Pokemon Reborn Hardcore [Mod][Discontinued]

[Dreamy]

And a happy new year to you too! nice to hear progress is going decently.

speaking of bugs, maybe one day my friend will make a forum account and post tales of some of the ones he experienced. I wouldn't worry about them too much though, tech seems to develop mysterious issues and break down around him. things seemed to work ok for me though, as I often had to get him past these problems with a save file transfer where I would play past the part that was broken. (notable ones I remember were the whole blake event in ametrine bugging out and skipping a big section, a double battle in the water treatment plant crashing, and a whole section of the railnet just being... gone.)

[Commander]

On 1/1/2017 at 5:40 AM, DreamblitzX said:

And a happy new year to you too! nice to hear progress is going decently.

speaking of bugs, maybe one day my friend will make a forum account and post tales of some of the ones he experienced. I wouldn't worry about them too much though, tech seems to develop mysterious issues and break down around him. things seemed to work ok for me though, as I often had to get him past these problems with a save file transfer where I would play past the part that was broken. (notable ones I remember were the whole blake event in ametrine bugging out and skipping a big section, a double battle in the water treatment plant crashing, and a whole section of the railnet just being... gone.)

 

That is uhh...more of RPGmaker functioning on his computer than anything on my side. Though...holding X does indeed text skip, the double battle in the WTC is bugged because Commander is an idiot and missed one of like 10 trainers that changed names, and for some reason talking to the Snubbull at the start of the game (instead of the girl) causes a freeze. As for the rail net, the new one seems to be missing the warp tiles. I'm currently playing through the game trying to spot these errors that popped up and fixed a couple but PLEASE REPORT ANY GAME BREAKING ONES HERE! I basically mean the game is impossible to play because of a glitch, error, etc.

 

I also haven't forgotten about the create a team contest, but hell has hung over around my place and just when I got that sorted out (well almost sorted out) I got a cold. I'll try to get those critiqued and announced before the 14th of January. I have a general idea who placed where, but I need to relook at it just to make a final decision. I'm really glad I got as many participants as I did and best of luck to everyone.

 

Now regarding the alpha testing, I've been thinking about it and I'm definitely going to need one more alpha tester so I'll post the info in the OP at a later date. I'll accept up to two people, but you are required to be familiar with RPGmaker and more specifically, debugging as well as spend...5 hours a week on testing. Mostly what I need someone to pretty much run through the game however they like, report any problems/give feedback as well as test a few of those features. If you're interested, just shoot me a PM, although, it'll probably be a month before I ask you to do anything since well...I got alpha 1 covered at this point.

 

I do have some bad news, I think insanity mode is getting dropped. I got an error trying to make money a really low amount as well as it just not functioning at all. While I could do the 10% level increase, it's just so small amount it's just not worth it. So instead, I'll give you guys a couple options (I will take suggestions, but nothing to force players to do something such a monorun script, forced set...I will make the game start on set if you want that though, nuzlocke scripts, etc). It's only going to be one thing though so...pick your poison:

 

-Randomized Wild Pokemon Only (aka like in CoM E15)

-Pokemon Reborn Abridged Version

-Create-a-trainer thread

-Super Bosses

 

I'm going to wait a little bit to make a straw poll (since polls are broken on this thread T_T), but Create-a-trainer is a two week session thread in each new episode release that I'll add new trainers to HCHQ to rebattle. Unlike the trainers in the Grand Hall, they are episode based so they'll stay until you defeat the gym leader and a new batch will come in. It's similar to the contest I made, except a few more restrictions based on the episode you're in (2-5 are 4 mons, 6-12 are 5, and 16 is 6). Trust me, early episodes are a lot more fun to create teams for than later ones.

 

Super Bosses is an interesting category as we'll only be seeing one in this episode adding one more per episode until the final release. There are 4 (possibly a fifth if I sprite the overworld for that one) all of which break some type of rule in Pokemon (such as breaking the cap, disabling items, etc). Won't say much more in regards to this, but if this gets chose, I'll add in more unique ones. And yes, they would give out a prize for beating them.

