Emerald hack: Pokemon Ascent

[Tearisten]

Pokemon Ascent Alpha v5

Story

Ascent is a combat focused rush of trainer battles with roguelike inspired progression. The gameplay loop lacks the adventure side of the normal pokemon experience, in favor of refined competitive battles. You start at the bottom of the tower with three starter pokemon and progressively make your way from floor to floor, earning currency to upgrade pokemon and items. Each floor has a variety of quality of life features to get your team ready for the next gauntlet without the regular headache of grinding. See if you have what it takes to ascend to the top!

Features

• Every floor has unique battles which must be completed in sequence to progress
• Rotating trainer teams. Trainers have additional pokemon and may switch them out randomly between attempts. Operates on a slot by slot basis.
• All pokemon up to gen 8
• Pokemon battle stats tracking (battle count/knockouts/etc)
• Swap all HP bars for text
• Mostly upto gen 7/8 battle mechanics, items, moves, abilities, with some adjustments and additions.
• Different currencies to manage.
• Choose one of every starter type.
• Built in gamemode options including permadeath/random encounters/gen8 speed calc
• Peek the enemy team status/pokemon stats at any time during battle.
• Forced set mode and no bag use in battle.
• No exp. Every pokmon evolves with stones from the shop.
• Evs on status menu
• Mobile PC
• 25 custom abilities
• 12 custom items
• Freeze now reduces Sp. Attack and does DOT like burn
• A few new natures with either multiple boosts or double boosts
• Hail boosts ice and fighting defence by 1.5x
• Sand boosts rock and ground special defence by 1.5x
• Reduced button prompts for cleaner battles and menus. No more spam clicking A in battle.
• Instant Text
• Looping menus
• Custom shiny palettes
• Very few stat changes (Ledian)
• Tons of ability/item/move/type changes

New Abilities

• Holy Aura: Heals you and your partner by 10% at end of turn
• Bull rush / Obsession: The speed/sp att versions of gorilla tactics
• Intrepid Wand / Dauntless Crown
• Trick room and tailwind set on switch abilities
• Hazard Crew: A hazard version of screen cleaner
• Inversity: Flips this pokemon's type weakness chart
• Clutch: Overgrow/blaze/etc... but for all types
• Vampire: Fang moves heal user
• Water lily: A rain version of flower gift
• Oppression: A sp att version of intimidate
• Running Riot: No cooldown on recharge moves if KO
• Fist of Fury: Fist moves hit both enemies in double battles
• Silver Spoon: Protected when hard switching in

New Items

• Hourglass: Flips the targets defences when attacking
• Triforce: Boosts all stats by 1.1x
• Heavy bands: Deal .5x damage above 1/3rd hp but 2.0x below 1/3rd
• Items to boost trick room / tailwind timer by 1 turn
• Plate mail: Boost defence by 1.5x but lower speed by .5x
• Greedy Pot: Boost priority once when attacking
• Brass Knuckles: Boost contact damage by 1.5x
• STAB/Coverage Gems: Type gems for STAB/Coverage moves
• Heel Guard: Protects from 4x damage

New Natures

• Demon: +20% speed for -10% in all other stats
• Pacifist: +10% def and sdef for -10% in att and sp att
• Rager: +10% in att and sp att for +10% def and sdef

Screenshots

Credits

• Tearisten: The main designer and coder
• Jeis27 and Memeos: For input on designs and suggestions
• Freebird5678 and EmeraldStatllion: For testing and feedback
• DizzyEgg: colored natures
• DizzyEgg and Dr. Pop: Scrolling Multichoices
• PokemonCrazy: iv/ev display, effectiveness text coloring
• ROM Hacking Hideout: pret emerald expansions. The MVP here. Porting and spriting all new pokemon and battle mechanics is way more than a one man job I would never even attempt by myself. Emerald hacks will never be the same.
• Mkol103: Remove low health beep
• TheXaman: DS Style party menu
• Hestia: Force set mode
• Paccy: unlimited tm use
• Zeturic: Party screen wrap
• ghoulslash/skelli: bag sort
• ghoulslash: disable bag use in battle
• avara: remove starting potion from pc, change starting money, scripting tutorials, pokecommunity forum guides
• Jaizu: skip rayquaza intro, remove contest move screen from pokemon summary
• Lunos: replace any movie
• Hiroshi Sotomura: remove save confirmation
• GriffinR: map transition explanation from pret discord
• BuffelSalt: for ev increase, reset special function & nature change function, as well as nature not being linked to personality, parental bond implementation(I think this was taken from skelli's CFRU). All extra tms post 50 implementation. Later gen item icons. Inclement emerald gave me so much inspiration.
• AsparagusEduardo: one time tm shop buy
• MGriffin: Troubleshooting help
• surskitty: trainer_control
• soupercell: bullrush ability and lots of inspiration from radical red
• Mkol103: battle frontier adventure was a huge inspiration
• LukasAUT: For gengar/espeon shiny color inspiration
• daviddelmundo: some of the custom item sprites
• Deokishisu: For pokmeon/move type icons.
• Deokishisu and Lunos: instant text implementation
• StarsMmd: tons of inspiration, especially for the trick room on switch ability. Also for being my rom hacking hero. XG is a masterpiece and my favorite rom hack.
• Skelli and the Unbound team: CFRU and DPE were my playground before I found poke emerald expansion. Unbound is the GOAT.
• Anyone who helped with the emerald decomp and members of the PRET discord
• Everyone in the Ascent discord who provides feedback and discussion

