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What I'm Working On

zingzags

PokemonGDX creator
536
Posts
15
Years
Why not "Smart AI", even though they are not AI's, it is just another person.
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
Why not "Smart AI", even though they are not AI's, it is just another person.
It's exactly the opposite of that. The opponent will be AI-controlled, and the party they use is created by another player (which really isn't much different to any trainer in the game).

"Battle Simulation" is sort of vague. How about "Avatar Battles"? Or maybe "Trainer House", since that's the place in GSC which does this.
 

IceGod64

In the Lost & Found bin!
624
Posts
15
Years
It's exactly the opposite of that. The opponent will be AI-controlled, and the party they use is created by another player (which really isn't much different to any trainer in the game).

"Battle Simulation" is sort of vague. How about "Avatar Battles"? Or maybe "Trainer House", since that's the place in GSC which does this.

I'm inclined toward the use of Trainer House. I would go with that, including having CAL there by default.

I'm guessing the inclusion of being able to choose what Trainer Type of your Gender you want to be like the official games ave isn't something that's going to be included with this though, as it is something that's arguably unnecessary (Though the entire feature is actually technically unnecessary)
 

FL

Pokémon Island Creator
2,434
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen yesterday
This is the part that made me laugh. It is true what you are saying it is more for "my game" than "most'.
I'm voting on Trainer House, Avatar Battles and Trainer Simulation. Side note: This "Trainer House" feature also exist in RSE when you mix record. You can battle versus several "Virtual Trainer" in their Secret Bases.

How about, in the "How to use Essentials" guide, a remider like "Look at this wiki when you have doubts and/or want to better understand the possibilities with some feature". In a beginner perspective, some of Essentials systems aren't easy to figure only looking the example maps, specially the PBS.

This is the part that made me laugh. It is true what you are saying it is more for "my game" than "most'.
I prefer gen 3 graphics. I really saw several people quitting Essentials and choosing other inferior kits (not related to Essentials) because of graphics.
 

IceGod64

In the Lost & Found bin!
624
Posts
15
Years
I prefer gen 3 graphics. I really saw several people quitting Essentials and choosing other inferior kits (not related to Essentials) because of graphics.

Remember what you were saying about people lacking common sense? If people don't have the capacity to figure out that you can swap out graphics, just imagine what else we're going see them posting.

If somebody is foolhardy enough to refuse to use essentials because the base graphics are Gen III, then frankly, I'm glad they aren't here.
 

zingzags

PokemonGDX creator
536
Posts
15
Years
Frankly speaking this is the best pokemon engine out there, if people cannot figure out that they can change pictures then it leaves me to believe common sense is going down the drain. Essentials may be lacking some features to the current game, but it is nothing all that important. Secret bases? Online Trading? Online Battling? Current battle system? I am the type of person who believes before you do a upgrade, make sure your current stuff is working. Or functionality first, then graphical eyegasim. The only thing I can see people having a hard time with is with programming in essentials. But if they look around like most of us did, then they are able to find out many things essentials is able to do that one does not know about.
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
I'm inclined toward the use of Trainer House. I would go with that, including having CAL there by default.

I'm guessing the inclusion of being able to choose what Trainer Type of your Gender you want to be like the official games ave isn't something that's going to be included with this though, as it is something that's arguably unnecessary (Though the entire feature is actually technically unnecessary)
It wouldn't be difficult to let the player choose their trainer type. I'm not even sure they should be restricted by gender (although perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to impersonate a Gym Leader or Rocket grunt). Things like intro/win/lose messages could also be customised. All this can be part of the trainer's "profile" and can be changed at will. As you say, it's not required for this feature to work, but it's nice to have.

The question is how exactly should it work? At the moment I'm thinking something like the Trainer House from GSC, where you choose a trainer from a list, then move to an area where you battle them. A bit like the Battle Tower, but just the one opponent and no prize. These battles wouldn't provide Exp or EVs.

I don't know if it would be a good idea to let the player rate the trainer after the battle. This rating would only be for personal use, and one of the options would be "Erase this trainer" which means they don't have to muck around with files and accidentally delete the wrong one. Ratings would only really be useful if players would want to save their favourite opponents for rematches, and I don't know how likely that is.


How about, in the "How to use Essentials" guide, a remider like "Look at this wiki when you have doubts and/or want to better understand the possibilities with some feature". In a beginner perspective, some of Essentials systems aren't easy to figure only looking the example maps, specially the PBS.
I think you'd have to be some kind of moron if you were reading that guide on the wiki and not realise that maybe all those other pages were actually there for a reason. They're not difficult to find.
 

