xd Pokemon XG: NeXt Gen

[Hecto]

I agree with the above post when it comes to the names. I understand changing the names for the random trainers, because to be honest, the names were kinda weird in the originals. But there's something special about the main character names. Gonzap was such a cool name! And now it's... Black? And Dr. Kaminko is... Dr... Clark? I dunno, man. Maybe keep the names of the non-random trainers the same, regardless of the strangeness.

 

Regarding the writing for Lovrina/Silvina, it was funny for me, but I can definitely see why it would be jarring. The same goes for the flavor text of the Music Disk in Phenac City. The "modernizing" text... I dunno. I don't think it fits, especially if it's making direct, real-world references. The only "modernizing" text change I can kinda agree with is changing Data ROM to SD Card (which, by the way, some text still refers to it as a ROM.) 

[Matiri]

I'm done!! And my thoughts are mostly positive. The Shadow Pokémon roster is pretty varied, so much so that I managed to have 4 full tempo sets in the purify chamber as early as the ONBS takeover. Similar praise goes to the wild Pokémon even though 25 mons per Poké Spot seems a little too much considering how these areas work. One thing I don't get is the purpose behind so many repeats, there're aren't as many as older versions but it popped up after I looked into what mons I could find in the wild. Speaking of repeats, this time concerning TMs, you get the picture (repeated I found numbers 3, 4, 5, 8, 19, 22, 23, 31, 34, 39, 40, 41 and 50). Also, I like the notably increased catch rate for most Shadows, especially because tanking them is no easy task (more so than XD) so it balances out.  

My only major issue is in regard to certain shadow attacks; the multi target(Swim, Shake, etc.), is it possible you make it so that they don't hit the partner as to prevent them from fainting another Shadow, Ardos in particular took me 4 tries because his Shadows kept killing each other with Shadow Swim; the recoil moves (Lunge, Crash, etc.), change the recoil so that the user can't kill itself, kinda like how Shadow End would deal recoil damage equal to half the user's remaining HP (though I suppose if you did that you may as well ditch the former ones and bring Shadow End back); and finally, I will make a predictable request and ask that you GET RID OF SHADOW BOOM!!!

And now for the more minor issues:

-Text inconsistencies persist (trainers both directly and indirectly referring to mons they no longer have, Pyrite Colosseum's registration info is outdated, etc.).

-At one point the mirror radar alerted me of Mirror B at the Rock Poké Spot, when I got there all I found were Trudly and Folly. I could talk with them and their dialogue seemed like that I would get when talking to them at a colosseum. Also, Mirror B himself never appeared.

-Aurora Veil has no PP and as such doesn't work.

-Mach Punch has Shadow Veil's description.

-The AI likes to get stuck using Shadow Veil and Shadow Room.

-Late game Shadows take way too long to purify, especially the legendaries, not even at max tempo and flow do they progress at a comfortable pace.

-And finally, some of the Shadow attacks sound a bit wimpy, any chance you can change Shadow Summer to Shadow Scorch and Shadow Swim to Shadow Tsunami.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Matiri

[Hecto]

1 hour ago, Matiri said:

-And finally, some of the Shadow attacks sound a bit wimpy, any chance you can change Shadow Summer to Shadow Scorch and Shadow Swim to Shadow Tsunami.

 

I don't mind Summer, but now that I think about it, Shadow Tsunami does sound cooler. If that happens to be too long for the attack text limit, maybe Shadow Flood?

Also, I kinda have to agree with Shadow Boom. Either remove it, or make it so the AI doesn't ever choose it / doesn't choose it until x amount of turns or something. I had to resort to savestates just because that was almost always the first attack it wants to do. Alternatively, make Shadow Boom reduce the user's HP to 1/ cut it by a huge amount like 75 or 80% instead. Anything but a pure Explosion clone.

[Stabbbb]

Hello! I'm spanish so I'm sorry if I write something wrong ^^'

Thank you so much for do this hack! Is one of my favourites games of the franchise and all the features you are doing are fantastic. I can't wait for the hack tools! =D

I have a problem patching (and sorry if you answer it another time, I don't see it): when i want to patch the iso, NUPS say: "Error opening Pokémon XD.iso", the clean iso is USA and the patch is in the latest version. 

What can i do? I have to say that I trying to patch it in a computer with only 1GB of RAM...

 

Edited August 31, 2017 by Stabbbb

[Hecto]

Boy, talk about a scare. I'm at Citadark Isle, just caught a Blissey, tried to save, and it said that the data was corrupted! I recall making some sort of mistake when saving versus using savestates (don't want to redo something if I accidentally KO a Shadow Pokemon on a turn, etc.) like the playtime was close to each other--something that I avoided--but finally slipped up. I decided to see if the save editor would do anything, but despite being able to edit so much, it seems that you couldn't edit playtime or... whatever else is kept on the save data as a whole. So I decided to just reduce the "number of times saved" counter (as if that'd somehow do something...) and reloaded it.... But oddly enough, it just loaded back into the time I had saved previously. Went back to a savestate that was further ahead, and it appeared that the playtime was actually ahead (38:06 -> 38:18) so I'm not sure what could have caused the corruption.

 

Do we know exactly what they do to check for cheating/corruption in the game? Or is it playtime and I missed something? And if it's playtime, does it somehow check for the past two playtimes or something, and calls it corrupted on the third save, AFTER the conflicting times? But if that's the case, why is it that when I reloaded, it was back to before, and now I can save fine?

[Burningocean2012]

I finally found the exact rom you used on a blog site!Patching worked and the game is good.I had given up for months.

[StarsMmd]

I'll start off with my usual apology for taking so long for a lot of these responses. :-) 

I am back to working on XG with some neat changes coming. I've also got my XD randomiser mostly done and as I've been promising for the longest time I have started work on hack tools for pokemon XD. I'll be updating it as I work on it and so far have the pokemon stat editor mostly complete. These will be for mac OSX as per usual so windows users may want to start preparing a virtual machine.

