FireRed hack: Pokemon - Poli Version

Introduction
Hello everyone, I have been a member of this community for some time now and last year I decided to try out modding a Pokemon game myself, instead of just playing those made by others. So I came up with Pokemon - Poli Version, a total-conversion mod of Pokemon - Fire Red. I am no expert at making these rom-hacks, given that this is my first one, and if you would take a good look under the bonnet of the game then you will indeed notice a whole lot of garbage coding. Despite all that I can still proudly say that I like the end result and that I think it would be fun for anyone to play. Now let's get into the details...

The Story and Features of the game
In Pokemon - Poli Version you play as a Pokemon, a poliwhirl to be precise, and you're on a quest to stop the director of an evil organisation who is trying to put your best friend, the insane professor Mr. Knar, out of business. It's a fairly straight-forward story aiming to present an excellent dungeon crawling experience. The game will lead you through 4 unique dungeons (1 being optional, yet highly recommended), 2 cities and 2 routes. While travelling you will meet several interesting characters who might join your party and travel alongside you or oppose you. Corruption, gullibility and betrayal are the key words in the story.

What do you get?
- The chance to play as a poliwhirl (the favourite Pokémon of Satoshi Tajiri who is the creator of Pokémon (source bulbapedia))
- The chance to stop several malicious organisations
- The chance to collect badges as collectibles (be warned, some are very well hidden)
- The chance to explore 4 completely independent dungeons, based on some more memorable dungeons from the original game
- Estimated game time: 13-15 hours

YouTube Let's Play
To accommodate my post here I also will be playing through the game showing all of it's features, fully commentated, on my YouTube channel (lordv555man). The first video of the series can be found here:


And now for some screenshots (will be updated as I progress in the LP)


Some excessive, purely decorative, imaginary box-art


Support
Credit to Mavy42:

Picture Code:
Download

Yay first post... finally apart from ruby destiny and super rising thunder another game in which you play as a pokemon love the idea looking forward to its completion

Very funny game! Good work man! But it seems like it's rushed...

mavy42 said:

Very funny game! Good work man! But it seems like it's rushed...

Click to expand...

Thanks. Rushed, not really, more like one big experiment that went sort of alright. If this works out, I might make a sequel and pay some more attention to the aesthetics of the game.

Doubt

Hey in pokemon poli version i reached a city called new new jersey and i enetred team pikesm hideout... however their hideout there is dorr that is blocking me and when i go to the phone it says code required...... Where do you find this code. Pease help me.

Ash493 is right... that's why is said it's "rushed" because poliwhirls OW isn't that good especially the titlescreen but still very great hack congrats on finishing it!

sako said:

Hey in pokemon poli version i reached a city called new new jersey and i enetred team pikesm hideout... however their hideout there is dorr that is blocking me and when i go to the phone it says code required...... Where do you find this code

. Pease help me.

Click to expand...

There is another phone in the north corridor that you need to talk to first in order to get the password. Once you did that you can use the first phone to switch the tiles whenever you exit the building, on hindsight I could have made it so that the changed tiles would stay, but this worked out as well.

mavy42 said:

Ash493 is right... that's why is said it's "rushed" because poliwhirls OW isn't that good especially the titlescreen but still very great hack congrats on finishing it!

Click to expand...

True, I messed up the titlescreen pretty badly (from that moment onwards, I learned to keep loads of backups ;) ). The problem is that I'm not really good with sprites. I think I did alright with the scripting, If I say so myself, the look of the game though could indeed have been improved.

Is this finished or just a beta? ^^,seems interesting

Iceypunchy said:

Is this finished or just a beta? ^^,seems interesting

Click to expand...

It is finished, I hope you'll enjoy it ;)

Ash493 said:

So you made those OWs by yourself?
Well that's impressive...
And since I was the first one to complain about OWs, I shall advise you what to do =)
You can find ripped MD sprites here and you can pretty much use them as OWs and I guarantee that they will look great =)
If you do that I'm sure your hack will be even more popular ;)

Click to expand...

Yeah, those look pretty good, thanks for the advice. But do they fit properly in the 16 by 32 sprite slots? When I created my own, I had a lot of trouble shrinking them to the proper size (especially magmar, that dude is bulky...)

This seems like an interesting hack, for your first one, its not too bad either!
Your commentary was entertaining lol, anyways I like the idea of the hack, but I think there is a whole lot of room for improvement. If you don't have any other projects in mind then you could be able to polish this one up.
A few things I'd suggest (remember this is only my opinion) Is;
- Change OW Sprites and Back sprite of Poliwhirl.
- Change from houses to wilderness, so it feels more natural because Pokemon living in houses seems off... I don't know...
- Have only natural items available, Pokemon don't know how to use man made items.

That is all I had in mind, it still is looks like a great hack, I'll try it out in the near future!

sorry for posting again i just wanna ask if this hack is complete ?

Asuf said:

This seems like an interesting hack, for your first one, its not too bad either!
Your commentary was entertaining lol, anyways I like the idea of the hack, but I think there is a whole lot of room for improvement. If you don't have any other projects in mind then you could be able to polish this one up.
A few things I'd suggest (remember this is only my opinion) Is;
- Change OW Sprites and Back sprite of Poliwhirl.
- Change from houses to wilderness, so it feels more natural because Pokemon living in houses seems off... I don't know...
- Have only natural items available, Pokemon don't know how to use man made items.

That is all I had in mind, it still is looks like a great hack, I'll try it out in the near future!

Click to expand...

Hmm, yes those ideas sound ok. My original idea for the pokemon was, not to let them have their own society like in pokemon mystery dungeon, but instead blend them in our own society as equals (or even our superiors: golbat as leading federal agent, pikachu as mob boss, magmar as CEO, Nidoran F as head of the pokemon center community, ...). Poliwhirl would have been an exception to this system as he sets out to do the crazy professor's dirty work, without even asking any questions. I do agree with you concerning the wilderness housing, I always liked the tree houses from RSE, if I do decide to polish this one up I could port those tiles into the game instead.

sako said:

sorry for posting again i just wanna ask if this hack is complete ?

Click to expand...

Yes, it is (although I might decide to update some of the visuals of the game someday). Have fun playing it ^^

This might be the next hack I'm going to play before I finish Flora Sky.... :D :D
This should be in the Hacks Showcase.... Am I right?

My progress so far:
Just finished Dark Cavern! I had a hard time y'know! Hehehe!
Leveling up my Psyduck and Poli!
This game is cool!

This could be a great hack if you spent more time on the eye candy, i like the idea of the poliwhirl concept but you need to break away from the fire red game itself, like maps and the intro. Ill give you more feedback once i get around to playing this hack. Good luck

Box Art

yo man I made a box art for ya!
Please comment if it's good! Other people here please say what you think about the box art! It's a good way to pass time! I'll start making the back par of the box art now!
Pls put this as fanmade boxart... Tnx to mavy42!
Wahahahaha

mavy42 said:

yo man I made a box art for ya!
Please comment if it's good! Other people here please say what you think about the box art! It's a good way to pass time! I'll start making the back par of the box art now!

Click to expand...

Wow, I was definitely not expecting any kind of fan art. Thanks man ^^
It looks pretty good, but Poliwhirl's left (actually his right, but on the left side of the picture... you know what I mean... ;) ) limbs seem a bit dislocated from the rest of his body though. Anyway, I think it's awesome!