Don’t worry! We haven’t died off! PokemonV is still around and working hard!

You’ve probably been wondering where we went. As the school season came to a close, each of us had things to wrap up in our personal lives and, as anticipated, things were a little slow for a short time. Now that the busy season is over, though, we’re back to our usual speed and should have notable updates coming to you soon.

A few changes have been going on in our team, including the switch of the main writers. Flycone, who wrote the script and the past blogs, is unfortunately going to be pretty busy for the summer. So with the agreement of everyone on the team, I’ve stepped in to work on the script in his place. I plan to do my best to help the team ensure that this project sees itself to a triumphant finale!

That’s just about everything – we’re all hard at work again and excited to bring you new content. Expect to see a post by our main music man in the near future. Please keep supporting us and keep an eye on the website for updates! Remember, if you have questions or comments, the forum is always open.

See you later, players!

~Ishougen

Hi there friends.

If you haven’t noticed, it’s the end of May and soon the beginning of June. If you know whats what, you’ll know this is exam time for those of us in school. Yes, we actually do have lives outside of internet and pokemon, and that’s what we are focusing on. So we have taken a bit of a break the past week and will be on a “limited work schedule” until we have all passed our classes and we have the summer free. We’ll be “Kobe Doin’ Work” here soon.

We had an internal misscommunication recently, and a valued member chose to step down over personal opinions of how we are going about the process of making the game. He coded most all of the Demo, and will be missed – but don’t fear, we still have the coders we need to finish the project.

We have taken a fine toothed comb to the storyline recently and a hot iron to the wrinkles that pop up every so often. Those are getting done quickly and easily. As for the progress we have made in the game as a whole, we have reached the 2nd gym and adding the finishing touches. It will take longer then usual because of our exams and school, but once this hurdle is over, we will be able to get to the 3rd gym in no time. I wish you could see the pokemon you get to choose from heading into the second gym, but it’s better as a surprise.

But there has been some actual testing of the game so far, and we have managed to solve a major issue that many have been having. It’s probably the biggest glitch of the game by far, and is clearly the complete and total focus of the last few weeks. We have spent more time on this issue then much else, and is going to redefine Pokemon V from here on out. I hope you’ve got yourself strapped to your seats, cause this is going to BLOW – YOUR – MIND!

Yea. We turned the Male Protagonist’s hat to the front. We demand your eternal praise for that.

But in all seriousness, there was a big problem we have found and fixed up. The lag has been a major factor in how the game is progressing and thanks to some genius thinking, lag has been dropped considerably. We anticipate that anyone even having minor issues with the lag will see a huge change, making the game run smoother and faster battles. The issue was the size of our map tile set. The game is being made inside RPGmakerXP using the Pokemon Essentials package, and originally we crammed all the possible graphics into one tile set. Well, with these new smaller tile sets, the lag is reduced and game play is easier.

Well, there is your heads up on the inside, and we’ll get back you all later. Keep posting on the forum. Talk to you all later.

-Flycone

Hey there. It’s me again and time for an update. We got some interesting things done this week. So let’s start!

This week started a bit slow for us. We got together and did a few minor edits to some things, as well as figure out some details we have been struggling with. It wasn’t until later that we really hit the books. There was a strange problem with the story, something that when writing we didn’t at first intend, so we got the development team together and figured out step by step ways to get around this big problem. There is still a lot of story issues to sort though that were discovered during this second revision, so there is still much work to be done. That hasn’t stopped all the work though. Our mappers are still mapping and the spriters are still working.

We have taken a second look at our main character sprites. There have been many fair criticisms over our trainers, so what we are going to do is test out some different colors, as well as a few tweaks here and there, nothing too major.

As for Good News – The forum is back! It’s time to gather together and start discussing everything again. We also added a forum for general discussion in addition to Demo Bug Reports. We have even added another new forum concept, of Suggestions. If there is anything you really want to see in a Pokemon Game, drop us a post in the forum and if it’s something the rest of us want to see, we will discuss it.

The Recruitment Forum is back too. We have lost ALL recruitment threads from before, so if you posted one before, and still want to sign up, please do so again. Sorry about that, but there isn’t much we can do. Read the README thread to learn what we need from you to post in your thread. We may not respond to your thread, and we may. It all depends on time and if we need someone at all.

The development team has decided not to release anymore spoilers. I’m sorry for those of you who thought we would have one, but it is not something the development team feels is necessary.

Well that’s all for now. Have fun in the forum, and we’ll be back later with more updates! I hope you are still trying to break the Demo.

-Flycone

We had some issue with the Forum. Because of this, we are going to change the forum software, or work up a new forum all together. Our issue with the forum caused us to lose most of the threads in the Recruitment and Discussion forums.

The forum will be temporarily out of order until further notice. Until then, please hold on and we’ll get back up soon. This hasn’t stopped the game from being made, so that’s good.

