Emerald hack: Pokémon Axiom Version (Open World/Side Quests/721 Pokémon)

[Dyskinesia]

STORY
You're one of your Professor Magonlia's assistants in the Drosera Region, helping her with her research into reviving old fossils. When going to one of her dig sites, you found an evil group is stealing the Professor's reviving technology and modifying it to allow them to fuse Pokemon together to make them even stronger! During your adventure to stop Team Nexus, you'll be exploring the world, challenging the gym leaders, helping strangers, eventually to become the Champion of the Drosera League! Even after you've completed the League, that's just the beginning! There is a ton more to explore and accomplish after becoming Champion!

FEATURES

Open World
Once you've gotten through the introductory portion of the game, the Drosera Region is entirely open for you to explore in whatever way you like, with new and unique areas. You can beat the gyms in whichever order you choose, as the gym leaders will match their team's strength to your team's depending on how strong you are as a trainer. The general story line for fighting the evil team stays the same regardless of what order you decide to take on the League. Trainers around you will get stronger as you progress as well!

Tons of Side Quests
Axiom will have tons of optional side quests that will take you into dungeons and overworld areas that the main story line won't take you. They can range in rewards and difficulty, easy quests can earn you accessories or foreign Pokémon, while the more difficult quests could reward you with battle items, special moves from a move tutor, or even Legendary Pokémon! Own a house, run a farm, compete in tournaments, there are tons of different activities to explore!

Decreased Random Encounters
To make exploration, a key portion of this game, less tedious, a few key changes have been made. Unavoidable random encounters in caves have been removed, instead you will have to avoid the most dimly lit portions of the cave if you want to avoid Pokémon. Water routes have been overhauled, instead of surfing on the backs of your Pokémon, you will find yourself able to own and operate your own personal boat to traverse deep water, and your own inner tube to assist you travelling across shallow water!

Expanded Pokedex
Eventually I hope that Pokemon will be attainable in this hack through a variety of different means. That being said, t's very important to me to make sure the region doesn't feel cluttered, so to catch many of the Pokemon you will need to talk to Exotic Fish Breeders, Fossil Maniacs, and Pet Shops. You'll also have to look very deep into the caves and forests to find secret places to catch certain Pokemon, and you will have to employ different encounter methods like Rock Smash, Sweet Scent, and using bait. While many will be obtainable, do not expect to be able to find more than 2 or 3 distinct lines of species per area per encounter method.

Removed HMs
I've gotten rid of HMs in favor of giving the player items throughout the story that will allow you to accomplish what HMs previously would. A boat, an inner tube, rock climbing tools, and other tools will be put to use to explore the entire region!

Fusion Pokemon
Team Nexus, the evil team in this hack, uses Fusion Pokemon, which are fusions of similar Pokemon with buffed stats and move pools! They can be incredibly difficult to beat, but if you can figure out what the original Pokemon were then you can probably figure out their weaknesses!
(note: Fusion Pokémon will not be obtainable by the player. With base stats almost double that of Arceus, it would be unreasonable and would invalidate every other Pokémon. they're just boss battles.)

Customizable Character
Although not on the same level as XY and SuMo, this hack will allow you to choose from a variety of different outfits that you can wear throughout your adventure! While you will start with a basic three options to choose from, you can acquire more and more as you explore the Drosera Region.

Updated Battle Mechanics
Physical/Special Split, Fairy Type, BW Repel system, Gen 7 EXP share, etc. As the opponent trainers get stronger, they will begin to use more competitive movesets, EV train their Pokemon, and improve their AI.

SCREENSHOTS

MAPS

9 total:

Spoiler:

Gazania Way

Spoiler:

This game's "Route 1", Gazania Way is the your first introduction to the world outside of your hometown. There is a cave that leads West, a waterfall that comes from the North, your home town to the South, and a harbor town to the East.

Lilac Woods

Spoiler:

The Lilac Woods are the epicenter of Fairy Pokémon in this region. Constantly veiled in a thin fog, there are many secrets to be found if you look hard enough!

Cabomba Swamp

Spoiler:

Cabomba Swamp is the home to many of the Poison-type Pokémon in this region. There are many trainers who practice against Poison-types here to prepare themselves for the nearby Poison-type Gym leader.

