Gen VII: Pokemon Sun and Moon Discussion MKII

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DHR-107

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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Orange Islands
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Welcome to Alola!​

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​

So I decided to write up a brand new OP with all the current information listed as we are moving into a new forum and starting the thread over as the other thread has ballooned up to 250+ pages since September 2015. Thank you very much to Karxrida for managing that thread for so long and keeping it up to date. This thread will be under much the same rules as the other thread.

Current SM Timeline

10th February 2016: Magearna is revealed via early issues of CoroCoro.
14th February 2016: Magearna is officially revealed
26th February 2016: Pokemon Sun and Moon are officially revealed in a Nintendo Direct
15th April 2016: Magerna's typing is revealed to be Steel/Fairy.
10th May 2016: Alola and Starter Pokemon are officially revealed. Rowlet, Litten and Popplio.
2nd June 2016: Cover Legendaries are revealed, Solgaleo and Lunala. As well as high resolution images of Alola
10th June 2016: Corocoro leaks reveal Komala and Rockruff
11th June 2016: Zygarde 10% and 100% are shown at Taiwan nationals.
14th June 2016: Nintendo E3 Treehouse reveals Pikipek and Yungoos. The trailer then goes on to reveal Grubbin. Battle Royale mode is also teased.
Treehouse Video (Approx 45 minutes):
30th June 2016: New trailers revealing 7 new Pokemon: Tapu Koko, Charjabug, Vikavolt, Drampa, Bruxish, Cutiefly and Togedemaru.
7th July 2016: Salandit is revealed as well as Rockruff and Komala.
12th July 2016: CoroCoro leaks and reveals Bewear and Mimikyu.
19th July 2016: Another 6 Pokemon are revealed. Wimpod, Bounsweet, Comfey, Mudsdale, Mimikyu and Bewear. Hyper Training which allows you to change IVs is also revealed.
1st August 2016: Pokemon Youtube channels reveal 6 new Pokemon: Fomantis, Lurantis, Gumshoos (Yungoos' evolution), Minior, Mudbray (Mudsdale's prevolution) and Oricorio (A bird with four different formes depending on the island it is from). It also reveals 5 new formes for Kanto Pokemon: Exeguttor, Vulpix, Ninetales, Sandshrew and Sandslash. It also introduces Z-Moves, Kahuna's and the Island Challenge Trials.
9th August 2016: Corocoro leaks and reveals Alolan Marowak and Meowth as well as several new Pokemon. A Ground/Ghost Sandcastle two stage line, a fish which can appear to change formes and Bewear's prevolution.
10th August 2016: Leaks surfaced pointing towards August 12ths new information
11th August 2016: The Japanese Pokemon Youtube Channel releases a trailer showcasing the Pokemon from the leaks and some new Alola formes of Raichu, Marowak and Meowth. No English names as of yet. English trailer was announced mid afternoon. New Pokemon are called Wishiwashi, Pyukumuku and Morelull.
18th August 2016: GamesCon Germany goes in depth with Battle Royale, showing off some of the moves the new Pokemon have. Check out this post: http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...-discussion-mkii.3578318/page-79#post-6950882 For more information. They also showed us a new Pokemon; Turtonator.
19th August 2016: Sandygast and Palossand are the english names of the Sandcastle Pokemon revealed in Corocoro, as well as Stufful being the prevolution of Bewear. Crabrawler is also shown.
1st September 2016: More information on Z moves and Alolan Rattata are revealed in a Nintendo 3DS Direct. There is also an "early buyer" Munchlax available. Pulverizing Pancake is revealed to be Snorlax's own Z Move. It requires Giga Impact to be in Snorlax's moveset in order to be used.
6th September 2016: Team Aether is introduced as another Team that appear to be on the right side of the law... Type: Null, Jangmo-o, Alolan Faticate Raticate are revealed as well as the mysterious and ethereal UB-01 who appears to be an "Ultra Beast". Dexio from Kalos appears to give you the Zygarde collection quest. They also introduced the version differences.
7th September 2016: Japan gets an exclusive trailer which highlights Solgaleo and Lunala. It also has lots of imagery of new locations and Alolan Professor Oak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oO_P4GX_RA
12th September 2016: Corocoro leaks revealing UB-02 Beauty and UB-02 Expansion. It also shows off the evolutions to Rockruff (Jap Name: Lugarugan, Midday and Midnight forme). It also gave some details on the Munchlax and also some untranslated information about Pokemon GO.

14th September 2016: Japanese Pokemon website updates and the West gets their first footage of Ultra Beasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8hARTlZrE UB02 is called Absorption in English. Beauty retains its name.

