Bakken31

- Not at all; abilities are probably the trickiest of those, but I've added a few custom ones to the game recently (might've made Mega Sceptile OP with its new ability, we'll see how it goes) so I know how to approach those now.
- I'd still want both the new regis to be in ancient ruins somewhere, so probably not New Mauville, but Meteor Falls is a good idea, will definitely go with that!
- Yeah, I've left all the trainer sprites as their original designs. Same goes for their personalities, so there's not much ORAS dialogue in the game.
- I need to fit all the legendaries in somehow, so the post game will definitely have some ultra space/other dimension nonsense to make that work! I'm considering adding a Pokemon World Tournament as a new Frontier facility too, so that'd let me add as many characters from other regions as I want.

Ooh well done, that's the first time I've heard of someone beating Ultra Necro with Trick Room Mimkyu, very clever!

- Yeah, you can hold B to surf faster. Really helps speed up the water route slog haha.
- That's pretty impressive! I still haven't tried to make anything with a new UI yet.

Hey!
- There's a very good chance I'll give more Pokemon megas, they'll be something I add in future versions occasionally as I come up with designs for them.
- Good guess! I had a bit of a trainer editing binge last week and finished both the hideouts, Mossdeep Gym and all of the surfing trainers. That just leaves the Seafloor cavern, Sootopolis Gym, victory road, the Pokemon league and the post game. Almost there!
- Currently the Safari Zone has Alolan forms and a mix of Pokemon you'd find in Safari Zones from the other games (Dratini, Tauros etc.)
- Yeah a Mega stone pocket for the bag is definitely something I want in the hack, I'll be looking into adding more pockets to it once all the trainers are done.

Good luck with Ultra Necrozma! Mimikyu and Decidueye's Sucker Punch should help quite a bit.

I've actually made trainers and wild Pokemon scale to the player's level instead of having a level cap. Hoenn has a lot of optional areas, so adding a cap would waste a lot of the EXP from those areas if they're explored later in the game. With scaling levels you can skip an entire area, come back to it later and still get full EXP from it. Trainer Pokemon levels are always the player's highest level + or - a fixed value, usually +0 to +2 for bosses and -2 to -3 for everyone else. It's impossible to over level, but grinding is still an option to get better moves or evolve a Pokemon.

Looks like a good team so far! 5 items per battle is fair, the AI gets 4 so that's better than using an entire bag full!

- Yeah I've got a few custom moves and abilities planned. I'm definitely considering the Gigantamax forms as Megas option; Lapras and Garbodor could really use them and it'd be nice to have designs and sprites done for them already. I'm hoping to add custom Megas for Milotic and Flygon too, but only if I can come up with decent designs for then (Flygon is pretty tricky to add things to, Game freak weren't kidding about the artist's block on that one!).
- That looks very impressive, might have to keep an eye on it! I'd like to have some sort of soaring mechanic as HMs are going to be optional, and it'd be the best replacement for Fly.
- It'd be nice if I could do that, but I've changed the Pokemon data structure enough that mons from my hack would appear as bad eggs in other games, and it'd only be able to battle with other hacks that use the same battle engine and have the same base stats for Pokemon. So unfortunately it's probably not going to be an option.

Congrats on beating Eternal X! Nice to see to your team's levels are exactly where I expected them to be, hope there wasn't any grinding needed to get there. Blaze Black's always good (especially 2). Gen VII's good parts are very good (personally I really liked the totem battles), but it's got waaay too much annoying dialogue. Might not be so bad on your first playthrough though.

Hey, I'm out of lockdown and back to work. How have you been?

- Day/Night encounters are something I'd add in a future version once there's a good day/night system available. Sierra's made one for Crystal Dust that looks fantastic, but it won't publicly available for a while.
- That's an interesting idea, but it'd be pretty complicated to implement. The game's open source so it'd be easier to add or edit a trainer by editing the ROM instead.
- Can't think of anything off the top of my head, it's a fairly straightforward hack so many of the new features are found in plenty of other hacks too.

Hey good to hear things aren't too bad in Algeria.

- I've changed quite a bit of dialogue so far, but it's mostly to accommodate new features (e.g. your rival asks which region the Pokemon in Birch's suitcase come from, which is how you decide which set of starters you want to choose from). There are a few new NPCs from ORAS that use their ORAS dialogue too, like the guy that hands out the false swipe TM. I haven't updated team Aqua or Magma to their ORAS versions though.
- Yeah I have a few ideas for an extended post game, nothing concrete yet but it won't be the Delta Episode.

Radical Red looks really good, I'll definitely give it a try at some point. Never played anything with Skeli's engine so that'll be interesting.

Hey, it's been a busy month; I'm in New Zealand and we were almost back to normal until last week (we're back in lockdown now, but fortunately only in one city for the moment). How's it going in your country?

