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

Yo this hack looks dope. Your mapping and palette editing is on point (love the mobius cave), and it sounds like you're going to implement some well thought out features.

Specifically, I'm looking forward to the challenge of battling Pokémon with unobtainably high BST (maybe even with custom OP abilities?), as well as the open map, which you seem to have worked out nicely. I've always thought that in "real life" gyms would scale in difficulty based on how many badges you have, but it hadn't occurred to me to actually implement that in a hack. (Although, I'm assuming that in your game, you're actually checking flags for the Team Nexus storyline, to get a more organic scaling of the route trainers.)

I'd enjoy bouncing some ideas back and forth with you in the future, so we can both improve our hacks. PM me if you're interested.

Either way, good luck with this. I think you'll do a great job.
 
Those new features sound really awesome. Good luck with finishing it. I'm looking forward to the beta.
By the way, if you need help in drawing characters such as the evil team members, I'd like to offer some assistance.
 
Open world? This has peaked my interest. Its a shame that the fusion pokemon won't be obtainable.
Would you be up to changing your decision? Could use something like the DNA splicers or something?
 
Shadowblade95 said:
Open world? This has peaked my interest. Its a shame that the fusion pokemon won't be obtainable.
Would you be up to changing your decision? Could use something like the DNA splicers or something?
Click to expand...

The way fusion Pokémon work from a technical standpoint makes it very hard for them to be usable by the player. They each have more than 2 types, and I accomplished this by making "combo-types" which are the sum of weaknesses and strengths of two or more types. To make fusion Pokémon obtainable I would have to give each of these types an in-game sprite. I would also have to make custom back sprites for each fusion Pokémon.

They're also hella busted from a design standpoint. Even some of the weaker fusion Pokémon have base stat totals that are higher than Arceus. They also have many unobtainable moves that serve to make boss battles more difficult. Effectively what this means is that the qualities that make them fun for boss battles would make them completely overpowered for player use.
 
Didn't get as much done today as I would have liked because I found Spheal Clicker and sunk 6 hours into it.

Anyway, heres the first city that you guys get to look at:

Currently Unnamed Ice City
Spoiler:
 
FeraligatrMaster said:
Wasn't this going to be a Fire Red hack at first? What made you change your mind to make it an Emerald hack instead?
Click to expand...

Quinhasa said:
Fire red its so much better in every way possible :(
Click to expand...

Anything I wanted to do in FireRed I could do im Emerald as well. For the player, it won't make a difference at all besides a few minor things. The reason I decided to switch was so that I could use Egg's upgraded battle engine to make the battle AI significantly better and more closely mirror real competitive battling. I'll still be using FireRed graphics overall, so it'll still all look the same.
 
I'd like to know more about the open world balancing. It's a tricky thing to get right, especially in a Pokemon game. Are there any checks in place to stop us from becoming too overleveled and blitzing through the story (assuming level progression is tied to story progression). How will wild/catchable pokemon be handled in regards to levels? They should always be at least several levels below what you need at the moment, to discourage players from treating pokemon as disposable. The entire point of Pokemon is that you grow and bond with your Pokemon, so that's a very important thing to preserve.
 
chrunch said:
I'd like to know more about the open world balancing. It's a tricky thing to get right, especially in a Pokemon game. Are there any checks in place to stop us from becoming too overleveled and blitzing through the story (assuming level progression is tied to story progression). How will wild/catchable pokemon be handled in regards to levels? They should always be at least several levels below what you need at the moment, to discourage players from treating pokemon as disposable. The entire point of Pokemon is that you grow and bond with your Pokemon, so that's a very important thing to preserve.
Click to expand...

Wild Pokémon are a set level, and they generally get stronger the further from your starting town you get, just like a normal Pokémon game.

Regular trainer battles act in a kinda similar way, except it's also modular based on how strong your strongest Pokémon is. Trainers nearest to your home town will tend towards owning Pokémon several levels lower than your highest leveled one, while the ones at the furthest corners of the region will usually own Pokémon equal or slightly stronger than your team in terms of level. In order to beat these trainers, you will need to make sure your whole team works as a cohesive unit, it will be hard to skate by with a single Pokémon.

Gym Leaders will adjust the strength of their team based on similar standards, but they're much more difficult than the other trainers because they're all using competitive movesets and updated and improved battle AI. Prepare to get Toxic stalled, Baton passed, etc. They also will have a minimum level based on number of badges, so if you just beat your 2nd gym and you don't train at all you'll still be underleveled for the 3rd.

Story battles are similarly curved to Gym leader battles except instead of a normal battle format you'll be fighting Fusion Pokemon, which provide a much different type of boss battle than what is typical for a Pokemon game. More similar to Totem Pokémon than a traditional gym battle.

The game is gonna be a rude awakening for players who only ever use one Pokémon and expect to ride through the game with it. You're gonna have to rework your team for specific battles and come up with strategies to win, as you won't be able to just grind your way past your problems.
 
Yoyoyo quick update post: I'm putting more regular daily updates on my Discord server here: https://discord.gg/5vX62Am

That's where all the daily updates will happen, but the big updates will still happen on this thread as well.
 
All the maps you've shown are amazing! I'm hoping a release is soon!
 
That map screenshot... It's is getting me all excited. But that bunch of water in the middle still kind of scares me.

I don't get how scaling works, though. I don't think you can have 10+ variations for each and every trainer... That just sounds insane.

I'll assume you know more, so I'll ask you now since you're making an open-world and I thought this was marginally related... What would Pokémon be like if levelling didn't make a dent to stats? As in, equalising all Pokémon to an equal field (Lv 50-strength wise for instance) and where things like base stats, move-pools, and fore-planning take precedence over levels? The competitive side is already like that, but how would that work in the game itself?
 
Last edited:
Adrevi said:
That map screenshot... It's is getting me all excited. But that bunch of water in the middle still kind of scares me.

I don't get how scaling works, though. I don't think you can have 10+ variations for each and every trainer... That just sounds insane.

I'll assume you know more, so I'll ask you now. What would Pokémon be like if leveling didn't make a dent to stats? As in, equalising all Pokémon to an equal field (Lv 50 for instance) and where things like base stats, movepools, and foreplanning take precedence over levels? The competitive side is already like that, but how would that work in the game itself?
Click to expand...

Water isn't really a big deal in the hack because there's no random encounters, instead you traverse water in a Sevii Islands-style boat between a few key harbor cities for the majority of the game. If you do some side quests, you can get your own boat, but still there's no random encounters in the big ocean. The side quests and story very much don't rely on you needing to go across the water much, so I don't think it'll be an annoying part of the game.

I definitely considered a system like that for battling, but I decided against it. Instead I have 2-3 trainer battles for each trainer planned, and then those basic battles are modified to more closely match the player's level when they battle them. For example, let's say I have a basic fisherman. He has two hard-coded teams: One with a Magikarp, and one with a Gyrados. Then in the fisherman's script, I have general level ranges that decide which of those battles it chooses from. So if your team is a level 10 team, you're gonna fight his Magikarp, if you're level 50, his Gyrados. Then, once the battle actually starts and he sends out his Pokemon, it will dynamically choose the level of that Pokemon using the player's team's level as reference.
 
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