Fortune Avenue User Manual
- The Basics
- Understanding Fortune Avenue
- Understanding the Waypoint System
- Board Requirements and Limitations
Fortune Street stores its boards in the param folder of the ROM, using Square Enix’s proprietary .frb file format. Fortune Avenue is the only way to read and write files with the .frb format, and create custom boards. [1]
Custom boards are the most major gameplay change you can make to Fortune Street, and as such can be considered the meat of your mod. If you learn nothing else, learn how to use Fortune Avenue.
1. Technically you could edit .frb boards with a hex editor, same as any other file, but that barely counts. Good luck making a functional board that way.
The main recommended method for inserting boards into your ROM is through the Custom Street Mod Manager (CSMM). There is already a guide for how to use it, so I won’t be going over that in this guide. However, if you are just testing boards, you might not want to use CSMM every time you want to make a test build. So, here are two other methods for quickly inserting custom boards into your ROM.
Method 1: The Base Folder
If you turn your base ROM into a folder, you can swap out the board files in the param folder and then repack the folder into an ISO later.
On WIT, you can turn your ISO into a folder using this command: wit copy --psel data --preserve --fst [Source] [ExtractDirectory]
Where [Source] is the path to the ISO, and [Extract Directory] is the folder that will be created. Make sure that the Extract Directory is empty. Once done, the files from your ISO should appear in the folder.
Method 2: WiiScrubber
WiiScrubber is a program that allows you to inject files into an ISO file. An overview of how to use WiiScrubber can be found in the "Extraction and Injection" chapter of the main.dol Editing Guide. Follow the same steps from that guide, but instead of extracting and replacing the main.dol, scroll down to the param folder. Click the plus symbol, and the board files will appear.
When you open up Fortune Avenue, the window will look roughly like this:
The center of the FA window contains the Canvas. This is the main editing interface of the program. Tiles are placed, moved, and deleted within the canvas to create or make changes to a board.
To the left of the canvas is the Board Info Tab. This is where global information about the board can be viewed and edited.
To the right of the canvas is the Tile Info Tab. When tiles are selected, this tab displays information specific to those tiles for review or editing.
To use Fortune Avenue, you first need an .frb board file to edit. You can make a new one by pressing Control/Command + N, which will generate a new board with a Bank at the origin. If you already have a board file, you can press Control/Command + O, and a prompt will appear requesting the location of your file.
Once you have a board, you have to put things in it. Boards in Fortune Street are populated with square tiles that function as spaces for players to roll through and land on. To get started with Fortune Avenue, practice adding, selecting, moving, and deleting tiles to get a desired board shape.
To add tiles to your board, press Control/Command + E, or press the Add Square button in the middle of the Board Info Tab.
Select a tile by clicking on it, or by clicking Page Up or Page Down until it is selected. A selected tile will have a white border around it.
If you want to select multiple tiles, first click on the View section of the Toolbar and ensure that Drag to Pan is unchecked. Then, click and drag on the canvas, away from any tiles. A gray box will appear, with one corner at the location where you started holding the mouse button, and the opposite corner at the mouse cursor’s current location. Drag and drop this box over tiles to select them. Normally, this would require that all the tiles you want to select are near each other, with no tiles that you don’t want to select in between. However, there is a way to select multiple tiles while there are undesired tiles in the way:
You can also do this with individual tiles by holding Control or Command and then clicking on the tiles you want to select.
To move a tile around the canvas, click and hold on it, then drag and drop it to the location of your choice. If you want to move multiple tiles at once, select all of them, click on any of the selected tiles, then drag and drop the group. Alternatively, you can type coordinates in the Tile Info Tab to move any selected tiles.
To delete tiles, select them, then press Backspace/Delete or press the Remove Square(s) button in the middle of the Board Info Tab. Any selected tiles will be deleted. There is no Undo button in Fortune Avenue, so deleted tiles cannot be restored. Please delete responsibly.
Tiles are the building blocks of Custom Street boards. They are the spaces that players travel through and land on, and their placement makes up the structure of the board. There are many different tile types with unique effects, and understanding the tiles is key to making a custom board.
