Permanently Damaged Fire Emblem 4 Game?
It would be much easier for people who have played this to really understand what's happening I think, since I mention game mechs a lot here, but any help would be greatly appreciated.
As a result of abusing cheats like no tomorrow, I fucked up my game. Except it won’t fix. No matter what I do or anyone else seems to do.
Moral of the story is supposed to be: How do I fix this?
Basically what happened is ORIGINALLY I had Levin and Fury paired, but I turned on Diadora’s lover code and put her with Levin. Well, okay. The reason my game fucked up were Sety is concerned, I got. Celice inherited Holsety, and I get why Sety got messed up… but then somehow Faval got messed up too.
What’s happening is during chapter eight, Faval and Sety are correctly getting their dialogue. Their mothers were paired and they are in fact meant to be present. They’re shown with their faces, names are spoken. Well, that changes when they becomes units on the map, and they turn into their subs. This shouldn’t have happened to Faval to BEGIN with, but my issue is that after all that, when this wasn’t a legit file at all and I never once hard saved it, never once in game saved it, it stayed like this. I did use save states but that’s the only existence this cheat run had.
Even though Sety becomes Hawk on the map, I have Celice speak to him, and once again, he’s Sety, name and face. The villager also says, “Please help Sety if you can!”. My game is in fact aware the mothers were paired and they’re meant to be here, but for some reason both him and Faval won’t stay as units. During the epilogue, they’re perceived dead and so the sister takes the inheritance. Yes, I mean to say I’m getting Patty and Fee, but not Faval and Sety (which it's impossible to get one sibling and not the other). Therefore, the epilogue considers them dead because they “aren’t there” (despite that the game previously recognizes that Brigid and Fury were paired and showing names/faces correctly).
During the ACTUAL run where Levin was with Fury but I cheated his digit in with Diadora’s code, Hawk’s lover was stuck on Sety. I did not have Hawk’s lover codes on at all, and even if I did, it should have said Hawk’s lover was Hawk if I used that character digit (since they share slots). The game still was trying to acknowledge Sety. That was only the first run though, when I understood why the game was getting messed up.
Second run, Hawk’s lover randomly stuck to Arthur. I shouldn’t have gotten Hawk at all in this run. Levin was clear off Diadora’s code and her code was shut off. I even disabled cheats completely from the emulator. After that, I would go back to my chapter five file, save state, and go into gen 2. Then I would proceed to bullshit it through to chapter eight to see if Faval was there (using infinite movement and EXP = Instant Level Up, and these cheats never hurt anything before and still are not the issue).
Faval’s name and face is present until the unit comes onto the map. Then he’s gone, and Patty can’t speak to him. However, when I engage him in battle, the speaker is Faval, with his correct enemy battle quote. Unit is still Asaello though, and he has no death quote I guess when the game’s messed up like this (or it could be because he was asleep from Patty’s sword?)?
Issue? Well, I thought it was that all my save states got corrupted somehow in the memory of my ROM. We wiped all save data from the save folder and I only put in the save state that was right before chapter eight, tried it, and all the same stuff happened. I had a couple friends trying to assist, and one sent me the emulator again. I tossed my emulator (SNES9x) into the recycle bin, where files can’t be read. Tried to open my game again just to make sure, and it wouldn’t open. Then, I got my friend’s SNES9x over Skype, so I switched out my emulator in case that was the issue. Well… it didn’t fix anything. I tried the save states again to check and sure enough, it was the same. Next, we switched out my ROM itself and the .ips file entirely. Didn’t work. Lastly, I literally removed all my saves from the save folder, nothing left, and replaced with my friend’s .srm file. Literally took her save files and continued playing from her in-game save on chapter five just before you speak to Aida. Did all the same stuff, nothing fixed. Even with her files on my computer, I still can’t get Sety or Faval anymore. My game is literally STUCK this way. We’ve switched out the ROM, emulator and save files (including having tosses everything and wiped ALL SNES9x memory from our computers), and the only thing left I could guess to do is literally wipe any existence of all three from my computer itself, all at once, and get them all back. I figured if my save states were the problem, not having them in my save folder at all (or even deleting them completely) would help, but my game is like… actually doing this normally now, after everything was wiped, like it’s supposed to be part of the game. It’s stuck like this and I have no idea how to fix it. The problem shouldn’t be with Diadora’s lover codes/Celice’s father, because those were off after the first time, and even then, Faval shouldn’t have been affected too.
Additionally, I sent the messed up files to two friends each, one who also used SNES9x and one who used ZSNES. Their games were perfectly fine until they played my file, and my friend who uses 9x actually told me it affected all her other save files. The one who plays on ZSNES told me the file that I had was also messed up on her emulator.
Basically the game is actually reading the above information to be true to the game, when it's not. It's not crashing or anything; it's actually proceeding smoothly and otherwise as normal. The problem is that no matter we do, whether we change emulators, roms (even different roms of this game, not just replacing the same rom for a new one of itself), or patches, it will not fix. I also tried rebooting my computer and the only suggestions I've been given otherwise is to upgrade to Windows 10 (I have 7), or a system restore when it goes back to a previous date (not a full system wipe/restore). We're about to try having me take the hard save of one of my friends and go from there, but I can't be sure it'll work; especially if all her files are now stuck like this too like my other friend's were after she played my messed up file. That and, once I open the file to play it, it might get affected instantly just by being on my computer, as ALL FE4 files have been affected (even on my pre-patched ROM it happened, when initially that wasn't the affected ROM). Once someone else receives the files, it affects all their files as well.
I can no longer get Faval and Sety as units, but I can get Patty and Fee, and the game shouldn't even be able to do that.
Prior to this, I was actually having lover errors. Azel's lover was stuck to Dew when he had no cheats on (which is impossible in natural gameplay), and I would have turn the cheat on and then back on to remove it. I found it weird, but went on. Later, Yuria started having Celice as her lover, and her cheat code wasn't on either. Then Hannibal, a unit who can't even have a lover naturally without cheat codes, had Celice listed as a lover. I have never even had Hannibal's cheats in my cheat list, much less it being turned on. Then Oifaye had Celice as a lover too, with his cheat off.
We've tried basically everything possible that we could besides for a system repair which I don't want to do unless it's the last possible thing I can. I believe I have the SNES9x 1.53, if that's the most recent version?
