[Game Idea] Customizable Pokemon and Moves in an Online or Local Battle Simulator

[CheezBallzFTW]

I had an idea that I wish existed but I wouldn't be able to make it myself and not at all without a lot of help and guidance. It would be a Pokemon pvp battle simulator like Pokemon Showdown but with the option of custom Pokemon and moves. An example for custom moves would be taking an existing move for example Scald, and turn it into a physical steel type move and you'd get to name it. It would have to show the data for the move on screen when it's used though so your opponent knows what it is (This can also be incorporated for non-custom moves to keep things consistent). An example for custom pokemon would be taking an existing Pokemon for example Noctowl, and changing his typing to Psychic-Flying (Which would also have to be displayed when the pokemon is switched in and/or before the match). This is sort of like regional forms or delta species from the tcg. The customization options would be intended as buffs but would have limits like only one custom feature on a pokemon and two custom moves per pokemon. Here's a list of example rules for customization:

Moves:

(Choose up to 2 per custom move)
•Change a move a Pokemon learns into a type of another move that Pokemon can learn
•Change a move a Pokemon learns from Physical to Special or vice versa
•Change a move a Pokemon learns to have +10 damage
•Change a move a Pokemon learns to have +10 accuracy
•Change a move a Pokemon learns that has 100 accuracy to bypass accuracy checks like Aerial Ace or Smart Strike
•Change a move a Pokemon learns to have +5% or +10% chance for it's secondary effects (+5% for things like status conditions and flinching, +10% for things like stat boosts or stat lowering)
•Change a weather move, terrain move, screen move, tailwind, trick room etc. to last an extra turn
•Change a status move a Pokemon learns that only raises or lowers one stat stage to raise or lower an extra stat stage of the same kind

Pokemon:

(Choose 1 per custom Pokemon)
•Add a type to a Pokemon with one type
•Change the secondary type of a Pokemon with two types
•Change a Pokemon's primary normal type to another type (for Normal-Flying types mostly)
•Add 20 to 1 of a Pokemon's base stats or add 10 to 3 of a Pokemon's base stats
•Change a Pokemon's ability to any ability of a Pokemon it shares it's primary type with (except things like Wonder Guard/Huge Power/Pure Power/Shadow Tag/Simple/Moody/Disguise)

If someone makes this you don't have to get me involved in the creation if you don't want to (I wouldn't be much help anyway, I just have ideas) but I'd want to know it exists and hopefully it stays relatively balanced (like the example rules but with tweaking where necessary). Also, if anyone knows of a good fan game with high-quality fakemon that actually fit in and multiplayer pvp that came out within the past 1-2 years I'd like to know about it. I want something new to do with pokemon tbh and that's what lead me to this idea. Thanks for reading this and have a nice day!

 

[mgriffin]

Cool idea!

I've been thinking about a somewhat-related idea for in-game. Basically you can create your own moves by combining together berries that represent effects such as "deals Fire-type damage" (Occa Berry), "may Poison" (Pecha Berry), and "is physical" (Jaboca Berry). This lets you create existing moves like Scald (Passho Berry + Rawst Berry) or Power-Up Punch (Chople Berry + Leichi Berry), and entirely new moves too such as an Electric-type Giga Drain (Wacan Berry + Sitrus Berry).



I haven't considered if or how to extend it to Pokémon, but your idea seems interesting.

 

[hirokimura]

Is there an actual demo of your script mgriffin? I'd love to test it out !!!

 

[mgriffin]

Is there an actual demo of your script mgriffin? I'd love to test it out !!!

There isn't at the moment, because I'm still trying to decide on all the effects. But if you'd be interested in helping out I'd be happy to explain what I've got so far and which bits I don't like in more detail; feel free to send a PM here, or reach out on Discord (I'm MGriffin on the PC server).

 

[CheezBallzFTW]

I like this idea with the berries and it seems you've gotten pretty far with it so this might be too late to suggest but custom TMs would probably fit better lore-wise because berries don't teach moves. You could have a move creator with a slot for the physical/special data, the type data, and the secondary effect data (which should define damage and accuracy as well for balance reasons like not having a 100 damage priority move). Then the Pokemon could learn it if the move matches a type of a move it can normally learn or if it doesn't match one then the damage is reduced by 10-20 (because hidden power does 60 which is less than the most used damaging moves). This data could be collected by scanning existing TMs or by scanning your Pokemon and after that it is unlocked. For Pokemon features it could use the same data (type, physical, special, and some new ones for defensive stats, hp, speed, and ability) also obtained through scanning Pokemon (scanning a Pokemon with speed as it's highest stat gives speed data, it's ability data, as well as type data for the Pokemon's primary type, or secondary type if it's Normal-Flying). Then using some sort of machine you could apply data to each of your Pokemon once each (one added type or one change to secondary type or one buff to a stat or one ability swap). I think to keep ability swapping from being op, abilities should only be available to Pokemon that match primary type with the Pokemon you got the ability data from, you should only get to scan each Pokemon once (so only one Huge Power from Azumarill) and ability data gets destroyed after use.

