FireRed hack: Touhou Puppet Play Enhanced (Reloaded) (Version 6.8D Released)

[FantasyJared]

Howdy! It's definitely been some time, hope everyone's doing alright. 🙂 Mad respect for all the updates over the years, it's amazing that this precious ROM hack is still receiving updates in any capacity!

Played through TPPER again about a month ago out of nostalgia, and while the game is definitely just as fun and balanced as I remember it, I can't help but shake the feeling like it could use some subtle (and hopefully easy to implement) modern improvements. Namely, some more player options and (perhaps most importantly) ways to speed the game up without resorting to abuse against your Turbo button.

There are a lot of ROM Hacks springing forth with a truly amazing amount of quality of life and modern design elements that make them far less of a slog to play through. Stuff like EXP modifiers, various battle speed modifiers (HP/EXP bar, battle intro animations, etc) and even cool features like fully-fledged difficulty settings, EV/IV calculation settings, and Nuzlocke modes.

Now, of course, that's a lot to take in...and I am absolutely not suggesting that suddenly, this hack needs all (or even most of) that. But if you look at other hacks rising in popularity, such as Fire Red/Leaf Green+ and Emerald Cross, there are some simple (yet super convenient) changes that I'd personally love to see implemented in TPPER.

My most wanted features I'd personally like to pitch are purely QoL, and would not affect the game balance at all. Features such as an EXP Modifier, HP/EXP Bar speed settings, ability to skip the battle intro animations, R for auto-running in the overworld, and even small details like pressing B in random encounters so the cursor goes straight to 'Run', or Select to instantly swap around Pokemon in your party.

I'm no ROM hacker/game programmer, but I don't think most of that would be terribly difficult to implement. I'd just like TPPER to be a little faster overall, definitely felt the burn going through all the slow animations and grinding last time I played. I also strongly dislike using speed-up/Turbo buttons in general, so this would be much appreciated and would go a long way. Just a suggestion of course, but I love this mod very much and I think it'd strongly benefit from perhaps a few of these new options.

 

[Marinebeast]

Oh, I didn't see the item/mart listing on the Touhoudex page! That's a superb resource, thank you.

So far, yeah, just sort of working on QOL and cleaning up text content.
I added two interesting features though--

Much more useful than a supposed height comparison. Works for everyone and everything.

It's currently a consumable item (I'll likely have the Pokemon League or a postgame mart sell it) but ideally I'd like to turn it into an infinite-use key item.
I just have to find out what alterations I need to make to its script to do that.

Other small changes include "you get EXP when you catch things now" and "the game skips the controls tutorial at the start of the game, instead going straight to the Prof. Oak introduction". Tonight I'll clean up attacks (both descriptions and any possible mechanics that are bugged/incorrect), continue testing and formatting Artbook entries, and dig around for other interesting features/scripts that can cleanly fit into the game. (One thing I'd ideally like to do is have an NPC or item that displays the IVs and EVs of your party, but I'm still looking at options for this.)

As for incorrect Artbook entries, I'll see about fixing any that might have issues...
There's no problems with space limitations, I can say that for certain.
There's a lot of free space in there, it's just that TPP Enhanced 1.8 is a sort of spaghetti-code situation (Reloaded is a mod of a translation of a hack that's something of a compilation of multiple hacks) with a lot of things shuffled around. Depending on how ambitious people wanted to be, there's plenty of space for new maps, species and so on. (I wonder if there's any hacks out there that have characters past Ten Desires-- I know I've seen sprites for a Shinmyoumaru evo line, anyways....)

And I don't know about difficulty modes, Nuzlocke mode or XP modifiers; those would likely need to be scripted into the options menu and I'm not quite certain how to do that. (I'll leave any implementation of that to people who know what they're doing on that front...!) But a toggleable Running Shoes sounds like good QOL to put in.

 

[Zeta Sukuna]

Oh, I didn't see the item/mart listing on the Touhoudex page! That's a superb resource, thank you.

So far, yeah, just sort of working on QOL and cleaning up text content.
I added two interesting features though--

Much more useful than a supposed height comparison. Works for everyone and everything.

