Just to put some context on the gym leader back sprites, both Falkner and Chuck can appear outside of their gyms in certain places once you've become the champion and can be talked to from all angles in those situations
If I had to wager a guess why Sprout Tower is modeled on all sides, I would say it has to do with the Ho-Oh cutscene. Bell Tower and Sprout Tower look to be made out of the same parts. Since Ho-Oh spins around Bell Tower, they need it modeled on all sides and they just copy/paste the assets for Sprout Tower. As for anything else modeled on the back, I can say that if what you are modeling is simple enough, it's easier and faster to give it a back than to spend the time removing it.
tbh, if your theory is correct, it would just be easier to leave the back polygons. Especially if its low poly like seen here, it wont be very taxing to leave it as is, and sometimes deleting faces can break a 3d model
Could also be because it's identical on all sides, and it looks like that door sprite was effectively overlaid onto the front. Still, I like your idea, but I don't know what sprout tower looks like.
Could even be that it is technically still modelled, but no texture is assigned, as there was no need to spend time making a unique texture which will never be seen.
From my understanding Mystery Zone was used in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum to space out the Underground, which spawned you in based on your location in the overworld. The whole region had to be mapped to line up with the Underground. Guessing that it’s a leftover from there, but it’s cool to see all the same, because I remember seeing the Mystery Zone exploring out of bounds with an AR as a kid.
Not only the Sinnoh Underground. The Town Map also specifically keeps track on which 32x32 world chunk your walking. Mystery Zone also exists to mask the fact that you are walking on a world made out of chunks, hence why the Mystery Zone exists out of 1 of the 3 possible tiles. (Trees, sea, mountain surface)(There are also blank Mystery Zone chunks, but they are far away from sight unless you're in a building.
Hey! Random dev here, the reason why you can find the characters in random locations around the map instead of them being spawned in is because of something we call "Object Pooling" Basically, having the objects be somewhere in the world and then teleporting them to their correct locations is cheaper performance wise than spawning them in from code! So this is something we do for optimization purposes :)
I have a theory as to why the battle sprites are 3D. The game squashes and stretches the sprites for some animations, so what I think is happening is that the game is rendering these “models” from an orthographic perspective and rotating them to create the illusion of them flattening. For example, if the sprite were to squish downwards, it would rotate on the X axis and the Z axis to squish inwards.
Also if you have a sprite / texture mapped to a 3d plane it's way faster for devs to create animations for the plane than for the texture. This way you can try more different effects and can tweak animations until you're satisfied. Because you already have 3d engine that does the hard work.
the "mystery zone" location tag is more than likely a fallback default tag used to identify untagged locations in testing and to prevent crashes that can happen from attempting to access a null variable. When programming the location tag, the code almost certainly references a local variable stored in the terrain objects, and leaving that tag empty could crash the game if you try to access it, so default terrain is probably given a default tag that is then changed later. It's similar to how doorways are often given a default teleport location. If the devs were to forget to set one while testing, the game would crash since it's trying to teleport the player to nowhere, so those door objects by default may be set to teleport the location to a dev room or to 0,0 of a default map, then devs will set that variable to somewhere else when placing it.
13:56 I've done this exact trick XD It's nice to know real games made by real programmers also use these silly tricks that I did when I thought I was being "lazy."
"...a local variable stored in the terrain objects..." 🤦♂ A local variable is, by definition, not attached to an object, but is instead local to a particular scope (typically a function or method). A variable attached to an object is an _instance_ variable.
@@BladeOfLight16 GASP! A hobbyist programmer used the wrong term! I can't believe how incredible this travesty is! Allow me to now be condescending to him by 🤦♂-ing at him instead of simply correcting the term.
The Mystery Zone thing applies to all of the Generation 4 games (Diamond,Pearl,Platinum,HeartGold,SoulSilver) when you go out of bounds and not just HeartGold SoulSilver. In fact if you do it in the Sinnoh games it plays a beta/unused version of Route 206 (as opposed to HeartGold/SoulSilver which just uses Route 29's theme). As someone who has gone out of bounds with this game and the other gen 4 games I've always wondered why those squares appeared. I just figured it was because the graphics screwed up and I didn't realize they were dev cubes.
Exactly what I originally thought when I fooled around in Diamond back in the day too. Never thought those were functions being displayed. Just thought of them as the cause of the textures being incorrectly displayed.
I remember the same thing too when I used Action Replay on my copy of Diamond back in the day. I figured they had something to do with the objects that would be there, but never knew how they worked. Brings back good memories of that kind of cheat.
No your original assumption was correct. Those cubes are just map props that haven't loaded, but they are just models and don't have any other behavior. Warps and scripts are handled entirely separately
@@brombrombromley actually no, they arent handled seperately. those do appear to be dev cubes, made to spawn in assets with code (aka anything that isnt just a static mesh) to create warps, or any kind of code to effect the game for that matter, you need to start with an event trigger. the easiest to use are BeginPlay events (Aka events that start when the game starts) and Overlap events (Events that start when the player or possibly other npcs walk over it) the dev cubes at doors are most likely those to do warp events and animate doors
@@inkii-y I literally have worked with the Gen 4 games through modding, these are literally just dummy boxes that stand in for map props (and doors are a type of map prop). The warps themselves along with NPCs and triggers are handled as "zone entities" and are loaded separately. You can remove the door prop and the warp would still work properly.
You're able to battle all the Gym leaders in Soul Silver at a special house, so they all have backsprites, for when you talk to them from behind. This was a really fun episode! HG/SS have a special place in my heart since they're remakes of the 1st games I got & that they managed to be really awesome. Makes me want to go back into the game, & play with more features that they added to it.
I imagine they also animate the back sprites of every character no matter what, since you never every scenario where they'll be turned around or not throughout the whole game. If they didn't give them a back sprite, the game would crash in the event a player talked to them from behind (normal gameplay or hacking) because there'd be nothing to load.
This is giving me so much nostalgia. As a kid I used walk through wall cheats on Pokemon Pearl and have a 300 hr save file that was just spent exploring Mystery Zone, exploring out of bounds and secret areas. Lots of secrets like the Lakes appearing as puddles in the overworld map, which can only be officially seen In the Prima Guide Books. And being able to walk across the entire map across a hidden ocean to get to New Moon Island for Darkrai.
This was my first thought. If they used separate Elms for different story triggers & they all face the same direction, you wouldn't be able to tell if one was teleported or not.
I think the reason that Professor Elm doesn't move from his spot in the woods behind New Bark Town, is because there's not one but *multiple*, for different events and cutscenes.
God, looking around the environments for this game is so fascinating. This is why the DS Pokemon games are my favorite, I love the mix of 2D sprites and 3D modeled environments, it's just so charming to me.
It's just a shame that the DS' 3d capabilities were so weak, it always makes this sprite/polygon mix look a bit jarring when you have lovely shaded sprites next to a 3d model with about 5 polygons. I'd love to see games revisit this on more powerful hardware.