[Commander]

I'm just going to make this a separate update because well it's kind of important. I felt a bit better today so I reviewed all of the apps and sent out feedback to quite a number of the participants. I did say the deadline was the 1st of January (though technically the deadline was supposed to be mid-December). I gotta get to bed...because I'm sick, but if I didn't send you a PM yet, I should within the next couple of days. I'll post the results here after I hear from all of our winners. I'm ecstatic that some really cool teams were submitted for this.

 

I do have another announcement. While it may seem weird, I'm going to release Hardcore CoM into 4 parts. The first part which is from the start up until Kiki should be ready for a release within a week. The second release will go up until Samson, the third up to Adrienn, and the final one is basically for CoM alone. Now you're probably asking: why on earth does the CoM need a separate release? The long story short is that while it's done, there's a huge content release I want to add to it. The reason I want to break it up into sections is so that early goers can run through the game and report broken stuff to help smooth it out for the next release over for people who want to wait until it's all done.

[enu]

> Currently: How was I able to win these battles again?

 

You obviously cheated! :-) ...Maybe the AI is smarter in E16?

 

Looking forward to the CoM release! :-) Just a question, considering how quickly E17 is progressing how much work it means for you to make the CoM update when it's out? Is it the same amount of work all over again as the E15 -> E16 update you're working on now? (I really hope that's not the case.)

Edited January 8, 2017 by baldr

[Commander]

@baldr It's not that updating the game takes a long time. That took about 3 days (mostly because I was permanently fixing a problem so that I wouldn't have to fix it again later down the line). It's actually making and testing to make sure all of this stuff works that sucks up a ton of time (CoM has a BIG update coming to it). After that, I can more or less copy and paste them over which take 10 minutes a piece. As for alpha testing, I've kind of tested over a bunch of stuff so everything should be fine (or at least function and not game crashing or glitching). I still need to get through Episode VI in testing but not very much was added in that segment.

 

I'm going to get to work on VII-XII now which after alpha testing, will be the mid release version. I was going to break it up more, but then I remembered the major game breaking glitch with the Tauros that if even a single curious person tried playing with, they'd screw up their game (well trainer card) which cannot be fixed. (Even though it is hilarious seeing Fern running and jumping all across route 1). To do that though, I'm making the sprites for the party members available at the time. I'm only going to get the tauros sprites done and save the rest for when I work on CoM (because it'd take a month to sprite all of them if not 2 alone).

 

Here's one I finished today since well...I can't post too many picture

 

[Commander]

So I know I haven't been updating the status for a while, but I reached Episode 10 content which is Radomus. Though digging around the forums, I noticed a rather...interesting problem. A lot of people have been complaining about the new weather system so...do you want me to bring back the old one/have it as an option?

 

Yes, this will cause the long delay in Obsidia (though I could turn it into a parallel process...I'll think of something here) still but...it'd basically just work like the old one. Tbh, it wouldn't add that much work since I have to edit the weather system anyways for CoM (though this one would be a much bigger edit). And you have time to answer as it looks like this episode might take a while to get done. A certain Purple haired man has cause a slight...technical difficulty.

[Commander]

I know I made a post earlier but I decided to update Reborn Hardcore to fix some errors (though I haven't tested everything, it should at least function properly. I just want to give you a rundown on why I kept the other one still up.

 

Download

 

-Fixed the WTC fight crash

-Fixed the weird map underground thing (no idea what's going on there since it now shows the mucky water, but at least you get to the right location)

-Added rematch trainer fights after Florinia and before Corey

-I may or may not have forgotten to re-add a certain lovable guy in Episode XIV's areas

-The save file system now runs on the Reborn Hardcore Folder (so you may have to transfer your save files over to the new folder)

-The level limiter has been added

-(The other features exist in the data, but have not been properly implemented yet)

 

So yeah, I kind of had an issue trying to update the game so...ya'll get a small chunk of what I've been working on recently. A very small chunk, but still a chunk. I also have a message to dataminers just as a warning. While I kept a lot of the data for the CoM version, there are sections missing so playing around with it might screw your save file up hard. I'd advise waiting for the CoM mid-release coming soon(ish) which will have all the data you'd need to play around with it.

