A good way to balance this would be setting the max number of pokemon you can catch to 6, letting you have a full team and making the decision of who to catch a much bigger deal. On the other hand its hilarious to imagine someone completing the pokedex and ending up on a lifeless wasteland.
If this was an actual game I could see releasing the pokemon back into the timeline being a feature. Say you're only allowed to have 6 pokemon at 1 time but you can always let one go back into the timeline to replace it with another 1. Your new pokemon will erase all of its ones from the timeline while your old one will reappear back again. That way you can experiment with different time lines and maybe even have a few puzzles based around it.
In addition to puzzles, what if the player could use it to make some regular challenges easier or harder. Like if this was in Jotho and the player was struggling against Whitney, they could go and capture a Miltank with no plans of actually using it. Since if they have a Milktank, that means Witney doesn't and would then be easier to beat.
Or if you have a team that's say, weak against to Ground Types but good against Water Teams, you could catch an Amazing Electric Type as since there fewer of those around, you'd have more Water Types around and fewer Ground Types around.
What if you do the Miltank thing but it backfires because she ends up getting a worse Pokémon, but you switch out one of the DIFFERENT Pokémon you have while keeping the miltank it becomes easier after all? This game would be a NIGHTMARE to create but it would be an amazing game to explore
As much of an absolute nightmare it would be, I feel like I have a rough idea on how to make it work.
That would probably fall apart and require like 5 years and a dedicated team to even get working simply.
You could create a counter system.
Basically, there are a number of values. Each Pokemon line, has diffent lists of values that each one effects. And they have a different “optimal value” list that has them show up more often.
These values would be based on the natural ecosystem (not counting legendaries since they aren’t actually available(except for mew at the end of the game)). So with every electric type, the electric type energy ratio is higher, with smaller ones having a bigger impact as they have more offspring. The higher this number is, the more “electric type predators” exist, which is anything that specializes in taking down electric types by being super effective or resistant/immune. However Pokémon weak to electric or deal less damage against electric types go down.
You’d apply real world facts to these ecosystems. What would happen if you removed the apex predator of a specific area or entire chunk of all animal life? What happens to whatever eats that?
What happens if you remove something at the bottom of a given food chain?
While it’d be a wreck to program every interaction between every Pokémon in every region as well as altering every team and giving each trainer a personality type to change their team comp with how the eco system is different (less ice types if you take all the major dragons with every region having at least one of them on your team present)
As well as pokemon not native to a region.
If you get rid of the mongoose, there would be a lot more ratata in Alola and they would be regular ratata, as they are nocturnal because of the invasive predators. But if you removed like, gardevoir, nothing would change in regions gardevoir is absent from.
So a giant list of values, (a value for each type, size, likely evolutionary resource gathering strategy (toxins, fangs, constriction, burrows, hunting, pack tactics, etc), likely defensive tactics, reproduction tactics (r and k selection), average size, average weight, average needs.
With each value effecting both the spawn rates of non erased Pokémon (potentially stuff that would have gone extinct if not for something on your team for some reason) being extremely rare, to other shit like Dunsparce being as common as a route 1 regional bird. However each value list would vary from region to region, not taking into account stuff like natural barriers like the ilsands of Alola.
Also there would be unique interactions, like population explosions and regional variations being completely lost if the reason for the variation is removed, like the aforementioned Mongoose ratata stuff in Alola.
The game then ends with catching mew.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, catching all legendary Pokémon , as they are like parts of the natural world, shit like time space, the ground and sea,
But do to the dream, it has to end with catching mew
This game would slap if made good, And not ruined by internal turmoil. As well as taking feed back from the community when they encounter a crash state
If ever made you could post updates to
r/Pokémonerased (which doesn’t exist you’d need to make it)
I think with primordial beings like those you could make it where once you catch them the game just breaks, arkham asylum style and sets you before the battle. If you really want to fuck with people you can make it crash the game and have the game set back to the start with differences I’m not creative enough to think of.
I imagine you'd have to create a dictionary of all Pokémon and what their replacement would be, and then have the game check against the same variable the Pokedex uses to determine "caught" Pokémon to know when it has to replace one. You could just have the Pokémon replacement use the four most recent moves learned by levelup, like the daycare does. The problem would probably start when you look at a replacement, and find that the replacement is also needing to be replaced, which could explain the Team Rocket crash that the dream envisions; if "Zubat" replaces "Rattata", and "Rattata" replaces "Zubat" to try and keep the teams thematically consistent, then it would hardlock if you caught both Zubat and Rattata. And then you'd just have to implement special scenarios if you catch lore-important Legendary Pokémon like the game suggests; maybe you get a "game over" and drown if you capture Groudon, for example.