@@estherstreet4582 It's just personal taste, but I kind of love that clash of themes. It's like "Hey, technology around us is modernizing but this is still a pure DS Pokemon game at its heart. :)"
As a developer myself, I can add a possibility here for the orbs in the Elite Four. We generally use invisible objects like that as variable manipulators and function triggers. It is very possible that each Elite Four room has an orb which acts as a constant check for the player's progress in the overall challenge to trigger a function to open the doors to the next room. The end of the dialogue for each Elite Four member would be the variable increase needed for those orbs to trigger the doors. The orbs can also act as an updater for the Elite Four members since they would need to be replaced for the player if they have completed the Kanto events to give them a tougher team. Just a thought...
I'm not a game developer and don't have much graphics experience, but as a more back end developer (mostly web back ends and command line apps), I cannot make heads or tails of what you're saying. Why do you need graphical objects for that at all? Why isn't all that managed in the part of the code that's _not_ graphical?
@@BladeOfLight16 I'm sitting here with the same background as you thinking the exact same thing, my limited experience from making games tells me those orbs where just material or texture orbs for quick switching between materials and or textures when making the rooms haha
Mystery Zones are fun. They exist because of how Maps work in Gens 4&5. Instead of individual maps of variable size that link to each other, the world is instead made of various arrays of standardized 32x32 chunks. It's really neat!
The thing about "being able to talk to Gym Leaders from behind them" is not a big deal, because during the post game you can get their phone numbers and call them at the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City and in that place you can chat to them in any of the 4 directions.
This is perfectly timed, I got a Pokewalker for my birthday and have been steamrolling through 100%-ing my Soul Silver since then! It's even in my pocket right now, my Duskull's walkin'! This kinda 2.5D-ish style is really cool, and I expect it to spike in popularity for indie games as people become cozier with 3D modeling. Things like the cubes in Will's room are mesmerizing.
Square is also helping to popularize the 2D-on-3D style with their HD-2D style, and I'll down to see more of it. Still can't wait for the DQIII remake!
YEARS ago I remember a project you may find interesting called pokemon 3D. Haven't played it for years as I said. But you may like to play around with it just based on how similar to the views you're curious about it is!
This is the EXACT type of stuff I wanted to see as a kid. Seeing that the darkness in caves is just a texture over your sprite is so fascinating. Thanks so much for making these videos.
I have two guesses about the over-extended terrain around the towns/routes: 1) The game engine uses a grid system at the macro level, and doesn't do a partial grid, so you have a "tile" with only a small portion normally visible it still has to be filled out (might also go to explain the oddly-sized surfaces found in some voids) 2) At one point there was a plan to have the player fully experience Fly, where they would zoom out from the start location, shift to the destination, and zoom back in, requiring the surrounding terrain. It was cut and they just left what "extended" terrain was already in place there
The thing with NPCs existing somewhere where players can't see is actually something I learned about when using RPG Maker. There I used them for the "follower characters merge into the main character and then split off" as seen in early Final Fantsys and a lot of sprite-based RPGs. They basically end up being puppets of sorts and makes it easier to manipulate multiple sprites. If recent games are anything to go by, Game Freak forgot how to use this particular trick despite it being around for a very long time. Spawn 'em _off_ screen people, jeezum.
Great episode Shesez! Some of the effects in the DS games really impressed me as a kid, so I love seeing how the devs pulled them off. The Pokéball interiors and title screen were real highlights for me.
Simpsons Meme?! At this time of year, at this particular channel, in this viewer comment, localized entirely within your video?! So glad to see this one, Shesez! Your substitutes did a fantastic job, really enjoyed the games that were picked and they carry the style of the channel exceptionally well, and it's great to hear your trip was fun. SoulSilver and HeartGold may be my favorite games in the entire Pokemon franchise...Gen 2 was my favorite for so long, and though I've enjoyed all of them, I think 4 holds a special place in my heart. Couldn't tell you why! I love seeing all of these little developer tricks, especially since I've done modding and attempts to make things for other games using creation tools, and knowing I'm not a total hack because I used those tricks too is super nice.
I still remember when I first used an action replay on my dsi to do all sorts of impossible things in Soulsilver, that including all the boundary breaking shenanigans. Glad I could vicariously relive those memories through such a wonderful video!
Glad you liked Alaska! It's absolutely gorgeous up there. You must have stayed in Fairbanks or somewhere closer to the arctic circle. Brave of you to visit in the Winter, but definitely less crowded!
What's fascinating about the mystery zone is that, due to it being inherently tied to the overworld and not just a void in the middle of nowhere, there are coordinates within it, and by manipulating the game you can enter the mystery zone through a glitch rather than a hack, and make your way to any legendary/mythical Pokémon, including ones such ad Arceus, Darkrai and Shaymin, all of which were locked behind events that most of us never had access to.
I always loved how Gamefreak added all those pointless trees in these older games out of bounds. It really makes the world seem bigger than it is when you look at the whole map.
@@AarturoSc you know nothing. all the ds pokemon games have megabytes of unused space that is just filler. b2w2 have nearly 50mb of unused space iirc. those "pointless trees" maps are actually just one map stored in the game and it is assigned where ever it is needed. they are called border maps and there are multiple of them.
@@AarturoSc he's right though. For all ds games, they'll have 1 "forest" map for example, and that forest map will just spawn whenever the player isn't in a proper map - that way they aren't just in darkness. This also allows them to make smaller maps without having to worry about the player being able to see the edge of the map - as the edges of the playable maps are designed in a way that the real maps will blend into the fake maps seemlessly while also allowing them to make full use out of said maps. There's 1 forest map, 1 sea map, 1 cave map, and 1 mountain map, usually. Mountain maps sometimes share the cave maps and caves with unique tilesets require out of bounds maps of their own. The gba games use a different system that doesn't allow out of bounds at all, as invisible walls exist even with walk through walls enabled (since there's nothing outside of bounds to walk on in the first place).
Something interesting is if the menu is forced open in the mystery zones, at least in diamond and pearl, the game breaks visually, hence why the menu is disabled in those zones. I hatched an egg to force a menu to open
Welcome back. Let me say that your choices of substitute hosts were great ones. Also I've been waiting patiently for you to do another main series Pokémon game and I hope it won't be long before the next one, but it is your show so you do what you want. I'm aware they may not all have free cams yet.
10:45 You know, I've always wondered what those were. I've messed around with an Action Replay when playing on my Diamond version and stuff like that would happen if I walked off the map far enough and entered the town off the spawn trigger leaving the buildings nothing more than those little cubes. I figured they had to do with the objects that were supposed to be there, but my little mind back then was quite curious.
Especially the way the sprites are slanted backwards, everything in A Link Between Worlds is slanted at a weird angle so it still looks like a top-down game.
Learning new things about my first and favorite Pokémon game is always a good time! Arceus, I love this game and overworld to bits! So many fond memories.
Regarding the gym leader back sprites, the gym leaders can be called for a rematch in a different building in post-game, and can be talked to from behind there. Good video, I love seeing all this neat stuff for my favorite Pokemon game.