The Professor's Sanctuary

Spoiler:

This is where the Professor keeps all of her Pokémon that she is researching and caring for. It's also home to one of her dig sites where she examines fossils of ancient Pokémon.

Mobius Cave

Spoiler:

Mobius Cave is a single room that wraps in each direction infinitely. Navigating it might be a little confusing at first, but it's not difficult by any means. If you go deeper into the cave, you may find interesting things!

Primrose Desert

Spoiler:

Even though it's a desert, Primrose Desert is far from empty. In the center of the Desert lies Primrose Oasis, which is home to a few rare species of Water-type Pokémon that you can't find anywhere else in the Drosera Region. To the West there is a myserious tower. Inside you will find that you can't get further than ground level without a special key. Can you figure out what is at the top?

Desert Pass

Spoiler:

One of the few areas in the Drosera Region where there are only two directions you can leave: East and West. This pass connects Primrose Desert with Gilia Canyon. It's also home to Cecilia, the Drosera Region's PC Technician. She's often not home, instead travelling around helping with technical issues for the PC across the region.

Gilia Canyon

Spoiler:

Gilia Canyon is the home to the Drosera Region's premiere Tauros Farm at the southwest corner of the map. A fossil maniac lives here as well, he studies fossils in the cave southeast of his house. The cave has been very troublesome recently, with frequent cave-ins. Be careful if you go inside, you might get trapped!

Currently Unnamed Ice City

Spoiler:

This city is near the peak of the tallest mountain in the Drosera Region. There are three residential houses, a Pokémon center, a town meeting hall, and a Dark-type Pokémon gym. To the north you can travel to the very peak of the Mountain where you can find an observatory, to the southwest you can find an ancient Ice tower, and to the southeast you can return down the Mountain.

~More to come~

GYM LEADERS
AND
MAJOR CHARACTERS

Spoiler:

Oleander

Spoiler:

Oleander is the Drosera's prodigy competitive battler, who due to his talent became the regions Poison-type gym leader. He's kinda a brat, and he battles like one too. His team is specifically designed to weaken your team with poison, then sweep you with his strong mixed attack sweepers. If you manage to get through the bulk of his team, you'll still have to deal with his Skuntank, which is holding a special item.

Aurora

Spoiler:

Aurora is the region's best Ice-type Pokémon trainer. She lives in a town at the peak of Mt. Camellia, where in addition to being a gym leader, she is often researching in the observatory. She specifically designed her team to tear through defensive teams by catching them off, with each of her Pokémon having unique movesets. Prepare to be caught off guard by some unorthodox strategies!

Persephone

Spoiler:

Persephone is the youngest gym leader in the Drosera region. She's pretty shy, so you'll have to find her before you can challenge her gym. She uses Dark-type Pokémon, which is ironic because she's extremely afraid of the dark. Her battle style revolves heavily around solid competitive movesets and strategies that she learned from her older sister, Vanessa, who is in the Elite 4.

Angelica

Spoiler:

Angelica uses Fairy-type Pokémon. Her team is centered around a new Fairy-type hazard move, "First Sight". It auto-infatuates Pokémon on switch-in. You will find yourself needing to counterpick Pokémon gender to avoid the hazard. If you're unable to build a team to properly combat this strategy, you're going to have a really tough time!

Bernard

Spoiler:

Bernard's gym is set up inside of a volcano in the southern area of the Drosera region. A Fire-type specialist, Bernard is going to try to overpower you with brute force. His biggest flaw is that his gameplan is pretty one-dimensional; you can abuse the simple movesets his Pokémon have. His gung-ho attitude comes as a result of him trying to compensate for his name, since the locals all think "Bernard" is kind of nerdy. Maybe you can find a way to use that knowledge to your advantage!

Joe

Spoiler:

Joe's just your average Joe, no matter how you look at it. He's aggressively normal, and thus specializes in the Normal-type. Don't underestimate him, though, because Normal-type Pokémon are surprisingly diverse. His team has excellent synergy, albeit with some unorthodox movesets.

Mica

Spoiler:

(ugly sprite, subject to change)
Mica is a Rock-type specialist, and he's hand-picked the most defensive Pokémon he could get for his team. Combined with some held items that can only be found in the Drosera region, it will be very hard to get through his team with traditional sweepers alone. You will probably have to fight a war of attrition to defeat this gym.

