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

[Trainer_BRANDON]

Is there a list of where to find the legendaries? Cant find them.

 

[jymjunior]

Cette rom hack est juste génial 😍

 

[ViridianMaridian]

First of all, thanks so much for making this. I've had specifically eight Gen III Pokemon I love and it sucks choosing between them every time I replay, so I was so excited to finally get to use them all. Appreciate some of the other touches like physical/special split, running indoors and reusable TMs. I'm sure this took a lot of effort that you generously donated from your free time.

Unfortunately I've had to stop at Mauville though. Sorry in advance cause this is gonna get harsh but, the gym leader balancing is abysmal. There was no effort made to change the balancing of trainers throughout the game, which would be totally fine, except that the gym leaders are brutally overpowered. A Raichu with Thunder on the third gym? And then I still have six mons left to face? Slight buffs to Cut and Rock Smash aren't gonna help me there, the only way past that is grinding. Having full 8 vs 8 battles is a great idea in concept but I'm not gonna have a full party of eight lvl~23-25 mons by the third gym. In the base game I wouldn't have that for six pokemon anyway unless I want to grind grind grind. I actually skipped Brawly and decided I'd come back to him later because I didn't wanna deal with the 8 team bullshit. Not to mention the music...no idea why you changed it, it's a worse song and doesn't fit the atmosphere.

I suspect one reason I felt under-powered was due to turning off the EXP share. The full party EXP share is a change I've always hated because you end up not using as many of your pokemon, knowing they're gonna level up anyway, and therefore form less of a connection with them. If I'm playing a special version of the game with eight pokemon, what's the point in ignoring some of my pokemon? May as well just play with six in that case. Maybe some other people like it but base Emerald is balanced perfectly fine without it. And double gut punch that the regular EXP share is removed, so if I want to help just a new teammate get a little boost for a while, I can't.

The thing is there was no need to make any changes to the levels/parties of opponents until about Mossdeep or Sootopolis. Up until that point you're not really gonna have an overpowered party, due to the nature of exp yield and available captures, so the gym leaders don't need stronger mons to compensate.

Look I'm sure I could get past these leaders with enough grinding and throwing myself against the wall, but that's where the fun dies for me. I'm running the same team I used last time I played (+1 more mon) and did not have nearly this much trouble before. Given it's so early in the game, and my Grovyle's strongest accessible grass move is bullet seed, it's reasonable of me to expect the same balancing of the opponents. It feels like you wanted to make two rom hacks in one: part A where you have eight pokemon, and part B with a bunch of your own ideas on balancing/remixed gyms/new music. There's just not enough effort put into part B to justify its inclusion, and it ruins an otherwise fantastically crafted part A. If you've disagreed with my opinions on the changes so far, just know that this is fundamentally where I'm coming from. I wanted to play emerald with eight pokemon, not some guy's special remix of emerald.

Sad to see that this is your final version of the game. I'm considering learning how to make rom hacks, even though I've never touched it, just so I can apply your 8 party member code to an otherwise untouched emerald. But in the meantime if you ever feel like making a version 1.5B where it's JUST the eight party members (and maybe some things like running indoors and p/s split) then I'd be over the moon.

Hopefully you don't think I was too mean here😔.

 

[Gooie]

Cool hack! Do you have any docs for it, like trainer teams? If not, could you at least give the level caps for the gym leaders and E4?

 

[Typhlosion787]

My only question is will the post game be touched? I remember doing a hardcore nuzlocke and doing the post game. I don't quite remember the post game gym leaders and if they have 8 pokemon or 6, but I do remember that Steven, the hidden final boss of the game, only had 6 pokemon in the post game fight even despite having a Mawile in the Magma Hideout fight. It's honestly the one thing I dislike about the game. I also feel Steven's team just being the original really let's the steel type down because he has both fossils and Claydol. Even if it'd only be during the final update, I really hope the post game gets touched up on a bit. Even if you don't include Registeel and Jirachi for Steven because they're legendary and mythical respectively, you still have 5 remaining steel types after Steven's Skarmory, Metagross, and Aggron. Steelix, Scizor, Forretress, Mawile, and Magneton would all work and would fully fill out his team.

 

[TKJinra]

Hey, the chances of the original creator seeing this are probably low, but I was wondering how you did this and if you'd be willing to share the process as I would like to try and make a difficult nuzlocke style rom hack with unique party size. If by any chance you come across this comment and would be willing to share a bit, feel free to reach out to sinisteak on discord (or just reply here, your call)

 

[HelenaWells]

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.

Is there a list of locations for every pokemon somewhere? Thanks!

 

[WhitronPhenomenon]

What the heck, how have I not seen this yet? I'm always interested in these kind of hacks, this might seem minor but, should keep things fresh with the additional party members. Very cool