Hey y’all! I’m Lucent (formerly Luke Duke, but feel free to call me whatever you’d like). I was introduced to this game shortly after starting college. A friend was showing me Reborn’s latest gym battle (Episode 17 at the time) on his laptop. It was a double battle that took place in an underwater arena! Needless to say, this game grew on me in an instant and it means a great deal to me today. I was grateful to recently find an opportunity to help contribute to the next update. This post will showcase some of my contributions that I find worth sharing today, as well as some very important features stardust and enu have been hard at work on.
 

Online Play

The Online Play experience has been touched up. There were internal refactors to some data structures that warranted updates to the online scripts, and once online functionality was restored, more work was needed to fix some issues that trainers reported over time. I can’t even begin to give enough credit to enu for handling the work for setting up the server environment for development, deployment, and automation. Lots of these improvements aren’t too flashy, but here’s a few to take a peek at.

• The server has undergone some security improvements. You will need to reregister your account for online play when the update releases.
• All online battling and trading will attempt to connect you to another trainer with a matching game configuration. For example, if you decide to wonder trade while using a mod with an expanded dex, the server will handle it and set you up to trade with a trainer using the same mod.
• There are checks to help make sure trades stay legal for the safety of the recipient.
• Online battle handling has been improved, fixing many graphical and sync issues.
• The game client no longer accepts battle requests while waiting for a trade, and vice versa.

The goals of these improvements are to improve online stability and to allow all future versions of Reborn to safely hop online without any worries about incompatibilities. I hope that these improvements will properly accommodate the already-existing online player base and invite even more to join in on the fun!

Battle Inspect

Many of you reading this post have likely played Rejuvenation. It has a battle feature that I really appreciate: Inspect! You select a battler and view more detailed information about them! Shoutouts to DemICE for creating this awesome feature.
 

Inspecting is useful when attempting to track everything going on in a battle. How many turns of rain and tailwind are left? Did that Hawlucha activate Unburden? What field is under the one we’re fighting on? Now all of this information will be at your fingertips while playing Reborn. We’ve also changed the control scheme for the inspect feature, utilizing the Q and W keys (that’s L1 and R1 on controller) instead of pressing the S key (Triangle/Y) to pull up the selector. Please give us feedback on this after trying it out. We want to make this feature feel the best it can.

(enu’s note: The idea behind using Q / W is to skip the selection steps and get to inspection of any battler with a maximum of two keypresses instead of up to four as Reju has it.)

…Have you noticed the button above the text box yet?

Field Notes in Battle

Here’s something I’m really excited to show off. You will now be able to open up the Field App during battle! Trainers can press the S key to open their app and read notes on the active field if the corresponding readout has been collected. Make sure to find all of the field notes or use the “fieldapp” password to unlock them all. This feature also works with the PULSE Dex, letting you press the D key (Right Stick) to view notes about any foe PULSE machine inhabitants. These features are also programmed with page navigation in case more than one field is in play.
 

That’s all I’ll share for today, but rest assured there’s plenty more to be excited for. I sincerely hope you all enjoy these new features. I’m personally going to love using the inspect feature alongside in-game field notes for my next run of the game.

patch directory

Hi, stardust here! 

If you’ve ever modded Reborn before, you’re probably familiar with the old way to install mods:

either having an entirely separate copy of the game with the mod (common for bigger mods) or overwriting the game files with the assets/code/data you wanted to change. Script modifications could alternatively go in a Mods folder in the Data folder to allow modders to only work with the functions they needed to modify, but nothing else got that special treatment.

This is not the most convenient thing, with one particular issue being that it’s really hard to get rid of any mod that’s not a script mod: either you had the foresight to keep the original files that you ended up overwriting, or you have to reinstall the entire game. Also, modded files might get overwritten when you update the game (which is particularly relevant now that the game is actually updating again). 

As of v19.5, however, this won’t be the case, because mods now have their own “patch” folder where they can override the base game assets without you actually needing to mess with the main game files! This isn’t technically a new feature we added: mkxp (the engine Reborn runs on) and Joiplay already have this functionality via a patch folder, and it only took a few modifications to our own code to get it working. (As the name might suggest, it was originally meant for dev-released patches, but the in-built updater takes care of that for us. Unfortunately, we can’t change the folder name on Joiplay.)

This only works for assets but not scripts. Script mods still work as they used to, except that we moved the directory for mod scripts from Data/Mods to patch/Mods.

There will be a text file with more detailed instructions in the game folder when the update is released, but the basic idea is that the files you want to modify/add go in the patch folder, following the same subfolder structure as the base game.
 