20th September 2016: New youtube video presents 3 new Pokemon: Passimian, Oranguru, and both formes of Lycanroc. It also shows off even more trainer customization and Pokemon Refresh (which we presume to be analogous to Pokemon Amie). Eevee and Pikachu also get exclusive Z Moves. https://youtu.be/m8lfI66T5II

4th October 2016: Youtube released the middle stages of the Starters; Dartrix, Torracat and Brionne. It gives us a teaser of many different play aspects called the festival Plaza. It also confirms Mega Evolution. Demo is due for release on the 18th of October, one month before the games are released internationally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciqAkdXQ9dw

12th October 2016: Corocoro leaks and shows us Alolan Grimer and Jangmo-O's evolutions as well as Type:Nulls evolution

14th October 2016: Youtube releases a new video showing Silvally (Type: Nulls apparent evolution), Hakamo-O (the evolution of Jangmo-O), Kommo-O (the final form of Jangmo-O), Ribombee (the evolution of Cutiefly), Steenee (evolution of Bounsweet), Tsareena (Final evolution of Bounsweet), Alolan Grimer and Alolan Muk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ4I_0DP4fc
​

That should be everything up till today!
 
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~~Hijacking this post to continue keeping all the videos together. I have asked HelenTheHero to let me (DHR-107) do this~~​

14th September 2016: Japanese Pokemon website updates and the West gets their first footage of Ultra Beasts. UB02 is called Absorption in English. Beauty retains its name.
20th September 2016: New youtube video presents 3 new Pokemon: Passimian, Oranguru, and both formes of Lycanroc. It also shows off even more trainer customization and Pokemon Refresh (which we presume to be analogous to Pokemon Amie). Eevee and Pikachu also get exclusive Z Moves
4th October 2016: Youtube releases the middle stages of the Starters; Dartrix, Torracat and Brionne. It gives us a teaser of many different play aspects called the festival Plaza. It also confirms Mega Evolution. Demo is due for release on the 18th of October, one month before the games are released internationally.
12th October 2016: Corocoro leaks and shows us Alolan Grimer and Jangmo-O's evolutions as well as Type:Nulls evolution
14th October 2016: Youtube releases a new video showing Silvally (Type: Nulls apparent evolution), Hakamo-O (the evolution of Jangmo-O), Kommo-O (the final form of Jangmo-O), Ribombee (the evolution of Cutiefly), Steenee (evolution of Bounsweet), Tsareena (Final evolution of Bounsweet), Alolan Grimer and Alolan Muk.








Thanks for creating this! Helpful to have the videos too for us lazy bums who can't find them when posted.
 
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Guess the old thread was a bit of a mess with 200+ posts. Special thanks to Karxrida for maintaining the first post of the old thread and keeping it up to date sans recent computer problems. And of course special thanks to DHR-107 for making this new thread with the first post having the videos.

Re-posting my previous theory post (though putting it a bit more elegantly and less word wall-y):

So August's CoroCoro is suppose to give us information about the Alola region itself, do you think that will also be the topic of the website's update?

Because honestly, I'm kind of getting tired of new Pokemon. Not that I don't appreciate it, I have liked most of the new Pokemon shown and seen much potential in them, but we know a ton of new Pokemon but very little about the Alola region itself. We only know the name of the first island... and that's it. We don't know any of the other island names (though there's a pretty good theory about what they could be which I'll go into later), any town/city names (not even the home town or the big city they keep showing), or any other significant location (heck, we don't even know if routes will be called "Route #").

Anyway, back to the possible other island names, the theory stems from this article. To summarize, one translation result for "MeleMele" is "yellow", and with there being four islands and this being Pokemon (where nostalgia and tradition are tied tightly together; especially being the 20th Anniversary) it's possible the other islands will be named after the other Gen I colors: UlaUla (red), Polu (blue), and OmaOma (green).
So going off that I tried assigning the other colors to the other islands and came to certain problems. I tried going by the main feature of the islands and something didn't seem quite right. I assigned the volcano island as UlaUla and the snow-capped mountain island as Polu... but that would leave the rocky island as OmaOma. Now there is an element of green to OmaOma, but that's off in a small part. So then I thought what about MeleMele Island is yellow and the only thing I could think of was Tapu Koko. So if this theory is correct would the islands be named after the main color of their guardian deity and does this maybe reveal their type (UlaUla being Fire, Polu being Water (or Ice), and OmaOma being Grass (or Ground)?
Also it still goes along with the alchemy theory. Assuming MeleMele Island is air since Tapu Koko is a flying, avian-like Pokemon (and in some media lightning is associated with the element of air), the volcanic island would be fire/red, the rocky island would be earth/green, and the snow-capped mountain island would be water/blue.
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And just re-affirming some of my opinions of "hot" topics:

