Part 5: A Quick Break for Creativity
For this section, I want to talk about more about the creative part of Poké Transporter GB, rather than the technical side of graphics. TONC’s guide on graphics does a much better job explaining them than I could, and if you’re interested I would highly recommend it. If you’re reading through these for the programming side of things, this might be worth skipping. Especially if you don’t know anything about Pokémon.
Early on I knew that I wanted to have a story explaining why Pokémon were able to be transferred from Generation 1 and 2 into Generation 3. Similar transfer methods such as the Pal Park in Generation 4 and the Poké Transfer Lab in Generation 5 had in-universe explanations to them, so it just made sense. I also wanted to explain some of the shortcomings with Poké Transporter with in-universe reasons: specifically why Pokémon were unable to be removed from Generations 1 and 2 upon transfer, and why they were effectively cloned.
“Allons-y!”
I ultimately came up with a concept that combined three things: The Pokémon Dream World, the Pokémon Timeline, and Ditto. Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire’s Delta Episode introduced the idea that there are multiple timelines, and that remakes happen in a different timeline than the original games. This, combined with how cut off the first two generations are, led me to assume Generations 1 and 2 in their original forms are not part of the “main” timeline. I chose to interpret them as ‘dreams’ in the current timeline. I then turned to the Pokémon Dream World- a feature in Black, White, Black 2, and White 2 that allowed you to send your Pokémon to the Dream World where they could befriend different Pokémon, which would then be sent to the Entralink. Professor Fennel, a character in those games, was the one who introduced the player to the concept. I decided that Professor Fennel was researching dreams, found that some trainers had whole other ‘dream worlds’ (ie Generations 1 and 2), and wanted to pull Pokémon out of those dreams. However, she realized that only Pokémon sent into the dreams can come out. Working within these limits, she started sending in Ditto, who could transform into the dream Pokémon, and then exit the dream world.
As I type this out, I realize how insane and convoluted it sounds. Oh well, it’s fun. At one point, I wanted to connect it to the Devon Corporation scientist who talks about working on a device that visually reproduces the dreams of Pokémon, but that fell through fairly early on.
In the remakes, he even mentions a rival who lives far away!
But the story is only half the… story. We have graphics to look at too!
Most of my graphics are taken from other Pokémon games, not only because I don’t have the art skills to make my own, but to keep the program feeling like something GameFreak made. The font is pulled from Generation 1, the text boxes are from Platinum, and the Fennel sprite is from Generation 5. The background is four different shades of green, which are directly pulled from the original GameBoy’s color pallet. Does it look great? No, not really. But it does the job! Eventually, I want to completely overhaul the graphical interface, and also add custom music. But that’ll happen once the rest of the program is functionally complete.
Next time we’ll jump back into the technical world, and see some of the things I needed to implement alongside the graphics!