Well guys, here's the promised update. There are a few things that have been implied, but not outright stated, and others that haven't even been hinted at. Some of those are going to be let out into the open now, so that you can decide for yourselves what you like or don't like.
Behind the Scenes:
One thing that has yet to be revealed is the massive amount of error checking I am placing in the engine. Not only am I over-checking input and output, but I am also including checks specifically designed to prevent certain forms of cheating. Specifically, I'm adding checks to prevent cloning and memory editing.
The checks for cloning will be fairly simple, but will result in all but one of the clones actually being deleted from your game. There are only a handful of ways that cloning would be possible, but, since they are essentially impossible to block without allowing the potential of losing
all copies of the Pokémon being cloned, I am adding simple checks to detect clones and remove the extras. This will even detect clones that have been leveled or even battled with, or that have had other perfectly legitimate changes made to them.
The second type of cheating is far worse, and many of you may be familiar with it. Memory editing is achieved in the official games through hardware like the GameShark and Action Replay, and allows players to do all sorts of nasty stuff. Due to the nature of the cheating method, I will not reveal my detection methods at this point in time, suffice to say that even if they are mostly futile, the sheer volume of ways I am checking for it will be enough to catch most memory editors and stop them in their tracks. When a Pokémon is detected as having been edited, you will receive a message stating that the Pokéball has been damaged and must be repaired. The "repair" involves reverting the Pokémon's data, which could potentially cause loss of levels, experience, effort values, and pretty much any other changes that might have happened to it since the restore point, legitimate or not. Similar methods hold true for items, and when memory editing is detected in other settings, then other messages will appear. (Such as a battle being aborted before starting, with a message to the effect of "You thought you saw something, but it must have been your imagination.")
Before any of you reply saying that this is stupid, and I should let you do what you want with the game, let me remind you of something. While it may not be immediately available, I plan to add at least basic online features to this game, even if it only amounts to direct IP connections to set up a trade or a battle. If I do not do everything within my power to to keep someone from cheating, then people who don't cheat get left behind, locked out of being the best simply because they adhere to stricter moral standards than other players.
Legendary Pokémon:
So, I've been hinting at these changes, but I haven't revealed much in the way of concrete details. You already know that there will be many more wanderers than in previous games, and that any defeated legendary Pokémon will also return as wanderers. You may have guessed that there will be more than one of certain legendary Pokémon, most notably Mew. Well, there is much more in the works, in the form of two very simple changes that are being made. These changes are an attempt to correct grievous wrongs Nintendo has done to the player, in an attempt to make the legendary Pokémon more notable, and more valuable.
First, not only will every legendary from the GBA generation and before be available in the game, you will also be able to find more than one of them. Specifically, every legendary will have a very specific set of circumstances in which you have a very low chance of encountering it in the wild. Now, this low chance won't necessarily be as high as one percent. In most cases, you will actually have a less than one percent chance of encountering them. However, under certain circumstances, this chance will increase to the point where you can reasonably expect to encounter the Pokémon, if you invest enough time and effort into it. Just like with the evented battles, these legendary Pokémon will become wanderers if you fail to capture them, allowing you the opportunity to get more than the standard legendary allotted to you by the game.
The next change we have decided to make is going to be far more controversial, however. This change is going to be to one of the most basic, commonly accepted fundamentals of legendary Pokémon, introduced in Gold, Silver, and Crystal versions. Specifically, in Holon, they can breed. Now, they will
not have any kind of standard egg group, and Ditto can do nothing for them. Instead, they will remain apparently genderless, and can only breed with their own species. In the case of Latios and Latias, another condition applies, since the actually have a true gender. Specifically, these two cannot breed with their own species, but most crossbreed between the two species. Their eggs will have a 50/50 chance of being either species, though you can ensure the species by giving one of the parents the Soul Dew. (The egg will then hatch as the same species as that parent.) If both parents have the Soul Dew, then the game assumes that it can be either, and you return to a 50/50 chance. This change has been made because Pokémon is supposed to be based in a world with at least some kind of functional ecosystem, and that means that there is no such thing as a species with only one member. (In other words, that species would be considered functionally extinct, as there would generally be no way for it to produce a new generation, and thus it would die with the sole remaining member)
Other Details:
The last thing I would like to share is that this game may potentially get much more in the way of online capability than even the DS Pokémon games. This is due to a friend of mine, another programmer, who knows enough PHP, MySQL, and Ruby to be a great help. There is no guarantee, since we not only have to build a server from scratch, but also have to secure it against all manner of attacks, cheats and exploits. Hopefully, we'll be able to pull it off without a hitch, and if we do, you should expect a plethora of new features not even Nintendo dares to offer you. (By the way, I can pay server costs for a while, so don't expect some second-rate, laggy server, at least not until we start getting massive traffic)
