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Emerald hack: Pokémon SwowS! [[BETA 1 OUT]]

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
Pokémon SwowS
Hello there! This is Pokémon SwowS, a ROM hack that straddles a pursuit of humour with an interest in a deeper, more bountiful Pokémon world on the Game Boy Advance. There was so much more in GSC compared to RBY, so why not follow that and expand the game? Sure, I said! And hey, while we're at it, let's not have the game take itself too seriously. So the scripts are let loose a bit. The result: something remarkably original… I hope!
Introduction
The name SwowS comes from one of my favourite Pokémon YTPs: Big Meowth, Little Samwich, where Meowth utters the line (through sentence mixing), "I could have swows!" But, it should be understood that SwowS isn't a hack for the funny papers, as they say. There is a lot of serious content I've integrated into this work that I call my own, some of which have been waiting for over a decade since I thought them up to be seen through. Every novel kid game idea I've had is probably going to make it into this game if it didn't evolve to feature in Project Trinity a few years ago. One such addition is two new evil teams alongside Team Aqua and Magma: the green-coloured Team Quaz, and the orange Team C.C.A.C.C., who both compound the legendary plotline considerably. I want to do Wally and May much better service as rivals, too. This I claim, and so on. /endzizek
Story
The plot of SwowS is based on Pokémon Emerald originally, but it's been deepened and reshaped a lot. I think a good parallel would be Black and White compared to B2W2 in terms of changes.
Right out of the gate, you're informed by your mother that you won't be staying in Littleroot, but instead moving to Petalburg to live with your father. He has a house there, as well! (Hooray, housing shortage resolved!) Professor Birch also gives you all three starters to venture out with, along with the one you battled the Zigzagoon with.
Team Quaz has gotten wise to the schemes of Team Magma and Aqua, and devised a plan to Shanghai their aspirations to capture Groudon and Kyogre by instead capturing Rayquaza, to rule over the two. In yet another twist, Team C.C.A.C.C. has done their research better than their rivals, and is actually striving to capture all three! They studied some ruins the others overlooked and believe the only way it will work is if they capture the whole trio. How on earth will you stop this impending disaster!?
Features and tech details
  • RUNNING SHOES INSIDEEEENBKLANJKDFLAHBADHFAJDNFALKDJF
  • Developed with the pokeemerald disassembly! Check it out on Git!
  • Several new rare items, including Big Nugget, Pearl String, Comet Shard, and even the totally new Comet Dust!
  • Totally revised maps and events, complete with music and layout changes!
  • I'm a pro C programmer, and I'm totally up for gameplay feature suggestions! Drop me a reply, catch me on Twitter or join the Discord to share!
Screenshots
swows-0.png
swows.gif
swows-1.png
swows-20.png
swows-23.png
swows-24.png
swows-25.png
swows-28.png
swows-31.png
swows-35.png
swows-38.png
swows-41.png
swows-44.png
swows-5.png
swows-7.png
The Goods
As of Sunday, September 27th, 2020, beta 1 of Pokémon SwowS is available for download!
Releases of SwowS are published on GitHub. Please grab the patch file from there.
The current beta is a two-gym beta that ends after defeating Brawly, the second gym leader. Of course, you can continue to play the rest of the original Pokémon Emerald after that. Beta 2 is planned to be a five-gym beta, so watch out for that! Until next time!
 
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Inner Rhymes

Rhythm & Poetry.
1,663
Posts
6
Years
Oh wow, this seem really interesting. I like the idea of starting off in Petalburgh city, I always found it odd that your dad being a gym leader in emerald couldn't find a house to move in there. I'll be keeping an eye on this!
 

Karl

Creator of [b]Pokémon Darkfire[/b]
168
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 29
  • Seen Mar 24, 2024
This looks great. Good luck with the project.
 
49
Posts
7
Years
  • Age 25
  • Seen Jul 6, 2022
This sounds and looks promising.
Though the tiles feels like the normals,
The story is GREAT. FOUR EVIL TEAM? WOWWWW.

Can you make your custom title screen though? ^_^
 

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
This sounds and looks promising.
Though the tiles feels like the normals,
The story is GREAT. FOUR EVIL TEAM? WOWWWW.

