Crystal hack: Pokémon Rising Crystal [COMPLETED]

[Sarns]

Pokémon Rising Crystal
​

Introduction
Pokémon Rising Crystal is an enhancement hack of Pokémon Crystal that aims to improve many of the flaws that the original GSC had, while also not deviating too much in style and feel. Story elements are kept mostly the same with a few additions.


What does this hack offer?
The original Gen 2 cast of Pokémon have been overhauled to allow for more diversity in the available types of Pokémon, so that certain types aren't under-represented. Many Pokémon have had their types, stats and appearance altered to make them more viable for use in a playthrough. Some Pokémon additionally have brand new original evolutions to give them more end-game viability.


Familiar evolutions
Alongside these completely new evolutions you'll see some familiar evolutions that joined the series in Gen 4.


New moves and Physical/Special-split
Along with the revamped cast, there are also new moves added to the game from future generations to allow for more diverse learn-sets. On that note, the weird rules of what is considered a special move and what is considered a physical move being based on typing has been ditched for the much superior Physical/Special-split that is present in future games.


Revamped areas, new and old
New locations have been added into the game and certain old locations have been revamped. Some of these locations are restored from Red/Blue/Yellow, such as Viridian Forest and Seafoam Islands and some are brand new additions, like the interior of the volcano at Cinnabar Island.


Easier access to trade-only Pokémon
Trade evolutions either evolve via level-up or have an evolution item associated with them. Items that used to make certain Pokémon evolve while trading can now instead be straight up used on such a Pokémon to make them evolve. Most, if not all, evolution items are purchasable at some point or another.


Harder difficulty
The game has been fitted with an entirely new level curve and ditches the open world gym progression that made certain gyms in Johto and Kanto a cakewalk. Non-held items cannot be used in battle and opposing trainers will not make use of these items either. Useful held items have been made available for purchase in certain locations to allow for easier team-building.


Boss trainers' Pokémon have competitive movesets, make use of held items and generally have more Pokémon on their teams as the game progresses. As an example, Chuck will no longer just have two Pokémon on his team despite being a late-game Gym Leader. In order to preserve the difficulty curve throughout the experience there are also hard level caps that prevent you from over-levelling past the highest leveled Pokémon on the next Gym Leader's team.


Something that is worth noting is that this hack puts an emphasis on difficulty. If you are not a fan of harder rom hacks, this may or may not be your cup of tea.

All Pokémon are catchable
As is the prerequisite with most hacks these days, the entire cast of Pokémon are available to capture at some point or another. All Pokémon are catchable in the wild or are available through evolution. Legendary Pokémon are all available somewhere in the overworld.


Documentation for the available Pokémon in the wild exists here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LMxR1xMwUc80xM8cjjZjwyy36Iv3GmGwal6K4ZjXMTs/edit#gid=0

Documentation for the stats and types of Pokémon exists here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YKCKdrTaqMRg6dfAg7Q_JcWGJgFjoZ6zp9Oz4Fwhrvk/edit?usp=sharing

Documentation for the changes to moves, Pokémon level-up learnsets and evolution methods exists here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_hF-vR7NUNtYLe0cc4xFhNsyCmCFGLiw/view?usp=sharing

Documentation for important trainer parties exists here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FSdv6cQDuLkz96ghdmql8N5Clej37Huaw5HQGsH50zI/edit?usp=sharing

Improved quality of life
Certain quality of life improvements have been added to the game to generally make Crystal a less sluggish experience. Repels ask you whether you'd like to use another upon running out, you can hold B to run etc. HMs can be replaced with other moves since there are now key items that you obtain throughout the game that perform their out-of-battle effects and the HP bars in battle don't go down at a sluggish speed in the late-game.


I forgot to mention this initially, but there's actually an option for instant text in this game. Go into the Options and set the Text Speed to "NONE" for instant text.


CREDITS:

Music credits:
Route 47 Demixed Theme by Mmmmmm
Cerulean City and Cinnabar Island Demixed Themes by FroggestSpirit
Ho-Oh Battle Theme and Lugia Battle Theme Demixes by Pigu
Kanto Legend Theme Demixed by GACT and Pigu
Hoenn Trainer Theme Demixed by FroggestSpirit

Graphics credits:
Latios and Latias front sprites by BlueEmerald, animation by Scarlax.
Latios and Latias back sprites by BloodlessNS.
Giovanni battle sprite by SirWhibbles.
Unique Pokémon Menu/Overworld sprites by Chamber, Soloo993, BlueEmerald, Lake, Neslug, Pikachu25 and Ryta.
Menu sprites for Gen 4 Pokémon from Rangi42/PolishedCrystal.
Menu sprites for entirely new Pokémon by Sarn and Pendulium.
New Pokémon concepts by Weny, Tulip, Pendulium and Sarn.
In-battle sprites for Generation 4 Pokémon and entirely new Pokémon by SuxMenner.
Jynx sprites by Pendulium, concept by Sarn.
Various smaller redesigns by Tulip.
Alolan Raichu sprites by Nuuk.
Map tilesets from Rangi42/PolishedCrystal.

