Part 4 - Amelioration Patterns
5 month(s), 28 day(s), 8 hour(s), 41 minute(s), 22 second(s) to deadline
Not long after the fateful conference in which it was decided to scrap the existing campaign plans of Capsule Monsters AGB, Keita and his roommates found themselves far removed from their hotel room for trips out into the field about Hoenn in search of inspiration. Their journey that day had taken their assigned group to a barren waste of sand hemmed in by mountains north of Mauville City. In the distance, a Trapinch could be seen pawing at the ground outside a sand pit, seemingly attempting to doodle something into the earth with its feet.
The desert had some charm with its rolling dunes and ever present glimpses of phantom water just beyond the horizon. But then there was the blistering heat, and the sun beating down on the team and their Pokémon as they stared wearily at rolling dunes ahead of them.
"How on earth did you ever get us into this, Keita?" Satoshi asked while wiping away some sweat from his blueish hairline.
Keita gave a sheepish look back at his coworker, with a quick glance over at Bracket and Paren evidencing that even his own Pokémon were visibly unamused with the current day trip. Sensing that the party as a whole was a bit agitated with their current field work, the programmer spoke up and attempted to check his companions' less-than-welcome reception.
"Well, hey, it's one way to get out of the hotel room, isn't it?"
"Do keep in mind that there is a practical purpose to this. This is field work for getting ideas for the game," the Director reminded. The Director's Wynaut was quick to mimic his trainer's feelings by sternly pointing at Keita and giving what the programmer presumed was a withering scowl just like the one his blond-haired superior was giving him.
Satoshi's Azurill began to tug impatiently at her partner's pant leg. The graphics artist stooped down and attempted to soothe her with water from a plastic bottle, only to find it bereft of all but a few drops.
"Well, what is there to take away from this aside from deserts being terrible to stay hydrated in?" he said in exasperation as Keita began to climb a dune in front of the group.
"The brochure mentioned that there was supposed to be a ruin of an ancient tower somewhere along the route that runs through here," the programmer explained, before raising a hand to his brow. Bracket and Paren traded puzzled looks with one another as they tried to follow their trainer's gaze, only to find nothing but a mound of rocks and a Sandshrew burrowing underneath it.
"If we can find it, maybe we can take inspiration from that-"
As Keita neared the top of the dune, he had the misfortune of having a clod of sand from the ridge thrown into his face by a strong gust. The programmer recoiled, jerking back and cradling his eyes as he attempted to spit sand out of his mouth.
"Ackpth! Okay, so that's why they were selling those goofy-looking goggles back at the rest area!"
As Keita's Tropius and Corphish rushed to his aid, Bracket took a perhaps ill-advised attempt to wash out the sand from his trainer's eyes with a Water Gun. As Keita flailed and protested, the Director glanced at the unfolding chaos, thoughts stirring in his mind.
"Hmm… the sand and wind acting as a barrier…" the Director mused. "We do need some ways to keep players from wandering into parts of the world they're underleveled for. I think something like this might be just up our alley…"
5 month(s), 21 day(s), 4 hour(s), 45 minute(s), 13 second(s) to deadline
A few days later, Keita and his roommates found themselves and their charges walking down a route encrusted in a never-ending rain of light-gray volcanic soot. In somewhat grayed foliage, Spinda with perpetually dazed expressions moved to and fro erratically around their surroundings.
"So… this is where all the ash for those glass-blown flutes comes from…"
Keita had read of this place on yet another travel brochure, but seeing it in person was all the more mesmerizing. The Pokémon with them seemed to likewise find the novelty of the gray land around them entrancing: spending time lazing about drawing patterns in the soot as they traded playful calls with each other.
"It's like a snowy landscape…" Keita mused. "Except it's hot and muggy and much worse for your lungs."
The Director raised a hand to his chin and looked about, and noticed that the Pokémon playing around them were starting to take on shades of the surrounding soot as it clung to their bodies.
"I notice that the ash tends to stick to you as you move through it…"
"Er, well of course," Satoshi explained. "It's how people around here gather the soot in the first place. They carry around a bag and let nature do the hard work."
