FireRed hack: Pokemon: Elemental Rift

shamus24 · Aug 2, 2013

Hello!

My name is probably shamus24, and I've been working over the past month or so on a personal little project that I've become increasingly involved in – making my own Pokemon hack. It's hard to justify it's solely mine, given the immense amount of research and tools available to the ordinary person, but I'd like to think that I'm creating a unique experience, at least for me. I've learnt the XSE IDE/language, dabbled in hex and ASM editing, and sketched out a lot of the graphical components. I think the key to success/time management is knowing the scope of your work and ability, so I've steered away from simply adding everything that seems good at the time – containing feature creep.

This is the first step of what I hope to be a fully realised hack, up to an Elite 4-esque finale and possibly post-game content, but that is still far away. With X/Y quickly approaching I'll probably hold off on a full release until the hype from the main games dies down a bit.

With that said, welcome to what I hope is an interesting, thought-provoking, and ultimately enjoyable hack: Pokemon: Elemental Rift.

Basic information:

Public Alpha available for download here or at the bottom of the page.
a Fire Red (BPRE) hack
386 Pokemon
Use how you would with any .ips patch
English language
Entirely new characters/region/plot
No Fakemon

The Plot:
You're a young boy/girl from the sheltered Longpalm Island, located in the south of the Davoa region. The rain has been relentless – it's the wet season, it's supposed to be – but it has been particularly malicious this time around. A storm has blown some of the city's wooden fixtures into the water, and your Dad has asked you to make the quick trip to Main Island to get some supplies. The storm has caused the otherwise peaceful coastline to rise up over the beachfront, and as such wild Pokemon can attack you. Because of these more dangerous conditions, Professor Greatbeard has allowed you to take one of his Pokemon for protection.

The unknowing hero makes the trip to Main Island, meeting researchers from the mainland that are currently studying the storm. Their attempts to glean the answer from some native Pokemon aren't working, unfortunately. Your journey leads you to Aquamaria Isle, where after a battle with Leader Fenton, you learn that the ancient elements are angered, and this is causing the disturbance. Fenton requests that you journey to the mainland, to learn about each of these ancient and powerful elements, and if you can, to quell their rage.

Will you step up to the challenge?

Features:
Hacks are being released every day, all with a laundry list of changes and additions that could pretty much be copied and pasted. It's my job to differentiate this game from the others – to give you, the player, a unique experience that you won't find playing other hacked games (for a while, at least). With that said, a brief list of the features Pokemon: Elemental Rift offers you includes:

EVERY Pokemon has been modified to some extent – either in it's type, base stats, ability, movepool, or evolution method (obviously, for some).
Physical/Special Split. It is on every other hack too, but this time, all Pokemon are going to be able to take full advantage of it thanks to the changes mentioned above.
A compelling story, not necessarily fuelled by an evil team that wants to take over the world, or other equally as cliché plots.
Emulating the VGC tournaments you might be familiar with, all Gym Leader battles are 2v2.
Randomised Gym Leader battles (not yet implemented).
An alchemy-esque system for making items from the reagents you find off the ground.
Less (read: virtually no) reliance on HMs.
An entirely new evolution mechanic, making its debut in Pokemon: Elemental Rift.
I know the difference between your/you're and there/their/they're.

Sweet!

It was hurting the readability of the rest of the post, but I've typed up a bit of information regarding the tactical/battling decisions I've made.

My guiding principles on in-game strategy:

Spoiler:

Other points:

Spoiler:

Screenshots:

Note: These are pictures from the first 15ish minutes of the game. I'll progressively update with more.

Tantalin Farms - the older farming couple need your help harvesting Darkstem Roots!

Progress/Errors:
Alpha 1 has up to the second gym playable. The routes/pathways at the second gym town don't lead anywhere, mainly because I haven't made anything past there.

I haven't implemented the randomised Gym battles yet.
When you white out, the Nurse doesn't say what she should – JPAN engine issue.
The nickname screen when nicknaming a certain early Pokemon has a glitched sprite.
Small tile errors.
I haven't actually edited any of the graphics besides small tileset/palette changes.
Likewise I haven't changed the intro Prof. Oak monologue to anything more relevant.

Credits/Tools used:
diegoisawesome's XSE tutorial
tajaros's XSE tutorial
JPAN's Hacked Engine
Jambo51/DoesntKnowHowToPlay/Darthatron's work re: Physical/Special split
Gamer2020's PGE suite
HackMew's contributions/XSE
Many of karatekid552's posts
Lu Ho/AdvanceMap
A-Trainer
probably other people/tools too!

