Amethyst

Confirmed. Basically I broke all the generators on the site. Oops.

no i broke shit, sorry I'll fix it as soon as I can

neato stuff neat౦ stuff thats ✔ some neatostuff rightthere right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self i say so thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ neato stuff okay well i guess i can make it a rare mining chance too i mean if you put it that way

these few weeks have been/are going to be really busy for me, so i may not have a lot of time to work on stuff (i have to work every holiday+holiday eve + a week straight, among other misc things) today is one such example where i was gone for most of the day so i only had a little bit of time to work on a field attribute that forces certain form changes

Yeah, and I've considered going through with it anyway (but I don't think I will). Namely, changing the scenarios around Corey/Kiki's battles so that they aren't gym leaders (and thereby people aren't disappointed when they don't get a badge). I made them leaders in-game and planned on that so that I could get both those two, and Aya/Samson's battles in the storyline, but that denial of the badges has caused a lot more frustration than I ever expected.

Pretty much everything Kuro said I agree with entirely, and that would also be my priority... Slight exception being that I don't think we need to 'size down' so much as ensure that there's strategic diversity enough to ensure that everything has its applications. There may only be x amount of type combinations, but there's a lot more factors than just that, so I think it's possible (but would take a LOT of design and balancing work) but really, fox type best type I don't remember about past development stuff because lolmymemoryisbad but as far as things I can remember I had had it up to here with making the background graphics for "that one field" because it took me like eight hours and then I realized I hadn't properly checked the spacing and it was unusable in-game. So I ended up having to remake it, which I went through like 4 or 5 more concepts of before settling on one, all of which also took quite a while. In playthroughs... I don't remember my most recent one that well; maybe Inuki or Dan do since they watched a lot of them, but I think I had a lot of trouble with (pre-Mirror Field) Serra. I didn't really ragequit, but I lost a lot. I was like, "let me remake and balance this gym already!!" and inuki was like "no, you will suffer with the rest of us, you are not allowed to make any changes until after you beat her" :c Probably. I never know what to make NPCs say. But, I'm trying not to do too many because the number of references in the game has been a point of criticism in the past.

mission accomplished fixed the error, so "that one field" is now fully implemented. the documentation for it is still going to be hell though OTL also implemented all of another field, meaning 4/6 are done. I'm not updating the status thread yet because I do still have to do the documentation piece of all new fields, which is its own demon. But once I get through this, there'll be a pretty good % jump again.

In that case you'd want your first pokemon to hold it, yeah. Because Grassy Terrain is what generates the field, whereas Sludge Wave just transforms it. That's different from the pledges where the second attack is what generates it.

Wait, really? Well, that's embarassing. Was it the other person with the smeargle avatar? I know I get you two mixed up all the time... Nefalem, I think? Even so, both of you have been extremely helpful. You did the other things like with the chrysolia background and error checking on icons, yeah? And you also both were active in the shiny project iirc... It's not really a goal or priority so I don't have any plans for it, but if a good effect is hammered out, I'm not opposed. . There were some ideas tossed around before, but I didn't really like the sound of them... Unfortunately I can't remember the details. >~< Maybe like an 8, but a good 4 of those points are from Reborn itself. I really love Pokemon as a concept, and I like so many of the Pokemon themselves as well as ideas within the world. But, I have a hard time with the media. I don't like the battle system of the main series so I don't enjoy it that much, and I can't respect the anime after hearing some things about its director.