Honestly it'd be epic you covered Black/White (maybe its sequel too 🤔) at some point now that you've done both this and XY BW is a lot more dynamic in its 3D environments compared to HGSS and DP, so I think there'd definitely be a lot more interesting finds :)
Im always astonished at these 2D/isometric games having so many things we never see, I always figured they were intentionally minimalistic for resource purposes but nowadays of course that's just a stylistic choice.
I can explain some of the 3D items. Some stuff like the laptop and other random items are made 3D because they know the developers are going to be reusing them multiple times in different places, so by making them a 3D model, it lets them use the items anyway they want. Like in a laboratory, they could have laptop in every direction.
If you go to the P2 lab in black 1 and white 1 and walk through the south wall, there’s a completely unused untextured room. I found this with an action reply when it first came out and thought I found something only I knew about haha
I used to LOVE going to the Mystery Zone with my Action Replay as a kid! In D/P/Pt, I remember one forest-y Mystery Zone that had a tiny puddle you could cast your fishing rod in. No Pokémon would ever spawn, of course, but I always thought it was super cool!
Ay glad to see you cover this! I remember recommending it a while back on Twitter after X and Y released. It was definitely worth the wait! Now if you could ever cover psychonauts, that'd be amazing.
I know im late but at the ruins of Alph, the under ground section shares the same loading zones for a few different areas. The reason I know that is when you use a dowsing machine on one side, itll flash saying theres an item nearby but it actually is in the other area. I was always puzzled as a kid but this explains that
I'm so excited to see a Pokémon Boundary Break episode! I'd love to see more Pokémon ones-especially of Pokémon Colosseum! Thanks for the great episode!
5:14 I’ve spent some time playing around with the mapping tools used in gen 4 rom hacks, I can explain these rocky sheets. They (or an equivalent) are actually present next to *every* piece of the map that the player can walk on in different forms. The game’s map was developed in “chunks”so the system only has to load a certain amount of the map at once - only the area where the player is. You’ll often see the game hide these area borders with those gate buildings, forest entrances or cave entrances Sometimes you’ll see them as trees, sometimes empty oceans, sometimes rocky mountaintops like the ones you’ve shown. They serve the purpose of visually extending locations over what would otherwise just be a black, undeveloped void to help make the world feel larger. They were given a location title (Mystery Zone) to help prevent crashes should a player somehow make it to those tiles, if you continue to walk past the end of them, you’ll eventually run into either a crash or another piece of the map depending on where you are. And as another fun fact, although it may appear as though large clusters of trees like the ones at 5:14 are the same tree repeated infinitely, they actually contain two different different tree entities - One with the edges of the leaves slightly overhanging into left and right adjacent tiles (effectively being 2x4) and one with those pixels cut to the normal 2x2 tiles the tree takes up. it with optimization to minimize the amount of objects being rendered over top of one another, and while we’re at it, the trees come with the ground texture included, they’re not placed separately, unlike gen 3, where every individual tile of every tree and building needed to be manually placed.
That's what I presumed as well. They could have removed the extra stuff before publishing the game but it probably doesn't use up much space and was just easier to leave in.
2:36 That's a load-bearing Professor Elm :P Heckin mindblowing to see all the 2D sprites morph into 3D as the camera moves, I had no idea it was all actually 3D Oog, MissingNo/Decamark my beloveds
Seeing these sequence breaks makes me appreciate the developers more as they are the unsung heroes for making 2D/3D images into a full scale imersive world
15:24 I think it's not an "r", I think it's the word "no" being cut off because the question marks are far longer than what is normally allowed for a Pokémon's name, so the text doesn't wrap properly
I thought all this time the game was mainly 2D with some 3D models, didn't know it was purely in 3D. It still impress me how good these remakes are. Nothing compared to the quality of most Pokemon's new entries.
Don't give Jasper credit, give credit to the people that actually did the work lol. I made the mistake of helping him out like 5 years ago, and I've never gotten any credit for my amazing discoveries, engineering talent, and implementations that nobody else would've ever been able to figure out.
I popped off so hard when I saw this in recommendations. I am so glad to see all the inner workings happening just out of view for my first and favorite Pokemon game.
I don't know if I've said this before on a previous video, but I absolutely LOVE the fact that you have a unique animated intro for every episode, depending on the franchise. Although, I do wish that Serena reacted to the ball bouncing out of the battlefield, since it makes the intro feel more alive.
15:23 That's not an r, it says "has no moves left" as the game is treating this Missingno-like glitchmon as if it's ran out of all its move PP, but since it doesn't *have* any moves, it just skips struggle and goes to the next step in the battle logic...Or something like that.
This video brings back so many memories of my childhood of going out of bounds using Action Replay Codes and running around in the mystery zone for hours in Diamond and Platinum. And this video also gave me an answer for what those gridded cubes were that I had seen frequently while running around the overworld out of bounds: DEV CUBES!
Have you ever thought about trying to interview any of the Devs for these games? I've always found it fascinating , the process making the games work and explanations behind things like this in the game.
I assume the mystery zone is a carry over from diamond, pearl, and platinum. but in those games the mystery zone has a beta version of the route 206 theme and using the tweaking glitch to access it, you can access limited time event locations to obtain Pokémon such as darkrai and arceus
As someone who is a very active hacker in the gen 4 scene, it’s very frustrating to see all of the stuff you got wrong. Which is a lot. Seriously though, there is a LOT of misinformation and assumptions made in this video.
@@AbsolXGuardian nothing about those “dev cubes” is remotely correct, those are only appearing because however he’s displaying the maps, the proper building NSBTX and model set just hasn’t been loaded. That’s the purpose of those gate houses in the base games, there’s not enough space in memory to store an entire NSBTX (texture set more or less) so you warp into an in-between map so when you warp into the next area it loads in the NSBTX and areadata (lighting settings, among other things) used by the new map you’ve entered. Him claiming the “dev cube” at the well in azalea town was the warp to the inside of the well is completely ridiculous as well. Those have nothing to do with the map models and are assigned via a warp tile that gets placed in the event files for the map header for Azalea Town. It does not at all exist in 3D space and only exists as a coordinate for the game to check if the player has moved onto. He talks about the “dev cubes” being loaded in instead of the models, but that’s literally just the model being incapable of being loaded in because the correct areadata and building set hasn’t been loaded into memory so the game can’t possibly load in the model. There is absolutely zero relation to those spheres out of bounds in the E4 chambers to the Vs. animation, that’s literally just a baseless assumption and makes zero sense because anyone who hacks these games knows those are 2D images displayed on a completely different layer internally. Under his logic you’d find these spheres lying around in any map you fight a gym leader or like your rival in, and you just don’t Calling running into wild Pokémon when you don’t have one already isn’t really a sequence break, and also using walking on water to show this off makes it kind of unclear what’s being displayed. Functionally speaking there’s no difference between the tile permissions that are set on grass tiles, cave ground tiles, and water tiles - they all can cause a wild encounter to occur. The only difference about water tiles is that you can’t walk from a non water tile onto a water tile without going through surf, normally requires pressing A on them which calls a commonscript that checks your party for a Pokémon with surf, yadda yadda. Also he uses the fact that there’s a cutscene at the bell tower to justify the partial sky dome on Bellchime Trail, but clearly shows a completely different sky dome with a different texture in that cutscene when he shows the clip. The NSBMD (proprietary 3D model format) that the cutscene takes place in is completely different from both the bellchime trail map model and the map model used for the top of the bell tower so he’s just nowhere near right there, as for why the partial sky dome exists, it’s just what GameFreak did. Even for DPPT with the Spear Pillar sequences, there is a separate file in the game where a copy of the spear pillar map and all assets that get loaded are stored - even with there being of duplicates of the player overworld sprites and other overworld sprites like Cyrus, the other galactic bosses, etc… stored in it. Cutscene models are COMPLETELY separate from the map models. There’s still more than this but my point is, like I said, this video was full of assumptions and misinformation.
