Hello and welcome to PokeCast #2. I'm very excited to be developing a Pokemon MMO and I personally hope that you will all be as just as excited to check out the progress and see how far we are going over time as I am making it. I'm going to cover some things in this PokeCast, and also have an uploaded video to show you to show that the project isn't just a fake or something that isn't real. I also wanted to address our XNA intentions.
First, what exactly is PokeWorld? PokeWorld is a Pokemon MMO that brings the original games to a multiplayer environment with re-recreation of the original continents and storylinse such as Kanto, and the Johto regions. Play and revisit some of you favorite areas such as Pallet Town, Viridian City, or even visit such remote islands such as Cinnabar island. We will also eventually sport all 450+ pokemon that you are able to catch, trade, and battle with or against your friends in an entirley new engine.
PokeWorld Online is built in a custom engine that we are building from the ground up. We are developing the engine so that it can be reimplemented to build other games as well, it's an engine of course. Eventually we will release the source code to the finished engine online and let other developers try their hand at developing managed code RPG's. Ultimately I decided to start the project for one reason and it's pretty obvious. I started the project because I myself wanted to play a Pokemon MMO and it's really a ton of fun to develop games. So, why not try it? I figured even if the project didn't go anywhere it would be fun to atleast have attempted it. The funny thing is, it did go somewhere and now I've decided to share my progress with everyone.
We've been making large leaps in the engine which is what the Poke Cast #2 focuses on. I also want to carry the community with the developers through the creation of the game so we'll release media updates, technology demonstrations, and other interesting videos as we add more and more to the game. I really admire the way Overgrowth protrays themself as a community oriented game and I hope that PokeWorld Online will run in much the same way. So, I hope you'll follow us and check us out as we grow and manifest into an amazing online game.
So, some of you may be wondering how we're going to implement this on the Xbox? Well initially when I started the project in XNA I had exciting dreams of writing a cross platform game that you could play with your friends, and even play with split screen. I even designed the engine to allow multiple cameras and view ports on the same screen, it was really exciting. Unfortunately the XNA version on the Xbox does not expose any networking API's at all except the built in peer to peer functionality. While this did smash my dreams, it allows us to focus heavily around the PC version first. This doesn't mean we won't release an Xbox client, it just means It'll work a little differently. Instead of being able to play on the main PokeWorld servers, we'll release an entirley different game using the same engine that runs of of split screen support where in you can just play Pokemon with 3 of your pals and have fun. This is going to be started some time after the initial development of the original game because entirley new networking code is going to have to be designed and created. Also well have to deal with the technological limiations of the Xbox 360 which may delay it even further.
Anyway, that's all for PokeCast #2. If you didn't catch PokeCast #1 (Because we didn't post it on ModDB) you can find it on youtube here, Youtube.com
I've always been fascinated by 2D game development. Keep up the development blogs!
Wow nice customized engine, I could have sworn it was RPG Maker or GameMaker for a second :D..
I love 2D game development as well. Its awesome someone figured "hey you know what would work and not be too much trouble.. an MMORPG version of pokemon" because you're using a 2D engine and its entirely grid based its a very feasible idea.
Good work and best of luck. I'll enjoy seeing your battle implementation as that will also be pretty easy to accomplish. I think a lot of people could end up having so much fun with this game.
He's so modest in the video :p
Really cool looking idea, I can't wait to download this game/engine!
Interesting, thanks
This looks really promising, i can't wait for this to come out with a playable beta.
However, since it's being designed for a PC, is there going to be any noteable graphical enhancements over the original games?
Also, will there be a story/plotline?
I'd love to help out in anyway that i can, although i have absolutely 0 experience with anything of this calibre.
I'm sticking to the original Fire Red graphics styles. However, since we decided to run the game at 800x600 instead of 640x480 like the original (or less!) the graphics look less pixelated and more smooth. So yes, it does look notably better although it's just the higher resolution the game runs at.