When you create a tile in Fortune Avenue, it will appear as a small square on the canvas.
The tile types available in Fortune Avenue are:
Property: A shop. These are the most common tiles on most boards, and the key to money making in Fortune Street. Players can buy unowned Property tiles by landing on them. Once a player owns property, they can trade it, invest in it, charge rent for it, and otherwise interact with their shop.
Bank: The tile where players start and finish the game. If a player passes a Bank with all four suits (or a combination of suits and Suit Yourself cards that adds up to at least four), they will earn a promotion, gaining money based on the Base Salary and Salary Increment you set for the board. Every board starts with a Bank at Tile ID #0 (which you must keep to make the board functional), but you can add as many more as you want.
Venture: If a player lands on this tile, they can draw a Venture card. Venture cards are the Fortune Street equivalent of Chance or Community Chest cards from Monopoly: each card has an event on it that may help or hinder the player who draws it.
Spade, Heart, Diamond, and Club: These are the suits required to promote. If players pass this tile, they will get the corresponding suit. If they land on the tile, they can draw a Venture card.
Spade (Change of Suit), Heart (Change of Suit), Diamond (Change of Suit), and Club (Change of Suit): A suit tile that rotates the suit on offer every time a player passes it, in the order of Spade → Heart → Diamond → Club. Like regular suit squares, landing on this tile grants players a Venture card.
Take a Break: If a player lands on this tile, all their shops close until their next turn. Players can land on closed property tiles for free.
Boon [with an N]: If a player lands on this tile, they get a 20% commission on any rent that other players pay until their next turn (For example if someone lands on a 100G shop, the player who owns the shop will get 100G, and the player who landed on a Boon square would get an extra 20G). This commission be changed with a main.dol edit.
Boom [with an M]: If a player lands on this tile, they get a 50% commission on any rent that other players pay until their next turn (For example if someone lands on a 100G shop, the player who owns the shop will get 100G, and the player who landed on a Boon square would get an extra 50G). This commission be changed with a main.dol edit.
Stockbroker: If a player lands on this tile, they can buy stocks. The effects of this tile can be changed with main.dol edits.
Roll On: If a player lands on this tile, they roll the die and move again as if they were taking another turn.
Arcade: Also known as a Casino. If a player lands on this tile, they play a minigame. These minigames usually give the player who lands on it some kind of bonus, although they can sometimes hinder the player or help other players. The available minigames are Round the Blocks, Memory Block, Dart of Gold, and Sluprodrome.
Switch: Used for dynamic boards, or boards with multiple board states. If a player lands on this tile, the board changes to the next state. If a player lands on a Switch in a static board with only one board state, the game will crash.
Cannon: If a player lands on this tile, they will be launched to another player of their choice. The effects of landing on the target player’s tile will not take place, but the effects of passing the tile will. If you are launched to the Bank you can buy stocks, promote, and check for win-conditions; and if you are launched to a suit tile you will collect the suit on the tile.
Backstreet A, B, C, D, and E: If a player lands on this tile, they will be warped to an arbitrary tile. Backstreet tiles have a different appearance depending on the theme of the board: on Mario boards they appear as warp pipes, and on Dragon Quest boards they appear as colored swirls. The pipes for Backstreets A and E are identical in color and share a texture, so unfortunately there can only be four unique Backstreet appearances on Mario themed boards.
One-Way Alley Door A, B, C, and D: If a player passes this tile, they will go through the door and out the exit door on the other end, then continue their roll. It is impossible to land directly on a door. This tile has a different appearance depending on the theme of the board: on Mario boards it appears as a yellow D-pad door, and on Dragon Quest boards it appears as a colored warp portal. On Mario themed boards, the tiles for One-Way Alley Doors B, C, and D are all identical and share a texture, and every door shares a texture, so unfortunately there can only be two unique door appearances on those boards.
