[Misc Engine] Turq-Bot Pokémon Discord Engine & New Logora Region

[Chron]

>>Discord Link<<

NOTE: This is not a ROM project, and is not related to the 2009 Fire Red ROM Hack​

Preface
This thread houses development information on two projects being worked on in the Pokémon Turquoise community (see discord link above):

1. The Turq-Bot Pokémon Discord Engine -
Turq-Bot is being created as a universal Discord Pokémon Game Engine development kit. What does that mean, exactly? Well, say you have a custom-created pokemon region, along with your own fakemon. While you can create your own ROM-based fan game, Turq-Bot would aim to give you the ability to create a text-heavy version of your planned game in Discord.

2. The New Logora Region -
New Logora is the first region that is being implemented in the Turquoise server alongside creation of the Turq-Bot game engine. While the Turq-Bot will eventually be able to be forked and altered so that you can create your own games, the New Logora region is being used to test and create features in the game engine. The New Logora region is largely complete, although there is still stuff to be done for it for those interested in this project.

Please note: Neither the Turq-Bot, nor the Pokémon Turquoise game featuring the New Logora Region have been released for play at this point in time. Both are under development.

About Turq-Bot
This project is about developing a baseline automated pokemon game engine for creating community-centric pokemon fan-games on Discord. The purpose of choosing this medium is to create the ideal hybrid between a Roleplaying game and an Automated game. In addition to simply playing the game, Turq-Bot gives servers the capability of letting their users roleplay and craft interesting characters/stories along with their adventure as desired. The general idea is to use a Discord bot to enable basic things like travelling, finding wild Pokémon, battling trainers, starting quests, etc.

Development Kit:
None; the Turq-Bot is being custom built in NodeJS. It itself will be a development kit for other custom games, in essence.

Turq-Bot Features

• Development Kit for creating your own Pokémon Discord Game with custom regions, fakemon, and more!
• A unique webapp for viewing user profile, party, and box info, or even pokemon, move, or ability info related to the game. Essentially an all-in-one Pokédex!
• The ability to intertwine complex character creation and roleplaying with gameplaying if desired.
• The potential for a co-op mode, where you have the option of playing with a friend in double-battle style.
• The ability to battle/trade with friends, just as in a regular Pokémon game!
• The introduction of a quest system. With the option of making quests purely automated, or have some require creative roleplay responses with a moderator approval system.
• The ability to create custom events - whether they be simple seasonal type events, or main storyline events that are released every so often and will require the server/players to work together to complete the events.

Turq-Bot Recruiting Positions
Super Nerds - Currently recruiting
- This is the programming team. Currently I am the most active developer, and as a result I'm looking to get help wherever possible as there's lots to do still. We are developing in GitHub using predominantly Node.JS with the Discord.JS library, the mongoose ODM for querying to the MongoDB database with player/pokemon/battle info, and lastly we are using a React framework for a webapp which will display player profile info, among other game-related details. We are interfacing with a fork of the open source Pokémon Showdown battle simulator via a stream and parsing/handling stream outputs to keep our battle status in sync.

Artists - Currently recruiting
- This team will be responsible for developing graphics needed for the game engine. This includes battle backgrounds, status/type icons, and game menus. This team will collaborate with the Super Nerds on menu designs for the user interface.

About New Logora
New Logora is an exhilarating and adventurous tropical archipelago, with a large variety of wildlife and a Pokémon League as well! The region is made up of six large islands featuring 8 gyms, which can be challenged in almost any order. It is also home to the Tanoby people, who may lament about the region not thriving as it once did. It's said that New Logora used to be a much more beautiful and bountiful paradise, all thanks to the legendaries that are nowadays nowhere to be seen. In the New Logora game, players will be able to play their own game files independently. However, they'll also be able to work together in server-wide events to unlock the secrets of the ancient Tanoby people, the missing legendaries, and the mystery of the region's connection with the Pokémon, Unown.

Development Kit:
The Turq-Bot Pokémon Game Engine Kit - as described above.

New Logora Features

• The game takes place in a custom region of New Logora with an intriguing history and many mysteries to solve. Pivotal to the story is the presence of Unown in New Logora, and the mystery behind their existence and powers!
• Over one hundred custom Pokémon that were designed with care, passion and attention to detail.
• Over 150 new moves to change up how you battle and play Pokémon.
• Over 30 new abilities to give a fresh feel to the new Pokémon you'll encounter.
• Dozens of sidequests rich in lore and exploration within the region.

Recruiting Positions

Artists - Currently recruiting
- This team will be responsible for developing graphics needed for the region. This includes custom Pokémon icon sprites, NPC/Gym Leader/E4 trainer art/sprites, and other custom art/images specific to New Logora. We will eventually open up work on integrating other regions/fakemon into the bot, so artists who are interested in creating in an environment where their creations can come to life in a new and exciting way are welcome to inquire about joining the team as well!

