Planning/Plot Thread

[Isrieri]

Okay, I misspoke the last time. Sacred Stones plot is perfectly fine. Its the writing and dialogue I thought was boring.

Also, I've finished my draft. I really got carried away and it isn't that great, pretty much a giant fan-wank. But damn was it fun to write!

Talkhaus Revolution Story Draft

In case you guys were wondering. Those are the other 'kingdoms' I'm referring to.

I tried to write everything under the assumption that there are absolutely no graphical alterations and that just the base Fire Emblem graphics get used. Plus I really wanted the story to have some pointless political drama. You need other factions with a Fire Emblem game!

All of the characters can be swapped around to be someone else or written out or whatever you guys want to do. I tried to make it semi-flexible. That is if we can even work with something like this.


Now I gotta go to work.

[Clamestarebla]

Well it certainly is way better than what I wrote, Iceleri.

Trimoon

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Genius.

[pholtos]

Guarding a bridge? Definitely the greatest of tasks.

[TheFinalSentinel]

The world was once united under the rule of the Awful Empire. And for a while, things were pretty good.

Love it already.

[Isrieri]

Soo...does that mean you guys like it? Do we want to run with this idea?

If so, I can head over to RMN & Talking Time and pitch the project to them and see if there's any interest in being a unit or helping out with making resources. If I get some okays for people being in the game, I can try to flesh out the story more.

Or should we wait until A2MBXT gets finished with its beta testing?

[TheFinalSentinel]

Well, in the interest of not spreading our efforts too thin, I'd say best to focus on anything close enough to completion first.

[swirlybomb]

I want to give some feedback, but it's late right now so I'll have to wait until tomorrow. The short version is that I'm not all gung-ho yet.

[pholtos]

I actually wouldn't mind guarding an important progress type thing or being the optional boss type guy.... or both for that matter.

[swirlybomb]

Whoops, sorry for the lateness.


Keep in mind that, of course, I'm not a writer myself and these thoughts and opinions are mine alone and do not reflect etc etc.


The thing that strikes me the most is that the overall scope is just much too 'epic' for what's reasonable to actually be made. All these kingdoms/factions/whatever would suit a 'normal' full-scale Fire Emblem game, but I think it's just too much for what needs to be a smaller-scale game. While SMWCentral/Lunar Kingdom/the Lunarians (and the capital of Trimoon (3-up moon) ), SMBX, and Talking Time/Orators are good/logical inclusions, I think the ties between the Talkhaus and RPGMaker.net/Aremen are... insignificant, at best? Is there any real connection besides a couple members (correct me if I'm wrong)? So I feel like Aremen is an unnecessary inclusion. Additionally, the name of the game is "Talkhaus Revolution" - that is, Talkhausers rising up against the Talkhaus 'aristocracy(?)' - so I think the other factions should have relatively minor roles in the overall plot compared to Talkhaus itself.

The length is also a concern;

I understand the concern, but 20+ chapters is a lot. Only one hack in the community so far has actually managed a campaign of that length, and it's made by a group of people who are huge fans of the Fire Emblem series. You're setting the same demands on a community whose common ground is raocow and mario hacks. It's simply not realistic.

I believe one of the reasons why a lot of hacks fail is because the person behind them becomes way too ambitious for their own good. In this case, let's keep our ambitions small and reasonable. Finishing the hack is extremely important. We can add stuff and expand upon it AFTER we finish it, since at least we'll have a strong foundation to work with, and even if we don't succeed in realizing the hack into it's 20+ chapter evolution, we can at least say we finished a 10+ chapter fire emblem hack.

From what I can tell (I could be somewhat mistaken), it seems like you've already got 10 chapters before the 'main' plot/'important' stuff happens (if it could be called that). Ideally the full game should be maybe 12-15 chapters in total, and even 15 might be asking too much to be doable.

I feel like I'm having trouble understanding what's actually going on. So far I think the general plot events are:
-Tactician is taken to Talkhaus
-Party retrieves stuff taken/lost in the Talkhaustrophe
-Demo arrives at Talkhaus and raocow becomes her 'herald'(? probably not the best way of putting that)
-People are distrustful and raocow/Rena get kidnapped
-3-4 chapters spent getting to Trimoon to rescue them, then they essentially free themselves by the time the party gets to the Luna Tower
-Searching for all the Crests for raocow to be the chosen hero
-Kentona/Solitayre/Isieri might be the villains; zombies/monsters are on the rise too?
Is that correct? and/or Am I missing/misunderstanding things?

