FireRed hack: Pokemon Barium

Intro: This is a hack of Firered that I am currently developing alone.
I have been involved with other hacking projects in the past, and now I am trying to create a new experience for myself and others to enjoy(in our own respective ways).

Story: Our protagonist is a 21 year old adult working for the organization
known as Terra Nostra. Said protagonist is not your run-of-the-mill kid
dreaming of being the very best and better than all the rest. Rather, this person is a mean, lean evil machine. They're out to plunder, destroy, and conquer the region of Dekhamo, following the mantra of the organization that they work for.

Your role in the story is to assist Terra Nostra with its goal of world domination. This means that you are going to have to steal, bribe, and persuade your way to the top. Whoever reads the newspaper may despise you. Pokemon centers will reject your call for help. Your only friends are the agents whom you work with.

Traveling throughout the Dekhamo region will bring you to a variety of environments. Meadows, deserts, and billowing snowstorms await you. The maps won't always be so flat and square.

Features:
Play as the bad guy
Alternative healing areas
New tiles and graphics
Many new tunes to listen to
New gym challenges
Refreshing maps
Four starting pokemon - Abra, Meowth, and two of your choice
More interesting battles from the beginning
A host of new characters
A new tier system - I put all of the pokemon on a high tier by editing their base stats. Now, pokemon like Beedrill may be
able to compete with pokemon such as Alakazam
New attacks from the 4th generation such as Dark Pulse, Bug Buzz, and Wood Hammer

Screenshots:


Tools Used:
AdvanceMap 1.95
Sappy 2006 mod 15
XSE
unLZ GBA
SMCA
A-Trainer
A-Text
Item Editor
Overworld Editor RE
Hex Workshop

Credits:
Tool Developers
Pe2K - Sprites
Neti - Tiles
Fangking Omega - Tiles
Zeikku - Tiles
Zein - Tiles
AmineX - Special music mods and custom voicegroup
Mastermind_X - Music switcher,DNS
interdpth - RTC,DNS
ZodiacDaGreat - DNS
prime-dialga - DNS
DavidJCobb - Fire Red RAM addresses
Alistair - Tiles

The "Dad:" would look better on the next line of text, but everything else looks good here. :D

the lab palettes really don't look that good, and the lab is constructed incorrectly. try to avoid one-tile paths too, as it restricts the movement of the player.

In the bottom right of the screen, you can see the top of a pokeball in the mountain.

The top of the mountain below the player on the beach has sand edges, where it should be water.

Other than the things I pointed out in the screenies, this is looking good. :D
I always enjoy playing the evil team in a hack. I'm looking forward to listening to the new music. I don't really like the idea of four pokemon at the start, but good luck!

Well, this sure does look like an interesting hack to be played.
Keep it up!

About "tier system", sounds good but you should make players notice it clearly during the early gameplay if you haven't already.

Looks really good! I like the screen and being a bad guy is always good you should edit the main trainer sprite through, other than that good work so far and good luck to you on this project.

It seems good but the tiles appear glitchy to me i dont like their look but thats one persons opinion xD

Love the new tree tiles, but unfortunately, everything else needs a bit of work. The lab's palette is off, and the rock tiles look glitchy, but if you fix up some tiles, you should be fine.
Your scripting looks good though.

I have a present for you all. Here is an alpha of Barium. The alpha ends in Marda City.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nj5rvh

Known Issues/Bugs:

Don't lose to anyone(excluding the first battle) before completing the egg event
Switching issues during the first battle
Teleport issues - I haven't gotten around to editing the sethealingplaces and worldmap flags yet

I just finished the alpha and I must say..this is on a scale from 1-10 a 4.5.
Although your story is great and tiles are good, there are many scripting errors, tile errors, and alot of grammar errors. Also, there are many glitches and tiny errors like:

- When going to the town with the men blocking the roads, the farthest man on the right on the southern section is..a never ending potion script, which can also lead you to walk through that route and have an encounter with the FR/LG rival.