I'll progressively update this post with appropriate documentation - ie. Pokemon changes. For the moment, ask about your favourite Pokemon and I'll tell you about any changes that have been made!

Thanks so much for reading this thread, and even more if you have tried out the game! Let me know what you think and I'll respond as soon as I can :)

Zoroyoyo41 · Aug 3, 2013

Surprised I'm the first one to reply cus it looks like you have very good ideas! Just it looks like your mapping could do some work, I could help you out :D

L0RD G3NGAR · Aug 3, 2013

Do you need abeta tester? I-d be happy to help.

TheEXeS0r · Aug 3, 2013

It's always nice to see new hacks in the forum. And this one looks really good.

But as Zoroyoy41 already said, you could rework some of the maps, as they're looking a bit empty ( maybe you could place some more rocks in the caves, and the caves are looking a bit too linear on the shown screenshots).

shamus24 · Aug 3, 2013

Zoroyoyo41 said:
Surprised I'm the first one to reply cus it looks like you have very good ideas! Just it looks like your mapping could do some work, I could help you out :D

Thanks! I've only been mapping for well, a month, so that doesn't surprise me. One of the issues I've identified is that I make my maps too big, then struggle to fill it appropriately. It's easy to fix those issues though, I might remake the maps later when I've had more experience.

Flamebot said:
Do you need abeta tester? I-d be happy to help.

That's why I've made this post, I'd like to think everyone that downloads the game gives some sort of testing feedback.

TheEXeS0r said:
It's always nice to see new hacks in the forum. And this one looks really good.

But as Zoroyoy41 already said, you could rework some of the maps, as they're looking a bit empty ( maybe you could place some more rocks in the caves, and the caves are looking a bit too linear on the shown screenshots).

Yeah like I said above, mapping is still kind of new to me. The screenshots of the caves don't give an entirely accurate overview of the actual cave maps - there are a lot of rocks littered through the caves, but yeah they were made slightly too big initially.

Also, here are some more screenshots - this is the farm you'll encounter after the first gym!

chrunch · Aug 4, 2013

Looks very impressive! You have some great ideas, and the reagents sound fun to collect. I'll be sure to give it a go as soon as I can, but there are a few things you could fix with your mapping:

The tree shading is wrong in the top left here.

and these grass tiles to the left could do with some work, the palette doesn't look very good.

DoesntKnowHowToPlay · Aug 4, 2013

Hi! I decided to give this a try. Feedback is in spoilers as it's rather lengthy.

Spoiler:

shamus24 · Aug 4, 2013

DoesntKnowHowToPlay said:
Hi! I decided to give this a try. Feedback is in spoilers as it's rather lengthy.

Spoiler:

I'm going to be blunt- the mapping in this is atrocious. There are rampant tile errors, movement permission errors, and generally bland paths. I won't be commenting on all of them as it'd take far too long, but I advise you to look over your maps (especially the first one in the game) and spend some more time making them look nice. Fortunately, mapping is not all there is to a game, so I won't dwell on this.

Yeah, the first map was my first foray ever into mapping, and I had a ton of issues even conceptualizing the map, what tile to place where etc. I really hope that it got better as you played through it, I'm quite proud of the farm personally but I'm also bias. The Rival's house is deliberately blocked off though, I still haven't decided what I want to do with him.

who's dis oak guy

Fair.

Fellow here should probably face the player, or better yet just be disabled when you get your starter as his remark lacks context if you didn't try to go down here before visiting the lab.

Yeah he was one of the first scripts I made, and you raise a good point of just removing him after the event.

Being grammatically correct is one thing- not having text outside the dialogue box is another. It's generally a good idea to look over every string in-game to make sure it looks right.

The text fitting is my blind faith in the XSE auto-text spacing tool. I test everything I write, but I've just realised every player name I've used has pretty much been 'aa' or Fred, so I'm going to have to go through the game again with a longer name now (likely 'aaaaaaaa') to fix those errors.

There is a problematic abundance of non-evolving mons in earlygame. This is anathema for a balance hack- if everything is going to be on even footing late-game, then the unevolved mons early on will have a severe disadvantage against the evolved mons' higher base stats. If they aren't on even footing in late-game then you're running a bit counter to your concept. Non-evolving mons generally work better as late-game encounters, where they can be given stats comparable to fully evolved mons without causing issue. (You'd probably want them to be a bit better than the early mons, to motivate players to mix up their team, compensate for lack of EVs, and to give a sense of progression).