Lift/Magmalice Start: Not recommended for inclusion in custom boards.[2] This is the starting point for Lifts and Magmalices from Yoshi’s Island and Mt. Magmageddon, respectively. If a player passes this tile, they can choose to stop on regardless of their remaining roll. If they do so, they will be taken to the destination of the Lift or Magmalice, and then their turn ends. The way Lifts and Magmalices work is not well-understood, so major glitches can occur when they are used outside of the specific locations they were placed in the vanilla game.
Lift End: Not recommended for inclusion in custom boards.[2] This is the end point for Lifts.
Magmalice: Not recommended for inclusion in custom boards.[2] This is the destination for Magmalices.
One-way Alley End: This is the end point for One-Way Alley Doors. The vanilla game places One Way Alley Ends directly on top of One Way Alley Doors to create two-way doors, but this is not necessary. You only need to place a One-Way Alley End if you are specifically making a one-way door in which the player cannot go back through the exit door. If you are making a two-way door set, then you should pair two One-Way Alley Doors together, without the use of this tile.
Event: A custom tile made by Deflaktor, utilizing the once-useless 0x2E tile type. The appearance and effects of this tile are different depending on the District ID of the tile. Essentially, the game behaves as if the player who landed on the Event Square pulled a Venture card matching the square’s District ID number. This feature only works if you use CSMM to insert boards into your ROM, as a complex main.dol patch is required to make the Event tile functional. If you are not using CSMM, the Event tile will do nothing when players land on it, which you may still find useful.
Vacant Plot: A special kind of property. When players land on an unowned plot of vacant land, they have the option of erecting one of seven unique buildings: a Checkpoint, Circus Tent, Home, Balloonport, Tax Office, Estate Agency, or 3-Star Shop. The vanilla game does not allow players to access vacant land on Easy mode by any means, but they are completely functional. If you are designing for Easy mode, you can freely place Vacant Plots in the place of Property tiles.
2. These tiles can crash the game if they are not placed in the exact spot as they are located in vanilla Yoshi’s Island (for Lifts) or Mt. Magmageddon (for Magmalices), or the correct background files are not used for the board. Deflaktor plans on finding a way to fix this. For now, Lifts and Magmalices are too restrictive and too volatile for serious use in custom boards.
The Board Info Tab on the left sidebar reveals information about the board as a whole, unrelated to any particular tile.
Initial Cash: Determines the amount of money that players start with when playing the board, in multiplayer only. For some reason, the Initial Cash value stored in the .frb is used when a board is loaded in multiplayer, but the value in the main.dol is used when a board is loaded in singleplayer modes. For every board, the Initial Cash value in the .frb and the main.dol/.yaml should be the same to maintain consistency.
Target Amount: Displays the desired default Target Net Worth for Tour mode. This doesn’t affect gameplay at all, because the game prioritizes the default Target Net Worth value stored in the main.dol over the value stored in the .frb file in all modes. Still, it is useful to store this information in your board file so you can access it in a convenient location when making the necessary edits to your main.dol or .yaml file.
Base Salary: When players level up in Fortune Street, their salary is split into three parts, based on different factors.[3] The first part is the board’s Base Salary, which is constant throughout the game.
Salary Increment: When players level up in Fortune Street, their salary is split into three parts, based on different factors.[3] The second part is the board’s Promotion Bonus, which increments linearly for each promotion. The Promotion Bonus in-game is the value you enter in the Salary Increment box, multiplied by the number of times the player has been promoted. In other words, Promotion Bonus = Salary Increment • (Lv. - 1).
Max. Dice Roll: The highest number that players can roll on the die for movement and certain venture cards.
Looping Mode: Determines whether and how the board will loop.
None: Boards will not loop.
Vertical: Boards will loop vertically around a cylinder, so the top and bottom tiles are connected.
Vertical+Horizontal: Not recommended for inclusion in custom boards.[4] Boards will loop vertically and horizontally around a sphere.
Add Square: Self-explanatory.
Remove Square: Self-explanatory.
Snap To: Determines the size of the grid that tiles will automatically be aligned to when moved. This does not retroactively snap tiles that are already on the board to the grid. The default grid size is 16 units, which is a quarter of the length of a tile. This section also contains a checkbox which toggles whether or not the grid is active.