Shortcut keys

Enu again! I want to share a small improvement I implemented. You remember how I mentioned game controls improvements in one of the previous blog posts? Well this is a little follow-up to that.

I implemented an improvement to Party screen and Storage. You can now use keys to quickly perform the most common actions and not go through the menu all the time. You can now use A for the Move / Switch action, S for Item action and D for Summary. Additionally in the PC Storage you can use Q to add/remove a mon from Multi-move selection and W to Store / Withdraw.

That’s all for today. We have one more important announcement to make before the release, mainly for the modding community. Stay tuned!
 

This is most likely the last blog post before the 19.5 community release. But in a way it might be the most important one for the future of the game. Since I started working on Reborn I took the initiative on several occasions to put together the new team, set up some workflows and good practices. This time I’m going a step further because this initiative isn’t targeting just the team but the community as well. Let’s see how this goes.

Okay, here is a little confession. I’m a big fan of open-source software and have a lot of personal experience with both contributing to and maintaining open-source projects. When I look at this community with 3 different games sharing the same engine and how many mods the community made for these games I can’t help but think that the games could be even better if we involve the community and modders more actively.

So today I’m introducing an experiment I proposed to Ame and the team and which we decided to try. No, we aren’t fully going open-source but it’s somewhat close to it. The idea is that we can give the more experienced community members and modders an opportunity to improve the game directly. You can help to fix some annoying bugs, make changes in the base game to make modding easier, and if the dev team likes your idea you can even contribute a new feature.

We have a private Discord server for this purpose. The way to get in is to apply by filling our form. The development team will review your applications and decide who to invite. We decided against having the Discord server public in order to keep the discussions productive and avoid having too many random people discussing things without actually being there to contribute themselves.

How strict we’ll be when selecting who to invite depends a lot on how many applications we’ll get. But there is no need to be shy to send one! It is also alright to send a new application later if your first was denied and your situation changed since then in some relevant way - for instance you learned new skills, started working on a new mod, joined a team which has other members already part of the initiative and so on. We can reconsider.

Next, we have private GitHub repositories for the game and the scripts. Git is a version control system - if you’re not familiar with it, here is a nice introduction video.

You don’t necessarily need to have previous Git experience to contribute. You will only need the basics mentioned in the video and a bit about submodules which we will explain. We can help you learn more if it becomes relevant.
 

Our motivation is to invite the authors of the large mods who often need to make many changes to the scripts and tend to add new features or fix bugs that should preferably be made in the base game instead. This is also intended to be the place where we give you some support to update your mods to the new engine and give you tips on how to maintain the mods afterwards in order to make future updates easier. And some good practices to have your mod compatible with online features and such.

Challenge runners who often find or hear about a bug and aren’t shy to dig into the code to fix it are also very welcome. This is how Stardust started after all!

But the initiative is by no means limited to these cases. If you just want to try and help make the game better, you can.
 

Some examples:

• We want to make modding easy and who would know better what’s needed than the modders, right?
• The engine should have Gen 9 battle mechanics implemented for usage by mods even if not by Reborn base game. Rejuvenation or Desolation might also want to add Gen 9 in a future release.
• Gen 8 dynamic speed mechanic. We still don’t have it implemented in the engine even though Rejuvenation and Desolation are using Gen 8.
• Reborn doesn’t have a quest log like Rejuv and Deso. But if the community implements one it could become part of the game.
• Text-to-speech support for blind players doesn’t work for all game screens and features yet. It would really help them to have the rest implemented. We also have other ideas on how to improve their experience.
• Contributing to graphics and other assets. We could use a few spriters to help out with some work. For instance we’d like to update the overworld player sprites and will need some help to create all the variants (running, bike, surf, mine cart, fishing, riding).
• Fixing bugs discovered by yourself, the devs or the community.
• Your own idea which you think might be good for the base game! Even if the feature may not be suitable for all players we might still accept it as a password.
   

And last but certainly not least, this is also a good opportunity for those who would like to join our team as actual developers. If we’re happy with your contributions, it’s a real possibility.

Of course not every suggested change will actually appear in the main game. Our team will discuss the ideas with you, review the changes and decide if both the idea and the actual implementation are something we want to include.
 

Application form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfwtMIEZTDqEEdBDHTELuoSawaO2tKPOAP3HAgamS52XgG97w/viewform

FAQ:

> How demanding is the role? How much time do you expect the applicants to dedicate to this project?

