Pokémon Altered Platinum - Sinnohan Forms, Increased Difficulty, and more!

[Lithium]

On 3/15/2022 at 8:00 PM, Shadestep said:

I'm up to the 5th gym and so far I'm enjoying this hack a lot.

I do have a little bit of criticism. It feels difficult to build defensively on a lot of things without EVs, so many pokemon got tuned up to hit harder but you can't have any kind of defensive walls. It's pretty common for 2 or 3 of my team to be fainted after normal trainer battles. While it is challenging, I don't think it's that fun to run a team of 6 sweepers and revive half of them after a slugfest. Part of this is me not knowing the new speed tiers things fall into, the type changes, and I am playing on the set battle style making switch ins harder.

Maybe a version with EVs enabled would be fun, with a disclaimer that it could throw off the balance because NPCs can't use them. Just my thoughts, overall good job.

I'm currently considering giving all defensive Pokemon buffed defensive stats that will mimic the performance of EV'd defenses against EV'd offenses.
Essentially, the thing is that EV investment adds more bulk than power, so in a meta without EVs, everything is squishier. This makes defensive Pokemon much less viable.

The problem with this is that this would throw base stat totals way out of whack. For example, to mimic a spread of 252 HP / 252 Defense, Blissey would get these stats:
Old     255 HP / 10 Atk / 10 Def / 75 SAtk / 135 SDef / 55 Spd / 540 BST
New     255 HP / 10 Atk / 34 Def / 75 SAtk / 150 SDef / 55 Spd / 579 BST

That bothers me for some reason. Plus, this would mean that Blissey basically also has 252 SpA EVs against opposing defensive Pokemon, so walls are going to hit harder, relatively speaking, than a metagame with EVs.
Offenses may need to be toned down on defensive Pokemon to compensate.

So my question is: Do you all think this would be a good addition?

Edit: Here's an idea. What if instead of buffing defensive Pokemon defensively, I buff the ones that need it in other ways? Give them reliable recovery, more team support options, and better attacking choices, so they don't just become walls of meat that don't do anything and then faint.

Edit 2: Thinking about it more, doing this kind of change would most likely result in a situation like Generation 2, where everything basically had 252 EVs, so everything just ran stall.
That would probably be worse than no EVs, so I might stick with things as they are now, and just go with the alternative idea.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Lithium

[Ajil]

did you change the egg groups of the new forms?

 

Edit: I didn't read that you cant breed them

Edited March 22, 2022 by Ajil

[Toreluz]

I just wanted to ask, if there is any way to cheat in rare candies because i want to do a Nuzlocke and that would be a grindfest without Candies.

[Lithium]

3 hours ago, Toreluz said:

I just wanted to ask, if there is any way to cheat in rare candies because i want to do a Nuzlocke and that would be a grindfest without Candies.

Any cheat tool like Pokegen or PokeHeX will probably work, but I will warn you, Nuzlocking was not considered in the design of this hack at any point. Team-wiping multiple times on boss trainers until you figure out how to win is expected to happen at least a few times, but that's game over in a Nuzlocke. Having absolute control over your team and building a competent one where Pokemon synergize in ways beyond their types is also expected to some degree- and that's also kind of up to chance in a Nuzlocke.

[Toreluz]

17 hours ago, Lithium said:

Any cheat tool like Pokegen or PokeHeX will probably work, but I will warn you, Nuzlocking was not considered in the design of this hack at any point. Team-wiping multiple times on boss trainers until you figure out how to win is expected to happen at least a few times, but that's game over in a Nuzlocke. Having absolute control over your team and building a competent one where Pokemon synergize in ways beyond their types is also expected to some degree- and that's also kind of up to chance in a Nuzlocke.

Thanks, i'll try it out.

And thank you for the warning, but that is exactly what i'm looking for, a hard game to Nuzlocke that is no quite as hard as the Kaizo games.

[Arianne]

_{I need to know the pokemon locations. do you have a doc for that?}

[Robert Stacc]

Just tried to evolve Hoothoot-S (doc says it does at level 28) and it just didn't. Idk if anyone else has that problem.

[Lithium]

5 minutes ago, Robert Stacc said:

Just tried to evolve Hoothoot-S (doc says it does at level 28) and it just didn't. Idk if anyone else has that problem.

What version do you have? You can check in the options menu, but up until a certain point I'd been forgetting to update the version number there.

This issue should've been fixed in version b1.1.7.

[Robert Stacc]

3 minutes ago, Lithium said:

What version do you have? You can check in the options menu, but up until a certain point I'd been forgetting to update the version number there.

