Red hack: Pokémon Scramble

PokemonScramble · Nov 15, 2017

Pok?mon Scramble

Hi everyone, seems rude not to say hi since this is my first post on this forum. I was looking for a place to post my hack now that I've finished it after years of working a couple of hours every few months on it. This forum seems like a really good place to start! Let me know if I went against any rule.

Overview
Pok?mon Scramble is a Balance/Difficulty hack that focuses on making battles more varied in sometimes surprising ways. Sometimes it feels like things have been kind of "scrambled". Other times you will just scramble to survive. Also collecting pok?mon is way easier in this version (and obviously all 151 can be found).

This hack started with an insane question: is it possible to balance out this incredibly unbalanced game without adding types and without changing the way the types worked? What would happen to the gameplay if all fully evolved pok?mon were as good as each other?
Then to spice things up I decided to add an exponential difficulty curve.
Because any pok?mon choice is as good as the next, and because high difficulty means that players need to start planning a team early, I thought it necessary to make it possible to find most pok?mon fairly early in the game.

A generally balanced out and more varied game also means a balanced out and more varied Player Versus Player, however I could not test that, so I'm not sure how it fares in that area. If somebody wants to connect and try battling with this hack, I would be hestatic.

Features
-The starting screen is pretty much the same, except Parasect appears first with Red. If you see Parasect, you patched successfully.
-Many pok?mon have different types to reduce the number of pok?mon sharing the same type combination. The choices for types are mostly sensible but sometimes weird.
-Since the hack has the same problem of the original game with Super Effective and Not Very Effective messages lying, I have provided a handy guide with all type combinations for the player.
-Stat Totals have been recalculated from absolute scratch (total disregard from the original stats). The formula takes into account how well the type combination of the pok?mon fares defensively and how good is the moveset of the pok?mon. Also having high Specials generally reduces the stat total that the pok?mon can have (basically it's counted twice as Special Attack and Special Defense). The result is a Parasect with the best stats in the game and an Alakazam with the worst stats in the game, and they both end up being pretty good in battle. Mewtwo and Mew are the only exception and are not balanced.
-Many pok?mon have additional new starting moves added, which can be found on the handy guide as well.
-Moves have also been changed types to ensure pok?mon had access to more types. There are more fighting, bug, ghost, dragon and attacking poison moves for example. Non-attacking moves are all typeless (this way the AI uses them slightly better).
-Similarly to stat totals, power of moves has also been recalculated from scratch. High PP moves are slightly less powerful than low PP moves, however in this hack high PP moves are still viable end-game options. This also means that battles in the first part of the game are way more Rocket-Tag gameplay, with the ups and downs of it. Non-attacking moves are still as unbalanced between each other as before, with fewer changes, except for some general fixes (Focus Energy raises attack, there are no move that lower or raise accuracy). Some non-attacking moves are now attacking moves. HMs are all pretty good moves, so that having a "HM slave" becomes less necessary.
-The hack comes with a handy guide of what every single move does.
-Almost any pok?mon can be acquired by the time the player reaches Pok?mon Tower and almost any pok?mon appears in the wild in one way or another.
-A little less repetition of the same pok?mon appearing constantly when going through grass or dungeons. All places have at least 4 pok?mon that appear at varying degrees of rarity.
-The guide also lists where to catch most pok?mon from Pallet Town to Pok?mon Tower, making it easier to plan early on a specific team to beat the game.
-In-game trades have all been changed. Game Corner Prizes as well. Trade-evolutions are in-game trades, but non-evolved versions of these pok?mon are also equally viable to use compared to their evolutions.
-Enemy trainers have their levels raised exponentially. Starting with almost no change at the very start of the game and then growing higher after each battle. By the time the player reaches Indigo League, all their pok?mon are level 100. Please note you can beat the pok?mon league with a team with average level 55-60. There is no need to grind if you plan properly. The lower the level of your team after finishing the league, the more proud you can feel of yourself.
-Enemy trainers have different pok?mon, they start having fully evolved pok?mon earlier and they have a generally higher variation of pok?mon. Pok?mon appear as enemies from trainers a similar amount of times between each other. Even legendary birds pop up surprisingly often for what one would expect.

