Unused & Scrapped Content

[Deo]

Game development can be a long process, and you can end up changing, tweaking, and removing certain things. If you've worked on your project for a long time, there's a high chance there's some content you've ended up cutting from the game for one reason or another.

This has always been an interesting topic to me, and I love seeing what sort of things people ended up not using. If this is something you've done and you don't mind sharing a few pieces of cut content: please do! Especially if you're up to providing insight on why it was cut, and maybe even what it was replaced with.

 

[doof]

Oh yeah, I've definitely cut some stuff out of games in my time. I've probably cut more than I've released. Lemme see all that I can remember across all the games I've made. You might wan't to settle in by a nice fire, maybe make a mug of hot chocolate. This is going to a decently sized list.

Cut from Loyalty:
-Multiple regions, because that's a bad.
-Branching paths and player choice was cut due to just rushing in and not planning anything - that got out of hand fast.
-Several custom Megas, due to not being able to actually sprite them.
-A lot of story stuff - can't say what or how, though.
-The third rival. There were originally three rivals - Keith and his sister Sarah, and Kelsey - however the third was scrapped, and Kelsey became Keith's sister, since they both started with K.
-And a whole lot more that I can't remember.

Cut from Loyalty April Fool's Edition:
-There was an end-game cutscene where the player woke up in their room and was approached by the two main rivals from the actual game. It was supposed to act like a bit of tie in to the real Loyalty, but was cut due to some technical difficulties.

Cut from Steve the Bibarel:
-Battling as Steve. I was going to try to add it in, but never found a good way to do it. There was even one version where Steve used PokeBalls like a regular trainer.
-Better stealth tactics. There originally were plans for Steve to be able to dig underground and swim underwater to avoid enemies. Cut due to lack of knowledge and time.

Cut from Steve the Bibarel : Heart of Darkness:
-Original boss was going to be Darkrai. Cut due to being a bit of an overused idea.
-Secondary boss was going to be a Dark Bibarel, but was cut because Raiden came up with a much better idea.
-The escort mission. There was a character that you'd have to escort from one town to the other. Cut because I was kinda lazy.

So yeah, cutting stuff out is a natural part of making a game. I mean, it doesn't matter how cool or smart you think you are, not all of your ideas are the bestest ever. Sometimes you realize that you don't need them, sometimes you find something better, sometimes you wonder what you were smoking when you added that in.

 

[Dragonite]

Six months ago I would have been all over this thread, but now . . . where do I even begin?

Pokémon Shadow Unbound
- Turn-based battles, because I would have had to program them from scratch and I hate turn-based battle logic
- Action battles, because I noticed that other aspects of the game were more fun anyway
- A large (if not 721) Pokédex, because those are just bad
- Time travel, because (don't ask)
- Pokétch - it was fun to make but looked (and worked) pretty badly

I'll post again when I'm (more) done with my current project and hopefully that list will be a little less vague :P

 

[Aki]

Let's see...I usually cut things for the sake of time, but here's a couple of design decisions

MewYou:
-Field moves like Rock Smash were cut out because it goes too hard against player's expectations that they'd be able to smash them. Just being able to levitate over water throws most people off and they assume it's a bug at first.
-A level at the end where you navigate through Mewtwo's New Island Dungeon. The ending of the game is suppossed to resemble the first movie, but I really didn't want to make tiles for that or have to involve a bunch of canon characters in cutscenes.
+Added content: I saw that most players never even thought about the visual markers I'd put on every map, so I ended up adding an NPC who clearly states what they are. The same goes for talking to NPCs who were on top of ledges; for some reason a lot of players tried doing that, so I added it in along with talking to NPCs behind fences.

