After over a week, I have finally implemented my catch chain shiny hunting method. You now get incremental increases in shiny odds every 10 catches of the same species, up to 100, where it caps out at 1/64 odds. Then it'll give you a guaranteed shiny at 170. It could be any pokemon, but you can just run away from it, to try to find your desired shiny. It will not reset until a shiny is caught.

Every pokemon that isn't chainable (Starters, gifts, eggs, statics, etc.) will have base odds already at 1/64!

Everything I did before, is also now migrated over to the polished crystal engine. This game will have *almost* all of the features from polished crystal.

*The only thing that won't be in it are the colored party icon sprites. I simply like the nostalgic feel of the old ones better. Though, there will be some custom ones for my new pokemon.

Which includes:

Gen 6 exp mechanics (toggleable key item Exp Share, exp on catching pokemon, etc.)

PC Link key item to allow the player to access their pc from anywhere.

Now here are some other things that I have implemented since my first post:

Exp boost for catching pokemon, to further reward shiny hunting using the new method.

Pokevial key item that allows the player to heal their party from anywhere. Up to a max of 3 times, before needing to be refilled at the pokemon center.

I changed the intro sequence to be a proper introduction to the hack. (Once I figure out a good way to record it, I'll post a video showing it)

The implementation of my custom pokemon is still a work in progress. I've just been focusing on the core of the game first, so I can have a demo asap. I don't think it'll be too hard, I just don't want to distract myself from writing atm.

https://preview.redd.it/8rzjlux4mcwg1.png?width=1378&format=png&auto=webp&s=acfdb01a85dab3bddb20619da8b8e6ff0b6cbca2

// This app was made with the assistance of Claude as I am not a coder. This is a repost as was suggested by the PokemonROM moderation team. If you prefer to not engage with AI assisted content, no worries at all. I intend to make this tool as good as I can for the community. //

Hello everyone!

I am very excited to announce the beta release of a new hack source tool, https://hacknav.app/!

In my own experience, I often find myself pausing play in order to look up different things like wild Pokémon in that area, trainer teams, gym leaders, legendary information, Pokémon stats and other info.

This tool allows you to look through that information by hack (based on the latest version), instead of sifting through notes or pdfs. This resource is by no means all encompassing. Hopefully, it covers 80% of what you need to know on a typical playthrough without giving away every single aspect of the game. I have done my best to make this workable on desktop or phone. I have found myself using it most on my phone and a mini pokedex :)!

Right now, HackNav covers six games. My intention is to add the most popular versions of the other hacks as we go. I'm definitely open to requests! Feel free to drop them below or dm my reddit account. I am tentatively opening a discord for you all to drop feature requests and comments: https://discord.gg/zS5cvscupZ, please be patient as I am just doing this for the love of the game but will add features as quick as I can!

• Rising Ruby (Drayano)
• Pokémon Unbound (Skeli)
• Renegade Platinum (Drayano)
• Blaze Black (Drayano)
• Blaze Black 2 Redux (AphexCubed & Drayano)
• Sacred Gold (Drayano)

If anyone spots missing or wrong data, please let me know. I haven't played all of these hacks to 100% but happy to patch things up. I've done my best to audit the dataset but there is a lot of information so it will take some help from the community to get it perfect. Hope you guys enjoy it!

(Massive credit to Drayano, AphexCubed, Skeli, and everyone who documented these hacks... this is just a layer on top of their work.)

#Disclaimer

Since initially making this review a few months ago, I was brought on to the Celia's Stupid Romhack dev team as the dedicated move animator. None of my opinions in this post have been affected by that decision - everything I address is an aspect of the game that I had no part in designing. I'm just a very dedicated fan who was lucky enough to get to work on this project, but if that makes you want to take what I say here with a grain of salt, then so be it. I just wanted to make that clear before jumping in.

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I'm not gonna lie when I say that when I went into Celia's Stupid Romhack blind, my expectations were middling. I had seen it referenced a few times on the romhacking sub, but didn't think it would be for me, so I never gave it a shot until I stumbled across it on Hackdex. I figured "ah fuck it" and gave it a go, and having now finished the game I'm very very thankful for that impulsive decision.