On 7/31/2017 at 5:03 PM, Dio_Vento said:

For the record, you might want to refactor the patch to work with self-dumped ISOs. Emuparadise no longer has any Pokemon games, so finding the correct ISO for the patch is going to be a massive pain.

Alternatively, provide instructions for decompiling the ISO and copying files over, then rebuilding: I think Dolphin has a native support for this.

As per your advice I decided to get a fresh new ISO that should hopefully be easier to obtain now. I'll also look into making a patching program specifically for XD which takes different ISO configurations into account :-)

On 8/3/2017 at 10:42 PM, Darquezze306 said:

Hey, I just found about this ROM hack and im wondering, can we catch all the Gen 1-3 + 2 gen 4 mons in this hack? I been looking for a Pokemon GCN ROM hack that allows you to do that plus the physical/special split

 

Most gen 1-3 evolution lines are available but not all. Bonsly is the only playable gen 4 as munchlax was never actually coded into XD. It just has a name and an overworld model but no battle animations as far as I can tell. Most pokemon you'd be interested in should be there but if there were some you were hoping to see that didn't make the cut, hack tools are on the way.

On 8/6/2017 at 7:30 PM, Cocytus said:

Been playing this recently and been enjoying myself so far. I would like to ask if you would consider releasing a version of the hack where the names and dialouge of people remain how they were in the original release. Of course with exception with some areas where npcs will name one of their pokemon in dialogue before battle. Thanks and looking forward to future updates/fixes.

I'm cool with names being strange or fancy but the XD names just felt like random syllables strung together with little thought behind them. For a game with so much detail and inspiration behind it, they really seemed so out of place and if I were building the game from scratch it's a design choice I would eschew. As a game that many people haven't played recently and many haven't ever played I wanted to design it as if it were a first play through.

That being said, I finally caved and decided to keep at least the names of the main story NPCs as they were in the original. XD is a beloved game and it is a lot more popular than I'd originally believed so there are a lot of people who still feel nostalgic about the old names. Even I still refer to the characters by their original names so I decided that maybe I'd been too stringent. :-)

On 8/12/2017 at 4:14 PM, gs82139 said:

I just started a new game using version 1.04, and during the second turn of the tutorial battle with the metagross and gardevoir, the game crashes. Is anyone else experiencing this? Or can it be fixed by using different dolphin configs?

I'm using dolphin version 5.0-5075 (the latest dev build). More specifically about the game crashing, as soon as I hit the "A" button to choose my second move, no matter what it is, the game locks up and eventually says that an unhandled exception happened.

I patched the game using NUPS, and patched an extracted rar archive located in my desktop. I tested the vanilla game and that runs perfectly, but the hack doesn't and always locks up on second move select. Also happens as soon as VS mode one player is chosen. 

This issue happened to me exactly one time and I was never able to reproduce it. I'm not sure what causes it but since it never happened again I was never able to narrow down the cause. Very few others have complained about it as well so I gave up on it. All I can suggest is maybe trying a different version of dolphin. Versus mode was purposely broken to give space for story mode data :-)

On 8/16/2017 at 1:49 AM, Hecto said:

Additionally, I came across this hack randomly after finding Paper Mario: Pro Mode. I thought to myself, "Wow! Mods for old Nintendo games are awesome!" Followed by, later on, "I wish Pokemon XD had current-gen physical-special split mechanics. It's the only thing keeping me from playing it again." And then this happens! What an awesome mod! How lucky of me to catch it with all the features already added--from what I understand from your posts, all you have now are minor bug fixes to work on?

Very clever renaming Eagun. I mean, we were all thinking it, after all...

EDIT: Also, I don't think I saw this anywhere in the changelog, but did you do anything to update the Exp Share item, or is that beyond the scope of the game's engine? It's definitely OP to make it behave as it does in current gens (Participating pokemon get full exp, all others get half) but what if the exp share was split evenly instead, or something similar? For example, if you turn the Share item "on," like a key item, or if you give it to any pokemon on the team, it simply distributes the experience evenly (1/4 to the two participating pokemon, 1/8 to the remaining four?)

Now that I think about it, this sounds pretty complex if you want to keep the amount of experience gained overall the same for balancing...

I know exactly what you mean. The lack of the physical/special split in older games makes them harder to pick up sometimes. It was precisely because of how easy it was to implement in XD that I started working on XD instead of colosseum.

I haven't changed the experience mechanics. I did figure out where the code that handles all that is so I could tweak things in theory but I couldn't figure out any particular changes I wanted to make. Plus as you mentioned even a small change would require the game to be rebalanced. It certainly is possible if someone was looking to do it for a different hack :-)

On 8/23/2017 at 7:10 PM, ZoeyQuick said:

There's one thing i really really want in this game that would make it perfect, that would be the option to play as a female protagonist, idk if it's possible but i would really appreciate if someone could do it

At this point in time the most we can do is change the textures. It would in theory be possible to retexture the main character's face to look more subjectively feminine. I was looking into changing the textures a bit but there are multiple copies across multiple files due to different models for different parts of the game like battles or cutscenes so it's a fair bit of work to even make a small change. It seems doable though.

On 8/24/2017 at 1:44 PM, Greentees said:

Some things I'd like to report on when it comes to the bugs

1. When you have a Pokémon with an ability like speed boost, if they get intimidated, both Pokémon have the buffed up stat graphic instead. 

2. Some Pokémon can't learn moves they should either have learned that generation or in future generations. Metang can't learn Ice Punch, but there is one in the Battle Square in Pyrite Town that has it.

3. The Pokémon Silvia/Lovrina have will appear in the Battle Memo as their nicknames if you encounter them there first.

Some complaints

4. I'm sure you've gotten this quite a lot but I don't like the fact that some character names changed, as well as the writing for Lovrina/Silvia.

