Pokemon: Saints

Pokemon: Saints is spawned from a concept that has probably always floated around Pokemon fangame sites, but I am yet to see done successfully*: you are a member of a Team, the criminal organizations of the Pokemon world.

Ariel is young, only fifty years since initially colonized, and the government has yet to truly find its footing. Law is hard, largely enforced by private security forces hired by the numerous private enterprises who are leading the colonization, and it has good reason to be - the region is hardly self sufficient, with many of its supplies and necessities being imported from the other, more populous areas and most funding coming from outside interests.

It is the perfect environment for corruption and crime to grow.

Spoiler:

⁂Real-time Battles

Fights between trainers no longer take place in a civilized, turn-based, otherworldly battle scene between two prissy farmboys who got their first Pokemon from some ambling old man - you're fighting on the streets, where each fight is a matter of life and death. Your Pokemon fight on the overworld in real time, dancing between buildings and trees to deliver devastating attacks. Their trainers are in on the action now, too, keeping close to give commands and courage to their charges while attempting to avoid blows which may be fatal.

⁂Criminal Activities

You will receive, stumble upon and concoct opportunities for you to increase your power and standing in the eyes of the criminal community. Ranging from abusing a shop keeper to earn protection money all the way up to capturing and using a Pokemon of immense power to bend the world to your will, your actions will alter the world around you and make you the stuff of legends.

⁂Territory

However, you won't easily be able to achieve your goals with only what you start with - competing Teams have buildings, sources of income and special items which you will want to obtain, fighting them to take over their territory and utilizing it to your own nefarious ends.


⁂Heroes and Police

However, the law of Ariel won't just let you take over; the police and private security firms will oppose you at every turn, and young farmboy heroes from will journey from across the ocean to put a stop to your rise.



And much more! This thread will be updated as each feature is refined, improved and fleshed out and new features are added.




Credits:

*If anyone knows of a game where it has been done well, I would love it if you could shoot me a message with a name or a link.

Pokemon Ranger map rips:
· InMooseWeTrust

NPC, Player and Pokemon sprite rips:
· The good people of TSR.

Good game, seems like you scripted a lot to make this.

I am waiting for a release!

Good luck, keep the quality at the same level the whole way through.

FinalEclipse said:

Good game, seems like you scripted a lot to make this.

I am waiting for a release!

Good luck, keep the quality at the same level the whole way through.

Click to expand...

He scripted nothing.. This is all images. I dont really like the images but your story is decent...

Yes! A pokemon "Fable" like game! Finally! And it seems like you can pull it off!

Kudos, man. I would work a bit on the battle screens, but I really like the non-traditional feel, especially towards the human sprites.

FinalEclipse said:

Good game, seems like you scripted a lot to make this.

I am waiting for a release!

Good luck, keep the quality at the same level the whole way through.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, KingCharizard is right - I'm still barely a novice at scripting, so most of what I've done is through images and eventing. Although I may seek the help of a scripter in the future to make a few modifications, as well as clean up a few scripts. But thanks for the support!

KingCharizard said:

I dont really like the images but your story is decent...

Click to expand...

May I ask which images you don't like and what you don't like about them? Is it the battle sprites? Trainer images? The tileset? I'd appreciate any and all feedback.

Bards Sword said:

Yes! A pokemon "Fable" like game! Finally! And it seems like you can pull it off!

Kudos, man. I would work a bit on the battle screens, but I really like the non-traditional feel, especially towards the human sprites.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much! I agree that there is still quite a bit of work needed on the battle screens (gotta get 45 degree sprites for the Sinis Trio from Pokemon Ranger, for one, and start work on some proper battle backgrounds), but I'm glad you like the non-traditional approach!

Trainer Sprite defently, in my mind is A Big No, no. If you wanted you could go under Resources, and actualy get A trainer sprite sheet, and set that as A main character to use, instead of the default Sprites that come with it.

Also good idea, and I would try to find/make some realistic looking pokemon tile sets.

Love the idea, Might love the game who knows?

- Ryan

Looks like the GBA kingdom hearts game... Any way, think of a "saint" like pokemone...

Wow, this is just plain awesome. :3 I like the Ranger style, although if that's the case, why the PMD Pokemon sprites? (I already know the answer; there aren't Ranger sprites for all the Pokemon, right? Still, the styles clash a bit.)

I hope you can pull this off, although for an amateur scripter, all your nonlinear gameplay ideas and additional systems seem very ambitious. Good luck.

I think you should probably get some Ranger-styled sprites for your battle system, and also change the angle of the background to make it a tad more natural. I do love your ideas, however.

Zephyr+ said:

Wow, this is just plain awesome. :3 I like the Ranger style, although if that's the case, why the PMD Pokemon sprites? (I already know the answer; there aren't Ranger sprites for all the Pokemon, right? Still, the styles clash a bit.)

Click to expand...