Also, I have issues with the abundance of Drought and Drizzle (why is drizzle on something as hard to kill as slowbro), but if this is meant to just be a single-player romp it isn't the worst thing in the world.

Yeah, I had based most of the cave-dwelling Pokemon off Meteor Falls (I think it's called, from R/S/E after Rustboro) and Dewford cave (hence Solrock/Lunatone/Nosepass) to try and expand the variety and give the player early access to Drought, but I realised myself after a bit of the balancing issues with that and I've been debating changing their accessibility - I might keep Nosepass and change the rest. I'll reply to the second point in the main post.

I know Arena Trap is coveted in comp play for assassinating weather starters, but this is a straight nerf from Insomnia in-game because the AI almost never switches.

My own justification was that it's more to pose a threat to the player as they make their way through the cave - you can't safely level your lower-level Pokemon because you could run into Murkrow - but after thinking about it that's actually just really awful design.

Please show, don't tell.

I was debating whether that was too obvious or not. On that note, for some reason the font does not want to change to the correct colour (iirc navy blue) which is why it's that awful grey shade. I'm probably going to remove the signposts until I've done significantly more work so I can really think about Dreyer's own story.

okay look i know doubles cresselia is obnoxious, but you can't just go and turn icy wind into string shot like that

That's should just be Swinub's abmyssal SpAtk, I haven't changed any move data.

This fellow offers food if you beat all the trainers here, then proceeds to totally ignore you after you do so.

Chef Conor from Chef Conor's Beachside Barbeque is a busy man! He should give you Leftovers, unless something awful has happened in the patch-creation process. I'll test this out again this evening.

I'm really on the fence about the reagent idea- if the player doesn't have any control over what they get (and i'm guessing these all use the same script and just increment a variable that spits items every so often), they might as well be picking up static items. The reason crafting systems work in other games is because you can, well, craft things- here you don't have any choice.

The script essentially adds +1 to a variable until you get 3, where it'll randomly select one of about 10 items (like Super Repel/Max Repel/the healing herb things, up to a 5% chance for a Rare Candy/Smoke Ball/Brightpowder) and reset the variable to 0. There's no choice involved, and it's not really supposed to be a 'crafting' system, moreso a change to the monotony of being in a forest and getting an Antidote. People get excited from randomised item distribution, this system tries to emulate that.

I didn't take any screenshots of the first leader for some reason but he's predictably docile if you just put an untrained Solrock in his face. I don't think people who passed the sun up would enjoy the fight as much, though.

I'm not sure how I feel about the first gym leader either. My first run though I used a Solrock too and it wasn't too bad, but it can get harder especially when your team is small and you rely on your starter. The fight is supposed to reward early teambuilding thought given your available options.

I dunno if this is a forgotten debug script or just plain broken, but I imagine you don't want the player to have Master Balls this early. Also, this part of the game would benefit from a PC on the other side of the point-of-no-return. It's not clear that there's a dungeon immediately on the other side of the urn, and if you didn't predict it and box a few mons you won't be able to train anything in the forest until you're all the way through it.

I've never ever encountered that Master Ball bug, and yeah obviously the player shouldn't get them so early. I have absolutely zero idea how that occurred, I'll also test this out. I really hope I gave the player ample warning that there was a 'you can't go back here' point - giving them a chance to stop and go and heal/use the pc/buy pokeballs, as a PC in the middle of the forest would be super out of place.

Return is a poor choice for a leader's TM- AI pokemon have 0 happiness and the AI doesn't read -- BP moves correctly. Also, your leaders seem to be using the RS Leader class and thus don't have leader music- they also appear to have 1 AI instead of 7, leading to them making dubious choices (although that might just be FR Doubles AI doing its thing).

Initially the TM was Rest, and the gimmick would be that he would have two Pokemon with Heal Bell, so they would hopefully Rest then their partner would Heal Bell, and then I realised that Rest is Psychic and not Normal and I was really annoyed. I couldn't think of a good Normal TM that would be useful to the player besides Return, but yeah in retrospect the 0 happiness/AI decisions thing really hampers that.

