Tankenka Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 (edited) Hi everyone! Here is a project I've been working on every now and then in the past years. It's my first experiment and it's still growing. I'm here to present it to you following a friend's advice. It's a customizable monster catching&training game based on GPS for Android, a free app you can find on Google Play. It works with any fanmade data pack containing all the data for a set group of monster, and the first one available is the Pokémon data pack, which is why I'm here. It's very light and doesn't use internet connection at all*, which is good news for the battery since gps alone already drains a lot. (* except when you download the data pack at the beginning, of course) We have communities of players on reddit and pokecommunity, game downloads are nearly 700 as of now, and lots of users played it for hundreds of hours already, catching hundreds of monsters near their homes and sharing their stories online (which made me really happy). It has just got out of beta, that's why the rates are few for now. Just a quick note: this game is not related in any way to Pokémon GO, concept and development started in 2014 and way before GO announcement, and as you can read below, the mechanics are a lot different and more inspired by pokémon games and anime. So I personally don't see them in competition, you can like and play both of them, no need to just choose one. Give this post a read and you'll see how different they are! Here is the link to the page on google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tankenka.gms Requires android 3.0 or better. The basic idea is that through the game, the entire real world is composed of regions and routes, and every route is a habitat for a different family of monsters. The common sense for most mechanics was inspired by the pokémon anime, more than the games. Please keep that in mind while reading. Also, this is a game to be played while you're outside, in a matter of seconds. You won't find the depth of canonical pokémon games, because it would take too long to play, and because it must remain generic enough to be adaptable to non-pokémon sets. An important keyword is, EXPLORE. This game's goal is to encourage you exploring, going around outside and discovering new places and things. Details on the game's mechanics: - Imagine being a child in a monster world: you start befriending the species living around your house, and then you begin your adventure exploring the surroundings and finding new monsters to add to your squad. - Monsters are 100% catchable when they are defeated. Simple as that. They're ko, what can they do in that state? - Catch items are precious here! Trainers in the anime don't throw balls at everything, and you shouldn't do it as well. Catch the ones you really like first, and establish a deep relationship with them. - Aside for the first batch initially available, additional catch items can be found by exploring areas, a radar will guide you to them through visual and hearing hints (blue arrows and a beeping sound). (Otherwise you can just keep the game open as you travel in car/train/bike and hope to find them accidentally.) - Every region has an established league, 8 gym leaders and 5 elites. As seen in Origins, gyms can be challenged in any order. Each gym leader uses a different team depending on how many badges you already have in that region. - Each gym leader or elite always uses a squad of 6. Enough with the easy battles, these guys should be though to beat, and you need a full team to compete with them. - Gyms can be accessed from anywhere. Every gym has its own domain, and every route is placed inside one of these domains, so you always have access to a corresponding gym. - The wild monsters you find and their levels depend on your carreer as a trainer. In more detail, they depend on the level of your team and the number of badges in that region. - Each monster has its genetic traits and personality. Monsters in the active team have different interactions with each other depending on their personalities, and you can observe their behaviour. - Region names are generated in a way to resemble known typical region names in monster adventures. There will be different naming algorythms for different data packs. - You can encounter legendaries if you're lucky, but only when you're already a good trainer. - You can find evolution-inducing items on wild monsters. Sometimes they drop the item as soon as they get defeated, otherwise you can catch the whole monster and therefore get its item without fail. - All evolutions are induced manually, not in the midst of battle. When the conditions are met you can evolve the monster from its own options. - A monster's options list (long click on its button in the Team screen) lets you give a nickname, assign/remove an item, check the status, evolve, and free. - The game works at its full potential (or should) everywhere in the world. Everything is autogenerated, so there are countless regions and routes, everywhere, all of them perfectly structured. Not a single spot in the world is left behind, no matter how little it is populated. - The game's musics are custom. You can select a folder on your device, and the game will distribute all the mp3s found inside to all routes. On the data packs website you can find a suggested music folder for the pack that you can download and unzip on your device. - The data pack just needs to be downloaded to the 'download' folder of your device, don't try to unzip it. The game will read and use it like that. - The game's options list lets you select a music folder, change the pack (useless for now), go check the web page where data packs are stored, and do a save data backup. Backups are just a countermeasure in case something goes wrong and a bug deletes your adventure. Also, in case of some problem you cand send it to me to check. Hopefully they will never be useful, but, do a backup every now and then. - New Like on 3DS, you gain coins by simply traveling. There's not a max per day, because it's unfair when you go on long journeys, but the distance needed to gain coins constantly increases until it starts over the next day. - New Hold pressed the exploration area, and you will have access to the shop where you can spend coins. Daily offers change everyday, and every player sees the same items so you can even tell your friends. - New Hold pressed the exploration area, and you will have access to the route marking functionalities: you can place only one home for now, but the other symbols (star, heart, cross, circle) can be used freely without restrictions. The purpose is to mark your frequently visited places and orient yourself better. From the screen of your marked routes, you can hold them pressed and remove them. - New The region view (accessible through the Zoom button) shows where you are (white square), where you've been already (colored squares) and where you've never been (black squares). Color of colored squares is a hint to the corresponding gym's type. - New Hold pressed the region view, and you will have access to a highlighting functionality. With this you can research the location of families that you have already encountered in that region. - New Family images have a circle around them, that shows how many new species you can still collect in that particular route. A full circle means that you