FireRed hack: Shuckle Version: Demo V1.2

mariomaniac432 · Apr 17, 2015

Introduction:

I know what you're thinking. Shuckle Version? Why would anyone make a hack based on Shuckle? Here's a better question: Wynaut?

Spoiler:

Okay, time to get serious about this. Well, sort of serious. Shuckle is my favorite Pokemon, and it doesn't get enough love. But let's be honest, it sucks. It's amazing Defense and Special Defense are almost worthless thanks to its incredibly poor HP. Not to mention that it's slower than molasses on a cold, Alaskan Tuesday, and getting attacked by it is like being taken off guard by a very, very, very small gust of wind. But I'm here to redeem Shuckle, and give it the glory it deserves!

Concept:

This was something I came up with about 5 years ago now, but never worked on outside of making some sprites. The main idea behind Shuckle Version that lead to it's development was this: What would happen if you took one Pokemon, and isolated it from the rest of the world for a very long period of time? In the real world, it would evolve, if you believe in evolution, that is. When Pokemon evolve, the change is often drastic, and takes seconds to complete. But in this scenario, the evolutionary process is slow, taking place over many years. Different groups of this Pokemon would have adapted to the various environments, resulting in several different, yet related, species, just like how there is more than once species many creatures on Earth, such as king crabs, for example.

With my main idea in hand, I then needed a Pokemon to use as my base. Shuckle was an easy choice. As I already stated, it's my favorite Pokemon. Additionally, it is not part of any evolutionary lines, which was vital to this project. A Pokemon that can evolve would require making sprites for it's evolution(s), which is a lot of work, or omitting them completely. Lastly, I felt that it's design opened up enough options for creating new sprites. Most other single stage Pokemon didn't seem like they would allow the flexibility to modify appendages, add wings, etc., the way Shuckle does.

And so, Shuckle Version was born! But why did it take me so long to really begin working on it? Two reasons, really. First, I'm not a spriter by any means. This project would require a lot of sprites to be made, and I was not looking foreword to that. Second, I'm not good a story-boarding, either. Also, I hate mapping, but that was less of a wall for me than the other two reasons. Basically, I'm not very creative, or I'm at least ot confident in my creativity. I can come up with a concept, but it's hard for me to create it. I'd prefer to do just the scripting and other programming aspects of hacking, so my idea kind of remained in limbo for a while, until I randomly got some ideas for this a few months ago.

Story:

Shuckle Version takes place on Shuckle Island. Shuckle Island is located far from the rest of the Pokemon World, and the only species of Pokemon to ever have inhabited this region is Shuckle. These Shuckle have changed over time, and adapted to the various climates on Shuckle Island. Normal Shuckle no longer exist, having all become the many species that exist today. Humans came back to Shuckle Island only recently, and declared it a nature preserve. To preserve it's unique ecosystem, no outside Pokemon could be brought to Shuckle Island, and no Shuckle could be taken to other regions in the Pokemon World, either.

On the eastern peninsula of Shuckle Island is Outset Town, the home of Professor Larch, Shuckle Island's local Pokemon Professor. The main focus of his research is evolution. What caused the Shuckle evolve differently from the rest of the world, and how does their evolutionary process work? This is the question he hopes to one day answer. He is currently working on completing the Shuckle Dex, a specialized version of the Poke Dex, designed to gather information on the Shuckle on Shuckle Island. You also live in Outset Town, along with your mother. Fascinated by his research, you go to Prof. Larch's lab everyday. Some day, you wish to go on an adventure throughout Shuckle Island, Shuckle Dex in hand, as Prof. Larch's assistant.

About a year ago, in the morning after a stormy night, Prof. Larch found a lone Pokemon Egg on the shore. With no parent Pokemon in sight, he decides to keep it. Having o Pokemon of your own, Prof. Larch allows you to help him take care of it until it hatches. One day, it appears as though the egg is about to hatch, and you are called to his lab to watch...