PokéManiacs - Currently recruiting
- This team will be responsible for leading discussions and finalizing decisions related to dex updates and relaying changes to the Super Nerds. The initial primary goal would be the large task of updating the TurquoiseDex to be Gen VIII friendly (it is currently in Gen VI meta). This includes deciding what Gen VII and Gen VIII Pokémon would be good fits for the region, and revamping movesets, abilities, and items.

Storytellers - Currently recruiting
- This team will be responsible for creating scripts for quests, travelling, and move flavoring. A lot of the starting sidequests have been created, but there are many items in-game that will still need new and creative quests formulated and scripted. Post-game release, these staff members will have the option to get involved with minor or major event writing. I will say that there is quite limited access to specifics as far as plotline, and that's because storyline events will not be baked into the starting version of the game. They will be added in to the game as server-wide team-driven events. As a result, there are very few who actually know much about what the storyline involves, and we intend to keep it that way for the time being. I can assure you that it is a thrilling tale abundant with mystery and adventure.

New Logora Teaser
New Logora is fairly quiet as most regions go these days—there are no evil teams threatening to snatch Pokémon away, the world is not in danger, the biggest thing going on is the start of a busy new trainers' season and the preparations for gubernatorial elections. Everything is peaceful, or as peaceful as modern life ever gets, anyway, and no one can complain because things could certainly be worse...

...but, according to some of the Tanoby, the descendants of the ancient civilization that once thrived in this part of the world, they could also be better. Long ago Logora was home to legendary Pokémon whose very presence granted the region bounty, prosperity and power. The legendaries have long since been lost to time after the events that led up to the Exodus, but a small group of remaining Tanoby mystics who call themselves the Revivalists are looking to return them to their former glory. There have been so few clues over the centuries, so much time and effort and research that seems to have amounted to nothing, but at long, long last they believe they've found something—the first hints at what might just be the key to restoring the legendary Pokémon to their rightful places...

---

*Ahem*..."Is this thing on...?" - ~tap tap~ ... *AHEM*
My name is Gadari. Nice to meet you! No, none of that "Professor Gadari" nonsense; I'm no professor. As a matter of fact I used to be a trainer of quite some renown, but now that I'm retired I help new trainers like you get started by handing out these Pokédexes and special starter Pokémon. That's why you're here, correct? Wonderful. Just tell me a little about yourself and I'll get your equipment and your new partner ready to go!

Here are the Pokémon I have available. Choose wisely—this little fellow will likely become your Pokémon partner for life! (If you need to know a little more about your options, why not try out that new Pokédex and see what it says?)

Acafia | Crocoal | Spraylet​

Turq-Bot Engine + New Logora Region Screenshots
Some examples of in-game travel mechanics:

Spoiler:

An example of a full wild battle play-through:

Spoiler:

This screenshot is a proposed battle template style at the moment, using X/Y backgrounds. Eventually we'd like to have custom location backgrounds and custom status bars as well. This sort of interface would replace the simplified version in the wild battle screenshots above

Anyways, that's all I have for now. If you are interested in helping in one of the roles mentioned above for either of the two projects, simply reply and/or private message me here, or join the Pokémon Turquoise Discord and check out the #join-the-team channel. If accepted, you'll gain access to our work channels and GDrive.

Our Discord itself isn't super active, but the community is still pleasant and easy-going to be a part of. More hands on decks can certainly help liven things up in the server, however. Thank you for taking the time to review our proposal, and we hope that even if you can't help currently, you check out and enjoy the New Logora game when it is finally released! Or try to create your own server game with the Turq-Bot engine after it's official first release. ^_^

Best Regards,
-Chron

 

[Chron]

A few quick updates following the initial recruitment drive:

• We are no longer accepting new developers for the Super Nerds team at the moments. However, if you can demonstrate strong passion, motivation, and knowledge of the tools being used, we will consider expanding the team.
  [*] We have filled 2 of 7 Artist positions, and I have updated the role responsibilities above to include designing fakemon in Sugimori (or similar) style for future installment regions. If this is something you are more interested in, you are welcome to inquire about joining! Realistically I wouldn't expect a new region to be ready for a couple of years, but I feel like this would be adequate time to put out a quality new region/dex at the same time.
  [*] We have filled 5 of 7 PokéManiac and Storyteller positions.
  

While the development team has been at work for a month and a half already, we are ironing out tasklists for the other teams at the moment, and will be working on task delegation and kickoff meetings for the other groups pretty soon. Act quickly if you are interested in joining these teams before work kicks off, but also feel free to come back at a later time if you are interested and don't mind having to do a little bit of catch-up homework. 🙂

 

[Chron]

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted here. Been mostly doing the coding on my own, but I've been making significant progress in some places with this game.

