Crystal hack: Pokemon Crystal Ultimate

OVERVIEW:

The goal of this ROM hack is to be the ultimate Pokemon Crystal experience for fans, a faithful yet ambitious remake: the same Pokemon in the same world, but the game is more playable, balanced and challenging. However, the core battle system remains the same (e.g. no phys/spec split). There is an expanded main questline in Kanto (in-progress) with new maps and items to account for the lack of story there, as well as brand new side quests, all inspired from the game's existing lore and characters. There are also many QoL improvements, from music to sprite work to brand new features and battle system and AI upgrades! Here's an overview trailer for v1.0:

https://youtu.be/xWUJOSRBteo


And here's a trailer (pardon the awful saturation, the hack doesn't look like that lol) for v.1.0.7, along with patch notes (since 1.0.5) just below it:

https://youtu.be/lsOPGs2RkNs




First of all, please note that this ROM hack is based off of Pokemon Crystal 1.1, so make sure to have that ROM if you intend on using a patch instead of the .gbc ROM.

SCREENSHOTS:


FEATURES:

As seen in the screenshots:

• Map changes that bring previously unimpressive areas to life (e.g. Victory Road in the first screenshot) and add convenience, such as the Goldenrod shortcuts
• Reworked in-battle and overworld sprites for notable characters and Surfing, as well as for Pokemon in the party menu and overworld
• Added evening as a time of day with a golden hue
• Convenient features such as being prompted to reuse Repels, resuable TMs, new gen 1 (GENWUNNERS) move tutors, a move reminder, and a Pocket PC
• More item variety and accessibility, such as a Lucky Egg early on, rare items found as milestone gifts in your room, all decorations can be obtained outside of Mystery Gift, and fossil Pokemon are found in the Ruins of Alph

Here are some other features not shown in the screenshots:

• Brand new Kanto storyline based on existing lore to liven up the region; the first part of this new story is playable in v.1.0.7 (see my Discord linked below)
• Over 90 new trainers added to the game
• New music and softer night versions for all outdoor themes
• Hold B to run
• Cross-region Fly
• All 251 Pokemon and all items obtainable through normal play
• Base stat, move and Pokemon type changes to rebalance the battle system (see the documentation linked below for details on a Classic version that limits some of these changes)
• New special trainer battles and superbosses
• New side quests
• Restored Kanto maps and revised/revamped many others
• A level and stat exp curve that match a diligent player's progression
• Level caps for extra challenge (added in v1.0.2)
• Trainer card badges are in colour and a third page has been added for Kanto
• Sprites have a softer and darker hue at night to match the darkness
• 1/256 shiny encounter rate (1/3 for the Odd Egg) and shinies always have high DVs
• Fixed many bugs (such as Kirt's balls) and restored things like the Celebi event
• Significant AI improvements
• Improved rematch system: rematch trainers offer their number automatically after you first defeat them and have much better scaling
• Every ball has a unique colour palette and catching Pokemon yields exp
• In-battle weather indicator
• Elite Four rematch with new dialogue

I could go on about a ton more features in Ultimate, but I believe that this will suffice to pique your interest! For all of the details and files, including documentation, I invite you to join my Discord server: https://discord.gg/XMYBvDA
Note: If you do not wish to use Discord, I am told that the ROM is available through some download links you can find on Google. However, I am not responsible or advocating for the distribution of the ROM via such links, and it may not be up-to-date or hotfixed.

CREDITS:

I would like to credit the following people who helped me in the process of creating this hack and learning about asm and Crystal disassembly hacking (which wouldn't exist without iiMarckus and co's work on the project). First of all, the fine pret folks that form the backbone of the pokecrystal github community, including Rangi (made countless great tutorials and Polished Crystal), others who made tutorials (such as growlie777), Seasick, Electro, ax6, Idain (also gave me his tailless Slowpoke sprite and I adapted his Hidden Power Guru code, among other credits mentioned in this document), i0brendan0, potato, TriAttackDev, TriteHexagon (created the night themes and helped me integrate them and contributed other music), Stan40 (title screen), and Mmmmmm and Pigu (many music themes). Thank you to ChattyCrystal for the files for the gen 3 Pokemon added and Nuukiie for the gen 7 one added, SirWhibbles for Lance's second in-battle sprite, which SailorShirayuki improved upon, and French Orange for back sprites, Lance's overworld sprite and touching up Clair's, which I've modified slightly, giving tips for improving the title screen's Celebi sprite, and Karate King (Molly helped FrenchOrange with this one).

I'd also like to especially thank Seasick, KDLPro and Idain, who helped quite a bit with some coding issues for some of the QoL changes and have been good friends and collaborators. As well, Solo0993's team made the unique icons I use for every Pokemon in the game (except Bayleef and Egg by Idain, and a few that I modified).