It's currently a consumable item (I'll likely have the Pokemon League or a postgame mart sell it) but ideally I'd like to turn it into an infinite-use key item.
I just have to find out what alterations I need to make to its script to do that.

Other small changes include "you get EXP when you catch things now" and "the game skips the controls tutorial at the start of the game, instead going straight to the Prof. Oak introduction". Tonight I'll clean up attacks (both descriptions and any possible mechanics that are bugged/incorrect), continue testing and formatting Artbook entries, and dig around for other interesting features/scripts that can cleanly fit into the game. (One thing I'd ideally like to do is have an NPC or item that displays the IVs and EVs of your party, but I'm still looking at options for this.)

As for incorrect Artbook entries, I'll see about fixing any that might have issues...
There's no problems with space limitations, I can say that for certain.
There's a lot of free space in there, it's just that TPP Enhanced 1.8 is a sort of spaghetti-code situation (Reloaded is a mod of a translation of a hack that's something of a compilation of multiple hacks) with a lot of things shuffled around. Depending on how ambitious people wanted to be, there's plenty of space for new maps, species and so on. (I wonder if there's any hacks out there that have characters past Ten Desires-- I know I've seen sprites for a Shinmyoumaru evo line, anyways....)

And I don't know about difficulty modes, Nuzlocke mode or XP modifiers; those would likely need to be scripted into the options menu and I'm not quite certain how to do that. (I'll leave any implementation of that to people who know what they're doing on that front...!) But a toggleable Running Shoes sounds like good QOL to put in.

This is looking pretty good so far, to be honest. I debated with myself on that BST replacing the dex change, but that was at the time where I was basically winding down development on this. It is a good change, though.

Things preventing me from adding more areas mostly just ended up being related to the following:
I can't really have more trainers at this point, and at least when I tried to add more in, it ended up going... poorly.
I don't really know what other mons I'd be able to put new areas in for without the former point to bolster it up.

Truth be told, yeah, there is a really good amount of space left in, at least. Also adding more mons via PGE ended up destroying a lot of stuff, though realistically I could've ended up probably prodding around with it more and properly doing it.

Nuzlocke mode and XP modifiers sound like either decomp or cfru locked, tbh.

 

[Marinebeast]

I feel like the solution to "adding more mons" would be "remove various evolved forms from the wild and have them be only accessible through evolution, then move new stuff (preferably Chibi forms) into those spots"... there'd be shuffling of wild spawn pools, but I feel like that's easy enough.
Looking around on this forum alone, it looks like there's a couple different ways to expand the (FireRed) Pokedex, but I don't know what editing tools play nicely with expanded species. PGE is a great tool but it's a very "jack of all trades, master of none" deal.
I'd certainly be curious about at least trying, though, if there are any Touhoumon hacks out there with new characters/moves/content that would gel well into this hack.

Still working on QOL and Artbook stuff tonight. Honestly, I'm not sure when I'll have a .ups patch to show, but once I'm actually happy with my changes I'll post something.

IVs are visible on the Summary screen now!
It's the first of a few changes to help you get the perfect touhou for your team; once I'm sure that the Everstone and Synchronize
have their nature effects working properly, I'm going to get a Destiny Knot item functional and make eggs hatch faster. This, along
with the fact that most mons can breed with most other mons (with exceptions-- please don't romance the bloodthirsty cherry tree),
and therefore easily pass IVs and natures and egg moves along, should make life a tiny bit easier.

Since there's no Battle Frontier (what a dream it'd be to have, though!), it's debatable how useful it is to have QOL stuff for competitive mons... but it's sure nice to be able to minmax, and hey, endgame can be rough.

Also, I removed the L+R help screen and made it so R can be used to toggle auto-run on and off. Should make life a bit speedier, though hopefully you won't have the classic "I'm playing as Marisa and she's too fast so I run into bullets" problem.

