Link to the latest version (May 9th):

www.mediafire.com/file/kb...oat_Shorts_-_1.0.rar/file

Steps:
1. Download the file.
2. Extract it with Winrar or something.
3. Run the "Game.exe".

General Notes (updated May 9th):
- 1.0 release of the game! Future updates I don't know.

- Lorelei is the final trainer. She will appear after you have defeated all other trainers on the ship.

- Your Pokemon are automatically healed after a battle.

- There is no exp gain in this game. That means you battle trainers to steal their Pokemon to use. If that's too difficult or you just want the hypno parts, the shop sells rare candies at 1 pokedollar each.

- Some pictures of the game.
<<i.imgur.com/uUKT0hc.png|Pic 1>>
<<i.imgur.com/bhF7okH.png|Pic 2>>
<<i.imgur.com/k7DlSbT.png|Pic 3>>
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Greetings!

I'm not sure if people are still interested in this or not, but figured to make a post anyway. I've had some free time as of late, and was reminded of this <<hypnohub.net/forum/show/24140|old gem>>.

I wanted to try making something like it, and as recommended in that thread, looked up how to use RPG Maker and Pokemon Essentials.

The general premise: You are part of Team Rocket, and have infiltrated a ship in order to steal the Pokemon of all the trainers on board. After beating a (female) trainer, you have the option of doing hypnosis shenanigans (in the future). Like the game link above, it's mostly going to be text based. Other than that there's not really a story.

This is a short game, and is currently unfinished. Well the 'story'/battles are, but the juicy hypnosis parts are not.


Some Notes:

- All the non-hypno related text and battles are complete. So if you want, you can complete the game. Just without any good hypno parts.

- Lorelei is the final trainer. She will appear after you have defeated all other trainers on the ship.

- There is no exp gain in this game. That means you battle trainers to steal their Pokemon to use. If that's too difficult or you just want the hypno (not that there is any at the moment), the shop sells rare candies at 1 pokedollar each.

- I used the concept of options after using hypnosis from Evilgrin's thread. Though at the moment none of the hypnosis options are complete. In fact, other than the Team Rocket Grunt, you shouldn't even try using it other girls because it would just have random text I put in there. Team Rocket Grunt hypnosis options has the general menu and some placeholder text.

<<i.imgur.com/udbkyfj.png|Example>>

And lastly (and the main reason I am posting this here), I am looking for feedback! Especially for the hypno parts. Ideas on trainer edits to make them look more hypnotized? Ideas on what to do for each hypnosis option for each girl? Or anything else that comes to mind.

Awesome funny I was literally thinking about this type of game when I made my last comment a minute ago~ Really need to give it a go once I get my computer set up done with~

I'm just gonna dump some thoughts here after playing for half an hour or so. I like the setup, and the fact that this is a standalone rather than a romhack means you can be a lot more creative with the hypno elements. The story is sparse but I enjoy the writing and dialogue, so I have no complaints on that front.

It's a bit confusing trying to figure out what battles have opened up after I win one. Unless I missed something, it doesn't seem like there's any clear pattern to how you progress and what order fights unlock. The ability to cheat super hard is welcome since I don't really enjoy Pokemon combat.

Hard to comment on the small amount of hypno content, but what's there seems like a good framework. The sprite for the Rocket Grunt isn't particularly large and I had to squint at it to even notice it was edited, so enlarging that or giving us a better view would be appreciated. Giving some girls, especially named characters, unique hypno options would be nice. As to what those should be? I'm drawing a blank, but when in doubt you can always borrow some ideas from the original romhack, like hypnotizing each trainer to act like one of their pokemon.

I would also appreciate the addition of a rival. Maybe Rocket Grunt Girl gets upgraded to being a recurring character? She certainly has the attitude for it, and you could solve one of my earlier complaints by having occasional battles with her after you win certain fights. Beating her would then lead to her making some remark about where you should be going next.

I played through to the end. I thought it was solid.

First Impressions
The dialogue was consistently funny, and super good. In a lot of the smaller, homebrew MC games, I can usually spot at least a few spelling or grammar mistakes, but I didn't notice any. On top of that, there are dozens of memes & references. If mistakes were made, then none of them stuck out to me. Easily best English in a game I've seen so far.

In-game opponents were funny too. The trainer that had only Explosion Pokemon made me laugh out loud.

The core gameplay loop is an interesting twist on a old classic. I can see it being a challenge for anybody who's new to Pokemon, especially since there are semi-competitive builds here, but the rare candies should also take care of that.

I also like that cutscenes don't look like they are drip-fed to you like they were in Psychic Adventures - the pacing is pretty good.

