As November comes to a close, I thought it would be appropriate for a month-in review of Supernova Sun and Penumbra Moon. I've been hard at work since completing my playthrough of Ultra Moon, and I wanted to give everyone here a progress report and reveal a few possibly-unexpected features. I'm still
not releasing an ETA, but I consider the hack to be about
halfway done as of today. Due to testing, balancing, and incremental implementation, I have committed changes to the change log
82 times.
Trainer Changes
The most important part of my ROM hacks is the alteration of every in-game trainer to obey the EXP share's level curve and provide new strategic depth. Some people have asked me if I intended to "port" Nova Sun and Umbra Moon to the Ultra games. No, I do not intend to port my previous mod over. While some movesets and strategies might be similar (there's only so many decent movesets for bad Pokémon), every Trainer in Supernova Sun and Penumbra Moon (with very few exceptions) will be designed from the ground up
for Supernova Sun and Penumbra Moon. As such, creating Trainer teams requires not just time but creativity and inspiration.
Trainer development happens in three stages in my workflow. First, I design the trainers in a spreadsheet. Then, I implement them in the game. Finally, they go through testing both by myself and beta testers.
As of 11/30/2017, I have implemented
122 modified Trainers in the ROM hack. The hack's Trainers are designed through the end of Akala Island and implemented through the Fire Trial,
approximately 30% of the game. My three beta testers have been hard at work, and Trainer battles up through Kahuna Hala have been rigorously tested for balance and challenge without being unfairly hard.
All Totems as of the end of Akala Island are also complete and implemented. Work on Trainers has so far been somewhat stalled by the other aspects of the hack, particularly wild encounters. Now that wild encounter tables are nearing completion, work on Trainers should progress faster.
Wild Pokémon Changes
Wild Pokémon changes accounted for over 50% of Nova Sun and Umbra Moon's development time. Thanks to a workflow method I committed to halfway through Nova Sun and Umbra Moon's development, progress has been
much faster on Supernova Sun and Penumbra Moon's encounter table work. Like the Trainers, the Wild Encounters go through a design phase in spreadsheets before being implemented in the hack.
Expanded Builds were the
overwhelming favorite Build of Nova Sun and Umbra Moon, so I put in a lot of extra care designing Expanded Build tables this time around. My Expanded Build encounter tables are
very detailed and have lots of fun SOS shenanigans, so I hope you look forward to them! In the Expanded Build, the player will have access to
57% of non-Legendary evolution lines on Melemele Island alone. This access expands to
81% after Akala Island, and
95% after Ula'ula Island.
As of today, the Expanded Build for both versions is
90% designed and implemented, but encounters past Akala Island need to be leveled up to match the new curve.
Of course, I have also put in a lot of effort with the Legit Build (and future Leveled Build)'s tables this time around. Fishing in particular will be much less of a pain in all Builds, as "rare" fishing slots have been drastically buffed, especially when the fishing spot is bubbling.
The Legit Build for Penumbra Moon is
100% designed and implemented. The Legit Build for Supernova Sun is
100% designed, but not yet implemented. The Legit Builds for Nova Sun and Umbra Moon featured Island Scan encounters in normal encounter tables, but it has since been discovered that Island Scans have special properties and are actually stored as "static encounters" in the game's structure. As such, Legit Builds will not include this feature in Supernova Sun and Penumbra Moon. After finishing Supernova and Penumbra, I will probably go back and remove Island Scan encounters from standard wild tables in the Legit Build for Nova Sun and Umbra Moon.
The Leveled Builds for both versions will come after the Legit Build for Supernova Sun is implemented and the game's Wild Encounters are fully leveled in the Expanded Build, but by nature of being based on the Legit Builds are
100% designed. Implementation of the Supernova Sun Legit Build will still take hours due to the complexity of Gen VII's encounter tables, though creation of the Leveled Builds will be much quicker since I can use the Legit Builds as a base.
