[Discussion] Should Pok?mon fangames be different to the official games?

[Maruno]

Should Pokémon fangames be different to the official games?

We all know the official Pokémon main games; they live on various hand-held Nintendo consoles. We also know about Pokémon fangames; they live mostly on computers. There are numerous differences between these two things. I'm not talking about story here; I'm talking about things like the control scheme and how the game is presented, as well as certain features and mechanics which could be different because of the platform being used.

Should Pokémon fangames therefore work differently to the official games because of the differences between these two platforms? If so, how? What (if any) intentional variations do you think fangames should make from how the official games work? Why?

Fangames are of course limited by what the available game engines can do. If there were no such limitations, and fangame engines were able to do anything you wanted, how would your answers to the above questions change? Would you prefer differences (which ones?) or would you prefer a faithful recreation of exactly how the official games work? Why?

Some platform differences to consider:

• The available fangame engines typically don't support multiplayer interaction (battling/trading), while multiplayer is a big feature of the official games. Is this a loss for fangames or a gain? How much so? Can fangames be adapted to lessen/remove the impact of this difference? If they can be adapted, should they be, and how?
• Computers have a keyboard and mouse as their inputs, as well as one large monitor. The Nintendo DS and DSi have a few buttons, as well as two small screens (one of which is touch-sensitive). Should fangames look and control differently because of this?

There are many more differences between the official games and fangames. If you think of anything else, do talk about it.

 

[FL]

RPG Maker+Essentials can handle almost all engine limitations, some with a bigger workaround (more than 999 maps, port into Android), while others aren't possible (OpenGL).

Some features that I believe that are stupid on PC are dual screens and dual games. Dual screen make totally no sense in PC, except if you want to play the games on two monitors, but 99% of cases this won't happens, just people wanting to mimic the official games at all cost. Dual games (releasing in two versions) are also VERY stupid, since you need to download/pack the same game twice. Something more smart would be a solo download with a "Select version" screen. Also, why always two? The pokémon "version" original idea suggests seven.

A understandable limitation are small screen resolution, generally 256x192 while computers can hold A LOT more room. Even using small sprites, a bigger screen make more room for the interface elements, that will be VERY useful in certain screens like summary (broken info in less screens), item listing, pokémon storage and double battles. The problem is that redoing ALL Pokémon Essentials screens can consume a huge time.

Multiplayer must be divided in two main aspects: Trades and battle. A server (with a lobby) helps to find each other online, but isn't necessary with peer-to-peer connection, except for a GTS, and not anyone can have one.

The idea of trades between fangames, specially if you do several "choose" pokémon like the starters and fossils, version exclusive, or even with other things like White Forest in BW can works very well, but you game NEED to have certain popularity enough to player find each other online. If the game is well designed, trades can works well, but probably some player on game start will get some pokémon of last areas and this may unbalance the RPG aspect of games. GTS can also works well if you do the right meansures for avoiding hacks. Trades are relatively easy to implement, since isn't too hard to serialize the pokémon object in something like JSON and send it over a socket.

All that I said was ignoring the fact that, without a complex workaround, players can copy his own savefile and clone pokémon using trades, and this totally breaks the trade system. The ways of avoiding this is to write some data of savefiles on something that can't be replace in your system, like the regitry or assign IDs for each pokémon and allows a master server to control who player have each pokémon. So, if you have the pokémon 8001 and trade to user 256, the pokémon will be linked with that user ID, so only user 256 can trade the pokémon with ID 8001 with another user and so on.

So, if you wish the multiplayer battle part of game, we gonna into the level 100 battle metagame. In my vision the battle part rarely worth it, since it can be only interesting if you have a good number of fakemons/fake moves/fake abilities or change the movepool base stats AND a your game have a huge popularity enough for several people raise pokémon for the battles. Besides, you need to redo the Essentials battle system for allowing this feature, something VERY harder than trades. Online battles may results in an awesome feature if the developer can fulfill all of these requirements AND also do a nice job with feature to helping raising the pokémon, like opponents that gave a good amount of Exp and EVs and features that allow ability change, more chance of get a pokémon with good IVs, Nature and so on.

I can't think a good use for keyboard besides writing pokémon names and chat system. I like a lot my script Set the Controls Screen than allow the player to set it own controls (joystick support isn't too necessary since softwares like JoyToKey already exists). For mouse, on other hand, we can use it as the games does with touch screen, like for select menus, pokémon storage, item bag and another menus, besides minigames. This isn't a "vital feature" but is nice to have. Probably the implementation cost won't worth it.

 

[Nickalooose]

My question would be: Why would you want to make Pokémon Red... Again?
It's been done, released, and played.

Of course it should be different... I have little to add that FL. didn't cover lol.