FL

Pokémon Island Creator
2,434
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen yesterday
Remember what you were saying about people lacking common sense? If people don't have the capacity to figure out that you can swap out graphics, just imagine what else we're going see them posting.

If somebody is foolhardy enough to refuse to use essentials because the base graphics are Gen III, then frankly, I'm glad they aren't here.
I partially agree with you, but remember that a Gyarados once was a Magikarp.

The question is how exactly should it work? At the moment I'm thinking something like the Trainer House from GSC, where you choose a trainer from a list, then move to an area where you battle them. A bit like the Battle Tower, but just the one opponent and no prize. These battles wouldn't provide Exp or EVs.
I agree (at least for now). Another alternative is to put all overworld sprite in a room like Union Room, but I prefer your idea.

I disagree about EXP and EVs (and maybe money). The GSC Trainer House and RSE Secret Bases allow to gain these things and are the best locations for training. I suggest you to, at least, make a setting.
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
I agree (at least for now). Another alternative is to put all overworld sprite in a room like Union Room, but I prefer your idea.

I disagree about EXP and EVs (and maybe money). The GSC Trainer House and RSE Secret Bases allow to gain these things and are the best locations for training. I suggest you to, at least, make a setting.
Union Room-style should be easy enough, except for allowing the player to choose which trainers to be visible. A player could have a hundred trainer files at once, which means there would need to be some way of filtering them in order to decide which ones appear - the player would need to do this anyway, so why not just go for the GSC Trainer House-style?

I just don't think this feature is supposed to be used for training. It'd certainly be easy to set up pushover parties to allow grinding (Gyarados with Splash, etc.), and it would keep the player there rather than playing the game.

Players will not be able to battle versions of themselves, because that's some kind of paradox.
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
I'm bumping this thread, because I have something new to show. Don't worry, I got permission to necropost from the guy who mods this section. :D

Here's "What I'm Working On" at the moment:

View attachment 67791

Currently it mostly works. I need to finish off the data-saving, and add in ways to edit some of the things (moves, egg moves, evolutions, form names), but the rest already works.

So while we're on the subject, is there anything you'd like to see done to the PBS-editing parts of Essentials?
 

FL

Pokémon Island Creator
2,434
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen yesterday
Maruno backs to Essentials, weee!

I only used the editor for repositioning sprites (aside for quick looks). I suggest you showing sprites and icons when possible, in pokémon encounters for example.

An idea: For trainers, when defining the party, how about showing the moves that the pokémon get by default? Several times I need to look at the pokemon.txt to see some default moves.
 

IceGod64

In the Lost & Found bin!
624
Posts
15
Years
I'm bumping this thread, because I have something new to show. Don't worry, I got permission to necropost from the guy who mods this section. :D

Here's "What I'm Working On" at the moment:

View attachment 67791

Currently it mostly works. I need to finish off the data-saving, and add in ways to edit some of the things (moves, egg moves, evolutions, form names), but the rest already works.

So while we're on the subject, is there anything you'd like to see done to the PBS-editing parts of Essentials?

In my project, I'm listing Pokemon in a specific order (I have an entire regional dex planned out), but I'm actually adding them on an "as-needed" basis. For example, everything up to 102 is added, abut some Pok¹mon that can't be caught until later in the game appear earlier, so the Pokédex order goes from like 101,102,123.

Will this be able to manage that properly?
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
At the moment you can edit:
  • Trainer types
  • Trainers
  • Items - (External Editor only)
  • Map connections
  • Encounters
  • Global and map-specific metadata
I'm thinking of adding ways to edit:
  • Pokémon species - (already doing it)
  • Regional Dex lists - (only the species therein, not the Dex names; possibly also National Dex numbers but that might be too much hassle)
  • Moves
  • TM compatibilities
The things I'm not planning to do anything about (because it's not worth the effort and/or the PBS file is easy enough to edit directly anyway) are:
  • Types
  • Abilities
  • Shadow moves
  • Phone messages
  • Town map point details - (townmapgen.html file already does this)
  • The various Battle Tower/Challenge Cup files
I think that covers everything. Comments?


Maruno backs to Essentials, weee!

I only used the editor for repositioning sprites (aside for quick looks). I suggest you showing sprites and icons when possible, in pokémon encounters for example.

An idea: For trainers, when defining the party, how about showing the moves that the pokémon get by default? Several times I need to look at the pokemon.txt to see some default moves.
Icons/sprites all over the place would be very difficult.