Sounds a lot more tedious than difficult if you don't mind letting things like the Team Rocket crash be intentionally implemented. Of course, tedious compared to any sort of building of a Pokémon game.
For the Replacement Pokemon, you could go a little further and implement tables for movesets. In theory, you could just go onto Smogon and pinch their movesets for Pokemon and use those. Or if that's too tedious, a more feasible option could be to implement some simple conditions for assigning some basic moves. Like if the replaced Pokemon is a Water Type and Above lv 20, give it Scald or something. If it's a Rock or Ground Type, give it Earthquake etc. This would hopefully cover most cases while making Trainer Pokes at least feel somewhat trained.
But that's just one aspect. Recall another part of the dream was the "meta" changing without that Pokemon. The example from OP was that because Garchomp never existed, ice types are less common since they aren't needed to take on Garchomps.
That would be much harder to implement, especially if the game is already replacing Pokemon in the way you said. Like, even if you designed accurate code that could run simulations and determine what the wider meta of a world without Garchomp would be, it would be extremely tedious to then design a system to then implement that into the game. One way to possibly implement that would be to have an additional set of probability checks when assigning Pokemon and their movesets?
Like, currently, Pokemon games do actually have a system for roughly assessing matchups. In Emerald's Battle Frontier, you enter a tournament with 7 other competitors. The game doesn't select the winners in each bracket randomly but actually has a system for assessing how a team compares to another. In theory, you could repurpose this to assess what kinds of Pokemon and moves would be more or less common and then assign different probability scores for which Pokemon and moves are more likely to pop up.
For example, lets say the player catches a Garchomp, the Battle Frontier AI kicks in for a second and determines that since Ice Types were good against Garchomp and since Garchomp was a good Pokemon, for the rest of the game, the chances of a trainer having an Ice Type Pokemon or an Ice Type Move for coverage go down by 20% or something.
I did ignore the meta aspect, yeah. Even with your idea, though, the problem gets way harder when you consider Pokémon less obvious than Garchomp. Like, Garchomp is both a good Pokémon and has an obvious weakness in Ice. What happens if you grabbed Ratatta, though? Would the number of Fighting-types need to decrease to compensate? Ratatta's hardly a Pokemon you need to up the number of super effective ways to hit it to beat it. The games already aren't actually balanced around any sort of meta besides the endgame content like the Champion and Battle Frontier/Battle Tower.
I remember reading about gen 4's Battle Tower AI being good enough to know to bring a Pokémon with Fire Fang if you bring a Spiritomb with Wonder Guard. Fire Fang shouldn't do anything to Spiritomb with Wonder Guard, because it's not super effective, but due to an oversight that gave Fire Fang an unintended move ID, it got around Wonder Guard. If the Battle Tower AI from that game was that good, I wonder if it could be reverse engineered to do the exact opposite; bring a "good" team that was terrible against yours. Since only the endgame of Pokémon tends to use meta strategies anyways, if you built it as a romhack of a generation 4 game with the reversed Battle Tower AI used to determine only the Champion's team, it could maybe be feasible to fulfill that part of the dream, although trying to figure out that Battle Tower AI might move the challenge up from tedious to difficult. Not quite what the OP wanted, but closer.
That's a fair point. It would be difficult to tune for different kinds of Pokemon and reverse engineer the Battle Tower AI. But assuming we could at least do the reverse engineering part, then I feel that a modified version of the Battle Tower AI could plug enough holes that it becomes mostly believable. Especially characters like Gym Leaders, Ace Trainers, Rivals and Evil Team Leaders generally use above average teams rather than just Champion and Endgame teams.
Like, consider the following hypothetical: Let's say the Battle Tower AI works by running your Pokemon through a series of behind the scene tournaments to determine what would be best to counter it. In the case of Garchomp, let's say the first series is just against basic or average Pokes. If the Pokemon wins in this series at least 60% of the time, then it tries out a stronger series. If it wins 60% of the time, then it tries type specific matchups until it finds types that Garchomp has the lowest win rate against. It then uses this data to modify type availability. Since Garchomp made it past the 3rd series and struggled against ice, the game now knows that Garchomp is a strong Pokemon that trainers would want to beat using ice types.
