Pokemon V is coming back! And we need help!
You must be thinking "what do you mean "coming back"? I've never heard about this before!".
Back in early 2009 this project was born. Over the course of the next year we all did a bunch of work together (and of course procrastinated and goofed around together), creating the story and game assets and the like. Around a year after the project started, we all tried our hardest and created our demo. It was all so much fun. As time went on the group started getting smaller and smaller, everyone has other things to do right? And eventually the project had to go on indefinite hiatus. Over these past few years I've been working on the maps in the game for fun but in the back of my mind still hoping that the game could be finished someday.
But recently, me and another dev were feeling nostalgic and wanted to continue working on this project again. So we made a little Skype group, got who we could from the old group back together again, figured out what exactly we need to finish the game, and now we're working on it again!!
We would really love to make this game sometime before we die. Unfortunately due to all sorts of reasons, we couldn't get everyone back together, which is why we're looking for people who are willing to put their all into the game just like us.
What is this game about?
This is a fangame set in a new region called Echon! Of course filled with all sorts of new characters and places to explore. It's being created in RPG Maker XP with Pokemon Essentials so it's a whole new game instead of being a romhack. Despite it being gen 3-style, we have included some gen 4 Pokemon along with the physical/special split and some other features found in the gen 4 games. Due to the size of the region we thought it would be best if we made a custom Pokedex, and so a comfy number of 280 Pokemon can be found in Echon. There won't be any fakemon in this, and as we started making this back when gen 5 didn't exist we won't be including any Pokemon or battle mechanics (e.g. triple battles, Mega evolution, etc) from those either.
What really sets this fangame apart from other fangames is that we're handling the story in a very unique way. I don't wanna spoil it so you'll just have to see what I'm talking about when the game is finished 
We're also trying to make it as high quality as we can, to be the very best, you know?
So who do we need?
Spriters
Sprites are one of the biggest things we need. As this is a gen 3-style game, we need gen 3-style sprites. It wouldn't make sense having XY-like models in the game right? Hahaha. We don't need all that many, but the sprites we do need are really important. We have a nearly completed list of sprites we need and character designs to work from so you won't have to worry about that.
Mappers
Nearly all of the overworld maps created, but now we have the daunting task of creating interiors. Even if you haven't mapped before that's okay, I can teach you how to do it. I'll also be making interiors with whoever helps out so don't worry! You won't be doing this alone!
Musicians
Our old musician is up for helping us out again, but I don't think it would be good at all if we pushed all of the work onto him!
NPC dialog writers
This region is a pretty good size, and an empty region wouldn't be fun at all.
Help with creating trainers
It wouldn't feel right having a Pokemon game without trainers, right?
When the time comes we'll also need help with balancetesting. The more help the better.
Also, if any of you have any experience with the programming language Ruby, there is something pretty big we need help with and would really appreciate it if you could help us out.
Even if you can't help out, that's okay! If you know anyone who can it would be fantastic if you could point them in our direction!
Just to let you all know, as much as I would love to, we can't pay you for your work. This is because we are working with copyrighted material. There have been instances where Pokemon fangame projects have been sent cease and desist letters because they've gotten money involved with their project and we certainly wouldn't want that happening to Pokemon V as well. To avoid this we aren't allowing money to come in contact with this project at all, not even donations for keeping the future website up.
You said you have a demo?
That's right! You can play the demo we created back in the day here:
http://www.mediafire...emon_V_Demo.rar
If you're thinking about helping out then I think it would be worth checking this out to see how the game feels! If you're using OS X or a Linux distro you'll have to use WINE to play it. As this is just an emulator you might run into some bugs that don't exist in the Windows version, for example I believe someone had issues running the audio while playing the game in WINE.
(I would recommend saving before fighting the gym leader though. We had a script which would send some game information such as party Pokemon and levels to our site so we could work from it. But since the site isn't up anymore, if you beat the gym leader you might get stuck in a loop where the game tries to send the information but restarts after failing. But sometimes you can beat the leader without this error happening! So it's best to save beforehand, just in case. Also your anti-virus might not like the fact that this script is in the game but there's nothing to worry about.)
We're using Skype for development discussion now so if you want to help out, send me a PM with your Skype username and I'll add you to the group!
If you want to keep up with development news, I created a new Twitter account for development shenanigans which I hopefully won't forget about. You can follow us here!
We'll make a real website Soon™
Thank you so much for reading this! It really means a lot to us! If you have any questions, just post here and I'll try to help out as much as I can.
