Stop using Pokemon Essentials to make fangames and use Pokemon Unity

Hi. This is a matter of relief.

You will see. The Pokemon franchise has constantly evolved over the years. To such an extent that it has abandoned pixelated 2D graphics in favor of more elaborate and pleasing to the eye 3D graphics.

If you don't believe me watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmU3N4yXBXw

But in the case of fangames. They seem to be stuck in the same thing over and over again, there has been no real evolution in those fangames. And with real evolution I mean the game engine change.

Well, fangames are still being done today with RPG Maker XP using Pokemon Essentials and they should know that RPG Maker XP is already an engine that has been very outdated for 16 years.

And the worst of those fangames are the bad optimization and the bad redemption that it has. I remember playing Pokemon Infernal Red and the game was almost unplayable, because it had many slowdowns and consumed a lot of RAM to the point that it could cause my computer to crash or explode. Making you stop playing that game due to the abusive consumption of RAM memory.

I have researched online and discovered something that could be the definitive replacement for Pokemon Essentials.

This is Pokemon Unity. A framework made by a YouTube user called Ilcolour Spectrum, designed for people who want to make Pokemon fangames within the Unity engine, and that are more like NDS games. That is, games that combine 2D graphics and 3D graphics, better known as 2.5D.

I am going to leave you the video about this project, you can click on the video to go directly to the video on YouTube to download the technical demo in the description:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XozaGOtIGys

I'm also going to leave a link to GitHub, to get the source code and modify it at will and create lots of forks:
https://github.com/PokemonUnity/PokemonUnity

I'm also going to leave a link to this little tutorial so you know how to make fangames with Pokemon Unity:
https://pokemonunity.gitbook.io/pokemon-unity/

Please. I ask you to stop using RPG Maker XP and Pokemon Essentials once and for all. Pokemon Unity is a thousand times better than those outdated programs. Talk to the people on the Whack to Hack forum and they are in favor of them stop using RPG Maker and move all their projects to Unity.

I don't care if programming in Unity is more complicated than RPG Maker for the simple fact that you don't have a pre-made base. Well, you already have it and it is Pokemon Unity. But if you want something like Mega Evolutions, Z Moves, Regional Forms etc. You will have to program all that from scratch yourself. Because Pokemon Unity only has the most basic and you will have to work the rest for yourself.

I hope this has worked and that there is finally a true evolution in the creation of Pokemon fangames.

People can make games however they like. If you only want to play games made with Unity, or that have 3D graphics, that's on you and you'll just have to accept that most people aren't making games like that.

Fan games are a hobby, no-one is under any obligation to do anything other than what they find most enjoyable. And especially not when it involves having to develop parts of the engine as you say for Mega Evolution, Z Moves, etc.

The way to convince people to switch isn't to endlessly complain that people aren't making things how you'd like, it's to listen to why people aren't making games with your engine and address those problems. People already understand how to use RMXP, why would they switch to a whole new thing that involves relearning all the commands and rewriting all their code and scripts? Write something as expansive and detailed as Thundaga's Pokémon Essentials tutorials. Build equivalents to all the popular resources such as Following Pokémon. Make your own game using it that is so impressive that other people come and willingly check it out.

Do anything besides this aggravating complaining that directly works against you.

Jcaraballo96 said:

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Moved this to Game Development, because it's not related to mainline Pokémon, which is what Pokémon General is more about.

Hey yo, Jcaraballo96. In all of your research, did you also notice how the dev teams of the 3d pokemon entries are approximately 5 times the size of the 2d entries?

it has abandoned pixelated 2D graphics in favor of more elaborate and pleasing to the eye 3D graphics

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You mean the 3d graphics that have been famously criticized for lacking the charm of the 2d entries?

Jcaraballo96 said:

I don't care if programming in Unity is more complicated than RPG Maker for the simple fact that you don't have a pre-made base. Well, you already have it and it is Pokemon Unity. But if you want something like Mega Evolutions, Z Moves, Regional Forms etc. You will have to program all that from scratch yourself. Because Pokemon Unity only has the most basic and you will have to work the rest for yourself.

I hope this has worked and that there is finally a true evolution in the creation of Pokemon fangames.

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So basically what I'm reading this as

I don't care if it's harder for you, the developer, who puts constant hours of work into making fangames, to suddenly learn a new engine from scratch and code in everything by yourself because there isn't as big of a development community as there is for Essentials. I want you to make games that appeal visually to me, the consumer, because what I want is what most important.

I hope you all cater to my whims and fancies.

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If you want people to make a switch, why don't you do something more productive- such as help to make the Unity-based engine have features equatable to those present in Essentials. You're not going to make people switch just because you want them to, or because a community elsewhere thinks people should.