The Director said nothing in reply at first, before quietly murmuring to himself in realization. They did need some places in their new games' world to show off the power of the new hardware they were developing for. And this strange route, with an almost monochrome appearance that seemed like something straight out of one of the first Capsule Monsters games, could be just what they needed to inspire such content.
"Hmm… we do need a few routes in the setting that are more than just normal tall grass and patches of water. Let's keep something like this place here in mind…"
5 month(s), 15 day(s), 15 hour(s), 6 minute(s), 40 second(s) to deadline
A few days afterwards, Keita and his roommates found themselves in an island town of whitewashed buildings that overlooked a caldera lake at its center. Given the plethora of eateries and souvenir shops, the town appeared to be a popular haunt for tourists, but they all were strangely empty that day.
The reason for the seeming incongruity was quickly discovered after Keita and his roommates found a young child from the area, who told a tale of a particularly stormy night just a couple months before the start of their project that had abruptly upended that year's tourist season.
"And the sky was dark and thundering, and the earth was shaking- And there were these red and blue Pokémon that were all 'Rawr, I'm gonna eat you!' and 'Bump wiggle wiggle' with each other!" he exclaimed. "And then this green sky gecko showed up and the two got bored and left."
Keita and Satoshi traded blank stares with each other after hearing the child. Even the Pokémon with them seemed to feel as if perhaps the explanation the child offered was a bit… incomplete, and not quite telling the full, likely far more worrisome story.
"I'm starting to understand why that news coverage of the big storm last year seemed like it was missing something," Satoshi murmured.
"No kidding," Keita replied.
Meanwhile, the Director seemed to be rather enthralled with the child's story. "'Bump wiggle wiggle,' eh?" he mused aloud to himself, "Very interesting… and I think we have our new plot climax…"
4 month(s), 20 day(s), 5 hour(s), 43 minute(s), 0 second(s) to deadline
After roughly a month, Keita and the others on the development team completed their last-minute inspiration gathering and returned to the thick of virtual battle with the different builds of their project.
The game was at long last beginning to resemble something more than a handful of test results from a compiler, and it was finally robust enough to host a battle between Keita and Satoshi. The pair squared away with two devkits linked by a data cable for the occasion at the former's workstation, both the graphics artist and the programmer selecting monsters for their match through a debug menu that the two had grown increasingly acquainted with.
At that time, the build was sorely lacking in presentation, with all of the sprites other than those for the menu and its icons still filled with placeholder sprites. Still, that did little to dampen Satoshi's smug self-confidence as he moved his selector icon twice to the right over along a 2-line list of attacks and made a final, decisive move.
"And another victim goes down to Champion Satoshi!" the artist crowed.
Satoshi's Azurill happily cheered him on, while Bracket seemed adamant on protesting his trainer's loss. Paren gave an unimpressed glance up at her trainer, before quizzically tilting her head and trying to examine the machines in the hands of the programmer and graphics artist. The young Tropius finding herself as at a loss over just what the two other Pokémon and their trainers had gotten so worked up about.
"Yeah, yeah," Keita grumbled. "When are you ever going to hurry up and implement character sprites instead of these floating question marks?"
"You can't rush art or battle prowess, young grasshopper," the graphics artist tut-tutted in reply.
It was then that the Director, attracted by the racket the two and their audience were making, came in and after a little chin-scratching, turned his attention over towards the still-jubilant graphics artist.
"That's the tenth time that you've been able to defeat him with more than half a team left, Satoshi," he remarked. "Just what is the team that you've been using against him?"
"Ah, just something thrown together with later-game monsters," Satoshi replied, giving a beaming grin back. "That new six-move limit really opens up a lot of possibilities. Why, my team lead has four offensive moves, a recovery move, and a status move!"
"The thing's a blasted juggernaut. I honestly don't know how anyone's supposed to counter it with that sort of type coverage and recovery abilities," Keita harrumphed.
The Director quirked his brow at the programmer's sour expression, as paused and mulled to himself for a moment about Satoshi's string of good fortune.