 

[FantasyJared]

I feel like the solution to "adding more mons" would be "remove various evolved forms from the wild and have them be only accessible through evolution, then move new stuff (preferably Chibi forms) into those spots"... there'd be shuffling of wild spawn pools, but I feel like that's easy enough.
Looking around on this forum alone, it looks like there's a couple different ways to expand the (FireRed) Pokedex, but I don't know what editing tools play nicely with expanded species. PGE is a great tool but it's a very "jack of all trades, master of none" deal.
I'd certainly be curious about at least trying, though, if there are any Touhoumon hacks out there with new characters/moves/content that would gel well into this hack.

Still working on QOL and Artbook stuff tonight. Honestly, I'm not sure when I'll have a .ups patch to show, but once I'm actually happy with my changes I'll post something.

IVs are visible on the Summary screen now!
It's the first of a few changes to help you get the perfect touhou for your team; once I'm sure that the Everstone and Synchronize
have their nature effects working properly, I'm going to get a Destiny Knot item functional and make eggs hatch faster. This, along
with the fact that most mons can breed with most other mons (with exceptions-- please don't romance the bloodthirsty cherry tree),
and therefore easily pass IVs and natures and egg moves along, should make life a tiny bit easier.

Since there's no Battle Frontier (what a dream it'd be to have, though!), it's debatable how useful it is to have QOL stuff for competitive mons... but it's sure nice to be able to minmax, and hey, endgame can be rough.

Also, I removed the L+R help screen and made it so R can be used to toggle auto-run on and off. Should make life a bit speedier, though hopefully you won't have the classic "I'm playing as Marisa and she's too fast so I run into bullets" problem.

Wow, this is some incredible work my friend! You're an absolute legend! ^^ We really appreciate your hard work, these posts have been absolute delights to catch up on. Take all the time that you need, these are some NUTS QoL changes - some of which I didn't even know I wanted, like the IV Display or Ability-Changing item.

 

[Zeta Sukuna]

I feel like the solution to "adding more mons" would be "remove various evolved forms from the wild and have them be only accessible through evolution, then move new stuff (preferably Chibi forms) into those spots"... there'd be shuffling of wild spawn pools, but I feel like that's easy enough.
Looking around on this forum alone, it looks like there's a couple different ways to expand the (FireRed) Pokedex, but I don't know what editing tools play nicely with expanded species. PGE is a great tool but it's a very "jack of all trades, master of none" deal.
I'd certainly be curious about at least trying, though, if there are any Touhoumon hacks out there with new characters/moves/content that would gel well into this hack.

Still working on QOL and Artbook stuff tonight. Honestly, I'm not sure when I'll have a .ups patch to show, but once I'm actually happy with my changes I'll post something.

IVs are visible on the Summary screen now!
It's the first of a few changes to help you get the perfect touhou for your team; once I'm sure that the Everstone and Synchronize
have their nature effects working properly, I'm going to get a Destiny Knot item functional and make eggs hatch faster. This, along
with the fact that most mons can breed with most other mons (with exceptions-- please don't romance the bloodthirsty cherry tree),
and therefore easily pass IVs and natures and egg moves along, should make life a tiny bit easier.

Since there's no Battle Frontier (what a dream it'd be to have, though!), it's debatable how useful it is to have QOL stuff for competitive mons... but it's sure nice to be able to minmax, and hey, endgame can be rough.

Also, I removed the L+R help screen and made it so R can be used to toggle auto-run on and off. Should make life a bit speedier, though hopefully you won't have the classic "I'm playing as Marisa and she's too fast so I run into bullets" problem.

There are definitely ways to do it even without actually expanding it, but I did not want to remove any mons from the original 1.8 Enhanded if I could help it. Chibis, even for the legendaries, also have their uses, so I also didn't want to delete them either.

And manually expanding is a pain and I'm not good with RAM values. There are hacks out there that do have expanded mons, but I'm pretty incompetent myself at the actual expanding stuff.

An endgame battle frontier would be pretty neat, but that'd require a lot that I don't think can be replicated in binary, unfortunately. Also, I'm going to DM you something for the whole showing IVs thing. You don't have to use it, but it might look a bit better.

