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This is not a new hack, it has been in the works since October 2021, however following on from a post within Liquid Crystal's thread where LAZ gives out permission to moify and post based on his hack: https://www.pokecommunity.com/threads/pokémon-liquid-crystal-3-3-xxxxx-live-beta.242023/page-293 - I present to you a continuation, of sorts, officially...
About the Game
This game has a bit of a history. It started out life as Pokémon Liquid Crystal, skilfully created by LinkAndZelda/Zeikku, then transformed into Pokémon Crystal Advance by Kertra; This is where my version comes in. It is an updated version of that ROM. Essentially, it is a hack of a hack of a hack of Pokemon FireRed V1.0. As to why I worked from Crystal Advance and not Liquid Crystal Directly...well...we will get to that in a minute.
This is not a 100% faithful recreation of Pokémon Crystal. Most events are 1:1 however there are differences, some call-backs to the original Pokémon Liquid Crystal. new areas to explore. This game retains the faithful GBA styling but sprinkles some niceties here and there. Think of this game as a sort of HGSS demake with some newer additions. With that, that brings me to -
- The Complete Experience: This game can be played from start to finish, from picking your Pokémon to beating Red. Aside from some other features and additions I am currently working on, it is fully enjoyable
- Day, Night, Seasons: The environment will change depending on what time of day/month it is, to keep things fresh
- Type chart improvements: Includes the addition of the Fairy Type. This change also affects Goldenrod Gym which in-turn has become a dual Normal/Fairy type Gym. This includes most Fairy type moves from gen 6 and the inclusion of Sylveon as an Eeveelution.
- Pokémon Migration: Creatures from the 3rd and 4th generations are a-plenty here. In total there are 499 Pokémon visible in the Pokédex; The Burmy and Shellos forms got their own entry. Sylveon and XD001 are obtainable but do not have a viewable dex entry.
- Learn-set improvements: All Pokémon have had moveset improvements, largely based on moves obtained within other vanilla Pokémon games, a few have been...more creative...And have added moves based on moves obtainable through other Pokémon franchise games (Wobuffet obtains Psywave and Rock Smash based on moves used in the mystery dungeon games and TCG, for example) - This was heavily inspired by Drayano's hacks, of which I am a huge fan of
- Item availability improvements: Gone are the days where you have to wait 16 hours just to obtain some Leppa Berries; Ethers and Elixirs are obtainable within the Dept Stores and Pokémon League. Poéballs are cheaper to buy, PP Ups are purchasable from Dept Stores, Vitamins are cheaper to buy. All Wild Pokémon have had their item tables improved upon. Evolution items are attainable this way, However they are also purchasable.
- Stat EXP system: The EV training system has been tweaked to recreate the old Gen1/2 Stat system, whereby you can get max EVs in *every* stat, not just the current maximum of 2. This can be achieved either through Vitamin use or pure battling, it does not matter. the Power items are also available for direct EV training regardless of encounter.
- New/Reinstated areas: Areas that were available in Pokémon Liquid Crystal have returned, meaning extra places to explore. More to come on these in the future. Sadly the Orange Islands from Pokemon Liquid Crystal have been removed in their entirety.
- New TMs and Move Tutors: Some old, less useful TMs have been replace with more useful ones. Say hello to Avalanche, Play Rough, Drain Punch, Drain Kiss and Dive. Every Gym also has a learnable Tutor move via the Champ Guy upon completion
- Higher difficulty Curve: trainers will be a little harder, with expanded teams. By the time you get to the elite four, trainer levels will be on average 10 higher than vanilla Crystal, and 20 by the end of the game. Kanto has been re-blanced to actually be fun to do battles in, and not feel like a chore.
- Double the trouble: Quite a few trainers are now double battles. Every Gym Leader is a double battle
- Placement differences: There will be some things that are still the same but in slightly different areas. I will leave these to be discovered.
- Evolution Changes: I have turned most single use held items into assistive evolution items. Pokémon that required trading now simply need to hold one of these associative held items and level up in battle. Eevee is now a purely stone evolving Pokémon, for example
- Higher Quality Audio samples: You may notice that Pokémon sound different, a bit more realistic? This is because I painstakingly ripped and recreated the sounds used in Pokémon Stadium 2 and inserted them into this ROM. Gen 3 and 4 Pokémon use their Gen 6 modulated sounds. These are encoded in a higher bitrate than standard also to give a more immersive experience. IDK about you but I was not a fan of the old square wave audio.