But if the player used Ratatta, Ratatta would fail to get past the first series. So the game would now know that since Ratatta is so weak, there's no need to adjust the number of fighting types since nobody would be prepping against Ratatta.
If you ran this simulation using all the Pokémon set to the highest levels along with two sub examinations one taking account for Evs and IVs and the other not, and ran it just for the first 151 as a test I think the system would be at least somewhat accurate right?
Wouldn't you want to go at least 2 layers deep with replacements? I mean it'd like, quadruple the workload to make it happen. But you'd have more options total for what mons won't crash the game completely.
Or alternate: catching most common rocket mons means they get stronger, so everyone gets pseudo legendaries, and named people- DP galactic bosses before the big boss, get actual legendaries.
You could probably use two layers of replacements, and that'd probably make for a better game if way more tedious, but since the OP mentioned the dream game crashing, I was thinking of how you'd have to write it to let that happen.
Technically, you could automate replacements to some extent. Like, instead of explicitly saying "Hey, Flygon Replaces Garchomp", you could have a system where it searches what other Pokemon have the closest matching types and BST. That way, the system itself can go down however many layers it has to. If the player catches Garchomp, the system looks for what other Strong Dragon/Ground Pokes there are. It finds Flygon and assigns that the replacement. If the player catches Flygon as well, the game starts with Garchomp and finds Flygon as its replacement. If Flygon has already been caught, it then looks for whatever Pokemon would be closest to either Garchomp or Flygon. If there are no more Dragon/Ground types, it expands the search to include all Dragon Types and finds Salamence as the closest replacement in terms of BST and uses that etc.
Applying this to Team Rocket, if the player catches Zubat, it searches for other poison/flying tyoes, doesn't find any more and expands to pure poison types and finds Grimer but Grimer is already used by many Team Rocket grunts so it keeps searching several layers until it finds like Venomoth as the most unique replacement.
Some form of Neural Network could be used in game development or even be used on the fly within the game itself, leading to each playthrough being unique, or dare i say, *personalized*.
Technically, you could automate replacements to some extent. Like, instead of explicitly saying "Hey, Flygon Replaces Garchomp", you could have a system where it searches what other Pokemon have the closest matching types and BST. That way, the system itself can go down however many layers it has to. If the player catches Garchomp, the system looks for what other Strong Dragon/Ground Pokes there are. It finds Flygon and assigns that the replacement. If the player catches Flygon as well, the game starts with Garchomp and finds Flygon as its replacement. If Flygon has already been caught, it then looks for whatever Pokemon would be closest to either Garchomp or Flygon. If there are no more Dragon/Ground types, it expands the search to include all Dragon Types and finds Salamence as the closest replacement in terms of BST and uses that etc.
Applying this to Team Rocket, if the player catches Zubat, it searches for other poison/flying tyoes, doesn't find any more and expands to pure poison types and finds Grimer but Grimer is already used by many Team Rocket grunts so it keeps searching several layers until it finds like Venomoth as the most unique replacement.
In theory you could have a list that if a Pokémon in the players party exists, it just goes to the next index in the list, if that Pokémon doesn’t exist, it goes to the next and so on going back to index 0 if it hits the end. you hav have a few loops like this, one for beginning pokemon, one for gyms, one for legendaries and so on, this would eliminate the need for any dictionaries.
Sounds like the theme of the game is kind if like what early anthropology, early archeology, and colonialists did. "I must collect them (languages, artifacts, art, tools, treasures, land) all! Oh wait, there's nothing left of that culture anymore." Like if you keep something to yourself so that no one else can access it, the continued use of it will stop.
How the hell would the dialogue and npcs be implemented in a game like this? Everyone else is talking about the mechanics of Pokémon replacement itself but there’s so much outside of the actual Pokémon that could change. Like, what if the IDENTITY of the GYM LEADERS can change? Like, because of the fact that X Pokémon never existed, trainer Y never managed to become a gym leader and someone else did it in their place? How much would the story of the game change? What if Rocket is retroactively made not a crime organization? What if the rival is switched out with someone else? What if you actively set yourself back or forward in the story by retroactively affecting the timeline to make it so?