I'm going to try and post here a little more regularly even if it's just with whatever I've worked on day-to-day (unless it's getting repetitive). I definitely won't have something to show for it each day but, at least hopefully it'll colour in these dead periods where the status % really isn't going up. today i kept working on "that one field," trying to add support for an attribute that changes moves' targetting. i've pretty much been working on it all day and uhh... the current state of things is that the targetting is successfully changed!! ...with the minor side effect, of, the move activating infinitely within the same turn until something dies. (which is particularly inconvenient when the move does no damage) it's been a long day

Like, pre-release? Because I sketch stuff out before mapping it, most things haven't really changed -that- much... And even post-release the layouts of maps rarely change even if the visuals do like in Mosswater/the Slums/Julia's Gym. But if it's like within an episode cycle the only thing that really changed a lot was probably Azurine Island. I had to sketch it out like five different times before I settled on something I liked. And then I started mapping it, the different islets were originally connected by shallow points in the water. However I added that little floaty plant stuff for decoration and realized I liked the look of that better, especially because that allowed me to get a bit more subtle and make some interesting twisting pathways and such, so I basically redid the entire map one more time without a sketch to use those instead. "Worst bug" could mean a lot of different things. Most problematic? Hardest to fix? Idk. Sucker Punch has been annoying but I don't think I'd call it either of those. The bug that's hardest to fix is probably one that's been around since Episode 1 and that still no one has been able to reproduce, where the game crashes if you're running in LoDo when a Pokemon's poison wears off. It's always these conditions, but it only happens rarely. I am very upset by it. Right now the worst bug in terms of most problematic might be an issue with the doubles AI that I'm not even sure is a bug so much it just being made badly in the first place. Currently in doubles, the AI only looks at about half of the Pokemon's moves, and at half of the targets available to it. I don't see any real rhyme or reason to this; it's just not made to do better. That's something we intend to fix for 16 though. It's hard to say without having a specific purpose for writing it that way. As a general method, we start with the purpose and how the protagonist is going to develop. Then every other character is written as an accessory to that development in some way. The plot is what moves them to develop from point A to B. It sounds hollow phrased like that, but that's a basic structure. Then the details are filled in according to the purpose and what metaphors suit it. I'm not really going to give a concrete example here because that takes quite a bit of time to feel all of that out, I'd be writing an entire other story from the ground up and we're not about that life right now. But that's the general idea. I touched on this before, but I didn't really set out to do this. We had the Reborn League, and a user was like "I'm gonna make a game based on the League!!" and I was like, knock yourself out because I tried romhacking once before and gave it up after changing a trainer's roster caused evolution to stop working entirely. And then he mentioned that he was going to use the engine Pokemon Raptor, an RMXP game, used. A lot of excited question marks and a few google searches later I found Pokemon Essentials, and already having been very familiar with RPG Maker from my younger days, tried it out right away and released Episode 1 two weeks later. Like I said before, I expected that I'd get bored of it quickly. It wasn't like I set out to make a Pokemon game. Someone else was going to, and then I realized I could make it better. So I did. But like, I've been interested in game development since I was like, 6. My best friend and made a regular hobby out of drawing fakemon and custom zelda dungeon maps. When I was 8, I got my first bit of training on an actual development engine (making a frogger clone) and then I started using Game Maker at home when I was 10 and RPG Maker when I was 11. Particularly with RPG Maker I've focused on a lot of different projects in the past (none of which were remarkable due to age and inexperience), so it's not like Pokemon was my first choice (partly because I didn't think it was practical in RM, and maybe at the time it wasn't). In fact when I was younger, the thing I most wanted to make was a tactical RPG. And hey! I'll be doing that soon. -- Many people in the community have helped a lot. Even aside from things in the Public Dev forum I've had users PM me bits and pieces here and there. Smeargletail, who's on the animation team now, was one such example. Before there was an animation team, he took on the job of occasionally scanning through the image files looking for out-of-line pixels, among other things, and also did all of the custom egg appearances pretty much on his own. I didn't ask him to do those things, he just did, and it was great. Obviously that's a dramatic example, but the point is, yeah, the community's helped a ton. -- Advice? I dunno. Maybe just to document the changes you make so that when you do get it done you're able to reproduce it or change things that conflict later. Poor documentation in the beginning cost me a fair bit of time on the project. Aside from that, I don't think there's much to say. Knock ya self out. ahahah... So sucker punch wasn't implemented in the first place, so we implemented that and since then it's been broken in different ways every release. like. we fix one problem with it and i'm so sure it's good now and then some other crash message springs up on a different case handler that I swear I tested. But in the dev version it's good now! Right..? r.. r-right?? Q~Q There should be a fair amount of post-game content. I mean there's like, what, 40 legendaries? Yikes... What kind of post-game would it be if that wasn't the case? Nothing! Water is one of my favorite types and I really like a lot of the Gen 1 waters! I already explained why they're so far back though; just because of (sometimes previous) competitive viability. *except that Golduck is just boring. What, Mewtwo isn't good enough for you??? Tbh, like, honestly, like, to be honest, like, to tell the truth... I don't really like legendaries. At all. That might be why the plot is so less focused around them than many other fangames. That said, contrary to what I promised in the past, you can probably expect to see at least one more before the end of the story.