Other (probably nitpicky in the grand scheme of things) stuff and lesser thoughts:

-Tuberia (Youtube, of course?) seems like a good name for the overall 'world'.
-The Awful Empire (Something Awful) backstory also seems like a good inclusion; especially if the opening of the game explains that backstory and then pulls the "but no one likes those guys anyway/but this story has nothing to do with them" bait-and-switch and they're never mentioned again, for humor's sake.
-SMBX is located in the desert, yet they have control of the sea? That doesn't make much sense to me, unless it's meant as a joke or somebody wants to tell me that it actually does make sense.
-I do like the inclusion of Zan Host bandits- they could definitely be minor early-game antagonists (since FE games typically start out with fighting bandits).
-Are you saying the Tactician (which may or may not be our 'player protagonist') is only present for the Prologue and then never seen or mentioned again? That seems rather... ehh, since one of the ideas we had going was the inclusions of a player protagonist (presumably so that no one Talkhauser is the main character, and such).
-I can't tell who are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys' between the 'devotees of Patchouli', 'dissenters', 'non-believers', etc. or 'who' each group even is (are any of them the playable party?); or whether Rena's 'preaching' about Demo/demons is meant to be positive or negative; or who all the 'she/her's (Horikawa? Rena? other?) are in Chapter 3's description.
-Inclusions of Luna Tower and/or Zebraspace could definitely work for 'endgame'/'major plot' territory.
-Is Thissa literally a dragon, or only metaphorically? Or something else?
-Chapter 5 seems like padding, which would be totally fine in a normal FE game but probably can't be spared for a smaller-scale game.
-Is Nightvale(/Nightfort?) a reference to something, or no?
-Septentrion gets murdered pretty quickly/unceremoniously for someone who wants to be switching sides, possibly multiple times. (unless he comes back from the dead later?)
-Is Horikawa a 'good guy' up to chapter 7, then suddenly becomes the boss of chapter 8? Or is she one of raocow's kidnappers from chapter 3? Doesn't seem to quite line up with the 'plot' of the "The TRUTH about raocow/Talkhaus, wake up sheeple" (paraphrased) thread where she starts on the Revolution side before switching to raocow's side (unless the kidnapping was planned by raocow all along,etc).
-Is King Kentona an actual person (I'm assuming from SMWcentral or RPGmaker.net...?), and is Solitayre? This is just my lack of knowledge. And where exactly is 'up north' (Lunar Kingdom? Aremen?) and 'south' (Orators?)?
-Does raocow actually join the party at some point, or is he just an NPC? Is he still the main/final villain, or is he going to actually be the Crest-powered hero? Because I think raocow being the villain was the intention from the start.
-I note the inclusion of wolves/zombies/possibly skeletons and other monsters; those only existed in FE8(Sacred Stones) and not in FE7(Blazing Sword) that the hack's being based on. I would certainly think it's possible to 'import' the monster classes into FE7 (I don't know that as a fact, but it doesn't seem unreasonable), but it depends on whether or not they should actually be a part of the overall plot.
-Natural Causes is noted to have yet to even make an appearance, although they should probably be the primary antagonists of the Revolution.

I really don't mean to be so critical and stuff, but there's things I don't quite get, and it feels like the story's not quite going in the right direction (again, too 'epic' and the core doesn't seem to be about Talkhaus itself). But again, these are just my own thoughts about everything. Please feel free to agree, disagree, or just tell me I'm a butt.

Also, since Isieri basically wrote the 'Protagonist' character out of the story and no one objected to that, are we still planning to have the 'male/female player character'?

[Clamestarebla]

TL:DR yes, the plot might be a little bit too complex for our skill level now. Apart from MarkyJoe, I doubt any of us has any experience with FE hacking and Isrieri's plot is alot more story-driven which means more scripting. And the fact that it's separated in books makes things a lot more complicated because nobody plays the same way so by separating the game, you make the player lose all his progress from the previous part. Whereas, if you make a simple first draft, then add stuff as you go on to finally have a more complex final product, you don't steal anything away from the player but instead give him new tools to work with with every update. And I find that the plot is WAY less based on the threads the project was actually born in, or at least so far.

[TheFinalSentinel]

Whereas, if you make a simple first draft, then add stuff as you go on to finally have a more complex final product, you don't steal anything away from the player but instead give him new tools to work with with every update.

THIS THIS THIS

Also, I agree. Though the revised plot is better, it's quite a bit less relevant to what this was originally intended to be about.

Like I said earlier, we should aim to make a simple, functional game and then build from there. No matter how rudimentary, we'll still have finished something from our efforts.

[Isrieri]

Okay! That makes sense.

I think the ties between the Talkhaus and RPGMaker.net/Aremen are... insignificant, at best?

I thought it would be meta-funny that in our attempts to make an RPG, we pit ourselves against the resident RPG fanatics. Really, its just because I know those guys.

I did deviate a lot from the source threads, especially considering that it has the Talkhaus fighting other dudes which might be tricky to handle. So if we don't want to do that we shouldn't do that. Basically, everything is malleable and whatever you guys want to change/throw out/mesh with Clem's plot; go to it.

