[Archive] The Pokémon Essentials Wiki

I have a question about Pokemon Essentials. Every game I've played that uses this still feels like RPG Maker. The movement, the transitioning of maps, the music and sound. Basically it never actually feels like a Pokemon game. Is this fixed? Is it more Pokemon-like now than it was before? If not, is there anything that can be done to really eliminate the RPG Maker feeling and make it completely Pokemon? I remember playing Pokemon Lost Silver, and while that scarred me for life, I still appreciate it's incredible Pokemon engine. Even the movement, it feels like going left/right is faster than up/down, exactly like the game! I don't know how the person did that, but can Pokemon Essentials eventually be as good as whatever that guy used? (I know it wasn't a hack.)

Music/Sound is completely up to the person making the game. If they leave RTP stuff in there, that's there problem.

Also,
HOORAY, I hope you guys do well with this!
I've made some custom features myself, and if it's possible, can I suggest/give them to be used in the wiki/next releases?

I would love to help with this, however i got alot on my plate ATM and i kinda lost my love for pokemon...

U_Flame said:

I have a question about Pokemon Essentials. Every game I've played that uses this still feels like RPG Maker. The movement, the transitioning of maps, the music and sound. Basically it never actually feels like a Pokemon game. Is this fixed? Is it more Pokemon-like now than it was before? If not, is there anything that can be done to really eliminate the RPG Maker feeling and make it completely Pokemon? I remember playing Pokemon Lost Silver, and while that scarred me for life, I still appreciate it's incredible Pokemon engine. Even the movement, it feels like going left/right is faster than up/down, exactly like the game! I don't know how the person did that, but can Pokemon Essentials eventually be as good as whatever that guy used? (I know it wasn't a hack.)

Click to expand...

Essentials certainly doesn't mimic the official games perfectly. NPCs that walk up to you keep stepping forwards even though they've already approached, and there's obviously the bugs and lack of non-essential features (erm, well, considering the name "Pokémon Essentials"...).

A feeling like this is hard to explain, and even harder to avoid. It's not just an issue with the kit itself; it's mainly about what people do with it. If you're playing a half-finished demo with obvious dodgy features and lack of quality control, it's bound not to feel like a proper Pokémon game. Plus there's the psychological thing where you know you're not playing a proper game, so you unconsciously keep telling yourself it isn't one, which leads to reduced enjoyment.

I think what you described is nothing more than a combination of psychology and sub-par fangames. Essentials is only a tool, and it's up to the user to make the most of it.

Of course, we'll try to make the kit itself work better anyway. Whether that necessarily means "absolutely accurate to the official games in all respects" or not remains to be decided.

udivision said:

Music/Sound is completely up to the person making the game. If they leave RTP stuff in there, that's there problem.

Also,
HOORAY, I hope you guys do well with this!
I've made some custom features myself, and if it's possible, can I suggest/give them to be used in the wiki/next releases?

Click to expand...

Feel free to offer up anything you think would go well into Essentials. The team (once it's appointed) will decide whether it belongs or not.

I'm working on a script for implementing aesthetic differences to pokemon (like notch eared Pichu) that have no effect on anything else. Also, what's the status on adding custom like abilities not featured in the real games?

udivision said:

I'm working on a script for implementing aesthetic differences to pokemon (like notch eared Pichu) that have no effect on anything else. Also, what's the status on adding custom like abilities not featured in the real games?

Click to expand...

I'd think the notch-earred Pichu would just be an alternate form really. I'm not sure how you'd remove the evolution though.

As for abilities that don't exist in the base games... I didn't create the wiki, but I'd think that would be a little counterproductive, as things like that seem like they should be left to each games' own developer. The Wiki should mainly be using content that would be significant mainly to the base games.

As IceGod64 said, Notch Eared Pichu is just an alternate form. To stop it evolving, just edit pbCheckEvolutionEx (in PokemonEvolution) to return -1 if it's a Pichu and it has that particular form.

Abilities are the trickiest things to add, because they can do so many kinds of things, and the code for them is all over the place. All I can say is to copy an existing ability (if it's similar to your new one), or be good at scripting if you want to add something really new.

I know how to add abilities, but IceGod pointed out that essentials doesn't exactly need custom stuff yet, which I agree with.

BUT, maybe we could build a database of custom abilities and the like as a community or something, and their implementation in the game would be option. Like, the script would be there, but if you don't give any of the pokemon in pokemon.txt the ability, it doesn't affect anything.

Maruno you have alot of workm because over the last year with all the new features. essentials has become laggy and buggy.. Right now essentials, is.... shot... I cant use it it annoys me, and Its hard as hell to read peter's code

If people want to make databases of their own custom abilities/whatever, they're free to do so. That kind of thing isn't really "essential", though, so it's probably best kept to tutorials. They won't be included in Essentials unless there's nothing else that needs doing (and to be honest, there'll always be something else that needs doing).

Essentials is quite a jumble when it comes to its scripts. Trying to untangle them would take a long time. The best we can do is bug fixes and documentation, and that's where everyone can help!