Mystery Zone is just map header 0, with a map header being how stuff like script files, event files, encounter files, and maps all being associated together. Even that’s been understood since the early 2010s
Also the glitched mon he sends out when walking on water is like he said, only because he has no Pokémon in his party - not because he’s walking on water. That’s the species at index 0, with Bulbasaur being index 1. Think of it as a null entry, more or less placeholder. We tend to refer to it as MissingNo in the gen 4 hacking community but it has zero relation to the original MissingNo from gen 1. The closest thing to this in a prior game is how gen 3 has the “?” Pokémon that gets sent out if you don’t have a Pokémon. Still don’t really agree with that being called a sequence break but yes he’s correct that this is what happens when you get into a battle without having any Pokémon
2:20 More often than not, things like these are a result of unplanned changes resulting in a engine which has limitations. For example, they might need every sprite or character that needs to be used to be loaded during the "enter room transition". Things are expected to be used in one specific way, thus the engine is designed to do that as efficiently as possible. Then they want a new feature. And are unable to spawn in objects dynamically. They therefore choose the cheapest workaround which is to place them off-screen and teleport them. This can be due to a number of factors. But I would put my guess on that it has to due with loading efficiency. When loading new assets and creating new resources the game needs to reserve more memory and process it. This can in many cases cause visible stuttering to the player. Which everyone who wants their game to feel premium, obviously wants to avoid. An action like this would not even scratch a computer's performance. But a gameboy might not have the capacity on top of what its already doing. 5:45 When making a game, it would surprice you how many iterative changes are done in a rush. Because they discover something new they like or dislike over play sessions. And leaving random un-intended tiles is usually a thing which can always happen accidentally. There is rarely any purpose behind those. 8:14 The 3D modell used here seems very simular to the one used in ho-oh's cutscene geometrically. My guess is that they already had modelled it for that cutscene and re-used the geometrics here with a slighly different texture on top.
15:22 It says "???...??? has no moves left!", it's just that "no" is cut off at the edge of the text box. Very cool video overall! It was very fun watching this.
It's refreshing to hear the wonder of someone discovering the Mystery Zone and MissingNo. for the first time. That excitement you expressed really brought me back from when I discovered them for the first time. MissingNo., (glitchy box Pokemon) is used as an error handler if it can't read a Pokemon's data. The Mystery Zone is composed of border tiles. The border tiles are filler tiles used to fill up space that can potentially be seen by the player, but aren't important or used in the environment. This is to not break emersion. As to why the Mystery Zone is so big, it's simply because the whole map is connected, and the Mystery Zone is the void between the map. The name Mystery Zone is also an error handler. If the Pokemon "Caught" or "Hatched" data can't be read and wasn't traded, it'll lable the Pokemon as being Caught or Hatched in the Mystery Zone. The Mystery Zone is the first location title in the game's data. Everything in this comment is also true for Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum.
14:00 you can notice this effect with some emulators! They don't render the game perfectly so you'll notice a black square around you in caves... with a perfectly bright section on top of it
Ive been playing video games for over 30 years, i have thousands upon thousands of games in every format you can think of, old consoles modern consoles, old pc, modern pc, you name it, i played it all, and in my whole life i have never found games more fascinating than the mainline pokemon games
Just to put some context on the gym leader back sprites, both Falkner and Chuck can appear outside of their gyms in certain places once you've become the champion and can be talked to from all angles in those situations
they can also appear in the Saffron City dojo to be rebattled
hey I know you
yeah that one was really obvious, guess the guy who made this video isn't really much of a pokémon player
@@Argonath_7 sorry I don't talk to people from Lancashire
@@Jayyemi are you too famous for me now that you got a top comment on a UA-cam video 🙄
If I had to wager a guess why Sprout Tower is modeled on all sides, I would say it has to do with the Ho-Oh cutscene. Bell Tower and Sprout Tower look to be made out of the same parts. Since Ho-Oh spins around Bell Tower, they need it modeled on all sides and they just copy/paste the assets for Sprout Tower.
As for anything else modeled on the back, I can say that if what you are modeling is simple enough, it's easier and faster to give it a back than to spend the time removing it.
tbh, if your theory is correct, it would just be easier to leave the back polygons. Especially if its low poly like seen here, it wont be very taxing to leave it as is, and sometimes deleting faces can break a 3d model
Could also be because it's identical on all sides, and it looks like that door sprite was effectively overlaid onto the front. Still, I like your idea, but I don't know what sprout tower looks like.
Could even be that it is technically still modelled, but no texture is assigned, as there was no need to spend time making a unique texture which will never be seen.
From my understanding Mystery Zone was used in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum to space out the Underground, which spawned you in based on your location in the overworld. The whole region had to be mapped to line up with the Underground. Guessing that it’s a leftover from there, but it’s cool to see all the same, because I remember seeing the Mystery Zone exploring out of bounds with an AR as a kid.
Not only the Sinnoh Underground. The Town Map also specifically keeps track on which 32x32 world chunk your walking. Mystery Zone also exists to mask the fact that you are walking on a world made out of chunks, hence why the Mystery Zone exists out of 1 of the 3 possible tiles. (Trees, sea, mountain surface)(There are also blank Mystery Zone chunks, but they are far away from sight unless you're in a building.
Glad I didn’t have to go far to see a comment about the Mystery Zone. I also remember my time going in the Mystery Zone in Pokémon Diamond.
Damn howd you get a rifle in Pokemon? Thats crazy!
@@australiananarchist480 From the Dratini episode of the anime.
Same
Hey! Random dev here, the reason why you can find the characters in random locations around the map instead of them being spawned in is because of something we call "Object Pooling" Basically, having the objects be somewhere in the world and then teleporting them to their correct locations is cheaper performance wise than spawning them in from code! So this is something we do for optimization purposes :)
Wow ❤
How do sprints divided in Game Dev? Is it divided by department?
@@keyblade5916 Sprints as in, agile development sprints? Sorry I don't quite follow you!
Thanks this actually helped when making games in Dreams
@@traggeydatroll yes that one
I have a theory as to why the battle sprites are 3D.
The game squashes and stretches the sprites for some animations, so what I think is happening is that the game is rendering these “models” from an orthographic perspective and rotating them to create the illusion of them flattening.
