[Developing] Pokémon Azure

[DJClass]

Pokemon Azure
Azure is a project born and raised on 4chan's /vp/ board, with the original idea of creating a game based in Real-World locations. Pokémon Azure (Previously 'Pacific Blue') is based on the real-life locations along the Pacific Shore of North America. The towns are heavily influenced by their real life counterparts. The game will consist of counterparts of California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, several territories of Canada, and Alaska. The ultimate goal of this game is to create an engine that allows players to create their own Pokémon game by using the various tools to create their own locations, or even using the source code itself!

Plot
The plot is basically your usual Pokémon journey - catch Pokémon, get badges, deal with rivals, go exploring, help take down a villainous team, all that fun stuff. There are plenty of surprises along the way, though!

Your travels will take you across the Pacific region, a land of highly diverse terrain and weather and a great variety of Pokémon - over 300 in the Regional Dex alone. From fields and forests to deserts and mountains to tundras and volcanoes, exploring this region is not for the faint of heart! On the other side of the coin, there are lots and lots of other trainers on the road who are just as competitive as you. For the truly brave, there's even an option to enforce Nuzlocke rules on the game.

Joining your adventures are your younger sibling and your childhood friend, both of whom are on their own journey. Professor Cedar saw a lot of potential for greatness in the three of you, and however you can, you're going to prove him right. You're all aiming to be the best, but your friend is willing to get stronger at any cost - and a certain shady group making the rounds looking for new recruits might just be able to make his dreams come true.

Advantages of using the Azure Engine/Feature List
Using our engine as opposed to RMXP, Romhacking, or really any other method of creating a Fan Game does have its benifits!

• A toolset custom tailored specifically for the purpose of creating a Fan Game
• Custom Map sizes (NOT modifying an existing area/route)
  
• Lua Imimplementation to allow for easy event scripting
• Full 3D model support and Scaling
• Open Source engine to allow modifying by the Community
• Full-Featured Mapmaker!
• Multiple Saves
• Innovative Single-Screen UI
• Custom Scripting Interface
• Drag-and-drop scenery
• Trainer editing
  

(and growing!)


Nuzlocke Mode

Pokémon: Azure will have one thing exclusive to it, that no other game before has had (as far as we've seen!); an official Nuzlocke Mode, supported by the creator of Nuzlocking, Ruby himself! Yup, that's right! A real, honest to goodness, Nuzlocke Mode. It will abide by classic 'Ruby' rules.

• You can only catch the first Pokémon of each new route.
• If it faints, then it dies and is released from your party.

If you don't know what Nuzlocking is, go to Nuzlocke's blog and read his awesome damn comic!

Online Features

A complete online trading system powered by RattleSnake & Mercury, two in-house projects. This will allow anyone to upload Pokemon, perform searches, and trade with any other people. It will function almost like Nintendo's GTS system.

On top of this, there will be online Matchmaking for battling across the Internet, which will not require port forwarding of any kind, allowing anyone to host! The matchmaking will use a point-based ranking system for those matches that choose to allow it. You can also choose to do what Pokemon Stadium allows, and create a "Rental" team instead of transferring your own over.

The matchmaking will also have a friends list system, allowing you to send/receive invitations to battles with friends and even view the profile of who is challenging you (allowing you to "peek" at their team). If you get bored, you can do random match-ups, and eventual support for double and triple battles will occur as well!


Various Arts

Spoiler:

Splash Screens by SoaringSomeone

Versus Sprites by SoaringSomeone

Screenshots/Videos
SoaringSomeone
mugeca
Charmilio

Spoiler:

​

F.A.Q.


Q. So, if I wanted to follow the progress on this project, how would I do that?
A. we now have a twitter that you can follow, or check back into this thread every now and again.

Q. I'd like to help! How would I join you?
A. contact me (Charmilio) via one of the links below, and we'll set up an appointment and discuss things!

Q. What exactly do you guys need from a potential team member?
A. if you can create trainer sprites, then please, contact me as soon as possible. and if you are any good with making music with Pokémon soundfonts, then feel free.

Q. Hey, haven't I seen this somewhere before?
A. yes, you have. tenFold Studios (formerly eightkit) is a splintered faction of NAPL (North American Pokémon Leagues), which was itself a sub-division of IAPL (International Association of Pokémon Leagues).

Q. When you say 'gen 5 graphics', does this include the 3D overworld and battle scene? Or do you mean the 5th gen graphical style in 2D like other games on this forum? (Awkward Squirtle)
A. The Overworld will be a '2.5D' style, having 2D trainer sprites, and 3D models for buildings. The battle scene will also be 2D.

Q. Is there any particular reason you chose C# and XNA? (Awkward Squirtle)
A. Ease of development, and the fact that all the developers involved know C#, kind of makes it an easy pick.

Q. I notice you're using a larger resolution (640x480, right?). What's your reasoning for not also increasing the tile size? Judging from the overworld sprites, it's still 16x16... Also, have you got larger Pokémon sprites already? (Awkward Squirtle)
A. Yes, the resolution size will be 640x480. The tile sizes are actually slightly larger than the standard Black and White tilesets (I believe they are 30x30, ours are 32x32). The overworlds themselves are also a max size of 32x32 (Again, Black and White ones are 30x30, I believe GBA OW's are 16x16). We will be using the standard Black and White Pokémon sprites for our battles since recreating 649 front and back sprites and then animating them would most definitely push our project into the dangerous HL3 zone.