Made possible thanks to:
The Pret community Discord for general coding assistance.
The Pokecrystal wiki tutorials and their various contributors.
Rangi42's PolishedMap and Tilemap Studio.

CREDITS NOTE
IF YOU NOTICE THAT SOME OF YOUR WORK IS USED IN THIS HACK WITHOUT PROPER CREDIT, PLEASE CONTACT ME SO THAT YOU CAN BE INCLUDED IN THE CREDITS.

DOWNLOAD THE HACK:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KZJXOQpzq0-uV_yPKnVL657XVZExtYbc/view

ALTERNATIVE VERSION OF THE GAME WITH BUY-ABLE RARE CANDIES:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1llzyZlDlupMR1kyE-PQN8aE98OyDW2ea/view

NEW UPDATE:

Version 1.1 patch notes:

-Made Raichu and Muk use sprites that look like their Alolan variants to match their new typings better. Nuuk added to credits for making the Alolan Raichu sprites.
-New Appearance for Donphan and Ampharos. I am genuinely sorry about Donphan, that should have just been in the base version.
-Nerfed certain early-game trainer movesets
-Fixed several small move errors.
-Fixed a bug with the Day-Care where you could overlevel past level cap.
-Removed Psychic-type from Politoed and Psyduck.

NEW UPDATE:

Version 1.2 patch notes:
-Small little updated appearances for various Pokémon
-Fixed a bug where you could no longer breed or gain EXP with the Daycare.

NEW UPDATE:

Version 1.3 patch notes:
-Fixed being able to access certain areas before you were supposed to be able to.
-Fixed some other small inaccuracies.
-Added an important trainers spreadsheet to the documentation.

Version 1.4 patch notes:
-Fixed not being able to enter Whirl Islands due to the warp events being one tile off.

Version 1.5 patch notes:
-Fixed some dialogue being incorrect.
-Fixed levels in certain areas
-Added a patch of grass in Olivine City with Pokémon that give high Experience yields to help with grinding.
-Fixed the level cap for Jasmine being off by a few levels.
-Added Up-Grade to Goldenrod Department Store.
-Made Cyndaquil obtainable on Route 24/25.

Please save in a Pokémon Center before going over to the new version. Patch a clean ROM and use the same save file.


The above link contains a download for a ZIP file that is pre-packaged with LunarIPS, a patching program that'll allow you to apply the patch included in the ZIP to your ROM. Obviously I will not be linking to any ROM. Please do not play with VBA, it is bad at what it does and there are better emulators out there.

 

[Tim-Volt]

Google Drive says the download is deleted.

 

[Sarns]

Drive link not working should be fixed now. Sorry about that!

 

[ablahblah987]

I've played Pokemon Crystal too many times but I appreciate the effort and I'll probably play this anyway. This seems to have some interesting ideas and I like difficulty hacks.

Could we please get some documentation on what edits were made to stats, moves, move pools, etc.?

 

[Sarns]

I will definitely try to get proper documentation out for everything. It is all documented, it's just not very user-friendly which is why I haven't shared it yet. I will definitely try my best to make it available for everyone however, as I want people to have the best experience possible.

 

[ablahblah987]

I will definitely try to get proper documentation out for everything. It is all documented, it's just not very user-friendly which is why I haven't shared it yet. I will definitely try my best to make it available for everyone however, as I want people to have the best experience possible.

I think I'll wait for that to come out before trying this hack. Thank you

 

[_pheebee]

Google Drive says "The File is in Owner's Bin"
Other than that, it looks good, and really want to try.

 

[Sarns]

Google Drive says "The File is in Owner's Bin"
Other than that, it looks good, and really want to try.

Really? I thought I had fixed that. Link works fine for me. Is it really not working?

 

[soupercell]

I love fakemon evos and those sprites look quite nice! I definitely like what I see; and I will mention the google drive download worked fine for me.