- Your first battle with Meggido, when switching pokemon, it still keeps the pokemon you already used's name and has the pokemon that you wanted to use's attacks, and a blank backsprite.

- When you first start, the scripts go like ''???: Blah blah Dad:Blah blah''
the names are on the same line, which is never good unless one is talking about the other.

- In the introduction, when talking about your team, it's in the same area as nameing the rival, which is very odd and confusing.

I know it's still in the alpha/beta stage but this stuff might turn off players. I hope you fix the glitches/tiny errors in the future and good luck.

One problem I noticed was that with the new tier system, you can get an uber-butterfree super quickly, while pokemon like Salamance, who took forever to train for a reason, are now a ton less usable. The tier thing was there for a reason, no matter how annoying it is.

Tcoppy said:

I just finished the alpha and I must say..this is on a scale from 1-10 a 4.5.
Although your story is great and tiles are good, there are many scripting errors, tile errors, and alot of grammar errors. Also, there are many glitches and tiny errors like:

- When going to the town with the men blocking the roads, the farthest man on the right on the southern section is..a never ending potion script, which can also lead you to walk through that route and have an encounter with the FR/LG rival.

- Your first battle with Meggido, when switching pokemon, it still keeps the pokemon you already used's name and has the pokemon that you wanted to use's attacks, and a blank backsprite.

- When you first start, the scripts go like ''???: Blah blah Dad:Blah blah''
the names are on the same line, which is never good unless one is talking about the other.

- In the introduction, when talking about your team, it's in the same area as nameing the rival, which is very odd and confusing.

I know it's still in the alpha/beta stage but this stuff might turn off players. I hope you fix the glitches/tiny errors in the future and good luck.

Click to expand...

Most of this does not help, no offense. I already know about all of those. I'm sorry, but telling me that I have a lot of grammatical errors and scripting errors is a moot point unless you give me major examples. The people that block Marda City aren't even part of the main game in the end.


@teej - I could make such pokemon evolve at lower levels.

Megiddo-san said:

@teej - I could make such pokemon evolve at lower levels.

Click to expand...

You could, but then there isn't a group of pokemon to really look forward to. All pokemon evolve quickly and then you end up with ubers the entire run that destroy all underevolved pokemon anywhere in the game.

How about the opposite? Making other pokemon evolve at higher levels?
I guess I could revert to the old system, even though it makes many pokemon weak.

Megiddo-san said:

How about the opposite? Making other pokemon evolve at higher levels?
I guess I could revert to the old system, even though it makes many pokemon weak.

Click to expand...

That could work actually, having pokemon like beedrill evolve later to be stronger.


Even though that balances it out a bit more, that still removes some of the variety. I think the old system is your best choice, personally, but you can do whatever you want.

I suppose releasing two different patches would also be feasible.

Megiddo-san said:

I suppose releasing two different patches would also be feasible.

Click to expand...

Probably the best choice of action.

Those tiles are incredible!
However, the mountain ones need a bit of work, but appart from that, I love them.
I usually prefer hacks to be done using the default tiles, but those look just like the default tiles, but better.

So I just finished the alpha, here are my thoughts:

• The game was easy for me, despite there being no pokecenters or marts. Most of the time I could just defeat everything with abra's confusion.
  
  
• On the top of mountains here, the movement permissions don't allow you to go to the edge to the right of the player. :/
  
  
  
  
  
• You can walk onto this tree.
  
  

Other than this I enjoyed the alpha. :D

How'd you beat the first gym with Abra? :P
Maybe I should give it a weaker attack, or lower its base stats. Thanks for the finds.
Glad you enjoyed it :)
Btw, there are a couple places you can heal, as well as a warehouse with a merchant.



New: I am working on a script that will change the music that plays
based on the current time. I'd like to thank interdpth, ZodiacDaGreat, Mastermind_X, prime-dialga, and DavidJCobb for making this possible.

Hey guys, sorry I haven't updated in a long time. College has me busy.
I don't have anything special to show you at the moment, but I do have a couple maps you can look at so this thread doesn't get locked just yet.