Red hack: Shin Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/JP builds (Bugfix, AI, and QoL patch)

[jojobear13]

Minor text edits for the Green build have been pushed to the github repositories. Too minor to bother with a patch.
--> Digglett sculptures are re-translated more accurately as Buddha statues.
--> The Bike Shop's name is restored to Miracle Cycle.
--> The sneezing Hiker with hay fever is re-translated more accurately as laughing from having eaten funny-tasting mushrooms. Lol...get it? "Funny"-tasting? I'll let myself out.

But for real, the Hiker's japanese dialogue is a goofy pun. Psychedelic shrooms are called "laughing mushrooms" in japanese. The joke is that he ate some laughing mushrooms which pokemon (and presumably the child playing it) interprets in a literal way; they are fanciful mushrooms that make a person laugh uncontrollably. It took me a while to think up a lame pun in english that kinda worked and kept the double-meaning.

 

[Synyster117]

Thank you for making this hack. I really enjoy playing it! :)

How do pokemon like haunter or graveler evolve? Are their final evolutions out there in the wild?
Btw I was able to encounter Mew without having the diploma. The sprite was glitched but once caught, it became a normal looking Mew.

 

[jojobear13]

Thank you for making this hack. I really enjoy playing it! :)

How do pokemon like haunter or graveler evolve? Are their final evolutions out there in the wild?
Btw I was able to encounter Mew without having the diploma. The sprite was glitched but once caught, it became a normal looking Mew.

Do you remember the encounter location?

Trade evolutions evolve by level in the mid to late 40's

 

[jojobear13]

Thank you for making this hack. I really enjoy playing it! :)

How do pokemon like haunter or graveler evolve? Are their final evolutions out there in the wild?
Btw I was able to encounter Mew without having the diploma. The sprite was glitched but once caught, it became a normal looking Mew.

Never mind. I found what's causing Mew to glitch. It's a small oversight that is easy to fix. Good news is that glitch sprites don't ruin your Hall of Fame anymore.

Anyway, you can always find evolution and level-up information in the data/evos_moves.asm file.

 

[Synyster117]

Never mind. I found what's causing Mew to glitch. It's a small oversight that is easy to fix. Good news is that glitch sprites don't ruin your Hall of Fame anymore.

Anyway, you can always find evolution and level-up information in the data/evos_moves.asm file.

Thanks. It was right next to Mewtwo. Got all 151 registered now. Again, great hack!

 

[jojobear13]

I've been working on PP tracking for both AI trainers and wild pokemon. Coming soon to a patch near you.

 

[Martdon]

Downloaded and played through today. Just going to say that I loved it, however, giving trainers improved changing actually makes battles a lot easier. Half the opponents moves are spent changing. Making it very easy to whittle them down.

Many changes don't even make sense. I have my haunter going to use psychic against a tentacruel. The trainer changes to a blastoise. (which doesn't make sense, as I hadn't used psychic yet, but not a huge deal)

Psychic hits the blastoise, next turn, he switches back to the tentacruel. Which makes no sense as the blastoise should've stayed in.

Just one example, but rival, gyms, elite four, all their new moves and AI can't compensate for the fact they never attack you. They just change.

Apologies if this has been brought up before, found this hack today, and didn't read through to full thread.

 

[jojobear13]

Downloaded and played through today. Just going to say that I loved it, however, giving trainers improved changing actually makes battles a lot easier. Half the opponents moves are spent changing. Making it very easy to whittle them down.

Many changes don't even make sense. I have my haunter going to use psychic against a tentacruel. The trainer changes to a blastoise. (which doesn't make sense, as I hadn't used psychic yet, but not a huge deal)

Psychic hits the blastoise, next turn, he switches back to the tentacruel. Which makes no sense as the blastoise should've stayed in.

Just one example, but rival, gyms, elite four, all their new moves and AI can't compensate for the fact they never attack you. They just change.

Apologies if this has been brought up before, found this hack today, and didn't read through to full thread.

Tentacruel gets switched out to avoid a super effective Psychic. Then Blastoise gets switched out because of low health and Tentacruel was internally scored as the best option. Yes, the computer knows what moves you pick and acts accordingly (the GB's processor is 80's tech after all).

Intelligent switching is really hard to get right, so feedback is always appreciated. I am considering the following adjustments:
- don't consider switching due to low health if you out-speed the player
- reduce the weight of super effective moves when considering a switch
- when switching in a mon, flag it so it cannot be switched out. Clear the flag when The player changes the active mon.

 

[darthbr]

Tentacruel gets switched out to avoid a super effective Psychic. Then Blastoise gets switched out because of low health and Tentacruel was internally scored as the best option. Yes, the computer knows what moves you pick and acts accordingly (the GB's processor is 80's tech after all).

Intelligent switching is really hard to get right, so feedback is always appreciated. I am considering the following adjustments:
- don't consider switching due to low health if you out-speed the player
- reduce the weight of super effective moves when considering a switch
- when switching in a mon, flag it so it cannot be switched out. Clear the flag when The player changes the active mon.

