I'm making this thread because, well, I'll need some help. And by help I mean advice. I wouldn't want anyone to take the time to do anything for me, unless absolutely necessary.
I plan on using FE8 as the platform, because there's no forced tutorial, and I just like it in general. I've played a few good Sacred Stones hacks before, so it definitely looks doable.
EDIT: Also, and this just occured to me, but FE8 is perfect for this hack, because I was already planning on adding two twin characters of mine, and Eirika and Ephraim are twins, so there's my two main characters besides Caitlyn~ Not to mention the twins have two preferred weapons each.
Now, to get to the nitty-gritty here.
Things I am comfortable with:
Nightmare (the original, I can't figure out 2.0)
Weapon Icon editing
Simple text editing (changing weapon/item names)
Things I have no experience with:
Portrait editing (not to mention making customs from scratch)
Event editing
Map editing
Palette editing
Mass text editing (story, conversations)
ROM expansion (I don't think I'll need to but you never know?)
Map sprite editing
Battle animation/map sprite importing
I include that last one because I want to import Lyn's Blade Lord animation. I already have concept art drawn of two characters (below) and I drew one in Lyn's outfit. I've decided she'll be a bit like Lucina; she's emulating a legendary warrior of lore.
One thing I want to add in, is the addition of more "preferred" weapons, that is, weapons locked to one person. The story I have in mind will re-use a concept from Genealogy of the Holy War; characters will have holy blood, and will be the chosen wielders of weapons such as Mystletainn and Tyrfing. I want to implement all of the weapons from Holy War, but have them locked to their chosen wielders only, so that they are usable without having an S rank in a weapon. If it's not doable to make that many preferred weapons, I'll settle on making the 8 sacred twins locked, if THAT is even possible.
EDIT: Also I'd like to use the Aircalibur animation for an Elwind spell. Is there a way to fix the bgm bug that comes with it? Also, can you recolor pre-existing animations? I'm thinking of using Fenrir's animation for Falaflame, but for it to make sense, I'd need to change it from purple to red.
I can already foresee that this will be a slow process, since I'm bogged down with school, but this urge to make my own hack has been gnawing at me for awhile now.
Before you say this Blazer, yes, I know you have an "ultimate tutorial" published around here somewhere. I've referenced it before when doing weapon icon editing. But, I know that tutorial is somewhat old by now, and I'd still like any available advice that may not be covered by that tutorial.
If all goes well, I can post a teaser patch of the prologue chapter for critique in a few weeks.
Concept art of characters
Caitlyn (the main hero) http://fav.me/d8258c5
Miiro (the Jeigan) http://fav.me/d82bfb0
Update 1
Layed down basic framework (Appropriate weapons editing in nightmare)
Started redoing weapon icons (See below)
