Party Overview

by Dale M.A. Johnson

 

created 4/6/06

 

This document outlines what "characters" are, how the engine needs to handle them, and how the user will interact with them.

 

What is a Party?

A party is, simply put, a group of characters. The engine keeps track of who is in the party so that even after a chapter ends everyone in the party will still be in the party, unlike factions which do not last from chapter to chapter. You have complete control of the parties you create for your story! You can add characters to a party and remove them as your campaign goes on.

 

In the Fire Emblem games there is generally only one party, and that is the party that all the player's characters are part of. However, in Fire Emblem Gaiden, you had control of two seperate parties! Fire Emblem Factory takes this even further: You may create up to eight parties. Generally, however, you will probably only need one party, and that party will be for the player's characters.

 

Adding and Removing Characters

Parties and factions are two different things. Parties stay consistant from chapter to chapter. Factions only last for a single map. This seems simple enough, but you'll need to remember it in specific cases.

 

For example, let's say the player visits a village, and a new character joins the player. This is easily accomplished by telling the engine to pop the character on the map at a given location, and then assign it to a faction. However, if the campaign creator only assigned the character to the faction, then the character will be gone come the next chapter. You must assign a character to both the faction and the player's party if you want them to stay. (Likewise, you can also tell a character to join a party and not a faction, in which case they won't be availible until the next chapter.)

 

Injured Characters and Dead Characters

How the engine handles what happens when a character is defeated is handled chapter-by-chapter. Three things can happen when a character is defeated in battle: The are assigned "injured" status, they "die," or they get put in another party.

 

First, let us discuss "injured." "Injured" is just an engine term, the game you create can refer to it however you want. If a character is defeated on a chapter with this setting, the character will be removed from the map, but will still be in the party. However, you will not be able to use them in combat for a set amount of chapters (set by you, the campaign creator, in each chapter). They will still appear on item menus, however, so you can trade their equipment.

 

Now, as for death... Characters never really "die." They just get kicked out of the party and given a "death flag." Since they're not in the party anymore, the player won't be able to use them anymore. The death flag ensures that even if a character is supposed to show up in a chapter, they won't (unless you set the chapter to force that character to appear). The death flag also lets you check if that character should have dialogue in a scene. You can check if a character is dead and assign the other characters different dialouge depending on whether or not he or she is "alive."

 

Finally, there's the option to dump the character in another party upon defeat. Because they are no longer in the current party, the player will not be able to use them. You can also choose to give them a "death flag" so that your dialogue will reflect whether or not the character(s) were killed or just captured/injured/whatever. You won't use this very often, unless you want to have a chapter where you can only play dead people, or if you want to have everyone that was defeated show up again at a specific part of the game.