 

[Marinebeast]

Alrighty, patch time.
It's mostly an Artbook entry overhaul, since they haven't been edited or really touched up at all since the initial game translation. Nearly all entries have been given some TLC and/or just plain rewritten due to being super minimal previously. The only ones I haven't touched are the Advent evolutions (due to being crossover meme evos that I know nothing about) and the VIVIT line (I know literally nothing about this character or what game she's even from). I tried to keep as much of the original pointer space as possible, but some entries have been repointed to free space in the 0x700000-0x800000 range.

Most of the species names have been altered to be decapitalized and more accurate to their respective Touhou (e.g. Letty is now "Yuki-onna Boneka", because that's what she is), but for some reason if I alter any species names in the 380-386 range, it proceeds to corrupt the Pokedex images and displays. So that'd be Marisa-EX, Dark Alice, CTenma + Tenma, CSendai + Sendai, and Ayakashi. Maybe a different tool will make it work, or something in there is just messed up, but I'm going to just say "the Saigyou Ayakashi was sealed away for a reason, really, don't touch it" is the reason.

Obviously, species that are in the hack but not in the Artbook, such as the evolved Ten Desires cast, have not had any changes made to their information because there's no information to alter. But if they ever do get information then I'll clean that up too. :p

Other things that I've changed:

- IVs are now visible on the summary screen, using the same graphic as the one in the Emerald hack.
- Un-capped vitamins so you can just use 26 Protein to max out Attack right away.
-- I haven't actually tested this but it SHOULD work...
- Added the Ability Bead to the Indigo Plateau mart. This acts as a one-use Ability Capsule and costs 9800 big ones.
-- If it doesn't work on a mon, then that mon doesn't have a second ability. But most do.
-- Feel 100% free to move this to another vendor if you want. Its item ID is 15B.
- Base shiny rate is now the modern 1/~4000 instead of the 1/~8000. Because that's spiffy.
-- The Lotus Land switch still overrides base rate, of course.
- You now get EXP for catching a mon. It's free!
- The Artbook now displays base stats + abilities instead of comparing the species' size to the player.
- When starting a new game, you now go straight to the Prof. Oak introduction. No controls or weird intro text anymore.
- Help being mapped to L/R has been removed. You can now press R to toggle/untoggle running by default.
- "CKongala" is now "CKonngara" because why wasn't it?
- CSariel can now evolve into SSariel with a RainbowShard, based on the Touhoudex that someone linked here.
-- If this isn't desirable, feel free to scratch it; I'm just filling in the (not Yukari-related) gaps.

- Move changes:
-- Faint Attack --> Feint Attack (Consistent with main series changes.)
-- Aqua Shower --> Water Spout (Consistency and also why was it ever changed?)
-- Mystic Water --> Aqua Ring (Consistency and also bc there's a vanilla FireRed item named Mystic Water.)
-- Hidden Power now has a correct description.
-- Thrash now behaves the way it does in vanilla FireRed.
-- Lock-On has its correct effect. (Previously did something unrelated.)
-- Lava Plume behaves the way it does in modern Pokemon-- hits both enemy targets, 30% burn chance.
-- Extremespeed now has the correct +2 priority. Needs to be tested but it should behave correctly.
-- Feint now has +4 priority which, as its description says, should allow it to bypass Detect.

I'd like to implement Everstone breeding functionality as well as Synchronize functionality, but I'm still trying to find scripts that actually play nice with this hack; the one Synchronize script I attempted to use had unclear compilation+insertion instructions and resulted in crashes. :( But, for now, if this game can cross-trade with the Emerald hack (which it presumably should?) then you can do all your more intensive breeding stuff on Emerald and then move 'em over.
There's other stuff I'd like to see about making real (like Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, etc), as well as examining the game's script as a whole and fixing any issues/translation oddities/inconsistencies, but I wanted to get this update out before I forgot to.

If you find any bugs or small things, feel free to bother me about them.

 

[Cinfest]

C Sariel evolving into S Sariel via Rainbow Shard was based on old information mined from an earlier version of the hack. When that was changed in a later version I didn't catch it. Whatever the current evolution path is is the "correct" version.

 

[DJCherryTempo]

Uncapped Vitamins is a big plus for me. I hope the next update also gives an IV maxer. I know that alot of hacks do that these days, but it's just such a great thing.

