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Comment by mikercampbell | Hacker News Reader

Pokemon games!! All of the algebra is solved, and you can dig as deeply as you like in any direction you like.

Graphics? Check. And simple, top down, tilesheet or character maps work just fine.

Battles? Check. You can leverage anything from purely functional, object oriented, websocket, long polling, SQL, you name it. Whether you use 3 elemental types or flesh out everything from multiturn, semivulnerable, exp/leveling, it's all up to you.

Wanna just build an REST/GraphQL/gRPC API? Or a UI? PokeAPI is an opensource database of nearly all game data from moves, items, and species.

Pokemon is an endless, any-scope, extremely documented, opensource-rich field of exploration.

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That's actually a great idea, hey. The only problem is getting C&D'd if you find yourself mesmerized by how much you like a new system into developing something that people would actually want to play.

At which point, going the "Freedom Planet" route and re-skinning is probably the epic gamer move I'd want to take.

Is there a tutorial for the boilerplate for setting this up? Where would I even begin as someone who has never built any graphics.

Yeah! I've done it a few ways, mostly in React. I'm currently trying my hand at it in Solid.js, as I want to learn it, and Web Components.

As for graphics, I've been following along in this book, and absolutely love it. They have an online version. You use the author's bespoke engine, so it does abstract much of it, but it covers things from map generation to event buses!

https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrust/hands-on-rust/

You make a roguelike, but the concepts carry over. And it can compile to Web Assembly, so any work you do can be embedded and shared on the web.

As for nitty gritty graphics, I highly recommend https://pikuma.com. They have free and paid courses, and go into a lot of the in-depth aspects you wouldn't get from using a web framework like I typically do.

As for game mechanics, Wikipedia is a surprisingly solid resource. I mean, it's expected that these things are covered, but the depth is amazing. Check out this page for example!

https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Damage

For in depth game mechanics, I'd check out Dragonfly Cave, as they cover so much of it, too!

https://www.dragonflycave.com/

To study the ROM, and how the 1st Gen games work, I recommend this article, which covers the mechanics of the bit level organization of the first games

https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue27/glitch

I would love to make a game that compiles down to almost nothing like GameFreak initially did.

I'm sure it's just a typo, but that's Bulbapedia, not Wikipedia. Got surprised for a moment.

Oh jeez, you're totally right :sweat:

I started one! You people inspired me!

https://mikercampbell.gitbook.io/gotta-code-them-all/

That's awesome, the elixir example goes just to the point. Waiting to read more.

Do you have a tutorial ?! I'm super interested in this.

I should write one! I've tried it enough times haha.

I'll look into starting that tonight and will share here if I go through with it!

I started one! You people inspired me!

https://mikercampbell.gitbook.io/gotta-code-them-all/

GOTTA CODE THEM AAAALLLLLL!

I hope it's okay that I took this and ran with it!

https://mikercampbell.gitbook.io/gotta-code-them-all/

Amazing!

wow this sounds incredibly complex

Only as complex as you want to make it! My very first Pokemon game was a case statement where you picked your first Pokemon and it emulated the dialogue.

My second attempt was before I knew about OOP or FP, and just had a C++ array that held Pokemon data in set indexes. That was during my first programming class haha

I do recall writing a text "battle" game in the Pokemon style with Harry Potter characters but that was a single battle sequence. It was also before I knew OOP and for my first programming class :) Your comment brought back some memories.

Do you still have the code?? I don't have mine but I'd give anything to see it again!

And I love the sound of that game!

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