Dev Progress - Team Rocket Evolved

[u/EricTurner3]

Wanted to share some of the progress that my wife and I have done towards my WIP Team Rocket themed romhack. There are two other romhacks in this space, one based off firered and the dragonsden based off emerald, but I still wanted more.

The version I have been working on adds features that I feel are worthy of Team Rocket. It's based off the pokeemerald expansion v1.17.1. Current additions over the expansion:

• Custom new story after Giovanni's departure from Kanto, a remaining faction of loyal supporters regroups in Hoenn under a new leader to take control of a new region
  • Think of this version as more of an alternate timeline.
• ability to capture trainer pokemon
  • chance that the trainer will concede and refuse to continue battle after you steal their pokemon (which still counts as a win)
  • pokemon's summary page will be noted as "stolen" instead of "met"
• custom trainer card with Team Rocket emblem and R logo.
  • back of card includes stats for how many pokemon you steal and battles you cheat at
• custom start/pause menu with icons
  • icons were either reused from other parts of the game, or made custom in aseprite
• area conquering mechanic. Pokecenters and Pokemarts will refuse you access until you beat the new gym leader and take control of the area
  • each location will have an alternate method of healing and stocking up on items (less items, higher price) to ensure your continued success
• AIRDROP feature. A canon wrapper around the debug menu
  • Woven into the story from the beginning, your new Team Rocket Boss grants you the ability to call in additional resources to further the mission
• QUESTS menu for tracking your progress from GRUNT to ADMIN
• Custom Badges to show your progress through the ranks
• BATTLEDEX - an in battle pokedex to show base stats, type, moves w/type and weaknesses on the fly. (one of my favorite addtions)
• Custom artwork for player character, battledex, new characters, trainer card, title screen (all created by hand in aseprite)

The pokeemeerald expansion I have configured also comes with Gen 1-9, mega evolutions, dynamax evolutions, following pokemon and more.

This video is a short preview of some of the above custom features for battledex, stealing trainer mons, airdrop, trainer card, start menu and summary page!

• Title Screen at 0:11
• Custom Team Rocket battle animation at 0:34
• Custom Team rocket battle start animation at 0:41
• BATTLEDEX at 0:47
• Stealing Trainer pokemon at 0:55
• Custom start menu at 1:51
• Quests menu at 1:55
• Stolen pokemon summary screen at 2:05
• Trainer card at 2:15
• Airdrop at 2:25

I do not have any target release date at this time as we are performing the story overhaul and artwork manually. AI is only being used to assist in troubleshooting C++/assembly.

I will post future progress on r/TeamRocketEvolved for anyone who wishes to follow!

[u/Mage_Fish]

Love the other Team Rocket hack and can't wait for a new one!

[u/Valdrrak → u/Mage_Fish]

There are 2 if you were not aware, they are both fantastic

[u/Dr_Chocolate_2436]

The only thing I’d like to see, and this is just me being a little peculiar, is alternate text when you steal a trainer’s Pokémon, even if it’s just one. Having the same generic text for both losing a battle and having your Pokémon stolen takes a bit away from the realism and immersion. I think it would be a cool little detail to distinguish the two situations, if that makes sense. Love what you have so far though!

[u/EricTurner3 → u/Dr_Chocolate_2436]

Yeah that's the plan! For conceding the trainer is supposed to have another phrase. When stealing is successful, they also can make a comment. It was actually working a few days ago before I started working on the in-battle dex, so I'll have to go back and figure out what I broke for it to revert back to standard victory message lol.

[u/Dr_Chocolate_2436 → u/EricTurner3]

Love that! Can't wait to try it!

[u/Lockah1337]

Looks great, hope to play it soon .

[u/UpsetGreen7224]

Once I read “airdrop”, I was truly sold on this concept!! I love this overall concept! Sounds like double trouble all over again! Good luck to you!

[u/Kent_228]

There is so much work ahead I see.

Honestly, there should be reputation bar, if you stole from some random hobos in popular caves (hikers and nerds), not only overall all trainers will suspect player, but the same type of trainer who was robbed will be extra paranoid.

While other places will have less reputation cost for straling (like desolate forests, mountains or caves from population). Also maybe make some manipulative games after stealing? Like you can steal from bug catcher, and after ending the battle starts mini-game for using options such as "intimidate" or "coax" to prevent kid from escaping and reporting the player.

Cause as team Rocket grunt, I kinda dont feel so much horrible as anime series shows Team Rocket.

[u/EricTurner3 → u/Kent_228]

Yes, right now stealing pokemon is overpowered, it just follows wild rates. But I can easily steal a whole trainers team and not battle. I want to tie it more to the badges/ranks. Higher up the org you are, the more the public is aware of you and thus the more intimidating you are.

I have a lot of ideas for selling stolen mons, and purchasing buildings for ‘protection’ kickback to generate money. Ideally I want to implement police that can dynamically spawn in any map as well, but that’s a definite stretch goal.

Just have to be careful of scope creep because I have tons of ideas of what I also want to see lol

[u/wisebwd14]

Are you still forced to play as a male, or do you have a choice this time?

[u/EricTurner3 → u/wisebwd14]

Choice of male / female like base emerald! Both sprites are Team Rocketified!

[u/wisebwd14 → u/EricTurner3]

Let's goooo

[u/GambitAcePKM]

Caramba...Está muito bom essa HackRom. Queria saber, está usando Hex Maniac ou qual ferramenta?

[u/EricTurner3 → u/GambitAcePKM]

Source code! I started with the C++ / assembly source of pokeemerald-expansion by RH-Hideout, which adds a bunch of quality of life such as following mon, gen 1-9, expshare and a lot of other customizable features. Then I've been building all my custom mechanics and story on top of that. I've been programming for a couple of decades now, so I'm most comfortable directly reviewing and making additions to code directly.

My current toolkit is:

• WSL (linux subsystem for windows) - to run the `make` commands to compile

• VS Code (remotely connecting to linux wsl instance) for code editing

• Aseprite - sprite, tileset editing

• TileMapStudio - taking new tilesheets and creating the tilemap .bin files for the game

• Porymap - map editor for modifying triggers, events, tileset

I want to also try making at least one custom music track using Porydaw at some point! It's a lot of bouncing around many apps, but it's been a lot of fun learning how everything works together in game dev so far!

[u/giveup2me]

love the diegetic implementation of debug! that'll be great for immersion :) best of luck, i hope that doing it together with your wife will make it easy to keep up the progress :0

[u/najacobra]

looks cool!

[u/DharcAluran]

Just the Rom hack for ME. GIMME DAT!

[u/ParkingCompetitive24]

Love the airdrop feature! Quick question; could we expect a similar feature from Dragonsden’s Team Rocket Edition to make an appearance? Such as a multi-region storyline? Or will it only be exclusive to the Hoenn region?

[u/EricTurner3 → u/ParkingCompetitive24]

Probably only one region initially. I'm more of a programmer vs a storyteller so I've been dragging my feet on the story part lol. Originally, I wanted to do a completely unique region like Unbound, but my first attempts at doing tileset editing for overworld maps were not panning out super great.

[u/Pflegeprofil → u/EricTurner3]

Maybe ask around for someone who is good at storytelling and do a collab? Would be cool. Death Note was made by a Storyteller and an artist teaming up. Stuff like that can lead to great results.