It does not apply to Tailwind actually, since I consider that more of a weather thing than a terrain thing. (and also would actually be OP)

No mining, but there'll be at least a couple by the end. If you're talking about what you think you are, they will, but they don't need to be announced since they're in canon games. You'll want it on the Pokemon that creates the field, so the 2nd attacker It does apply for Wonder and Magic Room too if you can find a way to use 'em! The effect does not stack, no.

How about it, then? yeah yeah i'm slow Though I've already dropped more than enough hints about it by now, I'll formally introduce the Amplifield Rock! The Amplifield Rock joins its companions such as Damp Rock et al. as a somewhat rarer variant in the line of prolonging stones. But it would not be rare if it did not have some value. Originally contrived as an item to enable Field Effect-based teams to play on their home turf a little longer, the Amplifield Rock extends the effect of all generated Field Effects by several turns, so you can get a little more Rainbow, Mist, or what have you in your life. Note that this applies specifically to generated field effects, as in when you create an effect, and not when you're temporarily transforming an existing effect such as Dark Crystal Cavern to Crystal Cavern. But wait, there's more! Not to be overlooked by those uninterested in running Field-specific teams, the Amplifield Rock has a couple other neat uses. You'll note that the description does not specify Field Effects, but rather area-altering moves. That does include Field Effects, but also things such as Gravity and-- dare I say it? Trick Room. Maybe being slow won't be so bad after all... Used correctly, this new item makes options that once might have been written off as gimmicks into something practical. It may be for themed teams or just those looking to exploit an opponent's strengths as much as their weaknesses... After all, come E16, one line of Pokemon will be able to use it to reverse a type match-up completely. Can you guess which?