 

Edit: GDI, just give me an hour and I should have the right DL link up.

Edit 2: Okay, download is fixed.

[Commander]

So as most people could probably see, Hardcore is done event wise and now I get to alpha test this bloody demon. Quite literally it decides to make Obsidia Ward lag to hell on me when I haven't even touched it (and it generally worked fine during the first testing session). I'll try to reduce a bit of lag regarding a few city areas, but it's possible that even removing 50 events wouldn't make a difference. It sucks, but there are limits to what I can do. I'll at least make it to where lag is bearable even if it mean removing stuff like lights at night.

 

I still have a few things left but Alpha testing will be going up soon (you can blame Mr. Bull for why it isn't up now). Once the game reaches a playable state, the game will be open beta. Which will go from the start of the game all the way up until Luna.

[Commander]

Goddamn I need more people to post in this thread so I'm not quadruple posting

 

Okay this will be the last update before the mid-release. So I know I've been taking a long time to make this version of CoM, but there's actually a lot of reasons behind why there was a delay. One of which was that I was away on vacation for 3 days and another is that I burnt myself out working 8-12 hours a day on this so I had to take a break which then Winter Break was over and I've slowly been chipping away at this (not as fast as I wanted). Let me just get into what happened over the 4 months (October, November, December, January) and why this game hasn't been released as I said it would in January:

 

1. Hardcore was rebuilt from the ground up

 

Basically, I took everything I did and pretty much more or less completely redid it. The reason I did this is because of the mess of transferring the data into a new version of Reborn. I did not originally plan for Hardcore to be such a big thing with custom scripts and now even custom graphics and fights so...I had to spend a lot of time making it more friendly to transfer. So I had to move around switches and variables around. This took about two weeks to fix so we won't ever have to worry about this issue popping up again.

 

2. The Party System

 

Oh boy this thing. It took a long time to pretty much get all of the details out in this one as I wanted to pretty much let you guys play with the idea of: what if? While they aren't exactly always perfectly, all of the party members use the same stats as when you faced them (for better or worse) though I did make one change on a Pokemon for being just way too OP. There is a lot that can still be done with this, but I would recommend using these things on a second playthrough as it functions very differently than just using the protagonist. It's also a test to see how skilled you guys are at finding stuff (it's not dratini level difficulty, but I put some very hard to find stuff in the game). The longest part of this was pretty much working all the kinks out of it.

 

I do want people to know that this is side content and not the main focus so if something irks you a bit on how Pokemon are obtained, I couldn't just have you find them all. That would be over 100 Pokemon to go out and look for. If someone wants to do more with it, they are free to use it but the characters themselves are strictly for Reborn purposes only. There are a lot of scripts that can be modified as I did create this to be pretty user friendly (though my comments are rather...lackluster). I even made sure to do little things to make it convenient such as the ability to heal everyone at a machine (but not light shards). I have a few surprises, but you'll have to wait and see for those.

 

3. HCHQ and the Custom Scenes

 

I don't want to make people get hyped for something only to be disappointed later. One thing about HCHQ is the fact that is entirely optional. Originally, it was merely going to be a place where you could rebattle certain characters (ironically the character is was meant for isn't even fightable there). Most characters were going to have one or two sets of dialogue for the entire game. That changed. I will summarize it by saying that one certain event has over 20 tabs. As the story progresses, you'll notice the characters move around and say different things. In fact, the one thing I hate the most is when character just stand still and only speak to the player (usually through a meme or reference).

 

The goal with it isn't to make super stellar dialogue (trust me, my focus with Hardcore will always be gameplay), but just to make a group of what should be consider generic, unimportant NPCs to the point if I say there name, you'll be able to say a couple things about them. There is no reward for talking to them and their isn't a prize for doing certain things, but dialogue does alter by doing a few things. You will also be able to battle certain characters, but only at certain points during the story. While it is limited at the start, fights will open up in E16 and future episodes. If people really like the HCHQ, I'll spend more time developing and smoothing things out. (I'm still getting used to RPGmaker's weird design).

