Sotomura Archives - Page 2 of 6

Elite Four’s Zeke

So some people saw this in my avatar at The PokéCommunity and wondered who I drew here. (It’s not illustrated by Signomi, but rather, it’s been coloured by her!)

And if you’ve played rijonAdventures, you will have seen “Zeke” within the game as the fourth Elite Four member!

Zeke is meant to be more of the “geek” character, and as such, if you know what’s printed on his shirt, you’re in-the-know and you’re awesome. I planned to make him a bit more of a geek by giving him a BlackBerry phone, but I realised I liked this idea better.

Anyone who’s battled him already will know he has no specific choice on Pokémon types. I really need to put him in more parts of the game, I guess. I was meaning to post this artwork eventually.

… and that’s all for today. 😛

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link.

Screenshots? What that?

I just realised something unfortunate: the lack of screenshots of anything here. But no worries! Curing the curious illness of missing screenshots, I’ll post some rijonAdventures ones to keep everyone a little updated on what’s been happening.

Lots of map updates. I’ll go through the first: I decided to throw out the original design of Origal Maze for something a bit bigger in scale. It’s still retaining that name (though I’m considering using route numbers) but it’s very, very different.

The second screenshot shows that I’ve changed the west of a certain route. But, I’ll leave that for later.

Oh, and finally, here’s a train station.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link.

We’re back!

EDIT: The release here is an unstable in-dev release not intended for serious gameplay. For the last-known stable version of the game, please head over to the game page.

Boy did we look bad, huh? We needed a design refresh (because the layout was… eaten by an update) and so we’ve got one! It’s based off the layout I made for Delicious Rocket though I don’t think the layout looks as good without the awesome bokeh effect, but I really am overusing that.

So, what’s new?

Pokémon: rijonAdventures has a new version release with lots of stuff in it, but it also has lots of bugs. Why? Because it’s the direct copy I’ve been working on. You have yourself a grade A developers’ copy (which is dangerous!) And, I’ve been refining it to make it better all the way through, but you won’t see those refinements yet! More awesome stuff about that soon, but you can grab the unstable copy here.
Koolboyman is planning to start a private beta test for Pokémon Prism around June for the existing test group (but no promises!) Hopefully, I can get him to actually start posting here more often.
The rijonWorld forums are coming back with single sign on with WordPress soon, but I’m currently working things out. Yeah, the wiki idea didn’t quite work out.

Oh, and the layout’s currently under construction. How’s it look?

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link.

Another observation: playable character

This post is my observation on the playable character, NPCs, and the camera. Awesome stuff if you’re interested. Otherwise, nothing to see here.

I honest have not tested this idea and I’m not even sure it’s going to work at all. Nevertheless, the Advance games present something curious and unused: the sprite behaviour 0×0B. You might wonder what’s so interesting about it, and let’s explain it. 0×0B, whenever the screen fades (often from exiting a menu – I haven’t actually checked if the XSE “fadescreen” command triggers it as well) the first person shifts from the hero to whatever sprite has this behaviour set to them provided that they’re on the screen.

Also, remember that “camera” command (“special 0×113″)? I believe that all it really does is, similar to what 0×0B does, shifts what the “camera” focuses on (to an invisible sprite, turning the hero into an NPC with the index 0xFF) and when people execute an applymovement command to 0×7F (which controls this original sprite) the screen moves too. (Question: does 0×7F exist only when the camera is activated?) And because sprite 0×7F can be treated like any other sprite, you can apply something as funky as a movesprite command to it. (Don’t attempt to hide 0×7F when the camera is activated, nor attempt to hide 0xFF when the player is in control of the camera. Something… funny will happen.)

Using the movesprite command on 0×7F as I mentioned above, in conjunction with the applymovement command 0×7F, you could effectively pan the camera along the level. 3D Zelda-style area overviews, anyone?

