The anniversary special!
One year ago today, Poccil told me that he would be happy to donate his Pokémon Essentials Starter Kit to the wiki I created for it, as he had lost interest in maintaining it himself. I took over development of the kit, and 366 days later, here we are!
So what's new?
Affecting Effects
- A large bucket-load of new item, move and ability effects have been added, as well as the improvement of many existing effects. There are far too many to list (I gave up trying, so I literally don't know what exactly I've done), but trust me, there's a lot.
- Animations and the Animation Editor have been improved, introducing a new kind of animation and a new way of displaying them. The new animation kind is called "Screen" (the old "Screen" has been renamed to something more appropriate), which doesn't stretch or twist in any way, meaning it's perfect for things like showing weather or moves like Surf which just wash over everything. The new display method is the introduction of cel priorities - a cell is either higher priority or lower priority, with higher ones being drawn after (i.e. on top of) lower ones. This means you can pop some cels behind the battlers, which I'm sure people will find useful.
- You know how Pokémon don't change their appearance in battle, unless they're using the move Transform? Well, not any more! Nowadays all Pokémon whose form could change in the middle of battle (Castform, Shaymin and so on) actually do so. The differences between those forms have been put with the rest of the form difference information for convenience. Oh, and there's form difference information for Gen 5 Pokémon too, should you feel the urge to include them in your game.
- Moving around maps has now been improved a bit. Sliding on ice no longer mucks up where the camera ends up pointing at, and you no longer jump insane heights just to get over ledges. The darkness in dark maps now looks nicer with its new fades. Bicycles are now strictly prohibited if you want to team up with a partner trainer.
- Because it wouldn't be a proper release without them. Some of them are rather important, such as the previously incorrect type effectiveness calculations, which always surprises me as to how they weren't discovered earlier. It's always interesting to read these, as you might not have realised what you used to put up with.
There are plenty of other things I've also done in this version, but are too minor to be mentioned. It's all in the change log on the wiki.
I haven't tested the vast majority of the new effects I've added, so there are bound to be some that don't work properly (or at all). Please let me know below if you find any.
Cheers!