Digimon Emerald
Hi all!
For the last year, I have been working on a project that I have dubbed Digimon Emerald. As the name hopefully implies, this is meant to be Digimon in Emerald however it is not intended to be a playable hack. Instead it is a tool for other hack developers to cut down the amount of time needed to start their own Digimon hacks
So far, I have probably only got about 15-20% of the way through this project however I've got enough done that I feel confident in showing people the project in its current state with many of the features partially or fully developed.
Features
Speaking of features, I want to go other exactly what I've done and my future intentions with this project.
To start off with, easily the most important part of this project, the actual Digimon. I intend to have all Digimon have proper front, back and icon sprites in Emeralds spriting style. Unfortunately I am not a pixel artist and for now have opted to use computer generated sprites. These don't look amazing but they are functional atleast. I'm not happy about this but I'd rather have something playable. Over time, I hope to have these replaced with human made sprites that are more standardised.
With this, I have also started work on full pokedex entries (including Weight, Height, Colour and Type), learnsets, typings, stats and abilities. The table below will hopefully show what has been completed, what's partially done and what's not even started.
Yellow circles indicate parts that currently WIP | Ultras are currently in debate. They are very few in number and might just be merged with Megas
Digimon will also utilise a new third typing mechanic! However this doesn't mean Digimon will be Fire/Dragon/Flying, instead the third typing uses one of five brand new typings.
Vaccine, Virus, Data, Free and Unknown are the brand new typings. Unlike traditional Pokemon typings where supereffective deals 100% more damage, tertiary bonus damage is only 50% (this is likely to change with testing as well) and there is no ability to deal non-effective damage with these typings.
All Digimon will have one of these tertiary typings no matter what so it will not be possible to have mono-type Digimon to use in battles. That is why I decreased the boost and made sure there was no punishment for hitting a Vaccine type with a Virus type (just as an example).
Speaking of traditional Pokemon typings, Fairy type will be returning alongside a completely brand new typing!
The Light typing is finally here! I decided to introduce this typing because frankly Psychic nor Fairy really work for the overwhelming amount of angel and religion based Digimon across the series and I felt it matched up quite nicely with Dark type.
With that, here is the new type chart!
It is important to note the Light type is new and stuff can change. If you disagree with some of the matchups, let me know!
Expanded Evolution is finally here. This is a very rough feature that is hopefully just a temporary measure until I (or someone far smarter than me) implements a way to control evolution from the Menu in a way that I like. For now, it just means that most Digimon have multiple evolution options. To give an example, DemiMeramon can evolve into Candlemon, Vorvomon, Flamemon, Coronamon or Gotsumon. Five is currently the limit that I've settled for but I have no issue expanding that down the line if need be.
New evolution criteria has also been introduced revolving around stats. If your Digimon's stats reach certain heights, you might get a different evolution from what you were expecting. However for those who can't be bothered to care about stats, every Digimon will also have just a bog standard Level based evolution which will be the standard evolution where relevant (Agumon to Greymon, Botamon to Koromon, DemiVeemon to Veemon etc etc).
That's basically it for what I've gotten done so far however I haven't mentioned the planned features I have. Because they aren't even being implemented yet, I'll just list them
Complete revamp of most items (e.g. Evo Stones to Digimon equivalent) alongside plenty of new additions
New abilities
New moves
Ability to control evolution (something more akin to Digimon Cyber Sleuth and Hacker Memories evolution would be ideal however I don't really have any idea how to implement that)
Jogress Evolution
New catch mechanic
New breeding mechanics
That's pretty much it for the planned features. I don't want to overcomplicate this too much and would rather leave stuff like overworld mechanics, art and sound track to the people that are going to utilise this template to make their own hacks so its easier to curate it to their own intended experience.
What about this or that???
This is kind of just the F.A.Q section but not really because questions have neither been frequent nor asked as this is my first time going public with this. Just kind of guessed the questions
Will reskinned Digimon like Psychemon, BlackAgumon or ModokiBetamon be in the game?
Yes. I intend to have all Digimon in the game regardless of how similar they are to other Digimon. Although its unlikely, I'm sure there is someone who prefers ModokiBetamon to normal Betamon or Red Otamamon to normal Otamamon and its so little effort, I see no point not doing it.
What about X-Antibody Digimon?
100%. I love X-Antibody Digimon and there is no way I'd miss them.
Will Appmon be in the game?
I'm not sure. They don't really mesh with normal Digimon and seem pretty much like a seperate series. If there's enough demand once the majority of the work is done, I'll see about either implementing them into Digimon Emerald or making an Appmon Emerald as a smaller scope project.
How many Digimon will there be?
See I'm a bit of a lazy git so I haven't done an actual count but its between 1000 and 1500. Unfortunately I couldn't find any definitive source for how many Digimon exist so that's basically the range I'm looking at.
Will joke Xros/Fusion forms be in the game?
If they are distinct enough, probably. For example CuteShoutmon is a likely candidate while Locomon + Dorulumon almost definitely won't. If I do add them, it won't be until near the end of the project.
Will Digimon use Sub or Dub names?
Mostly Dub because that's what I prefer and generally use however some are sub (e.g. MetalKoromon is called Choromon) because there is a character limit to the Digimon's name in the code. Some also have completely brand new names because of that aforementioned character limit (Minidekachimon becomes Kodekacmon which is an absolute mangling of its original name but it was the closest I could get).
Is this Binary or Decomp
Decomp all the way. If you want to look at the abomination that is my code, check it out here: https://github.com/Luna3Step/DigimonEmerald
I need your help
This is the not so fun part of the post.
I am not an artist, I am not a competitive Pokemon player nor am I particularly good at coding. I have very clearly found my limits with this project so far and I need help.
If you can help out with any of these and are down to contribute, even if its only one sprite, one learnset or one line of code, I would appreciate it a lot. Here's a list of areas that it would be nice to have either help or criticism
Sprites (I need sprites for Back, Front and Icons.)
Balance (I've tried my best but if you have better ideas, I would love to hear them)
Coding (If you can do a CSHM style of evolution menu, new breeding mechanics or new catching mechanics, please for the love of god help me. I'm also not very good at adding new Abilities or Moves and would love help there.)
If you are confident that you can help in those areas, please contact me on the discord ( https://discord.gg/QQh3EARTUK). I will have open channels for Sprite and Balance contributions (although DMs are also fine if you want to be hush about it). If you have code contributions, please feel free to do so through github if you don't wish to go through discord.
Where to find updates on the project?
I will occasionally post on tumblr however you will also find a mixture of other stuff about me so if you don't care about the me, the Discord will be heavily catered towards the project. I will post updates (hopefully frequently) on my Discord however for those that don't like Discord, I will also happily talk about the project on my Tumblr. Feel free to send me asks if you have any questions.
Discord: https://discord.gg/QQh3EARTUK
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/198lzeg/digimon_emerald_a_template_for_other_developers/