Well, site staff (mods/admins) aren't actually involved with game development themselves, though there is a small amount of crossover (basically Dan and I by now). And... the only one who really does that much designing is me. But I think I get your meaning, details aside. Dropbox has been absolutely invaluable for this. There's a handful of us (basically Dan Inuki and I) who have access to an automatically-syncing project through db so we can edit whatever and reload and it's on each other's computers instantly. Then the animation team + Jan works separately and they submit their files through db's file request system, so they go right into the project folder too. Finally, the scripting team uses Tortoise subversioning hosted with Rioux which allows us very rigid control over local/shared copies of the script files + documentation, including the ability to roll back to previous versions when necessary. Only Pokemon Centers. We old fashioned. Mm.. I think, in terms of what the 'biggest victory' is, it'll be the fact that I managed to actually 1) finish something, and 2) create something that a really large number of people really like. Historically I've never really been good at finishing things. That's the popular habit, in fact. I've been messing around with RPG Maker since I was 11, and I used to frequent a lot of RM communities where many people would post about their projects and then in month or two the creators would lose motivation and abandon them. I wasn't an exception to that. Before I started Reborn, I had sort of 'retired' myself from the whole game development thing. So when I went back to it, I started Reborn with the expectation that I would get bored of and drop it within a month. Obviously that didn't happen. When it is finally done, it's going to be pretty big to me to show that I actually came through on something. And it'll happen-- even if it takes a while. As for the second part, that's mostly just a matter of proving to myself that most-- or at least, enough-- of my principles and ideas are effective enough to make something a success. That's huge to me. Whenever I watch or play something, I'm analyzing the plot structure, the design choices, so on- identifying what's good, why it's good, what can be improved. As such, I tend to be very critical of things like games and writing. However, it's not like I'm a published author or anything, so what I say about writing has no real weight. The same went for the video games side of things-- until this took off. The fact that I can do this well enough is sort of validation to the previously unjustified confidence I had in terms of my thoughts on design and structure. aha, haha. ha. So, following after the above: When I actually sit down and write something, be that a short story or a plot for a game, or whatever, I'm very methodical about it. I have pretty strong ideas about purpose, structure, character development and so on. I start with an outline, a central purpose, and I build everything out from there. This is the case for Starlight. I believe quite firmly this works, and creates stories that are both engaging, and technically satisfying. The thing about Reborn, is that was all thrown out the window from the start. Remember that this game was based off of our online league. I think I said this in an earlier reply, the gym leaders for the online league were written to be one dimensional. Furthermore, most of their stories didn't connect at all and many of them had no development whatsoever. These characters were not meant to be part of a game. They do not fit together. I've done my best to string them along and tie them up into a singular story, but because they are made from this lackluster source, the story and characters come out (in my opinion) as very disjointed and flat. So that's my regret-- that the story isn't structured more clearly, and the characters aren't more interesting. Of course it had to be that way, because that was the point of the game. And I probably only got away with it because the canon games are still less interesting than that. But in the end, this is nothing. I know I can, and will, do so much better. And if you'll allow me to toot my own horn for a minute more, because I haven't done that enough, I already have done better. Even though most of it is still in my head, and coming out slowly in the form of concept art every couple months... I don't care much for most of Reborn's characters, save one or two. And that's understandable I think, because like I said, most of the characters in Reborn weren't written to be likable. In contrast, however, I am absolutely in love with every single major character in Starlight. Maybe that's just because I'm in the honeymoon phase with it still, or maybe it's because most of them haven't made it to a tangible form for me to criticize yet (...though one of them never will, and that's the way she likes it...), but I cannot wait until I can finally play them from my hand. I like this one. EDIT: Rip, ninja'd again. I didn't plan out the plot until I started making E3, realized I probably wasn't getting bored of this any time soon, and needed a direction to take it. So... it wasn't really from the start, but everything to the end was planned out at that point. Details and order of events were revised periodically. I also made a few rewrites to add content, such as the entire excursion with Adrienn and Ditto-Arceus. I can't think of anything significant that was removed, but I'm sure something was. Oh, like there was originally going to be a gang sidequest where you and your chosen gang got arrested and you had to break out of jail (beneath the police station) together. That was something that was scrapped in favor of the 7th street events, which were also last-minute additions. For many of the reasons above, I don't think this would make a good book. If it were a book we'd have to have a non-silent protagonist. That protagonist's development would have to inform the events and actions included.

Would I really do something like that? Firstly let me just say that it's lost on exactly no one how you basically just asked the same thing as before with slightly more generalized wording to get around the stipulation Kuro listed. But when it comes to getting around things, I suppose old habits die hard, don't they? The point that this has all been said in the other topic remains-- but whatever. Specific things that have hindered development in this cycle include technical problems (I had to replace one of my computers already, and the other one is now freezing frequently), internet problems, and health problems (with both Kuro and I) that prevented us from working (and are still a factor). In the past it's just been me having to work/be in school/getting grounded. Most of that's not an issue now since I'm out of school, my mom stopped doing that (she gave up on me lol <3) and I can work on the game at my job (...when my computer isn't freezing) The main slow down for this and probably future episodes is just that there's a lot more to do, and that's not a trend that's going to change because we'll be working on animations and AI, both of which are very sizable projects, probably throughout the rest of development. Even aside from those things, I have hundreds of things that need to be done, some of which take seconds, and others, days. also the real reason she survived the fall into the water is because she's a water leader, so it's not very effective. Yep. Though that one sounds boring. Not too much, but maybe. Until recently we didn't have code for this so it's now a possibility-- but not really a priority Nope. Nope, because it's the same as making anything else (but handling giant sprites like Steelix is more than a little rough) Yep, all non-meteor important characters in this game are based on leaders from the online league. It's not impossible, but I almost have all the areas covered, so it might be replacing older stuff or something if at all. Varies between each. Some Pokemon I know exactly what I want to do with them from the start and they have an event tailored to them. More often though, I look for places that events could go and build them in like I do item niches. Or sometimes I don't think that far ahead and end up tucking them into any corner that looks like it can hold one (but that's usually for when availability gets changed for axery or whatever)

