Little Parts of Fan Games

[Presley]

Hello, all! Most of us are creators of various fan games and projects and all have our little niches here and there. For me, I feel like I've got the hang of included all of the main story, characters, locations, etc. One thing that I really want to work on are the little elements that make a Pokémon game. Some examples of what I mean by the "little things" in Pokémon games would include things like: Move Tutors, including TMs, hidden areas, and the Game Corner. Some of these things are quite small while others are a little larger parts of these games. My questions are:

• How do you all determine when and where to put these things like Move Tutors?
• How often do you include accessibility to obtaining TMs?
• When do you include certain TMs in your game? (Like how early would you put moves like Roar or Fire Blast?
• How often do you try to incorporate little alcoves for items and such?

Please discuss away! And if you have any other questions similar to these, feel free to ask them!

 

[TechSkylander1518]

The Game Corner's nice in that it's had a pretty consistent pattern. In every region, the Game Corner is accessible just around the third gym-with a little variation, of course. (I even see this in fangames-Uranium has it at the third gym, and Reborn has it at the second)

Move Tutors and TMs are a little more varied, of course-since they have all sorts of little differences between them, there's not as much of a structure to them. One thing I've noticed is that sometimes they'll be there for the player to notice, but they won't be usable right away-maybe the TMs cost too much to buy all at once, or the Move Tutor needs a currency that they don't have much of yet. And when the player has access to a facility where they're encourage to mess around with their team (the training dojo of Uranium, the Battle Resort of ORAS, etc.) there's usually a TM store or Move Tutor (or both) nearby.

 

[doof]

Personally, I aim to have Move Tutors fairly commonly, but each one can teach different moves. Like, the farther you get into a game, the better the moves they can teach become. Another thing that I'm thinking of doing is having Move Tutors teach unique custom moves. Makes them more interesting.

Same thing with the Game Corner. I hope to have a couple of Game Corners across the region, each one focusing on one game and having different prizes available.

As for TM's, I typically add some as often as I can, whether it be through an NPC or found on a Route. More powerful moves would be harder to obtain - whereas Roar would probably just be found on the ground, Earthquake would need an HM to get to.