Skeetendo

If you're going to add things like the Gen 3 EVs/IVs systems, you should consider making room for natures and abilities in the rewrite.

There are 25 total natures (I'm not sure whether reading them from a list or having it individually check which stat to raise and which stat to lower would be more compact) which could fit within five bits, right?

And abilities, if you include the Hidden Abilities added in Gen 5, have a maximum of three to choose from, so that would be 2 bits for box data (assuming you listed its abilities in its base stats, and just had a number 1-3 in the box structure that corresponded to the three abilities) and 24 bits for base stats (there are 191 abilities in Gen 6, so I'm assuming it stops at 255 here; I guess an argument could be made to raise it to 512 as future-proofing, which would make 27 bits, but I don't know if that's excessive).

You freed up one byte in your rewrite of the box data, and it seems like natures and abilities could fit in that one byte, but if I'm wrong please correct me since I don't know assembly or the Game Boy's hardware that well.

Of course, I also understand if you think that's too great a leap to attempt, since abilities really changed how Pokémon battles felt in Gen 3 and beyond, especially Pokémon defined by their gimmicks like Slaking and Shedinja. I just think, if you're going to attempt completely revamping the data and modernizing it, going the extra mile and adding the necessary framework for natures and abilities would make it "complete." The only other major additions to the data structure that I can think of is Contest stats, and I don't think that would be a priority since they'd take up 5-6 bytes (depending on whether you also port Sheen) and you'd have to port Contests to Gen II in the first place to make any use of them (and even if someone did they could probably just match each Contest stat with a stat EV, like Speed for Cool, Defense for Beauty, etc.).

Yeah Abilties and Natures should be a must for a new structure, Modern EV/IV has a lower priority imo but should definitelly be done if possible.

How much do you think it would take to rewrite all the functions to use the new structure?

I'm not too worried about abilities right now, and natures would be something I'd consider. I think it'd be nice to just get the structure rewritten first, and then people could use it as a base and build upon it. I'm not going to code in 100+ abilities. Natures shouldn't be too hard though. (And yes physical special split is a must too).

EDIT: github https://github.com/froggestspirit/pokecrystal20XX

Last edited by FroggestSpirit (2016-09-15 16:43:23)

I mean I think Abilities and Natures are important from a gameplay standpoint, I'm pretty sure a new player playing a Gen II ROM and seeing Abilities/Natures would impress him more than a IV/EV System.

Increasing the Poke/Move data is indeed the most important part tho, I was gonna suggest items too, but considering all the teru-samas and the useless mail items, i doubt its needed.

Also I was thinking on the Wild and Trainer battle tables, do you have a plan on how and what to rewrite from them to use the new struct?

Lastly, how difficult would be to implement the new structure on G/S once its done in Crystal?

While it is all a good idea in hindsight, there are extreme considerations to make in the long run. ROM space is the most limited resource, especially when it comes to Generation II games... unless the mapper gets transformed into MBC5, which will also make it easier for pirates to sell cartridges online. Also, I don't condone using anything related to newer generations like the upcoming generation since the hack in question will be easier for Nintendo to take down using the DMCA, if they so choose. Kuroko made a wise choice in not providing those sprites since the newer games use a fresh IP.

Natures are a good idea, but are not required as they take up more space. However, it is viable to have the Physical/Special spilt with natures.

Also, taking out animations? This doesn't sound like a genuine Crystal hack at all, but I don't have to play/support the hack.

I agree on not worrying about Nintendo. If they were going to take this down, they'd take down every hack hosted on Skeetendo, and probably on other sites like Pokécommunity and PHO and romhacking.net, and probably the disassemblies as a whole, and we'd have a much bigger issue on our hands than this individual hack.

Oh, this looks promising!

You seem to be retaining the system of calculating gender and shininess based on IVs. If each of those had their own bit, female and shiny Pokémon would be more useful: no handicapped Attack stat for females, and possible perfect-IV shinies.

I agree that reserving five bits for Natures would be useful, since they're relatively simple to implement and have the immediate reward of seeing them on your status screen to give your Pokémon extra personality. EVs are an internal change, but a useful one since it saves space.

Abilities would (a) take up a whole byte, (b) really change how battles play out, like Mmmmmm said, and (c) take quite a while to implement given how diverse their effects are. So I'd understand leaving that out from the default new structure.

Here's the format of the 2-byte CaughtData:

• Time and level
> 2 bits: Time of day (1: morning, 2: day, 3: night)
> 6 bits: Level
• OT gender and location
> 1 bit: OT gender (0: male, 1: female)
> 7 bits: Location

Note that with only six bits for the level, any wild Pokémon above 64 will look incorrect (regular Crystal doesn't have any, even lowering Lugia and Ho-Oh to 60, but some fan games do). I'd suggest expanding it to seven bits, and maybe adding four or five bits for the type of Poké Ball.

Pokérus uses a whole byte for a rather complicated system allowing it to last 1–4 days. This could be replaced with 3 bits (0 = uninfected, 1–4 = days left, 5 = cured).

When in the box, each move can have 0-3 pp ups applied. The actual PP will be calculated upon withdrawing

I think pokerus can be shortened to 3 bits.

I'm almost thinking of starting the source code over from scratch, and taking a different approach which will be trying to add padding, making sure that still runs flawlessly, then slowly using the new padding data for extending Pokemon, Moves, and yes, items

https://github.com/dannye/pokered-gen-II That only has sprites for the original 151, but it's a start.

Last edited by Mateo (2016-09-18 15:48:56)

That's what I want to "expand" aiming to write a program to insert pokemon (following the instructions of Schattenjäger and Danny).

Rough guess, the extra sprite tiles are as large as 50%–100% of the static sprite. Some random samples:

There's also the bitmask and frame data for each one, but that ought to be smaller than graphic data; I doubt it adds up to more than another 50% each. So maybe removing all the animation data would make room for another 200–300 sprites or an equivalent amount of code.

You could go further and remove the functions for animating sprites at all, but that's a fixed cost, not per-Pokémon, and would be more for thoroughness than for freeing significant space.

Last edited by Rangi (2016-09-18 20:59:13)

I used a script to remove the animation data: for each Pokémon, front.2bpp.lz, anim0.asm, anim1.asm, bitmask.asm, and frames.asm have been trimmed. Sorry I can't make it a pull request, I already forked pret/pokecrystal as my own project so GitHub won't let me fork your pokecrystal20xx, but here's the pics folder. I missed a few Pokémon: Aipom, Cleffa, Delibird, Fearow, Goldeen, Hoppip, Igglybuff, Jumpluff, Lickitung, Natu, Questionmark, Seaking, Shuckle, Skiploom, Smoochum, Spearow, and Stantler. The rest should be okay.

Last edited by Rangi (2016-11-02 01:40:37)