Insane Difficulty: Pokemon RedBlue: Certainly Not Worse Edition - Insane Difficulty

Because Pokemon Blue was the second game I owned, and because the 3DS release fixed exactly nothing, here is the first in what I hope to be a series of bug fixes and improvements.

Well, if not improvements, certainly not worse. Get Ye Patch HERE.

Things made Certainly Not Worse

• Mist protects against stat drops, not just a certain set of moves that CAUSE stat drops.
  
• Haze works as in Pokemon Stadium.
  
• Hyper Beam requires recharge, even on faint or Substitute break.
  
• Sleep can no longer override other statuses on Pokemon that have to recharge (did u kno! Pokemon recharging after a Hyper Beam have a 100% chance of being affected by Sleep status.)
  
• Breaking a Substitute no longer overrides after-effects of moves. (This includes moves that hit 2+ times! the attacks will continue after the sub-break)
  
• Can no longer self faint by using Substitute at exactly 1/4 health.
  
• First pass at AI improvements; enemy trainers will not spam 0 power super effective moves and wonder why they aren't the very best.
  
• Sleep timers adjusted. Currently 1-4 (really 0-3 ?) turns.
  
• Rest works as in Pokemon Stadium
  
• Critical Hit chance roughly halved. A Pokemon of average speed has a 10%-ish chance to crit.
  
• Focus Energy not actively harmful!
  
• Psywave can no longer both simultaneously miss and do damage (mostly effects link battles).
  
• Dig/Fly invulnerability should no longer stick when fully paralyzed.
  
• Hyper Beam recharge clear when opponent is Frozen.
  
• Healing moves don't fail if health is a multiple of 256.
  
• Counter can't counter damage from previous turns.
  
• Game doesn't freeze with a divide by 0 when a powerful pokemon picks on a weak one. Reflect/Light Screen boost properly doubles defenses and won't overflow; Withdraw+Reflect Cloyster viable now.
  
• All pokemon stats recalc'd when statup or statdown applied (fixes Burn/Paralyze penalties being reapplied; might lag the game, let me know)
  
• Crash Damage for Jump Kick & Hi Jump Kick restored. Let me know if this causes any weirdness with Bide or Counter.
  
• Wrap ends if the target switches out; if that happens, the user loses its turn. Trying to use Wrap twice in a row will force your Pokemon to go last in the turn order.
  
• Rage, and Thrashing About recalculate hit chance every turn so accuracy drops don't stack.
  
• Critical Hits use whatever stats (modified or unmodified) benefit the attacker greater.
  
• Poison damage increased to 1/8th HP. Toxic remains until a battle is completed.

Moves Edited

• These moves now do Physical damage; Thunderpunch, Fire Punch, Ice Punch, ICrabhammer
  
• Karate Chop is FIGHTING move (was NORMAL)
  
• Gust is FLYING move (was NORMAL)
  
• Razor Wind is 100% accurate (was 75%) and has a high critical-hit ratio.
  
• Wing Attack is 60 Power (was 35)
  
• Bite has 30% to flinch (was 10%)
  
• Blizzard is 80% accurate (was 90%)
  
• Rock Throw is 90% accurate (was 65%)
  
• Rage no longer forces the user to use Rage.
  
• Skull Bash raises defense one stage.
  
• Dizzy Punch has a 10% chance to confuse the target.
  
• Rock Slide has a 30% to flinch (was 0%)

Hard Type Hack Goodness (up to Brock)

• AI ensmartened.
  
• Movesets changed.
  
• Enemy trainers have Stat Exp-raised Pokemon. (Stat Exp is EVs' more useful, weirder cousin.

Planned Improvements

• Give AI another pass. Potentially use the AI system from Pokemon GoldSilver.
  
• Make enemies not ignore PP (had this working, but then gremlins)
  
• Less ugly back sprites. (Also working, but have to reshuffle banks around now that AI takes up more space)

Gamefreak Hall of Shame It's all fixed!


This time around I've included a save file so you can try your hand at the new Elite Four.

Changelog

• 0.1.0 :initial release
  
• 0.1.1 :Substitute was failing all the time due to me not understanding 16bit math, whoops. Faint on 1/4thhp bugfix reverted.
  
• 0.1.2 :Enemy AI correctly ignores typing for 0 power moves in all cases now.
  
• 0.2.0 :New trainer moveset system! Elite four moveset show proof on concept with new strategy.
  
• 0.5.0 :Second pass at AI. More battle bugs fixed.
  
• 0.6.0 Sleep timer reverted to standard as I consider a second version with more extreme changes. AI can Dream AI effectively now. Wrap+switch bugs fixed.
  
• 0.6.1 Sleep timer changed again. Odds now 1/5th for 1, 2/5th for 2 and 3 turns. If it's good enough for Stadium it's good enough for us.
  
