Pokemon Project's Original Developer's Video
After a while the head developer decided that he had enough and I was glad to take over the project, I dont like being commanded by others and I like to lead, no matter how bad a leader I am.
At this time the community around the game had pretty much died, but I was not detered. This was around 2007. I was working on it on and off, and I stumbled into some problems that basically stopped me from developing it all together. But one day I received a message from the original creator (we kept in touch) and he told me of some extensions for MMF2. I was so intrigued one that added pretty good server support and one that allowed for me to use an array with keys. which was simpler but was nowhere near the complexity I wanted (the warcraft 3 engine was great). The extensions allowed me to take the game to new heights, I had a backend running on MySQL using PHP post and Get forms, while insecure worked a treat, even with MD5 I was still sending the passwords in plain text in some form because again, MMF2 didnt support MD5 or SHA encryption. The Master client was a program that basically interacted with the Web back end, the database. The database was messy but it got the job done. I slowly started to get a team going, I was on head developer, basically putting stuff into the game. But I had the original creator who had some musical talent recreate the RSE music in 8 bit, which I touch more on later but it sounded great. We were still using the original graphics from the RSE generation but we had a mapper who used a map program called Advanced Mapper or something which allowed him to easily make the maps, but MMF2 was so dificult for me to deal with when making the maps I had to put so much effort into translating those maps from Advanced Map Maker to MMF2. Gradually a game started to come together, and we started to post content and sneak peaks on my web site which unfortunately was running off my crappy connection so we couldnt host a massive community, and we still had the problem of finding a server.
Early ingame screenshot of the home town (Developed By Me)
The game started to take off from here, we had a website running and we were powering out updates. We had the battle system fully working and that sort of thing. We even had a alpha test going to start, but the server troubles kept getting in the way and none of us wanted to pay out of pocket for hosting.
Another screenshot from ingame
As we started to get more popular we started to pump out lots of content. Another video I did a while into my developement.
Anyway the reason development stopped on it, was basically because I couldn't run the servers off my home internet anymore because the connection was so poor. So I tried moving it to a tumblr. The other reason is that I had to run a linux webserver and a windows server for the master client, while it was easier to run them both on windows it was very hard to get emulation working on a linux box.
While I have moved on from this project its not dead and burried and I will probably return to it at some stage.
What this blog post is really about is that I am rewriting the game in the SC2 client. Its not the same project that you saw on reddit a little while ago and by no means do I want to step on someone's toes when it comes to map making. I will be using most of the content I can from my old project such as the music and region that it takes place, shigama. As far as I know it was the most advanced mmorpg at the time, as most others were very closed source, and towards the end of pokemon project we were gearing up for a alpha test. Its possible that around this time next year I may try to reboot it as I will be getting much faster internet, but I dont know yet.
What I need for my new project is some concept artists and people with very basic editor knowledge. The roles for the concept artists are to turn SC2 units into CraftiMon, the working title at the moment for the new game. There will be more than one game, likely the first out with the Arcade beta retail (or at least in alpha by that time). Its so much quicker working in the SC2 editor, I already have basic battle scene setup, leveling, stats and catch rates are all identical to the pokemon games, and it shouldn't take long for me to get out a working alpha.
If you would like to help my with my new project I need some people to work out what craftimon best matches up with pokemon units. For example at the moment a Larva evolves into a drone then into a Queen. I dont mind if you take the stats and stuff from pokemon as we arent using graphics or anything from the games and I doubt nintendo can sue for numbers. (they will probably try).
The other role I have is for people to take the concepts that I approve into valid craftimon and this is quite easy. Its all just work with triggers and does not take very long at all. Here is the code for Larvamon at this stage.
It's very simple to understand, and basically that's all that's needed. It can be done on any map, no other work is needed, all's I have to do is copy and paste the code that is sent to me into the map and its ready to go.
While its not a true MMORPG it will have a MMORPG feel, you will be able to leave any game and enter another and have a completely different set of people playing with you, and this garuntees that the map wont be overcrowded.
I will be sure to upload a video of the map at some stage, but for now please enjoy this set of images from Pokemon project. :'(
Watching back on those videos really take me back, almost to the point of starting the project back up but the though of working with that horrendous program makes me shudder.