Emerald hack: Pokemon Emerald's Eight v1.5: Now with full dex and Physical/Special split!

[AstroBreak]

Hello everybody! After lurking for some time on these forums and playing lots of great hacks, here i present to you my first hack (and post!):

Pokemon Emerald's Eight.​

Introduction:
My initial idea, and the one that ultimately led to me starting this project, was to create a hack that featured a party size other than the classic 6 members that's been included in all main series games to this day. There's seemingly a lack of hacks (or none at all that i've knowledge of) that have attempted to implement this, and when i first i looked into it, there didn't seem to exist any major limitation preventing it from being done, but there was definitely not a lot of info regarding different party sizes.

And so, this is a bit of an experiment-hack that consists of the base Pokemon Emerald experience, such that all of the mainline mandatory battles are playable, but with a party size of 8 pokemon not only on the player's side, but on enemy trainer parties as well. Along with this, i've added some QoL features that seemed like a must, as well as expanded all initial gym leader's teams to feature a full 8 member party, together with elite 4 and champion's.

Features:

• Party size of up to 8 members on both player and enemy parties.
• New 4/4 party manu layout.
• Gen 6+ Exp. Share.
• Custom gym leader, elite 4 and champion 8-member teams.
• Reusable TM's.
• Indoors running.
• New music on gym leader battles.
• Starter Tyrogue along with the usual starter of choice.
  
  New as of v1.5:​
• Full 386 pokemon catchable.
• Physical/Special split added.
• Tuned down a bit the Exp. Share. This results in a slower level curve and alleviates overpowering the full party.
• Trade evolutions are now all friendship evolutions.
• Event items are obtainable from player PC upon starting a new game.
• Expanded item pocket to hold up to 50 items.
• Forgettable HM's.
• Evolution stones sold on Petalburg pokemart, heart scales sold on Fallarbor pokemart.
• Buffed Cut && Rock Smash. Rock Smash now also lowers defense every time.

Screenshots:








Known issues & bugs:

• Slight graphical glitches on party menu.
• Battle Frontier and postgame are largely untested so probably broken somewhere, due to them being out of the scope of this project.
• Some emulators might produce freezes at the beggining, or cause a black screen when starting champion Wallace's battle. Retroarch mgba core seems to mostly run the game just fine.
• You tell me :)

Thank you to:

• Everyone working on the decompilation project! I'm sure this would not have been possible to do with binary hacking, and the decompilation project is an amazing work of reverse engineering.
• My friend Airen for playtesting the hack.
• u/SilverPrince94 for suggestions on expanded enemy trainer party members.
• Blurose for their implementation of the gen 6 Exp. Share, and Lunos for their port of said implementation.
• Romhacking Hideout members for their PSS battle engine implementation.
• Jordan Davenport for creating the MIDI that i used on the gym leader theme.
• All users that encouraged me to finish the initial version of the hack!

Download:
Please patch using Lunar IPS.

Changelog v1.5:​

• Small buff to Flannery && Winona teams as they seemed too easy compared to other gym leaders.
• Fixed Hall of Fame freezing the game after beating league.
• Fixed bug preventing 7th/8th pokemon from being switched in on double battles on occasion.
• Fixed bug incorrectly selecting party members on forced switch in (Roar, etc.)
• Fixed bug preventing pokedex data from being recorded correctly.

Release v1.5​

Initial release v1.0:​

Release v1.0​

Additionally, the code for the party expansion implementation featured in this hack is available on this repository.

 

[Mirizi]

Wow 8 size party that would be great 😁
Thanks for these kind of idea

 

[Mason Shu]

This is impressive

 

[darthbr]

Wow, amazing, can you give more details where you found this Gen6 exp share? im the owner of Pokemon perfect emerald, and many ppl are asking me

 

[soupercell]

Wow, amazing, can you give more details where you found this Gen6 exp share? im the owner of Pokemon perfect emerald, and many ppl are asking me

this hack is made through decomp; I'm assuming perfect emerald is a binary hack so OP's way of implementing gen 6 exp share isn't applicable to your project unfortunately

 

[darthbr]

this hack is made through decomp; I'm assuming perfect emerald is a binary hack so OP's way of implementing gen 6 exp share isn't applicable to your project unfortunately

Yes u are correct. My bad. Didnt realized it was decomp. Just saw The features.

 

[Zero-G]

I haven't found anything in regard to this matter (sorry if it is somewhere but you don't mention anything either), but:

So this is just a "simple" 8-team extension alongside the other changes? There's no intention to add the P/S/S split or make everything available (or, at least, the Hoenn Dex completeable)? Or if it is, where are the starters?

I'm honestly interested in this one but better safe than sorry with asking.

 

[Mr. Dudley the looker]

Okay so, you mentioned there was a problem with the pokedex, where you couldn't open it upon booting up a save. Well, not only does it not open up, it seems to just out right delete the data there. As in, you no longer have the seen/caught totals, and you can't access dex entries that were previously accessible. Basically, the dex just deletes itself. Will there be some sort of fix for this in the near future, as that's pretty bad.