• 0.7.0 Wrap mechanics finalized (except for interaction with X Accuracy. May adjust in the future). A bug with damage calculation + high stats was fixed (my bug, not Game Freak's). Mist and Elemental Punches changes; see new list of things Certainly Not Worse.
  
• 0.8.0

This post has been edited by MechanicalPen: 17 October 2016 - 03:39 PM

As cool as this sounds, I think I'm gonna stick to the way it was. That and for the most part, Nintendo wants to keep games released from before the same way as it was back then. The biggest (and maybe only) change they did was allowing you to trade and battle WITHOUT a link cable. They finally worked around that.

I also never played either of the Stadium games. I tried to but it slowly shutdown on me the one time I tried playing it. On an original N64.

The AI patch looks like it'd be a great improvement. Another improvement I'll throw out is getting rid of "Badges increase player's stats" and doing what Pokemon Pyrite did and giving the computer actual EVs.

A little self-serving on my part, but if you ever decide you want to try and "balance" the Pokemon better, I'll point you to the Pokemon RBY2k10 forums and their RBY+. But you make that call.

RBY+ has some interesting ideas about moves and movesets. I've been thinking of ways to avoid the early game's lack of tactical options. I'll see if there are any mechanics from RBY+ that can apply well to a singleplayer game.

genobeam3, on 22 December 2015 - 05:24 PM, said:

Maybe it's just me, but I felt this post was in very poor taste. It's like if I went to the BNW or 1.3 forums and said "Sorry, but the original is best."

Why do Nintendo's wishes even enter the equation? The moment anyone makes a mod, they throw that shit out the window. They don't matter.

It's just kinda pissing all over the modder's work. Nothing in there is constructive in the slightest. Like, why go out of your way to say something like that?

Like I said, maybe it's just me, but it really rubbed me the wrong way.

Advent, on 22 December 2015 - 06:55 PM, said:

Sorry Advent. I had no intention of mocking or talking bad of someone's work on a mod. Mods are no easy task and I praise MechanicalPen for what he's doing. And I get what he's intending to do, some of it just kind of seemed a little confusing to me. :/

No disrespect MechnicalPen. I'll give your mod a try sometime when it's ready. Unless it's ready now. :-)

It's all good, yo.

MechanicalPen, on 22 December 2015 - 06:29 PM, said:

Again, it's very self-serving of me, but I'd be very interested in seeing a (good) hard-type, single player RBY+. Almost did so myself, but I gave up when I realized I lacked the ASM knowledge / experience to do a thing about AI or any other mechanics (and currently in my life, I'd rather not spend free time learning ASM).

But enough about me. This is your hack, do what you want. I'll keep an eye on this hack, and may give the current beta some shots.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 22 December 2015 - 07:24 PM

thzfunnymzn, on 22 December 2015 - 07:23 PM, said:

Once it's done, you are more than free to make a RBY+ mod of this mod Letting enemy trainers use moves besides the learnset is the next big feature I will work on, and that is what we need to design interesting fights. (As an aside, this project all started because I was trying to make a "balanced" randomizer and kept running into issues. I drew the line at Ghost Ninetails that knew Rest and spammed it against my Fighting Cubone. Really showed off all the flaws with Gen1 mechanics. So now I am trying to fix them) and please, if you know of any game mechanics that need tuning, or bugs that need fixing, let me know!

The first version will really shine if you have a save file ready to go through the Elite Four. Though the AI still doesn't know how to use Hypnosis and then switch to Dream Eater yet, it should be a good showing of the new AI. It'd be a big help to be if you could fight someone with Recover, as I am not sure if my tuning of AI healing is up to par.

I'll have to snag a save file near the end to test stuff out.

As for mechanics, I know that the Quick Attack effect and High Critical % effect are hard-coded in the battle engine. So you'll have to edit that if you want to have other moves with those effects. Shouldn't be hard if you use the pokered disassembly.

Off the top of my head, I don't know of any other mechanic mistakes, though I'm not super familiar with Red / Blue. I remember a Crystal hack, Pokemon Pyrite, had a number of mechanical changes that looked good. Stuff like removing Gym Badge bonuses, giving the AI their own EV system, Gym Badges capping your levels (actual levels) instead of just your obedience level, removing the Shift battle style, no using Items during trainer battles, unable to leave a Gym until you've beaten the Gym Leader (might wanna disable saving in the Gym until after beating Gym Leader too), etc.

Off to snag a save file.

Anything in particular I'm hunting for while smashing the Elite Four? The save file I have has lots of Itms & strong PKMN, though I dunno how much that's really gonna affect the AI (just means I can muscle my way through everything).



tl;dr, The AI won't spam Agility against Muk (actually should've specifically tried that, but I trust you), but that's about it. It'll still need more work (EDIT: Mind you, I don't expect tactical brilliance out of the AI). Does Gary's Alakazam have Recover? He never did use it.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 23 December 2015 - 01:22 PM

Advent, on 22 December 2015 - 06:55 PM, said:

What's fun to remember is that this kind of response would be standard in a regular forum, if they presented a forum.