5. The TM and move tutor selection seem a little weak.

6. Why have Graveler as a Pokémon you can catch when the other 3 Trade Evo Kanto Pokémon are shadows?

Final words
It's a great hack, and I can't wait for the Battle Sims to be fixed. I'd love to help on that front if you need any ideas or anything.

1. I'm aware of that visual glitch but not sure what causes it. It could be something in XD itself. There are a lot of weird little errors that you'd never have noticed because the pokemon available in game were so limited. 

2. It's way too much effort to cross check with their canon move sets and to check that all NPCs have legit moves. There were also some moves that I wanted pokemon to learn that they couldn't normally or there were some moves that were key to some pokemon that aren't in XD at so had to be replaced with similar moves (e.g. some pokemon having super power since close combat isn't available). I just went with my gut.

3. They're actually implemented as separate pokemon because it's a lot easier than reprogramming the game to allow NPC nicknames.

4. As mentioned above I finalled gave in and decided to change the NPC names back. I still stand by lovrina's speech though. She was always pretty annoying in the original. Her charm was always the juxtaposition of a genius scientist with a bratty teen attitude. If she wasn't annoying I wouldn't be doing my job properly :-)

5. I tried to keep the selection quite general and give a wide range of typings. There are only so many TMs available so there's no point wasting one on a move that can only be learned by a handful of pokemon. I found it quite hard to find a good balance of moves and have changed the selections around many, many times. Were there any moves in particular you felt were missing? I'm open to suggestion :-)

6. The shadow pokemon are distributed such that at any point in the game, the player is given a fair selection of different pokemon types and play styles. The list was refined a few times over and ultimately, golem didn't make the final cut. However, when I extended the number of pokespot pokemon I was able to add it in but at a lower level since pokespots are unlocked quite early.

On 8/26/2017 at 4:54 AM, Matiri said:

I'm done!! And my thoughts are mostly positive. The Shadow Pokémon roster is pretty varied, so much so that I managed to have 4 full tempo sets in the purify chamber as early as the ONBS takeover. Similar praise goes to the wild Pokémon even though 25 mons per Poké Spot seems a little too much considering how these areas work. One thing I don't get is the purpose behind so many repeats, there're aren't as many as older versions but it popped up after I looked into what mons I could find in the wild. Speaking of repeats, this time concerning TMs, you get the picture (repeated I found numbers 3, 4, 5, 8, 19, 22, 23, 31, 34, 39, 40, 41 and 50). Also, I like the notably increased catch rate for most Shadows, especially because tanking them is no easy task (more so than XD) so it balances out.  

My only major issue is in regard to certain shadow attacks; the multi target(Swim, Shake, etc.), is it possible you make it so that they don't hit the partner as to prevent them from fainting another Shadow, Ardos in particular took me 4 tries because his Shadows kept killing each other with Shadow Swim; the recoil moves (Lunge, Crash, etc.), change the recoil so that the user can't kill itself, kinda like how Shadow End would deal recoil damage equal to half the user's remaining HP (though I suppose if you did that you may as well ditch the former ones and bring Shadow End back); and finally, I will make a predictable request and ask that you GET RID OF SHADOW BOOM!!!

And now for the more minor issues:

-Text inconsistencies persist (trainers both directly and indirectly referring to mons they no longer have, Pyrite Colosseum's registration info is outdated, etc.).

-At one point the mirror radar alerted me of Mirror B at the Rock Poké Spot, when I got there all I found were Trudly and Folly. I could talk with them and their dialogue seemed like that I would get when talking to them at a colosseum. Also, Mirror B himself never appeared.

-Aurora Veil has no PP and as such doesn't work.

-Mach Punch has Shadow Veil's description.

-The AI likes to get stuck using Shadow Veil and Shadow Room.

-Late game Shadows take way too long to purify, especially the legendaries, not even at max tempo and flow do they progress at a comfortable pace.

-And finally, some of the Shadow attacks sound a bit wimpy, any chance you can change Shadow Summer to Shadow Scorch and Shadow Swim to Shadow Tsunami.

I'm glad you enjoyed it :-)

In response to the repeated pokemon and repeated TMs, I've watched a lot of play throughs of XD and XG to gather data and I wanted to cater to as many different play styles as possible. For example, a lot of TMs are obtained from the colosseum challenges or mt. battle but most people don't even do them. Some TMs are obtained really late in the game but a lot of people don't play much of the post game so those TMs end up going unused. Depending on how much of the side content you play and how much you explore you may get a lot of repeats but people playing through more casually tend to miss a lot of the TMs.

Similarly for the repeated pokemon, a lot of people don't bother with the pokespots. Also, as I mentioned, most people don't play much of the post game so and usually finalise their team well before that. This means that most pokemon obtained late, especially those on citadark isle, rarely get used. I needed a good balance of threatening, powerful shadow pokemon for the final dungeon of the game but at the same time couldn't leave all the good pokemon exclusively to the end because then people wouldn't be able to play the game with their favourite pokemon. Also for the few people that play the post game, they would appreciate being able to obtain a fully evolved salamence right at the end of the game instead of having to grind a bagon from the start. Either way, it surprises me that people find having multiple pokemon so weird. Most pokemon games give you multiple opportunities to get the same pokemon. It gives you more chances to roll for the ivs, nature and ability you want or have more than one on your team if you like the pokemon that much. It's only really a problem if there's a particular pokemon you wanted that isn't obtainable that could have been in that location. At this point just about any pokemon you could want should be in though :-)

I'm slowly working on removing a lot of the TMs from their old locations but it's not easy to edit scripts right now as I still do them in a hex editor and it can take a while to do each one.