 

4. Mechanic Changes and Fixes

 

This area doesn't take that time to do thanks to @sardines for all the help he's been. Thanks to his work the Level Limiter is nearly flawless with the only flaw being with the exp gains right before you hit a cap (which it is possible you can go over the cap in a rare situation). I haven't been relying on him to do all of my work as hard as that is to believe as I've been working on fixing a few of my custom scripts as well as fixing some critical AI problems. I'll need to test my numbers to see if I'll need to lower them, but I found an interesting error in the AI on AoE damage. Opponents should now pick moves skewed more towards damage the opponents rather than if it'll hurt its partner as long as it is Not Very Effective.

 

 

I've gotten skilled enough at coding to the point I feel comfortable making small changes to the script if it is vital for a Hard-mode of Reborn to work. I won't be making too many changes to the normal Reborn code as it's kind of a waste of my time (I almost was going to skip battle quality checking due to Gen VII around the corner). Thankfully most of the hard work is over with scripting changes and fixes, but I can't promises my brain won't want to do something else before we get to the end.

 

5. The Alternate Gym Battles/New Battles and Quality Testing

 

Ah yes, this thing. I decided to do this merely because some gym leaders had it and a lot of people like the fact you could choose between Radomus in Singles or Doubles format. I had a lot of these done before E16 came so this area was pretty quick to do in the December-January timeframe. In fact, everyone up until Luna is pretty much ready to go testing wise. In the latter half of the game though, I'll need to do some testing to fix Ciel and Adrienn is getting a revamp due to fixing a few mechanics. And let me tell you, there were a lot of battles that needed to be created as well as adding all of those Pokemon in episode 1, adding the rematch trainers pre-Corey, and the entire altered Path for CoM plus even more.

 

6. New Graphics

 

If you've seen me complain, you probably know that I don't like spriting...with a passion. I would rather have someone else do them so that I can keep adding more content and doing other cool stuff, but ultimately it does come down to me so I'll do them if I must. Since I'm not very good with graphics, this actually sucks up a lot of my time. Most of the ones I need are super easy to create as a single one can be done in 30 minutes, but when you have what feels like 40, yeah, that add up a lot of time. Right now, I have the minimal amount of sprites required for the mid-release to be functional. While I would love to have them all done by the final release of E16, I gotta keep moving forward and getting this mod done. If you want to help me here, please shoot me a PM.

 

7. CoM Updating

 

Ho boy this one. While I haven't touched the CoM gauntlet lately, it's coming. I just came up with an idea for the altered path which is going to take some work as I do need a set of sprites (nothing major but it'll look nice). Altered path was originally going to merely be the same as CoM but just swap a few leaders out, but I had an interesting idea (don't worry it won't add too much to time to develop, but it'll make sense once I release it). E15's CoM will still stay, but it'll be Classic Mode. It's also a reason why the CoM gauntlet will be on a separate release.

 

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Gen VII stuff:

 

I'm going to make this a very small statement: I may revert status effects and Gale Wings back to how they were in Gen VI. Sorry if that turns you away, but I have reasons behind it as it regards how my focus is for the single player experience rather than consistency. As for Z-moves...right now it's going to be a no, but I might push it to a maybe depending on how much it affects difficulty and how it feels. (I can always prevent the player from using it...just like the Mega Ring).

 

There are many factors behind this and one of the bigger ones is added development time. That is a big reason why I'm hesitant to include Z-moves as then I'd have to have every opponent use them (which I already hate the fact I kind of have to do it for Megas). I do want Hardcore to have the same general feeling that is has right now as it has a pretty good blend in difficulty. Redoing fights and adjusting for the new system takes time (I spend the most time on fights) so redoing every fight with Z-moves will add more time and likely lead to me cutting stuff until E18 (likely the party system and definitely the CoM gauntlet).

 

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Can I use Reborn Hardcore/part of its code to...[insert mod name here]?