Bonfire Stories:
-Having each character offer multiple stories at once instead of unlocking them one at a time (unlocking doesn't actually happen yet either, there's not that many stories implemented). If a player was trying to keep track of all their options that'd be like,12-15 at once. Yeesh
-A story that takes place in space, because it made me really want to make a Eeveelution that evolves in zero gravity but this isn't a fakemon game.
-A crossover story taking place in Ethereal Gates' Leneka region. Didn't even end up running that idea by Evan because again, decided on no Fakemon.
-In 'Duplicates' there were originally battles against household objects in order to clean them, and the items would've used only HP restoring moves (Old Vase used Gather Dust!) or moves that didn't do anything. I kept Minccino's moveset but did pokemon instead because they're way more interesting, even if it's kinda wacky.
-A time based event in 'The Changeling' if the player tried going into town after being told not to. It would involve being chased, but would've cut the player off of the second part of the forest and I didn't want to have branching paths.
-'Flashing Lights' was way longer and more hostile. The story still revolves around "the main character has memory loss and so is locked in a time loop while the situation slowly gets worse with each loop" but that was toned down a lot so that the player doesn't have to come to that exact conclusion to follow the story (just know that freaky things are happening).
-A story called 'The Huntress' was re-written to 'Ice Princess' because the twist at the end was that the protagonist was a murderer and that's why so much bad stuff had been happening. There's already a story in the game though where the player gets to be a bad guy and there's karma-tic justice, and that character is more interesting and fun to play as.
+Added content: Keeping the TMs after each story. Originally that wasn't suppossed to happen, but players liked it and the TMs became more valuable as collectibles.

 

[Dawn Bronze]

My only released project was made for the game jam, so obviously most of these features were cut because of the time restraint

Pokemon Umber:

• Gen 7 - I briefly thought about adding a few Pokemon for gen 7 (along with their moves and abilities), but I quickly realised that that was a dumb idea since we didn't even know basic stuff like their stats and move-pools when I was developing the game, much less have anything scripted towards it.
• Another town north of Lazuli Town - I think I've mentioned that Umber Island was based off of the actual island of Tenerife in Spain. Me and my family go there on holiday a lot, and so I wanted to add a lot of features and places that stuck out to me when we go there. One of these places was a town called Los Gigantes that we went on a day trip to. I really liked the general feel and the huge cliffs that the town had, so I thought it would be nice to add it in. Like I said though, unfortunately I ran out of time. I'm not sure it would have really fit into the plot anyway though. :P
• Nanab Berry Plantation - This is another thing that was based off of the real world location. They grow a lot of Bananas in Tenerife. I had the same issues as the planned town.
• Raikou - During the planning stages, I wanted all three of the legendary beasts to be in the game. I had planned something actually kinda cool for Raikou. The native people of Tenerife had pyramids similar to the ones in South America, and I had planned to have Raikou be found inside of one of those. I was thinking about having a puzzle involving electricity in some form (not sure if I'd have been able to pull that off anyway though :P). Again though, this had to be cut because I realised I wouldn't have enough time, so it never got past the initial planning stages.

Keep in mind I'm working on a little update for Umber at the moment, so maybe some of these things will be added in. Who knows..?

 

[TechSkylander1518]

Around the time I started planning out my game, I was thinking it'd be cool to see creatures and characters from Paranatural and Monster Pulse in a fakemon game. Some of the pieces clicked nicely (Bina of Monster Pulse likes dinosaurs, so she could be a professor that studied fossils, some creatures like Scrapdragon (pnat) lent themselves to easy typings, and I think making Rixis (mp) a Light/Flying might've been what made me want to include a Light-type) But as this train of thought continued, the idea of including more mechanics from these stories made things overcomplicate, and the game had been taking off on a story of its own.

 

[Falcon]

Considering we're still developing the demo, I'm certain that this list will grow in the future.

Pokémon Dimensions: Jadeite and Painite
-Originally called Pokémon Jadeite and Painite.
-The main legends were originally 'evil', kidnapping your mom who turns out to be a Pokémon? (What were we thinking?!)
-Mega Evolution. We have 5 finished official arts and upwards of 20 planned but decided to trash it.
-Fairy typing. I took a break from Pokémon during 6th Gen so I didn't really like coming back to this idea. Plus the only real identification of being said type (in my opinion) is being pink? Not good enough to cut it for me.
-Secondary region.
-All cannon/official Pokémon.
-Plenty of fakemon designs and ideas...
*To be continued...