I, or others, will keep you up to date. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hello there friends. My name is Flycone and I’m the lead story writer for this project. I saw a lot of good responses to the story concept, but you have only seen the surface. Be prepared to be amazed. I guarantee you’ll enjoy what I have in store. But I’m not here to go on and on about the story…yet. What I will do is go over a few quick things, confirm what may have been lost in translation, and offer up a Pokédex Spoiler. Ready for this?

We took just a few days time off after sending out the demo. The code team, made up of only two members, did some amazing work and deserved a breather. Now we are back underway on the game, and thankfully for us, this next section will be a little easier. So since we are getting revved up, let me share a few things that you might know, but maybe missed concerning the demo and the game itself:

1 – Music in the Demo may change.
Some of the music in the demo was nothing more than a placeholder. Our music team intends to create original works of music for the demo, and that’s something we all should be excited about. They have done a great job with the music so far, and constructive comments on the music is always appreciated.

2 – HMs are Items.
You heard me right! HM effects are now Key Items. If Nintendo ever shuts us down, I hope they take everyone’s overwhelming excitement of this concept to heart. You will no longer need an HM Slave in order to bust down trees or rocks. But what is more exciting I think, is that the actual attacks themselves will not go to waste. Each of the HM attacks will be available as TMs. This means you can still power that Pidgeot with Fly and give Surf to your favorite water Pokemon. But if it’s your intent to avoid a water Pokemon, you are still able to “surf” the water using an item.

3 – Sprites and Animations
You may have seen a lot of things in the demo that didn’t seem right. The running sprites, the lamp posts, and a whole host of sprite issues. We understand them and are working on them. You may have seen a massive lack of Battle Sprites, as well as other kinds of animations. The truth of the matter is that these things seem to bog down and lag the game. Even in our toned down demo, some computers lag slightly or massively. We are attempting to keep the lag low, and avoid animations. If we have time, we will make an attempt to have battle animations, but it’s on the bottom of our list of things to do. We are more willing to sacrifice something like battle animations in order to ensure that the greatest number of people who want to play the game, can, with as little lagging issues as possible. If you do experience lag, it is your system’s fault for being unable to keep up with the game, and not something we can fix beyond what we are attempting to do.

4 – Windows7 Fix / Other Technical issues with playing the Demo
Some players have reported an issue when running the demo on Windows7. If you run Windows7, and you are getting a message that the game has closed, then follow these instructions, as provided by Dane343 on our forum: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=257

If you are playing with a Mac, you will either need to get a new computer, or find some sort of cross-compatibility software. I have seen some people give out ideas, but I was a fool and didn’t remember them. If you know of a few programs that will do this, please post them in the forum.

If you are having issues other than these, please post in our forum what is going wrong and your error messages, and we will see what we can do. We are not experts. Don’t expect us to solve the problem, but we will do what we can. If you have had problems before but found out how to solve them, please post your strategy to fix your particular issue on the forum as well so we can aid those having your issue and give you credit.

4 – The Pokédex
If you haven’t taken a look at the Pokédex app in the Pokégear yet, you will find that our Pokédex contains 280 Pokemon. Each of them has been selected under many different reasons. We have a good spread of Pokemon by type and attacks, and the ones we have chosen will make this game really fun. We also tried to pick favorites – a lot of Pokemon in our game are common favorites of not just us, but the Pokemon community. In addition, some Pokemon that don’t get as much day of light in the official games, can be seen a little more often and take a bigger role in ours. How has that Teddiursa you caught in Skufield Forest treated you against Natalie?

Now we get to the fun part! There are 115 different species of Pokemon in our 280 count pokédex. That’s a lot actually. If we were to reveal a species each week, that would take us two years! The game won’t take us that long to create, and because of that – I’m going to reveal 12 of those species right now! Highlight the below black bars to reveal information on the Spoiler.

CLICK HERE FOR THE SPOILER

If you played the demo by now, this isn’t really that much of a spoiler, but there is good news to report, so it’s not that all of a disappointment. Yes, each of the 12 starter pokémon is available to use as your starting pokémon and are available to catch at one point in the game as well. Cool right? Even if you didn’t pick the starter you wanted, you can still eventually catch the other 11 starter pokémon in a special section of the Echon Region.

We first wanted to have a game with all 489 pokémon in it, but it turned out to be one of our dumber mistakes. So we got together and formulated a smaller sized pokédex and attempted to select which of the 12 starters we wanted to use for our game. In the end, we found a fun way to get the one that you want rather then forcing you to pick from our select choices. It should be easy to figure out how you can pick the one you want a few times into the demo.

Well that’s all for me today. I’ll be back next week with some updates, more game info and a Pokédex Spoiler that will knock you off your feet. Post in our forum, keep trying to break our demo, and I will see you later!

-Flycone