enu

Hi everyone! Some of you might already know that a new Follower Pokemon mod is in development. While we're not yet done I'd like to give you an update on the current state. We're also looking for a few volunteers to help us. Preferably from someone who is already familiar with Reborn's story, including Post-Game content. More information near the end of this post. Scope Let's deal with the most obvious question first. Why is the mod taking so long? It should be relatively easy to update the e18 mod to e19, right? Well... yes that's technically correct. Updating the old mod is relatively straight-forward. However those of you who played with it know that it was filled with various bugs, had repetitive lines and generally just wasn't all that great in practice. I'm a perfectionist with a high quality standard so no way I'd be satisfied with that so I knew that if I took this on I'd aim much higher. I'd never attempt doing this project properly alone but fortunately I got help from a few others. So instead we're making an entirely new mod and giving it the attention it deserves. Reborn is the best pokemon game and as such we want the mod to meet the same quality. Our work actually isn't based on the old Follower Mod for Reborn. Instead it's based on Following Pokemon EX which is a newer base mod for Essentials-based games. Now to give you an idea about the scope of the project. Make sure to read to the end as the last change is the most important one: Reborn compatibility While Following Pokemon EX is great, it's based on much newer Essentials than Reborn is so of course it doesn't work out of the box. Also Reborn is using many things the mod didn't account for. It took a lot of time and effort to make it compatible with this old version and also all the Reborn-specific changes. Movement fixes I adjusted follower movement to work correctly with all kinds of movement. Jumping over ledges, between stones, ice sliding, surfing, rock climb and Victory Road mine carts should work well with followers. I also fixed the broken walk animation and missing water reflections NPC followers had in pre-e19 Reborn. Most of these fixes have been backported into base Reborn or will be included in the next update. Map transitions Going from one map to another also needed a ton of adjustments to work well with followers. Between simple event-based teleportation, map connections, fly, dive, rock climb, escape rope, waterfall, whiteout and all the other various ways that can take you from one map to another we had a lot of issues. Fixing one thing often broke another. More testing throughout the entire game will be necessary later on but for now it seems relatively stable. Sprites We combined several sources and adjusted the sprites when needed. We're also working on normalizing the sprites between base Reborn and the mod to avoid inconsistencies. Reborn Shinies As you likely noticed Reborn is using different shiny sprites than the main games. However only the battle sprites have been recolored so the shinies would have wrong colors when following you. So Nico and A1mon are recoloring the overworld sprites of all mons to match Reborn's shiny battle sprites. Interactions Now this is most likely the coolest change we're doing. In the main games the interaction lines were quite generic and felt repetitive after a while. It would be much cooler if the pokemon was able to react to what's going on around them. Be it weather, specific map, showing off the item they're holding, having nature-specific lines and various other conditions. We have many ideas what the mons could react to. The old mod had a few map-specific interactions but it was implemented in a way they they overrided any other interactions and the follower soon started repeating the same thing. So I implemented an entirely new subsystem where the interactions are split to groups with weighted chance to be triggered. Also the mod remembers the recently used lines and prevents their selection again for a while. This should greatly improve immersion as the follower will always have an interaction you've never seen before. We've also added several new emote animations which can be used with the new interaction lines. Call for help Now for the part where you can get involved and help us finish the mod. If you read the paragraph above about the new interaction system it might be obvious. While the new system is cool we need someone to write the actual new lines for various conditions. I set it up in a way that no coding is required. Instead we have a shared google spreadsheet where we can just go and add the lines we want. Then I have a script which will download and transform this into a format that the mod can use. UnclePops already singlehandedly doubled the total amount of lines we have but there is more to be added. In particular we'd like the follower to react to the map you're currently in. This needs someone who is already familiar with Reborn's story, preferably including Postgame. DM me on Discord if you're interested in helping us with these. I can give you access to the spreadsheet to let you add all the funny lines you can think of. Another thing is sprites. For certain mons all the existing overworld sprites are pretty much useless as followers for various reasons so preferably we'd need entirely new sprites for those. This of course needs an experienced artist so my hopes for actually finding someone willing to help with those aren't high but it doesn't hurt to ask. Let me know if you'd like to try making a new overworld sprite. Discord: enumag#2976 As for release, we don't have any ETA. We'll release the mod whenever we're satisfied with the quality. Which also depends on if we get more of you to help. ;-) That's all for today! Thanks for reading.

Hi yeah I accidentally denied that friend request and had no way to find out who it was. Discord doesn't show denied friend requests anywhere. My apologies for that. Please try again or DM me.

I think this depends a lot on what kind of changes. If it's just text alterations it's easy. If it's more complicated with different movement, animations etc. it can become a lot more difficult. Can you be more specific?

Hi everyone. We did in fact take this project on together with Nico. It's still quite a bit of work but we're making progress. And it will likely be way better than the previous mod as well. As a part of this Nico is also working on recoloring the overworld shiny sprites to Reborn's customized shinies. But considering how many mons there are he wouldn't mind some help with that. So if anyone is up for a bit of art work please hit me on Discord: enumag#2976

Pretty sure I'm dreaming.

