Emerald 3DS v0.5.0

This download does not contain the game. Download Emerald3DS-v0.5.0-Windows.zip below and follow the installation and update guide. You need your own dump of Pokémon Emerald (USA, Europe), Pokémon Esmeralda (Spain), Pokémon Émeraude (France), Pokémon Versione Smeraldo (Italy), Pokémon Smaragd-Edition (Germany) or Pocket Monsters Emerald (Japan); the Brazilian Portuguese game is made from the English ROM. Updating from 0.4.x keeps your save; this release changes the game data, so generate the pack again with the new builder (Windows ZIP below) or with the web builder at emerald-3ds.com, which needs no download. A Quick Update of the executable alone is not enough this time.

v0.5.0

The first beta. Emerald 3DS leaves the alpha: most of Hoenn now stands in 3D, inside and out, the touch screen is redesigned from top to bottom and the game speaks three more languages. Thank you to everyone who built it with us.

Highlights

• Most of Hoenn in voxel, inside too.
  Nearly every interior is in 3D now: Lilycove's contest hall, Department Store and museum, the Pokémon League, the Battle Frontier's lobbies and battle rooms, the Trick House, the S.S. Tidal, the Abandoned Ship, the Sky Pillar, the Aqua and Magma Hideouts, the shops, houses and stations along the routes, and many more. Every gym is modelled in 3D, with Mauville's beams switching and Petalburg's doors sliding open, though the gyms still have faults to fix. Outside, Fortree's tree houses, Sootopolis and the Cave of Origin, the Battle Frontier and the Safari Zone are built, and the mountains round Lavaridge, Routes 111 to 114, 120, 121, Lilycove, Mossdeep and Routes 124 to 129 rise in terraces. It is all still under construction: there are still many faults, flat elements and other problems, which will be fixed in the coming versions, and every part of the 3D world keeps being improved (voxel status).
  Interiors by @Deunnis (PRs #120, #124, #125, #129, #132, #139, #143, #145, #155, #156, #159, #161, #163, #165, #167, #168, #170, #172, #173, #180, #184, #185, #188, #189, #191).

• A new bottom screen.
  A header with the place, Repel, the clock and RUN, a dock with every section (MAP, POKéDEX, POKéMON, BAG, POKéNAV, CARD, SAVE, OPTIONS) and the game's screens in a window. The party, summary, bag and Pokédex are drawn natively at the touch screen's resolution, in battle too, and a tap jumps straight to a section. The map zooms in and shows each place's details, and Fly picks its destination on the bottom screen's map. CLASSIC MENUS brings back the game's own screens.
  Map zoom and Fly based on @luksgrin's PR #108.

• Japanese, German and Brazilian Portuguese.
  Build the game from your own Pocket Monsters Emerald (Japan) or Pokémon Smaragd-Edition (Germany) ROM, or in Brazilian Portuguese from your English ROM (the builder asks for the language). Japanese and German are experimental.
  Japanese by @luksgrin (PRs #59, #200, #201); German by @DannyM90 (PR #175), with work by @andyst-dev (PR #96); Brazilian Portuguese by @carlosmozart (Carlos Mozart, AllGenWiki; PRs #60, #178).

• Nuzlocke tracker and randomizer.
  OPTIONS > MODES > NUZLOCKE keeps, by hand, each area's catch, your fallen Pokémon and the next level cap, without enforcing anything or touching the save. OPTIONS > MODES > RANDOMIZER shuffles wild Pokémon, starters and trainers' Pokémon by one reproducible seed. Both are off by default.
  By @jacobcorbett, PRs #112 and #113.

• Weather in the 3D world.
  Rain, sandstorm and volcanic ash fall in the scene at their own depth, hidden by roofs and fading into the distance, with each weather's light and the thunderstorm's lightning on the world. They cost the console almost nothing.

• A pack in seconds.
  The builders no longer run the voxel generators: the release carries them precompiled, so the 3D scenery takes seconds instead of minutes, with a byte-for-byte identical pack.