For starters, I'll downgrade the day/night system so that it no longer depends on the player's location on Earth. This should help with (some of?) the lag, and will mean Vista users can go onto outdoor maps without crashing.

For starters, I'll downgrade the day/night system so that it no longer depends on the player's location on Earth. This should help with (some of?) the lag, and will mean Vista users can go onto outdoor maps without crashing.

Click to expand...

This is a start but it still not enough essentials lags alot on my computer, and its not my system because i can run unity 3d at 100 FPS but essentials forget it.. OH and any other RMXP games runs fine on my system...

I will also reccomend you remove the new features like the shadow pokemon crap, and the wii remote crap.. Just bring the kit to a basic everything you need to make a solid pokemon game level, not all the extra featured that has been added in all of 2010

Okay, you're right.

Maruno said:

For starters, I'll downgrade the day/night system so that it no longer depends on the player's location on Earth. This should help with (some of?) the lag, and will mean Vista users can go onto outdoor maps without crashing.

Click to expand...

Just curious, what would it be based on then?

KingCharizard said:

I will also reccomend you remove the new features like the shadow pokemon crap, and the wii remote crap.. Just bring the kit to a basic everything you need to make a solid pokemon game level, not all the extra featured that has been added in all of 2010

Click to expand...

Well... if it doesn't hurt (read: make the game lag) I don't see why the functionality should be removed.

Maruno said:

For starters, I'll downgrade the day/night system so that it no longer depends on the player's location on Earth. This should help with (some of?) the lag, and will mean Vista users can go onto outdoor maps without crashing.

Click to expand...

Vista users? From my experience, it's Windows XP users that have the problem, and Vista/7 users don't have an issue.

Still, that's a good idea, the day/night system is way to bulky now, and really this lattitude/longitude stuff is completely unnecessary. As far as I'm concerned, it should just be simple shading, nothing more.

udivision said:

Maruno said:

For starters, I'll downgrade the day/night system so that it no longer depends on the player's location on Earth. This should help with (some of?) the lag, and will mean Vista users can go onto outdoor maps without crashing.

Click to expand...

Just curious, what would it be based on then?

Click to expand...

Just the time of day, like it used to be. Hey, even Black and White only depend on the time of day!

udivision said:

KingCharizard said:

I will also reccomend you remove the new features like the shadow pokemon crap, and the wii remote crap.. Just bring the kit to a basic everything you need to make a solid pokemon game level, not all the extra featured that has been added in all of 2010

Click to expand...

Well... if it doesn't hurt (read: make the game lag) I don't see why the functionality should be removed.

Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. I like the idea of Shadow Pokémon (although I've never used them or played the games with them), and there's no reason to toss them out. Wii support can be scrapped, though, as no one'll use it. Neither affects the lag, though.

I'll be looking seriously into lag at some point soon. It would help if you could tell me exactly when it got worse, so I can compare before and after versions to see what changed.

There will certainly be new things added to Essentials in the future. I'm not going to cut it down to basics - I'm going to make it all work.

Maruno said:

Just the time of day, like it used to be. Hey, even Black and White only depend on the time of day!



My thoughts exactly. I like the idea of Shadow Pokémon (although I've never used them or played the games with them), and there's no reason to toss them out. Wii support can be scrapped, though, as no one'll use it. Neither affects the lag, though.

I'll be looking seriously into lag at some point soon. It would help if you could tell me exactly when it got worse, so I can compare before and after versions to see what changed.

There will certainly be new things added to Essentials in the future. I'm not going to cut it down to basics - I'm going to make it all work.

Click to expand...

I suggested they be removed because of the fact their pointless in the game, no one has used them successfully, no one plans to probably I just think they should be removed but its your choice, i'll compare when you send me the older version of essentials

Maruno said:

There will certainly be new things added to Essentials in the future. I'm not going to cut it down to basics - I'm going to make it all work.

Click to expand...

If only the official developers thought like you. *looks at his bros Beedrill and Fearow.*

So, what's the timeline on the first bugfix update? That one is just going through the wiki and applying the fixes, right?

maruno i dunno if you have already but may i suggest you adding the old versions of essentials to the wiki downloads somewhere since there the most stable versions of essentials...

udivision said:

So, what's the timeline on the first bugfix update? That one is just going through the wiki and applying the fixes, right?

Click to expand...

I've been doing a little more than just applying the bug fixes on the wiki. My change log has about 50 things on it, just over half of which are bug fixes. I just keep discovering more things to tweak.

However, I've decided I'm just about done with the first new version now. Unless I can think of anything else I can quickly fiddle with, I'll release it in the next day or so. There'll be a lot of wiki editing to go with it!

KingCharizard said:

maruno i dunno if you have already but may i suggest you adding the old versions of essentials to the wiki downloads somewhere since there the most stable versions of essentials...

Click to expand...

The point is to make the new versions better. The old versions aren't supported as it is, and I haven't seen a demand for years-old versions yet (aside from you).

Any news on when the lag started to come in?

KingChar, maybe you should just disable Day/Night functions until it's resolved. That's what I did, and I think that got rid of most of the lag.

If that's true Maruno, that's good news!