[Developing] Pokemon Online - POL

[Fblaster]

Pokemon Online is being developed in C++/IIRC.

Hello everybody. I'm creating this thread to present to the greater audience, you, a game that has been in development for a few years now, with a dedicated team. Some may have heard of it, wether because of its polemic origins or because you happened to stumble upon its website.
Pokemon Online came to be because a group of people with a passion for Pokemon wanted to see a playable MMORPG with great quality. Thus development begun a few years ago. After some derails and ownership changes, we got to where we are now. For techical reasons, and to make the project achievable, the game is being moved from MMORPG to Online Co-op.

PLOT

Spoiler:

As in any open world game, there are several plots available for the player to enjoy. There isn't one imposed plot here. We have a full team of people dedicated only to developing and scripting in-game plots. It has been decided that the time period will be set one year after the events in Nintendo's official games.

There is the basic, standard plot of the gym journey, defeating all the gyms, getting the badges, becoming the pokemon champion... all that standard pokemon stuff. All regions will be included in due time, with Kanto and Johto already ready for implementation.

There is a team system, where you can join any of the evil teams and undertake missions under their name. There will be lots of optional missions, and as you upgrade your rank in the team you get access to lots of stuff, from pokemon, to items, and new missions, to use when on team duty.

POL will inlcude a TCG system, where you can explore and battle in the TCG's maps, improved to POL style. The TCG sets will be coded into the game gradually, and there will be a TCG league to face.

Much much more scripted and ready for implementation.

Features:

-> Fully customizable hero. Choose from hundreds of clothing pieces and hairstyles to create your own unique hero!

-> All regions in custom graphic style: Kanto, Sevii, Orange Archipelago, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova
Tilesets revamped to be twice bigger, for fullscreen maps.

-> PvP - Fight your friends -or foes- from all over the world in pokemon battles to prove once and for all who is the best trainer.

-> Trading Card Game - Collect Pokemon cards and challenge trainers for TCG games.

-> Joinable teams:
EVIL -Rocket, Aqua, Magma, Galatic, Plasma, Cypher, Snagem
HEROIC - Pokemon League, Rangers, Interpol

Undertake missions for your team, acquiring new gear, pokemon and titles for use while on team duty.

-> Inviting friends over to your game world/joining them on theirs.

-> Secret Bases in all the regions - Create and decorate your own base with lots of custom objects that you will collect in your journeys.

-> One of our strongest features is the sheer ammount of custom quality sprites created from scratch. From game characters, to manga, anime, TCG... we have hundreds of custom graphics already done. (New pixel artists welcome onboard). Find and fight characters from the Pokemon series, from spinoff games, from the manga, or even characters only seen in the TCG's cards.

EDIT: We are moving our old sprites to a new graphic style. Here's a preview:



-> Iconic and original story arcs - Experience the most iconic moments in Pokemon history, with you as the hero, or brave way through new, original, story arcs that make you live the Pokemon world in a whole new way!


SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler:

Credits go to the whole POL team and contributors.

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Recently looking for spriters. We have a database with hundreds of custom sprites from the whole pokemon universe, from games to anime, manga, TCG... But we're always on the lookout for new contributors to help expand the graphics database. We aim to cover every pokemon character we can.

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For more information about the game: www.pkmnonline.org



For applying to the spriting team, PM me.

[Gameday]

Nice to see this game finally on Pokecommunity. Can't wait for the Kanto release : D

[Fblaster]

Originally Posted by Gameday

Nice to see this game finally on Pokecommunity. Can't wait for the Kanto release : D

True, it's been a long and delayed step... I'll take it you're on our forums?

Anyway, it's always been hard to bring the game here, since all the work is done behind the scenes, and hardly exposable by screenshots and that kind of stuff.

Still, progress has been steady, and the project has been running for so long that we decided it deserved some more exposure.

Me being one of the main spriters, I'm mostly on a mission to gather talented pokemon spriters all in one place, which I think can be done if they get a peek at all of our amazing sprite art. Who knows, maybe I'll leak a few from time to time? ;)

[Gameday]

lol, I'm on the wiki team. Just working on Creoix template atm lol

[Fblaster]

Here's a treat. Our custom overworld sprites for some of the heroes.