Almost right. There are quite a few Ranger Pokemon sprites, but they are missing a few key Pokemon (often the middle evolution. There is Weedle and Beedrill, but no Kakuna!), as well as only scattered Pokemon from the three Pokedexes. However, I recently decided to correct this by shifting them all to the Ranger sprites, building my own Pokedex out of them and requesting for some enterprising spriters to try their hand at making the missing middle evolutions.

Zephyr+ said:

I hope you can pull this off, although for an amateur scripter, all your nonlinear gameplay ideas and additional systems seem very ambitious.

Click to expand...

Most of the more open stuff and additional systems I'll be Eventing into place. I know, it won't offer anywhere near the best that the systems could be, but I've been experimenting with Eventing for a few years and found a few ways to get the systems to work. I hesitate to ask for help from a more experienced scripter until I have more to show to the community. I've a few things I'd love to tweak with the battle and inventory systems, as well, but they'll have to wait.

Yuoaman said:

I think you should probably get some Ranger-styled sprites for your battle system, and also change the angle of the background to make it a tad more natural.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the background was something I quickly tossed together to make sure I understood how to set custom battle backgrounds. You have no idea how many times I only got a black screen. Keep an eye out to see some updated screens with an improved battle style!

Yuoaman said:

I do love your ideas, however.

Click to expand...

Zephyr+ said:

Wow, this is just plain awesome...Good luck.

Click to expand...

Thank you both!


On an aside, is it possible to edit the poll on my thread? I'm thinking of closing this one soon and replacing it with another (looks like the starters will be Phanpy, Bellsprout and Nidoran (although I am yet to find a Nidoran sprite. Uh oh.)).


EDIT:

In fact, on the note of screens of an improved battle look:

Before:



After:



I'm yet to get to work on the attack and health boxes, but they'll be up for alteration soon.

UPDATE: Added new screenshots of the introduction, and it looks like I might be getting close to being able to release a beta/demo (of course, it would be an incredibly small part of the game, but it would be good to show some basics about the game).

Also started updating a few of the graphics in the thread, and I shall soon get around to writing up proper character bios.

Whats wrong with the pokemon charater ow's? Why wont you use those?

I like how you're using Ranger sprites

KingCharizard said:

Whats wrong with the pokemon charater ow's? Why wont you use those?

Click to expand...

I'm sorry? I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

Lookin' Good so far! How much have you done?

Work has slowed a bit on it, partially due to having to continue to expand my tileset as I go along and partially due to a few external factors, but I've so far managed to get about 25%-30% of my maps done, including one of the large cities and three of the smaller towns, as well as Routes, Fields, a few caves and building interiors.
The main story has been completely planned out, as have a few of the Grand Plans (you know how the Teams always have some evil plan in the games, like summoning an ancient Pokemon to destroy the world? The Grand Plans are things like that you can do), but populating the maps with the required NPCs will have to wait until I at least get most of the overworld maps finished, just so I can start putting names to places.

I have run into a bit of a problem while designing my UI.

Old UI:


New UI:


I have begun to shift my game away from the official Pokemon games by implementing a real-time overworld combat system, where the Trainer and Pokemon move around the map together. I'd gotten the idea for most of how the combat system would work from the manga; you always see the Trainer and Pokemon fighting the battles side by side, the Pokemon would often have to protect the Trainer from attacks, all that jazz.
However, figuring out how to get such a system to work well is a little more difficult. The idea I currently have is that the Trainer is moved around with the WASD keys and the Pokemon is controlled by the mouse - left-clicking somewhere other than on the UI would make the Pokemon use the selected attack in that direction, right-clicking would move them. If the player doesn't have a Pokemon on the field, they click-and-drag the Pokeball in the lower-right corner of the game window and where ever they release the mouse their Trainer will summon the Pokemon there.
Items and attack selection are proving to be a bit of a bother, though. Or, more accurately, how to display them is. I thought that using a quickbar-type thing would work, as most gamers are familiar with the system, they're traditional in RPGs and they're a pretty good way of quickly inputting commands that might otherwise be a little more complex (obviously), but I'm not sure what would be a good way to include these on the UI. I want to avoid clutter so that as much of the map as possible is visible to the player. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Your implementing two features I've always wanted in a pokemon game fighting on a criminal team and real time battles I hope you succeed this shows promise

I like your idea the new style looks cool, keep up the good work

Seems like an interesting game. A darker take on Pokemon is always eye catching. Although if you want to avoid 'clutter' you may want to avoid large sprites (and large black circles?) being part of your interface (although the Pokeball thing is a cool idea). Hotbars aren't traditional with RPG's, with MMORPG's yes, not regular RPG's. Your choices are either a hotbar to put things on, or specify which key belongs to attack 1, attack 2, then display each attack next to the key. (Maybe display only in battle, to avoid clutter all the time.) Also left clicking anywhere to attack does not seem like a good idea. Misclicks and other things happen often. Might be easier to have to press a key then left click to do a specific attack.