For one, I've more or less finished the travel system mechanics, which includes travel between the region islands via ferry, as well as the game's flying mechanic. I originally had the map feature separated from the travel feature, but merged them for a more user-friendly and informative interface. See the screenshot below for a couple examples of this:

Spoiler:

The far bigger feature that I've been making steady progress with, however, is the battle simulator.
It was certainly a doozy figure out how to implement this as coding an entire Pokémon battle interface would probably take me a lifetime on my own. So I ended up finding out that I can fork Pokemon Showdown's public repository and just make modifications to and interface with their battle simulator. Luckily, they make it pretty easy to add custom Pokémon to the simulator. However, adding new abilities and moves definitely requires a more intimate understanding of their simulator. Fortunately, I've finished with adding and testing all new moves that will be present for the first beta. It still requires a good deal of work to parse and handle flavor text for everything that the Showdown simulator spits back, along with some custom functions for dealing with item usage, pokemon catching, run away attempts, etc. But after a bit of work, I've been able to implement and handle simple battles in discord:

Spoiler:

For the Beta at least, I'm going more for initial functionality, so I may not have battle templates included like the one shown in original post. Especially since I'd like to get some artist's help with crafting custom battle templates.

With all of the progress being made, I've still got a decently long list of tasks to accomplish in order for a first Beta to become a realization. So if anyone is interested in helping in any way, I've re-opened recruitment for all game positions. Please feel free to post here or private message me (here or in the discord) if you have any questions about helping.

 

[spacemountaincarlo]

This is one of the more unique games I've seen in this forum. Love these unique fan games that use a different format to play! Hope you find the people you need to help out.

 

[Chron]

Thanks, spacemountaincarlo!

As an aspiring developer and long-time pokemon nerd, it's been really fun and educational to try to create a game engine like this.

One of my goals with the project is to create a solid base for other fangames to fork off of and develop their own discord pokemon games with. And of course, to be able to add additional regions and pokemon to our game server later on. :nod:

Definitely open to any experience levels with the coding. I started with practically 0 experience, so I'm perfectly comfortable teaching any newcomers who are passionate about coding.

 

[_pheebee]

Oh wow!

While I cannot offer any service or help to this.
This is mighty impressive to see.
I don't think we get many Discord Plugin development here on Pokécommunity!

 

[Chron]

Thank you, Pheebs! We're looking to build a community-centric game with personal character expression and a lot of interaction between players, so Discord just felt like a great choice as a relatively untapped medium for games like this and since our community is presently rooted in Discord. We're very excited to see where it goes from here! :boogie:

In other news, I updated the role description for the Artists to include spriters in the role. And I should clarify that you do not have to be able to do everything listed in the roles to consider applying for them. An artist can be someone who only does sprites, or it can be someone who only does game user interface design. Anyways, we recently decided that we're going to include pokemon icon sprites in the game, which of course is only a measly 126 sprites to make (124 since I've started the first couple below). However, we have an initial goal of 28 that will be needed for the first beta.

We're also looking for artist help with another new role task: designing game menus. Currently, we will be needing the following types of menus prior to a beta release: A party menu, a Box menu, a Pokedex menu, and a base trainer id card layout. Since this game is discord-bot driven, menus with options need to be numbered/lettered, which makes for some fun challenge with compact design flow. For example, below is the main menu for the game that was recently finished. It'll be the core command menu to start playing the game at any given time, and through which all other game command options will be accessible.

I can help guide menu-design to an extent since I was able to put together the one above, but any help with stuff like this will be great in-so-far as letting me focus more of my attention to code development.

Lastly, I updated the storyteller role description as well. I know some people may be hesitant to get involved because let's face it, the storyline teaser I gave above is quite limited and doesn't tell you much. So I tried to explain the reason for this as quoted below:

I will say that there is quite limited access to specifics as far as plotline, and that's because storyline events will not be baked into the starting version of the game. They will be added in to the game as server-wide team-driven events. As a result, there are very few who actually know much about what the storyline involves, and we intend to keep it that way for the time being. I can assure you that it is a thrilling tale abundant with mystery and adventure.

Pokemon Turquoise as a forums has been around since 2007, and work on the New Logora region, created by our very good friend (PhoenixSong) reaches back almost just as far. Our collaboration together goes back as back as far as 2012/3, when we originally developed the game together as a forum-based text RPG. So I can assure you that the foundation is strong, the lore is rich, and the Pokémon and regions themselves are incredibly fun to work with.

Again, feel free to reply or get in contact if there's anyone interested in helping in any way. There's a lot of stuff to be done that isn't strictly coding or graphics. So I'm sure if none of the roles listed in my original post seem like a good fit, I can find something to be done that would fit your niche.

 

[Chron]

I wanted to give a short update to say that the entire first post has been overhauled, along with changing the thread name. The reason being that we are aiming to separate work on the New Logora region game from work on the Turq-Bot game engine itself. As we continue progress on the game engine, we are redirecting our focus officially so that it's not just a game engine exclusive to the New Logora region. We aim to create the Turq-Bot separately as a development kit in and of itself for those who would like to create their own discord pokemon games with custom regions, pokemon, and more. We hope that it can provide a new and fun format for playing Pokémon and giving your creations life.

As a result of these changes, those who are interested in helping can opt to help with a single project of the two, or even both if desired. As always, please feel free to post here, in the Pokémon Turquoise discord server, or private message me if you are interested in helping. Thank you!