right i should probably get on that in other news, i had some kind of naive notion that "this one field that's literally 5x as much work as every other field" would not also be 5x as much work to code. i'm not really sure why i thought that might be the case, but consider me thoroughly corrected. (especially since trying to -start- coding it in has lead me to find a bug in 15's implementation of field transformations where a bunch of them just flat out aren't working so i have to restructure a bunch of the code. god bless.)

hi these headphones are a thing btw

I do. Depends greatly from puzzle-to-puzzle depending on the complexity. Gym puzzles aren't usually that bad (shelly's excepted, fuck shelly's puzzle) but with puzzles like WTC/Route 2/Aventurine Woods where the entire map is basically a bunch of puzzles (often connected in one big meta puzzle-- I love that, by the way) it's pretty significant. I spend a lot of time drawing layouts for those on paper, then I map it out in-editor and try to fit everything into what I had in mind, and then I do the eventing and inevitably find scenarios/issues I didn't account for in design (such as places to get stuck) and so on and have to redo stuff a lot until I find a way that works. Nah, that's like 90% just a LoL reference + something to make it more like an arcade and less like a casino I intended that last appearance to be the final one-- but it's not impossible. Nope, they're changed for #puns of damage Surnames are less puns and have other very obscure meanings which I can neither remember, nor subsequently comment on. As far as grace, stuff like Gardevoir, Meloetta... come to mind at once, idr feel like searching through the whole list atm. But types aside Ciel's team would be about grace secondarily and firstly about what can have grace in the air since her shtick is Aerial Ballet as opposed to the grounded variant. So that would primarily open up stuff like, yeah, Meloetta, maybe Mienshao/Blaziken, Lucario, stuff that can move swiftly, even just between ribbons in the air. I'll say if I could have gone about it with any of those things in mind from the start, it would have been great. Unfortunately since this story is made from stitching pre-existing characters and scenarios together I wasn't really able to do that, so whatever is included is just what came out of the things that inspired the game. Also if the protagonist weren't silent I would love to have an over-arching theme for their development-- but alas, 'tis not in our source. But because of those things no single aspect can really tie up the plot itself. There's too many things to bring together. Sort of. A lot of it was actually me feeling guilty for making their struggles into a game, something for entertainment value. I've often felt like it disrespects them, or diminishes their memory. I don't think I regret it though. Many of them seem very one dimensional to me, but that's because they were written to be that way in the first place. The original goal of the online league was to mimic the in-game experience with a human-level of difficulty. So, back in the day every leader had a set of quotes like the leaders in-game do. Quotes for when you win, lose, after the first hit, when they're down to one pokemon, etc. Those would be used every battle. When writing their quotes with them, I also had them deliberately choose lines and personalities to be a bit one-dimensional, because we were trying to express a clear character all within the span of a trainer card + one fifteen minute gym battle. Compared to knowing the actual people behind them, it all seems very watered down to me. I'm very much looking forward to writing for more interesting characters in Starlight. - That's been a huge issue for me, especially with these last two episodes where it's taken 6 months/6+ months to get anywhere. I've had to let go of a lot of my expectations and constantly remind myself that this is something I originally just did in my free time and there is no actual development. Quality over speed. No rush, no need to hurt myself. ... But, doing that is a work in progress, and on the whole it's something I still do stress about multiple times a day. - I really only have one friend who's not at least somewhat around the community tbh. She hasn't played the game, but some of her friends have (and they don't believe her when she says she knows the person who made it, lol rip). She's encouraging, but I don't think she pays it much mind. She says I work on it too much. I disagree. Smooth, and highly recommend the Peanut Butter Co. brand's White Chocolate Wonder or Dark Chocolate Dream. The former is like eating Reese's filling. The latter, nutella. I usually pick out attributes based on the environment, and then occasionally add some stuff for the major battles it'll be used them/balance numbers for that, whatever. I don't have any specific plans for increasing transformative effects but the item I'll be announcing shortly will help in letting players use their own fields more. Field-specific AI is planned to be included in E19. spoilers???? A fair point and it's for that reason a lot of that stuff might backwash. However, I wanted to air to the side of being too restrictive with those things at first so that I don't run out of material to reward players with. If I find I have too much I can move it earlier. I think players will prefer that change to the reverse where I run out of TMs to give and up axing some. Fair- but honestly I put limited stock into Pokedex entries... Thunder Wave is common in competitive as stuff like Flamethrower though. It's something that's really strong itself and I sort of consider a no-brainer, so it'll be held off for later