- Increased Shiny Odds: Gone are the days of you searching for 84 years just to get a rattata. Shiny odds are 1/256. Furthermore within Celadon Game Corner there is a machine that will generate a random Shiny Encounter for you to catch (this costs quite a few coins, mind)
- Fully Implemented Dive System: A complete implementation of Dive, fully scripted (no ASM/C# injection involved)
- Fully Functional GB Player: Remember when the GB Player in Liquid Crystal played a bunch of sounds with missing channels? Pepperidge Farm remembers; and so do I. Which is why I re0coded an entire section of the music bank handler, and then went through and remastered most of the music in the game. As of 18/4/24 (or 4/18/24 for those across the pond) every single GBA track in the game except for 2 has an accompanying GB audio variant - even then that is soon to change.
- And Many, many More...
Tools used
Hex Maniac Advance
Sappy Mod
Cry Editor (aligned)
Bugs?
- Breeding is confirmed to be working. HOWEVER loading the Pokémon info screen when you have 2 or more eggs in the party WILL CRASH THE GAME. As of 23/4/24 (2) build the Egg crashing issue has been fixed.
- Sheer Force ability is fully functional. HOWEVER Strength and Cut (which were given added effects) are not affected by the ability.
- Various minor issues; nothing game-breaking, definitely some text disparity as of 22/4/24 roughly 1/2 of the NPC scripts has been fully De-capped, so at some point through the playthrough you will start seeing capped text.
- Some Features are still WIP and Incomplete - this will be apparent once you head into the Discord, you will see changelogs when they happen; everything is posted.
Download?
The patch file can be found on my Discord server alongside instructions on what you need to do to patch the game (input this code into the server window within Discord):
discord.com
As for why a direct link is not being provided here? The development is really active, sometimes seeing 2+ builds per day. It would be inefficient if I were to update this thread every time I post an update patch. My Discord server is far easier to manage for me.
Mentions and Credits
First of all it goes without saying that I need to credit everyone involved in the original Liquid Crystal (the end credits are actually retained so you will see all of these guys names in-game):
a special thanks to Kertra, without whom this version would not be possible, and for all the random questions i threw at him over the course of the past 2 years.
a special thanks to Haven and Shiny Till Dawn, for quite frankly the best software available in Binary hacking, and most definitely without it I would not have this hack where it is now.
I uh, don't really need to thank myself. This is a passion project of mine and is built for me to play, and for you to enjoy.
Any questions or queries should be directed to my Discord server. I will not be checking here often.
About the Game
This is not a 100% faithful recreation of Pokémon Crystal. Most events are 1:1 however there are differences, some call-backs to the original Pokémon Liquid Crystal. new areas to explore. This game retains the faithful GBA styling but sprinkles some niceties here and there. Think of this game as a sort of HGSS demake with some newer additions. With that, that brings me to -
Features
- The Complete Experience: This game can be played from start to finish, from picking your Pokémon to beating Red. Aside from some other features and additions I am currently working on, it is fully enjoyable
- Day, Night, Seasons: The environment will change depending on what time of day/month it is, to keep things fresh
- Type chart improvements: Includes the addition of the Fairy Type. This change also affects Goldenrod Gym which in-turn has become a dual Normal/Fairy type Gym. This includes most Fairy type moves from gen 6 and the inclusion of Sylveon as an Eeveelution.
- Pokémon Migration: Creatures from the 3rd and 4th generations are a-plenty here. In total there are 499 Pokémon visible in the Pokédex; The Burmy and Shellos forms got their own entry. Sylveon and XD001 are obtainable but do not have a viewable dex entry.
- Learn-set improvements: All Pokémon have had moveset improvements, largely based on moves obtained within other vanilla Pokémon games, a few have been...more creative...And have added moves based on moves obtainable through other Pokémon franchise games (Wobuffet obtains Psywave and Rock Smash based on moves used in the mystery dungeon games and TCG, for example) - This was heavily inspired by Drayano's hacks, of which I am a huge fan of
- Item availability improvements: Gone are the days where you have to wait 16 hours just to obtain some Leppa Berries; Ethers and Elixirs are obtainable within the Dept Stores and Pokémon League. Poéballs are cheaper to buy, PP Ups are purchasable from Dept Stores, Vitamins are cheaper to buy. All Wild Pokémon have had their item tables improved upon. Evolution items are attainable this way, However they are also purchasable.
