I would've waited until tomorrow to post this since it's Pokemon Day tomorrow, but I might get too distracted for the rest of the week and forget.

I'm probably going to be slowing down a little bit for personal reasons. (Reasons involving my husband again, so I'm not going to go into any details.)

Good:

-Finished Cerise's, Esmaralda's, Kai's, Rebecca's, and Umeko's friendship syntax, meaning that every "present" candidate's syntax has been finished.

-Gave Cerise different "after talk" dialogue if she's cleaning up after your Mareep. (As a spouse.)

-Went through the v.19.1 version for any syntax changes and replaced some of the ones that I barely used that were changed. Like the bug contest. I dunno if it was necessary, but again I barely used them so replacing them was really fast. (Unlike the days that it took me to finish the syntax for farming and gifting to candidates.)

-I've been phasing out the ability to give a candidate who you chose to just stay friends with the ability to give them a Valentines day gift. (Only if you're at the max friendship level before a relationship though.)

-Made it so you can buy pride flags... Or posters. They're more like posters.

-Changed my profile picture after having the same one for years, as you can see! I think it'd make more sense for the professor of the region to be the PFP for the development blog, but also I just like the edit I did for her.

Here's the full body .png:

This is what you'll be seeing when you start a new game from now on.

Neutral (bad?):

-Got a bunch of things set up for testing. (Trading, farming, etc.) I haven't actually tested anything yet though.

-Instead of just being really windy, the "bad winds" storm in the winter time will act more like a blizzard. Though the icon and the TV will still state that it's windy to indicate a different scenario that can happen with really bad weather.

I will not subject you to the torture of having to wait until spring on a day that it's raining and on a Monday just for ONE event! UNLIKE A CERTAIN COMPANY!

So for some context: In Harvest Moon: DS Cute (one of my favorites. Maybe in my top five) Skye has some very specific conditions that has to be met for his second heart event. Basically, it has to be raining on a Monday. In that game snow doesn't count as rain, so if you don't see the event before winter time you have to wait until Spring. I never got rain on a Monday before winter time.🙃

-I decided to not try to add in some of the food item's battle functions. Mostly because they were sort of broken anyway.

When you used one a pop-up would happen claiming that your game has crashed, but the game will function again the second that pop-up goes away and the intended effects happens anyway, for the most part.

I was trying to make items that were like full restores, but they didn't fully restore your Pokemon's health and they only cured one status effect. They were also supposed to disappear after use, but they didn't. It was purely a "let's see if I can do this" kind of thing that sort of worked.

My main intent with those items was to have a way for you to gain your own HP back anyway, and they still function that way, so I'm going to just leave the battle functions out.

I dunno if anybody will be broken up over this or not.

Bad:

I got "busy" and development slowed down because of it. And by "it" I mean Pokopia.

Coding:

-Finished the trade syntax for Umeko, Souma, Rebecca, grouped together spouses.

I got so bored that I considered just locking out the trading requests for now, but I got enough done that it feels like the sunken cost fallacy to do so at this point.

-Fixed one of the rival events with Souma and Cerise to work for all seasons. Also I actually turned it on for all seasons.

-Of course this means that I rewrote every candidate who has a "complicated trade" trading syntax in the meantime. I just haven't gotten to replacing them all yet.

-Added all of the custom Mega Pokemon in the game. And by that I mean Raichu. I forgot that the only Mega Pokemon I actually inserted into the game myself was Raichu. (I did it first, Game Freak!)

Graphics:

-Made a Fakemon that I've been thinking about making ever since the concept was brought to my attention through a MandJTV video while playing... Certain livestreams in the background, so I can pay attention to what was going on with... Something. I tried working on the game instead but I couldn't focus on either thing that way.

I wasn't even sure I really wanted a baby Miltank/Tauros in the game, especially since I decided on having a "Partner Tauros," but uh... I made them anyway.

I'm going to call them something like "Kaf." A simple and boring name, but one that works for both Miltank and Tauros. (Since both baby cows and baby bulls are called "calf.") Every other idea I had would've leaned towards one or the other, which I don't want.

I gave it all of Miltank's Egg Moves. (Even Dizzy Punch.) And also Endeavor- the one Egg Move that Tauros can learn that Miltank can't. (The only other Egg Move that Tauros can learn is Curse, but so can Miltank.)