already have everything you can find in there. A big part of the circle, in black color, refers to the common family. A small section of the circle at the top, in gold color, refers to the rare family (legendaries). - New There's a new item in the shop, the Item Grabber Boost. It does extend your item grabbing range by 20 meters, so you can get hidden items even when they appear in some private property or some house. But remember to be already as close as possible when you buy it, because the effect expires in just 1 minute! - New The new PP system enhances the realism of monsters, who now become tired after using lots of attacks, regardless of the battles' outcome. PP recover over time. - New You can now transfer your adventure to a new device, if you need it. Just do a backup (must be a backup made with the newest version), transfer it to the new device in the same location (the 'download' folder, where even the data pack is), start a new install of the game there and follow the procedure. - New NPC trainers appear daily in routes. Instead of being one-shot random guys, you can encounter them frequently and turn them into your rivals. Tap on their sprites to see infos about them, and go near them to have a battle! No need to reach their exact position, they can see you from a distance, and once they set eyes on you they won't let you do your normal activities. There is a logic as to where they appear, and it could be useful to you... Screenshots: Other screenshots from previous versions: Or if you want to see some descriptions with the screenshots, go here: http://imgur.com/a/qX6yy Of course there is still a LOT to improve, so updates will be frequent, but it's fairly playable already, and I really hope you have fun with it. Some brief information on what could come next: - (Done!) Additional boxes you can manage and rename freely - (Done!) 'Pedometer'-like function to gain coins daily like on the 3ds - (Some of these, Done!) Internal shop (paying with coins, not real money don't worry) to obtain catching items, evolutionary items, legendary items, and... eggs! - Eggs to hatch by walking with them - (Done!) Whole region view shows more clearly which areas you've visited already - (Done!) Distance markers are colored when the neighbouring area has not been visited yet (or belong to a different region) - (Done!) Monsters in a box or in team can be ordered by level - (Done!) Route 'completeness circle' around the family image - (Done!) Region view option: Highlighting of the routes where a certain family lives - (Done!) Free marking of routes - (Done!) Experience points balanced with battle toughness - (Done!) Enhanced cursor and radar functionalities - (Done!) Exp bars in battle - (Done!) Npc Trainer battles - Multiplayer options, aka battles and trades - Individual id & name for the trainer (necessary for multiplayer) - Collection objectives and rewards - More non-pokémon data packs - Secret enhancement to have landscapes more similar to the real world - More dynamic battles against gym leaders/elites and human players - MBTI instead of the current 6 personalities - Buyable potions to make monsters recover fast - Side games: I won't reveal much for now, but I have some ideas for simple management and tamagotchi-style side games ;P - Options about memorization of teams to quickly recall them - Legendary items in the shop (e.g. shaymin's flower) - Flavor text in dex - First monster following you - Shiny monsters - Region scrolling to see neighboring regions - Hybrid location tracking system - Better graphics. Because I suck at making graphics. - Other things I'm forgetting As I said ANY set of monsters can be made into a data pack for the game. If you want your set of fakémon, or digimon, or monster hunter monsters, or characters from fire emblem or undertale, animals, bugs, dinosaurs, you can do it, any large set of creatures is perfect for it, and I will gladly help you create it. I think the Fakémon option is particularly interesting, because they can also be used to promote an artist work or a fangame. For a generic fakémon data pack, with artworks made by lots of different artists, I can add some content in the Dex screen, so that below the species name, type and power, a player can also find the name of the author, and a link to their website/gallery. Ask away if you have doubts or difficulties. Thank you! Edited July 5, 2016 by Tankenka Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PokeFailure Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 Gonna download this and use it over the summer, Love the potential for it especially the "Any set of monsters" part. Hilariously pokemon GO came out before I find this. This just looks like a gem, Hope it gets the recognition it deserves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tankenka Posted July 6, 2016 Author Share Posted July 6, 2016 Gonna download this and use it over the summer, Love the potential for it especially the "Any set of monsters" part. Hilariously pokemon GO came out before I find this. This just looks like a gem, Hope it gets the recognition it deserves. Thanks! I feel very unlucky for finding myself in a 'competition' with an official game. They're very different, but explaining that to people has been extremely hard for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PokeFailure Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Thanks! I feel very unlucky for finding myself in a 'competition' with an official game. They're very different, but explaining that to people has been extremely hard for now. People assume things, we're weird filthy creatures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpee Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Looks very interesting, but it keeps saying that GPS isn't being found even though I've enabled GPS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tankenka Posted July 9, 2016 Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 Looks very interesting, but it keeps saying that GPS isn't being found even though I've enabled GPS. Did that happen indoors? The signal can be too weak inside buildings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpee Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Yeah, I'm indoors atm, but the signal should not be weak as I can use Google Maps pretty well indoors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tankenka Posted July 9, 2016 Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 Yeah, I'm indoors atm, but the signal should not be weak as I can use Google Maps pretty well indoors. Yeah the system for gps is a bit different here, I need to improve it :/ Try it outside and it should be ok, it's a game meant to be played outside anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tankenka Posted July 22, 2016 Author Share Posted July 22, 2016 Update 0.10.2.1Many little improvements:- Monsters from the 4 neighboring routes can appear sometimes during your wild hunts- Icons of the neighboring routes will appear at the borders, if you already visited them- Catch items and npc trainers do not respawn daily anymore... they respawn EVERY 2 HOURS- You can sell items in the shop- Items grabbing ranges (normal and boosted) have been slightly increased- Some bug fixesRemember to do a backup every now and then, just in case Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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