Expressive backgrounds teased for upcoming Pokemon Black and White 2 ROM hacks
Though the GBA games tend to receive the most attention when it comes to ROM hacks, strides are being made elsewhere to lift some of the best games in the series to even greater heights. In the past few years we've started to see movement for the fourth-generation DS games, with hacks like Garbage Gold using the decompilation efforts to add new maps and even Mega Evolutions. Today though, we got a sneak peak at some of the improvements that'll be featured in a few upcoming fifth-generation hacks: Blaze Black 2 and Volt White 2 Redux v2 and Cascade White 2.
Expressive backgrounds make use of the fact that the battle backgrounds in fifth-generation games are actually 3D environments, fleshing them out in a way that the official games never really explored. In the shared video, we get to see the first fight against your rival in Aspertia City, with further screenshots showing other key fights throughout the game. According to the brief Q&A on the announcement, these backgrounds run at full speed on real hardware, and react to both the time of day and current season exactly how the regular overworld would. You can find the full Q&A below:
Q: Do these run on hardware?
A: Absolutely! Both emulators and real hardware can display these backgrounds. We've explicitly tested on Desmume, MelonDS, a Nintendo DSi, DSiXL and the original DS. You can see a version of them in Pokestar Studios, and if you look carefully you might notice the regular backgrounds are actually 3D scenes too!
Q: How do these backgrounds react to time of day and the changing seasons?
A: These Expressive Backgrounds will reflect the time of day and season of the area as you would expect, for example Route 6 in Winter during the day will be brightly lit and snowy. Special areas will also refect their unqiue lighting, for example the Marine Tube is bathed in a cool blue glow from the surrounding tropical waters.
Q: Why do you call these 'Expressive' backgrounds?
A: As noted, all battle backgrounds in vanilla are actually 3D environments, so it seems like a vague descriptor if we call these 3D backgrounds. Furthermore, many of these have animated elements: including running water, pulsing speakers and twisting rollercoasters. Given the vibrant and dynamic nature of these backgrounds, we're electing to call them 'Expressive' Backgrounds.
Q: What kind of performance can we expect?
A: Emulators won't have any trouble running these if you can already run the original titles. We've spent lots of time optimising the maps to account for the rendering constraints of the DS's hardware, meaning these maps will run at full speed on the original Nintendo DS, DSi and DSiXL*. We don't expect issues with later models such as the 3DS, but we don't have such hardware to hand to test this ourselves.
*If a map is designed for a single battle environment and through the use of a randomiser or other editing method the battle is changed to a Multi-Battle, you may experience degraded performance, especially on real hardware. You shouldn't experience this in the base version of our projects though!
Q: How do move animations interact with these backgrounds?
A: Whilst we can't test every single move with every single background in every single battle format, we're very confident that most all move animations will work as you'd expect them to. There are cases where an animation will clip into the geometry (for example Thunder Wave might extend into the floor under the target), but these are extremely minor. You can get suprising behvaiour if you use a move like Fly in an indoor area with a low ceiling, but we've decided we can accept that level of jank!
Q: Are there visual issues with these Expressive Backgrounds?
A: There can be minor visual artifacts in some backgrounds. Different emulators may render backgrounds slightly differently, which can produce minor visual glitches on a case-by-case basis. Some backgrounds are very demanding for the DS and will cause significant slowdown if the battle-type is altered, for example via a randomiser - however as shipped in our projects, this should never be an issue!
Q: Can these be brought to other titles? (BW1, HGSS, DPP, FRLG, RSE)
A: The Gen V titles feature a battle engine with native 3D background support for battles, so this can be directly brought ot BW1 titles. The Gen IV titles only have 2D background support natively, but since the generations share underlying hardware, it's possible the Gen IV engine could be modified to use Expressive Backgrounds, but that's not been done and would take a considerable effort to make possible. As for the Gen III titles, the GBA is significantly weaker than the DS, so it's very unlikely you could run complicated 3D backgrounds on native hardware. That said, those titles have full decomps and a very talented community, so it's entirely possible years down the line we'll be proven wrong in the best way possible
Q: Can Expressive Backgrounds be disabled?
A: Both Redux v2 and Cascade White 2 will have options to disable Expressive Backgrounds. This can also be used to disable any misbehaving backgrounds!
Q: How long do these take to produce?
A: We've managed to improve the creation pipeline dramatically, but depending on the complexity some backgrounds can take a few days to get right. Fundamentally, the overworld assets are not made with the performance requirements of a battle background in mind, so certain scenes can take a lot of work to get just right.
Though there's currently no information on when the hacks featuring these backgrounds will release, AlphexCubed and TrustyPeaches did confirm that everything will be open-sourced when they do, with the final goal being a community patch that covers the entirety of the Unova region.
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