#romhack idea

[pepperochau]

Ledian: A Modest Proposal

Oh, Ledian. Beloved bugge cherished by many and belothed by just as many. A controversial reception which is easily understood by looking at its design and stats:

dreadful, isn't it? And that's to say nothing of the near-useless abilities it has—Iron Fist can do nothing off of a paltry 35 Attack, and the mon is likely to faint before Swarm is able to take effect. A cute, yet dreadful mon, and its not an opinion I'm alone in. Pokemon romhacks take particular interest in Ledian whenever it appears, often adjusting stats to mold the beetle into something more viable:

Renegade Platinum adds 60 points to the BST to turn Ledian into a mid-speed physical attacker as seen here:

The Emerald hack Elite Redux takes an incredibly similar approach, adding 60 points and emphasizing the attack stat, but also making Ledian much faster:

This is a similar approach taken by the Photonic Sun hack, again adding 60 points and emphasizing attack and speed:

YouTuber LivSama, no doubt thinking along similar lines, also changes Ledian's typing to Bug/Fighting from Bug/Flying but goes above the modest 60pt buffs to a full 100 in a spread not too dissimilar Mega Beedrill:

YouTuber Zen Mode takes a radically different approach in their attempt to fix Ledian, utilizing a number of minor changes instead of stat redistribution (Bug/Fighting, a few changes to the learnset, and most notably swapping Iron Fist for Technician) to make Ledian a serviceable pokemon throughout all of HGSS. (great video btw)

And lastly, perhaps my favorite Ledian fix comes courtesy of the Crystal Legacy hack. I have nothing to say about this.

If you're smart, and I know you are, you may have noticed a bit of a pattern when it comes to how romhacks handle Ledian: High Attack, High Speed, lower Sp. Atk by 20 points. Why people love to drop Ledian's Sp.Atk is beyond me, but I can at least surmise a reason for the former buffs it receives, which is another fairly consistent pattern among the fixes: Iron Fist. Excepting our delightful ladybird, no fully-evolved pokemon with Iron Fist has an attack stat below 104, and of those 8 mons, 5 have an attack stat over 120. People see Ledian's abilities first, then its attack, and say "well that cant be wrong" and bludgeon the poor dear into the mold of its brethren. I could be callous and argue that this represents a lack of creativity on the part of most fans, an assertion that I would argue is backed up by Zen Mode being able to realize the potential of Ledian's original base stats, I must rather instead accept the reality that Ledian, as it is seen by fans, needs to be a powerful attacker in order to be good.

So, how would I fix Ledian? I would like to draw your attention to the pokemon that Ledian is within a few BST of:

As you can see, barring a few insectoid exceptions locking into their 3rd stage, the 380-395 is home primarily to NFE's. Because of this and examples prior, I argue that Ledian does not need to be fixed, but rather that Ledian needs an evolution. And this is where and how I would like to throw my hat into the ring. Behold Ledinizer name pending):

To start with, Ledinizer will be keeping the Bug/Flying type. Partly because I feel like Yanmega, Ninjask, and Vespiquen are incredible pokemon even with a 4x Rock weakness, but also in part because I personally don't see enough justification to make it into a Fighting type, or into any other type for that matter. "B-but the dex entries say it throws barrages of punches" yeah you know what else the dex entries say? The dex says Ledian is weak as fuck, that it uses starlight as energy, scatters lucky dust, and prefers lands with clean air, and yet no one talks about making Ledian Bug/Psychic or Bug/Fairy or Bug/Dark do they? In fact, take a break from this post right now and go tell your friend that they should've made Ledian a Fairy/Psychic/Dark type, then ask how they'd feel about it being part-Fighting. Go on. That said, I am still taking those dex entries into account with its abilities.

When it came to the stat distribution, I kind of felt like I was playing with fire. I wanted to avoid the trope of Iron Fist maximization, and Pokemon often change stat distributions as they evolve—Electavire and Magmortar are great examples of what I mean with this—, but Ledian comes from an era where stat distros tended to be linear improvements across evolutions, so with this in mind I wanted Ledinizer to maintain its Special orientation and focused on that, but also without giving Ledian an avenue for abusing eviolite. The decision to reduce the speed stat comes from similar turns in the series—Poliwrath, Octillery, and Ursaluna to name a few—but also stems from a conscious decision to avoid a cliche.

Iron Fist is, in my mind, the greatest limiter of Ledian's potential in the fandom. Zen Mode showed that Ledian can work wonders without it, and since this is all in good fun anyway, I did away with Iron Fist in order to give Ledinizer some potentially very broken, but I think very interesting, abilities. Will to Power's flavor text is as follows:

Drawing on the power of the stars, the pokemon’s Special Attack stat is used when calculating the damage of physical attacks.