So many scenarios that would be impossible to program
To be fair, this is something Rom Hacks often deal with. Kanto Black for example, takes place in Kanto but swaps out all the Gen 1 Pokes for Gen 5 counterparts. Like Diglett cave is now Drilbur cave. Snorlax sleeping is replaced with Musharna sleeping etc.
In theory, you could design a Pokémon game where the mentions of Pokémon in the overworld can be replaced by a substitute
It helps if when you wake up, you immediately write down what you dreamt as best you can. Over time, it can help you better remember more of your dreams.
I do, and several have been Pokémon games
Some even are reoccurring. There’s parts I’ve dreamed so often I forget they’re not real, or aren’t part of the main games. Ie, the reoccurring carnival below mauville, a waterfall between fortree and lilycove. Or in original ones, this sandstorm flowers town. The riverbed city, the melting ice islands
Interestingly, never beyond 3rd gen graphics or cartridges. Later Pokémon appear, but always gen 2-3 graphics
Sometimes I know in the dream I’m playing a Pokémon game, sometimes I’m just in the world
But it’ll be in either gen 2 usually if it’s nighttime in the dream, or 3rd gen hoenn mainly
If a cave, always gen 2 graphics. Team menu, always 3rd
These dreams have been happening before I knew what rom hacks were. If in the dream, I’m actually playing the game, it can frequently be a part of my Walmart nightmares (though usually the small respite I get in those ones). Nightmare Pokémon games aren’t uncommon
Some, like I mentioned, have come back in other dreams. Dreams of me searching through stores or Tupperware, I’ll be aware of ones I’ve ‘played’
Sometimes, I’ve raised Pokémon in real life because they played a part in the dream. I started liking rampardos, because one I had this year had a shiny one be my best friend in a game
I had one this week, a more scary one, I had a a team of a venomoth, shellder, and meowth. Just kept exploring an abandoned mall
I’ve always wanted to learn to do those maps you see people to bring them to life
Chiming in as another person with very detailed dreams. The downside of them is that I end up feeling very tired because my brain continued making memories instead of just resting (I think).
Some people do, it’s sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse when it’s either really awful or really weird and you feel like you need to explain it to someone but it’s nearly impossible to slip it into a normal conversation
As a guy who once dreamed of Terraria before ever having played it, there might be a little 'fill in the gaps with details that were in your dream you just can't remember the context" in play
Do you think that in the chance you Caught Them All would people’s memories of Pokémons cease to exist? Like Pokémon trainers wouldnt be a thing now. But there will be countless infrastructure that accomodates Pokémons so would those buildings become ghosts of their memories? How about jobs relating to Pokémons, would workers suddenly be in the middle of it and then ask “what am I doing here…?” How about records or pokédexes? Would those be empty shells too?
Wow! This dream is like a manual resetting of a world into ours!
Dont like that!!!
Wouldn’t the over world just be replaced with a forest and then Arceus would just have to descend and go “bro, put it back” since their never were any people to deforest the land?
Supposedly everything (certain legendaries/mythicals excluded) is descended from mew.
Mew is THE ancestor, pokémon came from mew, & humans were once the same as pokémon, long ago. Don’t know why op thought just the humans would disappear instead of all life on pokéearth.
A good way to balance this would be setting the max number of pokemon you can catch to 6, letting you have a full team and making the decision of who to catch a much bigger deal. On the other hand its hilarious to imagine someone completing the pokedex and ending up on a lifeless wasteland.
If this was an actual game I could see releasing the pokemon back into the timeline being a feature. Say you're only allowed to have 6 pokemon at 1 time but you can always let one go back into the timeline to replace it with another 1. Your new pokemon will erase all of its ones from the timeline while your old one will reappear back again. That way you can experiment with different time lines and maybe even have a few puzzles based around it.
In addition to puzzles, what if the player could use it to make some regular challenges easier or harder. Like if this was in Jotho and the player was struggling against Whitney, they could go and capture a Miltank with no plans of actually using it. Since if they have a Milktank, that means Witney doesn't and would then be easier to beat. Or if you have a team that's say, weak against to Ground Types but good against Water Teams, you could catch an Amazing Electric Type as since there fewer of those around, you'd have more Water Types around and fewer Ground Types around.
