FireRed hack: [HotM October 2009] Pokémon ToxicPurple (Team Rocket hack)

[timeshero2]

So I'm guessing that Toxic Purple ends after the Marowak battle? I went back to the base to get my "promotion", but there wasn't anything else I could do.

 

[Tony Montana]

So I'm guessing that Toxic Purple ends after the Marowak battle? I went back to the base to get my "promotion", but there wasn't anything else I could do.

You have to go downstairs and get the Machete, then the alpha ends.

 

[ckret2]

Nice, battling Jessie and James seems fun.

Oh, and I know it is kind of late for this, but I made a support bar, just in case you wanted another one.

Thanks, it looks great! :D Do you think you could host it online somewhere, like tinypic.com or something? That'd make it easier to add to the front page for other people to use.

I really enjoy this mod. The trainers are a little tough to beat, seeing how they have way more pokemon than you, and how rattata can't really do damage to ghosts, but I have to say that this is one of my favorite mods.

I'm going to change the game so that, at least while going up Pokémon Tower, you won't have to battle any trainers with Ghost-types. On the way back down, you'll at least be able to start catching Pokémon so you should get some extra Pokémon to fight against Ghost-types.

WHAT!! I beated the dojo does this means i need to *Gulp* Restart really,but if you mean only the Saffron gym then *Phew*.

I did say "Same goes for the dojo". If you beat the dojo, you'll need to restart. If you want, you can wait until the next alpha is out, since that'll give you some patches of grass where you can train before having to battle anyone. That should make it easier to get up Pokémon Tower the second time.

I have an idea for the route below lavander:
the police are blocking it off because a snorelax is causing trouble for some reason. They don't arrest you because they are dumb enough not to notice that you're a rocket.

Also, you could make the snorelax problem into an event later in the game, where other rockets are fighting for it, and making it angry.

Unfortunately, "for some reason" isn't a very good excuse. That's a Broken Bridge trope, when a game has some random blockade that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual plot that's going on, and/or the event that clears up the broken bridge has nothing to do with the broken bridge itself.

There are some examples in the original Pokémon games: A police officer is standing in front of a house in Cerulean City but gives no good reason for why he's blocking you, since it suddenly becomes okay for him to stand aside and let you through later on. To get the police officer to move, you have to talk to Bill. How do the two have anything to do with each other? Then there's the Rocket who stands in front of the Silph building and refuses to let you in, which makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is the fact that you have to beat a bunch of Rockets in Pokémon Tower to make the Rocket in front of the Silph building spontaneously fall asleep. How the heck does beating Rockets cause their guard to fall asleep? There are more examples: the Snorlax itself, especially since you'd think that the police or something would've made at least one of them move; the Saffron guards, not because they won't let you through (presumably the Rockets are forcing them to keep up the blockade), but because giving them a drink will change their minds; the fact that you need a badge from a Water trainer for your Pokémon to be able to Cut things down out of battle when they can Cut foes down in battle already, or the fact that you need a badge from a Poison trainer for your Pokémon to be capable of Surfing... and don't get me started on that "power outage" in Sunyshore City. That one probably takes the cake for dumbest broken bridge so far.

So, besides retaining the broken bridges that already exist in-game (such as the Snorlax that are already present), I'm not going to create any more. In fact, I'm going to try to come up with some decent explanations for the broken bridges that already exist in-game. If your route is blocked, it's because of an event that's actually relevant to the plot, and clearing up that broken bridge is directly related to the ultimate mission of Team Rocket and to the ongoing story.

I've also already figured out what I'm going to be doing about the two Snorlax.

So I'm guessing that Toxic Purple ends after the Marowak battle? I went back to the base to get my "promotion", but there wasn't anything else I could do.

Yep, that's the end of this particular alpha. You can head down Pokémon Tower and have some more battles, but that's it for this alpha. The next one will have the first promotion, and will let you go through Rock Tunnel. ToxicPurple definitely doesn't end there. :P But just for the time being, yeah, that's where it stops.

