this is your captain speaking
i wish to announce the presence of our friendly local concession stand where you can purchase snacks at your convenience
(by "snacks" i mean "minor feature updates that are so small they don't even deserve their own post")
(and by "purchase" i mean "you just kinda get this shit")
so e19's been in testing for a few months now. more on this in a later post.
obviously the main point of testing is that we fix bugs and make sure your game doesn't break, but a side bonus of testing has been that we can see testers complaining about annoying shit in-game and be like "yeah that's dumb we can fix that".
and maybe no one asks and we just do shit anyway.
here's the neat shit we have on offer.
- repels are better now
you know how we make you fucking run everywhere in this game like possessed zebra?
everyone knows that they gotta go and purchase a bunch of these bad bois:
but oh wait what's this is that number bigger???? ooooooooo
- fishing is more likely to prompt a catch, and it's easier to do on speedup
ok we're going into the scripts for this one.
see this line right here:
it does exactly what you think it does!
if you're fishing on speedup you just get a longer chance to hook it.
god knows everyone uses speedup all the time and absolutely refuses to turn them off even if they're getting [MESSAGE REDACTED BY TRAIN CONDUCTOR]
but at least fishing will be a bit easier!
- this screenshot has like five features in it
long time viewers of this devblog who are neither goldfish nor that one guy from memento will recognize this image from the last post i made:
- party status is visible on the main menu
look at that party menu. that's their friends right there! you can even tell that four of them are shiny just by looking at the menu!
you can also tell if they're dead or not! please do not kill your friends.
- shiny gardevoir is hype
one of the perks about reborn being an indie-devved community-based game is that sometimes we just see neat shit and are like "yo can we put that in"
so, like, two years ago- that sound you just heard was every reborn developer emitting screeches of pain- a mr. Khrona guy posted a gardevoir shiny and it was, like, mega hella.
so we were like "yo can we put that in"
and it's in.
- you can use a controller
you can use a controller
- hot new shiny icons
so i made a devblog post about this a few months ago, but in case you missed it we have some hype new icons for various eggs/shinies/shiny eggs made by smeargle. bonus convenience for if you're shiny egg hatching and don't want to hatch the entire egg before knowing if it's shiny or not!
- new sprite storage/retrieval (spritesheets)
ok so this one's going to be controversial so it's best we get it out of the way sooner rather then later.
so smeargle made a shitload of new sprites. a ton of them. stupid number. i slapped them all on a single image.
here's what necrozma looks like:
blah blah "i did this for reasons" whatever. here's the advantages/disadvantages of this:
1. sprites are all in one place and easy to edit
the above necrozma image was originally 16 individual images. that's too many images. now if you want to edit the necrozma sprites, you can look at them all at once from one (1) file. you can edit shiny sprites next to the original! edit back sprites next to front sprites! forms are all right there next to each other too. ez.
2. cleans up the number of files/filesize
okay, so, most people aren't going to care about this. but "most people" ain't making this post, knowwhatimsayin.
so here's a comparison of folder information before and after "compilation" of sprites onto a sheet:
the difference in file number is more dramatic for battlers; the difference in file size is more dramatic for icons:
so, obviously, most people are gonna be like "ok, well, that's 15MB. who cares." and, well, yeah, you're right. this is the kind of thing that'll matter for people with garbage internet and 15MB translates into a minute of download time (and i'm so sorry that you live like that btw), but we live in a world where 1TB of hard drive space is, like, $30.
the bigger advantage is the sheer number of items that this cuts.
you've probably noticed that copying the game files from one place to another takes way longer than it feels like it should. the size of the data you're moving matters, but so does the number of items that you have to move. and if you're copying the game onto a flash drive? forget it. that shit's gonna take ages. spinning hard drives will appreciate this too since they run more slowly when grabbing many files at once.
condensing all the icons onto one sheet means that, despite adding a shitload of assets into the game, there are now ~3k fewer files in the game.
every essentials game should really do this.
i realize i'm probably the only person in the entire game development industry who cares about optimization and that this is ultimately a tiny change, but i like this shit.
plus i stress-organize.
disadvantages:
1. beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeg sheets.
so i showed necrozma earlier because it's a nice demonstration of the spritesheet layout.
let's talk about unown.
hooooooo boy. the forum software actually won't let me make this image bigger.
surely i don't need to explain the downside of this. that's too many sprites on the sheet.
i can't show you arceus for obvious reasons, but that thing's even worse.
ultimately i didn't think this was a substantial enough concern that this change wasn't worth doing, and i still think this will ultimately be a positive change for spriters.
but, uh... it'll have some quirks.
yell at me about this in the comments.
ok! back to your regularly scheduled announcements.
