Optimisations, Immersion and Frogs

 Hello hello, you might be wondering why I, Ruby, am posting this devblog? Well… someone decided to go to Japan again! The audacity of that man… I haven’t even been to Japan once! :/ oh well… Besides all that, the rest of this devblog was mostly handled by him. So, take it from here, Posty of the past!

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 Howdy folks! Hope everyone is doing well, me? Well as of this post going out I will once again be touching down in Tokyo, Japan. Loved it so much that I’ve already returned to spend even more of my life savings on silly pieces of shiny cardboard. Anyway, enough about that, today’s blog will highlight some of the work that our newest members have been producing since joining the team, but speaking about new members, we had one more join us in recent months!

For those who don’t already know… I’m pleased to welcome Twoslashes to the Desolation development team! He has joined us in the mapping and spriting department and has already hit the ground running in producing some high quality content for the game. His work I will be looking to share in a future development blog, so keep an eye out! But for now, I’m going to pass it to Mags as he walks through some of the sidequest content he has been whipping up. SPOILER ALERT, it contains frogs.

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 Hey there, I’m Mags! I joined the team recently as an Eventer. I’ve been mostly working on sidequests, which is perfect because when left to my own devices I tend to add flavor text - sidequests, in my opinion, are very elaborate flavor text. Indeed, some may argue the point of the humble sidequest is to elaborate upon the world in small ways, to make it feel more lived in and fleshed out…. And some may argue its point is to give you new Pokemon. Both can be true. Also I talk a lot so be prepared for a lot of yapping.

I’ll be going over the process of making a sidequest I’ve been working on that you’ll be able to find down in Blackview.

To start with… that new Pokemon thing. As you all probably know, Gen 9 ‘mons are getting added to EP 7. Yay! I’m quite a big fan of Arboliva, myself. Anyway, new ‘mons means new sidequests, and new sidequests means new NPCs… Now, I could’ve been normal about it. Could’ve just had some random nameless guy be like “hey can i get your help with something” and you just get a normal Pokemon out of it. But unfortunately, I was left to my devices, and now we’ve got a whole new sidequest-exclusive NPC.

Enter: Ribbert.

Ribbert is an NPC with a long and storied development history, the history being that I wanted to make a frog pun and then I portmanteau’d Robert and Ribbit together. But why Ribbert? Why… him?

He fulfills a few roles. His first role is that he acts as the main sidequest giver, of course. Interacting with him and hearing his spiel about frog Pokemon begins the quest “Hop To It!”, which is the sidequest that lets you catch Tadbulb. This is also the 2nd role he fulfills: everything about Ribbert is designed to make you go “okay, I see why this guy knows about Tadbulb”. His character is, first and foremost, an explanation as to how you could find Tadbulb in-universe.

Tadbulb, for those who don’t read Pokedex entries for fun like I do, aren’t actually found underwater or in traditionally swamp-y places. No, their dex entries say they actually just chill mid-air. Like in the sky. Specifically when there’s thunderclouds… so they’re probably high up in a rainy place like Blackview. Obviously, for optimization and gameplay reasons, SV just has them hover above the ground, but the wonders of [ sparkling effect ] locked camera perspective [ sparkling effect ] means that we can just say Tadbulb are in the sky and have it be true without having to render dozens of frog lightbulbs mid-air whenever the player looks up.

That leads to the next problem, though: if we wanna make it feel like the Tadbulb are doing what their dex entries say they do, how does the player acquire one? How many trainers DOES it take to catch a Tadbulb? The answer is two, because you’ll need help from a real FROG EXPERT. Ribbert!

Ribbert just needs your help in prepping a special maneuver to get some Tadbulb down from the sky. It’s a fairly simple fetch quest, since it’s… like, I love Tadbulb, Bellibolt is really cool, but it’s not a game breaking ‘mon, so I didn’t want actually getting it to be a real chore. So a lot of the quest’s fun just comes from the stuff Ribbert says to you unprompted.

Incidentally, ignore the lack of accents over the es. Bad habit of mine, I’ll put ‘em in the game later.