 

One thing I like to do with Hardcore is experiment. I can't help it as my curiosity just intrigues me. I do hope that a few things I do in CoM E16 start being seen in other fan-games. There's the level limiter instead of the disobedience cap, No-item clause, the CoM gauntlet concept (aka pseudo gym leader castle), gym leaders running multiple teams, multiple characters in a party, and a couple other fun surprises. All of my coding (it is labeled) is free use under Reborn usage, but feel free to use the frameworks for any other fan-game if someone wants to mod those (or they want to include it themselves). You can't obviously use Reborn sprites outside of Reborn since technically they are...not mine.

 

Now for the PBSfile. I know Reborn made theirs public, but I'm not going to right away. While it won't be public, I am okay with using Reborn Hardcore for modding purposes other than taking my trainer files and using that to make a Hard-mode version of Reborn. The PBS file is missing a huge chunk of data right now so giving it out now would be counterproductive. This also will be added in the FAQ.

[LordWallace]

Finally getting around to trying this out since the CoM features seem extremely fun. For now I'll be playing on the E15 version specifically for those features but from what I can tell from the above update it seems like E16's version will have quite a lot of new things. 

 

I guess my general question is, will I miss out on a substantial amount of new stuff/changes E16 CoM will have by progressing in E15 CoM? If so I would probably rather wait a little longer than invest my time now. The whole thing about rebuilding it "from the ground up" is I guess where my concern came from, even if you're just retracing a lot of your steps I imagine you've still taken advantage of that to optimize/fix/change some things along the way in addition to what you've laid out in the rest of the post (or not I really wouldn't know). Either that or I could just be fundamentally misunderstanding how the CoM stuff works. Even so I'll probably just get impatient and start E15 CoM anyway, I was simply wondering.

[Dreamy]

Still greatly looking forward to E16 CoM for my second Reborn playthrough, though I may not have a whole load of time with starting Uni soon... I guess I'll just chip away at it over time. probably a good strategy for getting through brick walls XD.

 

Just keep up the awesome work, Quality > Speed.

[Commander]

15 hours ago, LordWallace said:

I guess my general question is, will I miss out on a substantial amount of new stuff/changes E16 CoM will have by progressing in E15 CoM? If so I would probably rather wait a little longer than invest my time now. The whole thing about rebuilding it "from the ground up" is I guess where my concern came from, even if you're just retracing a lot of your steps I imagine you've still taken advantage of that to optimize/fix/change some things along the way in addition to what you've laid out in the rest of the post (or not I really wouldn't know). Either that or I could just be fundamentally misunderstanding how the CoM stuff works. Even so I'll probably just get impatient and start E15 CoM anyway, I was simply wondering.

 

CoM E15 was moreso me delivering a lot of stuff early due to the very, very long delay for Reborn E16 to be released. I suggest waiting for CoM E16 since well...everything from that version (minus Insanity mode) will be added back in E16. The one thing that will happen (unlike future releases) is that the feature you have will have been disabled though there will be an NPC in the final version. In other words, you may want to play the version below and just continue in E16.1 (which does have some errors...but I'll explain in a minute).

 

14 hours ago, DreamblitzX said:

Still greatly looking forward to E16 CoM for my second Reborn playthrough, though I may not have a whole load of time with starting Uni soon... I guess I'll just chip away at it over time. probably a good strategy for getting through brick walls XD.

 

Just keep up the awesome work, Quality > Speed.

 

While I agree here, I do have some limits of what I can do without taking forever. I know it is common sense, but Reborn is a really, really long game and while episodes feel short, a full journey really adds up when doing a mod of this scale. I might have gone a little too deep this time, but thankfully I have E18 and E19 to really polish all of this off.

 

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Remember how I said that would be the last update before uploading the mid-release: it turns out I did a really, really good job with a lot of the events past episode 1 so I was able to rush on through most of the stuff I added for proper testing (only thing I didn't do is check for spelling and grammar errors which is set to be done for a full release version). So here you go:

 

CoM E16 Mid-Release

Mediafire

Mega

(I'm not making a log as most stuff is in the readme, mentioned in the op, and in the post above...sorry).