You're not applying to become a dev here. There are no big expectations, we do understand ppl are busy and modders already dedicate lot of time to their mods. Occasional contribution is enough. It would be nice to have some regular contributors as well but it doesn't need to be everyone.

hey majors. 

turn on your lo-fi and kick back cuz we got another coding post after a while.

saves

yeah so saves were brutal. i actually changed these a while ago but we kinda never spoke about it?

those file sizes were awful. especially once we figured out we were saving a lot of map data to the save. like. too much

that includes the current map, any neighboring maps, and connected maps, the last like 2 maps you were on, and a bunch of other nonsense.

i took that out and we got the nicer numbers you see:

ain't that neat.

DOH.

data object hash. doh. the new pbs files. last time you heard about these they were very in progress. the astute among you might notice rejuv and deso had these.

the even more astute of you will realize that the community release has even more changes

the even mostest astute of you will realize i'm not cass. hi. different code sorceress here. sup.

anyway.

we've cleaned up a lot things here and there with the doh files. and i made a lot more changes to the mon doh. you're welcome modders. i'm to blame there

but

you'll come around when you see them:

megas are now form specific. no more hard coded them in the mega code.

also.

evolutions also now look cleaner. and function better.

now they're explained! because i really hated long arrays that don't really explain anything.

and also forms.

while this is rejuv code, you can now like. add form evolutions. real easily.

 randomizer 

yeaaah!! that's the thing i do!

so if you read the patch notes you'll see a lot has changed. i did the thing again where i rewrote it from scratch

haha

ha.

i'm not really gonna talk about those changes. i'm gonna talk about the stuff that i have planned and some changes i really like

there was this thing where the randomizer didn't work a lot. and couldn't be tested reliably. so i changed it.

this is a really cool thing. it lets me read info from your save file, load up the random class for your save, and regenerate your entire data files, using a settings seed

if this sounds familiar that's because the regular ol' randomizer for the main games does a similar system. 

pretty hot right?

it gets better.

you know that whole random thing. how it changes things. you can read those changes now.

that's what i'm talking about.

ain't that cool. neat. quirky, or even cool.

one last thing

fun tool for devs

color your console output.

very nice. very cool.

yeah. that's it for this wednesday.

p.s.

we did not fire her

Just a quick post for you all this time:

We’re not dead! 19.6 is currently in the works. A ton of people are cooking up a ton of amazing stuff for this update! We can’t wait for you all to see it. Every time I look in the Community Cooperation Initiative discord, something new and wacky is going on. So much is being worked on, though, that 19.6 is going to take a while. Please bear with us!

A few quick announcements about some of the people who have been helping out:

We have a new developer on the team! Joining us from the Community Cooperation Initiative, it’s Karvanha! If you’ve played 19.5, you’ve probably already seen some of Karvanha’s contributions, such as the multiple rows of balls in multi battles and the move descriptions in battles, to name a few! Karvanha has also made an unfathomable amount of bugfixes and put a ton of work into the Gen 9 engine implementation for modders. We’re all glad to have him on the team!

Returning from the old team, also, it’s Azzie! She’s been knocking it out of the park with her contributions as well, between ████████████ and █████████████████! Oh, I can’t show those yet, can I? Well, rest assured, she’s been doing great work– one of these two features wasn’t even initially planned, she just dropped in with it and we all immediately fell in love.

Over on the Community Cooperation Initiative side, we recently pulled in several artists– Apophyll has been helping us with some sprites for a secret feature for a while now, and MoonPaw, bowle, meteors, Not_Aza, and inserobite102 have been helping us create many variants of existing sprites– such as our new protag sprites! These were shared on Discord a while back, but here’s a preview for you all here! They’ve been doing a great job!

AiedalEclipsed, who made the initial updater for 19.0 and manages the links for the downloads of all three games, has also been cooking up an improvement to a feature of the game that’s been there since Episode 1! It’s been a little messy for a long time, and the new improvement to it is great! Thanks, Aie!

Yeah, that’s… pretty much it! We’re all working hard to make this update great, between core developers and the Community Cooperation Initiative!

I probably shouldn’t leave this off without a screenshot, huh…

How about this?

(yeah i know i don't have the updated protag sprite, it's on a different branch and i don't feel like switching)

Thanks for all of your patience and support! See you all next time!

today, we're going to show and talk about these in a bit more detail.

(a note for our blind players-- this is a purely visual update most and so this is probably not for you. with apologies, i will be sparing myself the task of IDing each image).