Features:

Over 50 different Shuckle species to capture
MrDollSteaks's Decap and Attack Rombase
Running indoors
No HMs! (OK, they're still there, but TMs are reusable, so I made them all TMs since I doubt I'll use all 50 TMs with only 56 Pokemon)
Berry System (currently not working, and Demo V2.0 won't be released until it is)

Screenshots:

These screenshots are all from the 1.2 Demo, and from an unreleased Demo V1.5 and are thus not up to date with the current story

Spoiler:

Meet the Shuckle!

For those of you who don't care about spoilers, here's all the Shuckle sprites in the current Shuckle Dex order, as well as their names and type combinations. Names, sprites, and Dex order are still subject to change, but most are final. Some names, sprites, and Dex orders may vary from the Demo versions 1.2 and older.

Spoiler:

Downloads:

Shuckle Version: Demo V1.2¹
Shuckle Version: Demo V2.0² Coming Soon!

¹ Apply patch to an English FireRed V1.0 ROM ² Due to changes in Vars and Flags, as well as the story, V2.0 and newer is not compatible with older demos. If you played the old demos, you will have to restart your game or you will be unable to progress.

Bugs/Errors:

HM Logo appears behind TM number (actually, I think it's fixed now, I forget)
What hatching an egg, palettes are incorrect. I'm not sure what caused this, perhaps I accidentally overwrote the Egg palette?
At some point during testing, TM 49 (Rock Smash) disappeared from my bag. If this happens to you, please let me know

FAQs/Help:

Dash is too powerful, especially his Shufang! Is there an easy way to beat him without grinding?

Spoiler:

Credits/Tools Used:

MrDollSteak: MrDollSteak's Decap and Attack Rombase 1.5a
karatekid552: Gen 3 ROM Hacking Suite
Kurapika: Gen 3 Tools 2.9.1
link12552: NSE 2.1 and 2.0
HackMew: XSE
LosksmithArmy: Complete Multi-Choice Box Editor
LU-HO: Advance-Map 1.92
HxD: All Hex editing done in this program
Microsoft Paint: All custom sprites made here, by me
FBI Agent: All ASM routines I'm using come from his ASM Resouce Thread
Quick Research & Development Thread: I don't even remember what all I found here, but there was quite a bit

chrunch · Apr 17, 2015

So are the only Pokemon you can get the variants of Shuckle? If so, aren't 30 fakemon too few for a full game? I imagine it would get repetitive just seeing 30 variations of one pokemon for an entire game. It's a creative idea, but I don't know how well it would translate to a hack.

Jukai · Apr 17, 2015

chrunch said:
So are the only Pokemon you can get the variants of Shuckle? If so, aren't 30 fakemon too few for a full game? I imagine it would get repetitive just seeing 30 variations of one pokemon for an entire game. It's a creative idea, but I don't know how well it would translate to a hack.

He said over 30. ;)

Anyway, the concept is great! But I'll have to test out the demo for myself soon. I'll let you know what I think after.

mariomaniac432 · Apr 17, 2015

chrunch said:
So are the only Pokemon you can get the variants of Shuckle? If so, aren't 30 fakemon too few for a full game? I imagine it would get repetitive just seeing 30 variations of one pokemon for an entire game. It's a creative idea, but I don't know how well it would translate to a hack.

The actual total is 38. I'm attempting to justify this way: In Red and Blue, there were 151 Pokemon. That's over four times the amount in my hack. But is encountering Golbat later in the game really all that different from encountering Zubat early in the game? Not really, it's still just a Zubat when you get right down to it, just powered up and it gives more EXP. If we only count the number of different evolutionary lines, we're left with around 80. This is now just over twice the amount as in this hack, as opposed to over four times as many. And on top of that, many of these lines are encountered over and over and over as it is, either in random encounters or trainer battles, such as Oddish, Pidgey, Zubat, and Ekans, and some are never seen at all. I also don't (currently) have as many planned locations for this hack as other hacks might have, and I'm going to try my best to keep a decent amount of variation between each location (i.e. the wild Pokemon that appear in this Demo won't be on every Route for the next 5 Routes like in all the original Pokemon games). Lastly, the finished hack will probably be a little shorter than FireRed's full story, to compensate for the lack of Pokemon. I may add more if I deem it necessary, but I don't plan to. I'm all Shuckled out after making so many Shuckle sprites, anyway.

trenhoj · Apr 17, 2015

Hmmm. One word.