 

 

I said it before, but basically, this is just kind of a showcase of what I've done so far and kind of a beta. It goes up until Luna as I have not done eventing past her gym battle. The thing with this though isn't so much it being perfect and polished but more of "how interested are you in the stuff that was added into the mod?" While you don't have to follow it, here's a basic questionnaire that'll help me so much when creating the full release:

 

-The party system was created to serve as an optional form of a challenge run. Did you use the party system? If so, how did you enjoy it?

-If you used the Party System, do you prefer using them over the protagonist?

-Do you prefer the new forced Level Limiter over Reborn's disobedience system? Why?

-Did you use the Item Ban? If so, did it, in your opinion, increase or decrease the difficulty of the game? Also if yes, did you prefer this over using items in battle?

-Alternate battles serve as a different take on a leader. Did you enjoy this option or does it take too much away from the story/feeling?

-Many scenes were added into the game, almost all of which are completely optional. Did you enjoy finding these scenes or do you feel they do not add much to the mod?

-Along with the scenes, secret battles can be found throughout the mod. Were you able to find any? If so, how did you enjoy them?

-A cast of new characters was needed to run and implement HCHQ. Did you enjoy these new characters? Are you anticipating any new characters for the full release?

-Pokemon have been moved around including completely changing the mystery egg rewards. Did you like any of the changes or would you have rather their availability be the same as Reborn's?

-Is there anything you'd like to see added into Hardcore in the future? 

-Who is superior: Ame or Jim?

 

The thing about feedback is that it shows interest. One example I can give is that HCHQ is unavailable for a long time after Luna. If people showed interest in that, I could still include little events and scenes during the Agate Blockout, but if people aren't too interested, I'd leave those out and focus on something else such as leader difficulty or graphics.

[enu]

Damn this sounds awesome. I'm really sorry I can't give you my feedback because uh I just don't have time to play this at the moment. Once I do I'm sure I'll spend over 100 hours on it which is more than I can afford at the moment. I had to prioritize some stuff in my life because I couldn't get some things done for over a year. I really have to sort out those priorities first. This is just to let you know that I'm still reading this thread and really appriciate all you're doing. Reborn is my favorite game and this will be like playing for the first time again. Thank you!

[Paperblade]

I haven't had a chance to play much of the new CoM due to life stuff, but the level limiter is a huge improvement over the system Reborn uses. Especially in hardcore where every random trainer early has 3 mons at 7+, making it easy for your starter to hit 20+ just doing that

 

To that end, I'm finding the removal of that super early exp share annoying--playing switching games to level up my filler mons resulting in running to a center every other fight is not compelling. I got the impression we still get it after Julia or something, but I'd rather just have the share asap

Edited January 31, 2017 by Paperblade

[Lord Chespin]

2 hours ago, Paperblade said:

I haven't had a chance to play much of the new CoM due to life stuff, but the level limiter is a huge improvement over the system Reborn uses. Especially in hardcore where every random trainer early has 3 mons at 7+, making it easy for your starter to hit 20+ just doing that

 

To that end, I'm finding the removal of that super early exp share annoying--playing switching games to level up my filler mons resulting in running to a center every other fight is not compelling. I got the impression we still get it after Julia or something, but I'd rather just have the share asap

 

Actually, if you talk to Techie Johnathan and start the Hardcore-exclusive subplot, he'll mention that the EXP Share got stolen by a "screaming panda". Said "panda" is a Spinda with hyper voice that you can catch in the area where you find Pansear, and it has the EXP Share as a held item. It's actually a pretty good early-game crutch character, and it helps with the Doubles fight against Julia. Also, even though it's relatively deep into the Peridot Ward, there's a path you can take through the ward to the Spinda so that the only guy you have to fight is the Street Rat under the bridge.

[LordWallace]

Just finished the CoM midrelease and just went ahead and finished the run on the lightly modded E16. 

