Idea for ROM Hack

[iTrainBeware]

Hello

I have had an idea for a ROM hack and I want some advice on how to be able to execute it.

I essentially would like to make a Pokemon Battle Royale mode. I am a fairly seasoned player of both Pokemon and Battle Royale type shooters, especially Fortnite.

In the last year I have put a lot of thought into how I might be able to merge these two genres of game that I already enjoy to create something I enjoy even more.

Essentially the biggest problem is how to execute the combat, as Pokemon and shooters are extremely different. Obviously in a rom hack, the battles would have to be turn based and in the engine of the game being hacked.

Today I thought up a solution. Essentially the game would work like this. You start off with the map of an island and select your destination as you would with Fly in a Pokemon game, although maybe there could be some kind of paragliding animation between this and landing on the ground. Then you have 10 minutes to get Pokeballs etc from the map, get into the grass and catch a team. I would set the wild Pokemon to level 50 and fully EV trained and taught competitive movesets, and possibly even holding competitive items too, although maybe these should be scavenged and attached. I would have the mechanics of catching set up exactly the same as the Safari zone. Just to be clear, the idea is that all players spawn into a single island where they compete for resources to catch the beat Pokemon. Pokemon would spawn in the grass randomly although possibly they could also spawn as stationaries, eg in the power plant there could be a low chance of stationary zapdos spawning, and Heatran in the volcano, etc.

After 10 minutes the looting section of the game ends and the game switches to a battle tournament. Players are paired up and have to use the Pokemon caught against their opponent who is randomly selected (or perhaps selected based on who is closest to the player). I think both doubles and singles modes should be available, so singles would be 3v3 (pick from 6) and doubles would be 4v4 (pick from 6) as per battle spot. If you win you advance to the next round, if you lose you are out of the game and back in the lobby. This continues until there is a winner. I would like there to be a very tight timer on moves, maybe as little as 10 seconds per move in order to make the game feel much faster paced than normal Pokemon. I would also suggest that Pokemon's health regenerate between battles, maybe not completely so as not to render scavenged items useless (you could these them between battles to heal up) but enough for players to have a chance in the next round. Complete healing after every battle is also an option, depending on how it works in practice.

I do not have any programming, art, or even Game design experience beyond developing this idea in my own head, however I am a music composer so can contribute to any project in that respect.

I am mostly posting this to see if there is any appetite for other people to work on this project with me. I realise that as it would require servers in order to run there is a high probability of Nintendo cease and desisting, but there are plenty of MMO games and of course showdown which have survived. I think it would just be a really cool game to play, and honestly I would be happy if gamefreak stole this idea and made it in 3D rather than in a GBA/DS format I am suggesting here.

I realize this is an ambitious project, and maybe would be smarter to undertake a normal rom hack first to get used to using the tools required?

 

[mgriffin]

Cool idea! It sounds like a new Battle Frontier facility? Sort-of a Battle Factory, but using Safari Zone mechanics to build your team instead of getting to pick from a pool of rentals? Maybe that's the best place to start if you want to look into implementing it.

EDIT: Except that you want it to have online features... Hmm. In that case a ROM hack is probably more difficult than something built with a PC engine like Essentials or PSDK.

 

[iTrainBeware]

Ah I've looked at both of those pieces of software, I will try to start learning them and maybe look at making some progress.

I think your thoughts comparing it to the battle frontier with safari zone mechanics is pretty much correct, although I definitely want to have some of the aesthetics of Fortnite... maybe a pokeball balloon animation taking the players over the map before they select their landing spot...

I think there are two possibilities... the first is that it is done as a completely single player experience which seems like a battle royale game... ie the player lands, collects a team, then faces off against the cpu.

By far the preferable option for me would be the real thing of a 128 player multiplayer Pokemon game. But I am not an experienced Ron hacker or game designer. So maybe doing a single player version would be a good proof of concept.

 

[mgriffin]

By far the preferable option for me would be the real thing of a 128 player multiplayer Pokemon game. But I am not an experienced Ron hacker or game designer. So maybe doing a single player version would be a good proof of concept.

I think if you started with an engine that has online features (IIRC PSDK does, but Essentials doesn't), then the code changes to make it support 128 players might be pretty doable. Assuming PSDK lets players share the same map over the internet then I expect the two big changes would be making sure that it's client-to-server not peer-to-peer, and implementing the bit that makes pairs of players battle.

 

[jensmoking]

You should start with a simple hack, only for testing the concept; then try with PSDK to make the actual game. It would be a very cool game to play, so I'm sure that you could easily get a team -developers, artist, etc-.