Awesome!!!

Love it.

chrunch · Apr 18, 2015

So I had some time to play through your demo. Found a couple of bugs (and some other things):

Spoiler:

Some feedback:

Your mapping leaves much to be desired. A lot of it is just empty fields, you should make more use of decorations like bushes, fences, etc. Use some trees in the empty spaces so it feels like there's more of a "structure" to the towns.
The tour guide's Shufang is very strong for that point in the game. Bug bite absolutely destroyed my lvl 16 Midckle, and it's made even worse by the low money you have for medicine and the fact that the only spot to grind has lvl 4-5 pokemon. If you don't want to make the tour guide weaker at least make it easier to prepare. Perhaps in the next version, you could make it possible to go to the next route before beating the gym so you can battle some more trainers?
Outside of the starter town, there aren't any NPCs walking around in towns. A few of these would be nice to make the world feel more alive.
I like the Shuckles but I feel like when you've already encountered 14 by the first tour guide, you're going to run out of new ones quickly. I think there should be a more even spread (or more of them :P), so that even late in the game you can find new ones and it won't get stale so quickly.

Other than that, I had fun and it's a very novel concept. The sprites aren't amazing but they're serviceable. If you can iron out some of the issues I pointed out, it could be even better. I look forward to more!

mariomaniac432 · Apr 18, 2015

Thanks for the input and finding errors!

I had most of the errors corrected on earlier versions I made before the demo, but must have forgotten to edit my uncompiled scripts before making the demo. It looks like I just forgot to save Shuclaw's dex entry and the Poke Bal key item description because I remeber making them. Since this was just intended to be a demo, I left out a lot of things like almost all the sign scripts and NPCs. They will all be implemented in the first non-demo, however. As for icons, I just made them all the same for now. For most of the early Shuckle, a simply recolor like you said will suffice, but for some later ones it will be a bit more complicated than that.

I thought Dash might be too strong, but I needed more input to be certain. Before releasing the demo, I battled him with a team consisting on Shucloud, Shuclaw, and Midckle, all Lv 13, and got crushed. But after I lowered the level of each of his Pokemon by one I was able to win without any further grinding, so I thought he might be OK where he was. Though it probably would have been doable the first time if I had a Scrappy Shuclaw instead of Tough Claws. The next area will almost definitely have some Pokemon to grind against before hand though. I'm also considering increasing the base EXP yield of some Pokemon to make up for the lack of evolutions that would yield more later in the game, and make grinding less of a chore. Base stats aren't final yet either, Shufang has an above average attack stat and Strong Jaw (~~which actually doesn't affect Bug Bite though, but I'll change that later~~ I looked it up in my hex editor and it does affect it, I assumed it didn't because it doesn't affect it in the real games) to make up for it's lack of STAB moves that fit it's theme of biting attacks, but I may have to lower it. Others like Shuclaw and Shucloud I've decided need a small buff since I want everything to be viable throughout the whole game, and while Shuclaw seems powerful early, I don't think he'll be able to keep up later. I'll probably just remove it from his team though, and give him something else.

Spriting and mapping are definitely my two weakest areas, though my mapping has actually improved, believe it or not.I was quite proud with how Route 1 turned out, especially compared to how my older maps from years ago look. As for spriting, I actually first had this idea almost 4 years ago, and made about 20 or so sprites back then (I never did anything with this hack beyond making those sprites because I no longer had time). A few of them I already have plans to change because I've had better ideas, but basic splicing is all I'm capable of on my own, thus far at least. Out of the ones that appear in the demo, these include Wormckle and Shucloud for certain. Most of my more "creative" sprites don't appear in the demo, however.

Edit: I've updated the download link with Demo V1.1. All the errors found by chrunch have been corrected.

