[Released] Pokemon Ethereal Gates

I am so looking forward to this.

Now I don't want to fall victim to any hype of whatnot, or find myself throwing around strong adjectives and praise, but I can honestly say this is certainly the greatest thing to ever be created in all of the history of mankind.

Looks pretty interesting! I never gave Pokemon games from RPG maker a try, but I'll defenitely try this one

Just saw this on Reddit, and I gotta say it looks really intriguing! Good luck with this project.

Found this on Reddit too, pretty excited!

So...who's the main coder for the game? (just curious).

I'd recommend using a darker colour for the item list in the bag interface. Clashing with the light background like that, really makes it difficult to read. The shadow helps, but not enough. Just make sure the font contrasts the background clearly. I also find the "overlapping" trees to look a little weird the way they are. They end abruptly when in contact with another. (I'm not a huge fan of that "HP" and "EXP" font either)

But that's all the C&C feedback I can give on the screenshots you provided us with. I'm sure you guys get enough praise already, so I don't feel the need to repeat all that.

Luka S.J. said:

So...who's the main coder for the game? (just curious).

I'd recommend using a darker colour for the item list in the bag interface. Clashing with the light background like that, really makes it difficult to read. The shadow helps, but not enough. Just make sure the font contrasts the background clearly. I also find the "overlapping" trees to look a little weird the way they are. They end abruptly when in contact with another. (I'm not a huge fan of that "HP" and "EXP" font either)

But that's all the C&C feedback I can give on the screenshots you provided us with. I'm sure you guys get enough praise already, so I don't feel the need to repeat all that.

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Thanks for the C&C Luka! We'll keep that in mind! Of course everything in the game is still very much in the works and subject to change. Our main coder of the game is Aaron Schmitz (Nebaku). We're still looking for another coder, someone with extensive knowledge of Ruby Scripting.

Are there gonna be real Pokemon in it? 'Cause I'm kinda partial to games that include the original 721, personally.

The art direction on this project is quite impressive. I look forward to seeing future updates!

Hey everyone!

So I've put together a subreddit where you can keep up with some more in-depth updates for the game, as well as create polls, fan art, and other things.

http://www.reddit.com/r/etherealgates/

There's some Q&A with the team as well which is awesome, and also some newly revealed art/information about Bubull (and perhaps more to come!)

In addition, here's the other stuff for the project if you want to follow!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/etherealgates
Twitter: https://twitter.com/etherealgates
Tumblr: http://pokemonetherealgates.tumblr.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBkNvbQ9AOAEpFNASyvGe0w
Deviantart: http://perihelion-projects.deviantart.com/?hc_location=ufi

Am I sensing some sort of Darwin/Beak of the Finch with Avinch and Professor Hawthorne?

.kirakinn. said:

Am I sensing some sort of Darwin/Beak of the Finch with Avinch and Professor Hawthorne?

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Haha nope, that was just a happy accident! If Professor Hawthorne has a connection to any pokemon, it would be Haibril, the pokemon you see in the third screenshot.

I actually made an account just to say, this is amazing. Honestly I have never seen this much work put into things such as art and the new pokemon.
Oddly enough I'm usually against new regions and fakemons, but this game looks like it'll pull it off.

WinterWonter said:

I actually made an account just to say, this is amazing. Honestly I have never seen this much work put into things such as art and the new pokemon.
Oddly enough I'm usually against new regions and fakemons, but this game looks like it'll pull it off.

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Wow, that's quite the compliment Winter, it's much appreciated!(though pokecommunity is awesome, do check the rest of the place out in your spare time)

And yes, we are trying to emulate the quality of a new pokemon release best we can. Obviously by using rpgmaker xp and essentials we are slightly limited on the software front of that, but we hope the quality of the story/sound/graphics will all make up for that. Thanks for the interest :)

Looks really cool, I might touch up the HP bars a bit, "Avinch Lv 4" looks misaligned.

I cannot wait for this game to come out! it looks so good and the story sounds captivating. you guys did a great job making this game so far, keep up the good work! ill be following this games progress closely:)

Check out some more info on the starters in this Facebook Album!
https://www.facebook.com/etherealgates/photos_stream

It looks pretty good so far. It's nice to see, when people actually put some work into graphics/sound design. However, it would by far not be the first game that features a custom region and custom Pokemon. I'm also more of a gameplay fan, anyway, so it would be neat to know, if there's going to be new gameplay elements as well. You know, something that fills the void that's created because of the lack of multiplayer options, that also adds something unique to your game, simply because all the other fangames don't have that. Something that actually makes me like "Oh, this feature is awesome. I totally want to play this game over the million other fangames out there that just all feel like carbon copies of each other."

BadSamaritan said:

Now, without a dedicated coder(I do it but don't like it), that's not easy to achieve. I can say this though, I personally am working on a new gameplay element that will be present in the demo. With that in mind, assuming we can get 1-2 people more interested in coding, we would have every intention of adding even more elements in the full release.!

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I believe, it is possible to add new gameplay mechanics, without even needing to write a single line of Ruby code, that's also relatively easy to build. One example that comes to my mind is that sneaking/disguise scene in Pokemon Insurgance. Since you don't have any Pokemon, you have to solve your problem (escaping from the evil guys) and what better way than disguising yourself and then sneaking out of their reach? That would also create interesting scenarios in later parts of the game, because you can give the player options: does he want to enter the building of the evil guys by the front door, where has to fight his way through hordes of Grunts, or does he rather take the secret path, disguise himself and sneak in, while avoiding being caught. Giving exclusive rewards for doing things differently also creates replay value, because the player wants to know, what happens if he takes the other route he didn't pick while playing the last time and all it takes are the sprite of the player character and a couple switches that control NPC behavior (and obviously you have to dedicate part of your level design for that purpose, but that's something coders don't need to deal with).

Now, that definitely doesn mean that I want you to build said feature into your game, because what gameplay you can use highly depends on what game you want to create and I certainly am not allowed to dictate you how to build your game. It's rather an example to illustrate what I mean with "new gameplay mechanics". :)