MK404's FE7 Hack

[Mage Knight 404]

Possibly a handful of FESS knows that I've been working on an FE7 hack for about a year now, and there's some spark of life in here it seems, so I thought I'd finally show something of my worth.

'Course, I didn't plan on doing much in the beginning; just changing names and text. I was also very nervous at trying to hack for the first time, but I managed to preserve. Now I want this hack to be a little more than just that. And so, here's a little overview:

The hack follows Eliwood, Linoan of FE5, and myself in a simple retelling of FE7. Many characters, some from video games, one from an anime, and many original characters join up to thwart Ingram's plans, defeat the Fire Dragon, and maybe have some fun along the way. Difficulty won't be that much harder, mostly along the lines of FE9 Normal to Hard Mode late game. I'm not a really big fan of hardtype hacks, FYI, and the aforementioned difficulty was easy for me, so there you go.

This hack has no title, because I haven't thought of one yet, so...

Current Patch: Up to Chapter 29x Eliwood Mode; new release once Epilogue is finished.

Here's a bunch of screens:

Beginning Screens
Rehauling comparison
Linoan's Mode screens
Eliwood's Mode screens:
Up to Ch. 16x | Up to Ch. 20 | Ch. 21

My YouTube Channel, housing videos from Chapter 15 to Chapter 29.

RapidShare link Read the Readme.

Comments, criticism, and info are more than welcome.

[Neofox]

Out of curiosity, which one of the characters is from an anime rather than a video game?

[Mage Knight 404]

Sakura, if you haven't guessed, is from Cardcaptor Sakura.

[Neofox]

I thought so, but I wasn't sure since there's a lot of Sakuras out there (all of which seem to pronounce their names differently... =/)

[Mage Knight 404]

I...might as well ask this now in hopes of an answer soon.

Before I started the rehaul(and just before my internet was axed for three months), on another FE board, I briefly learned that one could find a pointer to a face sprite and mess with the coordinates for the mouth and eye frames from that pointer.

I successfully managed to pull it off, but have forgotten how to do that since, and the FE board I got the info from shut down. I need to relearn this and soon; I'm running out of face sprites that have eye and mouth frames that align with my own.

If anyone can help me with this, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Nintenlord]

Well, I'll try.

I'll use Lloyd's portrait as an example.
4C30C108 Main portrait pointer
A82EC108 Mini portrait
8828C108 Palette
A828C108 Mouth frames
00000000 ???
0205 Mouth position
0303 Eye position
01 Blinking control
000000 ???

[Ice Dragon]

Find the pointer for the main portrait. The pointer should be the address (possibly [address] - 0x04) of the main portion of the face sprite sheet.

The rest are as Nintenlord posted:
(Offset, byte length, description)
+0x00 4 Main portrait pointer
+0x04 4 Mini portrait pointer
+0x08 4 Palette pointer
+0x0C 4 Mouth sheet pointer
+0x10 4 Generic class portrait pointer (only used for class portraits)
+0x14 1 Mouth x-position in tile units from left
+0x15 1 Mouth y-position in tile units from top
+0x16 1 Eye x-position in tile units from left
+0x17 1 Eye y-position in tile units from top
+0x18 1 Eye control
+0x19 3 Spacer

(Note: 1 tile unit = 8 pixels)

[Onmi]

this looks like its going to be great, im still trying to guess the story and such but this is a definite download for me
seriously good work

[Mage Knight 404]

Argh, darn. I'm getting nowhere with this. It's very likely that I'm using these wrong.(Mainly because I forgot how exactly pointers operate. God, I suck.) Reversing the pointers into offsets seems to lead me nowhere, or I just may not be trying hard enough.

Any help with this? Though thanks for the info, ID and Nintenlord. :<

[Ice Dragon]

I'll assume you're using FE7NA as your base game.

The face sprite pointer table begins at 0xC965A0. Each entry is 0x1C bytes long. The order in which they are listed is the same as the order of the portrait indices (the ones in character data, not in cheats).

The data block is as follows:

+00 Main portrait pointer
+01 Main portrait pointer
+02 Main portrait pointer
+03 Main portrait pointer
+04 Mini portrait pointer
+05 Mini portrait pointer
+06 Mini portrait pointer
+07 Mini portrait pointer
+08 Palette pointer
+09 Palette pointer
+0A Palette pointer
+0B Palette pointer
+0C Mouth pointer
+0D Mouth pointer
+0E Mouth pointer
+0F Mouth pointer
+10 Generic portrait pointer
+11 Generic portrait pointer
+12 Generic portrait pointer
+13 Generic portrait pointer
+14 Mouth x-position
+15 Mouth y-position
+16 Eye x-position
+17 Eye y-position
+18 Eye control
+19 Unused
+1A Unused
+1B Unused

The format of bytes 00~13 is as follows:
To point to an address 0x12345678, input the bytes in the hex editor as 78 56 34 12. Remember to add 0x08000000 to the address before flopping the bytes (so the address of 0x00C965A0 becomes 0x08C965A0, etc.).