*If you are the original creator of any of these ideas and would like them removed please reach out
*Any of my new ideas are fair game for anyone else to use. I'm planning to share some of the implementations later.

Planned Features

• 6 total areas for 30 total floors. Currently at 3 areas with 15 total floors
• Pokeball swaper npc
• A custom tileset
• A custom stat editor UI
• A custom battle UI

Download & Documentation

Base: Pokemon Emerald
Please use mgba or you will experience bugs
Alpha V5

Bug reports and feedback

Discord

 

[nezhas]

really love how this hack looks so far..! i think all the changes are very creative and nice, and while some would definitely be busted in mainline games, i think that's no excuse not to include them for fun in hacks. in particular, i love poison lowering special attack, the added poison touch-alikes for the other ailments, oppression, the buff to hail, hyper cutter and the like no longer being affected by self inflicted drops... it felt like every time i glanced at something in this game, i thought "oh, i haven't seen that before!"

not to mention how absolutely streamlined everything is! one thing i would be curious if you're planning to implement on later floors is more interesting pokemon that cost more bp to get? like lileep and some other fossils (... maybe not aerodactyl) costing 3 bp each, maybe. (i'm personally just fascinated by cradily and always looking for opportunities to use it in battle frontier esque content and whatnot. feel free to ignore this)

i really love this hack so far and i can't wait for more. i get exhausted easily trying to go through the story mode of rom hacks whether it has a new story or just revamps the base game, so something like this is perfect.

 

[Tearisten]

Thanks nezhas!

One of the reasons I wanted to make something of my own is I think there is so much more that can be done with the battle engine. Pokemon is all about options but I feel like some archetypes and systems were left out in order to create distinct feeling play patterns. Burn halving attack but having no special attack alternative is the best example, but this can apply to moves, abilities, and held items as well. Why are there no physical moves that hit across the defence spectrum like psyshock? Rock and flying get no consistent physical moves without recoil but ground gets 100bp 100acc earthquake? Even with the plentiful ground immunities the gap in consistent options across types is just too wide. It's a luck based game but sometimes they take that too far. There is a line between samey and lacking options I'll have to find as well.

I'm aware things will be extremely unbalanced at the moment. My current plans is to create the entirety of the battle floors for alpha then bug fixing, balance changes, and cosmetics as needed in beta. Full release when I'm satisfied with the balance and it's prettier than the current version.

Later floors will definitely have stronger pokemon and the currency will definitely scale as you progress. Some of the pokemon shops will be themed, for example I currently have most of the final stage of the early game bugs on floor 9 (Beedrill/etc). Fossils will probably be similar. Not every pokemon will be available, that sounds like a nightmare to balance. I'll probably adjust over half the roster though. I'm a big fan of Cradily as well so it will definitely make the cut. I really like pokemon with uncommon dual types. Mono types are too common for me and I'll be retyping a lot of them. The goal is to make every pokemon I give out strong and unique in some way. Perhaps I've been giving out too many coverage moves at the moment, but I feel this is the best way to create variety along with abilities. Most pokemon have one or two additional type coverages they wouldn't normally.

I've been trying to keep these adjustments at least a little thematic, but gameplay comes first.

All that's left for the next alpha version (up to floor 10), is trainer teams. Hopefully done in a week or so.

