Before you read this stuff, please note that I will update the thread on GBATemp before I update this one. Progress updates will be seen much quicker there than they will be here. You might want to check that thread if you are really interested in looking at the progress of this hack. Also the downloads are there, since I'm not allowed to put them here anymore.
Rayless Ruby and Shadow Sapphire are rom hacks that I am currently developing. There are many changes to this game, including plot, wild encounters, trainer battles, and much more! NOTE: The current game only goes up to the 3rd badge, and the game will continue normally after that. I will link several tutorials to this post including how to install it on both gateway and hans, as well as updating the file without losing your save.
One of the main changes of this hack is the addition of shadow pokemon. Mysterious shadows from within the region are corrupting pokemon into shadow forms, making them more hostile, and giving them slight but noticeable stat boosts. Due to this corruption, pokemon with shadow forms do not have shiny forms, and each shadow pokemon also loses its secondary typing to gain the dark, or sometimes ghost typing. Now, you may think that this is OP to have in a game. I agree, which is why the shadow pokemon will always have 1%-5% encounter chance(with the exception of treecko, torchic, and mudkip), meaning that they are very rare to find.
There are a lot of evolutions that have also been changed. All of the trade evolutions have been made easier to obtain(so you don't need to trade), and a few other evolution methods have changed. I would list them, but right now they are one of the WIP parts that I'm still working on.
The overall game difficulty has been increased, giving trainers higher AI's and IV increases, and giving most trainers competitive items. To give you an idea of the changed level curve, the Elite 4 will be around lvls 70-80 instead of lvls 50-60, and the 3rd gym will be at about lvl 30-35 instead of 20-25(the reason I used the 3rd badge for an example is that it's one of the main level curves in the game).
I am also looking for a team to put this game together. I want to make this a great rom hack, but if I do it alone, it would either be terrible, or it wouldn't be out for another few years. Anyone that contributes will of course be given full credit. The main reason I need help is because the way the story text and battles are ordered is seriously confusing, and I want to make sure it is all done correctly. If you are interested in helping with the development of the game, the best way to contact me would probably be through skype. My skype is zangoose95(Also send me a message here because I usually deny people I don't know of).
NOTE: It is recommended that once the full version(1.0.0) comes out, anyone that had previously played it play it again. There will most likely be changes to battles, some plot, as well as wild encounters. By 1.0.0 I plan to have all 721 Pokemon available without trading. Also, when you play this game, nuzlocke at your own risk. This rom hack is made for all 3ds users, as long as you have homebrew access. There might eventually be a "pro" or "full" version for CFW only, but for now there will only be one version.
Edit to the previous paragraph: Since starting this, using a cfw for hacking has become more mainstreamed (since it is much easier and can be done on most versions), so I will likely just incorporate the features of the "pro/full" version into the main version.
Sorry That you've been waiting for so long! I've never gotten around to really trying to come back to working on this! I'm going to try to much more frequently (at least every day) so I can increase the frequency of these betas!
Known Glitches
Some of the story text might be messed up; haven't been able to do a playthrough with the full story text yet.
The DexNav will crash the game on some routes! If you want to try to use the DexNav, save before turning it on and save before entering a new route or a new part of a route!
Downloads
Changelog
Progress
Special Thanks
To Youtube users Mixeli and Shadowth117 for the player models
To TyranitarTube, because his Alpha Sapphire Extreme Randomizer series inspired me to make a game based on shadow pokemon.
To Asia81, for making a tutorial on how to dump and decrypt roms.
To Kaphotics, for making pk3ds, which I used to edit encounters, trainer battles, pokemon stats/level-up/TM & Tutor moves, and the shops; and also for garctool, which I used to decompress the files within the 'a' folder in RomFS
To Reisyukaku, for making ohana3ds, which I used to edit the title screen and sprites.
To all of the people on my Discord server for helping to give me ideas
To all of the Rom Hackers and Homebrew/CFW Developers that made these hacks possible
Not going to be too pushy with this, but if you want to see my progress updates, my twitter is the best place to go(@PrimalKyurem)
Occasionally I'll also play this game on my youtube channel as I work on it live. All of the streams are archived an can be found on my channel (haven't done one in a while)
Okay, this is really going to be the last place to check updates. I have a discord server for it now yay! https://discord.gg/7c6kCny