- Stat EXP system: The EV training system has been tweaked to recreate the old Gen1/2 Stat system, whereby you can get max EVs in *every* stat, not just the current maximum of 2. This can be achieved either through Vitamin use or pure battling, it does not matter. the Power items are also available for direct EV training regardless of encounter.
- New/Reinstated areas: Areas that were available in Pokémon Liquid Crystal have returned, meaning extra places to explore. More to come on these in the future. Sadly the Orange Islands from Pokemon Liquid Crystal have been removed in their entirety.
- New TMs and Move Tutors: Some old, less useful TMs have been replace with more useful ones. Say hello to Avalanche, Play Rough, Drain Punch, Drain Kiss and Dive. Every Gym also has a learnable Tutor move via the Champ Guy upon completion
- Higher difficulty Curve: trainers will be a little harder, with expanded teams. By the time you get to the elite four, trainer levels will be on average 10 higher than vanilla Crystal, and 20 by the end of the game. Kanto has been re-blanced to actually be fun to do battles in, and not feel like a chore.
- Double the trouble: Quite a few trainers are now double battles. Every Gym Leader is a double battle
- Placement differences: There will be some things that are still the same but in slightly different areas. I will leave these to be discovered.
- Evolution Changes: I have turned most single use held items into assistive evolution items. Pokémon that required trading now simply need to hold one of these associative held items and level up in battle. Eevee is now a purely stone evolving Pokémon, for example
- Higher Quality Audio samples: You may notice that Pokémon sound different, a bit more realistic? This is because I painstakingly ripped and recreated the sounds used in Pokémon Stadium 2 and inserted them into this ROM. Gen 3 and 4 Pokémon use their Gen 6 modulated sounds. These are encoded in a higher bitrate than standard also to give a more immersive experience. IDK about you but I was not a fan of the old square wave audio.
- Increased Shiny Odds: Gone are the days of you searching for 84 years just to get a rattata. Shiny odds are 1/256. Furthermore within Celadon Game Corner there is a machine that will generate a random Shiny Encounter for you to catch (this costs quite a few coins, mind)
- Fully Implemented Dive System: A complete implementation of Dive, fully scripted (no ASM/C# injection involved)
- Fully Functional GB Player: Remember when the GB Player in Liquid Crystal played a bunch of sounds with missing channels? Pepperidge Farm remembers; and so do I. Which is why I re0coded an entire section of the music bank handler, and then went through and remastered most of the music in the game. As of 18/4/24 (or 4/18/24 for those across the pond) every single GBA track in the game except for 2 has an accompanying GB audio variant - even then that is soon to change.
- And Many, many More...
Screenshots
Tools used
Hex Maniac Advance
Sappy Mod
Cry Editor (aligned)
Bugs?
- Sheer Force ability is fully functional. HOWEVER Strength and Cut (which were given added effects) are not affected by the ability.
- Various minor issues; nothing game-breaking, definitely some text disparity as of 22/4/24 roughly 1/2 of the NPC scripts has been fully De-capped, so at some point through the playthrough you will start seeing capped text.
- Some Features are still WIP and Incomplete - this will be apparent once you head into the Discord, you will see changelogs when they happen; everything is posted.
Download?
Join the Pokémon Crystal Advance Redux Discord Server!
Check out the Pokémon Crystal Advance Redux community on Discord - hang out with 2165 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
discord.com
As for why a direct link is not being provided here? The development is really active, sometimes seeing 2+ builds per day. It would be inefficient if I were to update this thread every time I post an update patch. My Discord server is far easier to manage for me.
Mentions and Credits
First of all it goes without saying that I need to credit everyone involved in the original Liquid Crystal (the end credits are actually retained so you will see all of these guys names in-game):
Spoiler: Liquid Crystal Crew
a special thanks to Kertra, without whom this version would not be possible, and for all the random questions i threw at him over the course of the past 2 years.
a special thanks to Haven and Shiny Till Dawn, for quite frankly the best software available in Binary hacking, and most definitely without it I would not have this hack where it is now.
I uh, don't really need to thank myself. This is a passion project of mine and is built for me to play, and for you to enjoy.
Any questions or queries should be directed to my Discord server. I will not be checking here often.
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