To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Pokemon Gold/Silver, I'm releasing my 32kb gen2 battle-sim game TOMORROW at 20:00 UTC!
Just wrapped up the monochrome sprites this morning!
#picodexdual #picodex #pokemon #pico8 #gamedev #gold #silver #crystal #pixelart
6 days until the picodex dual release for pico-8!
5 days later, I can't believe I fit it! Had to make a few tradeoffs on the UI/and how the move hidden power works. As well as making my codebase even more cryptic.
I'm on track for releasing November 21st. Will try to have a trailer video in a week or two.
Things I now have left:
- Playtesting
- Bugfixing
- Spriting
- Writing a manual reference
Currently working on a separate guide cart to document all the moves to make the game easier to play. I'll probably try exporting it to a big cheatsheet png later.
#pico8 #picodexdual update. I finally finished implementing all 252 attacks!!!!! It has been a roller coaster getting everything to fit into the 32kb cartridge.
Still have lots of polishing left which will keep me busy. And I ran out of compression space a week ago, hence the temporary fix of 1 letter Pokemon names.
Expect a release on the 25th anniversary of Pokemon Gold and Silver! For those not-in-the-know, that is November 21st, 2024!
I've implemented 175/250 moves and 200/250 sprites for Picodex Dual. Besides that, everything else is done.
And random battle gifs.
i'm still working on my 32kb gen2 battle sim, "picodex: dual version". and i finally finished the ui for the entire game! lemme know how you think it looks.
other progress: data packing is 100% done! sprites are maybe ~70% done. the battle system has been researched/planned, but only just started implementing it.
i've been working on this project for ~8 months, i only have free time early mornings or late nights when my toddler/job aren't distracting me. so progress is slow.. but i'm now on the tail-end of development and very excited to actually be implementing the complex battle system of gen2 pokemon. seriously, this is the most fun part.
Picodex Dual is my attempt to fit the entire gen 2 pokemon battle system into a single 32 kb pico-8 cartridge.
My gen 1 battle sim was already nearly 32 kb, so adding all the extra content requires tradeoffs:
- Sprites are all 1 bit. Very compact and no need for token-expensive decompression.
- Trainer/item/pokemon/move are condensed to 6 or 7 characters, saves on code compression tokens and works with UI design.
- Pokemon cries just use the same data as the pokemon stats & move data I have packed into the cartridge, but with a filter applied.
- The entire UI should be virtually sprite-less, because there is no cartridge space after storing all the pokemon data.
I hope that explains better what I'm trying to achieve.
I've been experimenting with the UI even more and I discarded my previous designs. Here is what it will really look like. It reverts to a similar style the original picodex had because I like the color palette. This is a simple grid-based UI that I can reuse the code for throughout the entire game. Which is important because the battle sim part will take lots of tokens.
11528 is the number of bytes it takes me to store all the different moves every Pokemon in GSC could possibly learn legally (no glitches/hacks).
That number includes all learn moves in GSC & RBY, TM/HM moves in GSC & RBY, egg moves in GSC, move tutor in Crystal Version, special movesets in PS1/PS2, all the variants from in-person events during the 1990s/2000s, and all the PCNY variants obtainable from 2001 to 2003.
Removing the duplicate moves that evolutions share with their previous forms takes the size to 7318. 63% the original size.
Space can be saved with only a few more tokens (~20) when move ids can be represented as continuous ranges. EX:
If bulbasaur can learn: LeechSeed, VineWhip, MegaDrain, Tackle, RazorLeaf. And each move is 1 byte, a total of 5 bytes is stored.
But if LeechSeed=1, VineWhip=2, MegaDrain=3, Tackle=4, and RazorLeaf=5. All the moves can be represented with 3 bytes instead: 1, dash, 5
Getting the number assignment perfect is NP. After crunching my CPU over the night, I got a number assignment which brings the total size down to 4737. 41% of the original size.
Pretty content with that & thought I'd share. Researching moves and data packing has taken like 2 months of my little free time. Nice to see it coming to an end.
Working on more #picodexdual ui mocks. The battle system and title screen will probably look like this...
I've been iterating on the #picodexdual UI more... And I've pretty much nailed down how I want it to look now :).
Trying lots of different things for the gen2 #picodex UI...
My current iteration is the green one with the CRT effect.
So... It's official. I'm working on a GSC/PS2 battle simulator now in PICO-8.
My goal is to implement close to the same battle mechanics that were in Pokemon Stadium 2 and fit it all within a single 32 kb cartridge.
With 80+ new moves and 100 new pokemon, there's lots of new data. So to save space, this simulator will likely be in only 2 colors. Calling it "Picodex Dual".
I'll continue working on the Johto Pokemon in color because it's cool and might be easier to monochrome them after they are already in color.
Here's a mockup of a few Pokemon in monochrome.