Moving on, a problem I had when playing earlier versions of XG was it still felt quite easy. I went into every single battle 100% certain I would catch the shadow pokemon. It's not much of a game when everything is going to be that easy. Especially in a game that gives you the ability to save before any encounter and let's you retry at will (plus a lot of people use state saves, save editors, action replay codes,etc.) why does it need to be that easy? It's nice to have a bit of a challenge and it's also healthy for the game if it frustrates you a little as it makes it all the more satisfying when you do finally secure the snag. Plus the game gives you a lot of options to counter those kinds of gimmicks. You have easy access to moves like fake out and sleep/paralysis moves so there are ways around them if you play smart. I also secretly gave particularly troublesome pokemon really high catch rates but don't tell anyone ;). In the upcoming version, shadow shake doesn't hit pokemon off the ground anymore and NPC teams with shadow shake are built around this for the most part.

There is a lot of text in the game so it's hard to keep track of but I fix them as they come up so thank you. Aurora veil was fixed months ago but I never got around to pushing out the update. The issue with miror b. not always showing up is something which I believe is in vanilla XD as well. As far as I can tell, the developers purposely programmed it that way. It seems to just be a troll like munchlax showing up for the spot monitor. I have a lot of trouble with the AI. I haven't found  a way to reprogram it yet so some pokemon will have to be broken for a little while. The move names change a lot too but the obligatory word "shadow" in shadow moves decreases the options as there is indeed a character limit.

Sorry for the long response but I hope I explained my thought processes effectively. I really do appreciate feedback and will bear it in mind in future decisions.  This is the first ever pokemon XD hack so there's still a lot to figure out :-)

On 8/30/2017 at 2:15 PM, Stabbbb said:

Hello! I'm spanish so I'm sorry if I write something wrong ^^'

Thank you so much for do this hack! Is one of my favourites games of the franchise and all the features you are doing are fantastic. I can't wait for the hack tools! =D

I have a problem patching (and sorry if you answer it another time, I don't see it): when i want to patch the iso, NUPS say: "Error opening Pokémon XD.iso", the clean iso is USA and the patch is in the latest version. 

What can i do? I have to say that I trying to patch it in a computer with only 1GB of RAM...

 

I think it's because your iso doesn't match mine. I've been told my iso was quite old and hard to find now so I'll be using a more recent one for future versions.

On 8/31/2017 at 3:39 PM, Hecto said:

Boy, talk about a scare. I'm at Citadark Isle, just caught a Blissey, tried to save, and it said that the data was corrupted! I recall making some sort of mistake when saving versus using savestates (don't want to redo something if I accidentally KO a Shadow Pokemon on a turn, etc.) like the playtime was close to each other--something that I avoided--but finally slipped up. I decided to see if the save editor would do anything, but despite being able to edit so much, it seems that you couldn't edit playtime or... whatever else is kept on the save data as a whole. So I decided to just reduce the "number of times saved" counter (as if that'd somehow do something...) and reloaded it.... But oddly enough, it just loaded back into the time I had saved previously. Went back to a savestate that was further ahead, and it appeared that the playtime was actually ahead (38:06 -> 38:18) so I'm not sure what could have caused the corruption.

Do we know exactly what they do to check for cheating/corruption in the game? Or is it playtime and I missed something? And if it's playtime, does it somehow check for the past two playtimes or something, and calls it corrupted on the third save, AFTER the conflicting times? But if that's the case, why is it that when I reloaded, it was back to before, and now I can save fine?

There hasn't really been much research on the topic as far as I know. All I can tell is that the play time of the next save has to be greater than the play time of the previous save (Maybe it also checks things like number of shadow pokemon caught and other things that can never decrease through normal gameplay). Also, it seems that the game keeps multiple save files at once and just loads the most recent one. It keeps the previous ones just to check for consistency. I think that by reducing the number of times saved, it caused the game to think the previous save file was the most recent one and completely ignore the corrupted save. This is really useful knowledge though. It seems like it could be a very reliable work around to the corruption issue as long as the previous save wasn't too far back.

On 9/11/2017 at 8:39 AM, Burningocean2012 said:

I finally found the exact rom you used on a blog site!Patching worked and the game is good.I had given up for months.

I'm glad you found it! I'm planning to use a new ROM for newer releases so hopefully it shouldn't be a problem for others in the future. :-D 

[Hecto]

Nice to see you back! I'll admit that while it's a little unfortunate that Shadow Boom will remain, I'm glad that the pokemon that use it seem to have a higher catch rate (at least from my experience.) and it's pretty easy for a savvy player to guess which ones know it.

 

Also, regarding the Exp. Share issue: After having played through all of the game and all of Mt. Battle, I don't think it's necessary to change it around. The Double Battle system makes it less cumbersome to switch pokemon around when some are getting too weak or too strong, so I wouldn't put changing that as a priority, or even something on the list of things to do in the first place.

 

Also! Here's another glitch that I forgot to mention! It's a weird one, and it might be emulator specific. I fired up OBS and recorded it, but forgot to record sound. But the sound wasn't that important, since it was just the music and stuff playing. I broke Citadark Isle, in the elevator rooms! 

 

It happened immediately after the battle against the ambush trainer when you open the chest in the spiral. The first few seconds of a still frame is just me checking OBS and going back to the game. The fadeout at 3:10 is me resetting the game without turning it off, etc.

[StarsMmd]

On 9/13/2017 at 12:33 AM, Hecto said:

Nice to see you back! I'll admit that while it's a little unfortunate that Shadow Boom will remain, I'm glad that the pokemon that use it seem to have a higher catch rate (at least from my experience.) and it's pretty easy for a savvy player to guess which ones know it.

 

Also, regarding the Exp. Share issue: After having played through all of the game and all of Mt. Battle, I don't think it's necessary to change it around. The Double Battle system makes it less cumbersome to switch pokemon around when some are getting too weak or too strong, so I wouldn't put changing that as a priority, or even something on the list of things to do in the first place.

 

Also! Here's another glitch that I forgot to mention! It's a weird one, and it might be emulator specific. I fired up OBS and recorded it, but forgot to record sound. But the sound wasn't that important, since it was just the music and stuff playing. I broke Citadark Isle, in the elevator rooms! 