New options and features

• OPTIONS, reorganised: every option of the game, the port and the enhancements in one place on the bottom screen, sorted into five categories (GENERAL, WORLD, BATTLE, MODES and CHEATS), each with its groups as tabs: interface and system; 3D, field, helpers and clock; scene, rules and experience; Nuzlocke and randomizer; catching, perks, Pokédex and items.
• Battle speed: in a battle R speeds up and L slows down (1x to 4x), apart from the overworld's SPEED.
  By @maxxandres, PR #149.
• Double battle targets as plates: the four places of the battle with each Pokémon's icon, name, level and HP; tap one to aim.
  By @eathanpage (PR #176), made ready ahead by @maxxandres (PR #152).
• The Pokédex on the top screen: while it is open on the bottom screen, the top shows the device with the Pokémon over the terrain where it lives, in front of the screen in 3D.
  By @darkmattericecoffee, PR #69.
• A camera swoop between the voxel world and the 2D field instead of a cut.
  By @darkmattericecoffee, PR #121.
• Field information (off by default): the current area's wild Pokémon and their rates, Repel steps left, a notice when the clock had to fall back, and SYNC CLOCK to bring a fast clock back to real time without losing berry growth.
  By @jacobcorbett, PRs #109 and #115.
• Soft reset on L+R+START+SELECT, as in the 3DS games.
  By @eathanpage.
• The camera stops at the map's edge on the routes and towns where the wide screen used to show the border tiled beyond it.
• REAL-TIME PACING is on by default.

Improvements

• Random numbers are seeded from the console's timing at boot, soft reset and new game, instead of always from zero.
  By @jacobcorbett, PR #116.
• Voxel sprites and text: nearby wild Pokémon get their sprites first, the S.S. Tidal and the submarine are drawn whole, the text box stands in front of the scenery in 3D, and door animations are no longer lost after a warp.
  By @jacobcorbett, PRs #110 and #114.
• Safer installs: the builder stages the SD card install, backs up your save first and warns when the DSP firmware is missing; damaged files give clear errors.
  By @jacobcorbett, PRs #101, #102, #103 and #104.
• The builder names the game when you load another regional Gen 3 ROM by mistake.
  By @abrahammordev, PR #95.
• Voxel details: new trees, long grass, clouds on the water, fences post by post, animated water in step with the 2D tiles, shadows where the geometry casts them, no seam lines while walking, and maps whose script swaps their layout (Mirage Tower, Sky Pillar) drawn as the game has them.
• Game Corner backdrops: the slot machine and the roulette are centred, the slot machine in front of the casino's wall with coins and a frame of bulbs, the roulette on a green felt with Poké Balls and a gold cord.
• GBA screens: the OPTION screen is centred, the cave transition covers the whole screen, Fly's bird circles the player and single-picture move backgrounds fill the screen.
• Performance: the bottom screen redraws much faster, files and sprites are read ahead instead of in the frame, and the Old 3DS keeps its frame rate on the mountain routes and in 3D battles.
• The bottom screen's Pokédex shows an entry's whole description, in every language.
  By @carlosmozart, PR #178.

Fixes

• Juan's gym battle crashed the game when it ended.
  By @DannyM90, PR #182.
• The Japanese game crashed half a second after loading a save.
  By @luksgrin, PR #200.
• An HP bar at 1 HP looked empty; it shows a sliver, as on the GBA.
• In 3D battles on the console, the sandstorm turned the Pokémon into sand-filled silhouettes and Surf's wave drew a pale band over the other Pokémon.
• With visible wild Pokémon on MANY, nothing could be met while diving.
• In the voxel world, a map behind the player could drop out and show black while still on screen.
• With PHYS/SPEC SPLIT on, closing the summary could read freed memory.
• Taps on a list menu's odd entries did nothing.
• Choosing a target, or the second Pokémon's move, in a double battle dropped an Old 3DS's frame rate the first time.
• In Spanish, French, Italian, German and Japanese, "sharply rose!" and "harshly fell!" were in English.
  By @luksgrin, PR #201.

Licence

From this release on, Emerald 3DS's own code, tools and documentation are under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 instead of MIT: you can fork it, change it and share it, giving credit and keeping the same licence, but not to make money from it. Versions up to 0.4.x keep the MIT licence they were published under.

Building from source

• tools/bootstrap.py --make --german-rom, --japanese-rom and --port-lang pt_br build the German, Japanese and Portuguese games; build_release.py --portuguese adds Portuguese to a release.
• The voxel world is always compiled in (VOXEL=0 is gone); releases are made with one pinned Python and tools/docker_release.py makes one from scratch; the buildings generator is a third faster (by @DannyM90, PRs #195 and #197).

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release: @Deunnis, @jacobcorbett, @luksgrin, @DannyM90, @andyst-dev, @carlosmozart, @darkmattericecoffee, @eathanpage, @maxxandres and @abrahammordev. Follower sprites come from pret/pokeheartgold and their messages from Poké Corpus; the builder downloads them on your computer, they are not part of this release.

Full history in CHANGELOG.md. Checksums in SHA256SUMS.txt, attached below.

Unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures or The Pokémon Company.