I actually put in some effort into the little details. I looked up the personalities most people noticed in their calves and I even looked up the average height and weight of a calf for this! Also the Pokedex color for Kaf is "black" for the hood thing since the main color changes with the gender.

I’m at over 8k words for this chapter, with one more scene to write!

Here’s a preview for anyone who wants a sneak peek:

Link to the blog page that has the download (I actually updated the details this time!)

Story:

+Finally finished Souma, meaning that I can finally start testing this build.

Edit: I lied. I'm not done yet. I completely forgot about the winter maps.

Misc:

-Changed the intro so instead of playing as the first two options you now play as the player you choose and it won't change unless you're able to use the custom clothes feature. I dunno why I didn't do it this way in the first place. It's so much easier this way.

-Added a little Easter egg in the intro house.

I’m a god damn maniac. A psychopath. All for something that will seem like not much is being changed. 

So while I was high on depo and not able to do anything artsy I started making my own method of berry growing with what will probably be close to 1,000 different events and variables. But I kind of have to do this because the original method to get berries doesn’t make much sense in the context for this game and is very exploitable. (That being the normal way berries are coded in gen 3 and 4.)

What the system was-

You buy berries online. They get instantly shipped to you.

You can bury them and then wait 20 or so minutes (because of the unreal time engine making an entire day actually last about that long) to get a fully grown tree full of berries.

You then would have to take them to a specific spot to go through a bunch of choices just to sell them for a profit.

Alternatively you could just buy the berries and then sell them. The profit would barely be anything though between the bought and sell price.

What I’m going to change it to be-

You buy *seeds* of berries to be planted. These seeds are cheap and can be bought at the bar in the main town. (The bartender would’ve kept them from the previous owner of the farm’s berries prior to you being there.)

They won’t grow unless you actually go to bed a certain number of times. (I’ll be referring to this as “number of days” from now on.) Watering them and giving them mulch will shorten the number of times you need to go to bed for them to grow.

Berries will restart to the first form after a certain number of days passes without being picked. Watering them will reduce the number of days you need to pass by one. Adding mulch will reduce them by two. (So 3 days with a combination of the two.) This will require math on your part because (for some berries at least) this could make the days go over and restart the berries.

There will only be one bag of mulch... Maybe two if I feel like giving the player some leniency. (One bag will reduce the days by 1, and the other by 2.)

You can sell the berries anywhere like you would normally sell anything and gain a profit.

There will be a way to get a better watering can. The “Shiny Sprayduck.” (I chose the Sprayduck watering can to give to the player because out of the three available cans, Psyduck’s shiny is the most drastic change out of them, since it goes from a warm color to a cold.) This can will water three plots at the same time- the plot to the right and left of the plot you’re in front of.

I’m trying to make this game be colorblind friendly because my husband is colorblind and he’s showing interest in playing this game. I’m not colorblind but sometimes I wouldn’t be able to tell if I watered something in the official games. So instead of making the dirt a darker color I decided to instead have the plants sparkling when you water them. (Though that graphic may go away if you walk to a different screen.) I didn’t bother having the graphics changed for mulch being added though, but the game will tell you if you already used mulch on it for the day.

Watering your plant more than once a day won’t do anything.

You can also just bury the berry itself if you want. It won’t do anything different from burying the seed though. You may as well just sell it and buy a bunch of seeds.

This method will NOT work with these berries:

Razz Bluk Nanab Wepear Pinap Cornn Magost Rabuta Nomel Spelon Pamtre Watmel Durin Belue

Download

Before you download this version: I have no idea if this will replace your character or not. I’d go to:

Graphics > Characters

And copy either TrChar000, Boy_Run, Boy_Surf, and Boy_Bike, or TrChar001, Girl_Run, Girl_Surf and Girl_Bike and paste them somewhere outside the game’s files. If your character changed after downloading this version, close your game, then paste the copied files into the “characters” folder and say “yes” to replace them.

------

I wanted to do a bit more but right now I’m emotionally exhausted, and on Friday I’ll be physically exhausted too for a few days. I feel like I need to focus on something else at the moment (it probably won’t take long) and I think I did significant work on this build anyway.

Story:

+Finished Kai’s pre-marriage schedule dialogue.

+Started on Kalani’s.

