Skeetendo

So I'm relatively new to pokered, but I've taken to it fairly well considering I'm not much of a coder/programmer and this forum has helped me out extremely in that regard. I've mostly done aesthetic changes to my ROM since I have more of a knowledge and background in sprite/pixel art, which is something I do as a hobby.

That being said, I've also made a bunch of other changes like adding the 48x48 unzoomed back sprites from the Spaceworld Demo (which I learned how to do from here), switched around wild Pokemon locations and starters, experimented with palettes, and a bunch of other little things. The "unzoomed back sprites" was probably the hardest thing so far, but with each new task I'm learning more about how the game works and what section it calls upon when implementing something.

My latest task included adding new pokemon to the game (which I learned how to do here) and, more specifically, adding the supposed cut betamon commonly known as GYAOON. For info on this betamon–even if it is speculated at some points–check out the articles from here.

Since I use a mix of red/blue and green front sprites, I knew that creating a back sprite for GYAOON was going to be the biggest challenge. Usually I take other sprites from the same game and use them as guides or "skeletons" in order to craft a new one, that way it keeps with the game's aesthetic and look. Here's what I came up with for GYAOON:

It's pretty good, all things considered, and uses a mix of RHYDON's and TYRANITAR's back sprite from gold/silver as "skeletons" or base structures for GYAOON (it's speculated that TYRANITAR was inspired by GYAOON). But as I started to test out the addition of GYAOON, in terms of battle, wild encounter/catching, cry, dex entry and back sprite incorporation, something became very apparent to me: That's not GYAOON or at least not that version of GYAOON.

When compared to GYAOON's front sprite, it doesn't retain and reflect that same stocky build of the early Capsule Monsters sketch (shown here) in which the front sprite is based on (the front sprite was acquired through a google image search; there are plenty of versions of this sprite out there, but I think I used this one). Instead, it looks more like GYAOON 2.0, which is fine, but isn't what I'm going for. Also, it doesn't have its mouth open! That's a main feature and trait of GYAOON's front sprite/sketch, so to some it all up, it just looks too docile and new compared to the original.

So now I have an even bigger challenge ahead of me: making a convincing pokemon back sprite from scratch. There's already a presumed Gen 1 back sprite for GYAOON which is in the original 32x32 format and this is what I used for inspiration and a guide when tackling this project. Here's what it looks like (can be found on that same website mentioned above or other places like here):

It's a classic from-behind top perspective of GYAOON, which is still in the style of the Spaceworld Demo back sprites where many of the bigger back sprites, like in red/blue and green, are shown protruding from the corner and on top of the text box. I decided to go kind of "old school" with my approach and sketched out on paper a bunch of interpretations of this sprite, but with a little more detail. After picking the best sketches, I scanned them and got to work converting them to pixel form and refining them. Here's two versions of the GYAOON back sprite I am currently working on:

I wanted to show that GYAOON had his jaws open as well as keep the same general style of the original 32x32 back sprite. In the original you notice he's got a little arm up on the right side, so I did the same with hints to one on the other side as well. I also tried to match the eyes with the front sprite. The biggest trouble so far has been the shading (both white and dark grey/green colours) and what to do about the tooth on the bottom jaw. Do I leave it out? I'm not quite happy with its placement so far because it clutters that section too much. My philosophy is that a sprite should look just as good up close as it does from far away (I do a lot of zooming in and out when I work on these lol).

So to kind of conclude, the whole point of this post is to showcase and bring this project to the community here, as well as ask for help if anyone's interested. I'm not very good at shading (as shown in the coloured pic above) so if anyone would like to help me do that or just generally wants to help work on the sprite and post their own version or just give me advice and point me in the right direction, be my guest. Any comments or criticisms are welcome.

I know this is a bit of a long written post, but I thought it would be cool to explain this project in a presentation format so that everyone would know where I'm coming from and what I'm trying to do.

Under here, I'll also post my base_stats file for GYAOON, as well as my evos_moves for him and his cry. I put him in MissingNo. slot 31 (in regards to adding him to the game) and I've read there was apparently a pre-evolution form for him, but I'm not too concerned about that now. For his type, stats and moves I basically looked at TYRANITAR, RHYDON, NIDOKING, DRAGONITE and SNORLAX for comparison. DRAGONITE for the dragon aspect; SNORLAX for the normal aspect; and TYRANITAR, RHYDON, NIDOKING for the Kaiju aspect. Essentially he's got TYRANITAR's base stat numbers with a resemblance to SNORLAX's TM/HM learnset. He's called GYAOON apparently because it's the sound of Godzilla's roar so that was my inspiration for his type/stats/moves. He's essentially a Godzilla-Capsule Monster pokemon, so I made his type Dragon/Normal. Keep in mind, I in no way claim to be a pokemon master, I'm just a guy trying to make my way in the pokeverse.

BASE_STATS:

db DEX_GYAOON ; pokedex id

    db 100, 134, 110,  61,  95
    ;   hp  atk  def  spd  spc

    db DRAGON, NORMAL ; type
    db 45 ; catch rate
    db 218 ; base exp

    INCBIN "gfx/pokemon/front/gyaoon.pic", 0, 1 ; sprite dimensions
    dw GyaoonPicFront, GyaoonPicBack

    db BITE, GROWL, NO_MOVE, NO_MOVE ; level 1 learnset
    db GROWTH_SLOW ; growth rate

    ; tm/hm learnset
    tmhm MEGA_PUNCH,   MEGA_KICK,    TOXIC,        BODY_SLAM,    TAKE_DOWN,    \
         DOUBLE_EDGE,  BUBBLEBEAM,   WATER_GUN,    ICE_BEAM,     BLIZZARD,     \
         HYPER_BEAM,   SUBMISSION,   COUNTER,      SEISMIC_TOSS, RAGE,         \
         SOLARBEAM,    DRAGON_RAGE,  THUNDERBOLT,  THUNDER,      EARTHQUAKE,   \
         FISSURE,      MIMIC,        DOUBLE_TEAM,  REFLECT,      BIDE,         \
         FIRE_BLAST,   SWIFT,        SKULL_BASH,   REST,         ROCK_SLIDE,   \
         SUBSTITUTE,   SURF,         STRENGTH
    ; end

    db BANK(GyaoonPicFront)

EVOS_MOVES:

GyaoonEvosMoves:
; Evolutions
    db 0
; Learnset
    db 30, FURY_ATTACK
    db 35, DRAGON_RAGE
    db 42, STOMP
    db 47, LEER
    db 52, HYPER_BEAM
    db 64, THRASH
    db 0

CRY:

mon_cry SFX_CRY_0F, $00, $80 ; Gyaoon

Last edited by Wild ABRA appeared! (2021-01-03 22:54:12)