As with Nova Sun and Umbra Moon, a Lite Build with no encounter table changes from default Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon will be made available.
Species Changes
As is usual for my hacks, I won't be retyping Pokémon, giving them moves or Abilities they don't legally have access to, or changing base stats. That said, there are plenty of things that I need to edit as far as individual species go.
32% of evolutionary lines have had their Level-up movepools edited to keep their progression in line with the extreme level curve of my ROM hacks. Some of those have also received level-up access to Tutor or TM moves (usually late in their movesets). I will not be distributing Egg Moves into level-up access because Pokémon with Egg Moves that have not been hatched from an Egg are detectable as illegal. This number will be 100% when I release the hacks.
100% of Pokémon hold Items in the wild, with most being new to the hack. Many are consistent with Nova Sun and Umbra Moon.
100% of non-Legendary Pokémon are able to SOS call in the wild. Baby Pokémon and Pokémon with predatory SOS calls (Corsola, Durant, etc.) have a higher SOS call rate than most species. The "normal" SOS call rate has been increased thanks to an anti-annoyance feature in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon: Only one SOS call per fight will succeed unless the player uses an Adrenaline Orb.
All species now have a one-cycle Egg hatch rate. Even though there are code.ips patches to enable fast egg hatching, I prefer not to rely on a patched code.bin file to implement what can be done through RomFS editing.
Evolution changes are
100% complete. The evolution methods are a more fine-tuned version of Nova Sun and Umbra Moon's, but with the addition of a
normalized Eevee evolution chart. Unlike my other Evolution changes, the Eevee changes
replace the original methods. That means in Supernova Sun and Penumbra Moon, Eevee no longer evolves through Refresh or Friendship and no longer evolves near the Icy and Moss Rocks.
Item and Poké Mart Changes
Thanks to Ultra SM providing
many more Marts that sell X Items (and a counter at the Megamart selling
five slots of Strange Souvenir), I can now assure you that
almost every useful Item will be available in Poké Marts. This includes competitive hold Items like Leftovers, Life Orb, and Assault Vest; the six Power Items and both types of Bottle Cap; the six EV reduction Berries; Breeding items like Everstone, Destiny Knot, and Ability Capsule; all Evolution Stones; all types of Poké Ball except Master Ball; PP Max, Heart Scale, and even Rare Candy... And this time, I didn't have to replace the Incense Shop at all!
In addition to shops being different, PK3DS's new abilities have allowed me to use a much less ham-fisted solution to Revive spam than I have in the past.
Sacred Ash (renamed "Revival Powder") is still available in shops in addition to Revives, but Revives now simply revive the fallen Pokémon with 1 HP instead of costing P20,000. This means that the player can't get absurd turn economy out of Revives and that a player committing to a Revive-heavy strategy should bring a Pokémon with Rapid Spin or Defog. Lowering the price of Revives also means that the player can't make ridiculous amounts of money by selling the Revives Hau gives them.
I've also introduced a new healing item:
Restoration Wing. This item acts as a Full Restore, is unusable during battles, and is available in standard Poké Marts for P150. The Restoration Wing replaces the Health Wing, so if you trade one to a default SM/USUM game it will not appear as an unobtainable item.
Thanks to the Restoration Wing, I can balance high-level Potions to cost more money to offset their massive value during battles. It's the player's choice if they want to invest in consumable Items like Hyper Potions, Revives, and Full Heals or instead to invest in Leftovers and Life Orbs and other such permanently-useful items.
I have also restored the Fresh Water, Soda Pop, and Lemonade to their Gen 1 potency and increased the Max Repel's duration by 50%.
All of these changes, and all item price changes, are
100% complete and implemented.
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a/0/8 contains the "2" and "3" files. One of those is encounters for Sun and the other is encounters for Moon, in either version of the game one of them will be large and the other will be 0kb. This is true for the default ROM structure as well.