My Pokémon Red/Blue ROM Hack Project: Red 2/Blue 2

Since late 2014, I've been working on a ROM hack of Pokémon Red/Blue. I'm far away from releasing it, but since I recently got back into working on it, I might as well talk about here and see if people on Steemit are interested. I have named the project "Red 2/Blue 2", but that may change.

So, why Gen 1? Because I liked the challenge. Gen 1 is riddled with bugs, errors, glitches, broken mechanics.. you name it. So, instead of choosing the easy way and hacking an already functional Gen 3, which a lot of people do (and there's nothing wrong with that) I wanted to tackle the challenge of hacking Gen 1, and seeing how far I could go in updating the mechanics.

The ROM hack will include an original story, most likely based, at least partially, in Kanto, that takes place after Gold/Silver/Crystal. I haven't done new areas yet, but I'm planning to, so that it's not just Kanto that everybody is bored to tears with.

It also already includes various updates, changes and fixes to the core gameplay mechanics. Here is a list of things that are already in the game:

• New Pokémon from the generations 2-6
• New moves from the generations 2-6
• Fully Functional Physical/Special Split
• All new Smart AI, written from scratch, that is able to try and predict that player's moves, switch Pokémon and use items efficiently, and offers more challenge in general
• In-battle graphics ported from Gen 2, so you no longer need to endure those Gen 1 backsprites
• Experience bar, also ported from Gen 2
• Running shoes
• New evolutionary methods
• Automatic Repel system from Black2/White 2
• Dark, Steel and Fairy types
• Fixes to most of the multiple glitches and bugs in Gen 1
• The battle system has been updated to Gen 5 - I haven't included the Steel type nerf from Gen 6
• New move effects from Gens 3-6, including the inclusion of moves such as Bulk Up that raise two stats, instead of one, allowing for more strategic gameplay
• Various characters from Gens 2-6 that will make cameos, and ones that the player can battle with
• Roaming Legendary Pokémon, ported from Gen 2
• New TMs to compliment the added moves and movesets
• Custom new move animations, not found in any other ROM hack
• Critical hits no longer based on speed, but functioning like they do in Gens 2-6
• More

Things that I am considering, but are not yet implemented:

• Genders for Pokémon
• And if so, Breeding
• Gender Selection for the Player, ported from Crystal
• Shiny Pokémon
• Splitting the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense
• Custom music/devamps from Gens 2-6 (This I can't do on my own, I'd need someone to help me out)
• Something else I come up with

I will not be including fake mons, nor will I mess with the typings of the pokémon. So, Gyarados will not be water/dragon and Luxray will not be electric/dark, sorry.

This isn't something I'm investing my time into full time, so progress happens when it happens. Sometimes I run into a bug that takes me a month to fix, sometimes I make a lot of progress in a short time. I do plan on finishing this, though.

Here's what a lot of the actual work looks like:

I'm just about done with the game mechanics, and I'll probably be moving into maps and story soon, although I will keep adding new moves and pokémon whenever I have the energy to. It's quite time consuming to add a new Pokémon into the game, but there are ones that I really want to include.

You can check out some of my YouTube videos I've made regarding this project. Here's a recent one that actually caused me to make this blog post:

Here I've finally fixed a very annoying Gen 1 glitch that had to do with the type effectiveness with dual type pokémon: if you were hitting, for example, Gyarados, a water/flying type with a grass type move, the game would print out the "Not very effective text.." even though the move did neutral damage. This seemed like a simple fix, but instead it was very hard to get working. However, I did it! Now when you hit a dual type pokémon with a move that does neutral damage, the game always treats it as such. It was one of the first things I wanted to fix, but it wasn't until today that I finally got it working.

Here's a battle with the 3rd Gen protagonist that includes a 3rd gen mon dream team:

If you're interested, leave a comment, maybe an upvote, it will keep me motivated. :)

@schattenjaeger