- •Downloads:
- •Update Log:
- •Table of Contents:
- •Prologue: Bare Basics
- •Chapter 1: Key Terminology & Abbreviations
- •7Zip Archive – Supposedly the best file archiver there is, but not used as much, and thus less convenient. Requires 7zip or winRar to use.
- •VisualBoyAdvance – most people’s emulator of choice, almost always referred to as “vba” for short.
- •Chapter 2: Using Nightmare Modules
- •I upload anything that I think might be useful to someone on that site. Just use the menus and search until you find it.
- •Chapter 3: File Management
- •In order to be a successful hacker you need to have a lot of good management.
- •Chapter 4: Pointer Tables
- •Chapter 5: Battle Animation Editor
- •Chapter 6: Character Editor
- •Chapter 7: Class Editor
- •Chapter 8: Item Editor
- •Item icon – obvious
- •Chapter 9: Spell Association Editor
- •Chapter 13: Movement Cost Editor
- •If the value next to a type of terrain is ‘255’ then it is uncrossable because a unit won’t have 255 movement points.
- •Chapter 16: Battle Palette Reference Editor
- •If you want to know how to actually edit battle palettes’ colors, you can find that in a later chapter that I will make.
- •Chapter 17: Arena Class Editor
- •It’s a bit of work, but making cGs is quite rewarding, and it’s easier than some stuff, that’s for sure! Good luck with your cg making!
- •Chapter 20: Lyn’s Ending Editor
- •Chapter 21: Tutorial Editing/Getting Rid of the Tutorial
- •Part 2: Downloading the Programs
- •Part 3: Preparing Your midi
- •If you still have more than 10 tracks, you should find another midi. Sorry but, there are limits in life.
- •Part 4: Applying Blazer’s Beta Music Insertion/Instrument Patch
- •Part 5: Converting Your midi
- •Part 6: Making Your midi Repeat and Transferring it to Your rom
- •If the b1 and bc are next to each other then I can almost guarantee you want to replace it, so hit “replace” and do that with every instance and once you’re finished you’re good to go.
- •Part 7: Track Pointers & Repointing
- •Part 8: Finale- Assembling Your Song & Profit
- •If you don’t have this module, you’ll have to use this outdated way of doing it. Do check to see if you have the latest Nightmare Modules in general, but otherwise… well, sorry I guess. Xp
- •Part 9: Possible Errors & Wrap-up
- •Part 10: Documentation and Stuff
- •Atrius’ Notes:
- •Charon’s Notes:
- •Part 11: The Music Hacking Run-Down (Shorter Version of Tutorial & Walls of Text)
- •Part 12: Credits & Thanks
- •Chapter 25: Music Editing with Zahlman’s Song Editor
- •If you actually do type in help and press ‘enter’ on your keyboard, it’ll give you a list of commands, and tell you some stuff. Here’s the important stuff:
- •It worked! Great! I know how to import a song!
- •Chapter 26: Exporting Music with gba2midi
- •Chapter 27: Battle Background Graphics
- •If it doesn’t, I suggest double-checking all your settings (everything should be compressed) and make sure your width is set to 30 and your height is set to 32.
- •Chapter 28: Music Array Module
- •Chapter 29: Sound Room Editing
- •Chapter 30: Chapter Unit Editing with Nightmare
- •Chapter 31: Death Quotes
- •Chapter 32: Event iDs
- •Chapter 33: Battle Conversations
- •Chapter 34: Triangle Attacks
- •Chapter 35-36: The Animation Modules & Repointing Tutorial
- •It should look like this:
- •Chapter 37: Support Editing
- •Chapter 38: Miscellaneous Nightmare Modules
- •In this chapter I’m going to quickly run through what some other nightmare modules do.
- •Vendor/Armory Editors – edits the contents of vendors and armories.
- •Vulnerary Editor – edits the amount of hp restored by a vulnerary. (Default: 10)
- •Vulnerary Editor – edits the amount of hp restored by a vulnerary.
- •Chapter 40: Text Editing with fEditor Adv
- •Chapter 41: Portrait Formatting & Preparation
- •Chapter 42: Portrait Insertion with fEditor Adv
- •I wouldn’t mess with the palette editor (the colorful boxes).
- •Chapter 43: Locating Palettes
- •Chapter 44: Editing Palettes
- •I don’t exactly have a color I want to use for this title screen background, so I’m just going to show you how to get the rgb of some random color on a portrait.
- •If something didn’t work right, make sure you:
- •Chapter 45: Working with gbage
- •Chapter 46: Chapter Data Editor
- •Vision Distance is for Fog of War (fow). If it’s ‘0’, it’s assumed there is no fog of war.
- •Hold it! (Unless you aren’t hacking fe7!)
- •Chapter 47: Map Creation
- •I’m tired of writing this tutorial. Honestly. So from now on, I’m going to stop making so many wasteful comments like the one I am typing right now.
- •Chapter 48: Map Insertion
- •If you’re looking to make a totally new chapter (instead of being limited to the old game’s exact same scenes with exact same events) then read on, because I’m going to hack events next!