For example, if the sprite were to squish downwards, it would rotate on the X axis and the Z axis to squish inwards.
Also if you have a sprite / texture mapped to a 3d plane it's way faster for devs to create animations for the plane than for the texture. This way you can try more different effects and can tweak animations until you're satisfied. Because you already have 3d engine that does the hard work.
the "mystery zone" location tag is more than likely a fallback default tag used to identify untagged locations in testing and to prevent crashes that can happen from attempting to access a null variable. When programming the location tag, the code almost certainly references a local variable stored in the terrain objects, and leaving that tag empty could crash the game if you try to access it, so default terrain is probably given a default tag that is then changed later.
It's similar to how doorways are often given a default teleport location. If the devs were to forget to set one while testing, the game would crash since it's trying to teleport the player to nowhere, so those door objects by default may be set to teleport the location to a dev room or to 0,0 of a default map, then devs will set that variable to somewhere else when placing it.
13:56 I've done this exact trick XD It's nice to know real games made by real programmers also use these silly tricks that I did when I thought I was being "lazy."
@@BewbsOP if it works in the end it's not being lazy just smart
i believe this might be the reason why in gen 1, the game crashes after going out of bounds too far
"...a local variable stored in the terrain objects..."
🤦♂ A local variable is, by definition, not attached to an object, but is instead local to a particular scope (typically a function or method). A variable attached to an object is an _instance_ variable.
@@BladeOfLight16 GASP! A hobbyist programmer used the wrong term! I can't believe how incredible this travesty is! Allow me to now be condescending to him by 🤦♂-ing at him instead of simply correcting the term.
The Mystery Zone thing applies to all of the Generation 4 games (Diamond,Pearl,Platinum,HeartGold,SoulSilver) when you go out of bounds and not just HeartGold SoulSilver. In fact if you do it in the Sinnoh games it plays a beta/unused version of Route 206 (as opposed to HeartGold/SoulSilver which just uses Route 29's theme). As someone who has gone out of bounds with this game and the other gen 4 games I've always wondered why those squares appeared. I just figured it was because the graphics screwed up and I didn't realize they were dev cubes.
Exactly what I originally thought when I fooled around in Diamond back in the day too.
Never thought those were functions being displayed. Just thought of them as the cause of the textures being incorrectly displayed.
I remember the same thing too when I used Action Replay on my copy of Diamond back in the day. I figured they had something to do with the objects that would be there, but never knew how they worked. Brings back good memories of that kind of cheat.
No your original assumption was correct. Those cubes are just map props that haven't loaded, but they are just models and don't have any other behavior. Warps and scripts are handled entirely separately
@@brombrombromley actually no, they arent handled seperately. those do appear to be dev cubes, made to spawn in assets with code (aka anything that isnt just a static mesh)
to create warps, or any kind of code to effect the game for that matter, you need to start with an event trigger. the easiest to use are BeginPlay events (Aka events that start when the game starts) and Overlap events (Events that start when the player or possibly other npcs walk over it)
the dev cubes at doors are most likely those to do warp events and animate doors
@@inkii-y I literally have worked with the Gen 4 games through modding, these are literally just dummy boxes that stand in for map props (and doors are a type of map prop). The warps themselves along with NPCs and triggers are handled as "zone entities" and are loaded separately. You can remove the door prop and the warp would still work properly.
You're able to battle all the Gym leaders in Soul Silver at a special house, so they all have backsprites, for when you talk to them from behind.
This was a really fun episode! HG/SS have a special place in my heart since they're remakes of the 1st games I got & that they managed to be really awesome. Makes me want to go back into the game, & play with more features that they added to it.
I imagine they also animate the back sprites of every character no matter what, since you never every scenario where they'll be turned around or not throughout the whole game. If they didn't give them a back sprite, the game would crash in the event a player talked to them from behind (normal gameplay or hacking) because there'd be nothing to load.
@@meowmasterL346 some games use placeholders for this exact case.
This is giving me so much nostalgia. As a kid I used walk through wall cheats on Pokemon Pearl and have a 300 hr save file that was just spent exploring Mystery Zone, exploring out of bounds and secret areas.
Lots of secrets like the Lakes appearing as puddles in the overworld map, which can only be officially seen In the Prima Guide Books.
And being able to walk across the entire map across a hidden ocean to get to New Moon Island for Darkrai.
For Elm in the woods, since he shows up so many times for story beats, is it possible that it's multiple Elms layered on top of each other?
I was wondering that. Maybe the devs accidentally added the sprite twice and only one of them is tied to the scene?
It's Elms all the way down
@@jimbob3332 I dunno what you're referencing but this reminded me of GutsickGibbon. Shout out!
This was my first thought. If they used separate Elms for different story triggers & they all face the same direction, you wouldn't be able to tell if one was teleported or not.
@@jesys32 i didnt expect to see another gutsickgibbon fan here, wow
I think the reason that Professor Elm doesn't move from his spot in the woods behind New Bark Town, is because there's not one but *multiple*, for different events and cutscenes.
God, looking around the environments for this game is so fascinating. This is why the DS Pokemon games are my favorite, I love the mix of 2D sprites and 3D modeled environments, it's just so charming to me.
I agree that the limited 3d is so charming
I love the limited 3d they used for this game, it’s so charming
It's just a shame that the DS' 3d capabilities were so weak, it always makes this sprite/polygon mix look a bit jarring when you have lovely shaded sprites next to a 3d model with about 5 polygons. I'd love to see games revisit this on more powerful hardware.
Much better looking than the Switch era.
@@estherstreet4582 It's just personal taste, but I kind of love that clash of themes. It's like "Hey, technology around us is modernizing but this is still a pure DS Pokemon game at its heart. :)"
As a developer myself, I can add a possibility here for the orbs in the Elite Four. We generally use invisible objects like that as variable manipulators and function triggers. It is very possible that each Elite Four room has an orb which acts as a constant check for the player's progress in the overall challenge to trigger a function to open the doors to the next room. The end of the dialogue for each Elite Four member would be the variable increase needed for those orbs to trigger the doors. The orbs can also act as an updater for the Elite Four members since they would need to be replaced for the player if they have completed the Kanto events to give them a tougher team. Just a thought...
Cool
Cool
Cool
I'm not a game developer and don't have much graphics experience, but as a more back end developer (mostly web back ends and command line apps), I cannot make heads or tails of what you're saying. Why do you need graphical objects for that at all? Why isn't all that managed in the part of the code that's _not_ graphical?
@@BladeOfLight16 I'm sitting here with the same background as you thinking the exact same thing, my limited experience from making games tells me those orbs where just material or texture orbs for quick switching between materials and or textures when making the rooms haha
I can only imagine what Ethan's reaction to Silver just manifesting himself into existence would be.
Mystery Zones are fun. They exist because of how Maps work in Gens 4&5. Instead of individual maps of variable size that link to each other, the world is instead made of various arrays of standardized 32x32 chunks. It's really neat!
The thing about "being able to talk to Gym Leaders from behind them" is not a big deal, because during the post game you can get their phone numbers and call them at the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City and in that place you can chat to them in any of the 4 directions.
