looks like weeb trash, mods or no mods. Which is a shame because I found the GBA Fire Emblems to be quality tactical RPGs with compelling characters. I guess we can put Intelligent Systems on the "pozzed" list.

[maidenhaver]

Every FE harem needs to include Marisa and Lute from sacred stones.

[Derringer]

This game looks like weeb trash, mods or no mods. Which is a shame because I found the GBA Fire Emblems to be quality tactical RPGs with compelling characters. I guess we can put Intelligent Systems on the "pozzed" list.

The GBA games were already casualized past 5 and still breakable back before that so that doesn't mean too much.

[GhostCow]

Finished my work on Anna. She starts as a wing tamer now because her growths are made for magic and game throws a ton of mages at you, so I wanted to make her a little different. That and I just like the class and the dress that comes with it. Also she's no longer a loli.

Gave up on deniggerfication. I could do it, but it turned out to be more work than I thought. I'd have to actually edit the face textures and I don't care enough to learn how to do that. Still doing a playthrough to see how my balance changes are working out. So far everything is pretty good, but I definitely made Celine a bit OP. She's normally the worst mage, but she's way better than Anna right now.

I haven't recruited any of the other characters I changed yet. I've been too focused on finishing the new DLC, which I just completed.

[somerandomdude]

Gave up on deniggerfication. I could do it, but it turned out to be more work than I thought. I'd have to actually edit the face textures and I don't care enough to learn how to do that.

The most prestigious type of mod that can be made is to cancel niggers from a game, so maybe you could find someone who will work with you on that?

[WhiteShark]

What's so hard about it?

[KnightoftheWind]

You could always partner with American Krogan once he's done with Fallout 4.

[GhostCow]

It's probably really easy to do. Can probably just extract the textures and use a paint bucket tool to turn the brown to white and then play with the skin tone modifiers on the bodies until they match. I just don't really want to spend the time learning how to do that. Originally I thought I could change the skin tone of everything with the xml files, but that only effects the skin tone of the bodies.

I would maybe be more motivated if I thought anyone would play my mod, but I think I'm the only person on this forum who likes Fire Emblem.

[GhostCow]

You could always partner with American Krogan once he's done with Fallout 4.

I forgot to reply to this last night. I actually know this guy and we don't get along at all. I don't like him because he's a pompous pseudo-intellectual who has no respect for the anime avatar anons who kept the spirit of George Lincoln Rockwell alive for years without any outside help and he thinks that white nationalism should be a no-fun-allowed movement with tons of purity spiraling. He doesn't like me because I racemix with Japanese girls.

[KnightoftheWind]

I see, well I expected that to be the case. However, I am no fan of George Lincoln Rockwell or any other Nazi LARPer. I feel that by making white nationalism synonymous with 1940s Germany, it's ideology and it's imagery, it kills the movement before it even has a chance to get off the ground. Not only that, but it corrupts the minds of young impressionable men into defending scum like Adolf Hitler. Whether or not there was a holocaust, his regime was Anti-Christian and Anti-Tradition. For those reasons alone, he is not someone anybody should be looking up to.

[rusty_shackleford]

I strongly prefer early Americana imagery over nazi larping.

[GhostCow]

I love Hitler and I think he was the greatest man to live since Christ, but Nazi larping is super cringe and none of the people I know who do it actually live like national socialists. They are all gross nerds with bad social skills and grooming habits, if they even groom at all.

That said, I agree with Murdoch Murdoch 100%

[rusty_shackleford]

Are you going to write a review for this tho?

[MadPreacher]

Are you going to write a review for this tho?

I wouldn't work for anyone that calls writers scribblepigs. Just sayin.

[rusty_shackleford]

I demand the highest quality from my scribblepigs.

[KnightoftheWind]

If you want me to be a scribblepig, you must be my paypig in return.

[rusty_shackleford]

If you want me to be a scribblepig, you must be my paypig in return.

You get paid in exposure.

[GhostCow]

Are you going to write a review for this tho?

Ah fuck, I guess I will since you asked. I actually used to be a really good writer, but it's been a very long time since I've written anything or even read an actual professional review of a game, so I'll need some time to prepare. I'll try to do it as soon as I finish my current play through so I can write one with the game fresh in my mind.

[KnightoftheWind]

If you want me to be a scribblepig, you must be my paypig in return.

You get paid in exposure.

[GhostCow]

So I fucked up the game in a way that I can't fix without starting over so I'm pretty much done with this shit. Sadly I won't be writing a review since I don't have any screenshots saved up and I was only up to like chapter 9 when this happened. Sorry Rusty.

[rusty_shackleford]

So I fucked up the game in a way that I can't fix without starting over so I'm pretty much done with this shit. Sadly I won't be writing a review since I don't have any screenshots saved up and I was only up to like chapter 9 when this happened. Sorry Rusty.

did you start over yet?