Gone Fishin'

In previous Pokémon games, many Pokémon were only found if you fished or surfed. In the handheld games it's been easy to determine if you could do either of these. There was a simple check to see if your sprite was bordering and facing water tiles. When your surroundings are determined by geological data it's a little more difficult to determine if you're near a body of water.

To solve this problem, we're using the Google static maps API. By downloading a map tile of your current location and determining surrounding pixel color, we can figure out if you're near water. Instead of checking game tiles whenever the fishing rod is activated, a Google map tile is checked. If you're within a certain distance (10 meters?) of water, then fishing will be activated.

Previously, your sprite would animate and cast into the body of water. Since the sprites in this game are representative, animating your character to approach a body of water would not only be astoundingly difficult and needlessly time consuming, but unnecessarily complex. The current idea for The Mobile Pokédex is to make fishing more than selecting 'Fish' from a menu until you get a bite. We want to make fishing a game of its own.

When your rod is selected, a 'mini game' opens. The reel is positioned at the bottom of the screen. You can shake your phone to cast out, and as Pokémon nibble at the bait, the iPhone will vibrate. At the right time, you shake your iPhone to engage in a battle. Hopefully this modification will make fishing a more unique experience, and more interesting than just pressing a button until a fish is caught.

Of course, this is all concept right now. Since this won't be coded until much further into the future, it's subject to change. I'm looking for some agreement on whether or not this is a good implementation of fishing!

PokéSpawn

About a month ago I talked about how Pokémon were caught; all of the information in that post dealt with what happened client side when a Pokémon was encountered. So now, what happens server side?

When you send the server your location, it pulls information from around the web to find out what it's like where you are. The main factors that contribute to Pokémon spawning are weather, temperature, time, date, altitude, and of course location. Once all of these attributes have been discovered by the server, it searches through the database of Pokémon to find which ones are suitible for your location.

Once the server determines which Pokémon can spawn, it needs to decide which ones will spawn. Pokémon have a couple of characteristics to determine if they'll spawn, rarity and urban tendency. Rarity is self explanatory, Ratatta is more common than Charmander is more common than Charizard. Urban tendency is a new attribute that describes the tendency of a Pokémon to spawn near urban areas. What does this mean for the players? As you walk around, the world is populated with Pokémarts and Pokécenters. As more people join more houses appear. City centers will develop, and Pokémon will slowly retreat to areas with less raucus. To catch rare and unique Pokémon you'll have to explore the natural world around you -- not neighborhoods and city centers.

I Like the Way You Move

As posted previously, catching a Pokémon in game, requires you traveling within range of that Pokémon's location in real life. The range is planned to be 50 feet, or about 15 meters. Once you're within range of the targeted Pokémon, the "Battle" icon will light up and you can engage the Pokémon.

Let's say, for kicks, that you're trying to capture a Ponyta. Ponyta's clearly run faster than you. Seriously, it's a pony on fire -- you have no chance. UNLESS you use a Pokémon outside of battle to catch up. If you can't seem to make a Pokémon sit still, try binding it! If you want a bit of a longer range, try using Vine Whip.

These moves aren't exclusively for capturing Pokémon either. They can be used to access your home when you're not there, or stores you've recently visited. There are plans to make teleportation give you access to your home wherever you're located. Fly will give you the last places you visited and allow you to reenter that place from wherever you wish. The way this works is that you don't get actually flown or teleported to the area near the store, you just get to enter that store. The same applies to your home.

All of the moves in this post are just Bulbasaur's moves, so they'll be a little different in the game. If you have any ideas for moves that could be used outside of battle in an interesting way, comment away!

Capturing Pokemon

It's almost as if I photoshopped a DS screenshot onto a picture of the iPhone from their always trendy commercials.

So, as you're walking around with your "Pokedex" (it's actually your iPhone or HTC) you'll see your sprite updating on the screen, and you might see Pokemon, depending on where you are. Pokemon will spawn based on many factors. Some of these are your location in the United States, current temperature at your location, date, proximity to urban areas and time of day. What this means for you is that to catch certain Pokemon you may have to travel beyond your bedroom and front yard. Though, this doesn't mean that you have to venture out by yourself to the middle of nowhere just for the sake of capturing rare Pokemon. I hope to encourage people to take their phones with them when they go on hikes, and when they sit down to take a break, see what rare Pokemon are around.

Once a Pokemon has been spawned, its sprite will appear on the screen. Each Pokemon has a different movement speed and movement pattern. Your job as an aspiring Pokemon Master is to get within range of the Pokemon you wish to capture, and then engage it in battle.

From that point out, the game continues the same way that the handheld games functioned. One of the key parts of this game is keeping the core game play (battling and leveling Pokemon) unchanged. Once a Pokemon has been captured, leveling it will be exactly the same as it has been in other games. It's capturing it is the tricky part.

And don't worry, there will be breeders. You won't necessarily have to sit in the woods during the middle of the night to catch that rare Pokemon!