Screenshots
Different in-game trades and game corner prizes.

Most pok?mon can be found earlier in the wild.

Types and stats are different.

Compare the stats between Machoke and Kadabra to get an idea of how much weaker pok?mon with good types are compared to pok?mon with many weaknesses.

Starting moves have been added to many pok?mon for variety and to avoid pok?mon with impossibly bad learnsets.

Moves have been changed types to add variety. Enemy trainers have much stronger pok?mon.

Credits
I worked alone on this project, but some friends of mine deserve a general thank you for trying the hack and giving me feedback.

Downloads
"image removed"
"image removed"
"image removed"

I am curious to hear any opinion. If you play the hack please let me know, I am always super curious to see how everyone plays it and what team they make.
I hope you like it and again, for the love of everything, if you want to try this hack in Player Versus Player against me, please let me know at once.

Edit: I somehow didn't notice after weeks of "pre-release" tests that karate-chop was still Normal instead of Fighting. Fixed it. If you notice any similar incongruence between the guide and the game, please let me know.

Edit 30/11/2017: Some of these changes are really tiny and not entirely necessary. I don't think I'll need to change much after this version.
-Fixed Dizzy Punch also being Normal (I was sure this was already changed, it feels like the game keeps reversing fighting moves to normal - or I'm going insane).
-X Accuracy cannot be bought from shops anymore (this was an oversight, all accuracy effects should have been eliminated)
-Fixed Poliwrath stats not being reduced despite the access to Amnesia (reduced its hp)
-Stat formula slightly altered in regards to amnesia, granting a few more stat points to Snorlax because of its low specials.
-Fixed Articuno's stats which were a few points higher than they should have been
-Changed Ditto's stats to make it more viable and generally more focused on defense/speed than attack
-Added Fury Attack to Zapdos, providing it access to dragon attacking type. Reduced stats slightly.

ablahblah987 · Nov 16, 2017

This looks interesting. I will give it a shot when I get the chance.

PokemonScramble · Nov 17, 2017

This looks interesting. I will give it a shot when I get the chance.

Thank you. Let me know what you think of it!

Disturb Not The Harmony · Nov 18, 2017

This sounds like an incredible idea for a hack. I'll give it a whirl shortly.

PokemonScramble · Nov 18, 2017

Disturb Not The Harmony said:
This sounds like an incredible idea for a hack. I'll give it a whirl shortly.

Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy it.

Also, I started recording myself playing the hack. It's super awkward because I'm not used to record myself playing (or doing anything really) but I wanted to show how the hack plays out while talking about it.
I wanted to link it, but I'm not allowed, so I guess I'll do that once I reach 5 posts. lol

Disturb Not The Harmony · Nov 20, 2017

Great hack.

I've played through it up through Giovanni (the final time), and have some thoughts.

Beneath a spoiler for people who haven't played the hack.

Spoiler:

I'd probably need another playthrough to talk about balance, since it's become clear that my team-building was... moderately dubious. (L48 Parasect | L45 Charizard | L42 Jolteon | L51 Graveler | L45 Wigglytuff | L47 Fearow) Still, I am making it through the battles (albeit with several retries) and having a lot of fun. :)

PokemonScramble · Nov 20, 2017

Disturb Not The Harmony said:
Great hack.

I've played through it up through Giovanni (the final time), and have some thoughts.

Thank you so, so, much for playing my hack and giving me all this info! Really valuable feedback. I'm really glad you are enjoying it as well.
Let me go through some stuff.

Spoiler:

* Why were the L40 Pokemon from Cinnabar Mansion's basement removed? To impair grinding?