Features:

-I have transformed the “video game floor” in the Nemorensis department store to a clothing floor, where you can buy “special clothing.” Specifically what you wear during contests in ORAS, DPP and BDSP. I do plan on having more simple, cheaper outfits, probably based on Pokemon in the future.

-Also you can get your hair dyed in two tones on this floor. No different hair styles yet and I doubt I would ever want to subject myself to such, but maybe I’ll do “wigs” in the future so I’d have an excuse to not color every hair style 15 times for every new hairstyle. Even wigs are a big “maybe” though.

-The “video game floor” in the Fulgora department store is still that, except you can buy a TV and game systems as furniture from there, plus a game that you can play on the NES. It’s only one game that you can play at home right now though. You know those Fossil puzzles in Gen 2 and their remakes? It’s that but the puzzles are art from Pokemon Cards. There’s up to five different pictures you can play with.

-That floor also allows you to play “demos.” One of them is of the puzzle game, except you can only do Pidove. The other is a dungeon crawler game that I made just to prove to myself that I can. I’ll talk about that game below

I don’t know what other games I can make. I thought about making a small dating sim within the dating sim, but I’m already having trouble writing for the dating sim, so how am I supposed to write for the dating sim mini game?

I also thought about making “Pokemon Box” available for purchase. The joke being that it would just function as a PC.

Graphics:

-I finally recolored the white male’s and white non-binary’s back sprite to have skin color that matches their overworld sprites’ skin color. I’m not exactly sure how I forgot that I never changed their skin color from the original sprites I based theirs on until now since I didn’t forget to do that for the female’s sprite. I also did some general fixes to the back sprites of all three. (Mostly focusing on the hair and shirts.)

-The two-toned hair made me want to make the back sprites match the clothes and hair you wear, so they do that now. At least they mostly do. I can’t see myself spriting the “special outfits” in the back sprites any time soon (not unless I’m actually commissioned to do so sooner) so whenever you wear one of those outfits your back sprite will be wearing their original shirts.

-Made the “surprise” and “super happy” mouths look better.

-Fixed up Alan’s, Cerise’s, Alderic’s, and Kai’s overworld sprites.

-I basically completely redid Ollie’s overworld sprites. (I did use one of the “special dresses” as the base for her body, and I fixed up her original head, so it didn’t take me that long.) After fixing up her head the rest of the body seemed weird and I figured out why- her body type in general was kind of messed up.

I used an overworld NPC from Ruby and Sapphire that was completely replaced in Emerald. She didn’t have arms, nor did she have breasts. I know that sounds weird but if you look at the overworld female sprites with dresses on they do have breasts that separates the top and bottom of the body.

-This also means that I redid her Halloween overworld sprites. I didn’t do that for anybody else since it’s only one in-game day but it’d be kind of weird to have a completely different shaped sprite for her on Halloween.

Glitches and oversight fixes:

-I forgot to delete the old “clock” thing where it’d show you the time of day but not the hour on the farm map, so it’d flicker between two different images and it’d look weird. I found and deleted the one that would just say “day, midday...”

Misc:

-I moved the men who sold TMs in both department stores to the ground floor where they’ll probably be the most noticeable.

Pokemon Dungeon Crawler (about the game):

You can play a “demo” of this game in Fulgora’s department store. Rather or not I make it into a “full” game will depend on feedback and/or if I just feel like finishing it. It’d be a good thing to do while I’m stuck on what to do with something else in the game. Or if I don’t feel good and I don’t feel like thinking too hard since a lot of it is just copying&pasting battles with some tweaks here and there.

In the "demo:" -The demo only has the most basic stuff, which is why it's so small: --You start with one full heal, one potion and one revive. (Though I'll probably keep it that way if I make it into a "full" game.) --There's a treasure chest in the demo map. There's chance that Voltorb will pop out of it. (Since Voltorb is Pokemon's version of a Mimic.) Defeating it will gain you more items than not having one pop out at you would. --There's only up to five Pokemon you can battle in the "demo." (Including Voltorb.) --You can recruit a partner, who'd be the healer of the group. --You can maybe get burned or poisoned by some Pokemon. ("Maybe," because despite this it hasn't happened to me yet.) --You get a sneak peek of the first boss. --Hiro can level up to 5, where Happy (and Nyura, maybe) can level up to 3. There's no "stats" on display but for every time you level up you can see the difference when you fight. --You control it the same way you control your character outside of the game. So if you have your running shoes toggled on, you'll rush through the dungeon. If you don't like this, you can always toggle them off.

