are those gonna increase the strain on my toaster laptop?
Honestly, yeah, probably. However my thought... and desperate hope... is that when I get to doing that kind of mapping, lag won't be an issue anyway because
1) I have never had to deal with latent overworld lag in RPG Maker before, except with Essentials. I don't know if it's because of bad coding or just -more- coding (base Essentials has about 10x as much code as base RPG Maker scripts), and
2) Starlight will be made on a newer version of RPG Maker, which runs on a newer version of the RGSS scripting languge. The newer versions are reputably more stable and scalable.
Yep! Though don't expect much from them. The grass and flowers are mostly decorative, and while I haven't worked out exactly what's gonna go in each ward, it will at the very least cover events that can no longer be gotten. For instance, we'll probably have wild Skitty in Coral since the Skitty event goes poof. But, we'll see. Most of the new Pokemon availability in this episode will be coming from sidequests rather than encounters.
My present thought is no, because it will seem more out of place to have level 70 bidoof, firstly, existing, and secondly running around in this previously low level area, than it will to just have the levels stay the same as before.
Besides, that would be a safety hazard to the people.
Don't worry, you may not see him again, but he's in a better place now.
...As in he moved to a new house. The old one was structurally unsound.
"STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND"
So firstly I hope everyone is well aware that I am now dead inside.
Anyway, official statements on Gen 7:
Yes, it will be incorporated. However, I'm 100% not doing anything related to Gen 7 until those games are released.
The good news is we're in a much better place to implement Gen 7 than we were for Gen 6 for a few reasons:
Sprites are scary but I have high hopes that I won't have to handle them like I have before. Can't say why for now, but it's nothing dramatic.
We have an actual scripting team unlike before, and I'm personally much more competent/comfortable with coding than I was back then.
We are currently (mostly) up to date. Before, only content up to Gen 3 was updated, with Gens 4/5 scattered in. We now have everything through 6.
The Essentials community itself is also up to date, as a fall-back. The most recent Essentials features Gen 6 code thanks to a user project. I suspect a similar project will pop up to get gen 7 in. This wasn't something that happened back in the day.
We already have a framework here of how the community can help with gathering/formatting data to put into the project, and I think we've got some surviving veterans from the process too.
However, there are a couple things this time that will be more inconvenient than last:
Field Effects will need to be updated for new moves, abilities and mechanics. This is going to be a particular pain because of the Field App graphics I spent forever of this dev cycle making.
Since we're managing animations now too, it's a whole new array of moves to animate.
There's more content in the game that will need to be adjusted for availability. There are more gyms, trainers, areas, TMs, events/sidequests than there were when Gen 6 hit.
So it's still a pain.
Further, I might deliberately hold off on implementing it until the final episode anyway. I mentioned this before but development times have taken so long, not because the new content is difficult, (excepting E16 in which everything takes forever), but because I'm making so many changes to the existing content. Since realizing this I'm actively trying to refrain from being too perfectionistic with preexisting content. I think postponing Gen 7 changes until the end of development will help me not have to constantly go back and change old stuff-- I can do it all in one fell swoop later.
The exception to that will be if there happens to be a new Pokemon or Mega that works out as an ace for an upcoming leader. For example with Ciel: Altaria was always her ace and I was going to have a hell of a time making it powerful, but then there was a Mega and all of my problems were solved. So like if there happens to be a Mega Dragonite then I'll have to add Gen 7 sometime before Saphira's battle.
But maybe that won't be a good thing for you all. Oh well.