Never forget why the place you hang out in is cool.

Pidgeot is basically a freebie, since it knows Whilrwind, Wing Attack, Sky Attack, and Mirror Move and Gary's AI prefers attacking. At least it never tried to use Whirlwind, as it should be. Alakazam only has Psychic attacks, so no surprise there. Focus Energy + Fissure is not a bad choice, really, just not a good one. Slowbro only knows Water Gun, so another freebie.

Agatha switching actually occurs at random; I hope to make it so she is more likely to switch if her opponent is Asleep. And an AI change I made was to prefer status moves first turn, so I guess this proves that switching resets that counter.

If Lorelei's Dewgong never used Rest and Alakazam never used Recover, that's a problem. They are supposed to prefer it on the second turn. I'll check that again. EDIT: Were you using something that resisted Psychic? Because both Rest and Recover are Psychic moves and the AI might have been trying to avoid not-very-effective damage. I had a 0 power check on super effective, but not on avoiding not-very-effective.


It sounds like we need better moves for enemies before we can really test if the AI has improved. I'll bump that up on my todo list.

This post has been edited by MechanicalPen: 23 December 2015 - 09:52 PM

Alakazam was fighting Hypno, so definitely there. I think Dewgong fought Ninetales, so she probably just went for the damage over Rest.

Better movesets is gonna be mandatory, yes.

Also, again, the player having EVs and Gym Badge boosts means I could take some lvl.40 dudes against the lvl.50-60 dudes of the Elite Four and not get totally wiped. Mind you, I didn't take things too seriously, and still muscled my way through with a lvl.60 Hypno (should only be on par) and lots of Hyper Potions. But I remember other people in other places noticing how despite a 20 lvl. difference, their PKMN didn't seem to be at a statistical disadvantage against the Elite Four.

Is there anything else in particular I need to check right now? I could try beating the Elite Four w/ strategy instead of muscle, or do you have the info you need right now?

I'll release a version with AI fixed to ignore typing of 0 power moves. After that there's not much more to test, AI wise until next major release. So you may as well wait.

If you are bored this Chirstmas though, these things need testing:

• A save containing a pokemon who can use Substitute and has HP divisible by 4. Trying to recreate "pokemon uses Substitute and immediately faints" bug.
  
• Using Hyper Beam against a Substitute. The pokemon is forced to recharge as intended, but I can't tell if there is noticable lag after the Sub breaks or if it is just my imagination. It's possible the game is doing such processing twice due to an oversight on my part.

This post has been edited by Advent: 26 December 2015 - 10:29 PM
Reason for edit: You're welcome.

Can do.

Here is a list of FUN POKEMON FACTS (noted here for my reference and your amusement)

• Ground types are immune to being paralyzed by Electric type Status moves (only Thunder Wave in the vanilla game).
  
• Posion types are immune to poison, and Toxic.
  
• Moves that burn, paralyze, or freeze as a secondary effect do not have that secondary effect applied if the target Pokemon matches the move's type. (You cannot paralyze Normal type pokemon with Body Slam)
  
• Substitute was intended to block HP draining moves, such as Leech Life, and Dream Eater. It does not due to a overwritten register.
  
• Enemy pokemon have a 1/4th chance of their stat downs failing. (I guess someone got annoyed at String Shot or something)

Just a bump to let people know the next version's out. In my (suboptimal) run-through I beat the Champion with 4hp left on my Mew. Would have lost but got a lucky Hyper Beam miss. Now, I was playing to test out the AI and not to win, but it's starting to feel a challenge. I'd sure like feedback if you play through the Elite Four. Vanilla saves are compatible.

Speaking of Mew, I figure I should add him to the game somewhere. I am leaning towards doing an in-game trade, PORYGON for MEW. Finally an excuse to get good at slots.

If I can get my scripting up to stuff, there also might be a special surprise for people who beat the Elite Four with a full Pokedex.

I'll get around to it.

Got a save I downloaded with all Pokemon available. Gonna have to hack their levels / movesets, though, to keep things fair & interesting.

What all should I be expecting from the AI now?

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 28 December 2015 - 08:07 PM

The only AI change I've made since you last played is fixing that Recover bug. You may want to wait until next release if you are itching for smarter opponents. If you want to fight some opponents with sensible moves though, now is a good time to try.

Meanwhile, bug fixing is going well! I've just about crossed off most of the bugs that bulbapedia have documented (well, in battle, anyways) I've got to slow down and test a few things before I forget.

Next release should be by Monday, unless I have too much fun over New Years.