The project has been going since just before the new year. Since I was finally in a position that I wanted to start showing off the game in a more public arena, I did just that. I would still say it's going fairly quickly, but rushing? Nah. A lot of care's gone into every angle...
A lot of the early work was devoted to coding the menu, adjusting the party system to allow a total of 6 Pok?mon, setting up a template for the PC system, setting up the fonts, then the weather and time system (including random encounter test events that work around the cycle of time and weather)... some serious graphics ripping and modifying then followed. The tileset has mushroomed intensely from the oldest version, and is now nothing short of absolutely huge x.x
My next phase is always design plan and ideas, coupled with the map making phase. Since Kanto will just be based mostly off FRLG, Johto was done first to get the main stumbling block out of the way. Matt is working on some areas of Kanto, and did a couple of maps for Johto also. Each map also goes through a very careful and thorough editing phase, so that they DON'T look rushed! Trust me, I've seen some rather nasty Johto remakes (Kyledove's happens to be one of the few brilliant ones, just with some shocking grass XP). I spend up to a day on the larger cities to get them perfectly proportioned in a FRLG kind of precision.
We working on the project believe that the true beauty of the Acanthite project will certainly be the story's angle. Playing from the Rival's point of view instead allows a completely different perspective while you play. Also, catching Lugia is much more interesting (I thought that the Groudon/Kyogre story of Ruby and Sapphire was the best part of the game, and better still in Emerald, and I want that sort of epic adventure rather than just picking up a feather or whatever and going into a cave :D).
You don't see a lot of the new region yet because of the following reasons;
a) I've not made that much of it yet
b) I wish to keep it somewhat secret
c) J'adore le petit poisson.
So, ideas are still wanted if anyone has any suggestions. How might I make certain maps better, or anything you want me to put in the new region?