PKM Battle Arena Week 2

Disclaimer

This is a fan made project based on a prior mod. We do not own any of the models created, engines used, or names and assets provided. All Pokemon likenesses and names are owned by the The Pokémon Company. Any models are from Vex’s Pokemon Collection, and are merely references of the Pokemon from their respected games. We have no intention of selling our mod for Warcraft 3, and DotA 2 will be experiencing MASSIVE overhauls to avoid any copyright problems with The Pokémon Company’s IP if we choose to set up Patreon-esque services.

 

Introduction

Hello everyone, Austin posting this week. Another week has gone by, and we pushed through this week at a slower pace than normal. Not to say nothing got done, just a weird week for the both of us for sure. This week was mostly a transitional week, as I am looking into options for a better workflow environment using tools like Trello or Taskulu. Currently we write Google Docs files for everything, and the intention was to resort to those for updates and reference, but this doesn’t allow for quick evolution, easy changes that can be noticed by everyone working on something, and makes 4 million files that are 4 pages long. All that said, there are two small topics I would like to bring to light this week: Map layout, and playable characters. Check below if you are interested, and thank you for reading!

 

Map Layout

To anyone familiar with arena style game modes, you should feel right at home. To anyone looking to start their journey with our mode, we plan on streamlining every aspect to feel fluid and consistent. Below are the average tropes of arena style maps.

A starting base for each team consisting of shops with basic starting items, potions, active items, a shop that contains patterns for stronger items, a portal leading to the main map, healing and mana regeneration and serves as a respawn point upon death.

Leaving the base has two enemy NPC spawn camps on either side of the map in the same spots horizontal from each other, an area in the middle with a semi-boss and a contested camp of enemy NPCs which are a set level worth more gold. Generally there is an area above the map that contains tons of low level, fast respawning NPC enemies that is heavily contested for both teams, and the further you go the higher the level of the NPCs start. On either side there are mini-bosses that when killed, lead to a difficult semi-boss that when killed give access to a shop with powerful items. On the map as well, are bosses that can be contested by either team, when killed will give the ability to change your character to a much stronger one, though you start at level one again. There is a lot more but it would take a whole post to describe everything

Now why is this important. Well our map consists of practically all of this, just with our own touches. For example, you do not need to defeat a mini-boss then a semi-boss to get to the major shop. Instead you have two choices: take a top route where there consists of a pack of fast respawning enemy NPCs to be killed, on the way to the major shops. Or you can take the bottom route and possibly engage in enemy players on the way to the shop. Some other things we have different are that the main map has a set of shops that contain stronger items than the starting shops, but are out in the open to everyone and everything. And of course, the map takes lots of reference from Pokemon generation 1, meaning the layout of the map draws lots of tropes from the Kanto region. I cannot go into much detail as it would seriously ruin the fun, but we really enjoy it so far and know that nostalgia will run wild for some people.

 

Characters

That last portion was quite long so I would like to try and keep this tight. We have decided on a final roster of starting playable characters for the game. We looked through just over 70 of the Pokemon in gen 1, and have decided to have a mix of basic and more advanced Pokemon for players to choose, ranging from no evolution Pokemon, to three evolution Pokemon. The current roster consists of 27 Pokemon, spread across all types and play styles. Types will matter a lot, as it is the very foundation of a Pokemon’s power and move set. Once again I cannot go into much detail, but some Pokemon are very obviously going to be playable, but some others are up in the air and will hopefully elicit a excited reaction when seen. Movesets have yet to be chosen, but we have all intention on sticking to all of the moves essential to each Pokemon.

 

Conclusion

We are slowly coming close to being done the drafting phase, and will likely start development next month. The two top focal points on our to-do list once drafting is done is getting Gyms to work, and Pokemon kits working and balanced between each other. Next week I hope to talk about more intriguing things like items, legendaries or character kits. Thank you for reading this week and we hope you are excited for this as much as we are!