Hack Series: Pokémon Photonic Sun & Prismatic Moon

[Buffel Saft]

rather than level curve (which is generally fine here), i would nitpick the "iv/ev curve" this hack have here. its starts off small but not even a quarter of the way through the hack even grunt trainers start to have near max iv and ev on their mons. imo its the most painful aspect of nuzlocke runs, having sub iv mons getting unexpectedly oneshot by a random move on a enemy weaker attacking stat. imo just like level it should more gradual and progressive, with only lategame named trainers and totem mons having perfect iv/ev.

The EV "curve" roughly follows what the player gets from the ridiculous EXP share in the 3DS games; though it will take a bit longer to get ideal spreads, you'll most likely have 510 EVs on anything you caught early game by the time you reach the Royal Dome. Most trainers won't have max EVs until well after that, and many of them won't have any EVs at all until Ula'Ula Island. I can't design the hack around Nuzlockers as they lose a lot of EXP and EV progress every time they lose a Pokemon, though the Power items are available early on so they can easily deal with that by making use of those items.

In a hack without the 3DS exp share I'd definitely go for a more gentle curve, though I'd still give ace trainers and veterans perfect stats too as they make good mini bosses.

 

[Murkrow]

The EV "curve" roughly follows what the player gets from the ridiculous EXP share in the 3DS games; though it will take a bit longer to get ideal spreads, you'll most likely have 510 EVs on anything you caught early game by the time you reach the Royal Dome. Most trainers won't have max EVs until well after that, and many of them won't have any EVs at all until Ula'Ula Island. I can't design the hack around Nuzlockers as they lose a lot of EXP and EV progress every time they lose a Pokemon, though the Power items are available early on so they can easily deal with that by making use of those items.

In a hack without the 3DS exp share I'd definitely go for a more gentle curve, though I'd still give ace trainers and veterans perfect stats too as they make good mini bosses.

xp share just means that your ev spread will be extremely inefficient unless you decide to do ev training right from the start till max ev. like i just check a xurkitree from a randomizer run after fire trial with no minimal grinding, it has near 200 attack ev "wasted" and the rest pretty evenly and inefficiently spread among other stat. then you have hau's pikachu much earlier on who has 25iv everything and 100 atk,100sp and 255 spd with light ball that just oneshotted one of my mon with random brick break. just not a challenge but a tedious chore that you have to start iv breeding/ev optimization not even halfway through the hack just to avoid random 1/2hko, something i never did even for drayano nuzlockes and that should be reserved for endgame purposes instead..

also you skirted iv, should named trainers at lvl20ish already have 25iv in everything?

 

[Ulysess]

hi buffel! just another fan here giving his thoughts, just as everybody else im having a blast playing this hack room after finishing you wylting y hack and drayano's rising ruby hack, i think its safe to say its a an amazing work you did here and more than that you take suggestions from the community that makes the game even more fun, im of course just starting the hack and expect no less from you and this amazing work that you created, thx for the hack, nothing else to say, just showing appreciation

 

[Buffel Saft]

xp share just means that your ev spread will be extremely inefficient unless you decide to do ev training right from the start till max ev. like i just check a xurkitree from a randomizer run after fire trial with no minimal grinding, it has near 200 attack ev "wasted" and the rest pretty evenly and inefficiently spread among other stat. then you have hau's pikachu much earlier on who has 25iv everything and 100 atk,100sp and 255 spd with light ball that just oneshotted one of my mon with random brick break. just not a challenge but a tedious chore that you have to start iv breeding/ev optimization not even halfway through the hack just to avoid random 1/2hko, something i never did even for drayano nuzlockes and that should be reserved for endgame purposes instead..

also you skirted iv, should named trainers at lvl20ish already have 25iv in everything?

If you were using the power items, most of those EVs would be in desirable stats and you'd almost have a perfect EV spread at that point, without needing to do any grinding. The EXP share makes sure any mon holding a power item gets at least 8 desirable EVs every time you KO anything. I get that the speed drop is a pain and you'd most likely want to remove them for named trainer battles, which is also a pain, but when you're just progressing through a route they're great items for your team to hold. Once you hit the EV cap you can just remove any unwanted EVs with berries until you have a good EV spread. There is no need to IV breed or spend hours grinding to EV train, and you don't even need good stats to beat the game in the first place (though they'll help in a Nuzlocke of course).

As for Hau's Pikachu, I absolutely think it should have those stats; for one it's a Pikachu, so it's not going to pose much of a threat otherwise, and it's also a boss battle. If Hau was as easy as all the other trainers in the area it'd be a pretty disappointing fight. Also at that level, the difference between 15 IVs and 25 IVs is one or two stat points; they make very little difference early on. The Pikachu having Brick Break isn't random; it has a very limited move pool, and as you get the TM for Brick Break in the trial you and Hau just completed, it makes sense for him to have used it on one of his Pokemon.