That would be great. Its a bit annoying those AI moves. Sometimes prefer vanila non switching. But what u suggested is a good one.

 

[jojobear13]

Here's what I'm playtesting with so far. Chances to switch have been reduced:
-->toxic poison - changed probability from 50% to 34%
-->super effective moves - probability weight reduced by 25%
-->only switch out from low HP if player outspeeds enemy
-->an enemy mon is flagged when sent out; non-volatile status or low hp cannot initiate switching until the player sends out a new mon (which clears the flag).

The code can be seen in the latest commit to master_dev and lite_dev. I had to move some stuff out of core.asm to make room in the memory bank.

EDIT: Another change I've added. If a super effective move instigates the AI to switch, the mon getting sent back gets flagged while it is benched. The scoring system applies a penalty for this flag. Once again, switching flags are cleared when the player sends out a new mon. The idea is that since the enemy mon was recalled due to taking a super effective hit, the scoring system for choosing what to send out should be dissuaded from sending it out again if the player's mon hasn't changed. This will help the AI account for player mons with type coverage.

Mono-type teams (like swimmers) are kind of hosed since nothing they switch to is particularly good if you have a stab super effective move, but then again they were always hosed in that way. They probably won't switch from super-effective moves anyway due to how the scoring works.

EDIT 2: Another change. I found it was possible to cheese using the sleep status again (it's very powerful in gen 1). The switching AI now has a 12.5% chance to switch a sleeping mon each turn that it's sleep counter is > 3. The idea is to simulate a situation where the opponent is hoping his active mon wakes up, but there's a chance he gets impatient and switches. The cutoff of 3 is so the opponent doesn't use Rest and then switch for the lols. 12.5% is chosen to help reduce situations of switching back and forth between sleeping mons (switching in gen 1 does not decrement the sleep counter).

 

[jastolze007]

I'm still on version 1.15 (I think) since I've made some changes to weaker, fully evolved PKMN that gave low EXP and some moves / PKMN type changes (Arbok is part Dragon, Marowak and Ninetales are now part Ghost) Would you consider making these changes in the official branch, or other type changes so there are more Ghost and Dragon types?

What about bringing the three new types in from Gen II+? Could you make an optional patch or branch for that? It does get rid of the retro typing, but at least Magnemite will gain its secondary steel type!

Loving this so far. I've since started a new game and am using the same team as last playthrough.

 

[jojobear13]

I'm still on version 1.15 (I think) since I've made some changes to weaker, fully evolved PKMN that gave low EXP and some moves / PKMN type changes (Arbok is part Dragon, Marowak and Ninetales are now part Ghost) Would you consider making these changes in the official branch, or other type changes so there are more Ghost and Dragon types?

What about bringing the three new types in from Gen II+? Could you make an optional patch or branch for that? It does get rid of the retro typing, but at least Magnemite will gain its secondary steel type!

Unfortunately this is not within the scope of the project. Part of why I keep this open source is so people can download, customize to their own tastes, and recompile. It's the only way to please everyone.

 

[jojobear13]

Since there is some confusion on what version people are running when I receive bug reports, I made it so the game will display the current patch version on the main menu. This will take effect in the upcoming v1.18 and onward.

 

[MoriyaFaith]

Oh, My little mini-project was actually used for something! Cool!

I also do have a few things to make sure of, particularly with Shiny Pokemon and Missingno.

In terms of shiny pokemon, was the way DVs were calculated changed at all? I know that in the originals, it's impossible to get Shinies of most species because wild Pokemon can't be shiny.

And in terms of missingno, How accurate is it's sprite? I know that in my own PokeJP project, the sprite isn't quiiite right, as shown here.

I actually have no idea if it would even be possible to fix its sprite to always one of two signature set of blocks, but....

 

[jojobear13]

Oh, My little mini-project was actually used for something! Cool!

You do good work. I'm really impressed.

In terms of shiny pokemon, was the way DVs were calculated changed at all? I know that in the originals, it's impossible to get Shinies of most species because wild Pokemon can't be shiny.

Not entirely correct. This has to do with the RNG. The short of it is that the original RNG would never produce certain results on certain maps. This made it impossible for some species to have perfect DVs or be shiny since they only appear on a map where the RNG does not generate the required combination of numbers. DVs are the same as in the original, but I've ported over the general RNG from Pokemon Prism. That should help greatly with the problem.

And in terms of missingno, How accurate is its sprite?

I've just been using fossil kabutops. Initially it was a placeholder to prevent HoF corruption. The HoF can't corrupt anymore from glitched graphics ever since I fixed the decompression bug that causes it, but I haven't bothered to change it to anything else.

 

[MoriyaFaith]

You do good work. I'm really impressed.