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Game Features & Suggestions
The theme of this game and EViLGRiN's ROM hack was: what if you could use hypnosis outside of battles, right?

Well then, not sure how feasible any of the below suggestions are, but maybe you could:

1) Hypnotize a Pokemon Breeder to give you (or cheaply sell to you) the rare candies, as opposed to simply buying it dirt-cheap from the store. Either that, or hypnotize the shopkeep.

2) Tag team battles, like in Gen 4+. Hypnotize someone to be your partner - maybe the trainers you beat, or an Officer Jenny, or... Gang up on other trainers, as if the game weren't easy enough already. You did mention the battles are already finished, but maybe...?

3) You have a hypnotized Officer Jenny arrest people for you on the side. Maybe she forces herself awake to battle you for the Pokemon she stole.

3) Instead of a boat-wide healing field, it's just a Nurse Joy you hypnotized into following you around. That, or you hypnotized your tag-team partner to give you lots of free healing.

4) You hypnotize some people into just giving you their Pokemon outright, or make them do ridiculous trades, like making them think trading away their Victreebel for a Magikarp is a good idea.

5) Is Malamar not available or feasible? I briefly saw on the wiki that Gen 6 pokemon are available as a separate download.

6) Is there a way to modify the controls, either by modifying the files directly or an in-game option?

7) Some people resist the hypnosis - so they only give you one Pokemon at first, but as you get stronger pokemon (looking at you, Exeggutor), you can go back and compel them to give you the rest of their Pokemon.

8) A pink-ish glow around the eyes would probably be good enough as an indication of hypnosis. Even if you scale up the sprites, the eyes are too small for you to really appreciate if they are empty or spiraled (unless they are whiteout eyes, but I don't prefer those). Maybe drool? Different body language is best, but heavily editing or creating your own sprites sounds like a pain.

9) Like @DannyS mentioned, individualized scenes & options is always pretty nice. There's swimsuit stuff you could do with Misty, tea ceremonies with Erika, a picnic with a picnicker... There are so many possibilities here, I'd be more worried about figuring out which scenes & options are best (based on your situation), as opposed to finding some in the first place..

10) Getting funds from Patreon for sprites? Spiral Clicker seems successful enough just by churning out new art & new dialogue. But then again, the Pokemon company is tight on DMCA...

11) Different branching choices during dialogue for different girls, and flavor text to go along with it. See 9).

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Closing Thoughts
Apologies for all the suggestions, I was just throwing things out there and hoping something sticks. The game fundamentally looks solid.

It looks like a lot of work though. Do you need help with any of this? I'd be interested, depending on the skillset & time commitment needed, among other things.

I can reeeead your miiind



That is the next thing on my list after making the core gameplay. Just wanted to get some feedback in case there was some hypno thing I should include, then I can do it all at once.




Thanks for the detailed feedback! Glad you guys liked the writing, it got a bit hard trying to make different personalities for just the girls, so for the guys I mostly defaulted to memes and silly stuff since they're not the focus anyway =P

The core gameplay would still be to run around everywhere as I dislike extremely linear progression (like beating everyone in one area before going to another area), but I agree right now it doesn't give you enough to go by. I'll see if I can clarify the battle order a bit more.

I am definitely going to change the sprite/picture, but that will be after the text is complete. Unfortunately I can only manip and not actually draw, so there will limit how much the picture can change.

I'll look into trying to get a hypnotized girl to follow you, and then that can trigger some new events. Getting Nurse Joy to follow you as suggested would also be nice, then you can get more hypno text while not making it tedious to constantly walk back and heal.

About resisting hypnosis/unique options - I'm planning on making different hypno text for each girl so they'll definitely be unique. I could perhaps make some unique scenes as well if an idea comes up while writing out the dialogue.

Patreon/funding is definitely a no go. I don't want to make commitments about doing x or y, and don't want to deal with any money/copyright stuff.

Unfortunately tag battles/modifying controls/Gen 6+ pokemon and other additional gameplay(?)/features I will not be able to do. That isn't to say that it isn't possible, because they definitely are, but because I only have ~2 weeks of 'nothing to do at work' before things get busy again (so I was only looking to make a short/simple game) =P

Though if you are looking to help, maybe you can try adding those things in yourself? I literally just follow videos on youtube on how to do the things so you don't exactly require programming knowledge or anything. If you're interested <<www.youtube.com/watch?v=m...pllmpcFOHbj4r8cVQYywpRZB5|these>> are the videos that I was watching. Not everything, I've seen only about 8 or 10 of them. But you can see that you can easily do a lot more than what I did if you dig through the list.