 

[Zeta Sukuna]

Alrighty, patch time.
It's mostly an Artbook entry overhaul, since they haven't been edited or really touched up at all since the initial game translation. Nearly all entries have been given some TLC and/or just plain rewritten due to being super minimal previously. The only ones I haven't touched are the Advent evolutions (due to being crossover meme evos that I know nothing about) and the VIVIT line (I know literally nothing about this character or what game she's even from). I tried to keep as much of the original pointer space as possible, but some entries have been repointed to free space in the 0x700000-0x800000 range.

Most of the species names have been altered to be decapitalized and more accurate to their respective Touhou (e.g. Letty is now "Yuki-onna Boneka", because that's what she is), but for some reason if I alter any species names in the 380-386 range, it proceeds to corrupt the Pokedex images and displays. So that'd be Marisa-EX, Dark Alice, CTenma + Tenma, CSendai + Sendai, and Ayakashi. Maybe a different tool will make it work, or something in there is just messed up, but I'm going to just say "the Saigyou Ayakashi was sealed away for a reason, really, don't touch it" is the reason.

Obviously, species that are in the hack but not in the Artbook, such as the evolved Ten Desires cast, have not had any changes made to their information because there's no information to alter. But if they ever do get information then I'll clean that up too. :p

Other things that I've changed:

- IVs are now visible on the summary screen, using the same graphic as the one in the Emerald hack.
- Un-capped vitamins so you can just use 26 Protein to max out Attack right away.
-- I haven't actually tested this but it SHOULD work...
- Added the Ability Bead to the Indigo Plateau mart. This acts as a one-use Ability Capsule and costs 9800 big ones.
-- If it doesn't work on a mon, then that mon doesn't have a second ability. But most do.
-- Feel 100% free to move this to another vendor if you want. Its item ID is 15B.
- Base shiny rate is now the modern 1/~4000 instead of the 1/~8000. Because that's spiffy.
-- The Lotus Land switch still overrides base rate, of course.
- You now get EXP for catching a mon. It's free!
- The Artbook now displays base stats + abilities instead of comparing the species' size to the player.
- When starting a new game, you now go straight to the Prof. Oak introduction. No controls or weird intro text anymore.
- Help being mapped to L/R has been removed. You can now press R to toggle/untoggle running by default.
- "CKongala" is now "CKonngara" because why wasn't it?
- CSariel can now evolve into SSariel with a RainbowShard, based on the Touhoudex that someone linked here.
-- If this isn't desirable, feel free to scratch it; I'm just filling in the (not Yukari-related) gaps.

- Move changes:
-- Faint Attack --> Feint Attack (Consistent with main series changes.)
-- Aqua Shower --> Water Spout (Consistency and also why was it ever changed?)
-- Mystic Water --> Aqua Ring (Consistency and also bc there's a vanilla FireRed item named Mystic Water.)
-- Hidden Power now has a correct description.
-- Thrash now behaves the way it does in vanilla FireRed.
-- Lock-On has its correct effect. (Previously did something unrelated.)
-- Lava Plume behaves the way it does in modern Pokemon-- hits both enemy targets, 30% burn chance.
-- Extremespeed now has the correct +2 priority. Needs to be tested but it should behave correctly.
-- Feint now has +4 priority which, as its description says, should allow it to bypass Detect.

I'd like to implement Everstone breeding functionality as well as Synchronize functionality, but I'm still trying to find scripts that actually play nice with this hack; the one Synchronize script I attempted to use had unclear compilation+insertion instructions and resulted in crashes. :( But, for now, if this game can cross-trade with the Emerald hack (which it presumably should?) then you can do all your more intensive breeding stuff on Emerald and then move 'em over.
There's other stuff I'd like to see about making real (like Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, etc), as well as examining the game's script as a whole and fixing any issues/translation oddities/inconsistencies, but I wanted to get this update out before I forgot to.

If you find any bugs or small things, feel free to bother me about them.

Seems mostly fine enough to me. Not the biggest fan of some of the changes to moves (Thrash, Lock On), but like... eh.

