[Developing] Procedural Pokemon

Hi guys! This is my debut of a project I have been working on solo for a few months. Title is kind of temporary til I think of a better one.

It's a little different than what I've seen out there, mainly because the map is procedurally generated! This means that each game you play will have a unique region to explore, with the Pokemon that appear on routes also being assigned differently each time.

I've always loved designing procedurally generated content, and enjoyed Pokemon games, so I put two and two together and started working on it. Now, there are admittedly a LOT of features still missing (it's a little boring, even :x ), but I feel it is at least at a point where it's playable enough to get some feedback on the idea.


The game is programmed in Java, as simple desktop application. I elected to create my own game engine rather than relying on existing tools, although I have mostly tried to match the mechanics of the actual games as closely as possible. I know a lot of fan-games and hacks have a heavy story emphasis, but since my main focus is on the procedurally generated aspect it hasn't been a priority for me, so there isn't a story planned right now. If I were to include one, it would probably need to be fairly generic in order to work very will within the context of a randomized game world.


So without further adieu, here is the current state of affairs!


+World generation
+Generates a series of "cities" connected by routes that have various biomes
+The biome of the routes determine what pokemon can be assigned to appear there when the game is generated
+3 biomes: grassland, forest, mountain
-"Cities" are lame and just contain a pokemon center. Boo!



+40 species of pokemon. This includes #1-40 in the National pokedex.
+Support for stone evolutions and evolution via leveling up
+Will learn moves from leveling up (based on gen 6 movesets, if the move is implemented)
+In the spirit of testing, the game starts you off with 3 random pokemon. This will be dropped later.



+Items: currently the only items are Balls (ultra, great, poke) and evolution stones
-The items are kinda just everywhere at the moment, the actual rarity and distribution will be tweaked when the game is more "complete"

+Most of the normal game menus, including the PC storage system
+Saving/loading (if a save file exists in the directory where you launch the game, it is automatically loaded. No file selector atm)
-No main menu! The game launches immediately, either into a loaded or new game.



+Battle system
+Damage correctly calculated using the damage formula.
+Accuracy, critical hits, and type effectiveness is calculated, including Fairy typing
+Support for stat raising/lowering moves, moves with nonstandard critical hit ratio, multi-hit moves (e.g. Fury Swipes), moves that never miss, moves with higher/lower priority
-Some moves with unimplemented secondary effects are added but with partial functionality
-Status conditions are not implemented
-Abilities are not implemented

-NPCs/Trainers/Gyms :C
-This is probably the most important thing that is completely missing. Even Nurse Joy is absent, and healing at the pokemon center is done at the PC for the time being. I have some work to do overhauling the message system for the game before I can really add trainers. But that will probably be next!
-Progression - since there are no trainers or gyms, there isn't really a pressing reason to explore the map besides catching pokemon in the limited biomes available. Once NPCs/Trainers are added the generation will be modified so that the wild pokemon's levels increase as you move further from home, etc.

-Most animations :C
-Again, this will be glaringly apparent. Besides the player's walking animation, there isn't a lot of liveliness in the game. No move animations, no evolution animation, no bobbing flowers, no sliding doors. Mostly just because I'm focusing on functional things before pretty things :s


Well, that about wraps it up! Give it a whirl and let me know what you think so far.

If you find any bugs/issues, please let me know (there are a few outstanding ones, I will put up a list of known issues soon). While I am not actively searching for help with this project as it's just something I've been doing for fun, if you like the project and are capable of making a contribution feel free to inquire!

Download (executable .jar file, requires Java to run):

after playing it a bit, might I suggest taking a preexisting randomizer pokemon engine and just inserting world generation, they already have pokemon randomization down, so just the world generation would be needed
good job recreating the basics btw, and in like 2 mb at that

Very cool! I'm obsessed with procedural content, so it's nice to see others making progress in the area :)

I enjoy the ASCII-art maps that get logged out, I assume that's the world map? What are the groups of numbers about, maybe the boundaries of the towns?

EDIT: A year late, oops!