ROM Hack [Release] Fire Emblem Fates Custom Paralogues

[thane98]

This hack adds new paralogues to Fire Emblem Fates. At the moment, this hack includes two paralogues which allow you to recruit two of the capturable bosses. These paralogues come fully featured with custom dialogue, map events, and units.

In order to fully integrate these characters into the base game, they have been given supports and additional dialogue for My Castle, leveling up, etc. Essentially, with this hack these characters should seem like they were recruitable in the base game.

At the moment, the supports lack dialogue to go with them. I'm looking for submissions from anyone interested in writing supports to go with these new characters. If you would like to submit support text, please send me a private message and I'll get back to you when I can.

Additionally, I'm always open to suggestions regarding new paralogues or improving the maps currently added in by the hack. Feel free to leave any suggestions in the thread, or send them to me privately if you prefer that.

The hack adds in a lot of new dialogue across the game. Unfortunately, I cannot practically test out every piece of dialogue in game at the moment, so you may see some oddities. If you notice any typos, textbox errors, or bugs, please report them in this thread and I'll try to fix them before the next update.

Spoiler: Nichol Support Options

Male Corrin C-A
Female Corrin C-S
Azura C-S
Silas C-A+
Saizo C-A+
Hinoka C-S
Oboro C-S
Kagero C-S
Ryoma C-A+
Shura C-A+
Camilla C-S
Beruka C-S
Charlotte C-S
Nilas C-A+
Xander C-A+
Sophie C-A

Spoiler: Haitaka Support Options

Male Corrin C-A
Female Corrin C-S
Azura C-S
Camilla C-S
Elise C-S
Mozu C-S
Beruka C-S
Selena C-S
Effie C-S
Nyx C-S
Arthur C-A+
Kaze C-A+
Leo C-A+
Xander C-A+
Keaton C-A+

If you want to see more screenshots, go here.

As a quick note, DO NOT attempt to do anything involving My Room with Nichol. He doesn't have a Live2D model, so trying to invite him to your room will cause a crash.

If you notice any bugs or oddities regarding the hack, report them here and I'll see what I can do.

Download: link

Spoiler: Previous Version

Update 1: link

Installation

Go about installing this as you would install the Gay Fates hack (check the thread here for more info). All you really need to do is drag the files inside the "Place Inside Patch" folder over to your patch (whether that's your Birthright/Conquest/Whatever folder for NTR or your romfs for HANS) and set things up as you would for any other hack. No special steps required.

Compatibility

This hack is compatible with the Gay Fates hack, but you need to install that hack first and overwrite with this one in order to get the new map. With regards to other hacks, this hack modifies the GameData.bin file, so any hacks that change that file will be incompatible with this one. This includes the Revelations balance patch, unfortunately.

For more information on specific hacks, check the readme.

Changelog​

Spoiler: Changelog

Update 2

• Added in a new paralogue for Haitaka. The paralogue is Conquest exclusive, and unlocks after Chapter 11.
• Added in supports and My Castle dialogue for Haitaka as well.
• Lots of changes under the hood. Edits to the character table will be helpful for future paralogues.

Update 1

• Fixed the bug with supports not ranking up.
• Added the correct flags to Nichol so that he will show up in your castle like a regular unit would.
• Made some minor changes to the chapter dialogue. Mostly simple wording and spacing fixes.
• Added a romantic support option for Female Corrin and a support option for Niles.
• Added some additional My Castle dialogue that was missing.

Bugs

• Inviting any of the boss characters to your room will cause a crash since they do not have Live2D models.
• The boss characters can cause glitchy behavior in the accessory shop. If you let the game load their model, it won't unload until you leave the change/buy menu.

As a final note, I want to thank @RainThunder for his documentation of the .bin files in Fates, as well as @DeathChaos25 for helping me out and providing notes over the various map files. This hack wouldn't exist without either of you!

 

[DeathChaos]

By the way, you can assign certain skills to Nichol (or any of his allies/enemies on the map) based on Difficulty, without the need to edit any of the character blocks in the person.bin.lz file for the chapter or Nichol's character block in GameData.bin.lz

 

[thane98]

By the way, you can assign certain skills to Nichol (or any of his allies/enemies on the map) certain skills based on Difficulty, without the need to edit any of the character blocks in the person.bin.lz file for the chapter or Nichol's character block in GameData.bin.lz

Ah. At the moment skills are simply added in through the character block to match what his class would typically have, but I'd be interested in assigning skills to enemies based off of difficulty. If you're not doing it through the character blocks in the Person file or GameData file, how are you assigning the skills? Through scripts?

 

[EmblemCrossing]

Do we have any method of actually modifying the map itself? (I mean, right now I see that it's the same as Mozu's). And are you planning on doing this for all the boss characters? I might be able to come up with some dialogue, its been a while since I've done any creative writing though. But hey, I'm sure I can at least write a few supports. Let me know if you're interested.

Edit: Any reason Corrin only has up to an A support with him? I mean, so long as someone avoids the my room issues, I feel like he would be a good addition to the marriage line up.

