Completed Pokémon: The Rising Sun

brysoonye · Mar 14, 2021

Looking forward to trying this out! :)

AnonAlpaca · Mar 15, 2021

Sequel to one of my favourite Pokemon games with returning characters? Sign me up

Ekat · Mar 15, 2021

I ran into this error on startup. I just deleted my old save in Pokémon Essentials so I could continue.

You can rename your project by going to Game/Change Title. Just be aware that you will have to transfer your previous save to the new file the game will create. (Under Whatever your pc is/users/your name if applicable/saved games/folder with the title of your game.)

Ekat · Mar 16, 2021

I ran into a softlock here.

When Steven tries to walk over, the scientist is in the way.

KennyCatches · Mar 16, 2021

Ekat said:
Ekat said:

I ran into a softlock here.

When Steven tries to walk over, the scientist is in the way.

Click to expand...

Ah thanks for letting me know! I'm not sure how to fix the startup error D: but I fixed the softlock bug. Sorry about that!!

TechSkylander1518 · Mar 16, 2021

KennyCatches said:
Ah thanks for letting me know! I'm not sure how to fix the startup error D: but I fixed the softlock bug. Sorry about that!!

Ekat actually explained how to fix that! The problem was her game loaded a save for Pokemon Essentials, and that was incompatible with your game- just changing the project name should prevent it for any other players!

KennyCatches · Mar 16, 2021

TechSkylander1518 said:
Ekat actually explained how to fix that! The problem was her game loaded a save for Pokemon Essentials, and that was incompatible with your game- just changing the project name should prevent it for any other players!

Ohhhh right! Thank you!

KennyCatches · Mar 18, 2021

Update: v1.1 is out! Fixed the major softlock bug. (It was out two days ago but I didn't post an update, so sorry!)

Ekat · Mar 18, 2021

I ran into this crash.

If you try to challenge the grunts on the lower floor with Winona, the game crashes. (You can skip those trainers by going around the tables.)

KennyCatches · Mar 18, 2021

Ekat said:
I ran into this crash.

If you try to challenge the grunts on the lower floor with Winona, the game crashes. (You can skip those trainers by going around the tables.)

Ah... I'll fix that later today, sorry about the crash!

Ekat · Mar 18, 2021

Beat the game, here are my notes!

Aesthetic

I have mixed feelings on the gen 4 tileset with gen 3 overworlds. On the one hand, I think that the outdoor tileset looks pretty nice. On the other, tilesets like the indoors and Neo Magma lab are very bland. The Neo Magma hideout, for example, is almost entirely walls and a few boxes. There's a little variation in the main office, but nothing to distinguish it as a place where they would hang out. (No lava, no insignia, the main pallet was blue rather than red, etc.) I also noticed that the weather station was still in a traditional gen 3 style, which made it stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the graphics.

Your recreations of different Hoenn maps are nice to look at. They were relatively faithful. I think my favourite had to be Route 117. I didn't encounter (m)any tiling or collision-related errors, so that's a plus! I only have one nitpick with the maps. You need to make the tree entrance to the top of Mt. Chimney more clear. I had no idea it was an entrance, because there was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the treeline. Try adding some shadows, or some sort of path, so that the player can get an indication of it.

The human overworlds are great, but I did notice that some characters didn't have their sprites aligned properly. (Off the top of my head, I know that the youngster's walk right frames are a bit skewed.) The Pokémon overworlds are a bit strange. You have a mixture of gen 3 and a spinoff style. They tend to clash really badly, especially the ones you haven't resized, or have quadrupled. (I noted them down as pixel density issues in my bug notes.) I would suggest just using the standard gen 4 style following Pokémon, instead. That would at least give you some consistency.

Finally, I would suggest tweaking the custom text colours. Characters who use the green, yellow, and cyan text colours are almost unreadable. Try darkening and desaturating the brightness of the base colours. The hex codes for the text colours can be found in the script section MessageConfig, starting at line 301.

The Gameplay

The gameplay was pretty solid. I didn't have any issues with the balancing, and I usually could reach items if I needed them. There was no need for me to go out of my way to build a team with Wally or May, either.

I do wish the game had more to do than trainer battles. For the most part, the main game was run from point A to B, with a quick gauntlet of trainers between that. A few of Hoenn's side gimmicks would have been cool to see. (People interviewing you for cool phrases, the game corner, hidden Kecleon, secret bases, etc.)

Despite that, the world did feel full of NPCs. There were plenty of people to talk to, and side areas to explore, even if they didn't offer much.

I do have a few nitpicks. First is the Rock Smash item. I don't know if I missed a piece of dialogue mentioning the man in Mauville had it, but I saw no clear reason for the player to go there. Why not just start them off with the item, and save them the trouble? The other thing was the healing beds. In both places where they show up, they're redundant. Partner trainers automatically heal you.