All the leaders and most other characters are based off of their counterparts from the online league. I try to avoid Terra. Their lives are their own and I promised them privacy. Nonetheless, I might say some stuff here and there particularly when I do my LP of the game once it's complete. We might disagree about Serra being a joke... different leaders are easier or harder for different playthroughs. Nonetheless the average difficulty of each gym battle is, like stated, intended to follow a fairly continuous line. Nope. After Reborn it's all about Starlight. I'm not so sure it would break an iron wall... super effectiveness aside. Nonetheless, how hard would you have to punch someone to kill them? There are some key points, for instance. The throat. The spleen. If their rib cage is shattered and punctured their vitals. A person isn't going to stay still when a Tyranitar is swinging at them though so it's unlikely that that big slow thing is going to hit key points with its hulking hands. It's harder to imagine it would kill her than the reverse. Water breaks a fall-- still hurts though. For items that are visible on the overworld I mostly figure out where I want them as I'm doing the mapping, and build in those nooks and crannies. For all hidden items, I have a list of items that are eligible to be found on the ground, plus a lot of duplicates to handle probability, and each time I finish eventing a map I plug that list into a randomizer and just go down it and drop the hidden items according to the list, wherever looks good on a whim until I feel like it's sufficiently dense. I really don't feel like making a Ferris Wheel graphic set tbh, especially since it's not really important to the story. Once it's back in commission there'll just be a long line of guests blocking it off.

Aren't clickbait listicles great? Especially when the title isn't even accurate. This title isn't accurate, because we do want you to know about them. That's why I'm telling you. But is that going to stop me from having fun with the title? Absolutely not. 1- The Pokemon Fan Club's content theme is getting changed up, and instead of being a Pokemon catch-all it's now specifically for canon material in the series 2- The Fan Game Expose's got a minor make over to it. Community games that are just starting out or in the concept phases now have their own subforum in Developing Games. The main FGE section is now for games, community or otherwise (so that includes hacks and other fangames!) that have at least one release behind them. Topics will be sorted shortly! We hope that this will encourage users to scan that section for things to play, just a bit more. 3- PotD has faded in and out recently and its fate has been the subject of some discussion. As of now, thanks to some strong community input, the function is officially dead and has been removed from the site shop! 4- A new tier has been added to the server! Battle Factory Doubles are now open for business! 5- The forum has a new BB Code tag for all the music lovers out there. Check this, to post a Soundcloud, uh, cloud? directly in the forum, like so: [soundcloud] That's all for now! But keep an eye peeled for next weeks article, "7 Dirty Things You Won't BELIEVE Staff Do On The Server!" You won't want to miss it!

hello :c I thought the story/graphics on LA were great. But I do highly recommend those games! I would say they controls/mechanics are a little wonky especially in the first but the second/third fix a lot of those problems Also, CIMA: The Enemy. GBA strategy game where you have to guide a group people out of a gate they're captured in. It's cool because you get to both give orders to and play as the various people you protect, and each of them develops throughout the story.