FireRed hack: Pokémon Crystal Advance Redux

[Arnie#0001]

This is not a new hack, it has been in the works since October 2021, however following on from a post within Liquid Crystal's thread where LAZ gives out permission to moify and post based on his hack: https://www.pokecommunity.com/threads/pokémon-liquid-crystal-3-3-xxxxx-live-beta.242023/page-293 - I present to you a continuation, of sorts, officially...

About the Game

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This game has a bit of a history. It started out life as Pokémon Liquid Crystal, skilfully created by LinkAndZelda/Zeikku, then transformed into Pokémon Crystal Advance by Kertra; This is where my version comes in. It is an updated version of that ROM. Essentially, it is a hack of a hack of a hack of Pokemon FireRed V1.0. As to why I worked from Crystal Advance and not Liquid Crystal Directly...well...we will get to that in a minute.

This is not a 100% faithful recreation of Pokémon Crystal. Most events are 1:1 however there are differences, some call-backs to the original Pokémon Liquid Crystal. new areas to explore. This game retains the faithful GBA styling but sprinkles some niceties here and there. Think of this game as a sort of HGSS demake with some newer additions. With that, that brings me to -

Features
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- The Complete Experience: This game can be played from start to finish, from picking your Pokémon to beating Red. Aside from some other features and additions I am currently working on, it is fully enjoyable

- Day, Night, Seasons: The environment will change depending on what time of day/month it is, to keep things fresh

- Type chart improvements: Includes the addition of the Fairy Type. This change also affects Goldenrod Gym which in-turn has become a dual Normal/Fairy type Gym. This includes most Fairy type moves from gen 6 and the inclusion of Sylveon as an Eeveelution.

- Pokémon Migration: Creatures from the 3rd and 4th generations are a-plenty here. In total there are 499 Pokémon visible in the Pokédex; The Burmy and Shellos forms got their own entry. Sylveon and XD001 are obtainable but do not have a viewable dex entry.

- Learn-set improvements: All Pokémon have had moveset improvements, largely based on moves obtained within other vanilla Pokémon games, a few have been...more creative...And have added moves based on moves obtainable through other Pokémon franchise games (Wobuffet obtains Psywave and Rock Smash based on moves used in the mystery dungeon games and TCG, for example) - This was heavily inspired by Drayano's hacks, of which I am a huge fan of

- Item availability improvements: Gone are the days where you have to wait 16 hours just to obtain some Leppa Berries; Ethers and Elixirs are obtainable within the Dept Stores and Pokémon League. Poéballs are cheaper to buy, PP Ups are purchasable from Dept Stores, Vitamins are cheaper to buy. All Wild Pokémon have had their item tables improved upon. Evolution items are attainable this way, However they are also purchasable.

- Stat EXP system: The EV training system has been tweaked to recreate the old Gen1/2 Stat system, whereby you can get max EVs in *every* stat, not just the current maximum of 2. This can be achieved either through Vitamin use or pure battling, it does not matter. the Power items are also available for direct EV training regardless of encounter.

- New/Reinstated areas: Areas that were available in Pokémon Liquid Crystal have returned, meaning extra places to explore. More to come on these in the future. Sadly the Orange Islands from Pokemon Liquid Crystal have been removed in their entirety.

- New TMs and Move Tutors: Some old, less useful TMs have been replace with more useful ones. Say hello to Avalanche, Play Rough, Drain Punch, Drain Kiss and Dive. Every Gym also has a learnable Tutor move via the Champ Guy upon completion

- Higher difficulty Curve: trainers will be a little harder, with expanded teams. By the time you get to the elite four, trainer levels will be on average 10 higher than vanilla Crystal, and 20 by the end of the game. Kanto has been re-blanced to actually be fun to do battles in, and not feel like a chore.

- Double the trouble: Quite a few trainers are now double battles. Every Gym Leader is a double battle

- Placement differences: There will be some things that are still the same but in slightly different areas. I will leave these to be discovered.