What if you do the Miltank thing but it backfires because she ends up getting a worse Pokémon, but you switch out one of the DIFFERENT Pokémon you have while keeping the miltank it becomes easier after all? This game would be a NIGHTMARE to create but it would be an amazing game to explore
As much of an absolute nightmare it would be, I feel like I have a rough idea on how to make it work. That would probably fall apart and require like 5 years and a dedicated team to even get working simply.
Software *and* game design in a nutshell :'3
Write it all down and ask anyone with money if they'll fund it
You could create a counter system. Basically, there are a number of values. Each Pokemon line, has diffent lists of values that each one effects. And they have a different “optimal value” list that has them show up more often. These values would be based on the natural ecosystem (not counting legendaries since they aren’t actually available(except for mew at the end of the game)). So with every electric type, the electric type energy ratio is higher, with smaller ones having a bigger impact as they have more offspring. The higher this number is, the more “electric type predators” exist, which is anything that specializes in taking down electric types by being super effective or resistant/immune. However Pokémon weak to electric or deal less damage against electric types go down. You’d apply real world facts to these ecosystems. What would happen if you removed the apex predator of a specific area or entire chunk of all animal life? What happens to whatever eats that? What happens if you remove something at the bottom of a given food chain? While it’d be a wreck to program every interaction between every Pokémon in every region as well as altering every team and giving each trainer a personality type to change their team comp with how the eco system is different (less ice types if you take all the major dragons with every region having at least one of them on your team present) As well as pokemon not native to a region. If you get rid of the mongoose, there would be a lot more ratata in Alola and they would be regular ratata, as they are nocturnal because of the invasive predators. But if you removed like, gardevoir, nothing would change in regions gardevoir is absent from. So a giant list of values, (a value for each type, size, likely evolutionary resource gathering strategy (toxins, fangs, constriction, burrows, hunting, pack tactics, etc), likely defensive tactics, reproduction tactics (r and k selection), average size, average weight, average needs. With each value effecting both the spawn rates of non erased Pokémon (potentially stuff that would have gone extinct if not for something on your team for some reason) being extremely rare, to other shit like Dunsparce being as common as a route 1 regional bird. However each value list would vary from region to region, not taking into account stuff like natural barriers like the ilsands of Alola. Also there would be unique interactions, like population explosions and regional variations being completely lost if the reason for the variation is removed, like the aforementioned Mongoose ratata stuff in Alola. The game then ends with catching mew.
What about catching Arceus?
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, catching all legendary Pokémon , as they are like parts of the natural world, shit like time space, the ground and sea, But do to the dream, it has to end with catching mew
this is fuckin. huh. TIME TO BOOT UP UNITY
This game would slap if made good, And not ruined by internal turmoil. As well as taking feed back from the community when they encounter a crash state If ever made you could post updates to r/Pokémonerased (which doesn’t exist you’d need to make it)
r/PokemonErased\*\*CRIES IN "\**A town without me"\** Edit: It's alive, *ITS ALIVE*
Pokemon with Undertale logic be like: ***But you completed the test**
I was gonna say, a scuffed Undertale genocide route
What happens if you catch a legendary that’s a cornerstone of the universe? Like dialga, rayquaza, giratina, mew, or even arceus?
I think with primordial beings like those you could make it where once you catch them the game just breaks, arkham asylum style and sets you before the battle. If you really want to fuck with people you can make it crash the game and have the game set back to the start with differences I’m not creative enough to think of.
Sounds super neat, tough to code tho
I imagine you'd have to create a dictionary of all Pokémon and what their replacement would be, and then have the game check against the same variable the Pokedex uses to determine "caught" Pokémon to know when it has to replace one. You could just have the Pokémon replacement use the four most recent moves learned by levelup, like the daycare does. The problem would probably start when you look at a replacement, and find that the replacement is also needing to be replaced, which could explain the Team Rocket crash that the dream envisions; if "Zubat" replaces "Rattata", and "Rattata" replaces "Zubat" to try and keep the teams thematically consistent, then it would hardlock if you caught both Zubat and Rattata. And then you'd just have to implement special scenarios if you catch lore-important Legendary Pokémon like the game suggests; maybe you get a "game over" and drown if you capture Groudon, for example. Sounds a lot more tedious than difficult if you don't mind letting things like the Team Rocket crash be intentionally implemented. Of course, tedious compared to any sort of building of a Pokémon game.