 

[thane98]

Do we have any method of actually modifying the map itself? (I mean, right now I see that it's the same as Mozu's). And are you planning on doing this for all the boss characters? I might be able to come up with some dialogue, its been a while since I've done any creative writing though. But hey, I'm sure I can at least write a few supports. Let me know if you're interested.

At the moment, I don't think that a lot of work has been done regarding actually changing map models. However, the tiles can be changed fairly easily - you just won't see the change visibly. So if you wanted to, you could add in healing tiles or block off certain tiles, that could be done fairly easily.

I'd like to add in paralogues for some of the other boss characters, though it'll be a bit. Before I do anything else, I'm going to need to put together some utilities for editing the spawn files so that moving units around isn't such a pain. But I might look into a paralogue for Candace or Haitaka next.

 

[EmblemCrossing]

At the moment, I don't think that a lot of work has been done regarding actually changing map models. However, the tiles can be changed fairly easily - you just won't see the change visibly. So if you wanted to, you could add in healing tiles or block off certain tiles.

I'd like to add in paralogues for some of the other boss characters, though it'll be a bit. Before I do anything else, I'm going to need to put together some utilities for editing the spawn files so that moving units around isn't such a pain. But I might look into a paralogue for Candace or Haitaka next.

Cool! Yeah I'll definitely come up with some dialogue for you. (Maybe when I have down time at work, which is often.) With the supports, how much freedom should I take with the characters in terms of backstory? Nichol doesn't have too much to work with. I'm thinking of all his related text and trying to think of some creative ideas for him. ^-^

 

[thane98]

Cool! Yeah I'll definitely come up with some dialogue for you. (Maybe when I have down time at work, which is often.) With the supports, how much freedom should I take with the characters in terms of backstory? Nichol doesn't have too much to work with. I'm thinking of all his related text and trying to think of some creative ideas for him. ^-^

I'm fine with anything, honestly. You're free to write anything, as long as it somewhat fits in with the existing information regarding him - if you want to give him some background, that would be even better.

 

[DeathChaos]

Ah. At the moment skills are simply added in through the character block to match what his class would typically have, but I'd be interested in assigning skills to enemies based off of difficulty. If you're not doing it through the character blocks in the Person file or GameData file, how are you assigning the skills? Through scripts?

Nope! Through the Dipos file, this was a very recent addition, but I already got it figured out, here's an example picture of it in Action.

Basically, I have now fully mapped the Dispos block;

Spoiler

The highlighted yellow "???" value is actually a set of bitflags that control skills based on a few things.

Value FF 7F means "don't mess with skills at all".

E6 7F has a few nifty properties depending on how you go about things.
1) If you have no SEID label pointers (skills), and all of the skills are assigned from the person block, it acts like this.
Normal: No skills,
Hard: First 2 skills only,
Lunatic: All listed skills

2) If you only use SEID labels, it works just as above, SEID labels can be used because instead of hard coding skills in a block and thus giving it to all of the same enemy type, you can instead use SEID pointers to give different skills individually to any repeated enemy.

3) If you have skills on the block AND have SEIDs listed;
Normal: All skills listed on the block (usually this method is only done if the block only has 1 or 2 skills like the HANS example above)
Hard: skills listed in the first 2 SEID pointers,
Lunatic: All listed skills.

A REALLY good example of Method 1 is Sumeragi in Revelation, he has 4 skills in his character block, these being, Vantage, Duelist Blow, Astra and Swordfaire.

Since he has the above mentioned Value, he has no skills on normal, has only Vantage and Duelist blow on hard, but once you get to Lunatic he gains access to his full skillset and thus gaining Astra and Swordfaire.

 

[EmblemCrossing]

Which supports still need writing? The ones up above in the thread? Oboro seems like an easy place to start. (Nohr hater, seems like something I could work with lmao)

 

[thane98]

(snip)

Well, that's pretty convenient then - I was planning on putting together a utility for Dispo editing before I did anything else with maps. I suppose I'll have to set it up for difficulty dependent skill editing as well!

Have you looked into the AI section of the block at all? From what I can tell, the AI section points to a couple of different AI labels which all tweak various aspects of the units' behavior. But I haven't done much research into what each label actually effects yet.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Which supports still need writing? The ones up above in the thread? Oboro seems like an easy place to start. (Nohr hater, seems like something I could work with lmao)

Yep, all of the supports lack conversations at the moment - the supports work, but when you go to rank them up they just progress to the next rank without dialogue.

 

[EmblemCrossing]

Oh one thing I was confused about. So these paralogues. Are you able to make it so that it only happens after the corresponding kid's paralogue has been completed? Otherwise you'll have awkward moments, like Nichol leaves you to kidnap Sophie, then pretending like he doesn't know any of your army.

 

[DeathChaos]

Well, that's pretty convenient then - I was planning on putting together a utility for Dispo editing before I did anything else with maps. I suppose I'll have to set it up for difficulty dependent skill editing as well!