Q. How are you doing the 3D map editor? Is it tile-based? (Awkward Squirtle)
A. It is mainly tile-based. Currently we can freely place trainers, npc's, and objects (trees, buildings, etc...) around on the map. Each thing we can place, including the tiles, can have a script assigned to them. Scripts can be accessed on touch or on activation.

Q.For events, I see you're using scripting. Is this difficult to implement? (Awkward Squirtle)
A. The Lua library we're using makes things a blast. Our goal is to make scripting easy for the mappers so they dont have to worry about learning some huge language in order to get things done. Implementing it took some research, but it wasn't difficult at all.

Q.Also, in the first post, it mentions an 'innovative UI'. Am I correct in saying this will be mouse-controlled? (Awkward Squirtle)
A. Sure, you can use your mouse for the UI. You don't have to, but it's an option. The innovative part is to make the transition from the DS to the PC a comfortable one. Elements in the UI will definitely be a plus for users with a mouse, but it should be accessable to someone who is playing just on their keyboard, or if they wanted to use a gamepad to play with as well.

Q.I suppose this is gonna be all official Pokemon, and no fakes, right? (Zephyr+)
A. right you are, all officials. the only fakes /vp/ would kill for is Tentaquil, and we're at least going to include him in some joke way.


Links/Contact Info
private message me on PC!
email - [email protected]
skype - pacificcharmilio
previous thread (info here is more up-to-date)
twitter - @tenfoldstudios

Credits/Thank Yous

tenFold Studios
Co-Admin of tenFold Studios - ShinyJirachi
Co-Admin of tenFold Studios - Charmilio

Senior Programmer - ShinyJirachi
Senior Programmer - Willaien
Senior Programmer - Darkkal
Senior Programmer - Ency

Senior Scripter - Charmilio
Scripter - Parasect
Scripter - Desame11
Scripter - muge

Senior Artist - SoaringSomone
Artist - KY_GhostTrainer
Artist - muge

3D Modeler - NikNaks


Contributors
Music, Sprites - Aus_Pokeguy
Scriptwork - ShinyGengar
Music - Tortiss


IAPL
CoolTrainerBro
Fremont
Anonymousse
bigplrbear

Special Thanks
Secant (Averdak)
Fenix (Chingling)

Everyone at IAPL!
/vp/


​

 

[Involuntary Twitch]

...Huh! Looks... rough, but that's okay. Obviously you've got a lot of stuff planned, and if you managed to pull through and make it work, this game could be really cool!

I suppose this is gonna be all official Pokemon, and no fakes, right? (/vp/ is pretty divided when it comes to fakes, iirc.)

I'm not totally sold on the 3d overworld yet, but that might be because the lack of texture or detail or anything makes it look really crappy right now. I'd love to see an example of a finished and fully-furnished map, it could look really cool.

 

[DJClass]

right you are, all officials. the only fakes /vp/ would kill for is Tentaquil, and we're at least going to include him in some joke way.

and yes, the placeholder at gives it that rough feeling you were talking about. i'm sure if we were to polish it up a bit it would look much better, but for the moment this is what we have.

(oh, and i wanted to personally thank you Zeph, since in the previous forum post we used your layout on your Uranium thread. thanks so much for making such a pretty thread layout! i'm sure many others would say the same!)

 

[☆Rei☆]

What programming language are you using for the actual editor? I assume either C/C++/C# (and of course lua)

 

[Involuntary Twitch]

right you are, all officials. the only fakes /vp/ would kill for is Tentaquil, and we're at least going to include him in some joke way.

and yes, the placeholder at gives it that rough feeling you were talking about. i'm sure if we were to polish it up a bit it would look much better, but for the moment this is what we have.

(oh, and i wanted to personally thank you Zeph, since in the previous forum post we used your layout on your Uranium thread. thanks so much for making such a pretty thread layout! i'm sure many others would say the same!)

ah yeah tentaquil. i remember that thread! i even made a sprite for him. glad to hear he's still around! (i haven't been to /vp/ in a long time.)

all of the credit for the thread CSS goes to ~JV~! i just sprite things.

 

[DaSpirit]

Wow. Your graphics need improving, but it seems as if you have a good start.

And no, you're not the first person who had a Nuzlocke Mode built in. I was planning on putting it in my game, and I got the idea from a game I saw a year ago who had the mode (don't remember which game it was, or whether it exists anymore).

How long have you guys been working on this? Seems like you have a huge team.

 

[DJClass]

What programming language are you using for the actual editor? I assume either C/C++/C# (and of course lua)

C# with the XNA framework.

And no, you're not the first person who had a Nuzlocke Mode built in. I was planning on putting it in my game, and I got the idea from a game I saw a year ago who had the mode (don't remember which game it was, or whether it exists anymore).

Pokémon: Azure will have one thing exclusive to it, that no other game before has had (as far as we've seen!); an official Nuzlocke Mode, supported by the creator of Nuzlocking, Ruby himself!

we contacted Ruby and asked for his blessings on this, which we received. it was more about knowing that the creator supported us. he's a bit of a hero to me, so i got all gushy, haha.

How long have you guys been working on this? Seems like you have a huge team.

the project as a whole has had almost 3 years of development, and the people actively working on it adds up to about 12-15 people.

 

[Fremont]

I lost touch with Pacific League forever ago, I decided to Google it on a whim and I am so happy to see it's still (potentially) kicking.

I'd like to be involved again, if you would have me.

 

[Maruno]

Please don't post in threads which have not been active for at least 2 months. It's in the rules.

Locked.