Snap All: Moves all tiles to be aligned with the grid, using the number from “Snap To”.
File Version: This tells the user which version of Fortune Avenue the board file was made in. If the board was made in an old version of Fortune Avenue/CSMM, back when the program was built on .NET, the File Version will be 0. If the board was made in a Qt beta version of Fortune Avenue, the File Version will be 1. If the board was made in a more recent version of Fortune Avenue, the File Version will be 2. There is a technical reason for this, based on the autopath metadata created by different versions of Fortune Avenue. If you open a board with a different File Version than the one that corresponds to your version of Fortune Avenue, you will be given a prompt asking you to change the File Version. Doing this or not doing this seems to have no effect on the board's functionality.
Stock Prices: Shows what the initial stock price of each district will be when the board is played. Base stock prices are dependent on the average price of each property in the district, so you can only change the stock price by changing the value of the properties. Vacant land is always treated as being worth 200G per plot, which will cause FA to display an inaccurate stock price if you have edited the main.dol to give vacant land a value that isn’t 200G.
The Board Info Tab also contains some autopath controls above the stock price portion, which will be explained in the Understanding the Waypoint System section of this guide.
3. The third part of the salary is the Shop Bonus, which is dependent on the value of the players’ owned property and cannot be changed through the .frb file. (In fact, I don’t think we know of a way to change it at all…)
4. The omnidirectional looping mode has camera issues, can softlock the AI (or make them take a very long time to scroll to the tile they want), and is generally just a pain to play on. This video by Asphodel displays the bugginess of omnidirectional boards in full detail. If you’re short on time, skip to 8:59 in the video. Technically speaking, omnidirectional looping “works”, as in it won’t crash the game, but the glitches it causes make it not worth using for serious boards. Just set the looping mode to Vertical and add doors to simulate wrapping around on the sides.
When a tile is highlighted, the Tile Info tab on the right sidebar will reveal information about the selected tile. Some of this information can be edited to change the tile’s properties.
Info/Waypoints: Toggles whether the information on the sidebar shows general tile information or waypoint information.
ID: The tile’s internal ID number. This cannot be changed. When multiple shops expand or downsize at once, they are shown in the order of their ID number, Therefore, it is best to have the shops in a coherent ID order so that the camera is not zipping around the map when many shops get expanded/downsized in different districts.
If multiple tiles have been selected, the ID box will show how many tiles are selected.
Position (x,y): The positional coordinates of the tile. Type into each box to change the corresponding coordinate. The length and width of a tile is 64 units.
Type: What kind of tile is being selected. There are many different tile types, and their effects can be found in the Tiles and their Properties section of this guide.
District/Destination ID: This changes different things about the selected tile, depending on what its type is.
If the tile is a Property or Vacant Plot, the District ID changes what district it belongs to. 0 is District A, 1 is District B, and so on. If you are designing for Easy mode, there’s no reason to bother changing the District ID for shops (unless your board is meant to be played on both difficulty modes), but there’s also no problems caused if you do change the District ID.
If the tile is a Switch, the District ID determines how many states that switch will consider when pressed. If you are making a 2-state dynamic board, the District ID of all switches should be either 0 or 2. If you are making a 4-state dynamic board, the District ID of all switches should be 4.
If the tile is a Backstreet, the District ID determines which tile players will be warped to when they land on it. This can be any tile on the map.
If the tile is an Event tile, the District ID determines the effect of the square when players land on it. Each number corresponds to a venture card. When players land on an Event tile with a certain District ID, it will have the same effect as if the player had pulled that Venture card (e.g., if the District ID of an Event tile is 12, then any player who lands on it will be able to invest in their shops, as if they had pulled card 12). If the District ID of an Event tile is 0 or more than 128, the tile will have no effect when players land on it.
Otherwise, the District ID has no effect on the function of a tile.
Auto-Calc: If this box is checked, the Initial Value and Initial Price of Property tiles will change each other based on a formula. This formula can be altered by clicking Tools → Shop Price Auto-Calc Function.