- Evolution Changes: I have turned most single use held items into assistive evolution items. Pokémon that required trading now simply need to hold one of these associative held items and level up in battle. Eevee is now a purely stone evolving Pokémon, for example

- Higher Quality Audio samples: You may notice that Pokémon sound different, a bit more realistic? This is because I painstakingly ripped and recreated the sounds used in Pokémon Stadium 2 and inserted them into this ROM. Gen 3 and 4 Pokémon use their Gen 6 modulated sounds. These are encoded in a higher bitrate than standard also to give a more immersive experience. IDK about you but I was not a fan of the old square wave audio.

- Increased Shiny Odds: Gone are the days of you searching for 84 years just to get a rattata. Shiny odds are 1/256. Furthermore within Celadon Game Corner there is a machine that will generate a random Shiny Encounter for you to catch (this costs quite a few coins, mind)

- Fully Implemented Dive System: A complete implementation of Dive, fully scripted (no ASM/C# injection involved)

- Fully Functional GB Player: Remember when the GB Player in Liquid Crystal played a bunch of sounds with missing channels? Pepperidge Farm remembers; and so do I. Which is why I re0coded an entire section of the music bank handler, and then went through and remastered most of the music in the game. As of 18/4/24 (or 4/18/24 for those across the pond) every single GBA track in the game except for 2 has an accompanying GB audio variant - even then that is soon to change.

- And Many, many More...

Screenshots
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Tools used

Hex Maniac Advance
Sappy Mod
Cry Editor (aligned)


Bugs?

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- Breeding is confirmed to be working. HOWEVER loading the Pokémon info screen when you have 2 or more eggs in the party WILL CRASH THE GAME. As of 23/4/24 (2) build the Egg crashing issue has been fixed.
- Sheer Force ability is fully functional. HOWEVER Strength and Cut (which were given added effects) are not affected by the ability.
- Various minor issues; nothing game-breaking, definitely some text disparity as of 22/4/24 roughly 1/2 of the NPC scripts has been fully De-capped, so at some point through the playthrough you will start seeing capped text.
- Some Features are still WIP and Incomplete - this will be apparent once you head into the Discord, you will see changelogs when they happen; everything is posted.

Download?
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The patch file can be found on my Discord server alongside instructions on what you need to do to patch the game (input this code into the server window within Discord):

Join the Pokémon Crystal Advance Redux Discord Server!

Check out the Pokémon Crystal Advance Redux community on Discord – hang out with 3240 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

discord.com

As for why a direct link is not being provided here? The development is really active, sometimes seeing 2+ builds per day. It would be inefficient if I were to update this thread every time I post an update patch. My Discord server is far easier to manage for me.

Mentions and Credits​

First of all it goes without saying that I need to credit everyone involved in the original Liquid Crystal (the end credits are actually retained so you will see all of these guys names in-game):

Spoiler: Liquid Crystal Crew

This list is copied verbatim from Pokémon Liquid Crystal's Thread

Linkandzelda's_mum – Thinking of the name Liquid Crystal and for supporting the project.
foullump – For helping me start to script.
zel – For helping me script and letting me use his hero back sprites from the old SG. World map tiles, frontier brains music & various sprites.
thethethethe – General help with problems.
JVG – Fixing the title screen fantasticly. (even though we have a new one for the next release.)
shadowboy166 – Fixing the male, female sprites in oak intro. (We have new ones now though.)
Ssyn, kid nino, megiddo and Black Charizard, Wataru-Kun, .com – Beta testing.
Keyrin – Battle Sprites.
Marnaic – OW Boy Sprite.
Spriters resource – Some More Tiles.
CloneX- Music.
Bombah!/Ryu – Some OW Sprites.
AmineX – Doing some remixes for me.
megiddo – Help with music remixing and looping some music.
gridiron – Bag.
PHO/Alistair – Lighthouse Tile and other tiles.
Magnius: Using some of his excellent remixes and beta testing.
~Teh Panda~: Some maps for the Orange Islands.
Hackmew: For making excellent tools and helping, overcoming some limits and help with general situations.
Pokepal17: outdoor gym building, general help and solutions, Inserting the new worldmap and tiles, some johto remaps. Cheers dude .
Sergio: Orange islands first gym leader sprite.
Lucifer the king of hell: Sprites.
Dirk123: For his amazing Walthrough and locations FAQ.
Mitchel1: Mapping out an awesome Goldenrod map.
Ray Maverick – Mapping some excellent Johto remakes.
Plat – Some excellent map remakes!!
ZodiacDaGreat/Kawai & Interpdth – RTC + Day/night system for FireRed.
Blues003 – Pokemon lineups for Gym Leader rematches, Zane and Axel.
JorgeZero – Testing, music and battle backgrounds.
Darthron – Animated titlescreen.
Jambo51 – Responsible for pretty much all of the newest and greatest additions to LC 3.1.
ShinyDragonHunter – Beta testing.
Horus/Seth – Beta testing and support.
Magnius – Latest orange islands original mixes & beta testing.
Diegoisawesome – general support, asm fixes and additions.
Algratue – A lot of the music included in beta 3.1 & OW sprites.