Can you make your custom title screen though? ^_^
I will, I just have to creatively decide how it should be. I'm going to do the 600-tile 8-bit edit I did years ago with Citrite, so it'll be super hidef.
 

SidDays

Professional Lurker
142
Posts
15
Years
I'm super excited to see a hack using pokeemerald! Will be watching out for this one :) and as someone who's trying to learn pokeemerald, thanks for making the repo public!

Also yes please, the P/S split would be amazing! (And decapitalization too, if possible)
 

bh02032002

Currently open for rom hack beta testing.
411
Posts
7
Years
this looks pretty promising to be honest. i love the fact theres 4 evil teams. i hope it's as good as the description is. good luck with this project.
 

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
Status update!
So there are a couple new things in the works I want to update everyone about. First things first, the goods! I have several new overworld sprite sets done up: for Quaz and C.C.A.C.C. Grunts, the team leaders, and custom overworlds for both admins of all four teams (including Magma Admin Courtney from Ruby and Aqua Admin Shelley from Sapphire, who didn't appear in Emerald)! I also made a lightly-edited custom black belt sprite for Karate Man (new name for the Trainer Class now) Hideki, the man from Dewford Gym who started a revolution around his famous saying "Might is right!", another allied faction that participates in the plotline to deal with the evil teams. There is also a new sprite for Interpol, which is similar to the work of Looker from Pokémon Platinum, but with a different character tone for them.
Interpol Employee:
interpol_employee.png

Karate Master Hideki:
hideki.png

Quaz Grunts:
quaz_member_m.png
quaz_member_f.png

C.C.A.C.C. Grunts (pending colour shift):
ccacc_member_m.png

ccacc_member_f.png

I will share the admin sprites and the new teams' leader sprites later on. :)
I have expanded Littleroot Town to include the coastline that actually exists there but was never shown in-game before (see the world map and the anime for canonicity):
swows-21.png
My final unveiling today is in a couple story fixups for the original R/S/E plotline. Since there is apparently no law enforcement in the entire country, Capt. Stern has taken the advice of Kilian in his Ruby Recap video and invested in some security for himself. This is provided to him courtesy of X Famous University, where he has tenure, along with Prof. Oak and a lot of other researchers of Pokémon. But like Storm Troopers, they end up being useless enough to not destroy the plot, so he still gets robbed and all that stuff that happens as usual.
Capt. Stern mentions offhand that his henchmen are necessary because the police are too busy arresting kids using their bikes indoors, which leads me to the big feature I will program in at some point, to be scheduled: the most innovative extension to the most amazing feature ever showcased in the history of ROM hacking: bicycling indoors. Please, hold your applause. I know, I know. This is the idea: you can mount your bicycle anywhere, but if you do it inside in a place you're not supposed to, once you go out you get arrested. The first time this happens it'll be a freebie, and you'll be let off with a warning, but every time afterward it's as costly as wiping out. Think of it like an expensive Teleport.
In addition to my existing plans to make Poké Marts more like Diamond and Pearl by having two ladies, one that sells standard goods based on your badges and another that sells local items, I will be following suit with Pokémon Centers by adding a basement floor. But instead of housing a gateway to the internet, it will house something very similar: the towns' local jails. They had to put the crazy guys away somewhere. It should be noted, that there are obviously some places this won't apply, like the power plants. Feel free to ride your bike there, no one cares. Generally speaking, if there's a chance you might battle, you can bicycle to your heart's content. But even outside towns, populated places like Trainer Hill will have mall security on you in a hot minute if you try. Remember Dad's words before they echo, or pay the price. ;)
I'm super excited to see a hack using pokeemerald! Will be watching out for this one :) and as someone who's trying to learn pokeemerald, thanks for making the repo public!
You are very welcome kind PC person. I figure since it doesn't make much sense to licence the repos anyways, that me making it public or not was really the only decision I had in the first place, and I chose to do so as my tooling for Swows will (eventually) be immensely helpful for people who make fanhacks, because I am overhauling the code and the build to take advantage of the fact that I don't care about matching.
Also yes please, the P/S split would be amazing! (And decapitalization too, if possible)
P/S split is coming, but when it comes to decap there is something more involved I wish to do: make it an option at playtime. I personally love and prefer the all caps way, ever since I was a kid I came up with a semantic term for it, "key nouns", but I totally understand the preference for the latter and I realised that I can make it so we have it both ways. I don't have this scheduled yet of course, but if I can finish overhauling pret's build system to use my own tooling, I have a collection of tools that can work in its place. I will create a tool that does some higher level parsing of text (which will be their own files), so you can "mark off" where you want that to apply, and under the hood it uses control codes in the text to tell the scripting engine (which is also modded) that its a key noun in those places. So I guess you can look forward to that. Thanks for the support everyone!
 
