Emerald hack: Pokemon Emerald Semi-Randomiser

[Anguishjumps]

Hi! There are a lot of very creative and talented people here. In contrast, I am a huge nerd who loves numbers.

Presenting: The Emerald Semi-Randomiser!
What does that mean?
Usually, every trainer in the game has a team hand-picked by the developers according to level, difficulty, class etc. I believe I have created an algorithm that emulates that process, and picks an appropriate team every time you start a pokemon battle. This means every trainer battle in the game is new each time you play it- but never truly random. In this romhack, you're forced to play blind against whatever terrors my algorithm has generated for you.
As of a3, your encounters are randomised too!

I've combined this with a couple of small QoL changes (with more planned) to release a beta. Ultimately, I want to create a pokemon game you can play comfortably from your bed without itching to look up boss teams or level caps on your phone.


Changelist (besides the obvious)

Spoiler:

Shop changes------------------------------------
- Rare Candies sold for $1 in all shops
- Pokeball prices quartered in all shops
- All evo items are purchasable in Lilycove Department Store 2F

Pokemon changes-------------------------------------------
- Evo items have been changed to work like evo stones (e.g metal coat)
- Sky Pillar Rayquaza has been changed to Level 40
- Milotic and Trade Evos now evolve by level up at level 36

Text changes ------------------------------------------------
- Gym statues now display the game's level caps
- Birch opening speech changed

Otherwise, pokemon are identical to vanilla Emerald as far as I'm aware. Unless something really REALLY bad happened.

Screenshots of gameplay:

Spoiler:

Here's a potential Norman fight:

And here's a visual simulation of the algorithm trying to pick some pokemon. Note that it happened to skip raticate 30 times this run!

Common trainer classes have more diverse pools. These are predictable, but the variance may throw you off if you're unprepared.

Showing off the Evo changes, TM changes, and scaling trainer battles!

Shop changes..

What's happening behind the scenes?:

Spoiler:

This bad boy is the BST curve.

It's the "big dial in the middle of the dashboard" for the semi-randomiser, as pokemon are chosen based on this curve that I just completely eyeballed first try and made no revisions to. We should probably try to adjust this.
Some pokemon like Shedinja, Slaking and Medicham have their BST weights altered a bit due to their abilities. Otherwise, this thing will just keep on picking pokemon, checking if they're eligible for the team, and expanding the criteria if not. I've taken care to avoid any and all infinite loops in this process- if cornered, the algorithm will just think for a while and then throw out a random mon.

Can I play this?
Probably!! I've included a bps patch as an attachment, which you can apply here.
I can only give a resounding "it SHOULD work!" to the mod as a whole, which is why I'm putting out a beta. I want to fine-tune the difficulty curve and squash any remaining bugs. Please let me know what you think!
Note, if you try this- Rival battles have been 'fixed' so that they always have their starter, so the first rival battle will be the same as vanilla. The randomising begins at the first youngster.
Current version: a3

Credits
I totally stole this idea off of PokemonChallenges' stream because he was talking about it and I thought I'd try my hand at it. Shout outs to the people in pret discord who put up with my shenaniganery, I've never coded C before so it was real helpful to have people to nudge me in the right direction. And thank you to Alex N for so much early feedback!
Uses the following premade edits:
- Reusable TMs courtesy of Paccy and Hiroshi Sotomura
- Sold Out! TMs from Lunos
- Running Indoors by TheXaman
- DizzyEgg's Nature Colouring
- NobodySociety's No-Reel Fishing

 

[professor plum]

Thread approved :)

 

[Anguishjumps]

a3 patch notes!!
- rayquaza at sky pillar is now level 40, if you're rayquaza-inclined
- trainers now scale based on the highest levelled pokemon in your party, -1 for
each mon in their party - or their original level, whichever is highest
- encounters are now randomised too, on much the same principles as trainers. cool!
- Battle Frontier sets are now tiered behind a level barrier, with them all being
unlocked at level 25. This is mainly to prevent middle-stage pokemon that can either
have ember or flamethrower (ahem, combusken) and roll you early game.
- BST buff to Wattson, hope he isn't too hard.
- I tried to increase battle speed a bit by changing some vars i hope it works
- Evolution items now buyable in Lilycove 2F
- Milotic and Trade Evos now evolve by level up at 36 as well as their original
criteria.

I didn't want to include TOO many QoL features and get away from vanilla Emerald.
Reusable TMs in particular was something I only chose to do to compensate for the
terrible gen 3 learnsets without changing them myself.
- Reusable TMs courtesy of Paccy and Hiroshi Sotomura
- Sold Out! TMs from Lunos
- Running Indoors by TheXaman
- DizzyEgg's Nature Colouring
- NobodySociety's No-Reel Fishing
+ I also made it so you'll always pull a mon

screenie of some changes

Spoiler:

original post has been updated with the new dl haf fuuun

 

[Broskandar]

I played this game with HC Nuzlocke rules and...well, while I enjoyed it somewhat I can't say I was a fan of it. Here is my criticism:



THE GOOD

Not having to fish a thousand times for an encounter feels soooooooooo good. I know it's small but I just had to thank you for this. So here it is. Thanks a lot.

Rayquaza being level 40 is a great idea that should be implemented more often. It doesn't make Rayquaza any less busted but allowing you to use it within the level cap is awesome and more rom hacks should implement that idea.



For the most part, the encounters are somewhat reasonable (we are gonna come back to this in a minute). I never found a Dragonite or a Zapdos in Route 101 or whatever, so good job on that department.