 

It happened immediately after the battle against the ambush trainer when you open the chest in the spiral. The first few seconds of a still frame is just me checking OBS and going back to the game. The fadeout at 3:10 is me resetting the game without turning it off, etc.

Wow that is a pretty crazy glitch! I've never seen anything like it before. I'm hoping it's just some random glitch to do with Dolphin's settings or some rogue AR code or something. I'll double check to make sure I didn't accidentally overwrite some of the collision data for that map or something but for now I'll be on the look out to see if it happens again.

[Hecto]

If you need any more info, the Dolphin build is the stable 5.0 release, not a dev build. I also may have clicked out of the game and back into it while it was loading, maybe? I don't remember specifically, but I could have done it. I didn't have any AR codes enabled, as far as I know, and the only one I had installed was one for 999 Rare Candies in the PC item storage (early on I changed my strategy and everybody was too weak to implement it since I hadn't used them, so I gave them a few extra levels.)

Aside from that, it was a clean version of the mod.

[jbanger]

Made this account just to give feedback. Obviously great work and I love it. Played through once, though I encountered a bug where Mirror B stopped appearing and I couldn´t actually finish the game. In that playthrough, I forgot to heal after training and lost in the first battle with him. He kept appearing with the shadow pokemon I missed but I never saw the shadow Ludicolo again. He just stopped appearing I even used cheats to multiply steps but still a no show. I know the cheat worked since the pokeradar would go off and pokemon would be purified but Mirror B was gone. I then talked to the man in the lab who tells me about the shadow pokemon i caught and he responded by giving me congratulations on catching Ho-oh and that I had caught all shadow pokemon. Obviously I didn´t catch all of them so I was confused. Best thing I could come up with is that even though it says Ho-oh, completion of catching all shadow pokemon is still linked to Dragonite. And since Dragonite is linked to Mirror B he stopped showing up after I caught it. The game was treating it as if I had all the Shadow Pokemon already. I checked at the bar in Gateon Port where Mirror B. is found after the last battle with him but he wasn´t there either. The version i´m using is 1.0.4 but I downloaded it in May so if there were changes to that version but not an actual update, I probably missed it. Needless to say I started over and made sure to catch Ludicolo this time just in case.

Another bug I found was that double kick did not break sturdy I don´t know about other multi-hit moves. Not a huge deal it just meant I had to take another turn to overkill a Geodude. (Dropped a +2 Iron Head on it´s face)

Noticed inconsistencies where Surf now hits all three pokemon but Bulldoze doesn´t even though Earthquake and Magnitude already did from the start. Probably something you´ve heard before though.

Psybeam uses Confusion´s animation. Also a suggestion to change Aqua Jets animation to look more like Waterfall. Maybe a combination of the start of quick attack and the end of waterfall? Water Spout just doesn´t seem right for it.

Just general feedback here. I skimmed over the thread and know you´ve heard this several times so I won´t stay on it long. Repeats. Not a bad idea at all. But what I would have done differently is make all the repeats pokespot encounters so the shadow pokemon (Bagon, looking at you) could be something different. I read and understand you´re reasoning but I´m not going to use a Larvitar or Bagon when I know by the time they fully evolve that there´s a Salamence and Tyranitar right around the corner. But I know you´re working on hack tools so people can change those kinds of things to their liking which is awesome.

I loved the name changes which is something I saw people complain about a few times. Let´s face it the Orre region (which in itself is a pun on gen 3 games being named after ores) was not good at naming their people. I always hated ¨Sylvia¨ so making her dialogue even more annoying was great since it gave me yet another reason to hate her. 

Also love the Duel Square Ev trainers. It took me a couple of wrong battles to figure out which was which. I just assumed the bodybuilder would be attack but he ended up being sp.def.

All in all I´m satisfied with the hack. I´ve played Colosseum and Xd dozens of times and they never get old too me. This hack has the same if not better replay value to me. As the first Xd hack I would say that it definitely made a good first impression. The only thing I genuinely dislike about it is that Mt.Battle seems to be type-oriented with every area focusing on one type. I always save Mt.Battle for the post game since going during the story makes you severely OP if you aren´t careful, and since I haven´t had a proper post game yet I haven´t gone past what they showed me in the story so I´m not sure if it is like that all the way through. And if it is, its not a huge problem. I just feel as though it kind of limits the pokemon you can use in each area and would probably get boring with having to use super-effective teams and moves and OHKOing your way to the end. With that aside though I love the hack and think its amazing. And I´m glad to see a version 1.0.7 update coming soon. Honestly thank you for the amazing work.

 

[Hecto]

4 hours ago, jbanger said:

 

Noticed inconsistencies where Surf now hits all three pokemon but Bulldoze doesn´t even though Earthquake and Magnitude already did from the start. Probably something you´ve heard before though.

 

 

 

Oh, oh! I can answer this one!

It was mentioned earlier that this is a limitation of XD's internal engine. You might also notice that Discharge also only hits opposing pokemon, compared to how it normally works in the games. I don't know about the inner mechanics of XD, but I do notice a pattern: moves that do not cause status effects (Surf, Earthquake, Magnitude, Shadow Swim, etc.) hit allies and enemies, but moves that have a secondary effect (Muddy Water lowers accuracy, Bulldose lowers speed, Discharge causes paralysis) only hits opponents. I think the flag for "hits ally" is possibly mutually exclusive to the flag "secondary effect" or something, and you can't have both. Maybe they share the same variable and it can only be one or the other.

 

Maybe. Just a guess.

[StarsMmd]

7 minutes ago, Hecto said:

 

Oh, oh! I can answer this one!

It was mentioned earlier that this is a limitation of XD's internal engine. You might also notice that Discharge also only hits opposing pokemon, compared to how it normally works in the games. I don't know about the inner mechanics of XD, but I do notice a pattern: moves that do not cause status effects (Surf, Earthquake, Magnitude, Shadow Swim, etc.) hit allies and enemies, but moves that have a secondary effect (Muddy Water lowers accuracy, Bulldose lowers speed, Discharge causes paralysis) only hits opponents. I think the flag for "hits ally" is possibly mutually exclusive to the flag "secondary effect" or something, and you can't have both. Maybe they share the same variable and it can only be one or the other.