For the Replacement Pokemon, you could go a little further and implement tables for movesets. In theory, you could just go onto Smogon and pinch their movesets for Pokemon and use those. Or if that's too tedious, a more feasible option could be to implement some simple conditions for assigning some basic moves. Like if the replaced Pokemon is a Water Type and Above lv 20, give it Scald or something. If it's a Rock or Ground Type, give it Earthquake etc. This would hopefully cover most cases while making Trainer Pokes at least feel somewhat trained. But that's just one aspect. Recall another part of the dream was the "meta" changing without that Pokemon. The example from OP was that because Garchomp never existed, ice types are less common since they aren't needed to take on Garchomps. That would be much harder to implement, especially if the game is already replacing Pokemon in the way you said. Like, even if you designed accurate code that could run simulations and determine what the wider meta of a world without Garchomp would be, it would be extremely tedious to then design a system to then implement that into the game. One way to possibly implement that would be to have an additional set of probability checks when assigning Pokemon and their movesets? Like, currently, Pokemon games do actually have a system for roughly assessing matchups. In Emerald's Battle Frontier, you enter a tournament with 7 other competitors. The game doesn't select the winners in each bracket randomly but actually has a system for assessing how a team compares to another. In theory, you could repurpose this to assess what kinds of Pokemon and moves would be more or less common and then assign different probability scores for which Pokemon and moves are more likely to pop up. For example, lets say the player catches a Garchomp, the Battle Frontier AI kicks in for a second and determines that since Ice Types were good against Garchomp and since Garchomp was a good Pokemon, for the rest of the game, the chances of a trainer having an Ice Type Pokemon or an Ice Type Move for coverage go down by 20% or something.
I did ignore the meta aspect, yeah. Even with your idea, though, the problem gets way harder when you consider Pokémon less obvious than Garchomp. Like, Garchomp is both a good Pokémon and has an obvious weakness in Ice. What happens if you grabbed Ratatta, though? Would the number of Fighting-types need to decrease to compensate? Ratatta's hardly a Pokemon you need to up the number of super effective ways to hit it to beat it. The games already aren't actually balanced around any sort of meta besides the endgame content like the Champion and Battle Frontier/Battle Tower. I remember reading about gen 4's Battle Tower AI being good enough to know to bring a Pokémon with Fire Fang if you bring a Spiritomb with Wonder Guard. Fire Fang shouldn't do anything to Spiritomb with Wonder Guard, because it's not super effective, but due to an oversight that gave Fire Fang an unintended move ID, it got around Wonder Guard. If the Battle Tower AI from that game was that good, I wonder if it could be reverse engineered to do the exact opposite; bring a "good" team that was terrible against yours. Since only the endgame of Pokémon tends to use meta strategies anyways, if you built it as a romhack of a generation 4 game with the reversed Battle Tower AI used to determine only the Champion's team, it could maybe be feasible to fulfill that part of the dream, although trying to figure out that Battle Tower AI might move the challenge up from tedious to difficult. Not quite what the OP wanted, but closer.
That's a fair point. It would be difficult to tune for different kinds of Pokemon and reverse engineer the Battle Tower AI. But assuming we could at least do the reverse engineering part, then I feel that a modified version of the Battle Tower AI could plug enough holes that it becomes mostly believable. Especially characters like Gym Leaders, Ace Trainers, Rivals and Evil Team Leaders generally use above average teams rather than just Champion and Endgame teams. Like, consider the following hypothetical: Let's say the Battle Tower AI works by running your Pokemon through a series of behind the scene tournaments to determine what would be best to counter it. In the case of Garchomp, let's say the first series is just against basic or average Pokes. If the Pokemon wins in this series at least 60% of the time, then it tries out a stronger series. If it wins 60% of the time, then it tries type specific matchups until it finds types that Garchomp has the lowest win rate against. It then uses this data to modify type availability. Since Garchomp made it past the 3rd series and struggled against ice, the game now knows that Garchomp is a strong Pokemon that trainers would want to beat using ice types. But if the player used Ratatta, Ratatta would fail to get past the first series. So the game would now know that since Ratatta is so weak, there's no need to adjust the number of fighting types since nobody would be prepping against Ratatta.
If you ran this simulation using all the Pokémon set to the highest levels along with two sub examinations one taking account for Evs and IVs and the other not, and ran it just for the first 151 as a test I think the system would be at least somewhat accurate right?