Good suggestion about filling in the moves in, though. When the game/Editor saves a fresh version of trainers.txt, the moves are filled in anyway, so they might as well be visible immediately. If the Pokémon's level is changed, I can add in a prompt which refreshes the movelist. The only shortcoming here would be that form-specific movesets aren't accounted for, but that's a minor thing that can be ignored.


In my project, I'm listing Pokemon in a specific order (I have an entire regional dex planned out), but I'm actually adding them on an "as-needed" basis. For example, everything up to 102 is added, abut some Pok¹mon that can't be caught until later in the game appear earlier, so the Pokédex order goes from like 101,102,123.

Will this be able to manage that properly?
Gaps in a Regional Dex simply look like unseen species, so there's no problem there anyway. I've just finished making changes to the scripts which should allow gaps in the National Dex (i.e. missing numbers in pokemon.txt) to work properly. Basically, come v12 you'll be able to give Pokémon whatever numbers you want without worry.

Plus there's also the Regional Dex Editor idea, which I'm still figuring out how it should work.
 

FL

Pokémon Island Creator
2,434
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen yesterday
Nice!

I suggest you for editing TM compatibilities in the Pokémon species screen with a TM compatibilities list. When adding new moves in TM compatibilities, divide the search in two groups, moves that already have at least one input in tm.txt and all moves.

By the way, I suggest you to move the Global Metadata to "Settings" script section, except the character specific metadata.
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
I was thinking of having TM compatibilities be a separate script, actually, since it's a separate PBS file. Choose from the list of moves that are already defined in tm.txt (or add a new one), then modify a list of Pokémon that can learn it.

I'm not sure what to do with global metadata and stuff in the Settings, really. I've not thought about it.
 

pkmn.master

Hobbyist Game Developer
299
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 28
  • USA
  • Seen Jun 7, 2022
Always glad to see more editor features, since they give me goosebumps when I tear open a new version of essentials and notice them. Good work as always, Maruno.
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
Here's an unrelated feature I've just added in: any file which includes the ID number of a thing can instead use the internal name of that thing instead. This applies to:
  • Pokémon sprites/icons
  • Pokémon cries/footprints
  • Item icons/mail backgrounds/berry tree charsets
  • Trainer type sprites/charsets
This allows you to rearrange Pokémon/items/trainer types in their PBS files freely without worrying about having to also rename multitudes of files. While this isn't important for items/trainer types, it's a huge bonus for Pokémon, since now you can rearrange the National Dex at will!

The only downside is that all the files would need to be renamed first to include internal names rather than ID numbers, which is a big task. Should I do this (for Pokémon only)? Bear in mind there's over 3300 battler sprites alone which would need renaming, plus at least 649 of each other kind of file. It'd help if I had some program which could automatically rename bunches of files - does anyone know of any?

One other downside is that it'd be harder to spot missing files, since you couldn't just scan a list of files to find a missing number. I don't know how useful it is to be able to quickly scan through lists of numbers to find gaps, compared to the usefulness of freely rearranging the National Dex.
 

the__end

Pixel Artist
141
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Jun 9, 2016
The only downside is that all the files would need to be renamed first to include internal names rather than ID numbers, which is a big task. Should I do this (for Pokémon only)? Bear in mind there's over 3300 battler sprites alone which would need renaming, plus at least 649 of each other kind of file. It'd help if I had some program which could automatically rename bunches of files - does anyone know of any?

One other downside is that it'd be harder to spot missing files, since you couldn't just scan a list of files to find a missing number. I don't know how useful it is to be able to quickly scan through lists of numbers to find gaps, compared to the usefulness of freely rearranging the National Dex.

I don't see the benefits of this. The way it is right now it is sorted like the national Pokedex. If you rename it to their species name it will be sorted alphabetically which will make it harder to find a Pokemon if you didn't memorized all of their English names. Right now the Pokemon are sorted after their generation as well. So if someone wants to remove a generation he has to search all of the Pokemon he wants to remove manually. I think the names are fine the way they are right now.

By the way...
With IrfanView you can batch rename files. :)
 

Maruno

Lead Dev of Pokémon Essentials
5,285
Posts
16
Years
You're talking about non-English-speaking people, which I think are a minority around here to start with. They'd need some knowledge of English Pokémon names anyway in order to add them as encounters or trainer Pokémon, and if nothing else they can have a quick look into pokemon.txt to find the internal name of the species they want. I don't think it's that big a problem. However, you do have a point when you mentioned generations.

I suppose I'll leave it as-is, and someone can write a tutorial on how to use IrfanView to rename the files for whoever wants to.
 
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