This issue should've been fixed in version b1.1.7.

I'm in version 1.0.0. Also I tried to level up the mon up until 35 and still nothing.

[Lithium]

18 minutes ago, Robert Stacc said:

I'm in version 1.0.0. Also I tried to level up the mon up until 35 and still nothing.

Yeah, you'll have to update to fix it. There are a LOT of problems that have been fixed since 1.0.0, and you should be good to update safely. No need to start a new save.

[Robert Stacc]

Just now, Lithium said:

Yeah, you'll have to update to fix it. There are a LOT of problems that have been fixed since 1.0.0, and you should be good to update safely. No need to start a new save.

Yeah I just realized I dl'd the first ever release of the hack lmao. Thanks for the insight still, I wouldn't have noticed for quite some time haha

Also keep up the good work, I've played up until Gardenia with sinnohan forms only and they're straight fire! 

[Robert Stacc]

On 3/20/2022 at 5:16 AM, Lithium said:

I'm currently considering giving all defensive Pokemon buffed defensive stats that will mimic the performance of EV'd defenses against EV'd offenses.
Essentially, the thing is that EV investment adds more bulk than power, so in a meta without EVs, everything is squishier. This makes defensive Pokemon much less viable.

The problem with this is that this would throw base stat totals way out of whack. For example, to mimic a spread of 252 HP / 252 Defense, Blissey would get these stats:
Old     255 HP / 10 Atk / 10 Def / 75 SAtk / 135 SDef / 55 Spd / 540 BST
New     255 HP / 10 Atk / 34 Def / 75 SAtk / 150 SDef / 55 Spd / 579 BST

That bothers me for some reason. Plus, this would mean that Blissey basically also has 252 SpA EVs against opposing defensive Pokemon, so walls are going to hit harder, relatively speaking, than a metagame with EVs.
Offenses may need to be toned down on defensive Pokemon to compensate.

So my question is: Do you all think this would be a good addition?

Edit: Here's an idea. What if instead of buffing defensive Pokemon defensively, I buff the ones that need it in other ways? Give them reliable recovery, more team support options, and better attacking choices, so they don't just become walls of meat that don't do anything and then faint.

Edit 2: Thinking about it more, doing this kind of change would most likely result in a situation like Generation 2, where everything basically had 252 EVs, so everything just ran stall.
That would probably be worse than no EVs, so I might stick with things as they are now, and just go with the alternative idea.

Just read about this and Idk if you still think about making the changes you talk abou in Edit 1, but I think it's always better to give better tools to these defensive mons just so they don't become not only passive but also outclassed. And better than everything stalling as well. 

Hope my feedback isn't a little too late lmao

[Lithium]

Released b1.5.0. This is going to be the last update for at least a week and a half, as I'll be on a trip and unable to work on the hack at all for the duration.
The update buffs a lot of defensive Pokemon by a little(nowhere near as drastic as the proposed changes), fixes some things, adds the ability to evolve female Kirlia into female Gallade, and overhauls the Battle Zone's unofficial Gym Leaders.

It also seals off the Battle Frontier, as it's currently impossible to edit it at all, and the Battle Frontier lets you get things like vitamins and so on. NPC Trainers use EVs there, and their sets are both impossible to edit, and not based on any changes made in the hack- so, for example, Flygon still uses moves as if it's Ground/Dragon, and moves like Boomburst may occur where Lovely Kiss would be expected, as an example.
I realize this is going to upset a few people, but the Battle Frontier is a janky experience as it is right now anyway, and the only way to fix it would be to make all the Pokemon and moves vanilla, which defeats the whole point of the hack.
It's been bothering me that something so broken has been accessible this whole time.

Also worth noting, you do not need to do anything special to update your save for b1.5.0 either. The new guards blocking the entrance to the Battle Frontier will only appear if a new flag is 0, but 0 is the default state of all flags, so saves from after this point, or from before traveling to the Battle Zone, will have no issue.
If you saved right before battling Flint and Volkner, the guards will appear overlapping Flint, Volkner and later Palmer, but this has no harmful effect. Riding the boat back to Snowpoint and then riding it back to the Battle Zone will fix this, as talking to him is what sets the flag to hide the guards until Flint and Volkner are defeated.

If you saved while inside the Battle Frontier, and you happen to have NO Pokemon in your PC or party who either know Fly or can learn it, then you're technically softlocked, but all you have to do to avoid this is to move out of the Battle Frontier before updating, or revert to b1.4.3 and do so, then update to b1.5.0 again.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Lithium

[felinefriend]

is it possible to modify Sinnohian Pokemon (such as S. HootHoot) in PkHex?