a special thanks to Kertra, without whom this version would not be possible, and for all the random questions i threw at him over the course of the past 2 years.
a special thanks to Haven and Shiny Till Dawn, for quite frankly the best software available in Binary hacking, and most definitely without it I would not have this hack where it is now.

I uh, don't really need to thank myself. This is a passion project of mine and is built for me to play, and for you to enjoy.

Any questions or queries should be directed to my Discord server. I will not be checking here often.

 

[R0guePhant0m]

Everything looks great however not everyone wants to join the discord server or is able to. I suggest putting the download here

 

[Arnie#0001]

Everything looks great however not everyone wants to join the discord server or is able to. I suggest putting the download here

Uh, no. The game sees almost daily updates, sometimes multiple *per day*. Not going to happen I'm afraid.

Appreciate the post though.

 

[Inner Rhymes]

I'm so happy to finally see this reach the Pokécommunity. Aa someone who has been in the discord for quite some time, I recommend joining because ofhow consistently the hack gets updated.

 

[AriaOfTheStar]

Uh, no. The game sees almost daily updates, sometimes multiple *per day*. Not going to happen I'm afraid.

Appreciate the post though.

Suggestion: make a GitHub page or some other kind of folder on a file host site. It's about the same amount of time needed to push new updates and doesn't rely on a service that is not made for file hosting. It also makes things much easier for users.
Cool concept though, I like the idea of refreshing something like Liquid Crystal and the new visual style is nice.

 

[looneyman1]

yay! I loved Liquid Crystal, I'm glad its back in some form. I hope some of the non-canon content is kept, I know alot of people had criticisms of that but I think people shouldnt be so judgemental over it. I loved those extra additions from more regions as well as new characters. The only thing I didn't like was the plotline of Suicune trying to flood Johto, that never made sense to me since Suicune was supposed to be an envoy of a benevolent deity in the franchise. Not to mention flooding the land is Kyogre's thing.

One thing; wheres the link for the discord?

 

[Arnie#0001]

yay! I loved Liquid Crystal, I'm glad its back in some form. I hope some of the non-canon content is kept, I know alot of people had criticisms of that but I think people shouldnt be so judgemental over it. I loved those extra additions from more regions as well as new characters. The only thing I didn't like was the plotline of Suicune trying to flood Johto, that never made sense to me since Suicune was supposed to be an envoy of a benevolent deity in the franchise. Not to mention flooding the land is Kyogre's thing.

One thing; wheres the link for the discord?

Hello friend

I have updated the link to the full URL, instead of the Discord join code. should be easier to access for you now.

 

[Arnie#0001]

Suggestion: make a GitHub page or some other kind of folder on a file host site. It's about the same amount of time needed to push new updates and doesn't rely on a service that is not made for file hosting. It also makes things much easier for users.
Cool concept though, I like the idea of refreshing something like Liquid Crystal and the new visual style is nice.

That would have been fine if it was a decomp with editable source code.

This is not a decomp project.

Discord is a simple drag+drop solution that works for me and my use case. Why fix something that isn't broken?

 

[R0guePhant0m]

That would have been fine if it was a decomp with editable source code.

This is not a decomp project.

Discord is a simple drag+drop solution that works for me and my use case. Why fix something that isn't broken?

Alot of people don't want to join the discord that's why he's doing this. Also why is the game updated that much?

 

[Arnie#0001]

Alot of people don't want to join the discord that's why he's doing this. Also why is the game updated that much?

All I can say to that is tough doodoo.