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Given the nerfs to Water-types and Psychic-types, an all-Normal team (using TMs to supplement movesets) is potentially very strong.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

* Jigglypuff is incredible. After thinking about it, I would guess it's because it has both a decent Special stat and a Psychic move, which allows it to hit Pokemon on their usually-weak Special stat. And, of course, it has a Sleep-inducing move.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

* Parasect is bizarrely well-balanced, given its high stats and Spore - it's extremely useful against things that can't kill it with super-effective hits, and completely folds to things that can. Kudos on the great balancing there.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

The post-Lavender difficulty jump is dumbfounding. I understand the idea -- Trainers are relatively low-level to choke EXP and force strategy rather than grinding -- but the leap from Erika up to the L70s really took me aback. (Lt. Surge was the same level as my Nidoking; Silph Rival, when I first attempted him, was twice the level of my Pokemon.) Beginning to ramp up the Leaders earlier might help the adjustment.
* On that note, Silph Giovanni is ludicrously low-leveled compared to Silph Rival.

Spoiler:

Oh yes, fun fact, I could not change the levels of Giovanni's team in either Silph or the hideout because there are no tools online to do so and I cannot seem to figure out how to do hex editing and whatnot. So he's at the original levels with the original pokémon, which is kinda sad.

Spoiler:

Something about how the game calculates movesets seems to have taken off both Water Gun from Omastar's moveset and Stomp from Rapidash's; reshuffling the move order in starting movesets might help.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

* If possible, raising the starting level of Lapras and Hitmonlee/Hitmonchan to ~L35 would make them more viable. It's hard to justify giving up a member of a team that can defeat L76 Rival for a L15 Pokemon, no matter how good.

Spoiler:

I'd probably need another playthrough to talk about balance, since it's become clear that my team-building was... moderately dubious. (L48 Parasect | L45 Charizard | L42 Jolteon | L51 Graveler | L45 Wigglytuff | L47 Fearow) Still, I am making it through the battles (albeit with several retries) and having a lot of fun.

I like how your team looks like though! I hope using graveler instead of golem doesn't feel too bad. The stats are the same anyway.
I think you lack some ways to resist psychic, ice or rock moves (although rock moves tend to disappear later in the game, even though I tried to make them more present). Lorelei might give you a somewhat hard time.
I'm really glad you are having fun!

ablahblah987 · Nov 21, 2017

I just beat the game with Victreebell, Golbat, Hitmonlee, Tauros, Kabutops and Lapras. This was a fun hack. I enjoyed the challenge. I like how even the worst Pokemon were made useful without just blowing their stats up. I'd be curious to see a hack like this done with GSC or possibly later gen games. Thank you for making it PokemonScramble.

I didn't think it was that hard apart from the final battle with Blue and maybe Lorelei, but I admit that I used Poke Edit GB to look at the stat changes that were made. I think the stats should've just been given away honestly.

PokemonScramble · Nov 21, 2017

ablahblah987 said:
I just beat the game with Victreebell, Golbat, Hitmonlee, Tauros, Kabutops and Lapras. This was a fun hack. I enjoyed the challenge. I like how even the worst Pokemon were made useful without just blowing their stats up. I'd be curious to see a hack like this done with GSC or possibly later gen games. Thank you for making it PokemonScramble.

I didn't think it was that hard apart from the final battle with Blue and maybe Lorelei, but I admit that I used Poke Edit GB to look at the stat changes that were made. I think the stats should've just been given away honestly.

I'm not 100% sure my messages are coming through, since my previous one has been "on review by a moderator" for a while now, but I'll try to answer anyway.
I like the team, I'd be curious to know their level and moveset by the end of the game. As a general rule of thumb the lower the level at the end of the game, the more you can feel proud of yourself.
You had no way to resist flying moves, ghost moves, fire moves, psychic moves or ice moves. Did that affect you? Also it doesn't look like you had much in the way of sleeping moves or paralysis.
I am a bit of a nostalgic so I won't dabble in gen2 or later, but I would be quite happy if my mod started a trend.
Thank you very much for playing it!

You have a point about the stat changes, I have this obsession for mystery but there's no point hiding things when you can just check it in a second.

Also let me know if you wanna try battling at any point (depending on the emulator you use)

Disturb Not The Harmony · Nov 22, 2017

PokemonScramble said:
Thank you so, so, much for playing my hack and giving me all this info! Really valuable feedback. I'm really glad you are enjoying it as well.
Let me go through some stuff.