While 90 attack isn't particularly worth writing home about, I would argue that having an effective BST of 534 lets Ledinizer slide very comfortably into the arena of fully-evolved pokemon. Now, how this abilitiy functions under the hood is: stat stages are still used normally when calculating damage; Atk for Physical, SpA for Special. What this means is that Calm Mind isn't going to let you do more damage with Drain Punch. There's also a number of other complicated interactions with this ability: while active, Physical moves count as Special for the purposes of Battery, Ice Scales, and other Abilities which modify Special damage; Cannot be copied, passed on, traced, or replaced by Wandering Spirit. When attacking a pokemon with Unaware, Mold Breaker, Teravolt, Turboblaze, or Mycelium Might, this ability will fail to activate. I took some heavy inspiration from Water Bubble for these interactions, and the intention for these interactions is to provide unique defensive utility for Mold Breaker type abilities, while also leaving open the option for offensive synergies. Moves like Simple Beam and abilities like Mummy and Neutralizing Gas, which simply overwrite the ability, still function as normal. There's probably some interactions in there that I'm not aware of though lol, but now onto my real favorite of the two, an ability I made specifically for Iron Fist fans, Force of Will, whose flavor text is as follows:

Drawing on the power of the stars, the pokemon increases its Attack stat as its HP lowers.

Force of Will, in essence, is an extreme version of abilities like Swarm. And similar to Water Bubble quietly boosting Water-type moves, this ability has the sneaky effect of, boosting the base power of moves by 10%. Seems small, but let's look at the how it boosts damage:

and lets not forget the host of other interactions: Cannot be copied, passed on, traced or replaced by Wandering Spirit. Suppressible. Affected by Foul Play. While this ability is active, Strength Sap will always work on this pokemon. The Strength Sap and Foul Play interactions are here basically entirely for the purposes of keeping Ledinizer from being banned at locals, lol. Now, I am very fond of this ability because I feel like it explores a niche that TPCi hasn't quite touched yet. Sure we have Zen Mode, Shields Down, and Schooling, but they aren't as dynamic as I'd like. I want to see HP management on razor thin margins, in a way not too dissimilar from how the Persona series uses HP to cast physical attacks, or Binding of Isaac's Eve, where more power comes at more cost. But because this is pokemon, and pokemon battles are not roguelites nor 4vX affairs, it takes advantage of Ledinizer's traditionally very weak type combo of Bug/Flying by turning that weakness into an avenue for strength. If you can't take it down in one or two hits then it will knock you out as thanks. You want a massive attack stat? Well you're going to have to play smart and earn it.

Anyway, I hope you found this to be an interesting little exercise. I would've included a photo of Ledinizer if I had the knack for character design, but for now just imagine a Ledian with Kamina glasses and Knuckles gloves. If I had to shoehorn a moral into this overlong post, I guess it would have to be: do what the fuck you want. Don't let yourself be constrained by what it currently is, throw it all out if you want and start over. And please be more creative than a flat +70 to Attack.

Tune in next time when I figure out how to fix carnivine.

[kashmimo]

🌱🌱🌱 doodles

[basofy]

buddy and jack are very angsty protagonist and supportive friend next door coded

[calico-strawberry]

Also wanted to point out the 429 damage eyeball

[antirepurp]

oh dear. the overwhelming urge to design a pokemon region is upon me again

[kk-dirge]

ouuuuuuuuuuu......... funny rabbit infestation of yw2: imminent

[pinyatapix]

enshittification 🤝 metroidbrainia

(being two very specific ideas that desperately needed names to be communicated about, yet when they did get names they ended up being some of the most god-awful cringe-sounding words i’ve ever heard in my life)

[octahyde]

there’s a reoccurring Mario 64 level in my dreams tucked away in a near impossible corner of the castle to get to that’s desolate and terrible and has a very surrealist aura that’s like. All sand and chain chomps in the sky. And the only levels I remember from them is one is named Pray and the other is literally named “pain.”

[goqmir]

idea: pokemon randomizer romhack that takes about an hour to complete with decently difficult challenge and allows access to different findable events, routes, and legendaries to complete the run.

and every day at a determined time the game changes its layout using the same seed for every single copy, so everyone gets to play the same randomized run during a day and talk about it together. the seed uses the current date so the romhack could work forever without manual updates.

and everyone could be like ooh i loved the pokemon random run seed today it was so fun! oh todays was sooo difficult. oh did you see mew was available in the run today? :o it would be sooo fun

[soaretheypurple]

Introducing: Pokémon Yellow - Companion Rival Edition

aka an entry in the clingy boyfriend romhack series

What if Kanto, but Red and Blue journey together? I made a quick, small romhack to indulge in this silly idea! See below the cut for details and downloads.