 

[Tony Montana]

So, after the promotion in the next alpha you get through dark Rock Tunnel. Just out of curiosity, do you get something to light the cave up after the promotion?

Oh, and when are you gonna get to the Rocket base in Celadon?

 

[flyin_hawaiian]

Thanks, it looks great! :D Do you think you could host it online somewhere, like tinypic.com or something? That'd make it easier to add to the front page for other people to use.

Sure, I will get the link up when I have more than fifteen posts.

 

[ckret2]

So, after the promotion in the next alpha you get through dark Rock Tunnel. Just out of curiosity, do you get something to light the cave up after the promotion?

Oh, and when are you gonna get to the Rocket base in Celadon?

You're not going to need to light the cave. Due to the fact that Flash is the second most useless idea in the Pokémon world (second only to Defog) and it's entirely possible to get through Flash caves without actually using Flash, I'm just changing all caves that need Flash into normal caves. Making it "necessary" to get a move or an item that it's not, in fact, necessary for you to have to get through the cave is just kinda pointless. To explain away the apparent contradiction between TP and canon, let's just say that Rocket Grunts have better night vision than whatever twerp you decide to play as in normal games, so they can see in caves.

Have you tried to use the Underground Path to get to Celadon yet? Someone there said it isn't completed? Well, you'll get to go to Celadon when it's completed. :P Finishing that path is going to be the goal of an upcoming mission.

Sure, I will get the link up when I have more than fifteen posts.

I see. XD Good luck with that. Only two to go!

 

[agel]

Have you tried to use the Underground Path to get to Celadon yet? Someone there said it isn't completed? Well, you'll get to go to Celadon when it's completed. :P Finishing that path is going to be the goal of an upcoming mission.

hmm so just thinking aloud but it might be interesting to have to steal a machop or somthin to give to the rockets to help them finish? lol got the idea from g/s/c where in vermillion theres a machop building somthing and in goldenrod mall basement also. just a little mini mission lol i know ull come up with something intersting though anyways haha

 

[timeshero2]

Ok, well it was still an amazing mod. One of my favorites actually. I've been waiting a very long time for a Team Rocket mod to come out for FR. Keep up the good work. =]

Oh, and for the HM Rock Smash, you could use dynamite. Just sayin'...

 

[ckret2]

hmm so just thinking aloud but it might be interesting to have to steal a machop or somthin to give to the rockets to help them finish? lol got the idea from g/s/c where in vermillion theres a machop building somthing and in goldenrod mall basement also. just a little mini mission lol i know ull come up with something intersting though anyways haha

Thanks, but I've already planned out how you're going to help the Rockets finish. (I've planned out several different methods, actually. XD Now I've got to either narrow down my options or decide to go with more than one.)

Ok, well it was still an amazing mod. One of my favorites actually. I've been waiting a very long time for a Team Rocket mod to come out for FR. Keep up the good work. =]

Oh, and for the HM Rock Smash, you could use dynamite. Just sayin'...

Thanks, glad you like! And yep, dynamite was one of the suggestions earlier. The problem with it, though, is the problem of supply. Either it acts like a normal Key Item, you can't use it up, and you never have to buy any new dynamite, which just doesn't make sense because you have to blow up dynamite to use it; or it acts like dynamite should, you can use it up every so often, and then you run the risk of using up all your dynamite in just the wrong place and being stuck in a cave forever. It's the same reason why the game doesn't let you delete HM moves unless you're at a move deleter: if you deleted Rock Smash while you were inside a cave, discovered you needed Rock Smash to get back to any of the entrances or exits, and then discovered you didn't have the HM with you (which was only possible in Gen I, I think, but still), then you'd be stuck there forever if you accidentally saved. Having an item like dynamite you can use up would have the same issue.

See, these are the kind of silly things I worry about when I make this hack. All sorts of things like logic that have no place in a Pokémon game. XD

Someone else suggested a jackhammer, which I actually kind of like and can think of another way to work into the hack's plot. So, I think I'm going with that.