Would adding some rocket ladies like domino, jessie, ccassidy to the game that you can hypnotize be possible? Figured adding in some more rocket ladies would be cool so figured id ask :)

Ah. Part of it is that I don't know anything about Pokemon Essentials, or what your current workflow is. For example, a different project team I'm working on uses a mixture of Discord and Github to collaborate & coordinate changes to the game. If you had something similar, I'd need Github permissions, discord invitations, etc.

Because I don't want us to step on each others' toes, if you're not using Github or something similar, then I'll just wait until you're done editing before I jump in with any edits I'd like to make. That, and if you're only working on this for two weeks, I agree that it seems counterproductive for us to collaborate directly - no need to waste time communicating if you're going to stop soon anyways.

At the moment, probably not. I don't think they have sprites or pictures, unless they get custom made. Maybe after I finish all the routes for the current set of ladies? But that would be way in the future (assuming I continue to make updates).



Well currently the only person working on it is me, so I pretty much just work on it whenever I feel like xD But yes, sharing the file might be a hassle.

At the moment all I am working on is the text for each 'Event' (ie. each girl), so any changes you make to the system/scripts should not interfere with anything. But I guess the best bet would be me releasing what I want to do before I get busy again, then you can take it and add your flair?

Sounds good. I'll ping you if I need any source code (it doesn't sound like I will, but you never know).

Already so here's an update! Link in the opening post.

If you talk to a trainer that you cannot battle yet, it will now show you at the end of the conversation a counter of how many fights you need before they are unlocked.

The hypno text is done for 6 trainers (Swimmer, Ranger, Lass, Painter, Young Couple, and Team Rocket Grunt). I've made their sprites bigger. There are also some crappy hypno effects added.

Unfortunately it seems I was being too ambitious in the things I want to do. It's taking a good 2-3 hours to come up with a scenario and write text for each girl already (and even then the text isn't exactly long), which basically means I can only finish one girl a day. Given I have about a week left, this is already going to run into overtime. So as a result, it is likely I'll just be able to do the scripts for the girls, maybe a tiny bit of tweaks, and that's it. Sorry.



After what I said above, I look forward to your improvement =P Just a side note I can try to help, but I have no programming knowledge or anything. The source code is already mostly set the moment you download Pokemon Essentials and RPG Maker XP.

The counter on trainers you can't fight is a huge improvement for me. It's still a little annoying trying to keep track of which ones need what number of fights, but I can pretty easily remember the general range of fights I need to unlock someone and come back to them at the right time.

The hypno effects and bigger sprites are, admittedly, not the highest quality, but the writing is good enough that I don't think it matters a whole ton. Overall I like the update and think the game's turning out nicely so far.

On the topic of the sprites, I did encounter a bug for you to squash. If I hypnotize a girl and have the menu brought up to choose what action to take, pressing x to back out rather than selecting "leave" or "release" results in their hypnotized sprite staying on my screen until I go back again and manually select one of those two options.

Yeaah, I'm basically using pre-built effects, and didn't exactly sync or vary the time and such. The 'bug' is actually a relatively minor one (ie. Me forgetting to add an option for 'cancel'), so that can be fixed rather quickly.

Anyway, my goal is to upload the 'complete' version by Sunday night my time, or Tuesday night at the latest. I may go back to it from time to time to add a thing or two afterwards, but that would be sparse at best.

Thanks again for testing it out!

Aaaand all the text is done!

Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to write the same thing almost 20 times?! Initially I planned for Nurse Joy and that attendant at the casino to be hypnotizable, and follow you around, but they are somewhat lacking in sprites and pictures (they don't have a 'walk', they just glide).

If there's some minor text issues and stuff I can fix, but overall I am done. Enjoy! Feel free to make your own edits to it too, if you want.

My main question is... there will be pet play here?

I'll start messing around with this game once I'm done with my duties to a separate project, which I hope to post about in a new thread soon.


I can step in here. My Google-Fu says that there are definitely improvements to sprites that can be made. It'll take some time though. Maybe a month or two? Idk, I'm really bad with time estimation, and I don't want to feel rushed or force anything.


I got it. I spotted a few errors, but fixing them would be good practice for me while exploring the Pokemon Essentials editor.


Uh, I can try and put in one. While I am willing to put in one or two pet play scenes, my forte is programming, not writing, so YMMV. Unless, some other writer here on the Hub would like to help out...?


Writing is hard, yes. I am straight up not as good a writer as you are, so if I produce any writing, it will be at a much slower pace.

I'd be happy to collaborate with any other writers that'd like to contribute. I can and will edit for spelling/grammar though.