Operation Strike Back
-16 other missions and 4 other ranks.
-Female character. Couldn't find a public back sprite and we didn't have time to make one so we decided to cut it.
-Whole training session at the boot camp.
-More absurdly difficult and stupid number puzzles (you're welcome).
-Fixing the whole ending section so that way no one ever beats it and I get more views on YouTube. (Laziness)
-Composing a new song for the credits. Tears of Life played in the credits. (I hate myself)
-Stealing of other trainers Pokémon to use on your team.
-Raid of the HQ and everyone gets arrested but you...

What a sad and cringeful trip down Memory Lane...

 

[Jephed]

When I first started Pokémon Ominous, it was very very different from what I'm working with now.
Most of the differences are aesthetic and story-related changes though.

- Originally the evil team was going to be Team Rocket. ('cause y'know... that hasn't been done before xD)
- Team Rocket was supposed to mutate a Pikachu and basically make it the strongest Pikachu ever (which would be the Signature Pokémon for the game)
- By the end of the main story the main character would've captured one of the legendary birds to fight the Pikachu.
- The game was originally going to be in standard 5th gen graphics. (then I decided to "up-res" everything and give myself a harder time)
- Two Regions. (Why did I think one region wouldn't be enough?)
- Character customisation (imo a fangame should only do this if it's done right. Atomic Reactor is doing a great job at this, but this feature was far too much for what I am capable of) Now it's just reduced to a set amount of different costumes.
- HM's. (Completely replaced by something new)

Those are the most significant changes.

 

[Evan]

-A crossover story taking place in Ethereal Gates' Leneka region. Didn't even end up running that idea by Evan because again, decided on no Fakemon.

On a more serious note--
Tons of things were scrapped for PEG, mostly Pokemon, and the idea of having our Pokemon mixed with old Pokemon. Our cover legends were initially (a while back) going to be based on the Sun and Moon, and our region was going to take place in the Chubu Region of Japan, which is just north of Kanto/Johto's Kanto/Kansai.

 

[Luka S.J.]

Here's the a few of the things (I can still remember) that I cut out from Blue Chrome while I was still working on it

• Key items (tools) to replace HMs - instead I went with something that would better fit with the lore of the story
• Lots of Pokemon - I mainly comprised the dex of gen 3 since the region was supposed to be more like gen 3
• Online functionality - this was mainly cut from the demo because I didn't feel like setting up a proper server
• PWT - made an entire system, which I planned on not using for the entirety of the game
• X/Y styled trainer customizations - I made the scripts for this, but ended up just completely removing them due to the amount of sprite parts that had to be drawn
• Pokemon migration - I made a little system to be able to trade cross RMXP fan games, which I ended up scrapping completely
• YuGiOh GX styled trainer academies - originally this was supposed to be the approach to gyms, which I never ended up implementing
• More than one region - I quickly realised that this wasn't the smartest approach for what I had in mind for my game
• Trainer experience & stamina systems - wanted to make it more like a traditional RPG in that sense, but ended up going with the Pokemon formula
• Minigames and doodling apps - lots of small irrelevant apps for the PokeCOM which I completely got rid of
• LoZ styled flute playing system - I thought of having the player interact with the world through playing melodies like in LoZ (replacement ended up being the Orbs of Life)

 

[DerxwnaKapsyla]

Faith & Prayer Version hasn't had a lot of cut content, but there was a few things that I have trashed in development.