 

[Mr. Dudley the looker]

I haven't found anything in regard to this matter (sorry if it is somewhere but you don't mention anything either), but:

So this is just a "simple" 8-team extension alongside the other changes? There's no intention to add the P/S/S split or make everything available (or, at least, the Hoenn Dex completeable)? Or if it is, where are the starters?

I'm honestly interested in this one but better safe than sorry with asking.

There isn't a Physical/Special split, but there is a gen 6 exp share, which is nice.

 

[AstroBreak]

I haven't found anything in regard to this matter (sorry if it is somewhere but you don't mention anything either), but:

So this is just a "simple" 8-team extension alongside the other changes? There's no intention to add the P/S/S split or make everything available (or, at least, the Hoenn Dex completeable)? Or if it is, where are the starters?

I'm honestly interested in this one but better safe than sorry with asking.

Yes, initially the party expansion was the main feat of this hack, and so once i got it working i decided to do this first release. However, i'm interested in implementing the physical/special split and adding pokemon variety so as to allow as much freedom as possible when teambuilding. Next update will probably be focused on these since they have been requested a lot.

Okay so, you mentioned there was a problem with the pokedex, where you couldn't open it upon booting up a save. Well, not only does it not open up, it seems to just out right delete the data there. As in, you no longer have the seen/caught totals, and you can't access dex entries that were previously accessible. Basically, the dex just deletes itself. Will there be some sort of fix for this in the near future, as that's pretty bad.

[Removed]

Edit: Above info regarding the pokedex bug is incorrect. I hope to have it fixed by next release, but it wasn't an address problem!

 

[Agaren]

Would it be possible to ad a special physical split considering you added other nice post gen 3 features?

 

[AstroBreak]

Would it be possible to ad a special physical split considering you added other nice post gen 3 features?

Sure! It's already implemented atm, so next update will have it :)

 

[Magius]

Thought I would try...

Spoiler:

same save, 8 Pokemon each, wingull was in slot 8

 

[TheSuperEan300]

I think I found a bug where the one Pokemon in a Double Battle only gains the normal amount of EXP when up at the left side. The right partner gains the same amount of EXP as the non-participating Pokemon.

 

[AstroBreak]

Thought I would try...

Spoiler:

same save, 8 Pokemon each, wingull was in slot 8

Didn't really take a look into multiplayer, so it's interesting to see the game's behaviour. The code must still be expecting a 6 member limit somewhere.

I think I found a bug where the one Pokemon in a Double Battle only gains the normal amount of EXP when up at the left side. The right partner gains the same amount of EXP as the non-participating Pokemon.

I've tried to reproduce this now. If you check the pokemon summary screen, you should see the amount of Exp gained is the correct one. However, because of the way the Exp messages work with the exp share, only the first party mon's exp gets displayed, and the rest are handled under the "rest of the party gained Exp points" message. This gives this effect on double battles that only the first pokemon gains the full amount, but it's just because of how the battle text is handled.

 

[AstroBreak]

Update to v1.5 is now released, new features as well as bugfixes have been added to the main post.

 

[jstogasterisk]

Is there a list of locations for everything somewhere? Thanks!

 

[ARCEUS493ZELDA]

any chance there is a list of all the songs added to the game?

 

[HorhayMelonian]

THIS IS THE BEST IDEA I've ever seen for Emerald. Eight Pokemon really scratches the itch to train more Hoenn Pokemon, which are perhaps the most well-designed generation imo. The 8 team for Gym Leaders and E4 makes the battle longer and slightly more grueling. Its not too cutthroat for new players as an introduction to Pokemon.

I finished the game, and I found a few things.

1. Top level of Mt.Pyre (indoor), there is a glitch Pokemon, when encountered it either crashes the game, or you see it as question mark thingy.
2. Evolution Stones wasn't in Petalburg mart. I had to do the shard thing to get a water stone.

Here are things I love:
1. The HMs and Leech Life buff.
2. All Hoenn starters available at the start. Route 110 Rival become less of a nightmare.
3. Gym Leaders and e4 here are such a well-balanced challenge. And the 8 pokemon team makes the battle more notable and epic.
4. That first Bug Catcher was a surprise. But he can be bypassed first, returning later for revenge lmao.

I have suggestions/wish list if you're looking for any:
1. Let PP Up be purchasable somewhere.
2. Giving full 8 pokemon to Lilycove Rival, and Wally. (Maybe even late-game Aqua/Magma leaders?) And give Lilycove Rival the 3rd stage starter.
3. Make the Lilycove rooftop sale and mirage island available all the time.

Anyways, love your hack. Thanks for a great time.

 

[AstroBreak]

any chance there is a list of all the songs added to the game?

Actually just the gym leader theme is new, since i wanted to see how adding music to the game was done. It's not exactly an straightforward process so i just did a single one, which is Trap Phantasm from Megaman ZX Advent.