Regrettably due to my being in Japan as well as my planned work on a new webmaster portal as well as a new pokemon metagame site, Twilight is being shifted to the back burner and will be finished when those two are finished, for they’re slightly more important than Twilight.  For those of you who’ve been with me on Cerise I know it’s kind of a “ya ya, Twilight’s always getting pushed back, we’ll never get an mmo.”  But we will, and it will be awesome, but mmo’s take time, everyone knows that.

In any event, today I wanted to talk about Arceus which will be making it’s formal anime debut this summer in the 12th movie.  Now when DP was first released Arceus hadn’t been announced, but serebii still had it’s pokedex data.  I was aware of Arceus but his being there didn’t really interfere with the storyline in any real way.  But with the 12th movie coming out it seems apparent that the ‘god pokemon’ will be getting some serious air time and some much greater character development, then I’d anticipated.  Which of course means I need to alter Arceus in Twilight’s character accordingly.

In Pokemon Twilight/Pokemon Revolutions, there is a “Council of Legends.”  The Council consists of the major legendary pokemon and it is convened during times of great crisis where the combined power of the legendary pokemon is required to stop some threat or deal with some problem.  Previously I had planned on having Arceus probably head the council, but that it would be other specific legendaries who would be doing most of the action, and perhaps I’d just throw Arceus into a battle or something somewhere along the way.

With the 12th movie come out, I think I’ll alter Arceus role a little and not have him head the council, and instead have him needing to be awakened again by a player.  In Revolution, a major part of the plot once Team Rocket takes over Hoenn is that the Elite Four and Pokemon Associations of Kanto and Johto have to find something to beat MewThree with, they try wishing on Jirachi, power of the badges, etc.  Arceus will be another.  Arceus though will of course be epic in the finding and awakening stages as well as the actual battle when Arceus is told what’s been going on in its’ absence and opts to confront James and MewThree on its’ own.

I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen between Arceus and MewThree already, and for all of you Arceus fans out there, I hate to say it, but not even the ‘pokemon god’ is a match for MewThree.

I know from what you’ve read about Revolutions/Twilight already, that it may seem like MewThree is just a little too powerful and that he’s a freakin’ g-modder. :P  And you’d be right, lol.  Which is why MewThree’s actual defeat, because as we all know, every bad guy has to eventually lose (sadly), will be all the more epic.

The two biggest fights against MewThree, as of this moment are going to be MewTwo vs. MewThree and Arceus vs. MewThree.  I actually haven’t written either yet, but I have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen. :P  Still, perhaps at some point here I’ll jot down a couple battle scenes to give an idea of what will happen, and just how strong MewThree really is. ^_^

In order to build the world of Twilight, namely the pokemon world 25 years in the future, it is necessary to determine what has changed in the pokemon world, and changes have occurred everywhere.  Furthermore, because of the depth of the storyline, and the depth of the various classes you can play as, it is necessary to define some very basic elements about the pokemon world, which haven’t really been defined before.  In addition to determining how to use a script, which was originally intended for webmasters building mmos based off of fire emblem and final fantasy, and turn around and use it to build a pokemon mmo.

So, specifically.

- How does the pokemon world operate, politically speaking?  How do regions, cities, and towns operate?  What form(s) of government are used?  What role does the private sector play?  What role do trainers, masters, gym leaders, the elite four and the pokemon association play?
- How does the “council of legends” function in a capacity to observe, regulate, and maintain the balance in nature?
- How are items used in the mmo?  How will they function in a battle system which was designed to use swords and shields?  How can this system be adapted for Twilight?
- How are “pets” going to function in Twilight?

Now, determining the political systems that are being used in the pokemon world, 25 years in the future is very important because there’s quite a few political things going on in Twilight, between regions, between leaders of Team Rocket factions, etc.  So it’s necessary to have laid a believeable framework which can function naturally in the pokemon world and which readers and players will have no difficulty believing is correct.  After all, I don’t want to create just another fanfiction, but a real ammendum to the pokemon universe which people will feel fits very naturally into what currently exists.