Bela · Apr 19, 2015

This is a really cute idea. I like it. I'll have to play the demo when I get a chance.

I really hope there's something like a ~Legendary Shuckle~ to find in this hack =]

kleenexfeu · Apr 19, 2015

Hi, I love your idea of slow evolution but you didn't do what I meant when I read your concept.
What do you think about having shuckles that have many form that they can evolve. Exemple : lvl BS = 250, lvl 5 evolve with BS = 290, lvl 10 evolve with BS = 335... an so on
If you creat 30ish lines like that it would be far better.
And also, what do you think about having 10-ish base shuckle (with 10 evolutions) and I don't know, 10 weedle base
I know it's a lot of work but it would be awesome :)

mariomaniac432 · Apr 20, 2015

Bela said:
This is a really cute idea. I like it. I'll have to play the demo when I get a chance.

I really hope there's something like a ~Legendary Shuckle~ to find in this hack =]

You'll just have to find out for yourself when I get more of this done ;)

kleenexfeu said:
Hi, I love your idea of slow evolution but you didn't do what I meant when I read your concept.
What do you think about having shuckles that have many form that they can evolve. Exemple : lvl BS = 250, lvl 5 evolve with BS = 290, lvl 10 evolve with BS = 335... an so on
If you creat 30ish lines like that it would be far better.
And also, what do you think about having 10-ish base shuckle (with 10 evolutions) and I don't know, 10 weedle base
I know it's a lot of work but it would be awesome :)

I get what you're saying, but it's just not what I'm going for with this. I considered giving a few evolutions at one point, and even made some Shuckle that are clearly derived from other Shuckle I already made that could have just been evolutions, but the reason they're separate is because they were once the same species, but for one reason or another some of them adopted traits that others didn't, and became a separate species. I think you're idea is good too, but as I said, I'm not really a spriter. I can't make anything myself, just splice. It's also really hard for me to come up with ideas for sprites that make sense, at least for the dual-types. Making a bunch of versions of the same one would probably drive me insane, lol. Despite this, today at work I had a couple of ideas for more Shuckle. I can probably increase the number to at least 45, but it won't be easy for me.

Also, I'll likely be updating the download link sometime tomorrow with a few more changes. After that I'll begin working on the whole thing again!

punkysaur · Apr 20, 2015

Interesting concept!I won't comment about how it is until the beta comes out but surely its something new.And I always am excited for anything which is "Out of The Box"!

NeoSpeedFreak · Apr 20, 2015

I only have one question:

Spoiler:

Deokishisu · Apr 20, 2015

This is a really fun, and almost nonsensically zany, concept that I can't wait to try out. However, if Shuckle Island really is so isolated, why are Team Rocket the villains? You would think that if people from Kanto/Johto could get to Shuckle Island, the Island itself would have more Pokemon species than just offshoots of Shuckle. I mean, if we look at the history of formerly isolated places with unique species on them (like Australia) you see a history of introduced, invasive species when newcomers (like Team Rocket would be) arrive. I could definitely see Team Rocket showing up with their Zubat, Raticate, Ekans, etc. and throwing off the balance of the native Shuckle. And if Team Rocket could get here, any irresponsible person could get here and release their Pokemon into Shuckle Island's ecology. It's just a big plot problem that I see; it almost breaks the premise for me.

mariomaniac432 · Apr 20, 2015

NeoSpeedFreak said:
I only have one question:

Spoiler:

Is this going to be a legendary?

Lol, that would be awesome, but no.

Deokishisu said:
This is a really fun, and almost nonsensically zany, concept that I can't wait to try out. However, if Shuckle Island really is so isolated, why are Team Rocket the villains? You would think that if people from Kanto/Johto could get to Shuckle Island, the Island itself would have more Pokemon species than just offshoots of Shuckle. I mean, if we look at the history of formerly isolated places with unique species on them (like Australia) you see a history of introduced, invasive species when newcomers (like Team Rocket would be) arrive. I could definitely see Team Rocket showing up with their Zubat, Raticate, Ekans, etc. and throwing off the balance of the native Shuckle. And if Team Rocket could get here, any irresponsible person could get here and release their Pokemon into Shuckle Island's ecology. It's just a big plot problem that I see; it almost breaks the premise for me.

