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Show HN: Pokemon Emerald Randomizer

github.com

37 pointsCloudef21 comments

I think the README could be a little more clear. What exactly is a Pokemon Emerald Randomizer? That doesn't tell me too much about what this software actually does. Frankly I only figured out what this is for thanks to the link izietto posted.

I wrote pokemon emerald randomizer for fun. If you have the original US ROM, you can try it online here https://cloudef.github.io/pokeemerald-randomizer/ randomize trainers does not currently do anything, but everything else should have effect, though expect still some bugs or small issues.

Can someone explain to me the appeal of traditional Pokémon single player games? I get that the system has some more depth to it than it appears for the competitive scene, but I was always able to get through it without too much trouble as a dumbass kid. I feel like it must be a pretty boring game to play through a second time. Your ability to optimize is made less meaningful but the lack of opportunities to use well optimized teams, no?

Presumably the randomized and nuzlocke and other challenges are meant to address it, but the design seems fundamentally pretty weak. And yet, probably a great fit for some sort of shorter roguelike genre.

It was a pretty good rpg (mechanics wise) with a collect-them-all feature.. and it was meant for kids, so yeah.. that's it.

Compared to other games from the time, it offered a lot of gameplay, a lot of posibilities and a lot of different tactics to beat the game. ...plus all the collecting.

Games don't always have to be challenging to be fun. Pokemon is just a fun little adventure through an alternative world where most of life revolves around the (mostly) cute creatures that share the world with people. Also beating all the gym leaders is only half the game, don't forget you "gotta catch em all".

The appeal for adults is lost on me, but as a kid it wasn't the challenge, just the adventure. I could go into school and have a conversation about where we are in the game, it took some time usually. Same as zelda, FF etc..

But ya now that I'm older I couldn't really imagine doing any of that. There are other games I would still do that with of course, but not Pokemon. It's a bit too cringe millennial

I mainly did this for fun and racing against friends. However your post is sort of funny considering emerald is one of the games in the series that actually has hard optional content (battle tower). The only other pokemon close to it are probably the stadium and colosseum games.

How is it different from https://pokehacks.dabomstew.com/randomizer/ ?

The readme says it just "randomizes warps", which isn't on the list of things that universal "randomizer" does, so... there doesn't seem to be any overlap?

I'm not sure why one would want to randomize warps, assuming warps means things like where you end up when you go through doors and cave openings and whatever. But maybe it's a thing people do.

Oh, it makes sense... I guess I just took for granted he was talking about Pokemon shuffling

That is a thing people do:

https://youtu.be/58rSKVOxvDg

This one is mainly a warp randomizer that works on the rom directly instead of the JSON data in the de-compilation project. In addition it has pokemon randomization and maybe more in future. Warp randomization is interesting for races where you race against other player on the same seed, trying to beat the gyms in order and try become the champion first.

I see there is a check to verify the ROM is the original based on a hash check - does this break if you use different versions of the ROM from different regions? I.e. PAL

Yes, only US ROM is supported currently, though it is setup so it can support any ROM build from the de-compilation project as long as you have the intermediate elf file for looking up the offsets.

What are you supposed to do with this if don't have the game like 0.01% of the population ?

You obtain the game somehow?

Legally, be envious or pay $100 for a legit second hand copy

Illegally, just download it

You wistfully look out the rainy window, sigh at your misfortune, and move on. It wasn't meant for you.

https://github.com/pret/pokeemerald

You play it on your PC with an emulator and download the rom from somewhere.

It is not particularly hard to find.

I don't think you understand the appeal of this, you wouldn't really enjoy this if you've never played the game before.

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