Only thing is documentation for the new evos and stat modifications would be nice, but this looks really good. Great job!

edit: i seem to missed earlier in the thread where you mentioned you'll address the documentation, so ignore what i said :)

 

[Sarns]

I love fakemon evos and those sprites look quite nice! I definitely like what I see; and I will mention the google drive download worked fine for me.

Only thing is documentation for the new evos and stat modifications would be nice, but this looks really good. Great job!

edit: i seem to missed earlier in the thread where you mentioned you'll address the documentation, so ignore what i said :)

Woah! Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm a big fan of your work, so hearing that from you is sort of surreal almost. I will be posting more documentation within a matter of minutes, so hopefully I did a good job with it.

 

[aicaimze]

is rng different in this...? i've never felt the need to ask this before, but i'm missing, getting crit & haxed way more often than normal

 

[therealzef]

figured i'd give johto a quick run through. gonna do kanto next. very cool hack, i enjoyed it overall. i agree with the post above that something feels weird about the RNG, specifically vs. gym leaders, i dunno why, maybe it's just a weird luck thing haha

anyway, a lot of typings kind of make no sense with their current designs. some pokemon had their designs changed to reflect this, but not all for some reason. muk could have easily been alolan. psychic meganium is strange. rock type dodrio is weird too. there were others, but its fine

it was hard like you said, but it was always remedied by constantly grinding to the current level cap which was sort of boring, but that's just naturally what happens if you slap a level cap onto a pre-existing region i guess.

the tiles were awesome, all the fakemon were great (i used smeargles evolution and the new aipom for a while), the gym matches were mostly fun & challenging and johto's pacing overall seems fixed for the most part

 

[Sarns]

figured i'd give johto a quick run through. gonna do kanto next. very cool hack, i enjoyed it overall. i agree with the post above that something feels weird about the RNG, specifically vs. gym leaders, i dunno why, maybe it's just a weird luck thing haha

anyway, a lot of typings kind of make no sense with their current designs. some pokemon had their designs changed to reflect this, but not all for some reason. muk could have easily been alolan. psychic meganium is strange. rock type dodrio is weird too. there were others, but its fine

it was hard like you said, but it was always remedied by constantly grinding to the current level cap which was sort of boring, but that's just naturally what happens if you slap a level cap onto a pre-existing region i guess.

the tiles were awesome, all the fakemon were great (i used smeargles evolution and the new aipom for a while), the gym matches were mostly fun & challenging and johto's pacing overall seems fixed for the most part

Hi! Glad to hear that you mostly enjoyed the experience. I realize that some of the new typings for certain Pokémon maybe don't make a whole lot of sense design-wise in hindsight but I hope it didn't impede the experience too much. Thanks for playing regardless.

 

[yankeesown]

Regular crystal cheats (wild pokemon modifier at least) don't work in this game - is this by design?

 

[Sarns]

Regular crystal cheats (wild pokemon modifier at least) don't work in this game - is this by design?

I would highly advise against the use of cheats in this game, as most of the time they'll either not work or straight up break something.

 

[Roaring Moon]

Regular crystal cheats (wild pokemon modifier at least) don't work in this game - is this by design?

The RAM addresses likely changed.

 

[ablahblah987]

I'm happy to see the requested documentation is out now. Have move powers been updated to match what they are in the later games? Does Leech Life now have a BP of 80? What about Hi Jump Kick?

Also, has TM compatibility been updated to resemble what things are like in the newer games? Can Venusaur and Aerodactyl learn Earthquake for example?

 

[Pendulium]

I'm happy to see the requested documentation is out now. Have move powers been updated to match what they are in the later games? Does Leech Life now have a BP of 80? What about Hi Jump Kick?

Also, has TM compatibility been updated to resemble what things are like in the newer games? Can Venusaur and Aerodactyl learn Earthquake for example?

Yes, as far as I am aware of, TM compatibility should be updated. Sarn can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I'm also pretty sure we buffed moves to be as strong as later gens.

 

[✧《 King Kage 》✧]

This looks great, I absolutely love every single change you've added to the base games. These changes, according to me are perfection and mostly everything I look for in an enhancement hack. Going to play it rn!

 

[ablahblah987]

I'm quite enjoying this hack so far. The Smeargle evolution is fun to use. Ariados with buffed stats and a stronger Leech Life is great.

Is there a move reminder somewhere? How are we supposed to get a Tangela that knows Spore? Is it intentionally impossible to get? I tried breeding two Tangelas and the resulting level five baby didn't get it...

Minor issue -- is it intentional to keep the BP of Dig at 60? Some people have real problems but I was a little disappointed to see that.