None of Drayano's hacks have trainers with EVs, so it's not surprising that things hit harder in this hack than in his. While Nuzlocking it is possible, I'd expect it to be a pretty horrible experience, especially given how hard it is to deal with totems in a vanilla Nuzlocke.

hi buffel! just another fan here giving his thoughts, just as everybody else im having a blast playing this hack room after finishing you wylting y hack and drayano's rising ruby hack, i think its safe to say its a an amazing work you did here and more than that you take suggestions from the community that makes the game even more fun, im of course just starting the hack and expect no less from you and this amazing work that you created, thx for the hack, nothing else to say, just showing appreciation

Thanks Ulysess! I hope you have fun with the rest of the hack!

 

[Ulysess]

hi buffel. i wanna ask, is this hack gonna have more updates or is already done? do you still accept suggestions, i wann point out how awfull the igglybuff evolution line has been since the begining of times, i saw the changes you did to it and i think its cool but there is still a think you can do to make it better, in my humble opinion jigglypuff should have the fluffy ability, i mean how can you not try to squeezee that pink fluffy thing, also you can double its defense to be 90 maybe? also can i ask if you know a guide of how to hack 3ds pokemon games? not trying to do something big, i wanna try changing abilities and types of some pokemons, of course for my own amusement, not trying to disrecpect your work or anything, if you dont wanna or cannot tell its ok

 

[Buffel Saft]

hi buffel. i wanna ask, is this hack gonna have more updates or is already done? do you still accept suggestions, i wann point out how awfull the igglybuff evolution line has been since the begining of times, i saw the changes you did to it and i think its cool but there is still a think you can do to make it better, in my humble opinion jigglypuff should have the fluffy ability, i mean how can you not try to squeezee that pink fluffy thing, also you can double its defense to be 90 maybe? also can i ask if you know a guide of how to hack 3ds pokemon games? not trying to do something big, i wanna try changing abilities and types of some pokemons, of course for my own amusement, not trying to disrecpect your work or anything, if you dont wanna or cannot tell its ok

Hey, I'm not going to be making any more updates for this hack for a while as I'm working on something for Emerald right now and want to focus on that (I'll still provide bug fixes if needed though). I don't have a link to any specific 3DS hacking guide, but all you need is pk3DS and version 9 of Asia81's 3DS hacking toolkit. You use the toolkit to unpack a 3DS ROM or cia file and then open the folder that contains the unpacked files with pk3DS, which will allow you to do almost everything that's been done in these hacks.

 

[james19]

Just passing by and I want to say that I reached 100 hours playing Prismatic Moon today. Everything is flawless and perfect. Thanks for such a fantastic piece of work (And Eternal X too!)

 

[Ulysess]

nice! thanks, ill try it, i wish you luck buffel!

 

[Buffel Saft]

Just passing by and I want to say that I reached 100 hours playing Prismatic Moon today. Everything is flawless and perfect. Thanks for such a fantastic piece of work (And Eternal X too!)

Thanks! That's quite an impressive play time, especially for a ROM hack!

nice! thanks, ill try it, i wish you luck buffel!

Thanks! Let me know if you have any trouble with it.

 

[Ulysess]

hello buffel, me again, sorry if i disturb you, im about to try my luck with the hacking thing, ive been watching tutorials on how to use poke3ds, can you tell if its the exact same way to edit an already done hack? like for example i want to edit your hack or drayanos hack, you guys provide us the files to just drop in our 3ds, im using luma btw

 

[Buffel Saft]

hello buffel, me again, sorry if i disturb you, im about to try my luck with the hacking thing, ive been watching tutorials on how to use poke3ds, can you tell if its the exact same way to edit an already done hack? like for example i want to edit your hack or drayanos hack, you guys provide us the files to just drop in our 3ds, im using luma btw

Yeah it's pretty much the same process for editing a hack, but you'll need to copy the hack's files into an unpacked 3DS ROM so that pk3DS can edit them (it checks that you have the entire ROM and won't just edit the files Drayano or I supply by themselves). When you want to test the edited files you can just copy them over the existing ones in the hack's folders on your 3DS.

 

[RachelTheIvysaur]

I know this question might be frowned upon, but is there any possible way to acquire a pre-patched ready-to-go PS or PM file? I am not great at 3ds patching, even with tutorials. If not that is okay. I can keep trying.

 

[Buffel Saft]

I know this question might be frowned upon, but is there any possible way to acquire a pre-patched ready-to-go PS or PM file? I am not great at 3ds patching, even with tutorials. If not that is okay. I can keep trying.

There are a few outdated pre-built ROMs available on other sites, but we aren't allowed to share them here. If there's a certain part of the build process you're having trouble with I can try to help you with it.