I actually went and more or less determined what are the actual mod changes. The good news is that I actually got it up and running on e19. I can get a pokemon out, it follows me, even through map transition, stairs etc. and I can interact with it. And I refactored pokecenters to basically become a non-issue (previous version required manually changing every pokecenter). The bad news is that it's very buggy. For instance it only checks the party leader which is a complete nonsense. Leader can be an egg or fainted in which case it's not eligible to be a follower (I have my unhatched Riolu following me around lol). And I have a whole list of other things to fix and test to get it up to my quality standards. I'm still looking into it when I have some time but it's a very slow process and I'm unsure if I'll ever finish it on my own. I'm a good enough programmer to be confident that I can do it, it's just very time consuming so I keep questioning if it's worth it to attempt it on my own. Perhaps if I had someone helping me? If someone wants to try and help me with this you can DM me here or on Discord.

I was considering looking into it but the main problem is that the download isn't really just the mod but rather the entire game and even other mods such as the SWM pack. I would need to see the actual changes this mod itself brings in order to do anything with it.

So I've been trying out Desolation lately, Currently I'm just about to face Aderyn and would like to provide some feedback. First big thanks to the team for making this game! I can see it's quite well done and has a lot of content to explore! Characters So far I find the characters well written with distinct memorable personalities. Can't say I'm too fond of some of them like Connor but he is meant to be like that. I'm curious to find out if he'll be more respectful later in the game. Story Can't say much about the story yet since I'm at the very start of the game but I have a feeling it will be good. Almost as good as Reborn and very likely better Reju for my personal taste. Audio Great tracks so far just as in Reborn. Loving it! Exploration Quite a bit of side content to do which is nice but I have to give my first bit of critique here. The missions for Rangers are very annoying by the fact that you can only have one active at a time. Yet there are 2 missions in Vejyr itself and a third just on the other side of it. It makes sense to not be able to take all the missions at once but having to run to the same place and back several times isn't fun. Pokemon availability Seems good so far. No super powerful mons to be found in early game. Magby and Elekid seem to be very early but that doesn't matter much since their evolutions will likely be held back to a more appropriate point in the game. Lycanroc is maybe too powerful though. Very strong on it's own and effective against first two gyms as well. One thing that doesn't make sense though is how is Scarlett getting her mons that are nowhere to be found? Progression and difficulty Good up to Connor but there I had to grind quite a few levels with no more content to do. First bad spot was Vejyr where I had to run back to Ava after every single trainer since I had weaker mons with me which I wanted to level up and the PC with my two most powerful mons was way too far. I think it was mainly the field effect making this area a struggle. Up until then it was all grass which provides healing every turn and being quite helpful with buffing some moves. On the other hand the field effect in Vejyr gives no healing, provides the wild mons protection from water types and even actively hurts my mons when combusted. The field and lack of PC made it quite a struggle. Afterwards everything was fine. Had to run back from weeping hill two times to heal which was a long way. Now though I'm about to face Aderyn and I'm hopelessly underleveled. Even after doing every piece of side content I could find my mons have average level of 28. I have 2 above 30 but a few which I need for Aderyn only around 25 so 28 is average. With level cap of 35 I assume I'll need a team roughly around lvl 33 to stand a chance. That's... a really long grind. In my opinion the repeatable trainer shouldn't be necessary this early in the game. Having to grind five levels even after doing all side content feels quite bad tbh. And I wasn't running from wild battles either except weeping hill unowns as there was no healing nearby.

Lol I somehow thought that Cass and Caz are the same person. Sorry for my mistake. :-D Thank you very much for the answers! ^^

Hi, I like Reborn a lot and played Reju too although it's not as great as Reborn in my personal opinion. I'm thinking about giving Desolation a try but I can't find the basic information of how far the game actually is in terms of development. Current release 5.1 has 7 gyms... out of how many? Is it planned as a standard 8 gyms game or will there be more? Similarly the episode number 5.1 - is it known how many episodes is the game supposed to have in the end? Ofc I know that even if a planned number is known, it may change as the development goes, I fully respect that. Next what is the current level cap in the game? Basically I just wanna know how much of the planned full game is already implemented. If I should expect a 30% done experience or 80% done experience. Also is Gen 8 planned to be added later? It doesn't matter to me if it isn't planned or if the devs have not decided yet, I think 7 gens is already plenty and don't care much about gen 8. I'm just curious. The last update seems to be nearly year and a half old. Considering Cass's involvement in Reborn development that's ofc perfectly understandable. I'm guessing the development of Desolation will resume after Reborn is finished? Thanks!

It's sad that these assets won't appear in the game... I mean they never got into the 'Pokemon Reborn Assets Storage Warehousetm'.

I heard that Commander got banned so most likely there won't be any more updates here.