This is perfectly timed, I got a Pokewalker for my birthday and have been steamrolling through 100%-ing my Soul Silver since then! It's even in my pocket right now, my Duskull's walkin'!
This kinda 2.5D-ish style is really cool, and I expect it to spike in popularity for indie games as people become cozier with 3D modeling. Things like the cubes in Will's room are mesmerizing.
Square is also helping to popularize the 2D-on-3D style with their HD-2D style, and I'll down to see more of it. Still can't wait for the DQIII remake!
Let me guess, your characters name is Revival?
1:36
I think that those orbs are used to somehow project whatevers on it onto the floor, but the other 3 rooms don’t use it
The DS is not advanced enough for that, they just map the texture directly
It’s so cute seeing the low poly “first person” versions of the houses, I kinda want to see a game just in that style
YEARS ago I remember a project you may find interesting called pokemon 3D. Haven't played it for years as I said. But you may like to play around with it just based on how similar to the views you're curious about it is!
same!
This is the EXACT type of stuff I wanted to see as a kid. Seeing that the darkness in caves is just a texture over your sprite is so fascinating. Thanks so much for making these videos.
I have two guesses about the over-extended terrain around the towns/routes:
1) The game engine uses a grid system at the macro level, and doesn't do a partial grid, so you have a "tile" with only a small portion normally visible it still has to be filled out (might also go to explain the oddly-sized surfaces found in some voids)
2) At one point there was a plan to have the player fully experience Fly, where they would zoom out from the start location, shift to the destination, and zoom back in, requiring the surrounding terrain. It was cut and they just left what "extended" terrain was already in place there
I assumed it was for the maps and it was just easier to leave it in. A simple repeating pattern is easily compressed/stored.
Yep, your first theory is correct, maps are loaded based on chunks just like that, so these maps exist to make sure you can't see the void
The thing with NPCs existing somewhere where players can't see is actually something I learned about when using RPG Maker. There I used them for the "follower characters merge into the main character and then split off" as seen in early Final Fantsys and a lot of sprite-based RPGs. They basically end up being puppets of sorts and makes it easier to manipulate multiple sprites. If recent games are anything to go by, Game Freak forgot how to use this particular trick despite it being around for a very long time. Spawn 'em _off_ screen people, jeezum.
That "first person" sequence is so amazing, I'd play the entire game like that
Great episode Shesez! Some of the effects in the DS games really impressed me as a kid, so I love seeing how the devs pulled them off. The Pokéball interiors and title screen were real highlights for me.
that intro got me teary. this game is so special to me and to see everything all at once just brought on the warm fuzzies
Soul silver was a jam, this should be great. Glad to have ya back man, hope your break went well
Simpsons Meme?! At this time of year, at this particular channel, in this viewer comment, localized entirely within your video?!
So glad to see this one, Shesez! Your substitutes did a fantastic job, really enjoyed the games that were picked and they carry the style of the channel exceptionally well, and it's great to hear your trip was fun. SoulSilver and HeartGold may be my favorite games in the entire Pokemon franchise...Gen 2 was my favorite for so long, and though I've enjoyed all of them, I think 4 holds a special place in my heart. Couldn't tell you why!
I love seeing all of these little developer tricks, especially since I've done modding and attempts to make things for other games using creation tools, and knowing I'm not a total hack because I used those tricks too is super nice.
The gym leaders have backsprites due to them appearing outside of their gyms and at the dojo
Ah, the mystery zone. I loved exploring that in Pokemon Pearl.
My child brain never knew the DS games were partially 3D, so seeing you zoom out like this is blowing my mind a bit
I still remember when I first used an action replay on my dsi to do all sorts of impossible things in Soulsilver, that including all the boundary breaking shenanigans. Glad I could vicariously relive those memories through such a wonderful video!
Glad you liked Alaska! It's absolutely gorgeous up there. You must have stayed in Fairbanks or somewhere closer to the arctic circle. Brave of you to visit in the Winter, but definitely less crowded!
I did!
What's fascinating about the mystery zone is that, due to it being inherently tied to the overworld and not just a void in the middle of nowhere, there are coordinates within it, and by manipulating the game you can enter the mystery zone through a glitch rather than a hack, and make your way to any legendary/mythical Pokémon, including ones such ad Arceus, Darkrai and Shaymin, all of which were locked behind events that most of us never had access to.
Just get an action replay and you can get them easy
I always loved how Gamefreak added all those pointless trees in these older games out of bounds.
It really makes the world seem bigger than it is when you look at the whole map.
It also eats up a lot of unnecessary space in the game and results on features being cut due to space concerns.
@@AarturoSc you know nothing. all the ds pokemon games have megabytes of unused space that is just filler. b2w2 have nearly 50mb of unused space iirc.
those "pointless trees" maps are actually just one map stored in the game and it is assigned where ever it is needed. they are called border maps and there are multiple of them.
@@lmaolol7702
They sure know how to optimize a game, sure buddy.
Refer to your user name for my actual response.
@@AarturoSc The people making sprite maps aren't the same ones adding features, "buddy"
@@AarturoSc he's right though.
For all ds games, they'll have 1 "forest" map for example, and that forest map will just spawn whenever the player isn't in a proper map - that way they aren't just in darkness.
This also allows them to make smaller maps without having to worry about the player being able to see the edge of the map - as the edges of the playable maps are designed in a way that the real maps will blend into the fake maps seemlessly while also allowing them to make full use out of said maps.
There's 1 forest map, 1 sea map, 1 cave map, and 1 mountain map, usually. Mountain maps sometimes share the cave maps and caves with unique tilesets require out of bounds maps of their own. The gba games use a different system that doesn't allow out of bounds at all, as invisible walls exist even with walk through walls enabled (since there's nothing outside of bounds to walk on in the first place).
Something interesting is if the menu is forced open in the mystery zones, at least in diamond and pearl, the game breaks visually, hence why the menu is disabled in those zones. I hatched an egg to force a menu to open
Welcome back. Let me say that your choices of substitute hosts were great ones. Also I've been waiting patiently for you to do another main series Pokémon game and I hope it won't be long before the next one, but it is your show so you do what you want. I'm aware they may not all have free cams yet.
I would love to see more boundary break of the DS Pokemon games, especially the Black and White games
The mix between 2d and 3d will always be my favorite art style for Pokemon
10:45
You know, I've always wondered what those were. I've messed around with an Action Replay when playing on my Diamond version and stuff like that would happen if I walked off the map far enough and entered the town off the spawn trigger leaving the buildings nothing more than those little cubes. I figured they had to do with the objects that were supposed to be there, but my little mind back then was quite curious.
Seeing the 3D models with 2D mixed in reminds me of how A Link Between Worlds is like.
Especially the way the sprites are slanted backwards, everything in A Link Between Worlds is slanted at a weird angle so it still looks like a top-down game.
That aurora borealis picture is stunning! Glad you had a good time.
Learning new things about my first and favorite Pokémon game is always a good time! Arceus, I love this game and overworld to bits! So many fond memories.