Mega Pokemon: They didn't get rid of them, they're just saving them for later announcements as "icing on the cake"; a sure thing to draw in players (aka customers) both casual and competitive.
Synchro Evolution: Stupid idea, something that should stay in the anime (which shouldn't have introduced it anyway).
Super Moves: A new mechanic I'd happily take over Sycnchro Evolution and curious what they plan on doing with it.
Game Engine: With confirmation of a new game engine, them knowing problems with slow down with the previous, other games released after XY having better graphic engines, and this being a game I think Nintendo is banking on, I think this new game engine would be able to handle the graphics with little to no slowdown (hopefully).
 
With Sun and Moon using a fully fledged 3D world as opposed to a grid based one, I'm very curious about the new puzzles that the games could potentially have. With the previous games, most of the puzzles usually ended up being simple strength, ice, or teleporter puzzles. While Teleporter puzzles could still work, Strength and Ice puzzles seem like they will have to be drastically changed to work in this game due to them being designed to work with a grid based environment as opposed to a 3d one. That being said, the new environment does open itself up to numerous other types of puzzles. Genuinely interested to see what gamefreak does with it.
 
Magcargo said:
With Sun and Moon using a fully fledged 3D world as opposed to a grid based one, I'm very curious about the new puzzles that the games could potentially have. With the previous games, most of the puzzles usually ended up being simple strength, ice, or teleporter puzzles. While Teleporter puzzles could still work, Strength and Ice puzzles seem like they will have to be drastically changed to work in this game due to them being designed to work with a grid based environment as opposed to a 3d one. That being said, the new environment does open itself up to numerous other types of puzzles. Genuinely interested to see what gamefreak does with it.
Click to expand...

Just because the player is no longer on a grid doesn't mean there isn't a grid, it's just now more invisible. Think of pushing puzzles in games like Legend of Zelda, they're on grids even though the player can move Link freely.
 
Okay so since i was out all day and didnt have time to respond before new thread time for a very awkward form of reply

Codraroll
They appear to re-use as much of their old work as possible. Makes sense, really. Between all the formes and all the Pokémon, there are some nine hundred models with textures and animations which were made for X/Y. Easily thousands of man-hours of work. Remaking it all for SuMo would cost a lot of development resources, so it's understandable why they just ported as much as posssible. Even with a new graphics engine, it's not like re-made models would have looked a lot better.

They've done this before, too. If I recall correctly, certain Pokémon models and animations from Pokémon Stadium were used all the way up to Pokémon Battle Revolution. Not sure if they spruced up the textures, but either way, that's almost a decade and a half of using the same ground work.
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Yeah I'm not surprised at their willingness to re-use resources - quite the opposite, even - was just surprised that said resources were compatible with a completely new engine rather than, say, having to be completely remade from the ground up. But in hindsight it makes sense they'd be compatible with a different engine; as another user said, they are just a bunch of triangles, and they can be run on phones and laptops and stuff viewing websites that have them on the internet...
 
Kurona said:
Okay so since i was out all day and didnt have time to respond before new thread time for a very awkward form of reply

Codraroll

Yeah I'm not surprised at their willingness to re-use resources - quite the opposite, even - was just surprised that said resources were compatible with a completely new engine rather than, say, having to be completely remade from the ground up. But in hindsight it makes sense they'd be compatible with a different engine; as another user said, they are just a bunch of triangles, and they can be run on phones and laptops and stuff viewing websites that have them on the internet...
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That doesn't surprise me at all, but this is coming from a guy who has seen so much insane stuff with modified Doom engines (including putting Quake's models into ZDoom or hell, just the amount of OpenGL they shoved into the Doom engine over the past two decades) that I'm not surprised at anything like this. Especially since 3D models aren't tied into the engine.
 
Viridi said:
and the Simple Questions/Remarks thread still hasn't been replaced, even after over a year


There's a "Watch Thread" button at the top of the thread...
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...totally forgot about that.


Well, just because they're reusing models doesn't mean they aren't revising how they rendering them.
 
AFAIK, The gen 6 models have a massive amount of polygons because they're designed to be used with higher specs for later games in the series. I imagine that once gen 8 probably comes out on the 3DS successor, the models will be the same but still look noticeably better.

For example, here's a higher quality Noivern model that was shown at E3 3 years ago. Its possible gen 8 may look a bit like this!

0Ix9qwy.gif
 
I was wondering if there would be a new thread. I just figured it'd come when the game was released. Oh well, the old one was getting big and cluttered. Thanks for including the timeline and videos.

