Hey Crystal_, I went back and re-watched the video before replying to this (and then I got sidetracked watching other videos, because of youtube). Anyway, here are my current thoughts on the Double Battle scenario:
- I feel like the constant switching does make the battle a bit hard to keep up with. I know it is pretty much unavoidable without completely rewriting how the battle scene is handled, but it does still feel a little awkward. I'm not sure how much of it is awkwardness brought on by "this doesn't look like it does in Gen 3+" and how much is just inherent awkwardness from the implementation.
- It might be that some of the confusion comes from watching it on a video, not actually doing it, so you can't really "feel" what is happening. That is, it's hard to tell if something happens automatically or because you caused it to happen.
I will say, however, I think it is nicely done in terms of how far it's come already. I like the way you recognized something wasn't feasible and tried to do as professional a job as you could with what was there. While sliding them in and out doesn't feel like an optimal way to handle Double Battles to me, I realize it's really the only way to do them without major overhauls. And it may feel less awkward if I was actually trying it out, so I will look into compiling a copy to play around with from Github to see if my opinion changes from playing it vs watching youtube.
It does seem like the core aspects are all there though. Having 2 "active" Pokemon, choosing a move with both of them, and choosing which enemy 'mon you want to attack. And I know that the constant swapping is to make sure whichever 'mon is attacking and which one is receiving the attack are on screen at the same time. I think that in spite of the initial awkwardness, it is off to a very promising start, and looks to be well beyond something I would have been able to work out. I know a lot of randos here don't seem to realize it, but I still consider myself a noob when it comes to asm for sure, and I'm really impressed with what all you've done.
In terms of suggestions that don't involve "Put all 4 Pokemon on the screen at once", let's see...
Maybe if there was some way to see the other Pokemon's level and HP? I know that's still a stretch with the space on the screen, but it seem like it might be a handy feature. I think the sliding in and out, while odd at first, would get to feel more natural once players got used to it, just like how Double Battles felt strange until we got used to them in the canon games.