Hold it! (Unless you aren’t hacking fe7!)

After Final Chapter: Light (pt2) are some cutscene/miscellaneous maps. They are chapters that are loaded through events during cutscenes. For example, when Rath joins at the end of chapter 7, I believe, you see some village/town. This map is a cutscene map—it only appears in a cutscene. However, you can use these spots for either your own cutscene maps OR your own chapters. Chapter 0x41 (it’s actually 0x42, but NMM has the prologue as 0x00 when it’s actually 0x01) is actually the link arena ‘chapter’, however, so I would refrain from editing that. Anything before that and after the final chapter part 2 is safe game. *Unfortunately the chapter data editor for FE7 is not compatible with the ‘extra chapters’, and I myself don’t have time to make the proper updates…*

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.

First of all, download Mappy and the appropriate tilesets. Go. Do it. Google “Fire Emblem Mappy Map Editor”, or look on my site. No excuses.

Extract the files as usual, blab la. Depending on what game you are hacking, there are different tilesets. As usual this hack is FE7 oriented and I will be using FE7 tilesets to make an FE7 map for insertion to FE7.

Open up Mappy and make a new map. File-> New.

Your settings should be as follows. All GBA maps use 16x16 tiles. The smallest size is 15x10; the biggest size differs for each game or something. FE7’s biggest size is 43x36. I am going to make a very small and simple map for this tutorial. When you’re done with the settings (should take 10 seconds) hit “OK”.

A message will pop-up. Read it, but don’t do anything. Mappy should look like this:

But not for long. Do File-> Import… or hit Ctrl+I. Select a tileset, and only ONE tileset.

I am going to use the fields tileset, 1C1D1E1F. Note the name of the tileset you use. It is very important that you have this for later.

Thus I click “open” and load my tileset.

I now see a bunch of tiles to the right. You should too.

I can use these tiles to make a map. I will make a very, very simple map, because I am just testing—making a simple map is good in case you mess up and need to restart from scratch. Learn how first, then you can spend time with fancy map making later.

Despite this, I’m going to teach you the fundamentals to map-making:

• Drawing a rough draft/doodle can be very useful.

• Reference other maps to make maps properly.

• Don’t spam/abuse tiles.

• Think about realism.

• To actually use a tile, click on it on the right and then click on it on the map area.

• You can hold your mouse and drag to apply a map tile in multiple places.

• Ctrl+Z undoes the last change you made. You can only undo one change.

• Don’t use glitchy or black tiles.

• Make sure to shade castle maps. Remember, walls make shadows, so tiles next to walls need the appropriate shading on the left and top.

• Look at elevation and make sure it is correct.

• “Grass patches”—different colored grass—helps make grass look less bland.

• Don’t abuse fortress or pillar tiles like some people do.

Once you’re done with your map, save it. Here’s what my real quick test map looks like.

Before we move on, I am going to cover some of the functions in Mappy (mainly the ones you will use).

File-New Map – makes a new map.

File-Open – opens an FMP/map.

File-Save – saves a map.

File-Save as – saves a map as a different file/as a copy.

File-Import – imports a tileset

File-Export – I will cover this in a minute.

Edit-Undo – undoes a map change.

MapTools-MapProperties – tells you the properties of a map (the size, tilesize, and other stuff)

MapTools-Resize Map – lets you change the size of a map and add rows/columns based on where the ‘center’ of the map is. To add columns to the right and left, center at ‘1’. To add columns all around, center at ‘5’. To add columns to the left and right, center at ‘9’.

MapTools-Grid – turns grid on/off. Alternatively use Ctrl+G.

MapTools-Zoom (X) – zooms a certain amount. Useful for analyzing tiles.

We are now going to export the map as two things. We can do each export separately, or both at once. The latter is more convenient. Start by doing File-> Export.

Check the things marked. The .MAR is for hacking purposes. The “current layer as big picture” exports the picture of a map as a BMP. If you want to share it with others, I suggest you resave the image as a PNG first. The image will have the extension ‘scrn’ at the end and be located wherever the FMP is. Same thing with the .MAR.

After you do this, save your map, and we’re done with map creation!