Mr. Smith

Spoiler:

Mr. Smith is the owner of the largest factory in the Drosera region. He oversees production of all of the most common goods that you can buy across the region. Mr. Smith also oversees research into new kinds of items that aren't available to the average consumer, and he uses these to his advantage to increase the strength of his already powerful Steel-type team. Be careful, and try to take note of what each of his items do!

CREDITS

Individuals
​

DizzyEgg - Upgraded Battle Engine, C help, Emerald Pokédex Expansion
Mateo - Tiles
Spherical Ice - ASM
lost - ASM
and all of the people who have helped me problem solve and think ideas through on Discord that I have not mentioned.

Tools Used Thus Far
Advance Map
HxD
PKSV
XSE
VBA-M
Photoshop
APE
unLZ GBA
Sphere
NTME
THUMB Editor & Assembler

(If I missed you, please message me on here or on Discord and I'll add you ASAP)

CURRENT STATUS

I have up through the first few major plot points completed, but I don't want to release anything until I am sure that the sava data will be future-proof. Once I've talking to some other ROM hackers about this and made sure players won't have to reset progress if I change how certain things work in upcoming updates, I'll look into releasing an alpha build.

If you have any questions ask me on here or on Discord, I'm pretty much always lurking on here, and I'm always active on Discord.

Invite link to my personal hack discord: https://discord.gg/5vX62Am
​

 

[megaman d]

The map looks cool and new. I am not sure if decreased encounter is to be liked or to be hated (Can't grind or search for rare easily). But I can say for sure that this would be great. Good luck with it.

 

[Dyskinesia]

The map looks cool and new. I am not sure if decreased encounter is to be liked or to be hated (Can't grind or search for rare easily). But I can say for sure that this would be great. Good luck with it.

The thing I hate most about vanilla Pokémon games is the grinding that can be necessary to keep an entire team up to level, so my aim is for grinding to be unnecessary in the hack. That being said, for players who do want to grind levels, there will be many places where you can rebattle trainers who own Pokémon that give high amounts of EXP when defeated.

 

[Christos]

I'm interested in seeing how you're going to implement the open-world aspect for this, both story/gym-wise and map-wise. Are the maps going to be big and connected to each other as in the region map? I'm hoping for a variety of environments to keep it interesting.

As for the encounters, I wouldn't mind tall grass having a very low (1%) chance of encountering Pokémon rather than nothing, just so you don't actually play for ages without encountering a single one. Though I guess that depends on the other means of encounter you're going to include.

Good luck with this!

 

[Dyskinesia]

I'm interested in seeing how you're going to implement the open-world aspect for this, both story/gym-wise and map-wise. Are the maps going to be big and connected to each other as in the region map? I'm hoping for a variety of environments to keep it interesting.

As for the encounters, I wouldn't mind tall grass having a very low (1%) chance of encountering Pokémon rather than nothing, just so you don't actually play for ages without encountering a single one. Though I guess that depends on the other means of encounter you're going to include.

Good luck with this!

Eh, I guess I wasn't super clear with the decreased random encounters. Tall grass will still have normal (slightly decreased) encounters. It's the caves and water areas that are taking the hit mainly.

Beating gyms is not essential to completing the main storyline. The difficulty of the gym is determined by how far you are in the story, so that the levels are still challenging no matter how far you get while skipping gyms.

 

[shiyako]

I love all features you have listed, i cant wait to play your hack, good luck :D

 

[Godlike]

Where does the story come in? If you take away all the general things that make pokemon well pokemon (basically what i'm saying is, the way you wrote the description makes it sound like battling/leveling, both essentials in pokemon, isn't really that important), you need to have something else it focuses on entirely and not the open world concept, I mean that's cool but I think you'll need a strong story so i'm interested to see if that's going to be something strong in this game.

Piqued my interest, hopefully the stories good.

 

[Dyskinesia]

Where does the story come in? If you take away all the general things that make pokemon well pokemon (basically what i'm saying is, the way you wrote the description makes it sound like battling/leveling, both essentials in pokemon, isn't really that important), you need to have something else it focuses on entirely and not the open world concept, I mean that's cool but I think you'll need a strong story so i'm interested to see if that's going to be something strong in this game.

Piqued my interest, hopefully the stories good.

