[Other] Rom/Hacking Question

Hey guys, I know I'm kind of new to the forums, but I've been following you guys for a while now, and I'm hoping I'm in the right spot for this.

I've had a lot of ideas for a pokemon hack, and I'm more or less wondering the possibility of it becoming reality. I'm not asking anyone to do it for me, I just want to know the level of difficulty. The tallest of orders is to actually change the combat style of pokemon from

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5bpaUbkcZQ

To this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWKr1YkDmqc (ignoring the custom character)

The pokemon battle system we all grew up with was great in Red/Blue, was refined in Ruby/Sapphire, and reached it's peak in Black White... But slightly moving sprites isn't cutting it for me. When I use a tackle attack, I'd love to see the pokemon TACKLE into the other, not just give a nudge.

Anyway, the FireEmblem battle set up is a lot better in this regard, not only does it give you the front view of your sprite (No more of this back of the head stuff), but the pokemon could actually make contact with opposing pokemon when necessary, and also perform more stylish moves when indirect, such as a deadly looking vine whip reaching across the open space and seizing the other pokemon like in the show, or flamethrower (FireEmblem has this sprite covered if need be, but this is a job for a sprite artist, and not what I'm going after right now).

That's the 1st one... Possible? I would think so.... Fire Emblem characters have some how sneaked their way into pokemon games, they are still sprites, but I'm not asking for them to move, I'm asking if the reverse can be done, and how hard would it be? I understand that you're splicing two different games, but how hard would this be? Even worth attempting?

2nd one I would think is a lot easier. Back in pokemon Red/Blue days, wonderful things happened... The moves Bind, Wrap, etc. actually did something. They stopped both the pokemon performing the move, and the one effected from moving for roughly 3 turns... This makes sense, and gave the illusion that the pokemon were actually fighting. Now.. They don't do that... You just see vines around the pokemon at the end of the turn. Is there a way to incorporate the Red/Blue mechanic into more recent pokemon games, say LeafGreen/FireRed?

I think those are the only two I'll bring to attention at the moment, altho there are a ton more... These are the ones I would like to know about first.

Sorry for the wall of text,
Sariix

If you want to recode the entire battle engine to support animated side-view scenes, and animate every single attack for other 300 Pokémon, then be my guest.

for me it sounds interesting and challenging and we dont exactly have to do all the pokes on there maybe a few 100 or so

Even that's a very difficult challenge for anyone - let alone a bunch of amateur sprite artists. The sheer number of sprites that would need to be produced would be a strain even on a big company working on a console-style budget.
(This is pretty much why it's extremely unlikely to occur with 2D Pokémon games. Even adding a few more reaction or situational animations into the style seen in B/W becomes a bigger and bigger task the more Pokémon and larger sprites you have to work with.)

To use the closest analogue, games like Disgaea have a small pool of unique character sprites, and no classes have particularly large skill lists (It also helps that humanoid characters can share animation bases). Or in fighting games, where the work involved with creating heavily-animated characters means roster sizes stay much smaller.

I'm no so much worried about the sprites even moving, just getting the battle system working the way I described to where both your and other pokemon are facing you. I'm not wanting to make these foolish leaps into a project without understanding if the basics are even possible. I'm just wondering if it's even possible to change the battle system from the pokemon style to a FireEmblem-ish style. Sprites don't even have to move as far as I'm concerned this early in the stage.

I seriously doubt that's possible unless you have a massive knowledge of ASM programming and find some way to modify the code for the battle engine. or write your own battle engine from the ground up and make the game call that instead.

The 100 Mega Shock said:

I seriously doubt that's possible unless you have a massive knowledge of ASM programming and find some way to modify the code for the battle engine. or write your own battle engine from the ground up and make the game call that instead.

Click to expand...

I appreciate your honesty. I sadly don't have extensive knowledge in programing... Unless someone with that type of skill falls into my lap in the near future, I'll just have to sit on these ideas for a while, see what happens!