[HN Gopher] Visualizing Pokemon Red and Blue Connections (2020)
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       Visualizing Pokemon Red and Blue Connections (2020)
        
       Author : clessg
       Score  : 111 points
       Date   : 2023-11-29 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (peterhajas.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (peterhajas.com)
        
       | davexunit wrote:
       | This was a real treat. Nice use of some regular old tools to look
       | at something in a new way. I'm also a big fan of the GB/GBC
       | Pokemon games.
        
       | NegativeLatency wrote:
       | These games were magical for me, I keep hoping for a good modern
       | Pokemon game but nothing has quite captured the experience of
       | playing through Blue for the first time. (Maybe it's that
       | experience of playing a game without being able to easily ask the
       | internet what to do next, but there was something delightful
       | about discovering the whole in game world and all the secrets in
       | it.)
        
         | MadSudaca wrote:
         | This gave me an idea, what about a game that is proceduraly
         | generated in whole, maybe using only the same underlying
         | mechanics, for each run of the game or each person that plays?
         | It'll probably be possible in not too long with generative AI.
        
           | eddtries wrote:
           | Rogue likes are good enough, if you build a procedurally
           | generated games it's very hard to not make it very boring and
           | empty. Many roguelikes do a good job at keeping things fresh
           | enough to replay while not allowing for that.
        
           | aperrien wrote:
           | Not to be negative, but isn't that the whole category of
           | roguelikes? There are definitely Pokemon roguelikes out
           | there.
        
           | crq-yml wrote:
           | UCSC EIS was doing some work on this kind of thing over the
           | past decade:
           | 
           | https://eis.ucsc.edu/
           | 
           | Everything procedural in nature essentially reflects the
           | design philosophy of the creator: that's a fundamental
           | restriction on the Holodeck. The generative approach is
           | actually creatively less productive than a chaos function,
           | because chaos is known to produce interesting long-run
           | patterns, while generative acts more like an interpolation on
           | existing patterns.
        
           | doesnt_know wrote:
           | I understand this isn't exactly what you meant, but The
           | Pokemon Mystery Dungeon[1] series is one interpretation of
           | that idea. Basically a Pokemon roguelike.
           | 
           | [1]
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Mystery_Dungeon
        
           | bagful wrote:
           | The "randomizer speedrun" genre involves completing a script-
           | generated ROM hack permuting existing game assets. A
           | randomized ROM might rearrange everything from door warps,
           | enemy locations, boss move-sets, even item effects can be
           | randomized; and importantly the game remains completely
           | solvable.
        
       | dunkmaster wrote:
       | http://peterhajas.com/media/pokemon_rb_towns_and_routes_prev...
       | This kind of looks like Pikachu
        
         | vorticalbox wrote:
         | Looks more like poliwag to me.
        
       | topherclay wrote:
       | Funny that the routes and towns map is the same as the in game
       | map, except it's sort of mirrored North-South around pallet town.
       | So instead of starting clockwise out of pallet town in game, you
       | would start counter-clockwise on this generated map.
        
         | davexunit wrote:
         | I noticed the same. Graphviz gives you some amount of control
         | over the layout so it is probably possible to get it to render
         | in a way more familiar to people that know the real map.
        
       | borbtactics wrote:
       | After all these years, the Silph Company is still one of the more
       | confusing RPG dungeons I've encountered. Glad to finally see it
       | explained.
        
         | jollyllama wrote:
         | The same graph was probably on the whiteboard of the game devs
         | and the people who got paid to write game guide books back in
         | the day.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-29 23:01 UTC)