49
Posts
7
Years
  • Age 25
  • Seen Jul 6, 2022
Hello again. I'm back :D

1. I'm just wondering if you can add fake mid-evo / alter-evo / new last stage or new 1st stage (baby) pokemon for some existing pokemons?
Like for example, Golduck will evolve into Poseiduck? Arcanine will evolve into something?

2. And here's a suggestion hehe.
Can you avoid putting 2nd-staged (mid) pokemon and last-staged pokemon form in low levels?
For example, some games has level 12 butterfree in the wild. Butterfree is a last staged pokemon but only at level 12.


If you train a catterpie, it would not evolve a butterfree at level12 right?

HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A GREAT WEEKENDS ^_^ AND REALLY LOOKING FOR THE RELEASE OF THIS GAME HEHE.
 

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
Hey everyone! I have some new updates!
New cave system under way:
swows-42.png
swows-43.png
New trainers and areas, and updated dialogues:
swows-35.png
swows-37.png
swows-8.png
New! All the starters:
swows-26.png
Newfangled reflection system:
swows-28.png
I've made a lot more progress on the update, and I'll be releasing a patch once the game is revamped up to Dewford Town. I'm bringing back the walkable island area of Dewford that was shown in the Ruby & Sapphire promotional beta advertisement!
For real-time updates you should definitely join our Discord by clicking here. Until next time!
 

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
I have a lot more progress done! There was a technical setback about a week ago, but I managed to revert the Git history to a working state, and recover the maps and other content from the broken branch. Also, both player sprites are properly recoloured now: they're blue! Da ba dee daba die.
New signage spritework for Rusturf Tunnel, made by Nex:
swows-32.png
Updated Rustboro Gym battles, with new Pokémon. Also fixed the level curve for having all three starters:
swows-37.png
A lot of scripting has been done for a totally revamped Tunneler's Rest House:
swows-50.png
swows-51.png
swows-47.png
swows-43.png
swows-40.png
swows-42.png
swows-39.png
There are also more trainers on Route 104, 116 and in Petalburg Woods (not pictured). From here, the updates will move on to Dewford Town, as we approach the first release patch!
 

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
Nex got some spritework made today for an extended part of Rusturf Tunnel. You can see it in-game:
swows-61.png


I also slightly modified the in-battle HUD to look more consistent and legible:
swows-60.png


From here I have a lot of scripting to catch up on around Rustboro, Route 116, and the like. I wanna put the effort forth and confidently move on to editing Granite Cave, and adding the new island that's part of Dewford. So you might not hear updates for a little while – I do have school and a marriage and all to tend to IRL. Hope you enjoy!
 
4
Posts
5
Years
  • Age 27
  • Seen Mar 17, 2024
Looks interesting, I'm always looking forward to what people can do with the dissembly.
I mainly was posting to say that the link to the Discord "Guild" in the op is dead.
 

Alexander Nicholi

what do you know about computing?
5,500
Posts
14
Years
New update just in as of a little while ago: a new wild Pokémon system! See the seminal commit on the Git repository.
Here's how it works:

  • Wild Pokémon encounters use a completely new series of tables
  • Depending on how many badges you have, every place will have different encounters in level, species or both!
  • This comes along with a two-birds-one-stone optimisation of the entire wild encounter system, previously comprised of several disjointed data tables. Now everything resides in a single master table with O(1) complexity to get any data point
  • In the future, this can of course be expanded for other game conditions, such as postgame events or Battle Frontier progress
As I mentioned before I am quite busy with school and life, so it is a great pleasure to be able to keep all of you updated on this fanhack of mine nonetheless. I work on it whenever I can.
 
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