 

[daniel098]

this is an interesting take of a rom hack, i hope that you will be able to have a smooth progress

 

[nezhas]

i definitely agree specifically with the rock and flying issue. in most games if you want a physical flying move that has good accuracy and no recoil... you're stuck with either wing attack with its 60 power or aerial ace which is just wing attack that doesn't care about double team. even the special moves for flying are kind of scuffed because pretty much anything past gust doesn't have 100 accuracy (and hurricane... 70...). as for rock... i think smack down might be the only common move that doesn't have less than 100 accuracy. what i see frequently in hacks is them throwing balance out the window a little bit to favor rock more, like adding more accuracy to rock slide and stone edge, or more commonly giving fly 100 accuracy. what would really be nice is having new moves.

your point about psyshock is a good one; i don't think there are any other moves that work like that. if anything, i think it'd be neat if dark had the opposite of psyshock since they're sort of opposite types. maybe a claw type physical move that uses special defense instead of physical... i also frequently notice the lack of special priority moves, since usually you've got extremespeed, bullet punch, mach punch, and aqua jet in particular (and the newer accelerock)... all physical. the best you could get special-wise is either vacuum wave (uncommon to see and most pokemon that learn it are physical attackers anyway) or aqua jet in a rom hack that added it in but didn't do the physical special split. for all the favor that's shown to special attackers (no intimidate equivalent, no real status moves to instantly lower special attack like you can with physical, etc) i'm surprised there really aren't any priority moves for them other than saddling them with a wimpy quick attack or some such. something like growl or even charm but for special attack would be huge. until the day comes where those become real, i will continue desperately spamming struggle bug in every game...

i feel like there's definitely a hierarchy of "strong" versus "weak" types where it's really hard to argue the opposite. like psychic and ground are objectively strong types while ice and bug are weak types, even if there are some wimpy psychic and ground types and good ice and bug types. it's why i really like the hail change you made where it gives ice types extra defense... though i'm not sure what can be done about bugs.

also, this is another question for my own specific preferences, but is there any plan to put the vanillite line in the game? vanillite is my favorite pokemon and i would love to try vanilluxe with the improved hail, since i used it with hail + ice body through my entire run of shield but knew that probably wouldn't fly in anything other than a vanilla mainline game, especially since i didn't have aurora veil. no worries if not though, i know you said you want to cut back on monotypes and i totally get why.

really glad to hear your plan for a new release coming soon by the way! i'm excited to try it :^)!

 

[Tearisten]

I wrote the psyshock and more special priority move ideas down. Particularly I really like the more priority moves idea.

I'm not planning to do typechart changes but I think sand/hail could definitely use more buffs. Rain/sun are too strong and affect more than just one type significantly so I think it's fair to do the same thing for sand/hail. I really like the idea of extending the stat boosts to additional types, I'm thinking ground and fighting. Ground is obvious and makes rock/ground dual types way better. Fighting I'm reasoning with "Martial Arts masters are known to train atop the tallest of mountains and have adapted immunity to even the mightiest blizzards." Along with overcoat blocking all chip as well.

Vanillite is in the first area in my dev build, I think that might be a new change? I redid the first area pokemon shops this patch. It has ice body as a standard ability, which I buffed to 20% per turn as it was pretty bad before. Weather isn't easily accessible(drizzle etc) till area two though. I don't mind mono ice. Mono water is the most egregious offender in my mind.

 

[Lrr]

Just played through the alpha, enjoyed it quite a bit. It scratches the roguelike+pokemon itch without requiring commitment to a 50 hour RPG like traditional nuzlockes, and I really enjoyed the trimmed down, curated movesets for pokemon. The fight design was also very enjoyable, with the AI teams taking advantage of utility moves like Trick Room, Heal Bell, Helping Hand, etc.

My only big balance concern right now is the status abilities (poison touch variants and poison point variants) being 100%. Static Shock Shinx was extremely strong and the thought of a defensively built Flame Body scares me. Poison Point is less egregious because almost no special moves are contact, although just the guaranteed passive damage made defensive Chespin capable of 1v1ing just about every physical mon thrown its way.

Also, not sure how popular this feature would be, but it'd be cool to have the random gift pokemon like in Nuzlocke mode but without permadeath. Part of the fun of roguelikes is having to work with what you're given so not getting to choose your mons would be cool

 

[Tearisten]

I plan to seperate the perma death setting from the random gift encounter setting, it's a pretty easy adjustment I haven't got around to yet.

 

[Tyxerns]

Just finished the alpha, def one of my favorite rom hacks i've played in awhile love the concept and everything about it. Looking forward to seeing where you go next with the concept.