 

Maybe. Just a guess.

Yup, you nailed it!

4 hours ago, jbanger said:

Made this account just to give feedback. Obviously great work and I love it. Played through once, though I encountered a bug where Mirror B stopped appearing and I couldn´t actually finish the game. In that playthrough, I forgot to heal after training and lost in the first battle with him. He kept appearing with the shadow pokemon I missed but I never saw the shadow Ludicolo again. He just stopped appearing I even used cheats to multiply steps but still a no show. I know the cheat worked since the pokeradar would go off and pokemon would be purified but Mirror B was gone. I then talked to the man in the lab who tells me about the shadow pokemon i caught and he responded by giving me congratulations on catching Ho-oh and that I had caught all shadow pokemon. Obviously I didn´t catch all of them so I was confused. Best thing I could come up with is that even though it says Ho-oh, completion of catching all shadow pokemon is still linked to Dragonite. And since Dragonite is linked to Mirror B he stopped showing up after I caught it. The game was treating it as if I had all the Shadow Pokemon already. I checked at the bar in Gateon Port where Mirror B. is found after the last battle with him but he wasn´t there either. The version i´m using is 1.0.4 but I downloaded it in May so if there were changes to that version but not an actual update, I probably missed it. Needless to say I started over and made sure to catch Ludicolo this time just in case.

Did you happen to look at the shadow monitor in the pda? It would show you exactly which pokemon were caught and which ones weren't.

The miror b events aren't linked to any particular shadow pokemon. The scripts simply count how many shadow pokemon you've caught and check that it's one fewer than the total. So it doesn't matter which particular pokemon were (or weren't) caught, once it hits the required number of shadow pokemon those events are triggered. One possible explanation is that the total number of shadow pokemon changed during the save file. This is possible if you started the save file on a different version of XD/XG and then continued using the same save file for v1.0.4. 

Another bug I found was that double kick did not break sturdy I don´t know about other multi-hit moves. Not a huge deal it just meant I had to take another turn to overkill a Geodude. (Dropped a +2 Iron Head on it´s face)

I've noticed this as well. This is because the focus sash and sturdy are implemented using the code for the focus band and that is how the focus band worked until gen V. Coincidentally, I did think up a potential fix yesterday. I just need to check if the move is a multi-hitting move and if so, ignore sturdy/sash. 

Noticed inconsistencies where Surf now hits all three pokemon but Bulldoze doesn´t even though Earthquake and Magnitude already did from the start. Probably something you´ve heard before though.

As Hecto deduced, in XD the ability for a move to hit all three is considered to be the move's effect. This means that it can't be used alongside other effects like paralysis or speed lowering. I put a lot of effort into combining them but never found a solution that worked. Earthquake has a very specific routine and it isn't very flexible.

Psybeam uses Confusion´s animation. Also a suggestion to change Aqua Jets animation to look more like Waterfall. Maybe a combination of the start of quick attack and the end of waterfall? Water Spout just doesn´t seem right for it.

I have changed psybeam's animation in the upcoming version. I don't feel waterfall really fits aqua jet and there weren't too many other options either. I also wanted to try and avoid repeating animations as much as possible.

Just general feedback here. I skimmed over the thread and know you´ve heard this several times so I won´t stay on it long. Repeats. Not a bad idea at all. But what I would have done differently is make all the repeats pokespot encounters so the shadow pokemon (Bagon, looking at you) could be something different. I read and understand you´re reasoning but I´m not going to use a Larvitar or Bagon when I know by the time they fully evolve that there´s a Salamence and Tyranitar right around the corner. But I know you´re working on hack tools so people can change those kinds of things to their liking which is awesome.

Most of the repeats are indeed pokespot encounters. I believe bagon is the only exception. There are a lot of shadow pokemon and just about anything you could ever want is represented so I didn't feel like bagon was taking up a slot that was deserved by another pokemon. Also, the shadow salamence is literally in the very last battle of the main game which is where I've found most people stop playing or don't play very much past. Salamence is one of the most popular pokemon in XG so I wanted bagon to be available asap. I designed Greevil's team under the assumption that those pokemon would almost never be used so no point putting in new and exciting pokemon. They just had to be menacing so it feels like a final battle.

I loved the name changes which is something I saw people complain about a few times. Let´s face it the Orre region (which in itself is a pun on gen 3 games being named after ores) was not good at naming their people. I always hated ¨Sylvia¨ so making her dialogue even more annoying was great since it gave me yet another reason to hate her. 

Indeed, most people really disliked the name changes so I have changed the important NPC names back in the upcoming version. As bad as most of them are, there's a lot of nostalgia there :-)

Also love the Duel Square Ev trainers. It took me a couple of wrong battles to figure out which was which. I just assumed the bodybuilder would be attack but he ended up being sp.def.

Yeah... I just kind of randomly assigned them and I forget every time as well. XD

All in all I´m satisfied with the hack. I´ve played Colosseum and Xd dozens of times and they never get old too me. This hack has the same if not better replay value to me. As the first Xd hack I would say that it definitely made a good first impression. The only thing I genuinely dislike about it is that Mt.Battle seems to be type-oriented with every area focusing on one type. I always save Mt.Battle for the post game since going during the story makes you severely OP if you aren´t careful, and since I haven´t had a proper post game yet I haven´t gone past what they showed me in the story so I´m not sure if it is like that all the way through. And if it is, its not a huge problem. I just feel as though it kind of limits the pokemon you can use in each area and would probably get boring with having to use super-effective teams and moves and OHKOing your way to the end. With that aside though I love the hack and think its amazing. And I´m glad to see a version 1.0.7 update coming soon. Honestly thank you for the amazing work.