- headbutt works and always gives you an encounter
this one's self-explanatory.
- mid-battle evolutions
let me take you back to the RSE days. pokemon ruby was my first pokemon game and that game had a pokemon called "mudkip". many of you have likely heard of this "mudkip". now, this mudkip evolved into marshtomp at level 16 and would, upon evolution, learn the move mud shot.
except that's not quiiiiite how it worked.
if you evolved at level 17 for some reason, you miss your move. big bummer hours.
now, this got fixed by the time USUM rolled around, but this is the best example i have for why mid-battle evolution is a neat thing that you should care about.
(from a mechanical standpoint. it's just kind of cool as a feature.)
- pickup QoL
when your mon picks up an item after a battle, it goes straight into your bag.
- eviolite acts like an everstone
put this on the "list of things that should just be canon": if you have a mon hold eviolite the game will stop treating it like something that needs to evolve after every battle.
- sky drop has been removed from the game haha lol i wish.
- a whole bunch of EXP and EV adjustments
now i know what you're thinking. "cass, didn't you talk about this shit, like, a year ago?" and, first, stop talking about the passage of time around me. second, i did! so you should just go read that post.
the short version is that EV grinding is way less of a pain and there's a ton more EXP in the game in general now.
- EV locations exist, too
we've also designated a few locations for EV grinding specific stats, just to make your life a little bit easier.
- catch EXP??
yes that's right, you now get catch EXP when you capture a mon. we figure that anything to make the postgame roundup more useful is a plus for everyone.
- better TM/tutor availability
so, in general, you will get better TMs and tutors earlier in the game. some move tutors have been added to onyx to aid in this. i suspect most people won't really care about being able to learn telekinesis a little earlier. if that does sound great to you, though? more power to ya. as for tm's, while i'm sure that everyone can't wait to get quash a little bit earlier, you'll also appreciate that nearly all of the learnable moves in the game have been moved up. people have been waiting for ice beam and earthquake since the middle ages, but in e19 you would have access to those by the time you finish agate.
- move tutors only charge you once
move tutors work like purchasable TMs where if you pay for them once then you can teach the move as many times as you want. tutors are slightly more expensive to compensate.
- multiple key item registration
so, a downside of the shift to the new engine is that we have fewer controls that you can just rebind at-will, which means that we had to drop some inputs for registered items.
to fix that, we've added something we call the ready menu.
if you register multiple items, then hitting shift (or whatever key you crazy kids are using these days) brings up a menu like this:
then you can pick the actual item that you want to use.
this also means you can register as many items as you want for quick use!
- gambling
they say a picture is worth a thousand words:
we added roulette!
coins are also generally a lot easier to get. i've spent so much time just watching people holed up in the game corner grinding coins because dammit they are not moving another inch without getting slugma.
so you can get coins much more easily now.
- sand dunes don't slow you down quite so hard
suuuuuuper minor.
suuuuuuuuuuuuuper minor.
but running around the desert while lost and confused will be faster.
- postgame QoL
so, again, this is mainly going to be discussed in a later devblog, but postgame is pretty battle heavy. we're expecting the need to frequently swap out your mons and movesets.
so we've got some things to make that easier.
so the big ticket item here is in slot #4. you can buy reborn balls.
glitter balls have a dual use. their primary function is that catching a mon in one will make it shiny. their bonus feature is that if you're using one on a mon that is already shiny, their catch rate goes through the roof.
EV tuners/boosters make it ultra easy to buff your mon's EVs and even transfer them from one stat to another if that's your jam.
the PP all is like a PP max on steroids. using it on a mon buffs the PP of all of its moves to the highest value. means there's a little bit less clicking for you.
we've also got the move restorer.
check it out:
you can just... relearn entire movesets! makes switching them out a piece of cake.
yes my prima has fly because i make this game and sometimes i just need to fly places.
you can also access your pc from anywhere. it burns some consumable items. i don't have a picture for it. sad face :(
there's also a lot of bonus catching charms. you're going to be throwing a lot of balls at a lot of legendaries and that shit'll get old after the first five times. and there's, like, 70 of those things.
let it be known that we are capable of mercy.