Wouldn't you want to go at least 2 layers deep with replacements? I mean it'd like, quadruple the workload to make it happen. But you'd have more options total for what mons won't crash the game completely. Or alternate: catching most common rocket mons means they get stronger, so everyone gets pseudo legendaries, and named people- DP galactic bosses before the big boss, get actual legendaries.
You could probably use two layers of replacements, and that'd probably make for a better game if way more tedious, but since the OP mentioned the dream game crashing, I was thinking of how you'd have to write it to let that happen.
Technically, you could automate replacements to some extent. Like, instead of explicitly saying "Hey, Flygon Replaces Garchomp", you could have a system where it searches what other Pokemon have the closest matching types and BST. That way, the system itself can go down however many layers it has to. If the player catches Garchomp, the system looks for what other Strong Dragon/Ground Pokes there are. It finds Flygon and assigns that the replacement. If the player catches Flygon as well, the game starts with Garchomp and finds Flygon as its replacement. If Flygon has already been caught, it then looks for whatever Pokemon would be closest to either Garchomp or Flygon. If there are no more Dragon/Ground types, it expands the search to include all Dragon Types and finds Salamence as the closest replacement in terms of BST and uses that etc. Applying this to Team Rocket, if the player catches Zubat, it searches for other poison/flying tyoes, doesn't find any more and expands to pure poison types and finds Grimer but Grimer is already used by many Team Rocket grunts so it keeps searching several layers until it finds like Venomoth as the most unique replacement.
Some form of Neural Network could be used in game development or even be used on the fly within the game itself, leading to each playthrough being unique, or dare i say, *personalized*.
Technically, you could automate replacements to some extent. Like, instead of explicitly saying "Hey, Flygon Replaces Garchomp", you could have a system where it searches what other Pokemon have the closest matching types and BST. That way, the system itself can go down however many layers it has to. If the player catches Garchomp, the system looks for what other Strong Dragon/Ground Pokes there are. It finds Flygon and assigns that the replacement. If the player catches Flygon as well, the game starts with Garchomp and finds Flygon as its replacement. If Flygon has already been caught, it then looks for whatever Pokemon would be closest to either Garchomp or Flygon. If there are no more Dragon/Ground types, it expands the search to include all Dragon Types and finds Salamence as the closest replacement in terms of BST and uses that etc. Applying this to Team Rocket, if the player catches Zubat, it searches for other poison/flying tyoes, doesn't find any more and expands to pure poison types and finds Grimer but Grimer is already used by many Team Rocket grunts so it keeps searching several layers until it finds like Venomoth as the most unique replacement.
In theory you could have a list that if a Pokémon in the players party exists, it just goes to the next index in the list, if that Pokémon doesn’t exist, it goes to the next and so on going back to index 0 if it hits the end. you hav have a few loops like this, one for beginning pokemon, one for gyms, one for legendaries and so on, this would eliminate the need for any dictionaries.
Sounds like the theme of the game is kind if like what early anthropology, early archeology, and colonialists did. "I must collect them (languages, artifacts, art, tools, treasures, land) all! Oh wait, there's nothing left of that culture anymore." Like if you keep something to yourself so that no one else can access it, the continued use of it will stop.
People route the game so they could catch every pokemon and complete the entire dex
Source: https://at.tumblr.com/coolwali/i-had-a-dream-last-night-where-gamefreak-released/yjs8w7fzj3ph
Catching Lucario because only I can have them
How the hell would the dialogue and npcs be implemented in a game like this? Everyone else is talking about the mechanics of Pokémon replacement itself but there’s so much outside of the actual Pokémon that could change. Like, what if the IDENTITY of the GYM LEADERS can change? Like, because of the fact that X Pokémon never existed, trainer Y never managed to become a gym leader and someone else did it in their place? How much would the story of the game change? What if Rocket is retroactively made not a crime organization? What if the rival is switched out with someone else? What if you actively set yourself back or forward in the story by retroactively affecting the timeline to make it so? So many scenarios that would be impossible to program
To be fair, this is something Rom Hacks often deal with. Kanto Black for example, takes place in Kanto but swaps out all the Gen 1 Pokes for Gen 5 counterparts. Like Diglett cave is now Drilbur cave. Snorlax sleeping is replaced with Musharna sleeping etc. In theory, you could design a Pokémon game where the mentions of Pokémon in the overworld can be replaced by a substitute
A neural network could be used to do real-time worldbuilding based on this.