 

[Ulysess]

thanks again buffel i successfully edited the archives, ill see how it works

 

[Mystesis]

Thank you for a neat hack, Buffel Saft, appreciated!

Would you please consider adding nocturnal Pokémon to the daytime areas and vice versa, like in the Penumbra Moon?

 

[Buffel Saft]

Thank you for a neat hack, Buffel Saft, appreciated!

Would you please consider adding nocturnal Pokémon to the daytime areas and vice versa, like in the Penumbra Moon?

You're welcome! That's something I considered while making the hack, but I found that it cluttered up the wild Pokemon tables and made it harder to find the Pokemon I was looking for. Personally I prefer messing with the system clock over dealing with low encounter rates. Normally I'd just provide another version of the wild Pokemon file, but it's way over sized and I'd like to avoid having any more copies of a ~400MB file in the hack's folders, so it's not something I'm likely to add unfortunately.

Thanks for taking the time to make a suggestion though, appreciated!

 

[vcvcvc12]

So, I'm having trouble getting this working. I'm using the Luma3DS LayeredFS method, and I get the "welcome to Photonic Sun" message, but everything after (wild 'mons, trainers) seems to be unchanged. One question, one suggestion:

Is this a problem with the files or with my installation? I followed the Quick Install guide exactly, and I'm on a regular 3ds XL with the 3ds guide stuff all done, and the associated title folder contains both a romfs folder and a code.ips file. I'm using the Rebalanced patch. Patching works fine for Rising Ruby, so other patches work.

Making some early, obvious changes and pointing them out in the quick install guide or something would be a good way to make it easy for players to detect these kinds of problems. You already did that with the wilds (route 1 grass 3 shares no pokemon with the standard as far as i can tell), but it could use highlighting. I don't actually have any confirmation about the trainer one because I don't know if you changed early regular trainers.

 

[o-taco]

First just wanted to say thanks for the fun hack! The challenge level is great and the item access and wild availabilities are really well organized.

I recently started up a new file because I wanted to try playing around with the shiny odds. I hunt on my 3ds but don't want to take the time to do the same on Citra, which I'm using now. I was able to use pk3ds to change the shiny rate in an xy hack no problem, but for some reason am having trouble with pspm. I tried changing the shiny odds in the 3ds file before I rebuilt it but it seems to have not worked. I'm pretty new to this sort of stuff so I'm not sure if I went wrong somewhere or if the 1.2 update cia file is overriding my odds? Any ideas or advice on how to fix this? Thanks!

 

[Buffel Saft]

So, I'm having trouble getting this working. I'm using the Luma3DS LayeredFS method, and I get the "welcome to Photonic Sun" message, but everything after (wild 'mons, trainers) seems to be unchanged. One question, one suggestion:

Is this a problem with the files or with my installation? I followed the Quick Install guide exactly, and I'm on a regular 3ds XL with the 3ds guide stuff all done, and the associated title folder contains both a romfs folder and a code.ips file. I'm using the Rebalanced patch. Patching works fine for Rising Ruby, so other patches work.

Making some early, obvious changes and pointing them out in the quick install guide or something would be a good way to make it easy for players to detect these kinds of problems. You already did that with the wilds (route 1 grass 3 shares no pokemon with the standard as far as i can tell), but it could use highlighting. I don't actually have any confirmation about the trainer one because I don't know if you changed early regular trainers.

The files seem to be working on my end; the easiest way to tell if the patch is working is if the trainers on Route One (or almost anywhere on Melemele) have more than one Pokemon. Generally if the intro text is working everything else should be too, as most of the hack's changes are in the same set of folders as the text file. Google drive does occasionally break some files though, so if it's definitely not working I'll try installing from there as soon as I have time to check.

Adding something like that to the quick install guide is a good suggestion, thanks for that! I'll make sure that gets done sometime soon.

First just wanted to say thanks for the fun hack! The challenge level is great and the item access and wild availabilities are really well organized.

I recently started up a new file because I wanted to try playing around with the shiny odds. I hunt on my 3ds but don't want to take the time to do the same on Citra, which I'm using now. I was able to use pk3ds to change the shiny rate in an xy hack no problem, but for some reason am having trouble with pspm. I tried changing the shiny odds in the 3ds file before I rebuilt it but it seems to have not worked. I'm pretty new to this sort of stuff so I'm not sure if I went wrong somewhere or if the 1.2 update cia file is overriding my odds? Any ideas or advice on how to fix this? Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words! The update cia is most likely the problem, I'm pretty sure the shiny chance code is in the code.bin file. You might be able to fix it by copying the patched code.bin from the update to the full ROM that you're editing with pk3DS, then changing the shiny rate and copying the code.bin back to the update. Then you can rebuild and reinstall the update, and hopefully that will work; either that or pk3DS will crash and we'll have to try something else.

 

[o-taco]

It worked! Thank you so much!