Hey guys :)
I haven't posted here in a while. To be honest, that's because I haven't actually been doing much on the game in quite a while; other things have been keeping me occupied (such as holidays, programming other things, and completing my shiny legendary collection :P). However, I have been thinking about it; I haven't really had a chance to do so while making it.
So, having a look over what I've done so far, I didn't really like where it was going. Sure, the screenshots and Pokémon were pretty, but the game itself wasn't as good as it could have been. There are two reasons why I thought this - firstly, the game itself was pretty much unplayable (you can't see from the screenshots, but outside of battle, it was running at a mere 10-20 FPS). Secondly, the graphics and general appearance were bad. I'm pretty proud of my spriting and tiles, but let's face it, it was basically a GBA game. In this era of 3D overworlds and 80x80 Pokémon sprites, my GBA-style graphics look pretty rubbish :P
So, I've made a bold decision. Production on the old Amethyst has stopped completely. Although I did have a lot of work done, due to the reasons above, I figured there was no point continuing. Instead, Amethyst is being restarted from scratch. Well, almost; the old Pokémon designs, story, and other ideas are still as good as ever.
However, graphics and script-wise, I'm starting over.
Firstly, the DS screen resolution is going. What's the point of limiting yourself to a 256x192 window when it's not even going to be played on the DS, and you have masses more screen space to use? I'm either going to use 512x384 (double the current resolution), or 640x480. I'm leaning towards 512x384, as that will give a similar field of view in the overworld as the DS games. However, 640x480 is a decent alternative. RMXP's default resolution, as well as the lowest resolution of many other PC games, is 640x480. I could use this extra screen space for an inteface, similarly to how HG/SS use the touch screen. I'm not going for any higher resolution than that, since it will be too much work to make huge sprites. I'll try and get a full-screen feature in, though.
Secondly, seeing as I'm increasing the resolution, all the graphics are going to be resprited too. I'm switching to 32x32 pixel tiles, the same as RMXP's default tile size. All the OW sprites will be redone too; this isn't much of a problem, as we only had about a dozen or so anyway. In-battle sprites will be upgraded too, to 160x160 pixels. I was originally planning a neat battle system with animated sprites etc., but I've decided against it on the grounds that it would take far too long to sprite multiple poses for several hundred Pokémon. It's still an option, but don't expect it to happen for a few years :P
I'm going to start a public sprite project to help achieve this. Not only can anyone help, but the whole community will be able to use the sprites (not the fakemon, though; the game's team will take care of those). If you're interested in helping out, you can either contact me, or wait for me to make a thread for it in the Pixel Projects forum. If we work together, it isn't such an impossible goal to aim for ;)
Thirdly, I need to deal with the horrendous framerate and glitches. To do this, I'll have to sort out the scripts which are causing them. However, it's more than likely that it's due to the many custom scripts I've added, not just one or two. So my solution to this is to restart the scripting side of things, too. It's going to take a lot of work, but I'm sure it will be worth it in the end :)
So, any comments? This is the biggest event so far in Amethyst's timeline, and I want to pull this off perfectly.
Oh, and thanks for the suggestions everyone; I'll be sure to include some in the game. Keep the ideas coming!