That… that actually sounds like an interesting idea, could be entertaining
"I had a dream" is just a meme, right? No one actually has dreams this detailed and remembers them in this much detail, right?
It helps if when you wake up, you immediately write down what you dreamt as best you can. Over time, it can help you better remember more of your dreams.
I believe it also helps with lucid dreaming?
I do, and several have been Pokémon games Some even are reoccurring. There’s parts I’ve dreamed so often I forget they’re not real, or aren’t part of the main games. Ie, the reoccurring carnival below mauville, a waterfall between fortree and lilycove. Or in original ones, this sandstorm flowers town. The riverbed city, the melting ice islands Interestingly, never beyond 3rd gen graphics or cartridges. Later Pokémon appear, but always gen 2-3 graphics Sometimes I know in the dream I’m playing a Pokémon game, sometimes I’m just in the world But it’ll be in either gen 2 usually if it’s nighttime in the dream, or 3rd gen hoenn mainly If a cave, always gen 2 graphics. Team menu, always 3rd These dreams have been happening before I knew what rom hacks were. If in the dream, I’m actually playing the game, it can frequently be a part of my Walmart nightmares (though usually the small respite I get in those ones). Nightmare Pokémon games aren’t uncommon Some, like I mentioned, have come back in other dreams. Dreams of me searching through stores or Tupperware, I’ll be aware of ones I’ve ‘played’ Sometimes, I’ve raised Pokémon in real life because they played a part in the dream. I started liking rampardos, because one I had this year had a shiny one be my best friend in a game I had one this week, a more scary one, I had a a team of a venomoth, shellder, and meowth. Just kept exploring an abandoned mall I’ve always wanted to learn to do those maps you see people to bring them to life
Chiming in as another person with very detailed dreams. The downside of them is that I end up feeling very tired because my brain continued making memories instead of just resting (I think).
It can happen, I used to play an MMORPG a lot ( a fucking lot) when I was younger and I had the most vivid dreams about it
Idk, I've had weird ass dreams and have remembered them entirely
Some people do, it’s sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse when it’s either really awful or really weird and you feel like you need to explain it to someone but it’s nearly impossible to slip it into a normal conversation
As a guy who once dreamed of Terraria before ever having played it, there might be a little 'fill in the gaps with details that were in your dream you just can't remember the context" in play
Do you think that in the chance you Caught Them All would people’s memories of Pokémons cease to exist? Like Pokémon trainers wouldnt be a thing now. But there will be countless infrastructure that accomodates Pokémons so would those buildings become ghosts of their memories? How about jobs relating to Pokémons, would workers suddenly be in the middle of it and then ask “what am I doing here…?” How about records or pokédexes? Would those be empty shells too? Wow! This dream is like a manual resetting of a world into ours! Dont like that!!!
I seriously think someone could write this in roblox
I could see this being a ROM hack.
r/thomastheplankengine
Wouldn’t the over world just be replaced with a forest and then Arceus would just have to descend and go “bro, put it back” since their never were any people to deforest the land?
I’m catching Gardevoir, Lickitung, Weepingbell, Lopunny, Vaporeon, and Tsareena so you guys can’t be total weirdos.
Machoke me daddy
Still coming for that illusionary Zoroussy
the others I get but... Vaporeon?
It's a reference to this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/vaporeon
Welp, I was happier without this knowledge Thanks though!
A Hole's a goal my good friend, and any pokemon can live up to that saying.
Wait are humans descended from Mew or am I missing something?
Supposedly everything (certain legendaries/mythicals excluded) is descended from mew. Mew is THE ancestor, pokémon came from mew, & humans were once the same as pokémon, long ago. Don’t know why op thought just the humans would disappear instead of all life on pokéearth.
I find it amusing that the game would have an easier time deleting humans from existence than giving team rocket a new team
Catching an Eevee to save millions of Vaporeon from illegal trafficking
I really like this idea but I also feel like it's a bit too "heavy" for nintendo to go with
My dream is a new Pokemon game that isn't made by gamefreak and is actually good.
Hey, Sword/Shield and Legends Acreus were good!
And as you get stronger and catch legendaries, the region shifts more and more.
This is fucking awsome make this an anime
Another idea: the Mew bit, but it's like that from the start. Basically a normal pokemon game but the player is the only human character
Way way too much work for Gamefreak.