To my memory, you're the first person to dislike the changes to mt. battle. The general consensus is that mt. battle can feel like a bit of a chore and so having themes for every 5 zones kept things fresh and exciting. Factors such as dual typings, abilities like lightning rod, and team archetypes like rain or trick room add a layer of unpredictability still so you probably wouldn't be spamming the same moves that much. I'd say give it a try and I'll be interested to know what you think. Maybe you still find it boring (it is grinding through 100 battles after all) but at the very least it should be a little less boring than it usually is. :-D

I'm glad you enjoyed XG though. I still have a lot planned for the hack and your feedback will be helpful in making future decisions so I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to seeing what other kinds of hacks people come up with in the future :-)

 

[Hecto]

To reiterate my personal opinion, I think your name changes for the less important NPCs are perfectly fine. I had a good chuckle at "Sailor Noah" and "Sailor Ark" up in Mt. Battle in particular, just off the top of my head. But you're right, the nostalgia for the "well known" names is a strong one, strange as they are. Chobin is a prime example of that--a reaction so strong that before anyone else, he got his name back. I didn't check previous pages to see what the name used to be, but Chobin is the meme of XD. An icon of our childhood with lips for eyes.

 

Also, I'll throw my hat in for really liking the Mt. Battle changes. I don't remember... anything noteworthy at all regarding the original version aside from being a slog through easy, and then progressively tougher, trainers. Changing the theme every five trainers kept things fresh, especially when you battle it progressively rather than all at once at the end (Helpful to handle the difficulty curves. Did you have Mt. Battle in mind when increasing levels for later areas? The jump from the lap to Pyrite was the first real spike I noticed, and that's right when Mt. Battle became available.)

 

The only problem I have with Mt. Battle is that the trainer dialogue hasn't changed, and sometimes refers to their old team. Same for the Colosseum fights. But that's small potatoes compared to the gameplay, but that's my bias toward prioritizing gameplay over story, especially for an engine/difficulty mod like this. And also, despite the

Spoiler

trainer model changing in-battle for the final one, the overworld model is still the same.

Something tells me this is because of something internal, again, like there being no easy or 'worth it' way to replace the model in the overworld.

 

Oh, right! A bug I forgot to mention! I don't know if the rewards for beating Mt. Battle is working.

Spoiler

Robogroudo works, but the other two don't seem to correspond to what they are supposed to be. I just get a Mewtwo and a Deoxys (iirc), when at the very least, one of those should have been RoboKyogre, right?

 

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hecto

[StarsMmd]

On 9/28/2017 at 2:00 PM, Hecto said:

Also, I'll throw my hat in for really liking the Mt. Battle changes. I don't remember... anything noteworthy at all regarding the original version aside from being a slog through easy, and then progressively tougher, trainers. Changing the theme every five trainers kept things fresh, especially when you battle it progressively rather than all at once at the end (Helpful to handle the difficulty curves. Did you have Mt. Battle in mind when increasing levels for later areas? The jump from the lap to Pyrite was the first real spike I noticed, and that's right when Mt. Battle became available.)

I aimed to make the game remain challenging even if you spend a little bit of time on mt. battle or in colosseums. They provide TMs and cash/coupons so it makes sense to do at least a little at some point. Hopefully, those who choose not to grind would still be able to proceed, just with a little more difficulty. The first spike is indeed placed once mt. battle is available. There are few pokemon choices up until lovrina and not much of an opportunity to grind so I kept it fairly easy up to that point.

The only problem I have with Mt. Battle is that the trainer dialogue hasn't changed, and sometimes refers to their old team. Same for the Colosseum fights. But that's small potatoes compared to the gameplay, but that's my bias toward prioritizing gameplay over story, especially for an engine/difficulty mod like this.

Yeah I modify the text as I see it and will complete it eventually.

And also, despite the

  Reveal hidden contents

trainer model changing in-battle for the final one, the overworld model is still the same.

Something tells me this is because of something internal, again, like there being no easy or 'worth it' way to replace the model in the overworld.

There wasn't an overworld model for the gba trainers plus in terms of the story itself the character is still meant to be the same as in the original. Just in the battle itself the game kind of breaks the fourth wall and is aware that it is a hack so doesn't require consistency.

Oh, right! A bug I forgot to mention! I don't know if the rewards for beating Mt. Battle is working.

  Hide contents

Robogroudo works, but the other two don't seem to correspond to what they are supposed to be. I just get a Mewtwo and a Deoxys (iirc), when at the very least, one of those should have been RoboKyogre, right?

I changed the rewards. They'll change again in the upcoming version as well. They're so late in the game and so hard to get, especially when most people don't even play mt. battle, that it's been hard deciding what to put there. XD

 

[Hecto]

Regarding what you could put as a reward for basically "beating the game" aside from Orre Colosseum, maybe Robo groudon, Robo Kyogre, and a Mew that knows Shadow moves? Y'know, like that one battle in the 95+ area. I did NOT expect to see something like that up there! But it makes perfect sense.

 

Also, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being copy-paste easy, and 10 being completely impossible, what are the chances of a mod (not necessarily yours, but mods to this game in general) importing the excluded areas back into the game, like the caves of Pyrite, The Under, and The Deep as postgame/optional content? Seeing as you broke Versus mode, I was wondering if there was more 'free data' to use now, or if that's simply too hard to do with the current tools available. I'm not sure about the mechanics of editing a file like this, only that it seems like you can't "add" more space to the 'disk,' either because that messes with memory calls, or because the original XD already filled the disk to the brim.

 

Edit: Oh, also, just a minor question: Did you ever consider making the 100th battle theme instead be the song that plays in a Vs. Battle? Since it's kinda appropriate, considering the model used, etc. and it's not used anywhere else. Or was that scrubbed along with the rest of the Vs. Mode data?