The Writing

I noticed a few grammar errors here and there, but the only repeated thing that jumped out at me was the lack of an é on Pokémon. (If you want to figure out how to type it for your keyboard, you can just look up the accent code online. Or copy + paste it.)

There were a few plot details I wanted to point out.

It gets mentioned that the Cable Car is shut down. So why bother with Camerupt being parked out front of it? Wouldn't it be more consistent to have some police officers at the entrance, saying it's shut down?
Does the player/Weather Institute actually have the Red Orb? It gets mentioned, why would either of them have it?
I also don't understand the evil team's main objective in going after Groudon. Volcarona can already do what they want, which is increase the power of the sun. Isn't that redundant? They certainly seem to think so, given how quickly they abandon it.
Was the evil team's main objective meant to be silly? I don't understand why they'd chose the sun as an infinite energy source when electric-type Pokémon already exist... I know Flannery has a quick line about things not working that way, but it seems strange that the grunts all take their objective perfectly seriously. Perhaps you could include more dialogue in the game to clarify the plot's intended silliness, if that's the case?

Bugs

1. Nintendo Switches.
2. Tiling error.
3. Corners of your water tile are a different colour than the grass.
4. Wrong pixel density.
5. Priority.
6. Garbage pixels here.
7. Pixel density.
8. Sign's shadow.
9. Typo.
10. Pixel density.
11. Collision.
12. I noticed that I didn't initially start off as having Flannery as a partner. She would follow me, but her team wasn't in the battle. It wasn't until I fainted a few times that she registered properly.

1.

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8.

9.

10.

11.

Overall
While I did have my criticisms of the game, it didn't stop me from enjoying my playthrough. It was fun to return to Hoenn in this little adventure. I also like how you incorporated May, Brendan, and Wally back into the plot. There are places that could use polish, but this is still a good game! Nice job with this!

KennyCatches · Mar 19, 2021

Ekat said:
Beat the game, here are my notes!

Aesthetic

I have mixed feelings on the gen 4 tileset with gen 3 overworlds. On the one hand, I think that the outdoor tileset looks pretty nice. On the other, tilesets like the indoors and Neo Magma lab are very bland. The Neo Magma hideout, for example, is almost entirely walls and a few boxes. There's a little variation in the main office, but nothing to distinguish it as a place where they would hang out. (No lava, no insignia, the main pallet was blue rather than red, etc.) I also noticed that the weather station was still in a traditional gen 3 style, which made it stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the graphics.

Your recreations of different Hoenn maps are nice to look at. They were relatively faithful. I think my favourite had to be Route 117. I didn't encounter (m)any tiling or collision-related errors, so that's a plus! I only have one nitpick with the maps. You need to make the tree entrance to the top of Mt. Chimney more clear. I had no idea it was an entrance, because there was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the treeline. Try adding some shadows, or some sort of path, so that the player can get an indication of it.

The human overworlds are great, but I did notice that some characters didn't have their sprites aligned properly. (Off the top of my head, I know that the youngster's walk right frames are a bit skewed.) The Pokémon overworlds are a bit strange. You have a mixture of gen 3 and a spinoff style. They tend to clash really badly, especially the ones you haven't resized, or have quadrupled. (I noted them down as pixel density issues in my bug notes.) I would suggest just using the standard gen 4 style following Pokémon, instead. That would at least give you some consistency.

Finally, I would suggest tweaking the custom text colours. Characters who use the green, yellow, and cyan text colours are almost unreadable. Try darkening and desaturating the brightness of the base colours. The hex codes for the text colours can be found in the script section MessageConfig, starting at line 301.

The Gameplay

The gameplay was pretty solid. I didn't have any issues with the balancing, and I usually could reach items if I needed them. There was no need for me to go out of my way to build a team with Wally or May, either.

I do wish the game had more to do than trainer battles. For the most part, the main game was run from point A to B, with a quick gauntlet of trainers between that. A few of Hoenn's side gimmicks would have been cool to see. (People interviewing you for cool phrases, the game corner, hidden Kecleon, secret bases, etc.)

Despite that, the world did feel full of NPCs. There were plenty of people to talk to, and side areas to explore, even if they didn't offer much.

I do have a few nitpicks. First is the Rock Smash item. I don't know if I missed a piece of dialogue mentioning the man in Mauville had it, but I saw no clear reason for the player to go there. Why not just start them off with the item, and save them the trouble? The other thing was the healing beds. In both places where they show up, they're redundant. Partner trainers automatically heal you.

