The Goal of Fire Emblem Factory

by Dale M.A. Johnson

created 3/28/06

Fire Emblem Factory is a fan project, created by fans for fans. Inspired by Nintendo's Fire Emblem series of strategy RPGs, the FEFactory project seeks to give fans the ability to make their own Fire Emblem-style adventures. It is not meant to replace the actual games in any way, which is something it could never do anyway.

This project has two clear goals:

• To create a user-friendly strategy RPG editor that can be used to make and run games similar to Fire Emblem.
• To use that engine to create a remake of the very first Fire Emblem game, which was never released in North America.

The focus of FEFactory is simplicity! Everything should be made easy to use and become familiar with. No annoying key memorization just to start up an editor; no advanced scripting or programming. Just point and click to get started. This is the foundation that FEFactory was meant to build on.

Fire Emblem Factory is also open-source. Although the code is copyrighted, it is availible for everyone to have access to and port. For this reason, these design documents have also been made availible online. The engine and editor are also freeware. That means you'll never have to pay a penny to use it or to play any of the games created with it. Lastly, the project strives to be legal, using original graphics and music arranged from scratch instead of ripping it from ROMs. Although the project obviously uses the Fire Emblem name and game mechanics, as well as characters and story from Nintendo, the aim is to make sure everything we're doing truely is "fair use."

Fire Emblem Factory will be created using C++, building on the Allegro library. The code should avoid using platform-specific commands so that it can be easily ported to other systems.