Also, there is basically no (easily accessible, at least) information on the AI variable, so I had set it to 225 assuming that was influenced the chance of the AI selecting the 'correct' move to make. I take it this isn't how the variable works? I'll test using 7 soon.

On the whole there are some neat ideas here- the setting is unconventional but works, and you have good ideas about what to strive for- but you need to spend a lot more time working on polish.

Hey thanks, I really appreciate your thorough feedback. I've replied to your points in the spoiler, but this is definitely perfect feedback and I'll roll out most of your points soon. Again, thanks so much for the time you (and everyone else that has downloaded it too!) have spent looking through this.

chrunch said:
Looks very impressive! You have some great ideas, and the reagents sound fun to collect. I'll be sure to give it a go as soon as I can, but there are a few things you could fix with your mapping:

and these grass tiles to the left could do with some work, the palette doesn't look very good.

They're pretty much just makeshift before I actually start changing the tilesets myself. There are lots of graphics that need to be changed and added, and I haven't even started to learn how to mess around with graphics. I was decent at pixel art when I last did it (..about 8 years ago, christ), so hopefully those skills will still be relevant.

I'll just further expand on what I mentioned regarding the distribution of Drought etc. My high-level design goal for battling in this game is for the player to collect a team that can cohesively synergise together, and as shown in current the current Gen 5 meta, the best way of doing that is through the weather. I haven't worked out ratios yet, but I'd like it if every team had some way to start a weather - another reason why I'm a big fan of the 2v2 focus. That's why there is Drought Sunkern (a Pokemon that's only niche previously was 'the worst') and Solrock, as well as Sandstream Onix and Drizzle Slowpoke. As I go through the Pokedex (I'm about 1/3rd of the way though Gen 3's Pokedex currently), I ask what use the Pokemon currently serves, and if there are ways to exaggerate it (especially if it isn't particularly good).

As there is no competitive scene that is dependent on this game, there are no real repercussions for making a Pokemon/theme too overpowered, besides making the game too easy (the game won't be too easy). What I envision is that this game will have a huge degree of replayability, and that is shown even through the starters themselves. You might pick Horsea at the start with Swift Swim, pick up a Drizzle user and have a team based around Rain Dish/Swift Swim/Thunder spam etc. When you beat the game, you might go again and choose Mudkip, then get an early Onix and have a Sandstorm-based team, or Ludicolo and use Drought with STAB Solarbeam. That also is why I want to have randomised gym leaders, building off the popular Random hacks that are getting progressively more popular. You might get to the first gym and deal with a host of anti-weather Pokemon, or a team that abuses your own weather, etc. I'm also hoping/planning that the theme of weather will be a big factor in the plot's development too, ensuring it's relevancy.

I really don't want to change how moves work or add new ones - despite really wanting to have moves like Aqua Jet and Shadow Claw to give some much needed utility and coverage to some Pokemon. Unfortunately editing Abilities is really hard, because Sand Force/Hydration/Sun Power/even Snow Warning and their Gen 4/5 friends would be really really great for this hack.

DoesntKnowHowToPlay · Aug 4, 2013

If you're using A-Trainer, the AI variable is actually in the trainer data and is marked as Unknown or something along those lines. In vanilla FR it's 1 for most trainers and 7 for leaders, rivals, cooltrainers, and other competent opponents (but not the first two Giovanni fights). What A-Trainer calls the AI Value that you see in Pokemon data is actually their IVs.

The Icy Wind issue can't be Swinub's low SAtk as the game floors damage at 1, not to mention that even off 30 base SAtk Icy Wind is still 55 BP STAB, which is normally a big deal at that point in the game. What probably happened was Icy Wind's effect byte got changed from Damage & -1 Speed to just -1 Speed somewhere down the line- it should be an easy fix.

Pulkit.Maheshwari · Jan 7, 2019

Hey, nice rom hack.... I have played it until the first gym. I need your help, how to proceed after you defeat Fenton (The 1st gym leader). I am surprised that I cant find a walkthrough sreies for this rom hack. Help me.

FireRed hack: Pokemon: Elemental Rift

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shamus24

Zoroyoyo41

Novice Expert

L0RD G3NGAR

TheEXeS0r

shamus24

chrunch

DoesntKnowHowToPlay

Tiny Umbrella with Lots and Lots of Good

shamus24

DoesntKnowHowToPlay

Tiny Umbrella with Lots and Lots of Good

Pulkit.Maheshwari