- photosensitivity mode
so every once in a while, someone will pop onto the forums with a niche request for the game. one of these, a while back, was a request to turn off the flashing and screen shaking that occurred. i whipped up a quick mod and sent it their way. well, now that mod is baked right into the video game! you can just flip a switch to make the flashing stop.
- field boost/drop indicators
field effects are complicated. to make it easier on people, we've thrown in a nice little indicator showing when moves get boosted/dropped on a field:
they'll show up if you have the associated readout.
- radomus's chess puzzle is less of a pain
okay, so, super niche, but the direction that you move a bishop is now selectable. chess pieces also disappear when you finish the puzzles so you just sprint through without a care.
- confirmation before backing out of tile puzzles
has this ever happened to you? you're doing a tile puzzle and you needed to check the picture of the puzzle in the game files, but when you reselect the game you accidentally back out of the puzzle? such accidents are now a thing of the past! our patented new technology helps keep you from making such silly mistakes.
- soft resetting is faster
okay, so, i'm sure that every single person will appreciate this. soft-resetting has been streamlined to get you back in the game as quickly as i can manage. load times in general have been reduced due to a lot of data caching.
- look at this photograph
personally, i'm just happy that i'll never need to explain how this works to anyone ever again.
i... okay, this post is getting long. there's a lot of extra shit that we added that doesn't require a nice bold bullet point, so i'm going to throw those all at you at once. this list isn't even exhaustive- we're definitely still leaving shit out.
- game window stays in the same place when you soft reset
- added a ladder in back of sugiline cave for more convenient gibles
- added a move tutor to the circus who can change a pokemon's hidden power to any time for a heart scale
- multiple EXP Candies can now be used at once
- Eevee can now evolve into Leafeon and Glaceon with Leaf and Ice Stones
- the rail section to devon now automatically opens at that point in the story if it wasn't already
- the high striker now puts you back in position if you win a partial prize
- shortcircuit now cycles through electric damage amps sequentially rather than randomly
- crystal cavern now cycles through rock type bonuses sequentially rather than randomly
- added a check for held items when sending pokemon back to the pc after a catch
- returns items to bag when handing in pokemon to type null quest etc
- added a lady to the department store who points the player in the direction of each sticker sidequest
- drifloon and spinel sticker events can now be done in any weather
- boosted max item stacks to 999
- integrated the PC Find Mod
- the player is now automatically given the powder vial at the circus
- player is also automatically given dive and rock smash
- added a party quick swap mode form base essentials by pressing A on the party screen
- adrienn's pre-gym recruitment quest is now optional
- players can now get ditto in blacksteam without having to go talk to the happiny guy, as long as they freed the daycare couple
- added a berry seller for top-end natural gift berries that were previously unavailable
- added letter indicators to the tuning panels on the floor of hardy's gym showing which is which note
- brightened some underwater doors. if you know the ones, you know the ones.
- it is now possible to access (the front part at least) of chrysolia springs, and the lost train before visiting spinel
- the nature center now gives out some starting honey
- when slathered, the adventurine wood honey trees now spawn heracross and pinsir immediately
- it is now possible to visit spinel, beat serra, and obtain the medicine before ever setting foot in belrose mansion
- you can now go to the sanctum immediately upon reaching 7th st without having to chase bennett around. also made chasing him around less obnoxious.
- added some fast travels after a few story segments
- the correct rocks to smash in order to drain each floor of pyrous mountain now glow
- sweethearts and exp candy can now be purchased from the candy store at various points throughout the game.
- lowered the cost of nature-changing to two heart scales from 3
- added the ability capsule QoL from rejuv to select from a list instead of sequencing through abilities
- whiscash now has a higher encounter rate in the tanzan cove for the super rod quest
- added an NPC to reset shelly's gym without leaving
not to mention some other passwords, script backend cleanup...
well, you'll see it all soon enough.
get hype. this boat engine makes noise, motherfucker