The QOL features are great. Allowing you to use unlimited TMs in gen 3 should be a must in any difficulty rom hack, as just like you said, gen 3 learnsets suck massive balls. The rare candies being sold by 1 pokedollar makes the game WAAAAAAAY more fun and smooth to play, and I thank you for that.



Having the starter and gift/fossil pokemon not be random is also something I see as praise worthy, because having a few guaranteed encounters in a randomizer allows you to not be completely at mercy of getting good encounters, so thanks for that as well.



THE BAD:

You mention how the algorithm tries to ensure that the boss battles and ace trainers pack some heat with them, and while this does work sometimes (almost lost my Graveler to a Water Pulse Castform when I wasn't paying attention), the large majority of the time they have some really nonsensical (or extremely niche) moves, such as Mind Reader Articuno in the Elite 4 or Foresight Raticate in the gym 5, giving the game a bit of an inconsistency when it comes to the difficulty, to say the least.



The game also gives some pretty "why am I getting this early route pokemon this late into the game" encounters, such as Beedrill/Pidgeotto by New Mauville or Delibird by the Jagged Pass. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT expecting every encounter to be a good one, but midway through the game I realized most of my team had been the same since I left Slateport City. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, forcing you to work with whatever the game gives you, which is the core of any nuzlocke, it hurts a little the diversity of teambuilding when you use the same pokemon from beggining to end pretty much, not because you want to but because you barely got anything better to work with. Some encounters also don't make much sense, like, Feebas in the land? Or Charmeleon in the middle of the sea?! I know the algorithm can make mistakes but that hurts immersion a little.



The level caps of Pokemon Vanilla Emerald are **extremely** tight and I think you should have raised them a little. This makes it a little difficult to not overlevel or forces me to avoid using some of my Pokemon which should be fair game by that point. The best example for that is the 6th gym split (Lv 31-33). This makes it a bit annoying having to constantly either avoid as many trainers as possible, keeping members of my party underleveled so they don't go past it (and losing the opportunity of getting more money in the process). Now, i could simply bring new pokemon to deal with random trainers/grunts/rival fights, but I don't want to risk pulling out Delibird and having the random grunt one shot me with his Thunderbolt Gardevoir, so I just keep using the same mons because I know the risk of trying anything below average DOES exist.



Lastly, the enemy trainers often have illegal pokemon. That's not to say the games (base ones I mean) don't also do that, but having a random trainer with a level 11 graveler in route 116 isn't exactly very "scaled". Or Brawly packing a level 19 Machoke (Machop evolves at level 28). I think they should have pokemon that makes sense for the point in the game they are in. Also, Wattson would have been a BEAST if I didn't have 3 ground types, Lanturn, Magneton, Minun and Manectric, ALL OF THEM WITH STAB THUNDERBOLT? Would have mauled me alive if it wasn't for Quagsire my beloved.



Beyond being a better scaled randomizer, it doesn't really offer anything else that makes it stands out. Not that it needs to, just saying.



FINAL SCORE: 5/10 (Ok, Fine, Decent, Average, etc)

The concept is everything I want in a randomizer rom hack and I really like how it doesn't have the Gen 4-9 Physical/Special split! I think Gen 3 P/S split has it's own charm, you know? Without mentioning how certain Pokemon benefit from it, but I am changing the subject.
While I enjoyed this game, I feel like the midgame-lategame felt like a slog where I just protect my 6-8 decent Pokemon the best I can and everything else just lives in the box. So I would say with a bit more polishing, it would be an 8/10, easily. But for now, I can't give it a higher grade.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE VERSIONS:

In case you don't want to change the algorithm, just put patches of grass in more places (ex: Petalburg City, Lavaridge Town, Slateport City, etc) so we can get more opportunities for new encounters.

Give the gym leaders from gym 4-8 full teams of 6. Same for the rival, team Magma/Aqua admins, ace trainers and more pokemon to normal trainers (at least 3) to balance it out.

Make the level cap of the game a little higher, not only so the gym leaders packing stronger stuff make sense but also to allow the player to use pokemon on par with their potential themes. This also takes advantage of the game being made with Rare Candy usage in mind. My suggestion for level caps would be:

Roxxie: No changes
Brawly: Level Cap 22 (4 Pokemon in his team)
May: Level Cap 25 (5 pokemon in her team)
Wally: Level Cap 27 (4 pokemon in his team to show how he still has a long way to go at this point)
Wattson: Level Cap 29 (5 pokemon in his team)
Maxie: Level Cap 31 (from this point on assume every "boss trainer" has 6 pokemon)
Flannery: Level Cap 34
Norman: Level Cap 37 (due to how you will be backtracking, thus not facing any new trainers on the way back, or if you do, few trainers)
May: Level Cap 40
Winona: Level Cap 45
May: Level Cap 48
Tate and Liza: Level Cap 55
Juan: Level Cap 60
Elite 4: Level 65-68
Champion Wallace: Level Cap 70

Make the TMs in Mauville's game corner cheaper. Seriously, I am probably the only person in the thread complaining about this but the gambling minigame is just kind of boring to me. How about all of them costing 1.500 coins? That sounds good to me. Also, if possible, add some pokemon being sold there like in Blazing Emerald/Fire Red. No reason for this last part that, just think it would be fun.

Lastly but not least, would you kindly make Beldum's catch rate higher? Seriously, this thing has the same catch rate as Galarian Moltres for no good reason. Sure, it's good but nothing that justifies it having the same catch rate as LEGENDARY POKEMON rather than other pseudo legends.

All in all, I had a good time. Thank you for creating this hack. Hope to see more games from you in the future!