[Lithium]

14 minutes ago, felinefriend said:

is it possible to modify Sinnohian Pokemon (such as S. HootHoot) in PkHex?

Yes, but it won't let you add 'illegal' moves or abilities unless you rename the exe to PkHaX.
Also, it doesn't account for any changes made in the rom even after that, so stats may be reset to their vanilla counterparts. Just put the Pokemon in the PC to re-generate the stats, though.

Which ability slot it has will also be important (1 or 2) if it has yet to evolve. For example, if Pokemon A has Ability A in slot 1, and you change it to Ability B but keep it set to slot 1, when it evolves it will gain the ability in slot 1 of the evolution.

Sorry if that doesn't make sense, I have to sleep now. Tomorrow I head out, so I'll be going incommunicado for an undetermined amount of hours.

Again, I won't have access to hacking tools for at least a little over a week, so I won't be able to make any updates.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Lithium

[doug.ord]

Does anyone else have a problem patching the ROM ? Whenever I try I get an error message that says:

 "An error has occurred: xdelta3: target window checksum mismatch: XD3_INVALID_INPUT" 

Can anyone here help me out please?

[Broubrou]

Does this not work with 3541 because thats the only version i have, if it doesnt where would i find a patch for new versions.

[Lithium]

On 4/5/2022 at 9:41 AM, doug.ord said:

Does anyone else have a problem patching the ROM ? Whenever I try I get an error message that says:

 "An error has occurred: xdelta3: target window checksum mismatch: XD3_INVALID_INPUT" 

Can anyone here help me out please?

 

On 4/5/2022 at 10:59 AM, Broubrou said:

Does this not work with 3541 because thats the only version i have, if it doesnt where would i find a patch for new versions.

I think both of you are having the same problem. Like it says in the included instructions(please read them before asking questions like this), you NEED a Rev 1 Platinum rom to patch with.

Not one with Renegade Platinum already on it, not any rom that isn't marked Rev 1. You need a Rev 1 Platinum rom. No, there is no version that's compatible with other versions of Platinum, and no, I won't make one, because it would make updating and maintaining the hack much more complicated.

[Shytrainwreck]

This is a bit of an obvious question, but does the cute charm glitch work just like in Regular platinum?

[Lithium]

19 hours ago, Shytrainwreck said:

This is a bit of an obvious question, but does the cute charm glitch work just like in Regular platinum?

Most likely. I don't know how the Cute Charm glitch works internally though; so because the shiny rate is now 1/512, there's a chance it won't work the same way as before.

[Shytrainwreck]

11 hours ago, Lithium said:

Most likely. I don't know how the Cute Charm glitch works internally though; so because the shiny rate is now 1/512, there's a chance it won't work the same way as before.

Aha, I see. I guess me getting two shiny pokemon with Sinohhan Poochyena on the front was just a coincidence and not from the glitch. Thank you for answering my question, mister Lithium.

[Pokemon Trainer X]

Hi i have recently done a playthough of your game on my youtube channel and was wondering if you could tell me all the things to do in postgame as i want to do one last video of it but dont want to spend hours going around looking for everything. Unless there is a lot of postgame content that cant be fit into one video

[Lithium]

13 hours ago, Pokemon Trainer X said:

Hi i have recently done a playthough of your game on my youtube channel and was wondering if you could tell me all the things to do in postgame as i want to do one last video of it but dont want to spend hours going around looking for everything. Unless there is a lot of postgame content that cant be fit into one video

In postgame, you have everything you could do in the original Platinum, save for the Battle Frontier, which doesn't work properly and was blocked off in a recent patch.

This is not to be confused for the Battle Zone, the area where the Battle Frontier is located- that still works. You can visit Stark Mountain, and battle the six unofficial 'gym leaders' from Renegade Platinum, each of which also got reworked teams in the same patch.

Aside from that, beating the Champion also unlocks a battle against Miror B. in the contest hall in Hearthome City. Be warned though, his team is all level 88/89!

There's also the Arceus quest, where you have to collect all the plates and catch most Pokemon(enough to earn you the Diploma). Talk to the NPCs in the church in western Hearthome City for more information about that.

[Lithium]

Released a minor bugfix update: b1.5.1. This fixes Tyrogue's evolutions, and an issue where Volkner's Sharpedo was carrying Leftovers instead of a Life Orb.

[Lithium]

Added a preview for all shiny Sinnohan Forms to the OP, directly underneath the main Sinnohan Form preview spoiler.