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[Toxicshadow]

Hey friends 

I've been really thinking about rebooting the old .34 Pokemon mod, but, I feel like it needs some major changes to the mechanics. For example I don't think you should have dwarves running around slashing Mudkips to death. Not really feeling that. So I wanted to ask the community, for some ideas.

What would you guys like to see in a Pokemon mod?

One of the main ideas I wanted to toss around was, how should we handle fortress mode civilizations? On one hand the Pokemon universe is filled with humans who raise Pokemon. But that's not a very DF-Friendly mechanic because even if we removed all the weapons from the game, humans would still run around like savages biting Poke-flesh off the creatures.

On the other hand we could come up with some lore about a new land or something only inhabited by Pokemon, and have some of the more humanoid-like pokemon (Machoke, Lucario, etc...) start forming groups, and 'leading' other Pokemon.

If we really wanted to go ham, we could even make every single species playable, letting players choose how easy/hard the game is. You could just get a whole bunch of Mewtwos and blast the s*** out of everything, or you could start with a little group of Krabbys, and run around pinching your way through the world. This would be really ridiculous though.

Anyways, what do you guys think? For/against any ideas? New ideas? I'd be able to handle the coding, I know my way around raws really well so I'm not worried about that. I just want a more community-driven project because there's so much potential to this but, if it's not done right, it could be a horrible mess.

Other proposed ideas

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Inside creature descriptions, don't limit the colors to just 'red' or 'blue', instead let different variations occur with different shades. So for example you might find a Magikarp with cherry red scales, ivory white whiskers, and goldenrod fins. This is aside from shinys of course.
• Replacing the default plants with the ones found in the games.
• By Ardent Debater: Giving legendaries the [MEGABEAST] and/or [FANCIFUL] token(s). This would let civilizations worship them.
• By Roboson: Going with a 'pre-technology' world, before Pokeballs and such made training easy. Using cagetraps and such instead, and letting them eat the poke-meat "as humans surely did"
• By darkflagrance: One civ of samurai-humans that need steel to stand their own against Pokemon, one civ of each type of Pokemon, and then wild tameable pokemon

Actually I'm gonna put this list on hold right now and I'll update stuff later. I was mostly using it to make sure I can give people all the right credits but it's really not that hard to just scroll through and write everything down later.

[Ardent Debater]

I'm no Modder, but I have a suggestion. What if Legendary Pokemon were Deities/Mega-Beasts?

[Toxicshadow]

I'm no Modder, but I have a suggestion. What if Legendary Pokemon were Deities/Mega-Beasts?

I like it  there's a megabeast token that is usable in creature definitions:

A 'boss' creature. A small number of the creature are created during worldgen, their histories and descendants (if any) will be tracked in worldgen (as opposed to simply 'spawning'), and they will occasionally go on rampages, potentially leading to worship if they attack the same place multiple times. Their presence and number will also influence age names. When appearing in Fortress Mode, they will have a pop-up message announcing their arrival.

There's also a fanciful token that we can use:

The creature is a thing of legend and known to all civilizations. Its materials cannot be requested or preferred. The tag also adds some art value modifiers. Used for things like dragons and other legendary creatures. Conflicts with [COMMON_DOMESTIC]

I think it would be awesome seeing a popup saying an Entei has appeared, or seeing Articuno statues get crafted.

[Roboson]

The problem with making every race of pokemon as a playable race in fortress mode means that you'll only get a few different kinds as the game only picks a certain number of civilizations during worldgen.

If you make them all one race, breeding wont work out right. Two bulbasaurs could breed together and you could get a charizard. Or two charizards could mate and you'd get a muk. It would be all random.

The way DF is set up, there is no way you can really get people from going around and beating up pokemon and eating their poke-meat. Even with no weapons, they'd still punch poor bellsprout to death. 

My advice would be to spin the mod as a "Pre-technology" pokeworld. The world before the pokeball and modern technology made training pokemon easy and eating them unnecessary. That way you could treat them as normal creatures, use cagetraps to catch them, and then train and eat them as humans surely did in prehistoric pokemon times.

[Toxicshadow]

-snip-
My advice would be to spin the mod as a "Pre-technology" pokeworld. The world before the pokeball and modern technology made training pokemon easy and eating them unnecessary. That way you could treat them as normal creatures, use cagetraps to catch them, and then train and eat them as humans surely did in prehistoric pokemon times.

I totally agree, that's what I was intending to bring up in the OP. It's savage but, the least nonsensical. Essentially a 'middle-ages' Pokemon world?

[Roboson]

-snip-
My advice would be to spin the mod as a "Pre-technology" pokeworld. The world before the pokeball and modern technology made training pokemon easy and eating them unnecessary. That way you could treat them as normal creatures, use cagetraps to catch them, and then train and eat them as humans surely did in prehistoric pokemon times.

I totally agree, that's what I was intending to bring up in the OP. It's savage but, the least nonsensical. Essentially a 'middle-ages' Pokemon world?

Yes. That's the way I can see it best working within the systems of DF.

[Toxicshadow]

What races should we leave? Just humans? How should we reform the nobles system? I think it would be really cool seeing 'ancient researchers' and such.

Another thing to think about (sorry for the edit, better than a double post though), should we go with the different non-modern weapons from the anime and such? Things like katanas, spears, shurikens, etc...

[Roboson]

I'd leave humans. You can set up an elite 4 style nobles system if that floats your boat.

As for different weapons you can always make different civilizations with different weapons. However, none of that is really in the pokemon games really.

[Roboson]

(I'm gonna double post because I'm evil.)