Council of Legends we’ll talk later about. :P  Also, the weapon/defense system is a very serious concern in building Twilight.  While I’ve often looked at it as secondary next to building the classes and developing the storyline through each individual class, how people will battle in Twilight is a very huge thing which needs to be addressed.  Given that the battle system is designed to operate with weapons and shields and other such final fantasy esque items/equipment, it is imperative to find a substitute.  One possibility is to use this integrated pet script which essentially allows you to have a pet inside of the mmo which can battle alongside you.  It goes without saying we’ll want to make pokemon available as pets, but balancing out the pet/pokemon against the enemies, and the native battle system will be a challenge.

Regardless, many challenges, such as these, and others, will come to the fore of my to do list as soon as pokemonfan.net’s content is finished.  ^_^  Stay tuned…

Basically I consider pages like these, to be portals:

http://maplestory.nexon.net/WZ.ASPX?PART=/Main
http://www.gaiaonline.com/

Gaia to a lesser extent, but MapleStory’s page is an excellent example of what I want to be doing with Twilight’s portal.  While pokemonfan.net and twilight’s portal will both be using joomla, I will not actually be using joomla’s user base system for Twilight’s portal, whereas pokemonfan.net will be getting a whole bunch of new social networking features hopefully in the middle of december.  Twilight’s Portal will therefore serve pretty much solely to introduce visitors to the fundamentals of the game and the plot while updating players on what’s going on in the game.  We will in all likelihood not actually “finish” Twilight before we release it to the general public.  Thus the portal will serve a perfect purpose to help us with updates to the game.  Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, since Twilight is running on phpbb 2.x, the whole graphical elements bit, especially when you visit the forum, will of course be lacking.  Now while Twilight is a text based mmorpg, more than anything, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some awesome pictures of the new pokemon, trainers, etc.  The portal though, will achieve that though, since joomla is infinitley more suited to displaying graphics and generally looking awesome.  The portal development is being codenamed “Polaris”, for future reference.  In any event, we’re still thinking of what kinda things should, in addition to updates, be included on Polaris.  Here’s what we’ve got so far.

- mmorpg background storyline
- special events
- top 5 players
- top guilds
- recent updates/additions
- user shop advertisements
- available jobs
- perhaps something about the plot?  Say “Today, this happened…”
- Forum Rules/Regulations
- Beginner’s Guide
- News from around the network
- Hint of the Day?
- Big Store Sales
- Store Hours
- maybe we have a blog thing from one of the characters in the story who’ll make an entry every so often.
- game faq
- support

If possible it might be interesting to stream some of the stock market functions that the mmorpg has onto the portal as well, but the stock system doesnt’ really have that much of a role in the mmorpg, and I’ve yet to decide whether that means we should take it out or leave it in there as an amusing extra.  In any event, Polaris is waiting till January when Pokemonfan.net’s content is slated to be finished.  With Twilight and Polaris next on the to do list, 2009 should be an interesting year.

My original idea with the resistance was to embody the hopeless in the situation, in their emblem.  The silhouette is in theory supposed to be of Mew crying.  Ideally by using such an image it invokes both the despair that civilians and members of the Resistance feel while simultaneously capturing a lingering hope that something will turn up and that Team Rocket may yet be defeated.

In this one, for Team Rocket we have the simple background with a flame and a kind of updated red/white “R”.  Definitley done to symbolize the changes that Team Rocket has undergone under James’ reign and to symbolize the power that Team Rocket now posesses.

One thing I was thinking of doing, is having two emblems for each alignment.  One emblem would be a smaller, kinda avatar like emblem which would be placed in places where size is a premium, while there’d also be a larger one where it’d be used in a different place, since there are size restrictions throughout the game.