(Also would love to see a randomized feature/different battle styles)

 

[Tearisten]

I just posted alpha v2.

Updates:
Implement area 2 for 10 total floors, up from 5
Pokemon shop additions for area 1
Moveset, ability, and type adjustments
Mid stage evolution stones in the item shop on floor 6. They only evolve 3 stage pokemon to their second stage (starters mostly).
A few bug fixes

A full list of changes will be available when I finish alpha.
My planned release schedule is 5 floors a month, with one or two months off to do other changes like implement some more items.

The thing I'm dying to implement at the moment is a generalized 4x weakness berry, so my shop can be tidier. This may be too OP, but I'm considering making it a permanent hold item rather than a berry that's used up.

 

[nezhas]

very excited to get started on the new version, but i do have a question now... i evolved my team to start with, which is togepi/litten/totodile/bulbasaur/abra/shinx... i think everyone kept their abilities that they had before evolving after using the stone, with the exception of ivysaur, whose ability went from poison touch to overgrow. i tried using the ability capsule i have left on it to see if it'd let me switch back but it says no effect... is this an oversight or is only bulbasaur supposed to have poison touch?

also, it seems like there's a whole zapdos available for 1 bp from the first new floor. is that on purpose?

EDIT: also just had an instance of yawn hitting through protect. my togetic used it on a galarian ponyta which had used protect that turn, but it fell asleep next turn anyway.

EDIT 2: just finished the phoebe fight :^) i feel like that was definitely harder than sydney's fight but that might also be because she has a legendary pokemon (emolga)

really looking forward to the next iteration! i didn't end up changing my team this time around because i'm not ready to commit to a hail team yet but i did buy a vanillite just so he knows he's loved.

 

[Tearisten]

Woops!

I use Zapdos and Zacian for testing! I'm not sure how it snuck through though, as it is commented out in my code at the moment. Maybe I didn't compile my final changes? I need make a lot of these test changes reliant on a build flag in the future.

Phoebe's Wailmer seems kinda OP on paper I may move it to a bit later and give her something a bit more on theme for her team. The elite four area bosses are just placeholders for now. Probably using some custom sprites and battle cards for myself/irl friends/inspirations

All evolutions are supposed to keep their abilities throughout all their stages. I can't stand when you have to look up which ability changes into which upon evolution so I'm making it consistent, probably missed a few others too tbh.

I looked into the yawn thing, a ton of moves weren't actually checking for protect if they used a value called "NO_ACC_CALC_CHECK_LOCK_ON." I don't think this should have any direct impacts, since most of the other moves using this value I don't really give out. If there is an issue I can just add/remove the affected by protect flags to those moves on a case by case basis. I'm actually a bit surprised this bug exists, since I don't think any changes I made caused this. Great find :)


I posted a new patch with these fixes since mostly the Zapdos thing is kinda game breaking

 

[nezhas]

very happy to report that my ivysaur has poison touch back now after the patch! unfortunately, i do have something else to report... the vanillite i bought is level 100 for some reason? i hadn't bought a seventh pokemon until that one and like i said i wasn't ready to use it yet, so i didn't glance at the pc until just now, but after noticing, i bought a random other pokemon and a second vanillite and they both came out level 50, so i don't think it's the straight to pc thing that's an issue...

 

[Tearisten]

Did you grab the level 100 on 2.0 or 2.1? I think 2.0 had the pokeshop set to level 100 on accident but it should be fixed in 2.1, I had this fixed but again I guess I forgot to compile my changes after removing all my test stuff.

I also noticed that I was giving out 10bp in the starter room. I also use this for testing stuff. I updated the drive with just this fix.

If you want me to respond in a more timely fashion, you can post in my discord nezhas. This is fine as well though, since it keeps my pokecommunity post active. I just won't always see it right away on here.

Posted 2.2 which removes the BP gift in the starter room I use for testing

 

[nezhas]

sorry, i don't do well in discords...

i did grab the level 100 in 2.0, not 2.1, so it looks like you already fixed it. also, i've been meaning to ask, is porygon planned to be included? i adore eviolite porygon2 (that combined with a mawile with stockpile, baton pass, and a custap berry just carried me through inclement emerald recently) and it'd be nice to use it here too... i like tanky stally pokemon in general, i've realized, as my pacifist ivysaur and togetic (with oppression) are my consistent favorites in this rom.

 

[Tearisten]

If the pokemon has been competitively (vgc and smogon tiers) relevant in the last 3 gens or so I'll probably include it. I just don't see a reason to include every low tier early game rodent, for example. Maybe I give out raticate but ignore watchog. Why would I give out metapod kakuna etc..