Load Shop Preset: This only matters if the selected tile is a Property. Loading a shop preset sets a pre-paired Shop Model and Initial Value to the shop tile, based on the way shop titles and values are paired in a vanilla copy of Fortune Street Wii. An Initial Price is also set if Auto-Calc is on.
Shop Model: This only matters if the selected tile is a Property. The Shop Model is the ID of the shop’s title, or the flavor text name that occurs in-game. This can be set from 1-100, although some of the titles are unused in the vanilla game.
Initial Value: This only matters if the selected tile is a Property. This sets the price that players must pay to buy a shop when it is unowned at the start of the game, and also sets a default Initial Price if Auto-Calc is on.
Initial Price: This only matters if the selected tile is a Property. This sets the rent price that players must pay to land on a shop once another player owns that shop, if the owner has only that shop in the District[5]/no shops next to it[6] and has not invested in it.
You can change the Shop Model, Initial Value, and Initial Price of a shop independently even if Auto-Calc is on, but you must do so in a specific order. Change the Shop Model, then the Initial Value, then the Initial Price.
Yield: This is the quotient of Initial Price ÷ Initial Value. If Auto-Calc is on and you set a shop’s Initial Value, the Yield will be set according to this formula by default:
The Yield formula can be changed in the toolbar.
Is Yoshi-type Lift?: This only matters if the selected tile is a Lift/Magmalice Start. If you are designing for Yoshi’s Island, check this box. Otherwise, uncheck it.
The Tile Info Tab also contains some autopath controls on the bottom, which will be explained in the Understanding the Waypoint System section of this guide.
5. If you are designing your board for Standard mode.
6. If you are designing your board for Easy mode.
The toolbar is where various miscellaneous features of Fortune Avenue are located. In Windows versions of Fortune Avenue, you can locate it on the top of the FA window, underneath the program’s title and icon. On Mac versions, you can find it on the top left corner of the screen, next to the Apple logo, when Fortune Avenue is the active window. The following options can be found in the toolbar:
File: This is where you can open or create an .frb file to begin working, and save the file when you are done.
Select: Contains hotkeys for selecting certain tiles. Actually clicking any of these options is a complete waste of time, so it is better to memorize the hotkeys instead.
Select All: Press Control/Command + A to select every tile on the map. This is similar to the Select All command on other programs.
Previous: Press Page Down to select the tile before the currently selected tile(s), in ID order (e.g. if you are currently selecting Tile ID #68, pressing Page Down will select Tile ID #67). If no tile is selected, this command will select the tile with the highest ID number on the map.
Next: Press Page Up to select the tile after the currently selected tile(s), in ID order (e.g. if you are currently selecting Tile ID #68, pressing Page Up will select Tile ID #69). If no tile is selected, this command will select Tile ID #0.
Follow Waypoint Destination 1/2/3: Press Control/Command + 1, 2, or 3 to select tiles by following the waypoints of the map. This only works if exactly two tiles are selected, and those two tiles are connected to each other by waypoints. If your map has not been given pathing yet, this command is useless.
View: The View tab has hotkeys similar to the select tab, but these affect the way you view the canvas.
Zoom In: Press Control/Command + Shift + = to zoom in the view of the canvas, making tiles appear larger.
Zoom Out: Press Control/Command + - to zoom out the view of the canvas, making tiles appear smaller.
Draw Axes: Press Control/Command + K to render lines through the X and Y axes on the canvas.
Drag to Pan: Press Control/Command + D to toggle the effects of clicking and dragging on the canvas away from tiles. If Drag to Pan is checked, dragging on the canvas will move the canvas around. If Drag to Pan is unchecked, dragging on the canvas will select any tiles that are dragged over.
Enter/Exit Full Screen: Click this to make the Fortune Avenue window full screen, or return to windowed mode if FA is already full screen
Tools: This section of the toolbar contains a few useful tools.