Changes made (all visual-only):

Your pikachu’s overworld sprite has been replaced with Blue's, and I also updated the animation speed since Pikachu normally has a faster walking animation

Minor dialogue tweaks to give a slightly sensical in-universe explanation

(Optional) Blue’s sprites are replaced with another trainer’s for better continuity

This romhack has three versions based on what sprite replaces Blue's:

Default: Blue’s sprites are unchanged, meaning you’ll see him as both your rival and as your follower companion (you could pretend he has a twin?)

Cooltrainer: Uses the `cooltrainer_m` overworld and battle sprites; I removed the whip for taste reasons and so the battle sprite would fit within the allocated memory

Monster: Uses the `monster` overworld sprite and `cooltrainer_m` battle sprite. Arguably my personal favourite

You can download the romhack patch files here. You need a copy of the US Pokémon Yellow ROM file; download the .ips patch file for the version you want and patch the Yellow ROM with a patcher like this one. For reference, the CRC32 for the original Yellow ROM file is 7d527d62.

I’d love to share the HGSS version I teased in a recent video, but I think it’s missing some polish. If anyone happens to be familiar with the pret HGSS decompilation project and might know how follower/tsurete pokémon animation is handled, feel free to message me 😅

[beevean]

Pictured: a jobber who could be killed by an average vampire, according to Nocturne writers

anyway Maxim is deliciously OP and he's like the lovechild of Sonic and Samus and the reason they killed him off in Nocturne is because he would have spedran his way through Sun Thundercat's heart in 5 minutes. and because they're cowards who can't handle his ninja technique of flashing his tiddies 😔

Having finished Harmony of Dissonance (it was a blast to play, much so than Circle of the Moon) and got a taste of Maxim's mode (he's a glass cannon to play, honestly), it reaffirmed my biggest question since I first watched Nocturne:

Headcanon: I'd like to believe that Maxim is a descendant of Grant Danasty. There are a lot of similarities in their character design, with Maxim looking a lot like a pirate.

How in the hell did Maxim Kischine, a lightning-fast ninja who survived both a duel with a powerful magician like Juste and a near-fatal possession by Dracula, just up and dies to a random vampire?

Playing as Maxim, I highly doubt that a classic vampire that the Netflix writers pulled out of obscure literature would be any match for a juggernaut like him.

[calico-strawberry]

Something comical about this romhack is how the playable eye ball has a boss conversation against nearly every boss despite it being unable to speak a line of dialogue and it's funny everytime even when the bosses are taking it seriously

[antirepurp]

i need unfiction about sonic cd i need it and i don't mean some sonic.exe reimagining shit or whatever i need it to be deeper than that. i need a story about a prototype that could almost plausibly have existed at some point during development that was worked on primarily by one person who poured something personal and specific into their work, and the resulting gameplay reflects that in unexpected ways. i want there to be a ghost in the cd that isn't just hyper-realistic blood and murder. i want it to be haunted in level design and atmosphere and make me long for a time i wasn't present for and a person i've never met

[deltaruminations]

SPOILERS for both chapters (mainline story beats only). just some. HOT REACTIONS FRESH OFF THE PRESSES

i cannot fucking believe this madman was originally going to release all of this AND chapter 5. that shit would have killed me. i think pretty much everyone underestimated how quickly the story would escalate. fucking insane

nothing in the world could have prepared me for chapter 3. the team really just let their freaks out on this one. utterly deranged and constantly disorienting to play blind. i truly do not have words to describe the cocktail of emotions i felt seeing tenna on-screen for the first time. in hindsight it's funny as fuck that toby let his design be shown in the press kit because that little console border art was not even close to being a meaningful spoiler for the real deal. if anything the expectation of a Normal Guy just made it hit harder LMAO. i might be in love with tenna

i like that everyone in advance was like "tenna is going to be so horrible he's going to be awful" and it's like no he's about as sympathetic as queen, just more unhinged

tenna gaster parallel Bigtime i think,,,,,, i mean gaster might actually be a terrible bastard but the romhacking type stuff in particular is like. yeah