"Hmm… what would happen if we cut things down to the original system of four moves each again?" the Director asked. "Could you two quickly reset the match so that the last two moves of each monster have no Power Points?"
4 month(s), 20 day(s), 5 hour(s), 32 minute(s), 12 second(s) to deadline
Once the Director's limitations were imposed and the pair progressed through the debug menu, Keita and Satoshi found themselves in virtual battle once again. This time however, fortune had turned against the graphics artist, and Keita was pleasantly surprised to find that luck had for once smiled upon him.
"Ha! Knew that things would finally turn around!"
Keita's glee rubbed off onto his Pokémon, as Bracket and Paren eagerly cheered on their trainer for his success with the mysterious handheld object. The programmer's victory came at the expense of Satoshi's visible dismay, who was still staring down blankly at his own devkit.
"Agh… that one wasn't even close."
While his two subordinates bantered with each other over the outcome of the test battle, the Director rubbed at his chin and mused to himself. If expanding the games' movepool in a casual match could cause such a radical difference in outcome, it couldn't help but make him think that…
"Hrm… maybe it is a little unbalancing to be adding more moves to monsters."
3 month(s), 30 day(s), 11 hour(s), 48 minute(s), 5 second(s) to deadline
Two months after the team's field work completed and the project was rebooted, the dev team's work was finally starting to resemble a game. During a bout of free time, Keita found himself glancing out the window while Bracket and Paren watched a young trainer on the sidewalk below toss small, colorful blocks from a dispenser to a Zigzagoon. The programmer tapped his foot impatiently, seemingly waiting on something, before shuffling over to check up on Satoshi at his workstation where he was poring over his monitor where a pair of dolls depicting black cat-like creatures with bells on them, monsters from the last set of Capsule Monsters games, sat on top.
"Eh? You're still working on those sprites?"
"That's right, I just finished up the base form of one of the starters."
The programmer looked at the screen, and paused with a small frown. On it was a creature that looked vaguely like a Torchic with what looked like a set of prominent head wings. Keita looked on as Bracket and Paren eyed the screen curiously, before giving a puzzled frown at his coworker.
"Eh? That's certainly different," the green-haired man said. "Isn't this supposed to be the starter that turns into that 'Latiiken' thing?"
"Not anymore it's not," Satoshi explained. "I got a memo stating that the line didn't seem to mesh well with the other two, so… we kinda binned everything and started from scratch."
"Hrm, a bit of a shame. I kinda liked those overgrown birds," Keita mused while looking over the screen. In another tab, he spotted a glimpse of another monster that appeared to be a creature like a Treecko with a banded stomach and bladed leaves like a Grovyle, a sign that perhaps their field work a few weeks ago had given these new Capsule Monsters games more of a Hoenn theming than he'd initially expected. Satoshi returned to playing with color values in his editing program, only to catch himself and look back at Keita puzzledly after he realized his younger coworker had been idle and away from his work for an uncharacteristically long time.
"Wait, so what are you doing right now?" the graphics artist asked.
"Oh, just waiting on a prank that I prepared for the sound team," Keita explained. "Some joker there tricked me into running a script with a hidden recursive delete command and made me wipe out a night's worth of work, so I figured I'd repay the favor."
Satoshi shot back an unimpressed frown back at his younger counterpart, and turned in his seat to face him.
"You should consider yourself fortunate the Director's out at the moment," the blue-haired man sighed. "And just what does your prank entail anyways?"
Just then, the abrupt sound of a cacophony of MIDI instruments could be heard blaring from the room next door, all tuned to a singular, distinctive instrument. Much to the displeasure of some voices from the neighboring room, which included the cries of displeased Pokémon and their similarly displeased trainers.
"Hey! This is supposed to be a test of the entire soundfont! Play one of the other instruments already!"
"That's what I've been doing!" another voice cried, "Everything's playing brass!"
Just as the graphics artist and the other Pokémon in the room turned towards the programmer and began to piece together just what he had been waiting on, Keita gave a contented smile and chuckled as he explained himself.
"Just gave them a little help editing their soundfont," Keita explained. "I was just waiting to hear their reactions to having some more trumpets in their lives."