Emerald hack: Pokémon Little Emerald

[Purkat]

Little Emerald
Recently, I've been getting into a type of challenge called a "Littlelocke". This is a Nuzlocke where you can only use fully unevolved Pokémon. As a frequent romhack enjoyer, I've been kinda craving a difficulty romhack designed specifically for a Littlelocke. So I thought, "hey, I can do that," and here we are!

Little Emerald is a difficulty hack of Pokémon Emerald with only fully unevolved Pokémon - both in the wild and on trainers' teams. Along with those changes, I've also added quite a few quality of life upgrades and two difficulty modes. This game was made with the goal of being a fun and challenging romhack to Nuzlocke, but I hope you enjoy it any way you decide to play.

Spoiler: Features

• Starters: Snivy/Scorbunny/Squirtle
• Hard level caps
• Gen 9 battle mechanics unless otherwise stated
• Difficulty modes:
  • Hard: All gym leaders and most boss trainers have a full team of six Pokémon with strong movesets
  • Normal: Not all gym leaders and boss trainers have a full team of six Pokémon and have generally weaker movesets than in Hard Mode
• EV Gain can be turned on or off
• Mini-Bosses throughout the game that give prizes such as BP, battle items, and access to move tutors
• A BP shop where you can buy battle items and items to customize your Pokémon such as Ability Patches, Nature Mints, and Bottle Caps
• You will permanently lose any held items that were removed in a battle (only if you win the battle)
• You can permanently take held items from Pokémon in a trainer battle (only if you win the battle)
• Trainers don't use items
• Attract works regardless of gender
• The 5 confuse berries (Aguav, Iapapa, Wiki, Mago, Figy) heal ½ max HP and trigger at ¼ max HP (As in generation 7)
• Oceanic Museum, Mauville Game Corner, Daycare, Weather Institute, Mossdeep Game Corner, Space Center, and Devon Corp (Fossil) encounter locations are now separate
• Two new custom maps:
  • Deep Woods (accessible from Petalburg Woods post-Cut)
  • Desert Oasis (accessible from Route 111)
• New "Mega Evolutions":
  • All Baby Pokémon (Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Togepi, Tyrogue, Elekid, Magby, Smoochum, Azurill, Wynaut, Budew, Chingling, Bonsly, Mime Jr., Happiny, Munchlax, Rioolu, Mantyke, and Toxel) can evolve in battle via a held item (their respective incenses and new incenses added for the babies without one)
• Some type and ability changes, mostly to give unevolved Pokémon types and abilities from their evolved forms
• Follower Pokémon
• Most bosses have overworld partner Pokémon
• Minor story changes (just added and move boss fights):
  • Added an Aqua Leader Archie fight to Slateport's Oceanic Museum just after fighting the grunts
  • Changed Magma Admin Tabitha on Mt. Chimnet to Magma Admin Courtney Courtney
  • Added a tag battle with your rival against Aqua Leader Archie & Aqua Admin Matt to Mt. Pyre
  • Changed Magma Admin Tabitha in the Mossdeep Space Center tag battle to Magma Admin Tabitha
• A few boss fights scale in levels depending on if you have defeated Winona yet (you can fight them before or after):
  • Optional rival battle in Lilycove City
  • Magma Admin Tabitha in Magma Hideout
  • Magma Leader Maxie in Magma Hideout
  • Tag battle with your rival against Aqua Leader Archie & Aqua Admin Matt on Mt. Pyre
  • Aqua Admin Matt in Aqua Hideout

Spoiler: Quality of Life Changes

• New Key Items:
  • Infinite Candy: Acts as a Rare Candy, cannot go past the next level cap (regular Rare Candies can, up to level 3 levels past)
  • Cap Candy: Brings a Pokémon to the next level cap instantly
  • Max Restore: Fully restores the HP, PP, and Status of a Pokémon
  • Infinite Repel: Lets you toggle wild encounters
  • Pokévial: Fully restored the HP, PP, and Status of all Pokémon in your party
  • Warp Panel: Lets you warp to a previously visited town
  • Flashlight: Brightens up dark caves
• Press 'L' in the overworld to open a utilities menu with the following utilities:
  • Pokémon Box Link
  • Infinite Repel (turn off encounters)
  • Auto Run Toggle
  • Change Time (set the clock)
  • Pokévial (heal your party)
  • Escape Rope
  • Warp Panel (fly)
  • Flashlight
  • Hatch Egg (choose an egg from your party to hatch)
• Press 'R' in a wild Pokémon battle to run
• Press 'R' in the overworld to toggle auto run
• Press 'A' to relearn moves in the Battle Moves page of the summary screen
• Press 'A' in the Pokémon Info page of the summary screen to change a Pokémon's nickname
• Press 'A' in the Pokémon Skills page of the summary screen to see a Pokémon's IVs or cycle between IVs and EVs if EV gain is enabled
• Romhack Version, Difficulty, EV gain, and Battle Points can be seen on your trainer card
• HMs can now be used as long as you have it in your bag and the corresponding gym has been defeated
• Removed the field move text boxes and Pokémon pop-ups
• Hold 'B' and press 'A' on a valid tile to Dive
• Hold 'A' and press 'B' on a valid tile to Emerge
• Hold 'B' while Surfing or Diving to move faster
• A new bag pocket for Incenses
• A new bag pocket for Nature Mints
• New NPCs in each Pokémon center:
  • Nature Mint Maker: This NPC takes a Blank Nature Mint and turns it into any Nature Mint you choose
  • Pre-Damage & Pre-Status NPC: This NPC will give you the option of Pre-Damaging or Pre-Statusing one of your Pokémon.
    Pre-Damage: You choose any number between 1 and the max HP of the chosen Pokémon - 1 to set the Pokémon's HP to.
    Pre-Status: You choose one of the following status conditions to apply to the chosen Pokémon: Poison, Paralysis, Sleep, Burn, Freeze, Toxic Poison. Electric types can't be Paralyzed, Fire types can't be Burned, Ice types can't be Frozen, and Pokémon with any of the following abilities can't be put to Sleep: Insomnia, Vital Spirit, Sweet Veil, Comatose, Purifying Salt. Poison and Steel types cannot be Poisoned or Toxic Poisoned until you add Salandit to your Pokédex (just seen, not caught).
    *Eggs and Fainted Pokémon can't be Pre-Damaged or Pre-Statused.
  • Hyper Training NPC: This NPC will allow you to Hyper Train a selected stat of one of your Pokémon in exchange for a Bottle Cap. A Hyper Trained stat will act as if it is 31 IV in all battle calculations. Hyper Trained stats are marked in blue when viewing IVs in the Pokémon's summary screen.
    *Eggs cannot be Hyper Trained.
  • Battle Points Trader: This NPC will exchange certain items for Battle Points which are obtained from defeating Mini-Bosses.
  • Egg Move Tutor: This NPC will teach one of your Pokémon one of their egg moves in exchange for 1 BP.