By the way, since the playable character has no script assigned to him/her, the game will crash when whatever’s being controlled attempts to talk to the player. I gotta wonder if there’s actually a way to give 0xFF a script.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link.

RNG and weather

This is certainly not an original idea. In fact, it’s something that I’ve seen long before – the first person to demonstrate it of whose name I forget designed it for his hack, Pokémon Dirt Brown (which, mind you, actually has no relation to Pokémon Brown and never made it to the public… as the person had lost interest).

Using RNG, I’ve thought up a similar system. It might actually be the same as this one; I’ll never know since the hack never released. My system (which I actually wrote on paper but now the sheet’s disappeared) involves changing weather depending on certain variables to another weather condition. For example, if it’s sunny in a map at the moment, then there may be a small chance that the sky will become cloudy (and then, the area will seemingly dim) when the player enters another map. When the player enters another map, there’s a chance that it will start raining, or it will become clear again. (Perhaps the chance that it starts raining will be somewhat high.) Enter another map, and the rain will either clear instantaneously (low chance), the rain will stop and the map will return to a cloudy state (high chance), or, for the worst possible condition, a thunderstorm will occur (low, low chance).

Perhaps if structured out, the script would look like, though my sheet of paper did it better so this might not work:

Variables values reserved:
1 = normal, 2 = cloudy, 3 = rain, 4 = thunderstorm, 5 = light fog, 6 = thick fog, 7 = diagonal fog
(5, 6, and 7 will not be used in this sample structure.)

Perhaps I’ll keep in mind that, upon switching to a different map where ever the script is loaded:
If its currently sunny, 2/20 that it will be cloudy, 17/20 that it will remain sunny, and 1/20 determining that it will suddenly start raining.
If it’s cloudy, 5/20 chance that it will suddenly become sunny again, 2/10 that it will remain cloudy, and 10/20 chance that it will suddenly rain. 3/20 chance that the player will be slapped with a thunderstorm.
If it’s currently raining, make a 3/20 chance that a thunderstorm will start, 7/20 that it will continue raining, 2/20 that the rain will cut out, and 8/20 that the rain will stop but the area remains cloudy.
Finally, if a thunderstorm has popped up, leave a 13/20 chance that it will reduce into rain again, 3/20 that it’ll quickly become cloudy, and a 4/20 chance that it will continue as-is.

Due to how the script is formatted, if the player enters a map where the script isn’t already implemented, the conditions in the maps prior will remain. So, if I entered a house in the town where the script was, when I exit, the RNG magic will start again.

Main script

Check variable for weather condition set between maps
If variable = 1, go to RNG script 1 (sets conditions when normal)
If variable = 2, go to RNG script 2 (sets conditions when cloudy)
If variable = 3, go to RNG script 3 (sets conditions when raining)
If variable = 4, go to RNG script 4 (sets conditions during thunderstorm)

RNG script 1

Start RNG, set to 20 (is this meant to be an integer value?) and store into LASTRESULT.
Copy LASTRESULT to variable.
(Following the chances set above) If RNG returns 0 (treat as hex?), go to script that sets weather to cloudy.
If RNG returns 1, set to cloudy.
If RNG returns 2, run script that ends script without doing anything.
If RNG returns 3, do nothing.
If RNG returns 4, do nothing.

(the rest of the script would be rinse and repeat of RNGs and such, so it’s cut for brevity)

Wow, I just gave other hackers a tip. Maybe though, if I decide to actually embrace variables, this script could be made much more efficient than it is here. If anyone wants to give me tips, by all means comment.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link.

Adios, The World of Rijon forums

It took its time – The World of Rijon Forums is now out of the picture. This spurred from a lack of motivation to keep it up-to-date and it wasn’t exactly active to begin with. But that’s not going to hold us back now, is it? Nope; look forward to a Pokémon ROM hacking Wiki in the future to replace it. (Couple that with vBulletin’s expensive licensing solutions and the situation gets expensive.)