Edited September 30, 2017 by Hecto

[StarsMmd]

28 minutes ago, Hecto said:

Regarding what you could put as a reward for basically "beating the game" aside from Orre Colosseum, maybe Robo groudon, Robo Kyogre, and a Mew that knows Shadow moves? Y'know, like that one battle in the 95+ area. I did NOT expect to see something like that up there! But it makes perfect sense.

It just felt a bit weird having a level 5 robot and being able to train and level it up. It just didn't really fit in with the lore of the game.

Also, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being copy-paste easy, and 10 being completely impossible, what are the chances of a mod (not necessarily yours, but mods to this game in general) importing the excluded areas back into the game, like the caves of Pyrite, The Under, and The Deep as postgame/optional content? Seeing as you broke Versus mode, I was wondering if there was more 'free data' to use now, or if that's simply too hard to do with the current tools available. I'm not sure about the mechanics of editing a file like this, only that it seems like you can't "add" more space to the 'disk,' either because that messes with memory calls, or because the original XD already filled the disk to the brim.

All the maps for pyrite cave are still in the game. It's super easy to access them by simply using a hex editor to change some file names and you can walk around and everything like normal. The stairs and entrances/exits aren't hooked up to each other and there are no npcs, items, objects, etc. though. I haven't quite figured out how to do anything interesting with them yet but it's something I'll be looking into going further. The under and the deep colosseum do not exist in any way in XD and the file formats are ever so slightly different between Colosseum and XD. It may be possible to copy and past the models with a little finagling but I haven't taken the time to test that yet. I'll run some experiments at some point.

Edit: Oh, also, just a minor question: Did you ever consider making the 100th battle theme instead be the song that plays in a Vs. Battle? Since it's kinda appropriate, considering the model used, etc. and it's not used anywhere else. Or was that scrubbed along with the rest of the Vs. Mode data?

I've made other optimisations in places so battle mode is actually working again although I can't remember which particular version that starts in. It might just be from 1.0.7. 

I don't think I've quite figured out how to edit the theme music for a battle yet. It's been a low priority though so I haven't put that much effort into it at this point in time.

 

[Hecto]

Wow, that's kinda cool that the caves are there, but The Under isn't. It's nice that you were looking into all that, though! I wish I had the know-how to help, but the lowest form of programming I ever worked in was assembly, and it sounds like you're a step deeper, into the hex. I wonder if it would be worth it to put that tidbit of info about the models for Pyrite Caves still being in the game on tcrf, since I don't see any mention of that on the site. 

What other things are still in the game, but never referenced or used/ dummied out? Are there models for the protagonists of Colosseum still in there, or even the antagonists, like the former mayor, etc.?

[StarsMmd]

6 hours ago, Hecto said:

Wow, that's kinda cool that the caves are there, but The Under isn't. It's nice that you were looking into all that, though! I wish I had the know-how to help, but the lowest form of programming I ever worked in was assembly, and it sounds like you're a step deeper, into the hex. I wonder if it would be worth it to put that tidbit of info about the models for Pyrite Caves still being in the game on tcrf, since I don't see any mention of that on the site. 

What other things are still in the game, but never referenced or used/ dummied out? Are there models for the protagonists of Colosseum still in there, or even the antagonists, like the former mayor, etc.?

 

I'll probably tinker around a bit more and take some footage and screenshots and publish them properly. Just wrapping up some stuff for XG and the XD hack tools.

Off the top of my head:

• An old, unused screenshot of gateon port which shows the main character in a different outfit and slight differences to the area itself.
• A bunch of old screenshots of various maps showing subtle differences from their final versions.
• An unused room which is almost identical to one of the rooms in the S.S. Libra except the textures are very different and it has a wooden pattern all over.
• The battle intro to the deep colosseum still exists but I wasn't able to load it meaningfully.
• A reference to the under in the world map "The Under. An abandoned underground town." but there is no real data for it.

There are still a lot of test files and files copied over from colosseum so I'm sure I'll find more stuff.

[Made_s]

The game also contains a bunch of scene files that were used for prerendered scenes, mainly the ending video

[sepe310]

Hi so is Version 1.0.7 released yet? I am just curious and also is there a way to update my game save from 1.0.4 to 1.0.7?

[Hecto]

12 hours ago, sepe310 said:

Hi so is Version 1.0.7 released yet? I am just curious and also is there a way to update my game save from 1.0.4 to 1.0.7?

Not yet. It will be released when it's put on the very first post; right now it still says "Coming very soon..." But since there's no specific date, he's probably still hard at work on whatever new things he's adding. 

 

Also, as stated in the first post, save files are unlikely to be cross-compatible with newer versions due to things being moved around, and some parts of the save referring to other things, etc. Thankfully, since updates aren't that close together, you can finish your game in the current version and just start a new one in the next version when you feel the need to play again!

Edited October 2, 2017 by Hecto

[dontkillSif]

On 12/09/2017 at 11:23 AM, StarsMmd said:

I also secretly gave particularly troublesome pokemon really high catch rates but don't tell anyone ;).

You didn't up the catch rate of that shadow lugia, did you? 0_-  And wow, 1.0.4 to 1.0.7   Why the 3 version jump, if you don't mind answering?

Glad to see that you're still working on this mod after like a year or more since you started it.<3

Edited October 6, 2017 by dontkillSif

[Solomon07]

Hello! I'm...new to this to this patching thing, and at least, figured out that only NUPS is supposed to work when patching the file.

When I tried doing it, I got a response that said the files do not match...am I doing something wrong?

[dontkillSif]

On 12/10/2017 at 5:36 PM, Solomon07 said:

Hello! I'm...new to this to this patching thing, and at least, figured out that only NUPS is supposed to work when patching the file.

When I tried doing it, I got a response that said the files do not match...am I doing something wrong?

As long as you have a recent version of NUPS and the US version of Pokemon XD, you should be able to apply his latest patch from the first page (it's a .ups file) to the rom.  Be sure to tick the box that says create a backup so you have the original file on hand, or back up the file yourself!