Have you looked into the AI section of the block at all? From what I can tell, the AI section points to a couple of different AI labels which all tweak various aspects of the units' behavior. But I haven't done much research into what each label actually effects yet.

Haven't really studied the AI labels yet.

For the SEID labels, you can take them off of the skill descriptions just how you can take most of the PIDs from the MPIDs, also, you don't need to use the first few label slots, for example, you could have an SEID label pointer in spot #1, then another in #3, then skip to #5, or just have a single one in #4, it doesn't matter, as long as you add a pointer to it on the pointers table.

 

[thane98]

Oh one thing I was confused about. So these paralogues. Are you able to make it so that it only happens after the corresponding kid's paralogue has been completed? Otherwise you'll have awkward moments, like Nichol leaves you to kidnap Sophie, then pretending like he doesn't know any of your army.

Yep! Setting conditions up like that is actually as simple as changing one bytes. Right now the chapter is set up to become available immediately after Paralogue 5 is completed. But it's also fairly easy to make a chapter dependent on marriage and the like. So hypothetically you could add in something like a new child paralogue using the same checks.

 

[Arubaro]

So it should work regardless of the language?
A little offtopic, but I think that could be interesting that someone made a thread about all the fire emblem fates' hacking documentation we currently know

 

[thane98]

So it should work regardless of the language?
A little offtopic, but I think that could be interesting that someone made a thread about all the fire emblem fates' hacking documentation we currently know

Now that I think about it, there could be language issues. This hack modifies a lot of text files to add in the chapter text and My Castle dialogue. As all of the files included in the hack use the English localization, things could get messy if you try to mix it with a different localization. It might work, but you'd still end up with half the game in English.

 

[EmblemCrossing]

I tried trying to set this up with NTR, but uh. I just get a "bnBootNTR failed" after adding all the files. It worked fine before though.


Edit: NVM, had to reset my system, works fine. Something I noticed though is the spacing on the text dialogue is a bot bothersome, could use some fixing.

Fixes:

-General spacing in sentences
- Nichol "Now let's this over with..." typo
- Personally I think you could take change the line "By the looks of it, the bandits intend to kill them." You already made reference to the bandits in the line before, and its not fitting in very well. (A big pet peeve of mine is when one word takes up its own line, and I noticed a few of them.)

More as I get through this paralogue!

- Nichol has an Iron Lance to start, but can't use it, because he's a Malig Knight.

 

[thane98]

Fixes:

-General spacing in sentences
- Nichol "Now let's this over with..." typo
- Personally I think you could take change the line "By the looks of it, the bandits intend to kill them." You already made reference to the bandits in the line before, and its not fitting in very well. (A big pet peeve of mine is when one word takes up its own line, and I noticed a few of them.)

More as I get through this paralogue!

- Nichol has an Iron Lance to start, but can't use it, because he's a Malig Knight.

To be honest, I remember thinking something was off every time I passed over that sentence during testing, but I kept writing it off because I was usually trying to work on something else at the time. I can fix the spacing as well - I automate the insertion of newlines into the text, so some of it's bound to come out looking a little off. I'll also take a look at rewording the line you mentioned. Were there any other specific concerns regarding spacing and wording?

And as for the random Iron Lance, I can give changing it another shot. Items always behaved a little oddly for me during testing, and I had a couple of cases where simply changing the item was enough to result in a crash. But switching the Iron Lance over to the Thunder tome he starts with in Paralogue 5 should definitely be possible. Did you get through the entire map? How was the difficulty? I lost my regular saves a little while back, so most of the testing I do for this kind of thing takes place on a save that's not exactly set up balanced gameplay.

Also, as a quick warning to anyone playing the hack, I caught a bug last night while looking into things a bit more. It looks like you can't actually rank up supports for anyone but Corrin. You'll get the visual cue after battles, but no matter how many battles you do, you'll never reach the point where Nichol can C-Support anyone but Corrin. I'm not entirely sure what's causing that at the moment, but I've got a couple of theories. I'll take a look at it and update the download with a fixed version when I figure it out.

 

[DeathChaos]

Also, as a quick warning to anyone playing the hack, I caught a bug last night while looking into things a bit more. It looks like you can't actually rank up supports for anyone but Corrin. You'll get the visual cue after battles, but no matter how many battles you do, you'll never reach the point where Nichol can C-Support anyone but Corrin. I'm not entirely sure what's causing that at the moment, but I've got a couple of theories. I'll take a look at it and update the download with a fixed version when I figure it out.

This usually means a mismatch in values of support building speed between the characters.

 

[thane98]

This usually means a mismatch in values of support building speed between the characters.

I took another look at the supports to make sure that they match up, and they do, so it's likely something else. Could it have something to do with the last 4 bytes of the support option? I used the same values for those bytes across each support, and I'm guessing that is what's causing the issue.

 

[Choromatsu]

This is super cool, and I love that it's centric of Nichol. Are there plans to expand his supports? I'd love to see them with Niles, they seem they'd be an interesting pair.
Either way, I'll have to give this a shot later when I unpack my game again. Thanks for all your hard work!