 

[alo123]

i think for hm fly you could use like a helicopter or the hot air ballon jessie and james use

 

[ckret2]

i think for hm fly you could use like a helicopter or the hot air ballon jessie and james use

And, just to save myself the time, I'll copy/paste something I posted a few pages ago:

At this point, though, I've only got good ideas for how to script Cut, Strength, and Rock Smash without needing a Key Item, and possibly Waterfall. I don't have any ideas how to script items to behave like Fly, Flash, or Surf yet. (But don't worry about Flash. I'm going to make all caves Flash-free, so it won't even be an issue. Apparently, Rockets just have better night vision than twerps like Red.)

With Cut, Strength, and Rock Smash, the rock/plant is moved by a script that's on the rock/plant; it checks to see if you've got a Pokémon in your party with the correct move, and checks to see if you've got the right badge, and then activates. All I'm doing is making a script that checks to see if you have a certain item in your back, and activates if it does. With Waterfall, I could potentially just line every waterfall tile with Signpost scripts that cause you to go up. But with Fly, Flash, and Surf, the script isn't attached to an independent item (like a tree) but is apparently part of the move itself, so you have to go into your party and click on a Pokémon and tell it to use that HM move. To replace those HM moves, I'd have to put that script on a Key Item (which includes much more details hacking than I can do yet), and then find a way to eliminate the requirement for a certain badge. Or leave in that requirement, and just make sure that you have the right "promotion" before getting the item. I could conceivably line every single coast in the entire game with Signpost scripts you can use to activate Surf, but that'd be a bit much.

In short: I'd love to, but can't script it yet. There's a big difference between scripting a rock to say "look for this item" instead of saying "look for this move," and scripting an item to really act like a Pokémon move. There will be Meowth hot air balloons when there are Magikarp submarines, which probably won't be any time soon.

 

[alo123]

I get what your saying but it would have been cool though

 

[ckret2]

I get what your saying but it would have been cool though

XD Very true. And if I ever figure out a way to script an item to call the Fly script, I'll do that. Changing the vague black bird sprite into some other sprite shouldn't be too hard, so it won't be a problem of graphics, at least.

In other news: I won't have much time to work on the hack this week or the next, due to AP testing. Shudder. In the meantime, though, I'm gonna send the hack off to Surf so he can do a level script for me. (I am an epic failure at level scripts.) So progress is still being made, yay!

(Any other delays can be attributed to the fact that I've decided to play through FireRed without catching any Pokémon other than my intended main team, and progressing through the Rocket plot as quickly as possible. I have three Pokémon on my team, six Pokédex entries, two badges, and have beaten Giovanni once and am almost through Pokémon Tower. The flexibility in this game is astounding, if you stop and think about it. I'll still have two badges when I beat Giovanni at Silph Co. I can put Lt. Surge off until the seventh badge if I want. I'm wondering how to work some more of that flexibility into ToxicPurple. ... Yes, I'm calling playing FireRed "research." It works.)

 

[colcolstyles]

It's been a while since I've read thethethethe's scripting tutorial but I believe he mentioned something about a special that forces the player to start surfing. You'd have to double check that though.

Yes, I'm calling playing FireRed "research." It works.

I couldn't agree more. I always turn to the successful games (and hacks) when I need inspiration or information. In fact, it was just the other day I pulled out my old Emerald version to brainstorm some cool gameplay features.

Anyways, I love what you're doing with the hack. I legitimately "laughed out loud" when I saw the screenshots for the rattata script. Brilliant. When I get the time, I'll be sure to play that alpha. Best of luck ;D

 

[Surf]

There is a special that forces surfing.
I can't remember it right now but I should be in the XSE help part.

 

[onyx79]

yay caught marowak,what now? -_____-

 

[Zanny77]

In other news: I won't have much time to work on the hack this week or the next, due to AP testing. Shudder. In the meantime, though, I'm gonna send the hack off to Surf so he can do a level script for me. (I am an epic failure at level scripts.) So progress is still being made, yay!

And also, I will be taking over graphics!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! XD


.....or not :(

Good luck, oh mighty one.

 

[ckret2]

It's been a while since I've read thethethethe's scripting tutorial but I believe he mentioned something about a special that forces the player to start surfing. You'd have to double check that though.