It gets updated that much because I work on it that much. You see, unlike most people I have the privilege to not have to or need to work so I have ample time to pursue my own interests; instead of adding 2-3 things every couple of months, I am able to work rapidly. The game is a work in progress.

If you don't like my work schedule that is your perogative.

As for not wanting to join my discord, again that is fair; but I do things that are convenient for me - this hack is after all first and foremost built for myself. I provide it publically for others to play because I respect the work of others.

I am not going to change how I distribute something just because someone doesn't want to do something. I don't want to spend half my day putting it in places that I really am not invested in just so someone else has easier access to it.

Essentially, as LaZ says, Liquid Crystal can bee freely used as a ROM base as long as credits is provided.

There are plenty of Johto based hacks out there that are actually far better than my hack. Just look at GS Chronicles or Crystal dust for example - excellent hacks and achieve far more than I ever could.

 

[CharlaMace44]

Any hints on some legendary locations? I've found Regice, Regirock, Registeel, XD001, Groudon, Mewtwo, Lugia, obviously Suicune. Any hints for Mew, Kyogre, Ho-Oh, Celebi, Entei, Rayquaza, Raikou?

 

[CharlaMace44]

Found Mew in the pokemon mansion. At least it was Mew before the battle. It appeared as a lvl 1 Suicune once the battle started. Glitch?

 

[ELCRIS89]

Any hints on some legendary locations? I've found Regice, Regirock, Registeel, XD001, Groudon, Mewtwo, Lugia, obviously Suicune. Any hints for Mew, Kyogre, Ho-Oh, Celebi, Entei, Rayquaza, Raikou?

All I can say to that is tough doodoo.

It gets updated that much because I work on it that much. You see, unlike most people I have the privilege to not have to or need to work so I have ample time to pursue my own interests; instead of adding 2-3 things every couple of months, I am able to work rapidly. The game is a work in progress.

If you don't like my work schedule that is your perogative.

As for not wanting to join my discord, again that is fair; but I do things that are convenient for me - this hack is after all first and foremost built for myself. I provide it publically for others to play because I respect the work of others.

I am not going to change how I distribute something just because someone doesn't want to do something. I don't want to spend half my day putting it in places that I really am not invested in just so someone else has easier access to it.

Essentially, as LaZ says, Liquid Crystal can bee freely used as a ROM base as long as credits is provided.

There are plenty of Johto based hacks out there that are actually far better than my hack. Just look at GS Chronicles or Crystal dust for example - excellent hacks and achieve far more than I ever could.

Hi, new to this community, but have been playing crystal advance for some time and love it! I got to the part where I go with Lance to the team rocket hideout and once I'm there, there are no grunts standing around to give me the passwords slowpoketail or raticatetail. There are only the grunts that show up to battle when I walk past a statue, but they disappear right away. Do I need to download a newer version? I cannot continue past Mahogany town.

 

[CharlaMace44]

Hi, new to this community, but have been playing crystal advance for some time and love it! I got to the part where I go with Lance to the team rocket hideout and once I'm there, there are no grunts standing around to give me the passwords slowpoketail or raticatetail. There are only the grunts that show up to battle when I walk past a statue, but they disappear right away. Do I need to download a newer version? I cannot continue past Mahogany town.

I was playing crystal advance redux and did not encounter that issue so yes, sadly it sounds like you need a newer version but I could be wrong. Could be a glitch that someone else knows how to get around.

 

[PokéemeraldFan92]

Hey, why are the Pokemon back sprites so small? I like them the regular size as the fronts

 

[cakeisgreat]

What a time to be alive to witness reboots/remakes of older romhacks

 

[Yave Yu]

Another Crystal hack, many nice feature, but bag still… small storage as vanilla FireRed (42 items).

 

[CRV13]

Hey, why are the Pokemon back sprites so small? I like them the regular size as the fronts

You do get a P.D.A. early on though that let's you access the PC Storage system anywhere you want and NOT JUST when you are inside a Pokemon Center or your own room so where's the problem then?

 

[PokéemeraldFan92]

This game sucks. The creator of the hack made it so Brock can't be defeated. And worse, he banned me from the game because of some data problem.

 

[Sama89]

hi i was playing pokemon crystal redux can someone tell me why as soon as i get metal cloat and get off the ship the game resets?