To such an end I was thinking of making a Resistance emblem with some blue flame and a pokeball.  Something simple to match Team Rocket’s.  We’ll see how it works out.

The purpose for the guild systems is going to be primarily to allow players to organize and help each other progress in the game.  One of the requirements at various points in the game for various classes and paths will be that to progress further you’ll need an item; and item which is only obtainable from a different class!  Therefore you’ll have to cooperate with other players to get them to trade you an item.  Thus the best way for people to progress is to organize themselves into guilds around certain classes and alignments so as to collect the items which players will need to progress.

The guild system that we designed is also a true guild system and rivals the guilds that gaia and world of warcraft posess.

Below are a couple of screenshots of the guild system.

Above you can see of how the main guild screen looks.  News is fully manageable by the guild master through the guild forum where you can select an option to make a post into a news item.  Furthermore you have the ability to select a guild emblem through a gallery available in addition to selecting your own banner (the banner must be linked, there is no upload option).

Above is the screen for donating items to the guilds.  This helps especially for guilds who try to help player’s as they move through the game and allows guilds to immediately dispense items to a player who needs an item to pass on to another area of the game.  It would also help keep track of especially rare items and could serve to facilitate the distribution of prizes for guild events and the like.

Above is a shot of the officer panel.  Leadership in guilds is divided between the leader and officers, both of which have a control panel from which they can affect changes to their guild which for officers, as you can see above, includes adding ranks to the guild forum, setting a guild to public or private, as well as managing a guild’s banner and emblem.

Unfortunately as you can see this creates some difficulties for me since obviously I’m not going to be using a lot of certain types of items.  So one of the challenges in creating Twilight is to convert this system to our methods.  Course we knew that was going to be the case going in.

Fortunately however the ADR does include an amazing npc system which is what I’ll be utilizing to move the game and the storyline forward.  So when you’re playing the game you would talk to the npcs and they would control your progress, not overtly.  It would be through class/alignment/item requirements or even random chance.  Like only certain classes can talk to an npc or to talk to an npc you need an item, or to get to a certain zone an npc will need to give you an item, etc.

The design of the npc system is such that it offers me a huge amount of control in determining paths for classes and how Twilight will express the Revolutions storyline.

Secondly the entire world inside of the ADR system is expressed through “zones”.  Basically everything you can do in the game will be done through zones and zones provide movement to other zones.  In this method it is very much akin to a text based rpg then it is to say something you would make with RPG Maker XP or one of the other pokemon mmos that are scattered around the net.

That said Twilight is truly not going to be like the pokemon games nor will it be like other pokemon mmos on the net, I’ll dig some up for examples.  Twilight is being driven by the Revolutions plot and that is it’s primary reason for existing, to allow players to play through and experience Pokemon Revolutions.  Twilight is not a trainer journey, by any means.

Welcome to the development blog for Pokemon Twilight.

This blog is pretty much your primary source for all news on the development of Pokemonfan.net’s awesome pokemon mmorpg.  It’s more efficient for me to create a development blog for Pokemon Twilight then it would be to post all the news on the site, since there’s going to be a LOT of news about the development of Twilight as time goes by, and I don’t want to make the site homepage into an extension of Twilight.

So anyway, couple things to start us off with.

Unfortunately I’ve got a couple other things to worry about before we start work on Twilight in earnest.

- complete site content
- begin scanning manga
- test forum for Twilight (gemini)
- define classes and paths
- determine mod list for Twilight
- create portal for Twilight (polaris)

Also, one warning first.

Pokemon Twilight is going to be a very large mmo, and as such it will take a while to develop it, especially since I’ll probably be one of the few people working on it until we get to a point where I’m confident about the project and know what to assign people.  Therefore as I’ve said previously, it will probably not be ready for beta testers for over a year, from now.  But fear not, there’ll be plenty of fun stuff to look at in the mean time.

Also, the number one thing I need help with right now is graphics.  Please check this thread on Shingetsu for more information:

http://pokemonfan.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53