My pleasure!

Spoiler:

Impair grinding and ensure players don't find pokémon at high enough level there to feel that training the ones they got before was a waste of time.
Generally speaking wild pokémon follow an inverse reasoning than trainer pokémon. The level grows slower after Pokémon Tower.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

It is possible that normal-only could be very strong, but keep in mind the boost to Fighting pokémon and the extreme boost to Fighting moves. Also you generally lose in STAB types you can use. The normal-only pokémon have been reduced in number, so there is only: Wigglytuff, Persian, Lickitung, Chansey, Snorlax, Ditto. Still enough for a team, I guess, and Ditto gives some flexibility.

Spoiler:

[QUOTE}

Spoiler:

[/QUOTE]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Thank you! There is a reason I chose it as the mascotte of this hack after all.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Originally leaders and rival were ramping up earlier but that brought to some serious frustration due to the fact that at that point the player often didn't have a proper team yet. Also I actually like the sudden surprise, the game is basically telling you "things are serious now, start thinking about the league".

Oh yes, fun fact, I could not change the levels of Giovanni's team in either Silph or the hideout because there are no tools online to do so and I cannot seem to figure out how to do hex editing and whatnot. So he's at the original levels with the original pokémon, which is kinda sad.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

You raise a good point there. I'll tell you a secret: there actually are wild hitmons and Lapras before you get them, but they are extremely rare and listed under "secret pokémon" in the file with all wild encounters. Though this is not really a solution to the fact that those ones you get later on are useless. Funny thing, similar to how I can't figure out how to edit Giovanni, I also don't know how to change the level of the pokémon that are given to you directly. I might have to just put 5% encounters for hitmons and Lapras with disclosed location on the file.

Spoiler:

I like how your team looks like though! I hope using graveler instead of golem doesn't feel too bad. The stats are the same anyway.
I think you lack some ways to resist psychic, ice or rock moves (although rock moves tend to disappear later in the game, even though I tried to make them more present). Lorelei might give you a somewhat hard time.
I'm really glad you are having fun!

Hm - stats are pretty much the same? That matches what I observed when I checked the tradeable Pokemon (in my pre-League quest to get an idea of every readily-accessible Pokemon's BSTs) - I suppose the point of getting the evolved forms, then, is to get the trade EXP boost? Interesting take on things.

Spoiler:

Yeah, I noticed Lorelei might be quite rough. I'm hoping I can close the gap with status moves - failing that, she is the first member of the Elite Four, so I can retry her readily until I come up with a strategy. >_>

It's a fun hack! :D

PokemonScramble · Nov 22, 2017

Disturb Not The Harmony said:
The Sleep-using Pokemon that I wonder about needing to be nerfed, though I haven't actually used it, is Poliwrath. It looks to be relatively speedy and has access to both Sleep and Amnesia - after one Amnesia, it's going to be hitting pretty hard. As I said, though, I don't know how well it performs in practice.

I think you might have spotted a calculation error! Polywrath was supposed to get a -20 stat total because it has access to amnesia (in addition to the stat reduction for access to hypnosis and some type moves), however it doesn't look like I applied that -20. On the bright side its specials isn't particularly high and it also has a pretty low defense, so if hypnosis fails it's easy to hit it hard. I might have to try a polywrath centered run to see how it fares.
I think I might resolve it by reducing the hp from 120 to 100, which might keep it overpowered when using hypnosis+amnesia, but it would reduce the effect of the special defense boost.

Spoiler:

I like that the high-power nature of the hack provides situational uses for physical tanks, mixed-stat Pokemon, and special tanks. Charizard's usually not that strong compared to other Pokemon, since its stats are balanced rather than really stacked towards one stat or another, but I find it useful for being able to take Special attacks in situations where Parasect would get hit by coverage. (For example, Sabrina's Venomoth: Psybeam hit my physical tanks and Wigglytuff hard, Jolteon wasn't up to snuff yet, and Parasect dropped to Poisonpowder. So who saves the day? Charizard!)