If you need help with the Rijon trilogy, some options will remain available: the Wiki will have discussion areas for help with any hack available there (obviously, the Rijon series will be there too). Alternatively, the PokéCommunity Forums offer the Rijon Trilogy help thread, and threads for rijonAdventures, Brown and Prism.

And if that’s not enough, Commenting is enabled on our blog posts so that you can criticise every single move we do.

Thank you for your support of the Rijon trilogy, and we hope to see your activity in future efforts.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link. Some of the PokéCommunity threads in this post have since been edited or deleted. For those, archive versions have been linked instead. We also do not have comments enabled on this blog any more!

Gym Leader campaign… again!

You’ve heard of “Challenge Leaders” before, but the whole concept hasn’t really been explained that much. I’ve actually ended up calling them “Gym Leaders” again, but the entire concept behind them remains the same. What are they, exactly?

Rachel and Chad are two Gym Leaders of… South Rijon. That’s right; you heard right – South Rijon has Gym Leaders. The reward for defeating them is a secret right now, but unlike Gold/Silver, where you end up battling Gym Leaders at toned-down levels, South Rijon’s Gym Leaders are going to be challenging. When I say challenging, I mean Level 60+ challenging.

Oh, and the final challenge (South Rijon’s champion)? Expect a fight where the highest-levelled Pokémon is an astoundingly high Level 100. (The regret here is that you may, unless you cheat or find a random supply of Rare Candy, never actually be able to finish the game.) Who’s the hotshot with such a crazy, blasphemy-of-a-high levelled Pokémon?

That’s for another day.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link.

Speaking of refinements (late)

The website blog’s being melded back into the main site, meaning that the “rijonAdventures official site” is finished. The old site will still be up (but not updated – feel free to steal that layout for your own website if you’re still interested. Or, steal any of our older, uglier layouts for your own site.) The PokéCommunity’s rijonAdventures thread will also be updated with information seen in this blog.

Future updates will be posted here. Like this update I’m posting right now.

Have you seen the new town in South Rijon? This is the first town you’ll come to.

Lakes Entrance is actually based a bit off the Victorian town of the same name. As such, it’s a town that’s far from the city and being the first town of South Rijon, it’s also a tourist area. (I forgot to put a Hotel in.) It’s got a beach and is known for Krabby fishing, too. (The real Lakes Entrance is popular because it’s abundant with crabs, mind you the crustacean kind, though they, unlike Krabby, are fished out, cooked and eaten.)

What more is there to South Rijon? I’ll reveal some information later on about it. Maybe.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link. The PokéCommunity thread linked here still existed but some of the original posts have been deleted, so an archive link has been included instead.

What’s this?

This is very clearly a blog – and it’s a work in progress as part of a nice visual and technical refresh. We’ve upgraded to WordPress! And we’re missing tons of content! (I mean to fix this.) So while we’re getting prepared (and this time I’m actually ready to work on it since WordPress is damn awesome to use) take the pleasure to browse our forums.

By the way, if you liked that irrelevant TF2 page, you can see it again here.

Originally posted on the old Rijon website, now offline. Archive link. It was posted to introduce the new, WordPress-based website. The World of Rijon Forums were also hosted here and shut down – an archive link has been included.

Getting closer, getting more refined

Been a while, hasn’t it? Got some updates for you guys, though they are admittedly pretty minor. I’m not close enough to a final release, but I’m not dead and rijonAdventures isn’t dead either. That’s a promise! (*By admission, SoulSilver will occupy my soul for a while once it releases.)

Because I haven’t been making my intentions clear, I’ll re-state them. The actual final release will be coincident with Pokémon Prism, but since that won’t be up for a while I won’t be giving the all-clear either. However, I do intend to make a more complete beta release – maybe one that’ll be close to the final version, just without the touches added.

With that out of the way, here’s some screenshots of what you will see in the next and final version – refinements to existing areas.