You could also scan berries to get data quicker than finding TMs.

Giving Regigigas or Slaking Huge Power from Diggersby also would need fixing so maybe anything that's primary type is normal would count it's data as it's secondary type, making pure normal pokemon more useful.

 

[mgriffin]

<Snip>

Just to say, I've merged your posts together, but in the future please make sure to edit your last post instead of making a new one if it's only been a few minutes or hours and no-one else has posted since.

I like this idea with the berries and it seems you've gotten pretty far with it so this might be too late to suggest but custom TMs would probably fit better lore-wise because berries don't teach moves.

I didn't want to distract from your thread with too much information about my own idea, so I skipped over the in-game justification. My lore is that there's a Smeargle that crushes berries into paint and creates a Sketch that your Pokémon is inspired by, hence the name "Berry Sketch". You have to give it a canvas to draw on, and that's what controls how many berries you're allowed to combine; 1 berry makes reasonable early-game moves, and 3 berries makes strong late-game moves. But I haven't done any of the graphics or scripts for that yet, just the proof of concept :)

You could have a move creator with a slot for the physical/special data, the type data, and the secondary effect data (which should define damage and accuracy as well for balance reasons like not having a 100 damage priority move). Then the Pokemon could learn it if the move matches a type of a move it can normally learn or if it doesn't match one then the damage is reduced by 10-20 (because hidden power does 60 which is less than the most used damaging moves). This data could be collected by scanning existing TMs or by scanning your Pokemon and after that it is unlocked.

Yeah, that's pretty much how berries work in my idea. Jaboca/Rowap picks between physical/special, type-resist berries pick the type data (using two makes a Flying Press-like move!), stat-boosting berries add a +1 (e.g. 2× Liechi makes Swords Dance), etc etc. The limit of 3 berries is to prevent things getting too powerful. I guess one of the big differences is that I let any Pokémon learn any move (but you can only have one per Pokémon) because I'm not too worried about balance in-game in terms of species of Pokémon, I just don't want to reduce all battles to spamming a single OP move.

For Pokemon features it could use the same data (type, physical, special, and some new ones for defensive stats, hp, speed, and ability) also obtained through scanning Pokemon (scanning a Pokemon with speed as it's highest stat gives speed data, it's ability data, as well as type data for the Pokemon's primary type, or secondary type if it's Normal-Flying). Then using some sort of machine you could apply data to each of your Pokemon once each (one added type or one change to secondary type or one buff to a stat or one ability swap). I think to keep ability swapping from being op, abilities should only be available to Pokemon that match primary type with the Pokemon you got the ability data from, you should only get to scan each Pokemon once (so only one Huge Power from Azumarill) and ability data gets destroyed after use.

You could also scan berries to get data quicker than finding TMs.

Giving Regigigas or Slaking Huge Power from Diggersby also would need fixing so maybe anything that's primary type is normal would count it's data as it's secondary type, making pure normal pokemon more useful.

Like you say, ability swapping is difficult to balance through type restrictions, but I'm not sure if there's an intuitive alternative.

Personally I'd be happy just turning the bullet points from your first post into items (or maybe an NPC?), rather than worrying about scanning and all that, but maybe that's because I'm a lazy developer :D

 

[CheezBallzFTW]

The only reason it'd want it to be very balanced at least in my eyes is if there's multiplayer battling and even then if you're playing with friends you could just ban something if you both agree it's op. I like it having only one move per Pokemon though because that definitely keeps it more balanced and makes sense since they're all called berry sketch. For Pokemon features, since there's not enough berries for every ability and every type and every stat, maybe only a small selection of balanced abilities are assigned to berries. Things like Overcoat, Cloud Nine, Scrappy, Poison Point, Static, Flame Body, Gluttony, Natural Cure, Sniper, Technician, Intimidate, Water Veil, Immunity, Limber, Torrent, Overgrow, Blaze, Magician, Anger Point, Competitive, Defiant, Emergency Exit, Stench, Gooey, Hustle, Analytic, Synchronize, Rock Head, Corrosion, and Filter. I think these give enough different types of abilities without being too op.