Another thing to think about is how you're going to set up the evolution system. You could set each pokemon as a creature (but there wouldn't be any evolving). Or you could do sets (like squirtle, warturtle, and blastois) as one creature with castes. I would do the second one so you could control the population ratios of the pokemon so that the later evolutions are more rare than the weaker earlier evolutions. In addition, that would allow groups of one "species" to show up all at once (like a blastois shows up with several squirtles).

[Toxicshadow]

(I'm gonna double post because I'm evil.)

Another thing to think about is how you're going to set up the evolution system. You could set each pokemon as a creature (but there wouldn't be any evolving). Or you could do sets (like squirtle, warturtle, and blastois) as one creature with castes. I would do the second one so you could control the population ratios of the pokemon so that the later evolutions are more rare than the weaker earlier evolutions. In addition, that would allow groups of one "species" to show up all at once (like a blastois shows up with several squirtles).

Castes are the best way to handle it. The old mod by Monk12 and Old Greg did it that way. It works pretty well, two castes per evolution, one male one female. :p Thats what I would go with atleast

[darkflagrance]

You would probably be able to pull off the pokemon mystery dungeon universe. All mons as part of a single civ, in adventure mode you go on missions, you build havens from the dungeons as fortresses, your pokemon speak, fall in love, fight for themselves rather than follow a trainer like a pet.

You can also neuter humans. Remove their bite and kick attacks. Give them splash, tackle, and flail. Then they will be at the mercy of rattata. No weapons or armor, just run and hope companion pikachu kills the pidgey.

Or you can look at pokemon x nobunagas ambition where the trainers are samurai.

[Toxicshadow]

You would probably be able to pull off the pokemon mystery dungeon universe. All mons as part of a single civ, in adventure mode you go on missions, you build havens from the dungeons as fortresses, your pokemon speak, fall in love, fight for themselves rather than follow a trainer like a pet.

You can also neuter humans. Remove their bite and kick attacks. Give them splash, tackle, and flail. Then they will be at the mercy of rattata. No weapons or armor, just run and hope companion pikachu kills the pidgey.

Or you can look at pokemon x nobunagas ambition where the trainers are samurai.

This is where I think we're stumped lol.

On one hand, there's enough canon from the first series alone to support trainers being samurai, with pokemon to aid them.

On the other hand we could find a way to just exclude the humans all together. I think having them all be one civ would be interesting, and somewhat more lore-friendly. Finding a civ of Magnemites, a civ of Bulbasaurs, etc... to be fair though, there wouldn't really be any control. Starting a new fortress would be poke-roulette. And the different civs would spawn in the most random places. I mean, Magmars in an ocean biome? I think not lol. I just am not sure if having them all crammed into one civ is the best idea? I'm not even sure.

Right now I'm a little stuck on the idea of how cool it would be if we had just civs of Pokemon, and for them to start developing their own technology. I mean come on, a civ of Machops that developed their own crude armor, tell me that doesn't sound awesome lol.

[darkflagrance]

Ocean biomes are basically broken right now if you've never tried them.

I recommend this: one civ of samurai-ainu who need their steel to hold their ground vs pokemon.

Civs of each type that randomly spawn mons from that type as castes. Maybe a guild civ that's basically the civilization of mystery dungeon with all mons as members

Wild uncivilized mons that humans can tame and use vs civilized mons or human invaders.

Ghost type nightcreatures who convert other mons or humans into ghosts.

[Toxicshadow]

Ocean biomes are basically broken right now if you've never tried them.

I recommend this: one civ of samurai-ainu who need their steel to hold their ground vs pokemon.

Civs of each type that randomly spawn mons from that type as castes. Maybe a guild civ that's basically the civilization of mystery dungeon with all mons as members

Wild uncivilized mons that humans can tame and use vs civilized mons or human invaders.

Ghost type nightcreatures who convert other mons or humans into ghosts.

This is pretty interesting, so far I'm into it. Would we still have every Pokemon tameable?
Edit: My apologies I think I just misunderstood what you meant. I'm really enjoying this honestly. Would we make the samurai-civ the only playable one?

[darkflagrance]

I had some other thoughts before but scrapped them. I left some in the spoiler below.

If we can just convert all the old pokemon to the new version, most of the work is already done.

Just segregate some civs of pokemon of the same type. You could probably put the gastly line into poison, dratini line into normal, reduce the amount of necessary civilizations. You could also go by team instead, maybe a team rocket civ with mons used historically by team rocket members.

To make a creature for a pokemon civ, you have to define a new pokemon creature with castes of each pokemon that can live in the civ. So the fire civ would have vulpix, magmar, and growlithe castes. We could use the type guidelines of the pokemon TCG, with rock, ground, and fighting types in one group, ice and water types in one group, dragon and normal types in one group, etc.

For humans, try to find a Japanese language raw file someone else already made for DF, if you want the flavor. It should be as simple as removing their basic attacks to neuter them. Probably remove the other civilizations, since we're using pokemon civs instead. We probably do want multiple hostile human civs so that we can have pokemon battles.

The game would be like the world of Sir Aaron and the Red Army. Humans and pokemon fighting each other to death, in armor. Pokemon being sentient and capable of organizing themselves, some of them might not wait for human orders but form their own warlike civilizations along mystery dungeon lines.

Some pokemon will have COMMON DOMESTIC to make all human civs bring them, and other wild pokemon can get tamed as necessary.

Spoiler: "IF you plan to start from scratch" (click to show/hide)

The first part is to decide what the scope of the game is. Probably just the 151 lines + some favorites like the Latis, Celebi, other gen starters/legends, with more to be added later.

You'd want to make each pokemon essentially the same at base level, modular so you can customize their bodies, attacks, and castes more easily. You probably want a representative attack of each type you can copy paste between pokemon if you're doing this from scratch. I don't know what there is in the other mod.