Problems and possible problems in the demo that I can't figure out: --Happy's HP display is reversed for some fucking reason. I know for a fact that I flipped the numbers but the numbers themselves didn't flip for some reason so it's just stuck like that. --I forgot to change some sound effects, so for some magic attacks you'll probably hear a "poison" sound effect. I'll fix this in the "full game" if I make that (and I remember) but I wouldn't fix it for the demo since it's more fun that way. Any other small things like this would also probably remain unchanged in the demo version. (I still hate the HP thing though.) --I forgot to change the names of some of the Pokemon in places. So you might see a message like "Houndour used Electric Magic!" because I forgot to replace "Houndour" with "Voltorb." (I just caught it so that instance has been changed now.) --I haven't fainted or have gotten a "Game Over" yet, so I don't know what will happen if that happens. If it works out the same way it SHOULD you just lose your turn until you're revived, and if everybody dies you go to the title screen. --You can still open your menu and save your game. I didn't test it and I doubt that this would effect anything, but I'm mentioning it just in case it could.

In the "full game," if I were to make it: --Make it so you can "buy" and play the game at home. (That'd be the only way to actually play it.) --Add a "manual" that you can read with it. (I'd probably just have it within text boxes instead of making graphics for it.) --I'd make the first map bigger. (The "demo" map just shows you the things that could happen in the game.) --Have up to 3 rooms, and maybe make you crawl out of all three of them once you reach the last room. --Every time you defeat one of the bosses, you'd gain their magic ability. --Give you another partner, this one more focused on physical fighting. (It's the BETA Sneasel.) --Have a better balance between the enemy Pokemon and you. I'd probably actually raise your party's defense during level up, too. --There would be around 13 different Pokemon to fight for each floor, instead of just five. All based on common RPG monsters, so you can probably guess what they'd be based on that. (Plus their evolutions.) I'd restrict them to Gen 1 and 2. (And mostly the 1997 and 1999 demos of Gen 2, where the sprites look a bit worse.) --I'll probably make you take damage for every step if you're burned or poisoned.

I won OMORI so I decided to switch to working on Alan for... Reasons. But when I designed him I made second to last and I’m pretty sure he was one that I had to use a “random OC generator” for because a lot of these characters I didn’t really know what to do for some of the characters. (I think these characters are Ollie, Alan and Souma) and I knew that I’d probably go back to some of these characters eventually to redesign them at least slightly.

It’s kind of a pain in the ass to make changes to graphics because I have to go into the files to make the backgrounds transparent and sometimes some of the files are too big so it takes a while to actually get into the folder and... So I put these changes off for a while. Most of the time I’m okay with them but for Alan... No so much.

So part of the problems with the first sprite is that your eyes kind of land on the garish blue clothes when I want them to land on the face. So I... Couldn’t figure out a good color for his clothes, so I just lower the saturation of the original colors. I may or may not change this if I can think of a color that would look nice. I also 

The hair color I thought was too close to Cerise’s (basically the same tone but lighter) so I changed it to have a more blueish tint.

I lifted his ponytail because... It just didn’t look good where it was. Also the ponytail is up in every other sprite and portrait of him.

I slightly changed his eye color but it’s hard to tell on a Pokemon trainer sprite. My goal was to make the eyes land on Alan’s eyes but I can’t do that with this.

I also just fixed up some things like shading and lines.

Which leads to the portrait,

I think I was able to do what I wanted to do with the viewer’s eyes being lead to his eyes. (I won’t know how the date portrait will look until I test the game.)

I won’t change the eyebrow colors though since I’m using the same purple for... Every character who has a portrait with purple hair. Because I’m kind of lazy.

And finally,

I also changed Ollie’s sprite some-what. I’m not going to show the changes because... Well, I can’t say why without spoiling something about her. (The change is out of sight from the portraits and overworld so I only changed the battle sprite.)

I thought about giving her a choker but it wouldn’t show up very well on the sprite.

Fun fact: Ollie originally had blonde hair but I was like “blue eyes and blonde hair within these people with hair color that’s only natural in anime and video games?” I changed it to a color that kind of looks like she could’ve dyed it if I ever decide on doing that for her. (Probably not though.)

Also fun fact: Souma originally had purple hair, but it would’ve been the third character you can date with purple hair so I changed it to pink.