[Decomps] (Reworking in Pokeemerald Decomp) Recruiting for Pokemon: Orre Arc!

[BittersweetNSour]

Return to a reimagined Orre Region and follow the story of taking down Cipher for the third and final time!​

What Is Orre Arc?

Well, the original draft was a Pokemon Essentials fangame, and the original recruitment post was written with that in mind. But what is it now?

Orre Arc is a Pokeemerald Decomp romhack (utilizing RHH's Pokeemerald Expansion base), intended as a followup to Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, taking place in a version of the Orre region adapted to a top-down sprite format. The story is adapted from WAAPT, a forum roleplay which had its own Orre arc in 2013, though restructured to fit a single-player experience; the end goal is a game that would not be out of place in Pokemon canon -- pushing, but not breaking, the boundaries of what a true Orre third-installment might have given us.

What's new and interesting about it?

As a current-gen followup to games from all the way back in Generation 3, there's a lot more room to explore the mechanics of Shadow Pokemon. The impact of having Pokemon stolen and turned into dark shadows of themselves, the effects lost Shadow Pokemon might have if they were released into the wild without purifying them, and further exploration of Hyper Mode and how the Shadow condition pairs with things like Mega Evolution, are all things I want to delve into with this game.

As well, the Orre region is an interesting region that is just begging to have more lore -- it sets the perfect stage for a Wild West backdrop (in a modern age, of course) but doesn't quite have the legends and history that the more prominent main-series regions steep themselves in. Even the few Legendary Pokemon that made their way into the previous games never quite had a role beyond being Cipher's aces, with the exceptions of Celebi and a brief cameo from Ho-oh. As such, I want to flesh the region out more, through new sideplots and maps giving the region more to explore and learn about.

Finally, there's one more aspect from the original games that I want to explore further. In Colosseum, the region was completely void of wild Pokemon. In XD, after a timeskip of five years, three Poke Spots had been discovered, where an extremely limited amount of Pokemon were available. For this third entry, I want to take that to its logical conclusion -- due to trainers bringing in Pokemon of all sorts over the years for the Colosseum challenges -- and, inevitably, breeding for the best competitors, as competitive Trainers are known to do -- the region has developed a full ecosystem, and it's about time someone made a record of what's coming in. So you, the protagonist, are a member of PEFE -- the Pokedex Extended Fileshare Endeavor -- on a mission to document the Orre region's new Pokedex, and with the return of Cipher, you get the secondary duty of making sure abandoned Shadow Pokemon don't wreck the region's newfound biodiversity.

What we have:

Story
As stated, the game is an adaptation of a story that's already written; the original writers have the plot covered.

Pokedex

With Orre's newfound biodiversity, there's a fairly balanced mix of Pokemon throughout the region, stemming from all generations and all types, for a grand total of 251. Of course, being a desert region, the most common types are Ground, Rock, and Steel, but there's a fair share of the rest of the type chart as well. And of course, the Shadow Pokemon you'll end up saving will provide its own selection -- for variety's sake, we're keeping the overlap with the native Pokedex to a minimum.

Music

So, this is a bit awkward.

Again, originally, this was a fangame using the Pokemon Essentials base. As such, I have a lot of music I've personally written, that would have been able to be used as-is in the engine. Now that we're transitioning to a GBA romhack, all this music is going to need to be rewritten, in a way that works in the GBA's sequencer. Don't worry, I've got that covered! But for now, what I have to show is the music as of the original iteration.




Character Art
Official art of the characters of Orre Arc is being handled by Daydre, an artist from the WAAPT community; the gallery is growing gradually, but here's a sample of the cast you can expect to meet so far!

What we need:

Mappers

One thing I learned from the RPG Maker iteration was, I may be able to do a lot, but mapmaking is not my specialty. However, lucky for us, we have existing games to base the towns on, with whatever liberties we decide we want or need to take. What Colosseum and XD don't offer, though, are routes. Those will need to be completely made from scratch, using our own creativity.

I do have screencaps of the few maps I made in RPG Maker -- Agate Village and Gateon Port (based on kingtapir/alex.psd's maps, with permission, and some modifications), as well as a route in between, and a more fleshed out Relic Forest area. As well, I have a rough layout of the whole region, including routes, in a Google Sheets file, as well as the wild Pokemon planned for each area.

So, more to the point -- we need people who can confidently use Porymap and help develop the region.

UI Designers

I love the Pokemon Emerald UI to pieces, but for an Orre project, it just doesn't quite hit the same vibe. Someone experienced with modifying the UI in Pokeemerald would be a godsend.

Anything Else
There's no doubt things I'm missing, so if you have anything I haven't mentioned that you'd be willing to contribute, I'd be happy to hear from you!

Feel free to DM me through Pokecommunity, or my Discord at BittersweetNSour or via email at [email protected]