General Chat: Dawn of THE FIRST DAY (72 hours remain)

just so you guys know, stephen's metagross is and willl always be shiny. so don't freak out like i did last night when you see it shiny because you can't catch it.

Yeah. He even mentions its coloration. I just assumed they were trying to get people excited about the shiny Beldum event later down the road.

I'm also really annoyed about how the demo's being handled, since Nintendo has screwed some of y'all out of it. Why it couldn't have just been put directly on the eShop is beyond me.

i actually haven't gotten my codes via email. the 3ds subreddit had a link to a giveaway from maxsoft and i got a code there. i've already promised out one of my two email codes (i think you get a second one to give to a friend), but i might be able to give someone here the other one.

You only get one demo code from the Trainers Club newsletter.

well shit on a stick

Yeah, well, screw those guys! We'll start our own demo, with flapjacks and lookers!

Honestly though? Excited as I am for ORAS (a Ruby remake has always been THE dream), I'm going to miss Pokemon in the pre-ORAS era. I feel everything has settled into a comfortable, happy medium. Everyone's... Content, and even if XY had a shitty story or postgame, I think most people were very happy with it. And on the competitive side of things, the metagame hasn't been this good since the end of gen 4; new strategies are flourishing, the viability ranks rotate weekly, and nothing is overwhelmingly broken (Greninja is being //suggested// by some, but it won't happen pre ORAS. It's just particularly good at dismantling Offense teams, nothing more worrying than that).

Whereas after ORAS, X and Y are being spiritually killed off, the patch (or lack of it) leaves a shitty aftertaste, there's a high chance we already have all of the megas available, who knows what the post game will be like, the metagame will be in shreds (Salamence is a given, but... All the other stuff D: ) and I suspect there's gonna be a lot of complaints about Bank in the next year. Not to mention GF's usual incompetence about delivering events/event Pokemon.

I enjoy the games. It's just I have no faith in Game Freak regarding them doing things to a sufficiently high standard. They just float along with incremental improvements, game by game :/ 
((Yo cA. As a fellow codûer [not a real word but I wanted to pronounce coder in a silly accent] have you any thoughts on code-related Game Freak stuff? Specifically how they handle things like patches/game compatibility/the 3D engine/Bank.))



Edit: non STAB Foul Play FAILS to 2HKO Mega Salamence. That's not even the worst part. The worst part is those 2 hits are after a Dragon Dance. Balance GF, what even is it???

Honestly, it just seems like GameFreak's just coasting. The patch shouldn't be that hard to implement, and I'm a little disappointed that the games don't seem to be optimized any better than XY (if the demo's an accurate representation on that front). They claim Bank will be ready at launch, but I'm not holding my breath.

Eyyy so my bro douglas's comic penelope just ended its first year, so I think y'all should check it out. it's sci-fi fantasy with a ton of final fantasy injokes and a really diverse cast, metric tonnes of cool queer representation. also if you really want to annoy him, read the comic and then comment "bush" on the newest page. i will explain if you succeed.

I'm annoyed at the no-item thing Bank is using. I'm not asking for the items to be on the Pokémon themselves, but dammit, GF make it really hard to transfer items! Unless they want to start giving us free choice bands/life orbs on every game as standard! And I don't think they'll ever do it. Not because they don't want to or because it's impossible, but because I highly suspect bank is held together with paperclips, spit and hope because of shitty coding practices and it's not easily extensible/patchable. Didn't you get the impression using it at first that it was like a bet version? Weren't there loads of improvements you would have made or things you would have added if you were on the dev team? I had a LIST. And most of them should have been quick and easy functions for any remotely competent graduate with access to a clean and concisely written codebase.

(If it wasn't already obvious. My preferences for programming fall broadly under "if you can't do it well then don't do it." I'm big on quality and quality assurance, design patterns, support for non functional requirements/modularity etcetera.)

Edit: oh yeah iT I think we were beaten to the punch??

Yeah, it definitely seems like Bank was rushed out. In undergrad research right now, I'm working on deciphering some documentation so that I can write a program to interpret some binary files, and the documentation is just terrible; if this is for a program that works well, I can't even begin to imagine how bad Bank's must be.

well i made a program today that spliced sound bytes together to say "is it inside of my camel?" and i know you all are jealous of that so there

Oh god guys help I entered the demo code, tried to download, saw that I didn't have enough blocks, deleted some stuff, then tried again but the eShop threw an error and the code doesn't work anymore what do I do

Well of course the code wouldn't work! You already have the demo tied to your account. so instead, go to previously installed software (I forgot what this was specifically called in the eshop) and the demo should be there, you can redownload it then. Unless it's REALLY weird, then I don't know.

Was it inside the camel??

i borrowed my sister's gba SP and plugged my emerald cartridge up and we're taking this old thing for a nuzlocke spin.