Regarding the new engine, as much as I would like to see improved models for some of the more awkward looking Pokemon, I'm not surprised it's not happening. There's over 700 pokemon, with more to come. Not to mention things like Pokemon-amie. At least the overworld looks better. I'm really excited about how much nicer this game will look. I know graphics aren't everything, but as someone who loves art and animation, I'm a sucker for pretty scenery. Alola looks gorgeous.
 
I've come to accept that they would reuse old resources because its the more logical approach. If you have something that works fine already, don't waste it. Despite that, I hoped that they would touch upon other certain models and improve their animations, even if the improvement was very slight. Seeing Salamence still have that floating animation just leaves a small bad taste in my mouth.

Its more of a nitpick than anything, but I can't help but feel that they were a TAD too lazy, especially for something that shouldn't take that long to fix.

Then again, they could be changing the animations that may well appear in the final product, but who knows.
 
The Heartless Dictator said:
I've come to accept that they would reuse old resources because its the more logical approach. If you have something that works fine already, don't waste it. Despite that, I hoped that they would touch upon other certain models and improve their animations, even if the improvement was very slight. Seeing Salamence still have that floating animation just leaves a small bad taste in my mouth.

Its more of a nitpick than anything, but I can't help but feel that they were a TAD too lazy, especially for something that shouldn't take that long to fix.

Then again, they could be changing the animations that may well appear in the final product, but who knows.
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The only model I really want fixed is Xatu. It just looks weird floating there, though I guess you can say the same about Skarmory (to be fair, I don't know how else they could've done it without making it look a bit weird). Salamence looks kinda funny floating there IMO, and I wouldn't mind them keeping it.

Theorymon said:
AFAIK, The gen 6 models have a massive amount of polygons because they're designed to be used with higher specs for later games in the series. I imagine that once gen 8 probably comes out on the 3DS successor, the models will be the same but still look noticeably better.

For example, here's a higher quality Noivern model that was shown at E3 3 years ago. Its possible gen 8 may look a bit like this!

0Ix9qwy.gif
Click to expand...
Huh, talk about TIL. I think Gen 8's graphics might look like a mix between the Wii U and the 3DS though.
 
Theorymon said:
AFAIK, The gen 6 models have a massive amount of polygons because they're designed to be used with higher specs for later games in the series. I imagine that once gen 8 probably comes out on the 3DS successor, the models will be the same but still look noticeably better.

For example, here's a higher quality Noivern model that was shown at E3 3 years ago. Its possible gen 8 may look a bit like this!

0Ix9qwy.gif
Click to expand...

I dunno, that looks just like the Gen VI model without the cel-shading.
 
Viridi said:
The only model I really want fixed is Xatu. It just looks weird floating there, though I guess you can say the same about Skarmory (to be fair, I don't know how else they could've done it without making it look a bit weird). Salamence looks kinda funny floating there IMO, and I wouldn't mind them keeping it.
Click to expand...

Whats really funny about Skarmory and Salamence is that they actually do have idle animations where they flap their wings (Skarmory I'll admit is a strange case, but I'm sure there could be a way to make it work). The fact they have those indicate that GF CAN make animations making them flap their wings, but for some reason they opted not to...

If they end up being the same, then alright.

I don't want to keep nagging on about stupid animations, so here's something for me to end it off with.

4541434.gif
 
Theorymon said:
AFAIK, The gen 6 models have a massive amount of polygons because they're designed to be used with higher specs for later games in the series. I imagine that once gen 8 probably comes out on the 3DS successor, the models will be the same but still look noticeably better.

For example, here's a higher quality Noivern model that was shown at E3 3 years ago. Its possible gen 8 may look a bit like this!

0Ix9qwy.gif
Click to expand...

Those graphics remind me of The Wind Waker (which I've never played.) and I love the style of that game. A Pokemon game in that style would be pretty awesome.
 
Based on some other people's theories, tomorrow could totally be a more gameplay/region focused update, considering how many Pokemon they've shown in the past 2 months in multiple announcements. They're obvious teasing the "super moves" from the last trailer, so if that's the biggest new feature of the gen, maybe tomorrow's the time. Some more Alola info would be nice too.

That being said, I wouldn't mind even more Pokemon reveals on the assumption/condition this game had as many Pokemon as gen 5. Then we could keep getting new reveals up until release and still have plenty of unannounced Pokemon to discover at launch.
 
I'm hoping for some information on gym leader's to end the whole "we get to make our own league" rumor. Removing gym leaders is such a huge departure from the classic formula, but I guess the games themselves should evolve too. I just don't think removing such a major component is the way to do it.
 
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