Eh, it's not THAT much, mostly just finding every small difference. Including the weird ones. Did you know that the JP version of Red and Green have a slightly different SGB color pallete, and the one in International RB is from Japanese Blue? Thanks for the compliments, though. It was just a little side project to see if I could. Might do more stuff to it if there's anything I missed.

Not entirely correct. This has to do with the RNG. The short of it is that the original RNG would never produce certain results on certain maps. This made it impossible for some species to have perfect DVs or be shiny since they only appear on a map where the RNG does not generate the required combination of numbers. DVs are the same as in the original, but I've ported over the general RNG from Pokemon Prism. That should help greatly with the problem.

Ah, okay. Anything else ported from Prism? That 60 fps it has is kinda cool, but I don't know if that can work in RB. makes the running shoes look nice rather than just being "feet bike." That's always been a pet peeve of mine.

I've just been using fossil kabutops. Initially it was a placeholder to prevent HoF corruption. The HoF can't corrupt anymore from glitched graphics ever since I fixed the decompression bug that causes it, but I haven't bothered to change it to anything else.

I'd probably say.....the original main Sprite? If it uses RG graphics, use the RG sprite (It's different.) even if it was just originally garbage data, I don't really think it would be Missing No without it.

Unless it's on the fossil and ghost hex ids, then use those, etc.

 

[jojobear13]

I know that in my own PokeJP project, the sprite isn't quiiite right, as shown here.

You can probably re-create missingno by initiating its encounter in the BGB emulator and drawing it pixel-by-pixel. From a visual point of view, it's made up of 18 bgmap tiles that are 8x8 pixels each. Once it's on the screen, go to the VRAM viewer, select the BG map tab, then select the 9C00 radio button. Missingno will now appear in the bgmap window. You can mouse-over each tile to get a zoomed-in view on the right. Just recreate all 18 tiles and assemble them together.

 

[jojobear13]

Did you know that the JP version of Red and Green have a slightly different SGB color pallete, and the one in International RB is from Japanese Blue?

Vaguely. It seems they tweaked it a bit to up the vibrancy. Even on my old Trinitron the RG palettes look a tad bit muted.

Anything else ported from Prism? That 60 fps it has is kinda cool, but I don't know if that can work in RB. makes the running shoes look nice rather than just being "feet bike." That's always been a pet peeve of mine.

Nothing else. Fun fact though, the gameboy runs at 60 fps natively. Prism just modified the graphical engine to use extra frames. Really tough to do with a gameboy, but the GBC makes it a lot easier with the extra slot of vram.

I'd probably say.....the original main Sprite? If it uses RG graphics, use the RG sprite (It's different.) even if it was just originally garbage data, I don't really think it would be Missing No without it. Unless it's on the fossil and ghost hex ids, then use those, etc.

The unused hex IDs can no longer appear in Shin Pokemon (or at least you'd have to work really hard at it). The missingo that can be initiated is effectively a custom-made easter egg / super boss. Everything is controlled and contained to prevent glitches. Its front sprite and its base stats are predefined. Its encounter is actually a trainer battle so it cannot be caught. Even its item duplication is now controlled (constrained to a max of 99 of a non-key item in the 6th bag slot and only if you win).

That said, I took an hour and recreated the front sprite. I think I'll use this in future versions. You're right in that it's simply too iconic.

 

[MoriyaFaith]

Vaguely. It seems they tweaked it a bit to up the vibrancy. Even on my old Trinitron the RG palettes look a tad bit muted.

Weird part is that the white is a slightly different shade of white. A green one compared to a more red one if i'm remembering right.

Nothing else. Fun fact though, the gameboy runs at 60 fps natively. Prism just modified the graphical engine to use extra frames. Really tough to do with a gameboy, but the GBC makes it a lot easier with the extra slot of vram.

Damn, that sucks. I still stand by the fact that most Running shoes in gen 1-2 hacks look sloppy, since the running animation isn't any different from the walking animation. It just looks crudely made.

The unused hex IDs can no longer appear in Shin Pokemon (or at least you'd have to work really hard at it). The missingo that can be initiated is effectively a custom-made easter egg / super boss. Everything is controlled and contained to prevent glitches. Its front sprite and its base stats are predefined. Its encounter is actually a trainer battle so it cannot be caught. Even its item duplication is now controlled (constrained to a max of 99 of a non-key item in the 6th bag slot and only if you win).

That's actually really interesting, good to know.

 

[jojobear13]

Weird part is that the white is a slightly different shade of white. A green one compared to a more red one if i'm remembering right.

It's really obvious on all our modern LCD screens. But I swear, both the off-white-red and the off-white-green show up as a stark white on my CRT. Probably has something to do with the phosphor illumination.

It must have been some kind of quick-reference for the dev team. Nobody would notice in 1996 unless they hooked their Super Gameboy up to a very expensive high quality monitor. Not to mention that Blue version still has the reddish-white. Since Blue was made on its own after the release of Red and Green, the white differentiation would have not been needed. I guess they grabbed the code for Red version and started working from there. They certainly weren't going for a color-coded tint aesthetic.