[khkramer]

Good luck with the game
And i was wondering, how did you guys make those tiles?

[Aamelo]

Ah Pokémon Online... Long Time No See.
I still remember the Time I got refused into the Mapping Team. OTL.

[Fblaster]

Originally Posted by khkramer

Good luck with the game :)
And i was wondering, how did you guys make those tiles?

Our tiles were all custom made, one by one, by our graphics team =)
Currently the whole Kanto region has been revamped and our team is working on Johto, if I'm not mistaken...

Originally Posted by Aamelo

Ah Pokémon Online... Long Time No See.
I still remember the Time I got refused into the Mapping Team. OTL.

I don't know why you were rejected. Also, I dont know if the mappers team is still looking for members, but if you want me to, I can check in with the head of the team?

[khkramer]

Tell your graphics team they did a great job on the tiles, then!

[Aamelo]

Originally Posted by Fblaster

I don't know why you were rejected. Also, I dont know if the mappers team is still looking for members, but if you want me to, I can check in with the head of the team?

I don't know that now. Still, I guess it was that rejection that made me into the Awesome Good Mapper I am today, so, I actually don't know.

[Fblaster]

Congrats Aamelo, I've heard your skills are now up to par with POL requirements.

Anyway, for whoever is out there, we are still accepting/forming spriters in our graphics team. Anyone interested, feel free to contact ;)

[Fblaster]

So, its the beggining of the month, and our PR has posted his usual progress update, in case you are interested in knowing how progress is going:

"POL Progress Update 7/1/12
5:08pm Sunday, July 01, 2012
Hey everyone! It’s the first of the month which means it’s time for another progress update!

First, let’s start off with the Wiki. Currently, the main Wiki task is compiling all of the information from the Pokemon Trading Card Game for use in POL. If you check out the Trading Card Game section of the Wiki (which is accessible from the Wiki homepage) you’ll be able to see all of the articles we have on individual cards, decks, sets, and other POL-related things. For those of you who don’t know this already, we currently have plans to implement the TCG into POL in some form or another, though it’s still in its primary stages of development.

Onto Mapping, we are essentially finished with Kanto right now. A few final checks need to be made, as well as the production of the final POL-exclusive maps, and then Kanto mapping will be finished. This doesn’t mean that Kanto is almost ready, however, as we still have more graphics and programming to accomplish. The Mapping team is starting on the creation of the Johto source maps, which is the first stage in the process for mapping Johto. This task involves transcribing the maps from HeartGold and SoulSilver quality into POL-quality, which is based off of Emerald.

With Graphics, we have seen the surge from May continue through June and now into July. In just the last couple of days, we’ve added a new spriting member, 15 more Pokemon sprites, and a bunch (I say that because it’s hard to count how many new ones we have!) of new NPC overworld and battle sprites.

That’s all I have to say right now, but it’s not the end of this update! In the next couple of days, you should expect another part to this update! I won’t say any more for now, but I should be able to post it soon :)

As always, if you have any questions/comments/concerns/suggestions, just let me know here in this thread! Alternatively, you can always send me a PM and I’ll be happy to answer."

I make his words mine, any questions/comments/concerns/suggestions, feel free to let us know.

[Fblaster]

Here's a nice little something I got from the mapping team recently.
Johto's route 47

[Yuoaman]

Okay, I'm going to be completely honest here. It's not nearly good enough. You don't seem to have decided on a single style for your graphics is very jarring. Your overworld sprites seem to have some sort of Earthbound/Mother 3 thing going for them, and while it's a nice enough style it doesn't suit either the HGSS or FRLG tiles which are both incredibly different stylistically and having them in the same game is just perplexing. And the sprites you posted with the list of factions are basically useless to anyone viewing the thread as you've watermarked the hell out of them so the finer details can't be seen, making it kind of useless to display them at all.

I see you posted a screenshot from your map editor, but that just confuses things further - if you have a map editor why are you going to such great lengths to create duplicates of the maps from the official games when even those can feel cramped when one player is running around?