- •Chapter 49: Event Assembler Basics
- •I would just always add end guards since it’s not something you need to worry about too much.
- •Chapter 50: Events – The Layout
- •Including the stlb
- •Chapter 51: Events – The Event Codes
- •Items is just a list of items with a max of 4 starting items. I prefer to use the 3rd method of writing them, with the brackets and all. Each item is separated by a comma.
- •Chapter 52: Event Construction
- •VillageGate: // name of tile data group
- •Chapter 54: Chapter Creation Finishing Touches
- •Chapter 55: Importing Tilesets
- •Part 2: The First Frame
- •Part 1b: Palette Preparing
- •Part 2: Testing the Foundation to Your Animation
- •If all goes well, your guy should be standing, kinda like this.
- •Part 3: Making the Rest of Your Frames
- •Chapter 58: Custom Battle Animations – Scripts
- •I just pulled a Xeld. Had to do that at least once in this tutorial.
- •If you don’t know what a sound sounds like, just test it out with your animation and find out. Experiment with the codes if you need to.
- •Chapter 59: Custom Spell Animations
- •0X85 command count for this spell: 10
- •It’s true! It did work! It’s still very much a work in progress, as you can see, but the point is we got he test frame working. The rest just takes time, patience, and the attitude that you can do it!
- •Chapter 60: Weapon Icons
- •If you did, you are successful. Despite the odd format of the icons, you have spotted them, and that is what is most important, in my honest opinion.
- •I have this show up:
- •Chapter 61: Map Sprites
- •Chapter 62: Proper Betatesting
- •Chapter 63: vba’s Tools
- •Chapter 64: Other vba Options
- •In this chapter I’m going to detail some of vba’s semi-obscure but not totally obscure options. Knowing how to use vba will help you test your game in various ways.
- •Chapter 65: Recording Videos & Sound
- •Chapter 66: Fixing the Desync with VirtualDubMod & Video Rendering
- •Chapter 67: ips Patching & General Patching Information
- •Chapter 68: ups Patching
- •I suggest you read the ips patching tutorial (at least the beginning) if you haven’t done so as I will not be as thorough with this chapter as I was the previous.
- •In an extremely similar manner you can apply patches. Take a look.
- •Chapter 69: jfp Patching
- •Chapter 70: xDelta Patching
- •Chapter 71: Nightmare Module Format
- •It is recommended (for reasons of readability by humans) that a newline
- •Is unused ("null") for editboxes.
- •Chapter 72: Miscellaneous Information Archive
- •Chapter 73: Useful Links & Websites
- •Chapter 74: Bonus – Assembly Hacking
- •Preparations:
- •Part 1: Background Info
- •Part 2: Inserting an Assembly Hack
- •Part 2: Breaking Down Your First asm Hack
- •I digressed a lot, but back to the point:
- •Part 3: Second Example – More Codes, More Fun
- •Read other people’s doc.
- •Part 4: More Examples – “Speed-Analyzing”
- •It’s thumb. Write to offset 0. Start with label “Initial”. Push 5 registers and the last register, then start a loop counter in r2 with starting value 0x00.
- •Ifat *Conditional id* *asm routine pointer*
- •I may have mentioned this before, but finding where to hack routines is difficult. And I’m sure I mentioned that finding space for them is difficult.
- •It’s not super long, but it’s got some new things we need to learn. Let’s get started.
- •Part 5: Finding asm Routines & Basics of Using a Debugger
- •Warning: terms may not be accurate. In fact, they almost definitely aren’t accurate, as you’ve probably figured out by now.
- •I don’t know what the flags do either, but they’re there, right next to the window. That’s g.
- •I hope to hear of your achievements in the near future!
- •Final Chapter: Credits, Thanks, and the Epilogue
Chapter 38: Miscellaneous Nightmare Modules
In this chapter I’m going to quickly run through what some other nightmare modules do.
FE6:
Army Editor – same thing as chapter unit editor, pretty much.
Battle Screen Editor – edits the layout of the battle screen. I myself don’t really get how to use this, and thus am not covering it.
Critical Bonus Editor – edits the critical bonus. (Default: 15)
Event References – a module for the event table. It helps with knowing where event data is located as well as repointing.
Level Cap Editor – edits the level cap. (Default: 20)
Promotion Level Editor – edits the level at which a unit must be higher than to promote. (Default: 9, meaning level 10 or higher)
Shop Event Editors – edits the events for shops (location, shop pointer, shop type).
Vendor/Armory Editors – edits the contents of vendors and armories.
FE7:
Afa’s Drop Bonus Editor – edits the bonuses given by Afa’s drops.
AI Recruitment Editors – edits info about “AI recruitments”, where an NPC or enemy unit moves to and talks to a character in order to be recruited. Clarine of FE6 and Xane of FE12 are just a couple examples.
Battle Screen Editor – edits the layout of the battle screen. I myself don’t really get how to use this, and thus am not covering it.
Beta Modules – for editing the FE7 beta.
Chest Editors – edits the contents of chests.
Critical Bonus Editor - edits the critical bonus. (Default: 15)
Event Pointer Tables – can edit the individual event pointer tables of chapters. Not very useful anymore.