Finally, I extend much gratitude to the members of my Discord community who have supported me and given feedback throughout the ongoing development process, namely Jason Biggson/Ben&Co, Silky Shine, Idain, KDLPro, Sir Kitten Tavo, Ping Pong, Vamsi, KingCoocuroo, Jassu, albinocat2637, No_Honor, FyodorVoynich, and knight13117 (these last four helped notably with testing and feedback), Azurot, and Animage.

cool I'll try this out after work. Is there a phys/spec split?

Hey, glad my hack piqued your interest! There is no phys/spec split, no. The goal of this hack is to stay quite close to the OG game and mainly intends to balance, QoL and add only a tiny bit of content. Think somewhere between Perfect and Polished Crystal. I hope you end up checking it out despite the lack of a phys/spec split!

This definitely seems interesting, I'd love to try this out, but would you consider adding the 60 FPS feature from Prism or Polished crystal?

Thanks for your interest! If I had a clue how to do 60FPS, I would try haha. Sadly, I don't have the coding know-how to even know where to start with that, but I may look into it down the road

After reading the Google Docs for a while, you've got my interest in this hack.

I even made a team for my first run (At least when I battle the Elite Four).

Glad to see the hype! Sorry, I don't check this site too often and I guess I didn't have notifications on this thread, so only saw this now. Have you tried the demo out yet or joined the discord? I just updated the demo an hour ago or so, definitely a great time to hop in as I won't be updating until the final release essentially at this point (months away at least).

Major Agnostic said:

Glad to see the hype! Sorry, I don't check this site too often and I guess I didn't have notifications on this thread, so only saw this now. Have you tried the demo out yet or joined the discord? I just updated the demo an hour ago or so, definitely a great time to hop in as I won't be updating until the final release essentially at this point (months away at least).

Click to expand...

I haven't played the demo yet. I've got other things I'd like to do besides play Crystal Ultimate. Be it playing another hack, finding a different job near the end of the year, or something else, I'll give this hack a try once the final release comes out.

I'll wait patiently until then.

Hey I saw you in reddit.

Yo. Just edited this post to reflect the v0.8 changes

Hey man, this hack have potential to be most accurate and up to date 2Gen rom hack. Please, consider to split physica/special, this mechanic bring more reality to the game. Or a second patch with this feat. Great job man, really great. Think about it, a perfect rom man...

Arthur Ferreira said:

Hey man, this hack have potential to be most accurate and up to date 2Gen rom hack. Please, consider to split physica/special, this mechanic bring more reality to the game. Or a second patch with this feat. Great job man, really great. Think about it, a perfect rom man...

Click to expand...

I honestly don't see how it would change anything at this point. Ultimate actually is going back and addressing the type and Special stat split problems that would've been fixed by damage split. At this point it'd be redundant and would just break a whole lot more than it would improve.

One of the features is "significant AI improvements."
What was changed?

I guess I should reword that since it's a bit misleading. I haven't done a whole lot to the AI code itself, but all trainers have the best AI now, with the exception of item usage and switch frequency. In that sense, the AI seems significantly improved for average trainers from the player's perspective. From the documentation: "Every trainer now has the smarter AI used by 'boss trainers' and their 25% chance to miss status moves has been removed, along with some bugs (see the 'Bug Fixes' section), and challenging trainers now switch and use items more often."

However, the AI itself has been improved a bit. For example, Solarbeam is now a favoured move with Sunny Day, the AI is more likely to use OHKO moves if your evasion has been lowered, it no longer uses status moves on a Substitute, lowering opposing Pokemon's stats significantly can cause the AI to switch Pokemon, all trainers swap out at a Perish count of 1, and the AI is more likely to switch Pokemon when at a type disadvantage or if it predicts that you'll make a switch that will lead to a type disadvantage.

As for Arthur's comment (idk why the Respond option doesn't quote), Chronosplit basically addressed it. The point of Ultimate is to remaster Crystal with a focus on balance and increased difficulty and some additional content, not to remake it. To me, adding the split is more remake territory, since that's basically a battle system overhaul. I want this hack to feel like you're playing the best possible rendition of the original gen 2 game. Besides, other gen 2 improvement hacks of a similar nature have already done the split (Polished being an obvious example), whereas I'm not aware of a gen 2 hack that has gone to significant lengths to tighten up the original battle system. I think it'd be really neat if fans of gen 2 started a niche multiplayer community for Ultimate, as I think it could make for an interesting and diverse meta. More interesting than a copy of the modern battle system at least, not that that's bad or anything.

The wait is over, folks; Pokémon Crystal Ultimate v1.0, the complete hack, is out! I've just updated this post as well as files and documentation. I hope you all enjoy the complete version!

Question why does rival has a team of 6 överleveled pokemon at the beginning?

There's problems with some emulators. You won't encounter that if you use Retroarch with mGBA core (for mobile) or BGB (PC).

How do you get the mgba core because ive downloaded The retroarch but I cant seem to find it

Does cheats work for this game? Just wondering

You're the same person that asked these questions on Discord I'm guessing, so it's already been answered.