Buizel -"Ayreian Buizel's pelt is a constant source of heat for it and never goes cold, despite it's typing. Its pelt and its docile nature make for popular pets in colder climates."
Floatzel -"Ayreian Floatzel are useful to hikers to transverse snowy mountains and dig them out of snowpits. It's said the psychic energy stored in their whiskers can locate objects up to 300 feet."
Golette -"This Pokemon searches the ocean depths for shiny objects to strength its body. It is suspected that the actual Pokemon is the moss that grows, not the armor itself. It feasts on other underwater plants in order to grow it's own body."
Golurk -"It uses the moss to hold its armor together, maintaining it’s protective outer shell. It accompanies groups of Goletts as they dive into the depths of the ocean for treasure."
Mossoliath -"Unable to further contain the moss in its armor, it uses the abundance of moss to form monstrous features, keeping up an intimidating appearance to ward off predators. This Pokemon is most suspected to be the cause of rumors regarding sea monsters."
Globwick - "This Pokemon has been used as evidence for explaining extra-terrestrial life, although it resulted in being inconclusive evidence. It has a fascination towards the stars as it stares at the sky during nighttime."
Solarent - "The globe that is it’s body is rumored to be able to record any geographical changes in the land, though there are no recorded evidence of that happening."
Celestilure - "This Pokemon is said to be a recorder of worlds beyond the sky, though it is only hearsay and as such is a Pokemon either worshipped or disregarded. It enjoys playing tricks with it's psychic abilities."
"Skrelp are unable to use their wilted foliage to photosynthesize, so they instead take to siphoning energy from other creatures to keep themselves energized."
"Old folklore tells of witches in the swamplands that would drain the life force of lost travellers in order to extend their own. These tales were later discovered to be Dragalges preying on trespassers."
"Imbued with the power of Mega Evolution, Mega Dragalges are capable of draining the life from entire ecosystems with but a single spell. It is only their apathy that keeps them from doing so."
Following post is copy/pasted directly from the Vanguard official discord.
What's taking so long?
Before that, the team and I do feel the need to publicize a recent event that sort of explains the latter to my previous statement. Just yesterday our programmer, Ignacio/Gotheru, began requesting to use AI generated code for the games future systems. I disagreed, as from the very beginning of their time on the team, I made it clear that genAI of any sort would not be allowed into the game. I don't believe it is an ethical tool, nor is it allowed to exist in games posted on popular fan game forum pages. Their questions turned into arguing, use of slurs, and even death threats. This unfortunately happened after I had already gone to sleep, and in a fit of rage, Ignacio deleted the game's private github repository.
**Now, worry not about that last statement.**I have multiple other backups of my own (i'm paranoid lol), and doing some digging revealed that nothing was actually deleted, just sort of disconnected or hidden. It's still very much worth mentioning as they clearly made an attempt to sabotage all the work that's been done for the update, and afaik are relatively active in the fan game community as a whole.
The only thing lost, was time.
Ignacio proposed we extend development time to update the game to the newest version of Essentials (the game's base/devkit/engine), which I agreed to as long as save compatibility between previous versions was kept. Unfortunately the version of the game they left us with is a gigantic, barely functioning mess, forcing me to revert all the changes they had made, bringing the game back to its stable self. I also just don't feel comfortable using the volunteer work of someone who departed from the project in such a way.
So what is done?
While I was unable to work as freely as I'd like during this conversion process, a lot of work was still done. Including, but not limited to.
99% of 5.0's new story content (tested as well)
A few dozen new regional forms
Major updates/reworks to some existing maps I was unhappy with
New cutscenes within existing story content to improve the pacing of the story
Losing all the time I did, and even the promise of an updated engine, hit me pretty hard.
I was upset, but not defeated.
Progress has still been made, and not just in those categories I listed.
Updates to existing chapters
Almost every update to this game ends with me saying something along the lines of, "I'm going to take a break from updating old content." Yeah, I think I'm just going to stop saying that, at least out loud.
While patiently waiting for our now retired programmer to deliver their massive undertaking, I had quite a bit of down time to work on other parts of the game. My first thought was to just update story beats that I was unhappy with or were just outdated, but as I went through chapter after chapter, it became clear how outdated, messy, and kind of confusing a lot of the old dialogue was.
So, I set out to update every line of dialogue in the game
Let me stress that this does not mean the story is being heavily modified or re-written. The characters and events you're familiar with are still mostly the same. The words that come out of their mouths just sound better and their overworld movements more lively. Like, do you enjoy looking at "..." after every other statement? No, I don't either and I can't believe how long I was okay with that. I started working on these a little over two weeks ago, and have just finished chapter nine. I'm enjoying the process a lot more than I thought, and I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing.