Celia's Stupid Romhack is a puzzle room-esque romhack that spans the entire Kanto region and parodies the Pokémon franchise as a whole. Now, this community has no shortage of FireRed romhacks that provide a remix of the main game, but I really need to emphasise how special CSR is. My love for this game can be broken down into the following reasons.

#Celia's Stupid Romhack is funny

But like, it's really funny. There are very few games I can name where I would consistently laugh out loud while playing it on my own, but CSR manages to handily make that list. It has exactly the sense of humour I love, and plays on expectations cultivated by 25+ years of exposure to the franchise. The game is so packed to the brim with jokes that it's kind of hard to even fathom. Celia is an inherently very witty person, and her sense of humour finds its way into every aspect of the game's design.

#Celia's Stupid Romhack is clever

Beyond just being a really funny shitpost hack, CSR is also an incredibly smart puzzle game. The main story takes you through a series of connected puzzles which will stop you at points you'd breeze through effortlessly in a standard Pokemon playthrough, and requires you to engage with the hack on its own terms. Despite the infamous 'pit' found at the start of the game, CSR is not an unfair experience. The game does not lie to you - information is presented fairly, and solutions can always be intuited without the need for trial and error. This is the kind of game best experienced blind, in a Discord call, with a group of close friends who are also well-versed in the Pokémon franchise. Bouncing ideas off each other and laughing at the game's constant inanity will make for a far more memorable playthrough than one experienced alone.

#Celia's Stupid Romhack is genuine

Despite the massive amount of ways that CSR will make fun of the Pokémon franchise, you can really tell how much of it comes from a place of love. It shows a dedicated passion and understanding of the main games, the spinoffs, the TCG, the anime, and most importantly of all, the community. This game is a celebration of everything the Pokémon franchise encapsulates, and a staunch 'fuck off' to the suits who attempt to stamp out the fan creation side of it all.

#Celia's Stupid Romhack is the only Pokémon game where shiny hunting is actually fun

And I mean any Pokémon game. Shiny hunting is by and large an incredibly monotonous and unengaging experience. At its best, you're chaining together the same encounter over and over to improve the odds of one of those encounters finally being the shiny you're after, or you're manipulating RNG with extremely precise timing to get exactly the mon you're after. At its worst, you don't even have any way of engaging with the experience, leaving it literally down to the luck of the draw. In either case, shiny hunting is merely a matter of inevitability. If you throw yourself at it for long enough, statistically you're eventually going to get the shiny. It's just a matter of 'when', and in some cases, that 'when' can take extraordinary lengths of time. I know people find it therapeutic, or just a way to occupy one's time when multitasking, but I just cannot understand any argument claiming it's actually fun.

Celia's Stupid Romhack, on the other hand, has the best implementation of shiny Pokémon I've ever seen in the entire extended series. In this game, every single evolution line has a specific quest or secret tied to obtaining its shiny. A few of these methods are fairly easy to come by and mostly serve as jokes, but a lot of the shiny methods are extremely cunning and devious, and so, so satisfying to find. You need to put all your knowledge of the game - hell, of Pokémon in general - to the test if you want to obtain all of them. Some are so difficult that they essentially require a concerted community effort to come together and decipher, and I adore that. The base game of CSR is a fully realised experience, but the shiny hunt really puts it into a league of its own.

#Celia's Stupid Romhack is anything but stupid

In all, CSR is just a hack unlike any other. It's an incredibly ambitious hack that aims to have you approach these all too familiar games in ways that challenge convention and think outside the cartridge. If you put in the effort, it'll reward you with a solidly curated experience from start to end. And if you really want to go even further, the hunt for the game's most well kept secrets will keep you occupied for longer than you would have thought feasible. These puzzles will challenge you to draw on all your knowledge of the Pokemon franchise, inside and out, and to consider the possibility that literally any mechanic present in the game could be tied to a devious solution. While other hacks may offer a polished or challenging take on the standard Pokemon experience, CSR goes above and beyond 'just' being a hack of Pokemon Firered to deliver a game that honestly stands on its own merits entirely.

And perhaps most impressive of all, it actually managed to endear me towards a Mr. Mime.

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Celia's Stupid Romhack Version 1.0 will be releasing within 24 hours of me making this post. You can download it at https://www.hackdex.app/hack/celias-stupid-romhack. I recommend going in blind, but if you'd prefer it, there are also playthroughs worth watching from Youtubers such as DeliciousJames and FlygonHG.