Verify Board: Fortune Avenue performs the following checks when the Verify Board button is pressed:
- There is a Bank at Tile ID #0
- The board has at least 3 spaces
- The max die roll is between 1 and 9 inclusive
- There are no shops with a District ID higher than 11
- No waypoint references a non-existent tile
- All tiles connected by waypoints are at most 32 units (half a tile) away from each other
- No tile has any more than 3 waypoint destinations
- Districts must increase without gaps and start with 0
- No Districts have any more than 6 shops
Some of these checks are meaningful in determining whether or not the board will function, some are completely meaningless, and some are inaccurate. Check the Board Requirements and Limitations section of this guide to see a more complete list of criteria for a functional board.
Autopath: Assigns waypoints to every tile on the map, based on which tiles are next to each other. More information on this tool can be found in the Understanding the Waypoint System section of this guide.
Screenshot: Creates an image of up to four maps (through browsing their .frb files) in .webp format. The images will be placed in the same folder as their .frb files.
Shop Price Auto-Calc Function: Clicking this tool will summon a prompt in which you can write a formula for the way that the Initial Value of a Property tile affects the tile’s Initial Price when Auto-Calc is turned on.
Changing the formula does not retroactively change the Initial Price of existing Property tiles, you must re-enter the tiles’ Initial Values to see the effects of the new formula. It is recommended that you only use this tool if you are good at math, or are willing to do a lot of trial-and-error to get the kind of shop prices you want.
To set waypoints on a tile manually, first select the tile you want to path. Then, on the Tile Settings section of the Fortune Avenue window, click the Waypoints button near the top. This will reveal the Waypoints tab.
The Waypoint # Start section references the ID number of the tile which players come from to reach the selected tile. 255 represents null, so a waypoint with a Start of 255 doesn’t exist. This is used if there are fewer than 4 tiles that players can come from.
The Waypoint # Destination section determines the ID number of the tile which the players go to after passing the selected tile. 255 represents null, so a waypoint with a Destination of 255 lacks that destination. This is used if there are fewer than 3 tiles that players can go to from this tile.
Each numbered waypoint is for a different path the player can take to and from the selected tile.
The Waypoint #s and Destinations within each waypoint should be entered in order. You shouldn’t have Waypoint 1 be blank, and fill Waypoints 2, 3 and 4 with pathing information, and you also shouldn’t have the first and third destinations filled within a waypoint while leaving the second destination blank. At the very bottom of the Waypoints tab, there is a Sort All Waypoints tab that sorts the Waypoint #s and Destinations within each waypoint in numerical order, so any mistakes like this are automatically cleared up.
If you’ve made a mistake with the waypoints and want to start over, the Waypoints tab has a convenient way to do so. On the side of each Waypoint is a Clear Waypoint # button that resets all values on that Waypoint to 255. Underneath Waypoint 4 is a Clear All Waypoints button that resets all values for all waypoints on the selected tile for 255.
If all this is a bit confusing to you, here’s an example:
I’m currently selecting the Bank, at Tile ID #0. There is a One-Way-Alley Exit (#59) to the west of the Bank, a District A shop (#1) to the north, and a District D shop (#25) to the south.
Starting with Waypoint 1, I entered 59, the ID of the One-Way-Alley Exit, as the Waypoint 1 Start. I want players to be able to go in either direction from this door, so the Destinations are the two shops: 1 and 25. The last destination is left at 255, since there isn’t a third tile that players can go to when entering the Bank from this direction.
Waypoint 2 next. One of the shops will be the Start value for this one. The District A shop has a lower value than the District D shop, so I decided to enter #1 for this Waypoint. The Destinations section is where this gets a bit more complicated. If players are coming to the Bank from District A, I want them to be able to go towards District D, but I do NOT want them going to the door. That’s an exit tile, players aren’t supposed to enter it (and even if they were, the waypoints for Tile #59 happen to be full, so the game would not tolerate players approaching that tile from the Bank). When players approach the Bank from Tile #1, the only tile they should be allowed to go to is Tile #25. So I enter 25 as the first Waypoint 2 Destination, and leave the other two destinations at 255.
Waypoint 3 is the mirror image of Waypoint 2.[7] The same logic from the last waypoint applies to this one, it’s just going to and from the opposite direction. The Waypoint Start is 25, and the Waypoint Destination is 1.