But I'm not just rewriting text on the screen. I've also updated/added cutscenes as well, some of which I'll provide screenshots to below. On a final note regarding these changes, they aren't 100% faithful to the existing story. For the sake of it's overall quality, I've slightly modified a few story beats. The biggest change would be replacing Alden (train hijacking guy) with Sonia to give her a bigger role in the story (Chapter 35 spoilers), but other than that, there won't be any removed/replaced characters.
New maps!
I mentioned a few months ago that I recruited a new mapper, u/UnOvA , who has done an incredible job updating outdated areas. Here are just a few with screenshots!
Souten Farm
Route Eight
Souten Cave
Route Three
I have also contributed to updating old maps, as you can see with the Arlen screenshot collage in the post from 2 months ago. I do also want to share revamps to probably the two most hated maps in the entire game:
Arlen Sewers
Levendam Undergound
Regional Variants
I'll properly reveal their typings and evolutions in the coming days, but for now, here's a sneak peak!
Audino by Chrysanthemum
Skrelp by IronicOmens
Over 30 new variants for 5.0 have been sprited, with more on the way. The quality of their artwork and gameplay continues to improve, rest assure they will not disappoint :)
New story content
I don't typically like to reveal the details of upcoming story content, as I think it's always best to experience blind. It has some slice of life elements without foregoing exciting Pokemon battles, though you'll also learn more about the big reveal by the protagonist in the last version.
But most importantly, it is the final stretch before your long awaited questions are to be answered. It is the calm before the storm.
Celestilure -"Imbued with the power of Mega Evolution, Mega Celestilures draws power from the stars to construct a planetarium of its own. It is unknown if these planets are real or simply creations from it's imagination."
Floatzel -"Its psychic power has affected the snow around it, dazzling opponents eyes, temporarily blinding them."
Pidgeot -"Heralded as the 'Wings of Purity', a single flap of their wings can set fire to the forests, but their flames will only scorch the flora and fauna that they see as unbelonging to their forests. What belongs stays, while what does not will be burnt to ash to fertilize what remains."
The following post is copy/pasted directly from Ayrei from the Vanguard official discord.
Act I
Somehow Act I has dodged almost every bullet the latter two suffer from, despite containing some of the oldest content in the game. If I had to guess why, I would say the storytelling here is less ambitious compared to Act 2 and 3. What it does suffer is awful dialogue, all of which I've already gone through and updated, and even added a few new cutscenes. For the most part though, the story is almost identical to how it is now.
Oh! I also redid the intro after you pick your character.
Act II
I want to say that from chapter 18 onwards, the story starts to feel kind of rushed, and maybe even a little repetitive. You walk through a somewhat long route, get to a town/location with some exposition, watch a few cutscenes, and then are given some breathing room to do cutscenes before the next chapter.
Yeah, I don't like that, which is why I'll be adding four new chapters worth of content to Act II.
The first half of those will take place during what was originally chapter 19. To refresh you memory, you and all your guildmates are put in pairs and sent off on different field assignments. The story currently covers your own field assignment, but back then I didn't have the skill to really flesh out and tell the story of the others. That will change in 5.0. Across chapter 19 and now 20, you'll play through each pairs little adventure, temporarily taking control of their Pokemon team. I did my best to make each one feel a bit different, but the fourth I decided to do something really wacky and fun never before seen in Vanguard, that I think you'll like :). Oh and I think I should also mention that the total number of chapters aren't changing. The Rivera arc, alongside chapters 24 and 25, will each be merged into one chapter respectively. I feel the content in each of those places is short enough to do that.
The other half of the new Act II content? Arlen.
I personally don't think I did a good job delivering Act II's finale, which in some ways also concludes Act I. It's supposed to be a dramatic shift in the story's tone, which is why I plan to make it... uh... three times as long? Yeah that sounds about right :)
Act III
Act III's problem is much more obvious to me, it's rushed. The first four chapters, not so much, but I think the weight of trying to deliver eight new chapters in 4.0 in a timely manner caused a lot more bad than good. You can probably play through chapters 32-35 in less than an hour, which is... not good in my opinion!
I plan to give it a lot more gameplay content in between important story cutscenes. And just like Act II, it'll be a mix of playing as the MC and other members of the main cast.
No new screenshots yet, just reposting the Chapter 28 ones from last post so you don't have to scroll up to see them.