Event References - a module for the event table. It helps with knowing where event data is located as well as repointing.
Level Cap Editor - edits the level cap. (Default: 20)
Luck Cap Editors – edits the luck cap. Comes in two parts. (Default: 30)
Promotion Level Editor - edits the level at which a unit must be higher than to promote. (Default: 9, meaning level 10 or higher)
Shop Editors – edits the contents of shops.
Seize Throne Editors – edits the location of thrones that can be seized. Currently incomplete.
S-Rank Bonus Editor – edits the bonuses of S rank weapons.
Vulnerary Editor – edits the amount of hp restored by a vulnerary. (Default: 10)
World Map Event References – A list of pointers for world map events, the one you see before a chapter actually starts.
FE8:
Battle Screen Editor – edits the layout of the battle screen. I myself don’t really get how to use this, and thus am not covering it.
Chest Editors – edits the contents of chests.
Critical Bonus Editor - edits the critical bonus. (Default: 15)
Event Table Editor – same as the Event References editors for other games, just for FE8, and with a different name.
Level Cap Editor - edits the level cap. (Default: 20)
Palette Association Editors – edits which palettes go with which characters and classes.
Promotion Level Editor - edits the level at which a unit must be higher than to promote. (Default: 9, meaning level 10 or higher)
Recruitment Editors – edits recruitments.
Reinforcement Editors – edits unit reinforcements.
Shop Editors – edits the contents of shops.
Summon Editors – edits which classes can summon and what character/class is summoned.
Vulnerary Editor – edits the amount of hp restored by a vulnerary.
You may be wondering “hey, wait, we still haven’t done the Chapter Data Editor yet!”. That’s because I’m saving the “best for last”. Sort of. Something tells me the Chapter Data Editor is going to be a long chapter, so I am going to try and keep it as short as I can, but it has a lot of important information related to map and event editing and creation. All this, after something else. :P
Chapter 39: Loading FEditor Advance
What, I’m dedicating a whole chapter just to loading FEditor Advance?
Eh, it’s not that big a deal, I dedicated chapters to minor modules like the Arena Class Editor. Plus I’ve seen so many topics on getting FEditor Advance to work that I feel I must make this chapter.
Step-by-Step Tutorial:
Go to the Java website. http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
Download the program by clicking on it. If you are a Windows user, use the online download if you don’t know what to do. There are instructions on how to download and install Java. For example, a windows user would look to the right where it says “instructions” and click there, getting them to this page- http://www.java.com/en/download/help/windows_manual_download.xml.
Save the file to your desktop or run it automatically. If it is saved, double-click and install. Wait, why am I typing this, the website gives instructions.
Once Java is installed, restart your computer. Just to be safe. There is no harm in restarting your computer, and I want this to be fool-proof. So do it.
http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp Test your java. It should work. If it doesn’t, re-install while following the directions.
Download FEditor Adv. You can find a link to the topic on my website, or you can just google “FEditor Adv” and it should show up on Fire Emblem Universe, a bunch of crappy forums.
Extract the files. To do this, use 7zip. To download 7zip, go here- http://www.7-zip.org/. Note that 7zip files can also be extracted with winRAR. Once it is installed, right-click and hit ‘extract here’ or something like that.
A folder should come up. I suggest you move this folder to wherever you keep your hacking stuff (as opposed to just lying about on the desktop; organization is key to a successful hack).
Open the FEditor Adv folder.
To run FEditor, you can either A) click the ‘run’ file or B) go to the dist folder and double-click FEditor Adv.jar…
It will ask you to open an FE ROM. Open up an English, U.S.A. release GBA Fire Emblem ROM of your choice. For FE6 (Sealed Sword/Binding Blade/Fuuin no Tsurigi) the ROM should be the Japanese ROM patched with the translation patch found on romhacking.net. Please do not ask me for ROMs, I will flame you. :D
If your ROM is edited, it will most likely give you an error message. Just hit “OK” or “Yes” or something.
Congratulations. You have hopefully followed my overly specific directions and successfully loaded FEditor Adv. If you have not, I would check the following:
Program, make sure to have the latest version *ironically, I am using an older version because FEditor Adv is not compatible with some of my older hack, and yet I am telling you to use the latest version at all costs*
ROM, it should be the (U) version. Check the ROM# as well, and for FE6, use the RHDN patch, as said.
The ‘cleanness’—if you’ve made massive edits and most importantly edited something that the program uses to check which FE game it is, that could be a problem. Like the ROM header, for instance. IIRC FEditor Adv checks something in the header, so if you’ve edited that, it could very well be a problem.
Your java. I can only hope you installed it right…
Your file extraction. If by somehow you extracted it wrong, the files could get corrupt, although the chance of this happening is very low, I think…
If it’s still not working, then check yourself. No, really, I don’t know what else to do. I can’t write more than a page on how to load a program. It’d suck if you couldn’t get it loaded, but plenty of people can, so it’s not the program, at the very least. Sorry if that happens to you. :\
With FEditor Adv loaded, we can now use all of its features! Huzzah!