The Writing

I noticed a few grammar errors here and there, but the only repeated thing that jumped out at me was the lack of an é on Pokémon. (If you want to figure out how to type it for your keyboard, you can just look up the accent code online. Or copy + paste it.)

There were a few plot details I wanted to point out.

It gets mentioned that the Cable Car is shut down. So why bother with Camerupt being parked out front of it? Wouldn't it be more consistent to have some police officers at the entrance, saying it's shut down?

Does the player/Weather Institute actually have the Red Orb? It gets mentioned, why would either of them have it?

I also don't understand the evil team's main objective in going after Groudon. Volcarona can already do what they want, which is increase the power of the sun. Isn't that redundant? They certainly seem to think so, given how quickly they abandon it.

Was the evil team's main objective meant to be silly? I don't understand why they'd chose the sun as an infinite energy source when electric-type Pokémon already exist... I know Flannery has a quick line about things not working that way, but it seems strange that the grunts all take their objective perfectly seriously. Perhaps you could include more dialogue in the game to clarify the plot's intended silliness, if that's the case?

Bugs

1. Nintendo Switches.
2. Tiling error.
3. Corners of your water tile are a different colour than the grass.
4. Wrong pixel density.
5. Priority.
6. Garbage pixels here.
7. Pixel density.
8. Sign's shadow.
9. Typo.
10. Pixel density.
11. Collision.
12. I noticed that I didn't initially start off as having Flannery as a partner. She would follow me, but her team wasn't in the battle. It wasn't until I fainted a few times that she registered properly.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Overall
While I did have my criticisms of the game, it didn't stop me from enjoying my playthrough. It was fun to return to Hoenn in this little adventure. I also like how you incorporated May, Brendan, and Wally back into the plot. There are places that could use polish, but this is still a good game! Nice job with this!

Thank you so much for giving such detailed feedback! I really really appreciate it.

I did get quite lazy with indoor mapping, I didn't spend much time finding good tiles so I just went with the defaults :p The feedback about the aesthetics are very very helpful, I'll keep those in mind!

About the rock smash item, it was kinda like a throwback to the original games since you got rock smash from that same guy!

I didnt know partner trainers automatically heal your party! Thats good to know

I know that theres a lot of flaws in the story, haha. Story was definitely something I didn't focus too much on, but the story in the original games are always kinda silly, dont you think? But that isnt an excuse for my poor writing lol.

Thank you so much for playing my game, I means a lot to me! I'm very excited to play Nightshade :>

KennyCatches · Mar 19, 2021

v1.2 is out! Fixes minor bugs.

KennyCatches · Mar 19, 2021

IMPORTANT PSA: The "Game Download" link previously went to v1.0, the broken version. Please download v1.2 again. If the file doesn't say v1.1 or v1.2, don't play it! A lot of you must've experienced that softlock, really sorry about that!

ThatWelshOne_ · Mar 31, 2021

Hello! I just finished your game. I really enjoyed this entry. It was nice to revisit Hoenn with updated graphics, so a "well done" from me. A few points of feedback from me:

1. I loved the trees in your outdoor tileset, particularly the ones around Mauville City. I'll most likely be pinching those (with credits to the original creator(s), of course).
2. The choice of music was great. I especially loved the updated trainer battle theme. That's always been one of my faves across the entire franchise.
3. I think you handled the multiple protagonists feature well. Getting to play as different Hoenn heroes was a nice surprise!
4. I enjoyed the story overall. I'll come back to this later, though.
5. The tiny Wingull were adorable even if they weren't intentionally tiny.
6. The title screen was lovely. Great use of the modular title screen there.

1. I'm not a fan of trainer gauntlets. I wonder if you could reduce the number of battles or, as Ekat suggests, have a side area or small feature to distract the player for a few moments between battles?
2. I found May's first section pretty difficult. Maybe that's just me, but I whited out a few times on the way to the Weather Institute. I'm pretty bad at battling, so you can probably just ignore this point unless others have said the same thing. Something I can think of quickly is to give May more money at the start to be able to buy more healing items.
3. I agree with Ekat's point about Groudon being redundant given Volcarona exists in the game. Maybe the story could be more focussed on Volcarona from the get-go. Like, Larvesta are refusing to evolve outside of their native region, so the evil team are trying to find a way to evolve them into Volcarona. Perhaps the Weather Institute holds the secret as they've been studying unusual evolution methods.
4. I liked the mid-battle dialogue. Could you use this same script to make certain battles more interesting? Setting entry hazards, changing the weather, setting up a trick room... So many possibilities! I can see this being hard to balance, though.