 

I used Item Ban and honestly I loved the challenge. For the most part it feels fair and adds value to Pokemon that are self sufficient in some way (Leech Seed, Recovery, etc.) that would otherwise be outclassed by just spamming healing items. At the late stages of the game though there are some oversights with some trainers breaking the ban (El still uses Full Heals on Arceus and both Arclight and Adrienn used their usual items against me). Far prefer this challenge run over using items normally or Insanity mode which I found to be insanely unbalanced and far less enjoyable before quitting that (which to be fair you did warn was untested).

 

I also did every available alternate gym battle and thought those were great too (as well as terrifying at times). I also fell in love with some of the other changes to a couple of the major battles, such as making Solaris on Pyrous Mountain an actual 6v6 battle rather than the usual scrambling to find a way to cheese the Garchomp. To me those were the main strengths of this mod, tbh I didn't find myself too invested in the extra events and characters (though I think I did find one of the secret battles with the "Meteor Grunt" and his level 70+ Sand team that I struggled through with my 65 hard capped team), and while I didn't use the Party system too much I do think it's a fun feature. 

 

Speaking of the hard cap, it's almost an essential feature for this mod given how much easier it is to overlevel your mons due to the roster changes and higher opponent levels in general, and it takes significant pressure off of training new Pokemon since you can just grind up to the level cap with little worry. Considering how much this mod encourages constant party changes to adapt to the pace and difficulty of the game (particularly the gyms), both the early EXP share and the hard level cap are much appreciated. The trade off for these conveniences is that you can't, for example, grind up past the cap to get certain moves/evos early then common candy back down like in the base game, adding to the difficulty of some major battles and sections.

 

As for what I'd like to be added to Hardcore, a feature/challenge mode that limits money gain without the insane level pace of Insanity mode would be nice, I actually made an entire thread pointing out how much more money E16 throws at you compared to previous versions. I'd love for Hardcore to bring back the days where Reborn was a constant struggle to scrape for resources, it felt more fun and rewarding that way rather than being able to buy 99 Ultra Potions after a single Team Meteor sequence.

If it could be done it would also be fun to have Mystery Egg challenge runs where you're given a random Mystery Egg mon as a Starter instead of the usual starters, similar to Rejuvenation's jackpot starter system. That's all the feedback I have for now.

 

 

[MetrololAce]

I've been following this for quite a while and am really excited to see its progress!

 

Is there a quick answer to how to use the new Party system? I started playing and am loving the difficulty and everything else but I don't see a way to initiate it or how it works. Did I miss something? 

 

I see now, I think I must of misunderstood. I expected fern to actually join the party (as an example) butt that's not how it works. Is there a correlation directly to the party members? I understand it has something to do with battling with other characters in the game, but I was expecting to get a full grass type user after getting fern's completion, etc. Am I wrong to think that? 

Edited February 4, 2017 by MetrololAce

[Paperblade]

Alright, finally got some time to actually play.

 

First thing I've noticed is that the double battle AI doesn't seem to account for Lightningrod, meaning that Goldeen totally trivializes Julia's alternate fight (I think mine had max special attack stages by the end of it, and I only lost one pokemon, which easily could have been 0 had I actually bothered to try after realizing how badly the AI was screwing itself). Her starting Electrike must've used Spark 3 times before switching to Ice Fang, and by then I had KO'd half her team. Electrode similarly fell over because the only move it tried to use was Charge Beam

[Commander]

@LordWallace I really do appreciate the feedback and I have gotten some feedback from showdown/discord, but a hard physical message is much more useful to me (as it can be weeks to a month before I work or can touch something to the point stuff like that gets lost or forgotten). I won't say much else other than your comment about the money. I do throw some stuff in there to counter the money inflation (still a problem no matter what) but what I might be able to do is take the money formula and multiply is by half to cut all the money earned in half. That should temporarily solve the money gripe for the time being but even in E15 with no item I had about 200,000 Poke by Serra. So while I can't make the players feel like hobos easily, I might tinker around with how much players earn based on progress of the game.

 

@MetrololAce Think of the party members as separate characters from the real ones (where you go to find them). In neo Reborn (when that section is released) you should be able to make more sense of it though I do plan on adding something in the area we've been to compensate for the party system changes. Don't worry about it too much though as it's more of a side thing then the main focus.