the use of the game-in-game controller gimmicks was really cute and a great vehicle for character exploration. i liked that a lot. honestly i was kind of dreading chapter 3 because i'm pretty dogshit at minigames but i thought it was handled well. i will say as of chapter 4 i'm maybe a little concerned about the difficulty level going forward as someone with pretty terrible twitch reflexes/hand-eye coordination but we'll see

raise up your bat "true" lyrics......... god dess fucks

i can't even begin to parse the bunker or kris's cellphone calls or the mayor. i guess i'm tentatively on board with the idea that the three symbols are people contacted by/working with the knight hence why they have their own codes. the thing about sacrificing undyne(???) is fucking nuts what does that even mean

dessroom note from playing (verbatim) (context is mint tin of weird looking leaves in the drawer): DESS HOLIDAY WEED SMONKER!!!!!!!!

roaring knight fucking crazy i don't think it needs to be said LOL. dessknight REAL and so much better than we could have imagined. i was wrong about dessknight. dessknight kicks ass. the design is insane and she's so smug and sassy with it too lmao i love this bitch

i'm ALMOST tempted to guess that the RK isn't simply dessknight but rather some kind of horrible almagamation of dess's AND gaster's fractured mind-parts or whatever (skeletal design, gun's, stigmata) but i'll hold off on that for now

church dark world just overwhelming as fuck in general i don't. know what to even say about it. the second i went to move on a horizontal climb and that fucking column 3D ROTATED i started pogging

i'm guessing the Bad Prophecy Ending involves killing noelle or some shit fuck it maybe noelle angel real after all

one immediate crack theory about the Church Prophecy (i'm sure i'm not the only one who raised an eyebrow about this) is that some combination of the "three heroes" is not actually who DELTARUNE is positioning them as being, or at least it wasn't MEANT to be them -- ex. "susie's" role could be filled by dess. "cage with a human soul and human parts" is so vague it could obviously also refer to the vessel but if we want to get CRAZY with this it could even be like... a humanoid skeleton... SORRY i'm just saying like ribcages... i doubt this is anything i'm just. saying

i liked jackenstein as a character and thought his encounter was funny but in terms of gameplay i was pretty much like OK Fuck This Actually after enough rounds. sorry. i do think it's very funny to foreshadow & tutorialize The Fucking Titan with this poor shitpost of a guy

the titan looking like the silhouette of a huge skull before it's "revealed" is. Troubling lmao i can't even begin to parse what that would mean. i wouldn't guess that gaster is a titan but also if dess is a titan plus all those scarred & crying eyes motifs associated with the titan FUCK IT maybe. i don't know why he's appearing halfway into the game and letting us whale on him but who fucking knows what his machinations are anymore

...anyway kind of a dumb thing to give a shit about after everything else that happened but as far as i'm currently aware Baby Bones Theory lives on? extremely important note i took while playing (verbatim) (context is looking through the window during chapter 4 light world):

what i'm saying is the pattern of papyrus being notably un-papyrus-like continues. almost as if he. is not papyrus. I'M JUST S. I'M J

SKELETON HOUSE IS MESSY

IT'S MESSY

PAPYRUS IS A NEAT FREAK

AAAAAAAAAA

OH also lol soft confirmation of soriel? toby got the nerve to do it? good on him, RIP kris's home life tho lmao

[d1gitalys]

Anyone interested in my Gortash Pokémon team idea... I will share

I wanna draw it SOO BAD but I'm allergic to drawing men/j

Also by extension I had the idea of a fangame/romhack based around bg3 :D specifically with stopping the dead three from their whimsical evil plans like some kinda team rocket

[spadenade]

From the recent Toby Fox Destructoid interview:

Welp. I guess the ‘Penumbra Phantasm will be in Deltarune’ theory is dead.

Lets look on the bright side- Penumbra Phantasm may be dead, but hey! Megalo Strike Back and Nightmare Knight are still on the table!

Honestly though? Even though Penumbra was a cool idea, the fact it’s so deeply entrenched in homestuck’s identity is a major drawback.

You cluld argue the same for megalovania, but Megalovania was only in 2 flashes. One was as an easter egg, and the other was as the background music. But even then, Megalovania’s existence predated its use in homestuck. It’s an original composition from a romhack made in 2009.

Thats not even getting into the fact that Penumbra is very frequently referenced alongside another song (Doctor) which is basically just the main theme of homestuck itself.

Any important scene in homestuck is either gonna have a reference to Doctor, Penumbra Phantasm (frequently referenced alongside doctor), or Savior of the waking world (a remix of doctor AND penumbra phantasm) its like… The Main Theme of the Main Character of the comic (well, aside from showtime and harlequin i guess)