This has been a busy week for me, and not because of the hack. This weekend was fully lost to some work stuff, and Monday was fully booked with Tuesday not much better. So I took another break this week to chill in my spare time and read a fanfic I've been meaning to get to.

However, there have been things going on. Most importantly, the super-awesome RydelFox has joined the project as Graphics Designer, and has been working on sprites and even map tileset changes (a nightmare I can only imagine, that was). The next beta (which will be released sometime in April, I hope) will look better than ever thanks to his hard work, so give him a round of applause. We also have a music hack from M06U3 that's implemented, go check it out on his YouTube. I cannot express my gratitude enough to Rydel and M06U3 for their hard work and am happy to have them aboard.

On my own front, there have been some changes. A handful of in-game sprites have been fixed (the dogs are no longer bright red and purple, for one), and unique weapons have been changed. Katanas have a chance to auto-counter, Brushes raise Sketch success rare, Throwing Rings can be hurled at enemies for higher damage (think the Hawkeye from vanilla), and Tricks (Pinkie's Gamblers) now all have a chance to inflict status ailments. The intent is to give the unique character weapons more use and in that make characters more diverse in their playstyle.

Moving ahead, the big one is event editing, and I say it's the big one because this isn't something that can be done in a convenient editor program. Well, it could, but it wouldn't work, the event editor is unstable and glitchy. So it's down to Hex editing. Plans for event editing include:

- Maud will be properly un-equipped by the airship guy
- My bonus boss will be added
- In the Esper world flashback, the scene with Sombra and Night Light will be altered
- Fluttershy's ending will be different, with some minor tweaks to Maud's and Scootaloo's
- Falling rocks will be added to the Sunset Shimmer flashback

If there's any other oddities in the story you think could use an adjustment, feel free to bring them up.

Good to hear the Ryder found the time to help out.

Awesome that more people are helping out with the project. Good luck with the event editing!

If you're curious what kind of Nightmare those map changes were:

Half the time the map editor claimed to save, it actually didn't
When it did, it wouldn't save everything.
Saving changes sometimes completely scrabbled the data for Daryll's Tomb
The game reuses tiles in odd ways, so it's hard to tell what's unused.
The documentation for editing this stuff manually is wrong.

I did manage to get a different map editor, so any future changes should be easier. It's not as fully featured (palette and tile changes have to be done the old fashioned way), but it should help.

There one minor detail that I've noticed. When doing the Pummel Blitz attack, the animation uses Sabin's hands. I don't know if that can be edited.

5133051 That's a good point, actually. I can't change the animation (well, I could, but I like to be safe), but I can make the colors Luna's.

5133971
Pony Fantasy changed the color of Pummel (among other things) as well as made the airship guy take Derpy's stuff and several of the specific events you mentioned. There might even be a specific guide to editing that somewhere unless you can ask Quickfix himself.

5132445
It's always nice to see you on another project. Its at least the third one I'm aware of, including Equestriabound of course.

5134307 I also do a Dwarf Fortress tileset (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=149172.0) and graphics for the Dwarf Fortress mod "Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=110704.0)

5134324
Dwarf Fortress? Lali-ho huh? I've never heard of Dwarf Fortress before.

5134307 I've asked the original maker, unfortunately he doesn't remember how he did most of the original event editing. Changing the color of Pummel is easy, it just slipped my mind. Everything else will be fairly simple, there's fortunately some good tutorials on event editing. A couple hiccups have confronted me but nothing that'll trouble me too much once the nice folks at FF6 hacking can give me a hand.

So, sorry if this is the wrong place for this. I saw a post on EqD for the update, but all it had was a link to a Youtube video. So I checked the Youtube video, and all it had was a link to the fimfiction page. So I checked the fimfiction page, and the first thing on it is link to the deviantart page. So I check the deviantart page, and the first thing on it is an update saying deviantart won't be updating anymore, and to go to fimfiction. So I go back to fimfiction, and can't find anything but discussion, and... where do I actually go to download this update!? After searching for a good while, I eventually found that most of the Beta Update posts had mediafire links, but the last few State of the Update posts haven't? Is the March 11 update the latest? If not, where do I get it, and would it be possible for it to be somewhere a bit more readily accessible?

For some reason Equestria Daily did not link to the group, though I did send them a link and they said they'd add it.

The March 13 update is the last one. I haven't been doing updates because the updates since have been more extensive overhauls that either wouldn't take effect properly just copying the new rom over the old and playing on. Presuming I finish my work this week (which I'm on track to), I'll be doing a personal playthrough to check things, and if all is well, an updated beta will be released closer to the end of the month.

http://www.fimfiction.net/group/209828/filly-fantasy-vi/thread/241880/beta-update-march-13