All in all it just feels like you've posted this project way too soon, and while you may be working hard on it, I've seen much better posted hereabouts.

[Maizox]

I've been looking forward to this game forever can't wait for beta release.

[Fblaster]

Originally Posted by Yuoaman

Okay, I'm going to be completely honest here. It's not nearly good enough. You don't seem to have decided on a single style for your graphics is very jarring. Your overworld sprites seem to have some sort of Earthbound/Mother 3 thing going for them, and while it's a nice enough style it doesn't suit either the HGSS or FRLG tiles which are both incredibly different stylistically and having them in the same game is just perplexing. And the sprites you posted with the list of factions are basically useless to anyone viewing the thread as you've watermarked the hell out of them so the finer details can't be seen, making it kind of useless to display them at all.

I see you posted a screenshot from your map editor, but that just confuses things further - if you have a map editor why are you going to such great lengths to create duplicates of the maps from the official games when even those can feel cramped when one player is running around?

All in all it just feels like you've posted this project way too soon, and while you may be working hard on it, I've seen much better posted hereabouts.

Hello Yuoaman. Thank you for your thorough input on our work.
About the watermarks... we have had sprite theft issues before, so you're right, I might have exagerated on that. I'll make sure to fix it soon, along with a few more to wet the appetite of the viewers.

About the style of the sprites not matching well with the tiles. That is a matter that has to be discussed with the whole team, as you see, we have hundreds and hundreds of custom sprites, making it kind of impossible to remake them all. The tiles were also in production for large months now, and I don't see the team starting from ground up. I remind you though that this is still work in progress material, and might be subject to much change until the final product.
I will be transmiting your feedback to the heads of the teams anyway, so thank you for your participation.

About the maps being "cramped", we have a set list of priority references, the top one being the games, and we're gonna stick to that directive, along with any consequences that might bring.

Thanks for your interest overall, and I hope I'll see you around again.

[Erosu mou]

Woh, nice tiles and Character.I can see this game being very popular in the future.Good luck!!

[Piko the Pichu]

Hey, I'm kind of an entry-level (to say the least) artist, and I was wonderring if maybe I could help out in some of the spriting! I'm not very good, but I'd like to give it a try, and maybe pick up some skills from other spriters!

[yusolaifdfer]

Oh Wow ... I actually remember this I don't know maybe 2008 or way more back ?
Is there any download available yet ? If not , maybe beta release or something ? I thought this project died long ago lol nice to see it again. :D

[Fblaster]

Hello Piko the Pichu! Sorry for not answering before, but we have been undergoing some major changes in our graphics department. You're free to try and join in, people are always welcome.

Anyway, I have news that might concern a big part of the pokecommunity. As of today, we at POL have decided to move on to a new, more detailed, graphic style. Due to this, we are considering releasing our sprites database to the public, for free use.
Mind you, we're talking hundreds of trainer sprites, with full walking poses.
I will bring more info soon and, when the team is ready, I will release the sprites in the resources sub-forum.

Any questions or feedback, feel free.

EDIT: Here's a taste of how the new graphic style will feel like;

[mjolnirIV]

Good to see you guys finally advertised somewhere haha. (Btw its Craig incase you're wondering) The new sprite style is awesome, I'm kinda guttered I left before I got to try out spriting in the new style, oh well. Its looking good, I'll have to keep an eye out for progress in the future now. =)

[Imags]

Wow! I really love the sprites, look better then the sprites in the new Pokémon games! :D

[Fblaster]

Craig, nice to see you here. You're free to re-join the team in this new phase, if you want. The team is as friendly as ever ;P

Imags, that's a nice compliment to hear. Hope to see you around ;)


PS: The old sprites have started being released to public in spritesheets at the tutorials and resources sub-forum. Make sure to take a look.

[mjolnirIV]

Haha, thanks for the offer, as tempting as it is, I'm too busy unfortunately to rejoin the staff. It would tempting to just try making one minisprite though, just to see what the new template is like lol

[casualsden]

Looks good. Looking forward to it.