This is all pretty fun info. I love when players find unexpected uses for pokémon they were expecting to keep in the bench while playing the hack.
I seem to remember I gave Sabrina a butterfree (bug psychic in this hack) but maybe I'm just getting confused.

Spoiler:

Fair enough. If Giovanni's levels are a technical limitation, I'm fine with that.
[...]
Huh! So that's what those were.
Fair enough. I don't know much about ROM editing, so I wasn't aware of technical limitations on the tools available. (I wasn't even aware of tools for Red, so I thought you were either using the disassembly or hex-editing.) Sorry about that.

Spoiler:

Hm - stats are pretty much the same? That matches what I observed when I checked the tradeable Pokemon (in my pre-League quest to get an idea of every readily-accessible Pokemon's BSTs) - I suppose the point of getting the evolved forms, then, is to get the trade EXP boost? Interesting take on things.

Stats between trade-evolved and pre-evolved are actually exactly the same. The difference is in the exp boost and in flavour. Since some prefer haunter to gengar (for example), I thought it would be nice to give the choice to use whichever.

Spoiler:

As for Psychic moves, I'm usually not that bothered (now that I've hopefully gotten past the Venomoths and Butterfrees) because Parasect can survive a Psybeam, if I recall correctly, so Sporing and Leech Lifes follow.

Yeah psychic moves are hard to have a resistance for, but they also don't hit very hard, so it's easy to counter psychic pokémon with bug pokémon even if they can't resist their moves. Either outspeed them with a pinsir/scyther/beedril or resist with parasect and you are sorted. Then there's butterfree if you want the ultimate psychic counter for some reason (maybe the rest of your team is fighting/poison).
Btw dragon moves are even weirder, since you can't defend from them but they are also very weak, to the point that they are a so-so option against any pokémon, but they can be necessary against certain dragons. Especially Seadra.

Yeah, I noticed Lorelei might be quite rough. I'm hoping I can close the gap with status moves - failing that, she is the first member of the Elite Four, so I can retry her readily until I come up with a strategy. >_>

She has a little less ice pokémon than you might expect, so it could end up being easy enough :D Good luck though!

Mateo said:
The reply you posted should be approved now. Not really sure why it did that. Sorry for the inconvenience.

No worries! And thank you so much for the help.

Oh right! I should be able to post links now, so here's the awkward video demonstration of the mod by awkward me:
https://youtu.be/rid_WvWyfZI

ablahblah987 · Nov 23, 2017

PokemonScramble said:
I'm not 100% sure my messages are coming through, since my previous one has been "on review by a moderator" for a while now, but I'll try to answer anyway.
I like the team, I'd be curious to know their level and moveset by the end of the game. As a general rule of thumb the lower the level at the end of the game, the more you can feel proud of yourself.
You had no way to resist flying moves, ghost moves, fire moves, psychic moves or ice moves. Did that affect you? Also it doesn't look like you had much in the way of sleeping moves or paralysis.
I am a bit of a nostalgic so I won't dabble in gen2 or later, but I would be quite happy if my mod started a trend.
Thank you very much for playing it!

You have a point about the stat changes, I have this obsession for mystery but there's no point hiding things when you can just check it in a second.

Also let me know if you wanna try battling at any point (depending on the emulator you use)

My team were all in the late 50s levelwise. Not having the resistances you speak of seemed to not make a difference. I think not having a fire type may have made Lorelei harder. As for status moves, my Victreebell did have Sleep Powder.

What emulator could we even use to battle? I played the game with VBA.

PokemonScramble · Nov 25, 2017

ablahblah987 said:
My team were all in the late 50s levelwise. Not having the resistances you speak of seemed to not make a difference. I think not having a fire type may have made Lorelei harder. As for status moves, my Victreebell did have Sleep Powder.
What emulator could we even use to battle? I played the game with VBA.

Late 50s is really good! With just one pokémon using a sleeping move as well. It does feel easy enough to me as well, but I've seen a lot of players finding it really hard (with some friends of mine kind of unable to finish it without grinding to lv70).