7. Mirror image waypoints will be present on most maps, since players will often be allowed to go in different directions, and thus when they return to the Bank, they may be coming from any tile surrounding it. The only places where you won’t see a mirror image waypoint is at a fork; where players can go in several different directions from one tile, and in any location where players are forced to go in only one direction, like the strip at the right side of Good Egg Galaxy.
The Autopath system only considers tiles that are physically close to each other on the map. Since doors’ main purpose is to connect faraway tiles on a board, this means that you will always need to assign waypoints to doors manually.
When creating waypoints for doors, there are four tiles that matter: The tile that players enter the first door from, the two doors, and the tile that players exit the second door from. In this example, the relevant tiles are the District B property (#9), the blue door (#28), the red door (#30)[8], and the Backstreet tile (#35).
To connect these doors from left to right, the Waypoint Destination for the entrance tile (#9) must be the first door (#28). The Waypoint Start for the first door (#28) must be the entrance tile (#9), and the Waypoint Destination must be the second door (#30). The Waypoint Start for the second door must be the first door (#28), and the Waypoint Destination must be the exit tile (#35). Finally, the Waypoint Start for the exit tile (#35) must be the second door (#30). Connecting them the other way can be done by simply creating mirror image waypoints for each tile.
To make this easier to visualize, imagine all four relevant tiles are right next to each other.
8. Doors that are meant to be connected to each other are usually the same color. I made them different colors in this example so they’re easier to differentiate.
As one might imagine, manually typing in waypoints for every single tile, on a board that can have up to 85 tiles and 12 numbers to enter per tile, is extremely tedious. Don’t do it.
Nikki has already made a video on the Autopath system on the Custom Street Youtube channel. It is somewhat outdated, but it explains the basics of how Autopath works in Fortune Avenue with visuals and an example. You may want to check it out.
The Autopath button in the toolbar automatically assigns waypoints to every tile on the map, based on proximity. This overwrites any existing waypoints. In some boards, merely pressing the Autopath button will make the board function perfectly with no other input. Sometimes, you will need to do some tweaking before the Autopath system will do what you want.
Like the general board and tile information, the sidebars contain settings for the Autopath system. On the Board Info Tab, global Autopath settings can be found, while the Tile Info Tab contains settings for the specific tile.
Autopath Range: Determines how far away tiles need to be from each other to be considered “connected” for Autopath’s purposes. Any value lower than 64 units is not recommended, as it requires tiles to be inside each other to be connected by Autopath. A value higher than 64 is useful for boards that have gaps in between tiles, but it can cause problems for tightly packed tile configurations that lack gaps.
This board was created with version v2-beta1 of Fortune Avenue, in which the Autopath Range was locked at 100 and couldn’t be changed by the user. It was not a fun time.
Straight-Line Tolerance: Determines how far off from a cardinal direction a tile can be from other tiles, while still being considered in that cardinal direction for the Autopath controls. For example, with the default settings, a tile like this is considered to be west of the Bank:
And a tile like this is considered to be north-west of the Bank.
This does not change the way directions are considered when the game renders arrows.
On the right sidebar are a set of buttons with arrows on them. These buttons allow you to set restrictions on the way tiles will be connected when the Autopath button is pressed. This serves as a visual approach to complex waypoint management.
From: This ring of arrows determines the direction of the tile that players are coming from (in effect, the Waypoint Start tile). Click on one of these buttons and it will turn green, indicating that direction is being selected.
To: This ring of arrows determines whether or not players can go in that direction (in effect, setting the Waypoint Destination tiles). Click on one of these arrows and it will switch between green (direction is allowed) and red (direction is not allowed). By default, every arrow in the To ring on every tile will be green.
Underneath the To ring is a set of buttons: Allow All and Disallow All. These buttons turn every direction in the To ring for the selected From direction to green (If the Allow All button is pressed) or red (if the Disallow All button is pressed).
If you’ve made a mistake with the waypoints and want to start over, there is a Reset Paths button underneath the From ring. This will turn every arrow in the To ring on the selected tile back to green, restoring the default Autopath settings for that tile. This will not erase any waypoints on the tile.