Are you saying the Tactician (which may or may not be our 'player protagonist') is only present for the Prologue and then never seen or mentioned again?

I never liked the Tactician. He always seemed really pointless and ineffectual. Like Vaan.

So I had the Prologue included based on whether or not there would be a Tactician at all. If so, then he'd doubtless appear later in the game, but he's not really a huge deal and you could just splice in dialogue involving him wherever and whenever you felt like it.

I can't tell who are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'

That's the point!

Apart from MarkyJoe, I doubt any of us has any experience with FE hacking

Well that was part of my evil plan: To try and get some folks from RMN to help out with making the game so we'd have more folks on hand. I honestly don't know how enthusiastic they'd be working on a rom-hack though. I haven't pitched it to anybody.

[TheFinalSentinel]

He always seemed really pointless and ineffectual. Like Vaan.

[Clamestarebla]

Apart from MarkyJoe, I doubt any of us has any experience with FE hacking

Well that was part of my evil plan: To try and get some folks from RMN to help out with making the game so we'd have more folks on hand. I honestly don't know how enthusiastic they'd be working on a rom-hack though. I haven't pitched it to anybody.

So you were gonna go recruit people from another forum to make a game about us and you don't even know how they'd feel about rom-hacking.
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ok

[Isrieri]

Well its not like I was going to do it behind anyone's back. No one can't say I don't make a lick of sense 50% of the time.

And I didn't think it would work!

[swirlybomb]

Yeah, the tl;dr version is that it's not like it's a BAD story, it just doesn't 'work' with what we're doing here. Though you seemed okay with it not being chosen anyway, so... yeah.

And the fact that it's separated in books makes things a lot more complicated because nobody plays the same way so by separating the game, you make the player lose all his progress from the previous part.

I really don't see why this would be the case; I thought it was clearly just a separation between the first half (setting things up I guess?) and the second half (the 'real' plot) - you'd keep the same characters/team, there's no reason you'd lose them all. Unless you were thinking that each 'Book' is a separate game?

I never liked the Tactician. He always seemed really pointless and ineffectual. Like Vaan.

So I had the Prologue included based on whether or not there would be a Tactician at all. If so, then he'd doubtless appear later in the game, but he's not really a huge deal and you could just splice in dialogue involving him wherever and whenever you felt like it.

Fair enough, but since our theoretical intention is to have a 'player protagonist' character to be the 'hero', it just... yeah.

I can't tell who are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'

That's the point!

That's all fine and good for there to be 'moral ambiguity' involved and stuff, but... the writers/creators/people working on the game should actually know what's going on, yo.



Actually, question for Markyjoe (if he actively reads this stuff): Is it actually possible to have a character be named/Affinity'd via the Tactician screen through... pointers and stuff?

[Clamestarebla]

Alright sheeple, since this sub-forum is gonna get nuked if we don't do anything I'll try to revive it.

So a little while ago (last month I think? I don't remember), I sent Swirly a new idea for a plot that would be much simpler to do while still keeping elements from my original plot, Swirly's and Isrieri's. Since he hasn't sent his input on it yet, I'm gonna propose to you guys right here, right now:

TR Totally Official Doc.doc

(29.5 KiB) Downloaded 184 times

Propose any modifications you think should be made. So 11 chapters would be, I think, the minimum amount we need if we want the plot to make any sense and the game to be fun. We can, as mentioned before, add new chapters and characters in new releases and stuff.

Since MarkyJoe hasn't shown any sign of life recently, I'll try to contact him. I'm sure he'll be glad to hear that this project is *still* going on.

[Mabel]

I can probably get started on the tutorial maps if that's cool. I can't see the doc thing yet since I'm not home but are you guys putting any plot stuff in the tut that I should be worried about?

[Clamestarebla]

You should probably wait until you see the document to begin making the map.

[Isrieri]

TR Totally Official Doc.doc

I like it. Feels more Talkhausy. But less esoteric.

The only thing I'm iffy on is making raocow the for-real villain. I thought it was better to make it ambiguous. Everything else is great.

Evil Team of Pure Chaos

[Mabel]

ok just read the thing.

love it but then again im not a guy who knows good plot haha

[pholtos]

Team pholtos for best team.

[Clamestarebla]

Alright sheeple, since this sub-forum is gonna get nuked if we don't do anything I'll try to revive it.

I thought we stated that we would start development when A2XT and SDS are done though.

Well from what I heard, A2XT is almost done and SDS too. Of course, A2XTE2 and SDS2 will start right after so we better start either way, right?

And besides, I don't make the rules, they get enforced on me by the great and powerful Limepie and I accept them when told by Alex-senpai.

[pholtos]

I'd be willing to help with something... although what I can do I'm unsure.

[Clamestarebla]

Everybody, this way!

Let's get the base game done first, then do graphic swaps later.

Aye. Graphics and music can wait until we're done making the base and programming the events (which I am currently learning).