It's explained very early in the demo that Team Rocket has been operating completely under the radar prior to the game's story. In order to do so, they would not be using Pokemon not native to the region for their missions, as that would have been a dead-give away. Giving certain special trainers like the Tour Guides non-native Pokemon was something I considered early on, but decided against. I thought about that last part as well, and in order to preserve the unique ecosystem the island has, there is an island-wide law against bringing in outside Pokemon and taking these Shuckle out, making it almost like a nature preserve for them. And isolated doesn't necessarily mean it's so far out of reach that no one can get there. If that were the case, the player wouldn't live there either, and there would be no game at all. It is far away, but that's why boats and planes exist. The Unova region is also far away from the rest of the Pokemon World, hence the lack of wild Pokemon not native to Unova, but that doesn't stop people from traveling there.

slim spazzy · Apr 23, 2015

Wow! I really like the concept of this hack. Great to see something original and not the cliche everday game.

yaiba990 · Apr 25, 2015

I just finished the demo 10 minutes ago and honestly, I am impressed. This game has a very creative approach to Pokemon. Hope Demo gonna come out soon

Sniper · Apr 27, 2015

I liked it. It's cute. That's right. I'll play it when full version comes out. Good luck cause it's cute. Shuckle is cute.

Lycanthropy · Apr 28, 2015

This is such complete nonsense. I like it!

Laguna · Apr 29, 2015

This is hilarious, I love it. I played the demo and I liked it, the only complaints I have is that some places need to be fleshed out, particularly Nextown and Route 2 since a lot of it is just empty space. Other than that, it's fine so far =3 I had some frustrations with Dash, but eventually I just gave up trying to do strategy and just level grinded my everything to Level 15 and curbstomped everything.

Also I don't know why Green would know that the Midckle pokéball would be from Team Rocket but that's just more of a nitpick so it's not really important.

mariomaniac432 · Apr 29, 2015

Thanks for all the positive feedback, everyone! I've been working on this whenever I have time, and I'm currently finishing up scripts for Route 3 right now. I'll hopefully release a much longer demo by the end of May.

striderviper said:
This is hilarious, I love it. I played the demo and I liked it, the only complaints I have is that some places need to be fleshed out, particularly Nextown and Route 2 since a lot of it is just empty space. Other than that, it's fine so far =3 I had some frustrations with Dash, but eventually I just gave up trying to do strategy and just level grinded my everything to Level 15 and curbstomped everything.

Also I don't know why Green would know that the Midckle pokéball would be from Team Rocket but that's just more of a nitpick so it's not really important.

When you talk to him, he has asks you "What brings you here?" which is followed by several "..."s. During this silence, it was supposed to be implied that that you are telling him how you found Midckle, and are describing what the person who dropped it looks like. In the next release, Route 3 will be partially accessible prior to defeating Dash, and with it comes a new Shuckle that should make the battle slightly easier.

Lastly, I've added a FAQ/Help section. It gives a suggested strategy for defeating Dash with minimal grinding, though it does require patience in order to catch one of Route 2's rare Shuckle.

FireRed hack: Shuckle Version: Demo V1.2

More options

mariomaniac432

Shuckle Master

chrunch

Jukai

JET DINO, YEAH

mariomaniac432

Shuckle Master

trenhoj

The Pikadex Gym leader and shiny hunter

chrunch

mariomaniac432

Shuckle Master

Bela

Banned

kleenexfeu

mariomaniac432

Shuckle Master

punkysaur

NeoSpeedFreak

A piece of meat

Deokishisu

Mr. Magius

mariomaniac432

Shuckle Master

slim spazzy

Kik: spazzyda59

yaiba990

Sniper

ふゆかい

Lycanthropy

[cd=font-family:Special Elite;font-size:16px;color

Laguna

Sir Zangoose

mariomaniac432

Shuckle Master