My little contribution was making the linewrap issues consistent. You see RMXP somehow managed to make it so that most of them only appeared in the real game but not when using the debug mode. Somehow in the compiled game there was an extra space at the end of the string so the length was different. Why? I never found that out but by adding a trim function to a particular place in the code, half of the errors were instantly fixed and the other half appeared consistently in both normal and debug code making it much easier for someone more familiar with RMXP to come and finish it. :-)

Hello. I'm the patron you mentioned. I'm soooo happy that someone finally managed to find the true cause. Thank you! Okay, bye.

Umm... would it be possible to get an 18.2.1 / 18.3 update with this and maybe the difficulty levels? The AI update kinda made me want to replay reborn again but I really like doubles so I kinda don't wanna play it without this.

I just noticed that Reju v12 is a thing now so I want to play it. Can someone please give me brief recap of what happened in v11 and where am I supposed to go to start v12 story? I totally forgot everything. Thanks!

I don't mean to judge you, by all means play what you like. But since you're new here I think I should tell you what Reborn is about. Yes, Reborn is a hard game. However a part of the difficulty is that powerful pokemons, items and moves are not available until late in the game. Your team has 2 Pseudo-legendaries, a Volcarona and other powerful mons. With these the game won't be as hard as you expect. If you get a well-bred versions of these mons from a trader then there is no longer much of a point in playing a difficult game. These mons are only available late in the game for a good reason and the game is balanced around them not being available sooner. Reborn is about you struggling to beat all the challenges presented to you with what you can discover in the game. In the beginning you will never see a wild mon which is really powerful. This will make you think which mons could be decent for that part of the game and you will have a lot of fun with underappreciated pokemon that you would never even think of using normally (*cough* Kricketune *cough* Meowstic *cough*). Also it will make you search every nook and cranny because you never know where something good might be hidden. Many mons and items are hidden and it's exciting to discover something and think how you can use it effectively. If you have a powerful team from the beginning then you don't need to do this and therefore cut a lot of the excitement out from the game. Another part of the game is the fact that some enemies have very good coverage of their weaknesses thanks to clever combinations of their teams and also field effects (which you can turn against them). So even a good team won't be enough. Unless you have OP mons (that you would not get normally) you are almost certain to need a rotation of more than 6 pokemon to beat this game (I usually use around 10). And sometimes you will scrap an old mon and replace it with something new you just found. My recommendation: - If you want to play a game with your "dream team", play some different game. - If you want to play a difficult game, play Reborn or Rejuvenation (without trading). Still Reborn is not too difficult so in case you want a real challenge you can restrain yourself with additional rules. Personally I play Reborn with these restrictions which makes the game feel just right for me: - Always use Battle Style "Set" (otherwise I feel I have an unfair advantage) - Never use healing items like potions during battle.

I can't remember what difficulty setting is my current savefile on. I think I have used the highest at the begining but I'm not sure if I have lowered it later or not. How can I find out? Also how can I change the difficulty if needed?

More megastones in V11? Does this mean that mega ring is available now? If so, where?

Exactly what I needed! Thank you very much, you certainly revived some of my memories of the previous events. I'm going to play E11 now!

I just noticed ep 11 is out now so I'd like to continue the game from when I ended. However I can't really remember what happened in the last couple of episodes very well. Can someone give me a brief recap of the story of episodes 8 through 10 or so? (Don't spoil 11 pls.) Thanks! Also I'm somewhere in this big city called Grand Dream I think? Anyway there are a lot of districts and I can't find a way out. Let alone to whereever the heck is this Route 9 where I'm apparently supposed to go before loading E11 for the first time. I'm just completely lost. Send help. :-D

That only means those better mons should be pushed back too and some of the underrated ones pushed forward. But you can never have every pokemon in an ideal place. I'm simply saying that I'm quite satisfied where these particular mons are. Especially considering that if you really want them earlier, you can just trade.

Interesting topic. I can agree with some but not all of them. Mons: Ralts, Elekid, Magby, Magnemite - All of these are very powerful and very popular. Because of that I'm glad that they are pushed back to where they are at the moment. Gives more space to less popular mons. Ralts in particular should never be available before Samson. Glaceon - Yeah, this one I can definitely agree with. Glaceon is not by any means the strongest Eeveelution anyway. Considering that Reborn didn't change any evolution methods (as far as I know) I think moving the ice rock to the cave near Shade's Gym is the way to go. Oshawott / Litten - Yeah this makes sense. Rogenrolla - If it is in 7th street it means it's still available before Agate, right? If that's so then it was only pushed back by 2-3 gyms so it's fine. Sandile - Yep, Sandile in Tanzan is too early. I'd push it to like Route 2? I think the environment fits there. TMs: Frost Breath - Agreed! Nature Power - Agreed! Sludge Bomb - The suggested place is available right after Adrienn, right? That's way too early in my opinion. Shadow Ball - Maybe? I'm not completely sure how useful Shadow Ball is.

@seki108Thanks for the Ciel image!