For 14~17, the number is the position of the mouth or eye frame's top-left corner relative to the top-left corner of the full sprite (in units of tile widths where 1 tile width = 8 pixels).

For 18, the value 0x01 is the default. The value 0x06 is for sprites whose eye position is always closed (the sprite still has open eye frames, but they are unused). (This explains why there are multiples of some face sprites. One has 0x01 as the eye control and other has 0x06.) Other values give varying blink rates from rapid (blinkblinkblink) to really really slow (blink...wait one minute...blink).

As for further notes...
00~07, 0C~0F, 14~17 are 0x00 for generic class portraits. 18 is 0x01 for generic class portraits. 10~13 are 0x00 for normal (non-class) portraits.

EDIT: I had one too many lines in my data block. Now it's fixed.

[Mage Knight 404]

Aha. Indeed, NA!FE7's my game of choice.

And duh, this couldn't have been any easier. Thank God for the scientific calculator.

Seeing as each face sprite are in 1C byte increments after the pointer, just take that and multiply in hex by the number of the face sprite of your choice.(Mine was 32; that's Florina.) Add that to the pointer offset, search for it, look a bit, edit, and blammo.

That info's going to be pretty neat. Thanks again, ID.

[nave165]

hello im nave165 i was just wondering howlong until the patch could be released because i just got my emulation of FE6 and FE7 and other things and ive also used hacks before so now i wish to add your patch (whitch looks awsome ) so to you Mageknight 404 i want to say thank you for doing something this cool and please finish the patch and have instructions on how to install it soon

I have an idea for a name:

Fire Emblem 7.5 the overloaded story
I say this because the hack is a part of FE7 and this is an unused story you made that wasn't ever released with brand new characters and everything 

p.s sorry for the double post im not used to using forums 

[Lord Glenn]

I have an idea for a name:

Fire Emblem 7.5 the overloaded story
I say this because the hack is a part of FE7 and this is an unused story you made that wasn't ever released with brand new characters and everything 

p.s sorry for the double post im not used to using forums  and i find this fun
FE6:
FE7     
FE7.5     
FE8

1. If you're not used to forums, I highly suggest you read the rules.
2. Had you actually read said rules, you would have known that double posting was against them.
3. As such, I'll 'merge' your posts once I finish replying to this.
4. It's hardly an 'unused' story. It's basically FE7's story but with minor-ish changes.
5. If you would have bothered to read the first post, your question of when the first patch will be released would have been answered.

[nave165]

thank you for merging them but
1 i apoligized for double posting
2 im not quite sure how to merge them
3 i did read the first post but as i was posting my message i forgot that it was posted recently
4 i didnt know there were rules sorry
5 its not really unused but like unreleased sort of
6 i thought that the 7.5 was a better idea anyway

[Lord Glenn]

There's an edit button off to the right side of the post and also the 'Modify' link at the top of the post for a reason.

If you didn't know there were rules, I highly suggest that you click the link slightly below the navigation bar and read them. Otherwise, your ignorance will not be further excuse.

[nave165]

oh right sorry i diddn't notice it as i said i'm new to using forums, at least last time i used them it wasn't as complicated but now ive read the rulez now lets continue this topic

[Zantetsuken]

hello im nave165 i was just wondering howlong until the patch could be released

This hack has no title, because I haven't thought of one yet. There's also no patch yet, because I want the players to have a good time to get reasonably far and enjoy the hack. I won't upload a patch until I complete Chapter 23 of Eliwood's Mode; that's plenty far. I've currently finished Chapter 20, and things are going smoothly.

What's bolded is the answer. MK's on Ch. 20 as said there, so MK probably needs like 3 or 4 more chapters to do. Hope that helps.

I can't wait for this to be publicly released. Just playing FE7's same old story over and over kind of gets stale after a while. I need some new wrinkle, and this here will provide that. Keep up the work.

[nave165]

I did look back and got my answer but i forgot to modify my post and im just going to leave as is

I agree on the fact that the same old story over and over can get boring, and thats why I keep checking on this post

[jediabiwan]

for instance ive been able to create an actual Brammimond with thumbnails, portraits, and a sprite sheet

Could you post that?  I really want to see it!

[Israel011]

Does Linoan promote