2 hours in - starter is female treecko named Azusa.
female cascoon named Xira Arien
(dead) female poochyena named Ink-Eyes
Male Lotad named Vorel

you are welcome to guess my naming convention. though i think OJ will be the only one to figure it out without googling.

rules are as follows:
(i want to call this play variant the noah's ark style)
-i MUST catch SOMETHING in every route, if possible.
-i am NOT ALLOWED to catch anything already recorded in my pokedex.
-i must catch the first pokemon in each route that i do not already own.
-if a member of a certain species dies, i am not allowed to carry on and catch another member. this enforces diversity.
-i am allowed to catch things in towns, non-route dungeons, etc.
-i cannot buy revives. however, i am allowing myself to use the revives i find as one-off resurrections. each pokemon may only be resurrected once. i must either use the revive or throw it away to rez something already dead. no profit in pokebucks must come from revives.
-i am allowed to catch shinies. this is a civilized world.
-battle style is set, instead of switch.

i'm not gonna write prose of this nuzlocke or draw things. just play. my trainer May, but I named her Kyria (I rolled a die to see whether I would pick male or female trainer. Odds was male, and evens was female. I rolled a 6.)

You should check out this nuzlocke

Ink-Eyes is a dead giveaway and Vorel was pretty obvious, too. But to my shame, I had to google Xira Arien and it took me longer then I'd like to admit to remember which one Azusa was.

After the first gym. Which Azusa soloed like a boss. I am now training to take on Brawly. I used a repel to avoid makuhitas in granite cave and hopefully score an aron. What I got was not an aron. Unfortunately, it wasn't a zubat either.

Current team:
Azusa (F) lv15: Treecko
Xira Arien (F) lv13: Dustox
Oona (F) lv13: Marill
Melira (F) lv10: Nincada
Ghave (M) lv12: Shroomish
Chainer (M) lv10: SABLEYE
that's right ladies and gentlemen. i caught a freakin' sableye in a nuzlocke run. i damn near pissed myself when it popped up. so much better than getting an aron.

IN THE BOX:
Vorel (M) lv8: Lotad
Mageta (M) lv7: Whismur

DEAD:
Ink-Eyes (F) lv4: Poochyena

Alright, that was a nice direct! And for once I actually got to watch the whole thing live!

Let's see...
- >4 player battles are really interesting! They might make playing on the ridiculously huge stages actually fun. But in all seriousness I'm looking forward to seeing how they play.
- Special Orders look to be really fun! I don't have any particular comments to make on them, but they look intersting.
- You can draw on the snapshots you take, huh? That's neat. But what do you wanna bet that a third of the snapshots shared online are gonna be something dirty?
- Oh wow, Stage Builder is awesome. I enjoyed the one in Brawl despite how limited and generic it was, so this one looks to be loads of fun. I'll be wasting so many hours on it, I'm sure. Seriously, this is probably the thing I'm most exited about, haha.
- The other assorted info interspersed throughout was all great, but I can't recall it all off the top of my head and I don't feel like rewatching it just to remember the things I wanted to note. Oh yeah, the boss characters look interesting. I find it hilarious that people were actually still expecting an announcement of Ridley being playable in some way, because seriously, was there really any doubt he'd be a boss after the last Direct? Also, Metal Face! Cool. His commentary, though... is really hard to hear over the music and other sounds? I guess it's just like Xenoblade Chronicles' boss battles in that respect, haha!
- Bowser Jr.'s trailer was nice! Obviously it didn't show us anything we didn't already know, but it was well done and all. Surprising there was no Duck Hunt [Duo] trailer in this, but I'm sure we'll see it soon enough.

Alright, so, those were all the important things, right? Yeah, that's everything. Nope, nothin' else new to talk about or comment on. That's all there was, definitely and obviously.

Wait oh crap I forgot to mention
PALUTENA MADE A "WHATTA BUNCHA JOKERS" REFERENCE HAHAHA
Oh jeez this game is officially the greatest thing ever
Seriously though I am SO EXITED for Pit's not-codec conversations??? I was like 75% sure they'd exist in some form or another but WOW I am going to have so much fun listening to them all

OH WAIT THE BOARD GAME-ISH MODE TOO! I also forgot that! I don't completely 100% understand exactly the way it works yet as of now right at this moment, but it's exiting as well! Dang this game is gonna be SO GOOD. Why's it gotta come out at the same time as ORAS, anyways??? ORAS will still always take priority for me but now I'm no longer 0k with waiting until Christmas to get the Wii U Smash Bros.

I'm gonna spend like $200 on nov. 21

OH JEEZ I KEEP FORGETTING THINGS TO MENTION!
Look at this picture!

Right there, below the Mario Galaxy stage! It's a N64 stage! This means it's actually possible for Familiar Stages to come back even if they weren't in Brawl! That's pretty cool.

yep. sure ain't nothing else new in those directs huh

nothin' new at all

MEWTWO IS SMASH BROS DLC


FUCK YES

Well damn, I was not expecting nearly that much.

i am sitting here with my tongue hanging out of my mouth still after hearing that revelation. holy fuck sakurai dropped a bomb today. bigger than the baby alligator i laid upon the throne last night.