Regarding the gym leader back sprites, the gym leaders can be called for a rematch in a different building in post-game, and can be talked to from behind there.
Good video, I love seeing all this neat stuff for my favorite Pokemon game.
Honestly it'd be epic you covered Black/White (maybe its sequel too 🤔) at some point now that you've done both this and XY
BW is a lot more dynamic in its 3D environments compared to HGSS and DP, so I think there'd definitely be a lot more interesting finds :)
God I love the limited 3D they use in this game. It's so charming
I knew there'd be at least one of you here
I'd love to see another sequence break.
15:05 "Missingno. Two" 😄
"But there was no target..." is up there with "But nobody came." as being simple but ominous
Im always astonished at these 2D/isometric games having so many things we never see, I always figured they were intentionally minimalistic for resource purposes but nowadays of course that's just a stylistic choice.
I can explain some of the 3D items. Some stuff like the laptop and other random items are made 3D because they know the developers are going to be reusing them multiple times in different places, so by making them a 3D model, it lets them use the items anyway they want. Like in a laboratory, they could have laptop in every direction.
Aurora borealis? At this time of year? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
This isn't even a game I'd think of boundary breaking. Great idea, I love seeing the environments at different angles!
If you go to the P2 lab in black 1 and white 1 and walk through the south wall, there’s a completely unused untextured room. I found this with an action reply when it first came out and thought I found something only I knew about haha
I used to LOVE going to the Mystery Zone with my Action Replay as a kid! In D/P/Pt, I remember one forest-y Mystery Zone that had a tiny puddle you could cast your fishing rod in. No Pokémon would ever spawn, of course, but I always thought it was super cool!
Ay glad to see you cover this! I remember recommending it a while back on Twitter after X and Y released. It was definitely worth the wait!
Now if you could ever cover psychonauts, that'd be amazing.
The best pokemon game, bring back so many memories!
I would have loved to see the battle frontier, I feel that would be so interesting, how the facilities interact with eachother and stuff
I know im late but at the ruins of Alph, the under ground section shares the same loading zones for a few different areas. The reason I know that is when you use a dowsing machine on one side, itll flash saying theres an item nearby but it actually is in the other area. I was always puzzled as a kid but this explains that
I'm so excited to see a Pokémon Boundary Break episode! I'd love to see more Pokémon ones-especially of Pokémon Colosseum! Thanks for the great episode!
5:14
I’ve spent some time playing around with the mapping tools used in gen 4 rom hacks, I can explain these rocky sheets.
They (or an equivalent) are actually present next to *every* piece of the map that the player can walk on in different forms. The game’s map was developed in “chunks”so the system only has to load a certain amount of the map at once - only the area where the player is. You’ll often see the game hide these area borders with those gate buildings, forest entrances or cave entrances Sometimes you’ll see them as trees, sometimes empty oceans, sometimes rocky mountaintops like the ones you’ve shown. They serve the purpose of visually extending locations over what would otherwise just be a black, undeveloped void to help make the world feel larger. They were given a location title (Mystery Zone) to help prevent crashes should a player somehow make it to those tiles, if you continue to walk past the end of them, you’ll eventually run into either a crash or another piece of the map depending on where you are.
And as another fun fact, although it may appear as though large clusters of trees like the ones at 5:14 are the same tree repeated infinitely, they actually contain two different different tree entities - One with the edges of the leaves slightly overhanging into left and right adjacent tiles (effectively being 2x4) and one with those pixels cut to the normal 2x2 tiles the tree takes up. it with optimization to minimize the amount of objects being rendered over top of one another, and while we’re at it, the trees come with the ground texture included, they’re not placed separately, unlike gen 3, where every individual tile of every tree and building needed to be manually placed.
My guess with the large unused area. Is so they can supply full town/city maps for walkthrough books etc. Without having the area cutoff ubruptly.
That's what I presumed as well. They could have removed the extra stuff before publishing the game but it probably doesn't use up much space and was just easier to leave in.
This is probably one of the most interesting episodes for me!
Was my first Pokemon and I had NO IDEA that it's almost completely 3D!
Welcome back Shesez! SoulSilver is the only Pokémon DS game I still have so I’m looking forward to this!
Suicune is a leopard, Raikou is a tiger and Entei is a lion. How are people still calling them dogs!?!?
Currently playing this now, perfect timing! I love the out of bounds videos
The spourt tower is model in all sides is for the intro scene of the Pokémon of the cover roaming around it
Hey welcome back! Hope you had a fun time! Great episode, can't wait for Boundary Break: Steamed Hams Secrets
Egads, my roast is ruined!
2:36 That's a load-bearing Professor Elm :P
Heckin mindblowing to see all the 2D sprites morph into 3D as the camera moves, I had no idea it was all actually 3D
Oog, MissingNo/Decamark my beloveds
Seeing these sequence breaks makes me appreciate the developers more as they are the unsung heroes for making 2D/3D images into a full scale imersive world
This is amazing!! As someone who played this remake countless times, it was awesome to see it in a whole new way.
15:24 I think it's not an "r", I think it's the word "no" being cut off because the question marks are far longer than what is normally allowed for a Pokémon's name, so the text doesn't wrap properly
I thought all this time the game was mainly 2D with some 3D models, didn't know it was purely in 3D.
It still impress me how good these remakes are. Nothing compared to the quality of most Pokemon's new entries.
Don't give Jasper credit, give credit to the people that actually did the work lol. I made the mistake of helping him out like 5 years ago, and I've never gotten any credit for my amazing discoveries, engineering talent, and implementations that nobody else would've ever been able to figure out.
I popped off so hard when I saw this in recommendations. I am so glad to see all the inner workings happening just out of view for my first and favorite Pokemon game.
I miss sequence break, I really wish you hadn’t canceled that
I don't know if I've said this before on a previous video, but I absolutely LOVE the fact that you have a unique animated intro for every episode, depending on the franchise. Although, I do wish that Serena reacted to the ball bouncing out of the battlefield, since it makes the intro feel more alive.
15:23 That's not an r, it says "has no moves left" as the game is treating this Missingno-like glitchmon as if it's ran out of all its move PP, but since it doesn't *have* any moves, it just skips struggle and goes to the next step in the battle logic...Or something like that.
This video brings back so many memories of my childhood of going out of bounds using Action Replay Codes and running around in the mystery zone for hours in Diamond and Platinum. And this video also gave me an answer for what those gridded cubes were that I had seen frequently while running around the overworld out of bounds: DEV CUBES!
Have you ever thought about trying to interview any of the Devs for these games? I've always found it fascinating , the process making the games work and explanations behind things like this in the game.
Have you ever seen his other videos?
I assume the mystery zone is a carry over from diamond, pearl, and platinum. but in those games the mystery zone has a beta version of the route 206 theme and using the tweaking glitch to access it, you can access limited time event locations to obtain Pokémon such as darkrai and arceus
As someone who is a very active hacker in the gen 4 scene, it’s very frustrating to see all of the stuff you got wrong. Which is a lot.
Seriously though, there is a LOT of misinformation and assumptions made in this video.