There's still regular trainer battles throughout the entire game during exploration, and for the main storyline. You get to do most of your Gym battles in any order you want or not at all. The AI is going to be updated as well, with trainers using more competitive movesets and strategies. Battling is very much a central part of the hack, I do want to remove the more tedious aspects like grinding levels and constant backtracking to heal, though.

 

[FeraligatrMaster]

There's still regular trainer battles throughout the entire game during exploration, and for the main storyline. You get to do most of your Gym battles in any order you want or not at all. The AI is going to be updated as well, with trainers using more competitive movesets and strategies. Battling is very much a central part of the hack, I do want to remove the more tedious aspects like grinding levels and constant backtracking to heal, though.

In that case, you should also do something about EV training, since that is even more tedious than grinding levels (in my opinion, at least).

 

[Kingdragon131]

This looks amazing! I can't wait to make videos on it!

 

[Gandhi Savage]

This game is looking dope already! I love the idea of a sandbox Pokémon game where you can progress as you please. It feels more realistic so that you aren't boxed in to a certain town etc. I quite like the idea of no cave & water encounters, especially when I've read that there will be places to grind against high EXP trainers. The screenshots have me excited - the maps are so gorgeous!

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this project, good luck!​

 

[felynari]

Liking the decreased encounter feature in caves and waters and the story looks interesting so far. Gonna bookmark this for updates.

 

[U-Hacks]

oh alpha build!
i'm waiting!

 

[Dyskinesia]

I didn't do anything for the RPS person because Christos mentioned he had an idea for giving the player a Lucky Egg if you lose a number of times in a row.

So, quick update. I've talked to a few people about making sure that the alpha build will be future-proof, so now I know what exactly what I need to change with the save data right to make sure I won't have to in the later (making everyone restart). I also need to redo a lot of the region, since a lot of the old maps are frankly pretty ugly and bad for gameplay. It's gonna be a bit, because I don't want to put out anything that's rushed.

In the mean time, here's some new teaser maps:

Spoiler:

The Professor's Sanctuary

This is where the Professor keeps all of his Pokémon that he is researching. It's also home to one of his dig sites where he examines fossils of ancient Pokémon that he is studying.


Mobius Cave

Mobius Cave is a single room that wraps in each direction infinitely. Navigating it might be a little confusing at first, but it's not difficult by any means. If you go deeper into the cave, you may find interesting things!

 

[MasterBallz]

I like the screenshots and most of the features except fusion pokemon which always seemed lazy to me like how people recolor existing pokemon and call them something different or delta mons.

 

[AgniPyro]

Awesome game that is upcoming. I would love to feature this game on my youtube channel with permission of course!

 

[Dyskinesia]

I like the screenshots and most of the features except fusion pokemon which always seemed lazy to me like how people recolor existing pokemon and call them something different or delta mons.

It's purely a gimmick for boss battles. I don't plan on making them obtainable.

 

[Dark]

This hack seems so promessing, cant wait to try it... Is there gonna be a demo or apha?

 

[Dyskinesia]

Quick update before I head to bed. A few new maps:

Primrose Desert

Spoiler:

Even though it's a desert, Primrose Desert is far from empty. In the center of the Desert lies Primrose Oasis, which is home to a few rare species of Water-type Pokémon that you can't find anywhere else in the Drosera Region. To the West there is a myserious tower. Inside you will find that you can't get further than ground level without a special key. Can you figure out what is at the top?

Desert Pass

Spoiler:

One of the few areas in the Drosera Region where there are only two directions you can leave: East and West. This pass connects Primrose Desert with Gilia Canyon. It's also home to Cecilia, the Drosera Region's PC Technician. She's often not home, instead travelling around helping with technical issues for the PC across the region.

Gilia Canyon

Spoiler:

Gilia Canyon is the home to the Drosera Region's premiere Tauros Farm at the southwest corner of the map. A fossil maniac lives here as well, he studies fossils in the cave southeast of his house. The cave has been very troublesome recently, with frequent cave-ins. Be careful if you go inside, you might get trapped!

I also made a lot of progress on side quest planning, major character planning, and I've been working on refining my plan for dynamic trainer levels. An alpha will be out as soon as I can get a decent portion of the game playable!

 

[Nex]

gud h@ck, keep it up!