Spoiler: Screenshots

The Future:
Of course I will release bugfix patches as bugs are found. Other than that, I have plenty of ideas (and a list) for features that I want to implement in the future. Here's a small, vague sneak peak at some of them:

• Changes to the functionality of the Damp ability
• Reaper Cloth Duskull & Lucky Punch Happiny
• Changes to the functionality of the move Revival Blessing
• Random berry amounts
• Monotype mode
• Sandbox mode

And then of course there are also some changes that don't have to do with new features such as the continual balancing of learnsets, trainer levels, and boss teams.

Credits

• Features:
• I took inspiration from many other romacks. Here are some of them and what I took from them (They may not be the first romhack to do some of these things, but the first time I saw them):
  • Run and Bun: Pre-Status NPC, Rare Candies bypassing the cap
  • Pokémon Lucid: Boss trainers having overworld Pokémon
  • Inclement Emerald: I got the idea for the Nature Mint NPC from this game
  • Radical Red: Egg Move Tutor
• Credit to my friend Montimon02 for the Monster Magikarp idea.
• Code:
• Modified code from Jaizu, Buffel Saft, AkimotoBubble, PokemonCrazy, & Scyrous for viewing IVs in a Pokémon's summary screen.
• Modified code from devolov for toggleable auto-running shoes.
• Used code from devolov for allowing field HM use when the player has the HM in their bag.
• Modified code from Buffel Saft for the difficulty and ev options at the beginning of the game.
• Modified code from AsparagusEduardo for the new bag pockets.
• Used code from Lunos (LOuroboros) for the Infinite Repel Item.
• Used RHH's pokeemerald-expansion as a base for this romhack (full list of contributors here) which in turn uses pret's pokeemerald decompilation as a base (full list of contributors here).
• Thanks to users Meister_anon and Alex (rainonline) for helping me figure out dynamic type changes in battle.
• Thanks to hudurlem and contributors for poryscript and porymap which I also used to make this romhack.
• Thanks to Team Aqua's Hideout (Archie) for the useful tutorials on their YouTube channel.
• Used KinglerChamp's VanillaCalc as a base for the Little Emerald damage calculator.

Documentation: Google Drive Folder
Patches: Google Drive Folder
Discord Server: Discord Invite

How to Patch:
Download a base Emerald ROM - "Pokemon - Emerald Version (U)"

• CRC32: 1f1c08fb
• MD5: 605b89b67018abcea91e693a4dd25be3
• SHA-1: f3ae088181bf583e55daf962a92bb46f4f1d07b7

Download a patch from the link above.
Go to the ROM Patcher Website.
Input the base ROM and patch into their fields and click "Apply Patch".
Enjoy the game!

Patch Information:
Any vX.X.X version is a bugfix patch.
The current supported version is: v1.1/v1.2.
MD5 Hashes:
Little Emerald v1.1: B081FDD37CEF378C8B24719B953B2AF6
Little Emerald v1.1.1: 03A1142FCDED05236DDC28AB5B288F99
Little Emerald v1.2: BD1D35D62FD82F4111224FBAFC8506B5
Little Emerald v1.2.1: 431C3CCDE5DBE3505F23C8C770F0BA97

Spoiler: Older Versions

Little Emerald v1.0 MD5: EDE5766D7BC1F1A02B1505E25B4F90DC

 

[RickOfTheDarkness]

This looks amazing. Gotta try it sometime soon.

 

[chamodman]

how do i use mega evolution in battle? when i press start before selecting a move it gives the move info.

 

[Purkat]

how do i use mega evolution in battle? when i press start before selecting a move it gives the move info.

That is a bug I will release a patch for soon.

 

[chamodman]

That is a bug I will release a patch for soon.

thanks for the info. i'm looking forward to future updates namely the sandbox mode.

 

[Celem]

This is super fun so far. It's tough, I have next to no mainseries pokemon experience beyond a playthrough of emerald. I picked Normal difficulty and the overworld is mostly OK, but rival and gym leaders have been real challenging (Brawly, so much. Wattson wasnt nearly as scary). I'm too new to talk about tuning I think, but I'm making slow headway with some strategic sacrifices at gyms.