- Some Pokemon do have quieter cries than others, but only if they're that way in the official games (e.g. Golurk). I processed all the cries myself so if any are too quiet it's an easy fix.
- I've gone with a different approach for the HM problem. They should hopefully be worth using; you can find useful items (berries, stones, fossils etc.) and Pokemon you can't get elsewhere in Cut trees and breakable rocks. Strength boulders are still a pain, but I'm looking into adding a Poke Ride style system alongside HMs so you won't need to give up a move slot if you don't want to.
- Haha, I wish I was up to Sootopolis! I've just finished Flannery and will hopefully get Norman and some of the Surf areas done today.
- Maxie and Archie have slightly different teams from their PSPM counterparts (possibly including Kyogre and Groudon though - still thinking on that one).

Looks like a fun team, and having Snow Warning will help a lot in EXWY's Elite 4. Good rule-set too, that's similar to what I use when testing my hacks (only difference is I use no items in battle - it helps to make up for me knowing how the trainers will act beforehand).

I likely won't be done with Emerald before Dray is done with Storm Silver 2.0 (looking forward to playing that), but I might release an early version without the updated Frontier and post game.

Hi, hope you're doing well!
- I'm actually using a custom EXP system, so it's a mix of both. Still testing it out, but right now this is how it works:
- Whenever you get EXP, every Pokemon on your team gets 25% of it, even if they didn't battle. If a Pokemon was on the field or holding an EXP. Share, it also gets the remaining 75% of the EXP (so 100% total). Might drop the EXP Share
bonus to 25% at some point though, will see how it goes.
- Maybe! I'd like to give them their own themes, but I've never done any music hacking so we'll see how it goes. There are a few trainer themes I want to add too, so hopefully it's not too hard.
- I'll definitely consider using alternative sprites if they look better, and I'll be making a few myself too (e.g. I'm not a fan of the Araquanid sprite in the resource thread, so that's been replaced).
- I worked from home during quarantine, so it actually felt pretty similar. Sitting at my desk all day did make it hard to stay there and work on Emerald in the evenings though!

Hey!
- Yeah, evolution moves were one of the first things I added, though my implementation is a little messier (still works just as well!).
- Adding some sort of music player is an interesting idea, I might have to look into that!
- Drayano's Blaze Black and Volt White were what first got me into playing ROM hacks, so his hacks are definitely the biggest influence. Also, Luuma's Altered Emerald had some pretty creative Pokemon changes in it, so there are a few things inspired by that too.

No problem!
- I'll probably go with something similar to ORAS and have some sort of side quest to get both bikes.
- If we find out more about Kabu at some point I might do something like that; just being from Hoenn isn't much to work with.
- I'm planning to have difficulty settings; normal will be somewhere around BBVW2 challenge mode (maybe a bit easier) as the trainers won't have EVs, Hard will be similar to PSPM, and Insanity will be ridiculous and unfair.
- May and Brendan will always have Hoenn starters. There'd be far too many teams to make otherwise (48 for every rival battle!). Their teams will include other Pokemon from newer generations though.

- Yeah, the DLC moves will definitely be added at some point.
- Not at all, I think they might even have contest data in Egg's battle engine already. If not it'll be easy to add some.
- The Cram-O-matic's not a planned feature for now, but maybe in future versions.
- Yeah, Route 105 and 106 already have grass patches where you can find Inkay and a few other Pokemon.

Hey, I've been busy, but busy in a good way. Hope all's well with you too!
- I hadn't actually thought about adding new Regi puzzles for those two, but now that you mention it I'll definitely have to do something!
- Yep. All wild battles in grass are doubles right now, but that's just for testing. I do want to add proper doubles grass patches at some point.
- I could definitely have colorful flower patches for Flabebe. Right now it's found on flowering berry trees, but I haven't implemented a way to get all the different colors yet.
- I probably will add mid-battle trainer messages. Even though they're mostly pointless I do like them as a feature.
- I'll leave the name as a surprise for now, but I've decided on one already!
I didn't know there was a switch emulator already; it definitely looks expensive to run. Hopefully my Emerald hack lives up to your expectations!

Yeah, they just animate with a single frame instead. If all the gen 8 mons are available with a single frame first I'll include them that way and update them later.

They're not in the hack at all right now, but all the gen 8 moves exist and have animations ready to go (no new effects yet though). I'll most likely add them all in at once after LeParagon's sprites are done. Apparently they're planning to do second frames for them all too, so they'll be animated like vanilla Emerald sprites.

Never played it, but not too impressed with the cries not being included. They aren't that hard to do, it just takes a while.

It actually does! There's one silly reference to a bad joke from EXWY for now, but I'll add a few more if I can come up with any. Most of the Pokemon changes from the rebalanced versions of those hacks are in too, of course.

I'm going to leave the UI as is for now; might add to it later, but aesthetic changes will be the last thing I work on.

I've seen the soaring feature, it's amazing. Pretty sure there's an Emerald version of it too, so I'll definitely try it out (if not it should be possible to port it to Emerald).

I hadn't considered that, but will definitely think about it adding them in after I'm done modifying the existing facilities. The mechanics shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Yeah, hidden abilities are available as a third ability slot, same as the official games. You can get them by catching a Pokemon in a Dream Ball, or using an item on them (still need to add the item, but it'll be separate from the Ability Capsule and work the same way). Haven't got a dexnav, but might look into adding it at some point!