As for plot? It will be using the original plots from the original titles. So yes, you will be fighting your rival throughout your multiplayer pokemon experience as well as collecting the gym badges and fighting off Team Rocket.
sounds really promising,
From what i understand, you will beable to travel to different regions to train and catch pokemon. With that in mind, will other npc pokemon trainers and gym leaders have pokemon with levels relative to your own, or their game defaults? Also would there be a level cap?
I think these are all great questions for Poke Cast #3. ;) I would be more than happy to answer any more questions you have.
Actually, theres two methods I am currently considering to handle this. Relative Pokemon levels are one of the methods and the other method has to do with requiring you to catch the lower level Pokemon on the other continents to use to beat the trainers, and gym leaders. Nothing has been discussed on the level cap. However, not many of these decisions have been solidified as most of the work is being done to the engine currently and the game is being worked on around it.
Mhm that's really ingenious with the idea of only using region only Pokemon.
And yeah, I was worried if I was asking about too many game play questions as you are still trying to get the engine on its feet :P
Well, I'll ask two more questions before I go to sleep (3:30am here Z_Z)
Will there be an option to allow a select Pokemon Sprite to follow you (such as Pikachu in Yellow Version)
And finally, what is your favourite Pokemon?
also, will you release a mac version too?
As for an OSX version, there most likely will not be. However, there is hope. I did find some Mono implementations of XNA which is the cross platform version of C#. I also found a library that will make your XNA applications work with Silverlight and Microsoft has promised 100% compatability with silverlight on OSX.
It hasn't been decided whether or not you will be able to have your pokemon follow you or not. However, assume not because there is no artwork to support this and we don't have custom artists that can help us make world sprite versions of Pokemon.
Aaaand, my favorite Pokemon is probably Totodile.
I thought the balance in the original games was pretty good.
Might just make things harder for you if you try and change it
:O finally a pokemon mmo that looks like it won't suck >_<
and i see your using windows 7 :D since the pokemon mmo deathball linked to runs like crap on win7 >_<
I'm looking forward to this one :D
Allso, i'm soooo gonna make my own mmo with it xP
how open source will it be? full source code or only trough editors?
I checked out the source and spent the last 7 hours playing around with it. Here is the fruit of my labor:
Im happy to give you the source code and help you if you want. Prob be able to spend around 5 hours a week on it. :P
The vid quality was murdered by youtube, im uploading it again
New Vid: Youtube.com
wow, thats looking pretty awesome
That is really cool. I'm glad to see someone already taking the engine and doing something with it.
Do you think the problem with the flowers stopping their activation when you change zones is because they only play the animation when the character is the zone and not the player's viewport? Telling them to animate when they become visible to the game camera instead might fix that problem.
I fixed that, only the current tile gets updated. Just have to make it so that all visable tiles get updated. :P
Wow so far it's looking very good. Maybe this is looking too far into the future but are you going to have custom player sprites so that players in this world can look like a 'Lass', 'Gary' or other characters across the games.
Its not Route 22. That is Route 1. Route 22 is the one leading from Viridian to the Pokemon League.
Bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net
Bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net
Nice, hope this turns out well!
Great work but if your using xna you will get hammered for copyright if your gonna sell. Great work anyway nice 2d engine i guess lol xna is easy to make 2d games.
Using XNA makes it easier to focus on development, it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to make 2D games. Regardless of how easy XNA makes it it's not going to design your games architecture so it's extensible and well designed for future improvement and development. Also, PokeWorld is a free game so no need to worry about getting shut down. (Hopefully ;))
you can still turn it into something else, like...demon hunting :D
call it digi-mon....
oh wait..
I did some searching and well, it looks like theres around 30 existing pokemon MMO games:
Onlinepokemongames.blogspot.com
Looks really interesting, can't wait to see how it turns out :)
The map editor looks like the one for RPG Maker XP, if not heavily based on it.
HOLY SHI-!!
I can't believe Nintendo haven't done this themselves!!0_o