For an example of how this works in practice, let’s look at a board from the vanilla game. In Robbin’ Hood Ruins, when players cross the bank they can only go straight across, in the same direction they were moving. This is a fairly common pathing restriction, but can we replicate it using Autopath controls? Yes we can. Here’s how:
In the Custom Street Autopath video, Nikki expressed that she had “the hope that we could enable you to just never visit... the Waypoints tab ever again", but in reality this is not going to happen. The Autopath tool is less like a silver bullet and more like a sewing machine. It is very useful and can do most of your pathing work for you, but there are places it cannot reach, and situations where you would be better off assigning waypoints manually. To make boards efficiently, you need to be comfortable with both sides of the Waypoint system.
There is a lot you can do with custom boards, but you can’t do anything and everything. If something goes wrong, any number of nasty glitches can happen. While I can’t promise to completely prevent board-related errors, this section should cover the most common problems.
Every board requires the following things to be functional:
- At least one Bank tile, with one Bank at Tile ID #0
- At least one Arcade/Casino tile
- At least one Take a Break tile
- At least one Boon/Small Commission Tile
- A total of at least 6 Property & Vacant Plot tiles (At least 3 shops per District, and at least 2 Districts)[9]
- At least one Property or Vacant Plot tile[10]
- At least one of each of the four Suit squares, and/or at least one Rotating Suit square[11]
9. This requirement only applies if you are designing your board for Standard mode.
10. This requirement only applies if you are designing your board for Easy mode.
11. This is not required in the sense that the game will crash or softlock if you don't include it. Promotions, a major part of Fortune Street gameplay, will not function without suits, so unless you are planning a promotion-less gimmick board, these should be on every board you make.
In case you are curious, the smallest playable Standard mode board looks like this:
And the smallest playable Easy Mode board looks like this:
Neither of these look very fun to play, though...
On top of these requirements, there are some restrictions that apply to any boards you make:
- The board must have no more than 85 tiles.
- If you are designing for Standard Mode, you must have between 2 and 12 Districts.
- Districts must start from 0, and increase without gaps
- If you are designing for Standard Mode, every District must have no more than 7 shops.
- If a District has 1 or 2 shops, the shop price algorithm will break in that district unless you are using CSMM, which comes with a tiny-district patch.
- If a district has exactly 7 shops, there will be some graphical errors in the stock menu but the gameplay will be unaffected. 8 or more shops in a district crashes the game upon scrolling to that district in the stock menu.
- If you are designing for Easy mode, no more than 8 shops can be connected in one group.
- Any loop in the board (where a player can travel around a segment of tiles and return to whence they came) must have at least as many tiles as the max die roll of the map.
- This is because the AI will softlock the game if they are in a loop and their roll is larger than that loop.
- The max die roll must be no more than 9.
- If there are any doors on the map, the max die roll cannot be 9.
- If there are multiple sets of doors on a map, players must not be able to cross two sets of doors in one roll.
- In other words, each set of doors must have at least as many non-door tiles between them as the max roll of the board (e.g. if the max roll is 7 there must be at least 7 non-door tiles between each set of doors).
- All doors must have only one tile they can exit to.
- If a door has more than one possible exit, it will just force the player onto the first exit entered in the Waypoint Destinations tab.
- If a door has more than one possible exit, it will just force the player onto the first exit entered in the Waypoint Destinations tab.
- All Waypoints and warp destinations must point to existing tiles (e.g. if there are 68 tiles on your board, you can’t have any Waypoints or warp destinations that point to tile 69).
- All tiles must have at least 1 and no more than 4 waypoints. These waypoints must have at least 1 and no more than 3 destinations.
- In other words, each tile must be connected to at least 1 and no more than 4 other tiles through waypoints.
Fortune Street Wii is a bit finicky, so a board that fulfills all these criteria may still crash, softlock, or otherwise misbehave. I recommend testing your new boards in Free Play with 3 AI characters before sending them out to other players. The AI will find any problems with your board faster than you can, while you can use your player character to test specific scenarios and areas of the board.