Also, for context, SSariel I turned into a stationary encounter, which was why I removed that. But I forgot that you can evolve the chibis anyway and that's how they get some extra moves, so eh. That was a bad change on my part.

I might put this on the front page with a new download link, so there is that, I suppose. If you do manage to update it again, then I'll replace it with that.

Thank you for taking enough interest in this to do something such as this, it actually does make me feel weirdly good about myself when it comes to developing this, even if this development is outright you fixing errors in this.

 

[joey10000th]

Well, I updated the Touhoudex with the changes and added a list for Quality of Life changes to the type chart and natures page. For the items, I'm still under the assumption that the only change was to the Indigo Plateau shop with the Ability Bead?
Also, I still have to go back through the moves set lists page to clean up the "missing" or conflicting level moves later.
Let me know if I missed anything, I have to deal with another bad egg in the meantime. RIP

 

[joey10000th]

Was just grinding, but I noticed that the Aqua Shower -> Water Spout change doesn't seem to have worked? I still see Aqua Shower but I'm not sure if that's just me.

 

[joey10000th]

Question: Is there a way to increase the amount of storage boxes in the PC?

 

[PerdoJarde]

Hi, I've played this hack a few times now and I greatly appreciate Marinebeast trying to clean it up. Going through the new dex there are some things which are incorrect and some things that I object to - mostly the use of "kami" which isn't any more informative than "god". Attached is a text file documenting the changes I've made and a patch for consideration. I avoided repointing so hopefully it doesn't step on the toes of any other work that might be in progress. I haven't touched stuff like VIVIT or the Advent mons yet either.

Anyway, thanks to the both of you for everything you've done so far, and to all of the documentation authors.

 

[Lenardes]

Hello, started this hack 2-3 weeks ago and i'm now in Johto !
That said, i found two bug, the first is the Sign in Johto, not all but... most of them, starting from the one just behind the Tohjo Fall that link Johto and Kanto. The Sign cause immense lag of the game, corrupt data and essentially crash it when we interact with it.. We can just ignore the sign and continue and no problem after a reload.
The second bug i found was about "Lock On", when ennemy use it, the Lock On act on themself instead of the opponent (me). I don't know if the effect work like intended, because it's hard to check that when you don't play around it. Don't know either on who work "Lock On" when the player use it, because i don't have any Bonéka that use it. (Frankly, if you need to change that, just make "Lock On" a capacity that boost accuracy at +2 and that it)

Edit: Oh and a suggestion about something i was thinking about. Viridian City have the Teleporter Room for the Town of Johto, but because of the map bug, when in Johto, we can only Fly on Island 4 or 5. I was thinking that adding a Teleporter Room at the Center of the Island 4 could be neat, that way we can simply fly here then teleport in other town of Johto without being in town. And it's the island with the Pension, so that the one you want to return anyway.

Edit2: Discovered recently too, but at the Route 34, if you go in the water then go to the south (not where the cosplayer is more south than that by continuing to follow the water), the map is cut suddenly by impassable ocean water.

Edit3: Just, something i was thinking about it but... This hack is supposed to give you exp at capture right ? ... I don't think it's works. Or the display of that is bugged.

Thank to all the hard work you both done. I really enjoy this hack and all the QoL present in it.

 

[GabePuratekuta]

Since there's a similar event going on in Touhou Lost Word, would it be possible to add some extra Rainbow Shard evolutions based on Lost Word's costumes? Like say, Schoolgirl Sanae or Cheerleader Hina for example.

 

[Bladeheart111x]

But there already is a Schoolgirl Sanae form (she's a static encounter in Mt. Silver

 

[GabePuratekuta]

There is? Does she have a lab coat and spiral glasses?


In that case, then....Maid Okuu?

 

[Bladeheart111x]

Sadly, no. It's the JP JKSanae sprite (she's in a Sailor Fuku school uniform...)
Besides, there isn't too many sprites for costumed puppets

 

[GabePuratekuta]

I understand. It would be something I'd make if I had like a template.

Really, I just want to see more evolutions for the Rainbow Shard. 22 isn't many.