Never mind the fact that alternatives to Essentials are in development and have been in development for a while. Until those are completed, and in a more stable and user-friendly format for people to use, don't expect people to move away from Essentials for a good long while. Have you actually done research on those? Or are you one of those people in the camp of "Oh if it's not using HgSs/DPPt/BW graphics then it's insignificant and not worth my time"? Because if it's the latter, then I'm sorry that you're so enraptured by graphics that you can't see the heart and soul people put into their projects. While you're at it, perhaps get some perspective for the fangame developers you criticize.

Let's also not forget how many people we've seen come and go with their "3D (often MMO) engines". The reality is that none of those 3D projects see it through to completion. In large part to total mismanagement and lack of structure, they've got their priority totally mixed up. They use rips from the official games, add some fancy shadows and lighting, and that's just about all they have to offer. They focus on visual effects and obscure features, rather than trying to implement a solid, expandable and dynamic inner structure that can be explained and interpreted.

And that's a mistake.

Part of Essentials/PSDK/MK's strength (being the three main 2D methods that I know of right now) is also the language. You can argue about Ruby being bad all you want, but it's an interpreted language that is much better-suited for third party support, modularity and extending and overwriting functionality. You're never going to get that level of control in a compiled language like C# which Pokémon Unity uses.

I happen to have toyed around with Pokémon Unity a few years ago, and can safely say the code is a mess. It's very unintuitive and very incomplete. Also, make no mistake - creating a grid-based map renderer with a simple eventing system isn't difficult, theoretically. I'm sure it's considerably more difficult in 3D than in 2D, but that doesn't make it any more than that - a map renderer. It's basic and fundamental, and not something that makes a game or engine worth using. I say that because if I recall, Pokémon Unity had a very incomplete and practically unusable battle system.

And that's only the technical aspect.

3D is not a feature, and 3D is not better nor worse than 2D. You can make a fantastic 2D game, or a fantastic 3D game. Pokémon's 3D games have received very critical and mixed opinions, so you couldn't possibly claim that they're automatically because, well, 3D.

Jcaraballo96 said:

But in the case of fangames. They seem to be stuck in the same thing over and over again, there has been no real evolution in those fangames. And with real evolution I mean the game engine change.

Well, fangames are still being done today with RPG Maker XP using Pokemon Essentials and they should know that RPG Maker XP is already an engine that has been very outdated for 16 years.

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People are well aware of this, and that's why there are multiple people working on alternative engines. I mentioned PSDK and MK before, but I also know Brom and Toby are working on an, in your words, "2.5D" engine.

Jcaraballo96 said:

I ask you to stop using RPG Maker XP and Pokemon Essentials once and for all. Pokemon Unity is a thousand times better than those outdated programs.

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This is just rude and inappropriate. You're in no place to ask someone to stop practising their hobby, and it's completely insensitive. Pokémon Unity is also by no definition better than Pokémon Essentials; they both have their fair share of issues - let's also not forget that the creator of Pokémon Unity has discontinued it. You won't get any in-depth creator-support for it.

Jcaraballo96 said:

I don't care if programming in Unity is more complicated than RPG Maker [...]

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This doesn't add much when you're not even an Essentials developer (and presumably not a Pokémon Unity developer either). The entitlement throughout this entire post, and certainly here, is appalling.

Jcaraballo96 said:

I hope this has worked and that there is finally a true evolution in the creation of Pokemon fangames.

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It certainly has worked, but in creating a bad image for yourself. I assure you the fangame development will see a true evolution one of these days, but this isn't the way to get there.

Personally, I'm not the kind of guy willing to make 3D models for a full game as a one man team and risk a cease and desist from Nintendo after who knows how many years of work, and plenty of people prefer the 2D aesthetics like myself.

Wait a minute, I remember you. You posted on my game thread that I should switch to Pokemon Unity because essentials is bad. Dude, essentials has way too many recources to make people switch at the moment, and harassing others on their game threads. (Some of which have been developing for years) And screaming at them to switch engines on those games is not a very realistic take on development. In fact, because you keep trying to force people onto this engine I will not be using it, even if I was remotely intrested.

Fangames are a hobby, a passion project. You are not entitled to them.

You clearly don't know how long development takes, especially a for a solo developer. Having to convert all your maps to 3D only to still have a fixed camera angle is a pointless waste of time, not to mention the fact that the EBS is superior than the battle system you have coded in. Please, don't keep making posts like this as they give you bad rep do to your entitlement and the fact that you don't know a lot about game development.

Whatever happened to those posts though, anyways? They dissipated really fast............

Unity is interesting. But forcing it to someone isn't the correct way of having people switch over. Ultimately I will switch over to unity. However it will be for a new IP and not pokemon. Too much work and no payoffs.

...

Anyway, I'm going back to my Essentials project... have fun with your elitism and bias against 2D graphics.

Very excited to see your superior 3D Pokemon project when you release it. I'm sure it's worth all the talk.