TGB-Dual used in conjuction with LogMeIn Hamachi should hopefully work. Also some instant messaging would help to coordinate it I guess.
For mobile, the paid version of MyOldBoy has a handy link remote function.
All my tests have been on mobile with the latest versions (and moving save files is a surprisingly painful process), so I would need to quickly whip up a team on PC for the latest version.
I'd go with levels 55-65 for the battles, with a total level limit of 360, using Species clause, Sleep clause, Self-KO clause and banning Mew and Mewtwo.

Dekaylab8 · Oct 8, 2020

If anyone is curious, I have made a Google Spreadsheet of all of the Pokémon base stats (Except for Mew and Mewtwo).

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFwl65gVjYt2Ftvdw6yG9reCI9IrXno0LzCjzDQd_9o/edit?usp=sharing

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

PokemonScramble · Oct 8, 2020

pdleck8v said:
If anyone is curious, I have made a Google Spreadsheet of all of the Pokémon base stats (Except for Mew and Mewtwo).

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFwl65gVjYt2Ftvdw6yG9reCI9IrXno0LzCjzDQd_9o/edit?usp=sharing

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm happy to see that this old little project of mine wasn't completely forgotten :D

This looks like such a labour of love, and I also feel kind of sorry that I caused you to have to write down every stat by not providing the stats in the first place! Thanks for laying them down so neatly.

I believe I never updated this post with a version I made about a year after posting the thread, with some changes on the non-evolved pokemon aimed at making some hard to level ones less frustrating to evolve (especially Dragonite). I might add that update soon, if I haven't lost the file (I've had a change of laptop and a few data hiccups since then...).

Edit: I have attached the new version to this post. I feel kind of nervous removing the previous version and substituting with this one, in case this one has any problem, since I haven't been touching this project in so long I don't trust myself with this.

ablahblah987 · Oct 8, 2020

I forgot about this hack but remember enjoying it. I'm sorry I never posted movesets for my team and we never battled PokemonScramble. I lost my old save file so there's no way for me to look into that. Maybe I'll play this again now that there's a new version. Is the only change that the not fully evolved Pokemon have been buffed?

PokemonScramble · Oct 13, 2020

ablahblah987 said:
I forgot about this hack but remember enjoying it. I'm sorry I never posted movesets for my team and we never battled PokemonScramble. I lost my old save file so there's no way for me to look into that. Maybe I'll play this again now that there's a new version. Is the only change that the not fully evolved Pokemon have been buffed?

Hi ablahblah987!

No worries about that, I'm still quite happy you enjoyed the hack :D

Yeah, it's mostly just the non-evolved pokemon I changed. I might have done some other smaller change, but I can't find a proper changelog for that version, which is my bad.

I wanted to apply some bigger changes based on the feedback I received, like for example nerfing further all the pokemon with sleeping moves, but I never got around to it. Getting a job and starting other projects (mostly boardgame design) reduced this one to just minor changes.

ablahblah987 · Oct 13, 2020

I'm trying out the new patch but I also applied the gen 2 graphics and full color patch. I'm having a good time so far.

I have my new final team already planned out using the Google doc that was posted (thanks pdleck8v) but it would be nice to know what edits were made to the moves...

PokemonScramble · Oct 29, 2020

Apologies for the slow answer. While I don't have a proper changelog, I did find an updated txt with the move stats (and pokemon stats!). Hopefully they are all properly up to date.

I've attached the txt to this post.

Let me know how you are getting on with the re-play :D

ablahblah987 · Oct 30, 2020

That document is very helpful. Thanks for sharing it.

I took a break from playing and now I think I'll finish my second play through.

Red hack: Pokémon Scramble

More options

PokemonScramble

Attachments

ablahblah987

PokemonScramble

Disturb Not The Harmony

PokemonScramble

Disturb Not The Harmony

PokemonScramble

ablahblah987

PokemonScramble

Disturb Not The Harmony

PokemonScramble

ablahblah987

PokemonScramble

Dekaylab8

I have Harm OCD...

PokemonScramble

Attachments

ablahblah987

PokemonScramble

ablahblah987

PokemonScramble

Attachments

ablahblah987