There is a special that forces surfing.
I can't remember it right now but I should be in the XSE help part.

Well, it's official; a forced surfing script can be made. The problem is how to implement it; do I put a "start surfing if X item is in bag" script on every single coastal tile in the game? Because that would get cumbersome fast.

I've got an idea for a variation I can use; you wouldn't be able to surf everywhere, but at specific locations could be "ferried" around by someone with sea transportation. (Which will probably be a Magikarp sub, naturally.) It wouldn't afford the same full-out epic awesomeness of getting to drive everywhere in a Magikarp sub, but it would fill the need for a Surf replacement. Plus, you wouldn't have to spend half an hour dodging a thousand water-type trainers and getting harrassed by a million Tentathings.

It occurred to me recently that, even if a Key Item could be made to act like Surf, it would be... logically wonky. How does one fit a submarine in their backpack? (True, the canon twerps haul bikes around in their backpacks, but bikes are still a lot smaller than subs. And I think in one of the games they were described as "collapsable" bikes or something, to explain how they could be compacted. Or maybe I made up that explanation...) I could make an official Rocket walkie-talkie key item and say that it calls someone with a sub for you to use, but Team Rocket's not going to have those resources after they fall in Kanto. Even in Johto they're kind of a disorganized mob whose master plan is "get in contact with the missing boss so that he can tell us what to do next." The Surf HM might just be stuck as a necessity. At least Surf is a useful move. The worthless ones like Rock Smash and Flash have all been eliminated, which is the most important issue.

I couldn't agree more. I always turn to the successful games (and hacks) when I need inspiration or information. In fact, it was just the other day I pulled out my old Emerald version to brainstorm some cool gameplay features.

Anyways, I love what you're doing with the hack. I legitimately "laughed out loud" when I saw the screenshots for the rattata script. Brilliant. When I get the time, I'll be sure to play that alpha. Best of luck ;D

Thanks! And yeah, playing the canon games really is good for inspiration/info. FR/LG really is flexible, now that I'm looking at it from a game design perspective. It's possible to beat the Pewter and Cerulean gyms, not beat a SINGLE other gym before taking down Giovanni in Silph Co., and then go Fuchsia-Cinnabar-Saffron-Celadon-Vermilion-Viridian for the order of the other six badges. Lt. Surge as the seventh badge, hah. You can go after Zapdos and go battle Blaine with a grand total of three badges without having freed Saffron yet; you can go after Articuno with only four, also without freeing Saffron. The game looks so structured, but it's so easy to go completely against the order of the game. And yet, it's still impossible to jump straight from a zone with level 5 Pokémon to a zone with level 35 Pokémon without first going through the other areas that ease you into the higher levels. Broken Bridges aside, that's a masterful feat of game organization. I've already got some of that kind of gameplay planned in ToxicPurple, and now I'm trying to figure out how I can incorporate more without compromising the plot.

And also, I will be taking over graphics!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! XD


.....or not :(

Good luck, oh mighty one.

Gasp! It's an artistic mutiny! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!!

Thanks. XD The testing is about half-ish over, thank goodness. After that I should be able to spend more time on the hack again.

 

[Mana1]

Perhaps you could make an inflatable raft that is only usable on Jetty like things... that way you dont have to script the whole coast :)

 

[ckret2]

Perhaps you could make an inflatable raft that is only usable on Jetty like things... that way you dont have to script the whole coast :)

Hmm... There's an idea. A good one. It gets around the problem of a submarine that's not portable, and avoids overly-difficult scripting... Of course, places without some sort of jetty or pier wouldn't have Surf-access, places like that little pond in Viridian City... but honestly, why would someone want to surf there anyway? I'd also have to stick some jetty-like areas onto pre-existing maps, but I can do that without much trouble... I think we've got a solution!

Thank you so much, that is an absolutely brilliant idea. :D

Zanny77, how would you like to sprite a raft? Let's say, a circular raft with a Magikarp design. If we cannot have a Magikarp sub, we can have a Magikarp raft!