Need help understanding the difficulty of implementing certain features

Hey guys, I'm looking to make a pokemon game and there are some new features and reworks to existing features that I want some help understanding. In order to prevent myself from aiming too high, especially since the only thing I know is art. I don't expect all of these ideas to be winners and would like feedback on

So first things, first, I wanted to add another type to the game. The game already has "sound" type moves so I wanted to implement an actual Sound type. The main reasons I wanted to add this type are to add something more unique (though I'm sure it has been done before) and because I wanted to change up the balance between types. Plus I think it could lead to some really cool pokemon and move ideas. Plus, changing old pokemon into sound types via being regional variants could make them more interesting (I'm looking at you, Exploud) Like one idea I had for an attack is it would deal damage, and then "reverberate" off the environment and hit again the next turn at greatly reduced power.

Sound Type Pokemon. Type Match-Ups:

Super-effective against: Fairy, Steel, Ghost (for both flavor and balance reasons)
Weak to: Ice (sound travels slower through cold air because air molecules are more resistant to change), Flying (strong wind makes sounds harder to hear), Water (sound doesnt travel very well through water)
Resists: Psychic, Ghost, Fairy, Fighting
Is Resisted by: Ground (immune), Ice, Electric
Immunities: none.
All sound-based moves become Sound-type. Examples: Uproar, Screech, Supersonic, Boomburst


The other, possibly bigger, I dont know, change would be a complete rework of the EV and IV system.
I was thinking about having a sort of monastery in the game where you would bring your pokemon to meditate and decide the EV allocation. In this system, every pokemon would award a generalized EV that did not affect stats at all until they meditated on their experiences. Evs would be awarded based on the stage of evolution (so 1-3/ pokemon) and would still cap at 510, with 252 still being the max for each stat. The reason I wanted to do this is to give people more direct control over the stats of their pokemon.

As for IV's, a theme of this game idea is overcoming yourself and realizing your own truth, so I wanted to make IV's based on friendship. Every pokemon would start at 0 IV's for every stat and then as you grew closer to them, those stats would passively increase. Going with this, I wanted to put more emphasis on the relationship between the trainer and their partner pokemon where unlike other pokemon, the maximum friendship value is tripled. This would be locked until reaching a certain point in the game where the bond between the trainer and pokemon grows further, allowing certain specific stats of the partner pokemon to continue to increase up to a max bonus of 93, instead of 31. This idea is spawned from the anime since it seems like Ash's Pikachu is exceptionally powerful and seems to be much stronger than basically every other Pikachu. Plus I'm super sappy and love the cheesy message of friendship allowing you to surpass your natural limits that's pretty common in anime lol Also breeding is time-consuming as hell and, while I'm good at it, I'd rather not have to do it at all in a fan game like this.

I also wanted to add at least 60 new pokemon to the game and offer lots of regional variants (hopefully like 20-40) of existing pokemon. I'm probably the only one who liked the idea of dex cuts with 8 gen so I'm aiming for a smaller pokedex of around 300-400, but we'll see how it goes.

Last thing, and this might just outright be gone because I'm still unsure of what I want the story and legendary for the region to be, the running idea of the legendary is that it warps reality to force the innermost desires and truths of pokemon and people to manifest (the evil "team" wants to create a world without lies, where the current deepest emotions are forced to forefront and becoming the defining characteristic of the individual), resulting in multiple different forms of the same pokemon. For example, A Flareon could gain the Water, Electric, or Dark type in addition to its previous Fire type and these bonus types would be determined randomly. These would also affect the movesets and appearance of the pokemon.

To directly reiterate my questions here: how hard is each of these to actually implement. What is the learning curve required of someone to pull this off? How many years of development would this take, if you had to guess? Do any of these ideas stick out to you in a positive way or negative way? Why?

DeathstickeR said:

Cut for brevity.

Click to expand...

1. New type: In my opinion, it's a pretty good thing to start on since it involves use of basic image editing and basic hex editing involving expanding data tables and what not. It can take a lot of work if you screw up though. I'd suggest looking at one of the tutorials in the Tutorial section on adding new types without replacing old ones. There's one for Ruby/Sapphire, one for Emerald and one for Fire Red (mine, but the images are messed up).

2. New EV and IV system: Doing this by yourself is very complicated. I believe you'd have to completely rewrite how the game handles them.

3. Adding new pokemon: Pretty easy right now. There are various programs and patches that allow you to add in pokemon to a total of about 1000-ish. They're located in the Tutorial and Tools seciton.

4. Pokemon forms: I'm not too familiar with adding new forms. Alternatively, you could just add new pokemon that simply have the same dex number, and add a new type that on the surface is Fire, but has additional weaknesses. So basically a combination of 1 and 3.

To make things easier, I'm pretty sure you can do all of these things by implementing the Complete Fire Red Upgrade files to your rom. It's located in the Resources and Development section and there are more details in that thread.

ShyRayq said:

1. New type: In my opinion, it's a pretty good thing to start on since it involves use of basic image editing and basic hex editing involving expanding data tables and what not. It can take a lot of work if you screw up though. I'd suggest looking at one of the tutorials in the Tutorial section on adding new types without replacing old ones. There's one for Ruby/Sapphire, one for Emerald and one for Fire Red (mine, but the images are messed up).

2. New EV and IV system: Doing this by yourself is very complicated. I believe you'd have to completely rewrite how the game handles them.

3. Adding new pokemon: Pretty easy right now. There are various programs and patches that allow you to add in pokemon to a total of about 1000-ish. They're located in the Tutorial and Tools seciton.

4. Pokemon forms: I'm not too familiar with adding new forms. Alternatively, you could just add new pokemon that simply have the same dex number, and add a new type that on the surface is Fire, but has additional weaknesses. So basically a combination of 1 and 3.

To make things easier, I'm pretty sure you can do all of these things by implementing the Complete Fire Red Upgrade files to your rom. It's located in the Resources and Development section and there are more details in that thread.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply! Im glad to know that adding a new type is a good place to start and I thought the EV and IV thing would be like that. Seems like something I'll have to cut. And I was looking at the upgrade thing before, but i'll have a look over it again. When it comes to literally anything to do with code my brain ties a knot on itself so I figured I wouldnt be able to understand it lol