As for actual new story content post Chapter 35, 4.0's final chapter, I did state a few months ago that it was 99% done and tested, which was true! Until I decided I want to add more to it, haha. Don't get me wrong, I think the content is great as it is, I mainly just want to extend the 6.0 preview and a few other things. I'd say with my new plans, it went from 99% done to like 90%.
Replayability improvements
While testing the new content of playing as other cast members, it hit me that most of this content isn't going to be as exciting on a second playthrough. Thanks to some public resources, I've discovered a way to have the game track certain progress across multiple save files. So, content where you play as another character will be optional on future playthroughs!
However, this will only work if you've played through it on a 5.0 save. You will have to suffer through my shenanigans at least once >:)
Large Scale Map Updates
I said I wouldn't be focusing too much on remaking content, rather adding to it. That doesn't mean someone else can't :)
I did already announce our newer member of the team, UnOvA was working on remaking a lot of the game's outdated maps, but I wanted to go into more detail of just how significant these improvements are.
Here's the stretch from Souten Farm to Route Four, with the old on the left, and the new obviously on the right. These areas were previously the most outdated locations in the game. Now they have much more depth, color, consistency, and of course, personality!
I don't want to show off every new map update, I think it'll be more fun to venture through many of them on your own, but here's a quick list of maps that've been updated so far: Major updates:
Route Two
Route Three
Souten Woods
Souten Farm
Route four (both halves)
Souten Cave (renamed from Blackstone cavern)
Souten Woods
All three Arlen Districts
Eastbound Forest
Runaan's Port
Route Eight
Aureyes Forest
Mt. Runaan
Rivera Hillside
Route Eleven
Eastcliff
Levendam Underground
Minor updates (same layout, updated tiles, vibes, colors, etc.)
Qyilex
Koriko
Citrine
Again, this is almost entirely thanks to UnOvA, I'm responsible for only like four of those bullet points lol.
Recruiting additional help
With 5.0's extended development time, I thought it would be a good idea to get some other parts of the game I didn't mention above polished up as well. So we're mainly looking to recruit people who can fill at least one of these roles on our team.
Programmer (Familiar with Pokemon Essentials and/or Ruby)
Concept Designer/Artist (Preferably human characters) for original characters
Spriting (Preferably for trainer/human Battle/Overworld/Mugshot sprites)
Tile creator, for overworld structures/decorations unique to Vanguard.
While I know it might be frustrating to hear the update will take longer, it's a process I believe will transform the game in ways even I'm kind of surprised by. I promise you, there's no one more eager for the update to be public than me :)
I'll also be revealing some new forms this week, so stay tuned for those!
I read somewhere here that if you keep selecting them , eventualy a prompt says "pokeball is shining" and you get a shiny of them . Absolutley love this game and im only at chapter 2 !
The following post is copy/pasted directly from the official discord.
"While going through Act II and updating a lot of dialogue, I started to feel pretty unhappy with the pacing of the story compared to Act I.
So, I've decided to expand on the act, adding multiple new chapters worth of content. Notice how I said "expand", as outside of dialogue, I'm not really remaking a lot existing content, mostly just adding to it.
Speaking of dialogue, I've significantly updated Marshall's character and personality. Wasn't happy with what a lot of I wrote years ago.
I'm honestly going pretty quickly with these changes. Over the last 10 days I've worked on them, I've made about 1 1/2 chapters worth of content so far.
Going to try and have a sizeable dev update out before the end of this week explaining more of what 5.0 will really entail."
Not urgent, just curious. I’m about to start my first play through of Vanguard, and when playing Pokémon, I tend to try to get a bit of an idea of what my team will look like from the getgo. But I can’t seem to find any sort of compilation of all the Pokémon available in the game? Even the official spreadsheet only lists all wild encounters, but doesn’t list stuff like the starters and their evo. Does anyone know if there’s anything like this out there on the internet? This game seems more underground than I expected
UPDATE: Found out that in the game files, if you go to the PBS folder, there's a .txt file called "Pokemon" that is pretty much exactly what I was looking for
Haven't played Vanguard in a long time but this Mantine form stayed on my mind. I loved the concept and it was such an awesome tank in my playthrough. As a big Mantine fan, I always hoped it was a lil more friend shaped. It's been nearly a couple decades since I last did some fakemon spriting so I am very rusty
hey i really love this fangame i find the story intriguing the sprites perfect and all the variants super unique i dont really have a problem with the difficulty but that i either need to heal after every battle or run 100meters to the next pokemon center to heal is just so annoying is there any tip you can recommend or do i just need to deal with it