 

@Paperblade That...is probably a Reborn error. Lightningrod Goldeen is a cheese tactic done through Reborn so I'm not sure if the AI has been fixed there or it is merely the Electrike. There's very little point in tinkering with minor AI problems in the long wrong as either A) I waste my time as Reborn gets it done next episode B.) Another Problem arises in the AI making derpy moves C) Even if I do get it done properly, I have to redo it every single episode. When we get into the final episode, yeah I may do a couple minor things, but when I fix AI I generally focus on if there's a major issue (especially since Gen VII pretty makes 80% of what I'm doing almost pointless...almost).

 

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So I did take a week off so that I could get a good look at what needs to be fixed and due to my schedule and things I have to get done...that might roll over into a second week. The full release should be done somewhere near the end of March (which I'll include the classic CoM run for the time being), but the Altered Path CoM option is going to take a while to set up. Anyways, here are some changes that will happen or I will look into for the full release:

 

1. Finding an editor to edit my grammar errors (while I could go back and check, having someone look over everything would help me...a tired set of eyes really isn't the most reliable thing)

2. Only the player will be able to challenge gym leaders (this is both a logic and balance fix, but...don't worry about grinding Party members as I have something centered around that).

3. Reviving the old weather system

4. Finding a way to reduce money earned (I may even use the old PBS file for trainers)

 

I also noticed that the Alternate leaders have gotten a lot more attention compared to the original CoM release which honestly I feel is a good thing since it does take me a little bit to figure out how to differentiate (except Aya who I just couldn't think of much to do with her...maybe in E17/18). I really do hope that the other half of this mod is worth the wait. 

[Paperblade]

I figured it was a Reborn issue since idk what, if anything, you've done to the AI, I was just bringing it to your attention since a trivial fight seems counter to a hard mode mod

[LordWallace]

one last question, you mentioned certain Pokémon getting moved around in Hardcore compared to the base game, would Misdreavus happen to be one of them? I'm going insane trying to get to the event where you obtain it but for the life of me I can't figure out how to make the Strength boulder appear in Byxsbion Wasteland to access the Ghost Kiki event. I even managed to get Beldum and I still cannot get Misdreavus.

So I'm just wondering if that's a Hardcore change meant to push Misdreavus back or if I just missed something.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I found out that I missed reading Kiki's tombstone and that's why the Boulder didn't appear. Disregard this comment.

Edited February 6, 2017 by LordWallace

[Hycrox]

http://prntscr.com/e5dgrr

[Commander]

So uhhh...I suppose I should update this. Right now progress is going to be a little bit slow due to me working on another project and trying to get it ready for a public announcement (which in return sucks up a lot of my free time). Once that gets rolling I should be able to get this done and wrap everything I need to up. But yes, I'm slowly working on this so don't worry as it will get done before episode 17 is up (otherwise I'd go cry in a hole).

 

News is going to be slow as hell due to my focus shifting temporarily away from Hardcore. Worse comes to worse I'll make a version releasing all the alternate fights and CoM then slowly get everything else done if the other project takes up too much time (since only Samson and Adrienn are the only ones who truly need worked on right now).

[Commander]

Okay, okay, I think it's about enough time since I've done a teaser pic so I suppose I can reveal this (even though I technically revealed it a long while back). I've just been tinkering at it every few days to try and make it look better and...while it's not impressive (still need to work on that bloody hair) here's a quick glance at a certain lovable character and location that anyone who has played full through Hardcore will recognize:

 

 

And everything up until right before Ciel (even though it's mostly me changing how the alternate fight works otherwise that's more or less done) is pretty much done. I was able to speed through these areas pretty quickly as there was only about 20 or so events and one of the huge ones (which took hours to make) was done beforehand. E15 shouldn't take long, but E16 on the other hand I still need to a large number of things as well as some miscellaneous stuff. Nothing difficult, but a lot of time consuming stuff.

[Lord Chespin]

Hey! First of all, I love the new sprite you teased. And second, what exactly were the mystery eggs changed to? I got a Swablu in mine, so I assume that all of them were changed...