Anyway, that’s how I got to making this Blackview sidequest. I try to think in the bounds of the world of Pokemon, especially if it’s a sidequest ABOUT a ‘mon. How does that ‘mon work, and if it’s not just milling about in the local foliage, how WOULD you get it? Then I work my sidequest around that central idea. The sidequest has to explain how you got your hands on this ‘mon. Additionally, the challenge of the sidequest should probably be proportional to the reward - in a game like Pokemon, there’s really little risk, since losing usually just sends you back to the Pokemon center. But even so, you gotta think about what the player is going to get in return for spending however much time on a specific fight or objective for a quest. If it’s not equivalent or better, then chances are they’ll just abandon it by the wayside.

And of course, I love to use sidequests and flavor text to just build out the world. Even if it’s minor, the implication there’s some guy running around Aryith who just… REALLY likes frogs and is going on his own little adventures to find and catch them makes it feel like, y’know, the player isn’t the center of the universe. And it helps that mono-runs that aren’t just about Pokemon type are very common and popular in the Pokemon fan space, so an in-universe character who exclusively uses frogs felt like both a realistic thing to happen, and I felt it would be a nice nod to that type of run in Pokemon circles. 

Ribbert’s sidequest will be available as soon as you get to Blackview, so feel free to drop by and do his froggy bidding when Ep7 comes out!

Ah, by the way… I’m not a big fan of introducing a named character just for one sidequest. While I like expanding and fleshing out the world, I also like using those fleshed out elements more than once to at least keep it from feeling like there’s too much going on all at once and also tying things together a bit neater. So… This Tadbulb quest isn’t the last you’ll see of Ribbert, I’m sure.

(And here, some additional memes, as a treat…)

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Ribbert, Frogs, and even some memes, Mags really gave us the goods for this. Hope this has got you excited for the new sidequest content coming to EP7. One of the reasons behind picking up a new Eventer for the team was so we can deliver on some new sidequest content, and with my time being a bit more limited than it once was, this was an area I really want to not fall behind while I focus on the rest of the project. We have been discussing some really cool ideas and concepts for sidequests, and Mags really played a part in providing some creative direction for these.

Now let me pass it over to Wire, for a brief look into a major update coming to our shops.

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Hello, I'm super excited to join Desolation's dev team! Ironic, considering I hadn't finished Desolation when I joined - E6 is unstable on Mac, so I only got most of the way through before getting too frustrated. That's been rectified, of course!

I'll be acting as a general scripts developer, helping out with whatever is needed.
I've also got some features of my own that have been introduced - for example, from my rejuvenation modpack, Complex Shops! All shops have been changed to use this system.

This system was originally created in my modpack for Rejuvenation's Cairo, who sells things in bulk as well as for different currencies. It allows us to make any such shop interfaces, including in the future, all navigated similarly, and with far less effort on the development side.

No more long menus for buying evolution stones, Pokemon, or TMs... No more trying to remember which TMs you bought... it's all just regular shop interfaces now!

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Short and sweet, sometimes that’s the best way to go about it. You don’t know how much I have been hoping for something like this for our Credit Shops, comparing what we originally had, this is a night and day difference. No longer will you have to double check the amount of credits you have in your bag as they now appear while you’re browsing the shop. And to even show the Pocket Monsters there as well, chefs kiss.

This is just one of the many things Wire has been already working on and optimising for the game, which alongside Yumil, have been crushing it with the scripts. There will be more to come in terms of optimisations… and maybe new passwords? Got to wait to find out!

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As we proceed with development and through 2026, I’m going to be looking to drop some more EP7 story teasers as a little taster for what you can look to expect once we finally get round to being ready to release. Here, I offer you all some crumbs :) 

 There’s a lot more I would like to do/experiment with Desolation as we progress forward with development, ways we can look to expand upon and develop our story telling to allow you, the player, to feel more immersed with the story. This comes from playing through some other fangames (Rejuvenation) and giving me a ton of inspiration about how we can improve our storytelling, especially without Caz at the helm. I will continue to keep you all updated on development. Desolation’s development team has really undergone a lot of change over the last 4 months, and I’m excited to continue to share more of all the amazing work they have been producing!

And with that, I’ll see you all next time.

Posty (and Ruby...)