• Faith & Prayer Version was to initially have four regions. Early on in Johto, and even back during mid Kanto, I was struggling to really work Hoenn into the plot. By Mid-Johto, when I was really feeling the burn of Multi-Regions, I basically sat myself down and said "Okay, five years have passed. Let's be honest with ourselves here. Including Hoenn just cannot work." And my brain just threw out every reason it couldn't work, and I couldn't counter-argue it. I made the executive decision to scrap Hoenn, and now the game is just Kanto and Johto, with Gensokyo remaining the Postgame Region.
• There was initially plans to have a Hotel system. Each region would have two hotels, A large one in the main port city (Vermillion, Olivine, Slateport), and a smaller, but still significant one, in a large city (Celadon, Goldenrod, Lilycove). While both types would have had recycling trainers depending on the day of the week, and would reset the following week, allowing you to battle them infinitely, the larger one would have more facilities in them, such as a Pokemon Center on the top floor, and a PokeMart on the bottom floor. You could also use your room as a resting area, which would heal your Party back to max. It wasn't long after finishing the Vermillion Hotel's design that I scrapped the concept because of how much tedious work it'd be to implement six of these. I may come back to it later on, but I don't see it being likely.
• While not necessarily in game, I had planned to include special seasonal events. Within the Touhoumon community, there were several Christmas-themed sprites used in some of the other ROM Hacks. Getting permission to use them, I was going to make a small area (accessible only during the Winter Season) where you could obtain these alternate formed Puppets. Unfortunately, every time I thought about doing it, I just didn't want to take the effort to make it a reality, and it was usually too late to consider it.
• I was going to be an stick in the mud and make the Life Orb unusable. While I was in the Touhoumon community proper, people would joke about how Life Orb would do "funny things" to 1.8x's balance. I said I would jokingly include the item, but it would be a key item and unusable. I later revised that, and made one of the side quest key items be called the "Life Orb", and it'd be used to get a legendary, and that would be it. Eventually, I grew up and decided to stop being such an uncharacteristic prude, and called the key item the "Soul Orb" (tentative, since I realize that could be mistaken for Soul Dew), and the Life Orb is now obtainable at the Celadon Game Corner.
• Nepgear. For those of you not familiar with the Hyperdimension Neptunia series (Be warned, it's a bit Suggestive. Not outright lewd, but.), Nepgear is the name of one of the characters in the game. In one of the games, she gets hold of a Cursed Sword called Gehaburn, which she uses to slay her kin, and bring about a "utopia". Within my friend circle, we've made some in-jokes about Nepgear and Gehaburn and that particular ending, but mostly about Nepgear in general. Back about two years ago, a friend of mine made a Nepgear sprite, and I had the brilliant idea to make a shitpost video involving a few of our in-jokes, namely involving Nepgear and an entity called "The Collector". Because Moxie wasn't in that build of Essentials, I used Speed Boost as a base for Nepgear's ability variant instead. Reception to the video in general was... less than positive. I debated adding her to the game as a joke Puppet, but I figured with the reaction to the video, and the fact that I was pushing it with having Pokemon and Touhoumon existing in the same game already, it might be too... forced? I don't know. Either way, I decided against it.
• Wild Battle Music would have been dynamic, and adjusted to what the Puppet you fought was. This would have been too much work, and felt awkward next to Pokemon, who used a stock theme. It also would have bloated the file size.
• The Battle Frontier would have been a postgame location. Unfortunately, with the Battle Frontier broken in Essentials, this idea fell flat instantly. I decided to replace this with the PWT that Luka made.
• A "translation" system that would have fixed all my typos and grammatical errors. This fell through because of how much work it was to maintain, having to fix it every single update was not something neither I nor my former grammatical adviser wanted to do.

 

[Radical Raptr]

I'm obsessed with player outfits and being able to dress how you like, and with that, in an old game I had a feature where you time traveled - male and female characters could wear any clothes they wanted (including opposite gender clothes, so there was only 1 player character rather than 2 (one for male and one for female) and as a result, it made it easy to have time travelling included since I could have the "present" be one character, and the "past" be another character
doing it that way allowed the player's outfit to be retained through "time travel" which I thought was neat.

Another feature I had in a previous game I mentioned before was having the player choose the pronouns they were addressed by. It made writing dialogue a little easier since I would just have the pronoun be replaced with a specific variable, and then when the game starts, in the intro you would choose the specific pronoun you wanted (ie, male, female or other - other being w/e you type in)
It's a bit weird and I got a lot of questions as to why I included it, and I felt it added a bit of inclusion no other game has ever had for literally no extra effort.

Another feature I may or may not include is returning to the one use TM's - it was inspiration I got from replaying the VC games of RBY, and I thought it would be really cool to have a set of TM's that were once use, but include the option to create your own TM's in some way, like having a pokemon who knows a move make the TM or something like that. It would force the player to think twice before they spam all their pokemon with a powerful TM and give them a unique value.