Could you outline some of those?
@@AbsolXGuardian nothing about those “dev cubes” is remotely correct, those are only appearing because however he’s displaying the maps, the proper building NSBTX and model set just hasn’t been loaded. That’s the purpose of those gate houses in the base games, there’s not enough space in memory to store an entire NSBTX (texture set more or less) so you warp into an in-between map so when you warp into the next area it loads in the NSBTX and areadata (lighting settings, among other things) used by the new map you’ve entered. Him claiming the “dev cube” at the well in azalea town was the warp to the inside of the well is completely ridiculous as well. Those have nothing to do with the map models and are assigned via a warp tile that gets placed in the event files for the map header for Azalea Town. It does not at all exist in 3D space and only exists as a coordinate for the game to check if the player has moved onto. He talks about the “dev cubes” being loaded in instead of the models, but that’s literally just the model being incapable of being loaded in because the correct areadata and building set hasn’t been loaded into memory so the game can’t possibly load in the model.
There is absolutely zero relation to those spheres out of bounds in the E4 chambers to the Vs. animation, that’s literally just a baseless assumption and makes zero sense because anyone who hacks these games knows those are 2D images displayed on a completely different layer internally. Under his logic you’d find these spheres lying around in any map you fight a gym leader or like your rival in, and you just don’t
Calling running into wild Pokémon when you don’t have one already isn’t really a sequence break, and also using walking on water to show this off makes it kind of unclear what’s being displayed. Functionally speaking there’s no difference between the tile permissions that are set on grass tiles, cave ground tiles, and water tiles - they all can cause a wild encounter to occur. The only difference about water tiles is that you can’t walk from a non water tile onto a water tile without going through surf, normally requires pressing A on them which calls a commonscript that checks your party for a Pokémon with surf, yadda yadda.
Also he uses the fact that there’s a cutscene at the bell tower to justify the partial sky dome on Bellchime Trail, but clearly shows a completely different sky dome with a different texture in that cutscene when he shows the clip. The NSBMD (proprietary 3D model format) that the cutscene takes place in is completely different from both the bellchime trail map model and the map model used for the top of the bell tower so he’s just nowhere near right there, as for why the partial sky dome exists, it’s just what GameFreak did. Even for DPPT with the Spear Pillar sequences, there is a separate file in the game where a copy of the spear pillar map and all assets that get loaded are stored - even with there being of duplicates of the player overworld sprites and other overworld sprites like Cyrus, the other galactic bosses, etc… stored in it. Cutscene models are COMPLETELY separate from the map models.
There’s still more than this but my point is, like I said, this video was full of assumptions and misinformation.
Mystery Zone is just map header 0, with a map header being how stuff like script files, event files, encounter files, and maps all being associated together. Even that’s been understood since the early 2010s
Also the glitched mon he sends out when walking on water is like he said, only because he has no Pokémon in his party - not because he’s walking on water. That’s the species at index 0, with Bulbasaur being index 1. Think of it as a null entry, more or less placeholder. We tend to refer to it as MissingNo in the gen 4 hacking community but it has zero relation to the original MissingNo from gen 1. The closest thing to this in a prior game is how gen 3 has the “?” Pokémon that gets sent out if you don’t have a Pokémon.
Still don’t really agree with that being called a sequence break but yes he’s correct that this is what happens when you get into a battle without having any Pokémon
The mystery Pokémon is almost a creepy pasta lol. The “but there was no target” is perfect for that.
Can I watch this if I have no soul?
Or if your soul was silver, I suppose. Idk, I'm no doctor.
No.
I don't see the problem if you have a heart
As long as you're not a ostrish yes
Don’t worry, after this you will have soul.
2:20 More often than not, things like these are a result of unplanned changes resulting in a engine which has limitations.
For example, they might need every sprite or character that needs to be used to be loaded during the "enter room transition".
Things are expected to be used in one specific way, thus the engine is designed to do that as efficiently as possible. Then they want a new feature.
And are unable to spawn in objects dynamically. They therefore choose the cheapest workaround which is to place them off-screen and teleport them.
This can be due to a number of factors. But I would put my guess on that it has to due with loading efficiency.
When loading new assets and creating new resources the game needs to reserve more memory and process it.
This can in many cases cause visible stuttering to the player. Which everyone who wants their game to feel premium, obviously wants to avoid.
An action like this would not even scratch a computer's performance. But a gameboy might not have the capacity on top of what its already doing.
5:45 When making a game, it would surprice you how many iterative changes are done in a rush. Because they discover something new they like or dislike over play sessions.
And leaving random un-intended tiles is usually a thing which can always happen accidentally. There is rarely any purpose behind those.
8:14 The 3D modell used here seems very simular to the one used in ho-oh's cutscene geometrically.
My guess is that they already had modelled it for that cutscene and re-used the geometrics here with a slighly different texture on top.
15:23 it probably says ‘no’ instead of r but the no is cut off
I love Shesez talking about back sides
Seeing that buildings aren't modeled at the back makes all the building shells in the National Park world in VR Chat make so much more sense
Now THIS is a boundary break episode I'm all for! THANK YOU!
Oh my gosh I love this! Heartgold was my first real introduction to the mainline pokemon games and THIS IS SO COOL!! Everyone is flat :)
15:25 I think that's just "has no moves left" being cut off by the textbox.
15:22 It says "???...??? has no moves left!", it's just that "no" is cut off at the edge of the text box. Very cool video overall! It was very fun watching this.
out of bounds stuff and infinite voids give me alot of unreasonable fear, I love game development, but its really fucks with me seeing it like this.
Honestly, the biggest thing that spooked me this episode is that the leafy part of the tree and stump are completely separate.
15:38
Aurora Borealis?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your Boundary Break!?
It's refreshing to hear the wonder of someone discovering the Mystery Zone and MissingNo. for the first time. That excitement you expressed really brought me back from when I discovered them for the first time. MissingNo., (glitchy box Pokemon) is used as an error handler if it can't read a Pokemon's data. The Mystery Zone is composed of border tiles. The border tiles are filler tiles used to fill up space that can potentially be seen by the player, but aren't important or used in the environment. This is to not break emersion. As to why the Mystery Zone is so big, it's simply because the whole map is connected, and the Mystery Zone is the void between the map. The name Mystery Zone is also an error handler. If the Pokemon "Caught" or "Hatched" data can't be read and wasn't traded, it'll lable the Pokemon as being Caught or Hatched in the Mystery Zone. The Mystery Zone is the first location title in the game's data. Everything in this comment is also true for Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum.
This is one of my favorite games of all time. Awesome video!
Never Clicked faster, this was my first DS Game
Loved this episode. Really hope you cover the Gen 5 games :)
14:00 you can notice this effect with some emulators! They don't render the game perfectly so you'll notice a black square around you in caves... with a perfectly bright section on top of it
Ive been playing video games for over 30 years, i have thousands upon thousands of games in every format you can think of, old consoles modern consoles, old pc, modern pc, you name it, i played it all, and in my whole life i have never found games more fascinating than the mainline pokemon games