OW updates were something that, in an ideal world, i would have done with e19. only, i was soooooo tired by the end of it, and we did a lot of shampoo-ing of VS and battle sprites, i truly did not have the stamina. however... these sprites appear in virtually every screenshot of the game ever, and so the mistakes of my past continued to haunt me until i was cow-prodded into doing something about them. fortunately, there was a lot that i wanted to fix, and my skill in spriting had grown over time, so it was quite rewarding to do.

to see them in action, let's post a dizzying array of gifs:

above includes both walking and running variants. our old sprites were made with very, very minimal effort to make the run sprites; i only moved the head forward and down a little bit, which is what sometimes resulted in the ability to spam the run button and appear to dance in place. i don't know if that's still possible these days, but i think that having a more dynamic running pose will feel nice anyway. truthfully, i want to develop my skills to push such poses to even more exaggerated animations than this. but alas, that is not for this little update project.

when updating our protagonists, i wanted to choose a 'style' of animation and stick with it for consistency between them. this consistency was a flaw in the previous set of sprites. they were made at various times and levels of skill, and so they are not always consistent in their dimensions and animation. this is also why the shape and size of some of them will appear to have slightly changed.

this was also an opportunity to fix some of the issues that had nagged me with our previous style of sprites. compare these frames.

new vero (left) vs old (right):

old decibel (left) vs new (right):

the issue is clearer on decibel's-- the way the feet are positioned ends up making a solid black line across the bottom of the sprite. on vero's, there is a one pixel notch, which i would consider better but still visually awkward. i'm not going to claim that the updated sprites are perfect, but i think we succeeded in refining the walk and run cycles to help silhouette the feet better in all frames of animation.

here is another example, demonstrating a change in the animation style i mentioned before. 

in the above screen, pay attention to the relative placement of the sprites' hands. in each step frame, i wanted to increase the action of the movement by making the hands appear to move more widely. i think this helps 'running' vs 'walking' come across much clearer. for aspiring spriters: I find that starting with the positions of the hands is a great way to tackle these little bodies. it'll help you refine the silhouette early on.

also look how much better alice looks! i haven't liked her very much in the past-- and with her OW sprite previously looking so different from her other graphics, it's no wonder! it looks like she had buns or something. i hope everyone enjoys the new hair-floof. i think i'll be using her more in the future myself.

perhaps the most notable new detail of the animation overall is the hair animation. in the current set of sprites, most character's hair hardly animates at all. much as we love lucia, hers in particular has been very awkward in the past. bouncy hair is a nice way to add a lot of life to sprites, and it's also one of my favorite things to do in sprites now. it's fun to make it go swoowsh-swoosh-swoosh!

here's some frames, and how i think of animating them:

frames 1 and 3 are always identical in these sprites, the work is on 2 and 4. in either case, i choose a direction, either clockwise or counter clockwise to think of each 'tuft' of hair as moving. then it's just a matter of moving the pixels as little as possible while finding a shape for the points that looks nice in pixel form, and doesn't create awkward movement when applied to the height change (frames 2 and 4 bend at the knees, and thus the head sinks 1 pixel lower, which can make some animations look awkward. testing is important!)

on a different note, did you notice from the first gifs that kuro is looking different? in my view, he's kind of been the least popular protagonist. originally, i imagined him having kind of a deliberately shaggy hair style, but i don't really like that as much these days, and more importantly it doesn't really seem to be a hit with players either. so i took the opportunity to kind of shore his hair up to a nicer shape in general. here's his updated VS sprite:

we wouldn't want to change him tooooo much for the players that are used to him as he is, but i felt this would generally be received as an improvement. 

and hey, we finally got his sunglasses into his OW too!

because of how many variations and alterations player OW sprites have, this ended up being a significant undertaking! there are many little pieces-- walking, running, biking, fishing, surfing, tauros-riding, minecart-riding, etcetcetc... i would not have had the stamina to do all of the animations over myself-- in the end, i just made the base walking and running sprites, and then others in the community initiative helped out with the finishing details. big shoutouts to moonpaw, nephilinite, meteors, not_aza, and inserobite102. in addition to the extra animations, they also helped refine some of the cross-sprite details... enu oversaw it and contributed some scripting to avoid having to make redundant graphics (surfing, fishing while surfing, diving were all very similar...) too! thank you all!

speaking of diving... i think, but i'm not sure? that the main games are doing this these days too... but we also took the opportunity to answer the question of "how does the player breathe underwater when diving?"

let's close out with some before-and-after references. for fun, i also included the original versions of Alice and Vero, back in the earliest episodes when they were the only protags.

if you are looking to improve your spriting from others' example, i suggest studying the differences in these images and seeing how they changed over time. softer colors, flatter hair shading, brighter outlines... what else do you notice? this kind of analytic exercise is a good way to improve your own skills.

by the way, for anyone still interested in the eventual postgame continuation of our dev let's play-- it is not forgotten. only life has been getting very in the way for a long time now, and at this point i would at least wait until 19.6 anyway. 

thank you all, as ever, for caring about the game at all stages of its lifecycle, and i hope you can look forward to the update