There were a few typos throughout the game. I've included a handful of screenshots of the ones I managed to grab, but there might be others I missed.
1. Its.
2. Find.
3. Intrigued.
4. This NPC in Verdanturf is super speedy.
5-7. A few pixels of these trees are missing.
8. Pause menu says I'm Wally when I'm not.
9. This NPC is set to event/player touch.
10. I think Winona's text changed from magenta to orange at the end of this cutscene.

1.

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10.

Overall, a great game filled with nostalgia. Nicely done!

KennyCatches · Apr 1, 2021

ThatWelshOne_ said:
Hello! I just finished your game. I really enjoyed this entry. It was nice to revisit Hoenn with updated graphics, so a "well done" from me. A few points of feedback from me:

1. I loved the trees in your outdoor tileset, particularly the ones around Mauville City. I'll most likely be pinching those (with credits to the original creator(s), of course).
2. The choice of music was great. I especially loved the updated trainer battle theme. That's always been one of my faves across the entire franchise.
3. I think you handled the multiple protagonists feature well. Getting to play as different Hoenn heroes was a nice surprise!
4. I enjoyed the story overall. I'll come back to this later, though.
5. The tiny Wingull were adorable even if they weren't intentionally tiny.
6. The title screen was lovely. Great use of the modular title screen there.

1. I'm not a fan of trainer gauntlets. I wonder if you could reduce the number of battles or, as Ekat suggests, have a side area or small feature to distract the player for a few moments between battles?
2. I found May's first section pretty difficult. Maybe that's just me, but I whited out a few times on the way to the Weather Institute. I'm pretty bad at battling, so you can probably just ignore this point unless others have said the same thing. Something I can think of quickly is to give May more money at the start to be able to buy more healing items.
3. I agree with Ekat's point about Groudon being redundant given Volcarona exists in the game. Maybe the story could be more focussed on Volcarona from the get-go. Like, Larvesta are refusing to evolve outside of their native region, so the evil team are trying to find a way to evolve them into Volcarona. Perhaps the Weather Institute holds the secret as they've been studying unusual evolution methods.
4. I liked the mid-battle dialogue. Could you use this same script to make certain battles more interesting? Setting entry hazards, changing the weather, setting up a trick room... So many possibilities! I can see this being hard to balance, though.

There were a few typos throughout the game. I've included a handful of screenshots of the ones I managed to grab, but there might be others I missed.
1. Its.
2. Find.
3. Intrigued.
4. This NPC in Verdanturf is super speedy.
5-7. A few pixels of these trees are missing.
8. Pause menu says I'm Wally when I'm not.
9. This NPC is set to event/player touch.
10. I think Winona's text changed from magenta to orange at the end of this cutscene.

1.View attachment 3289
2.View attachment 3290
3.View attachment 3291
4.View attachment 3292
5.View attachment 3293
6.View attachment 3294
7.View attachment 3295
8.View attachment 3296
9.View attachment 3297
10.View attachment 3298

Overall, a great game filled with nostalgia. Nicely done!

Hey! Thanks so much for playing my game and giving feedback!

The music from the game are all from omega ruby/alpha sapphire!
You made a MUCH better story than I did so quickly >< I agree, the story writing could be better!
Thank you for the bug reports!

I really appreciate the feedback, thanks again for playing! :)

KennyCatches · Apr 9, 2021

Version 1.3 is out! This update has small gameplay adjustments, it makes the game a bit less trainer gauntlet-y and the beginning of May's section is a bit easier. See change list below or in thread. I also included Galactic Gaming's YouTube playthrough in the thread, go support him!

Updated 9th April.
Some trainers now have custom pathing, battling them are optional now.
May's Pokemon are one level higher.
May starts off with 7000 extra gold.
Fixed a couple of typos and tile errors.
Edited some dialogue.
2nd battle vs Ray should have a Conkeldurr instead of a random Mienshao. (oops)

I probably won't update the game anymore unless it's for something major. Thank you everyone who played my game!!

Lord Lucario 35 · Jun 6, 2021

Amazing game, you should make one about Team Aqua next for the next game jam. Only issue is the team magma leader's sprites was not transparent.

KennyCatches · Jun 6, 2021

Version 1.3b is out, the background of the final boss trainer sprite is now transparent. If I somehow broke the game, download v1.3 instead

Lord Lucario 35 said:
Amazing game, you should make one about Team Aqua next for the next game jam. Only issue is the team magma leader's sprites was not transparent.

Thank you so much for playing! And thank you for reporting that issue, I can't believe I had that out for so long

Completed Pokémon: The Rising Sun

brysoonye

Novice

AnonAlpaca

Why Do People Call Me A GOAT

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

TechSkylander1518

Wiki Dweeb

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

ThatWelshOne_

Champion

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

KennyCatches

can he catch his?

Lord Lucario 35

Cooltrainer

KennyCatches

can he catch his?