I also love the porygon line and it will for sure make an appearance, but as with a ton of other lines I can't give it out too early since it would destroy the balance. Since porygon line is a 3 stage, I can't give out it's 1st stage early game since you would be allowed to evolve it with the mid stage evo stone you get in area 2. Porygon2 is way too strong for area 2 access since I capped area 2's stat total around the starter 2nd stages. Instead I'll just directly give out porygon2 when it's stats/movepool is directly competitive with the area. Too early of OP evolution access has turned me a way from a lot of early game additions, especially 2 stage pokemon. Area 3 will have access to the 2 stage evo stones, so any pokemon I put in the area 1 or 2 shops can't have a 2 (final) stage evolution that outscales area 3. The best example is growlithe/arcanine. I really wanted to put growlithe in area 1 or 2 shop since it's stat totals match those areas, but having access to arcanine(555 total stats) as early as floor 11 does not make sense as floors 11-15 will have a total stat cap of around 500.

I am not willing to sacrifice complicating the evolution methods any further to get around this limitation.

The current evolution stone plans are as follows:
Mid stage evo stones (for 3 total stage evos like bulbasaur) = floor 6
2 stage final stones (for 2 total stage evos like growlithe) = floor 11
3 stage final stones (for 3 total stage evos like ivysaur) = floor 16

Area stat scaling is as follows (5 floors each with a boss). Guidelines more than rules. Generally goes up from a single floor to floor as it still factors in moves/abilities/types too:
1-5 : 350 max
6-10: 420 max
11-15: 490 max
16-20: 545 max
21-25: Low ubers and psuedo's
26-30: True Ubers

Anything with multiple forms like eevee I also will not be including as it will litter my shop to have all those different stones. I'll directly give out flareon/jolteon/etc... instead.

Hope that clarifies things a bit. I've had this planned out for a while I just never posted it anywhere yet.

 

[nezhas]

thank you for the info; it's good to know what we can look forward to! i wasn't expecting porygon to show up early on anyway, if at all. it's nice to know my little guy is planned for later, though.

 

[Tearisten]

Posted alpha v3

Implement Area 3: Teenage Daydream
Seperate nuzlocke mode into perma death and random encounter modes
Permadeath now prompts users to adjust their team between battles but has strong restrictions.
Implement peek battle option. Lets you scout the enemy team. Part of this option can be toggled from starter room npc.
Implement evo stone for 2 stage final evos (think arcanine, scizor, muk, etc)
Implement colored move effectiveness text.
Add new ability, silver spoon. Cast protect when switched in mid turn. Does not work with switching moves (volt switch etc)
Add new item, greedypot. Boosts prio on switch in for 1 turn. Currently unavailable.
Add new item, brass knuckles. Boosts contact damage. Currently unavailable.
Add new item, thermometer. Single weather item for all weather types. Replace normal weather hold items.
Add new item, (Achilles) heel guard. Lowers holders 4x weakness to only 2x. Does not consume when activated. Does not work on 2x weakness.
Change destiny knot to take target with holder when a death is caused by contact. Works both ways.
Buff figy berry to always restore 50% hp no matter what nature.
Make item and shop list menus loop from top to bottom
Rework item pouch. Now requires less button presses and changed item tab types.
Change sandveil to heal in sand
nerf weather speed boost abilities to 1.5x
nerf infiltrator/unseen fist to do less damage through protect
ground boosts sp. defence in sand. stacks with rock type
fighting boosts defence in hail. stacks with ice type
lower toxic spikes max to 1. toxic is meant to be rare
buff aqua ring/ingrain to 20% per turn
Changes to mon Typing, movesets, move target, move accuracy, and abilities. Too many and likely to change so won't bother listing all of them for now.

*Probably more buggy compared to other patches. I did a lot of experimental menu changes and there are probably edge cases I missed.

 

[Meka]

Do the gen 8 moves haven't finished yet? Because I was so hype when I got girraffarig with psychic surge abillity and expanding force. Unfortunately, it says "This move effect is not done yet". Although this is a cool and fun romhack to play.

 

[Tearisten]

I am aware that some of the newer gen 8 move animations and effects aren't quite implemented yet. I'll take a look at that one specifically since I know I gave it out a bunch.

Rom hacking hideout are the ones to thank for most of the new sprites and move animation work. Their contribution to emerald decomp is truly unfathomable.