Poke Planner - A tool for planning in-game pokemon teams (WIP)

[Frostbiyt]

Background/motivation (I decided to give some context for this project, but it ended up being kinda long, so I put it in a spoiler so you can skip it and get to the actual content of the post):

Backstory

So I recently graduated from college with A BS in Computer Science and no job lined up for after graduation. With my new found free time, I decided to play through a pokemon game (Leaf Green). Playing through a pokemon game soon turned into playing through several pokemon games (the job market is terrible right now).

When playing a main series game, I like to plan my team out ahead of time, or at least quite early on, including their final movesets and held item for the elite 4. So I often found myself with several tabs open on my phone: Showdown to build my team, Marriland to check my team's defensive properties, PokemonDB's type coverage calculator to decide on movesets, Smogon dex so I could see what each mon was good at during this generation, and of course, Bulbapedia, for everything else.

Bulbapedia is a fantastic resource, probably the best, but its user experience isn't great for my use case. Game information is spread across a multitude of pages, with tons of extraneous detail I have scroll through to find information for my specific game, then often you have to follow another link because it's info from a previous gen, and it's not a particularly fast site. Here's something that actually happened while playing through Platinum:

• Recieve an egg from Cynthia, check the page for Eterna City to see that it's a Togepi, decide to use it on my team
• Check the Togetic page to see how it evolves, see it needs the Shiny stone
• Go to the Shiny stone page, scroll way down to the acquisition table and locate the Pt section, note that it can be found on Iron Island and route 210
• Find those locations on the map, then continue playing until I make it to one of them
• Make it to route 210, finally, time to get my stone
• Oh right, the Psyduck. Go to the route 210 page and see that the Shiny stone is in the foggy section, north of the Psyduck, so I'll need the Secret Medicine and Defog
• Continue playing until I get these and can return to route 210
• Explore the route, fight all the trainers, pick up all the items, and make it to Celestia town
• No Shiny stone
• Go back to the page, double check its location: requires rock climb
• Go to the rock climb page, then the HM08 page, then the route 217 page to see that I get it right before Snowpoint
• Continue playing, make it to Iron Island and pick it up there instead

Ideally, there would be a resource that would just say something like:
Togetic - Obtained from evolving Togetic with a Shiny Stone
Shiny Stone - Obtained earliest from Iron Island after [Story beat], then Route 210 after obtaining Rock Climb, then Route 228 after the Elite 4

Trying to plan out movesets was a similar story. Just because it's available in Smogon's team builder, does not mean it's practically available in-game, before the Elite 4, so it required lots of back and forth through wiki pages and the team builder. Then what if I want to give earthquake two multiple Pokémon, but there's only 1 TM available, then I have to check for alternatives. It's a pain.

I thought, there must be an online tool that I could just input my team and it figures out where I can obtain them and if their sets are valid for a given point in the game (like before the elite 4), but I wasn't able to find one. What a shame, I guess I'll be stuck with Bulbapedia forever... Oh wait, I have a Computer Science degree, I could make this tool (excellent foreshadowing).

The purpose of this tool is to be an all-in-one team planner for a pokemon game playthrough, with its distinguishing feature being it's ability to tell you, in a centralized location, how to obtain each pokemon on your team, their moves, and their items, and help solve any conflicts (like if you want two earthquake users, but only have access to one TM). Its full list of planned features are:

Planned Features

• Team builder with Pokemon, Ability, Item, and Moves
• Base stat info
• IV calculator
• Individual weaknesses/resistances
• Offensive coverage calculator
• Pokemon, item, and move acquisition information
• Alternate move suggestions
• Team offensive and defensive type coverage
• Damage calculator (maybe), possibly with NPC teams preloaded
• Game maps, with item and trainer locations included

This tool is still in its early stages, so it's not yet ready to use, I'm coming here for some early feedback on its features (and not the development forum, since I'm looking for feedback on features, not code, bug reports, etc). I'm currently focusing on Gen I, since they're the simplest, and intend on making that feature-complete before moving on to later games (at least the team builder, the calc and maps are a stretch goal).

Do you think you'd use something like this? Do you think it should have any features I haven't mentioned? Does this already exist and I'm just bad at googling? Can you hire me pls, I can code.

I'm currently working on features rather than visuals, so it still needs some polish. Here's a couple pictures of it so far:

 

[Sixfortyfive]

When I'm planning for long-term team-building in the quest, my main priorities are things like:

- What available Pokemon can make use of HMs at the point in which they're required, particularly good enough use to justify as an actual in-battle move slot and not just a utility field move? As in: I'd want to put Strength on something with enough physical oomph to actually lean on it in battle.
- Same as above, but for other non-HM field moves (Dig, etc).
- Type advantages over major bosses as they come up. If the water gym is early then I either want a grass/electric type or a good candidate for a Thunderbolt TM on my team by then.

So if I was to use a team builder program built for this kind of stuff, that's what I'd be interested in looking up. "What are my options for types/TMs/etc before badge #4?" "What are my attacking options for STAB before level 20?" and such.

I do not think I'd have much use for an IV calculator because that's getting into weeds that aren't terribly relevant for me in a noncompetitive setting.

 

[Frostbiyt]

When I'm planning for long-term team-building in the quest, my main priorities are things like:

- What available Pokemon can make use of HMs at the point in which they're required, particularly good enough use to justify as an actual in-battle move slot and not just a utility field move? As in: I'd want to put Strength on something with enough physical oomph to actually lean on it in battle.
- Same as above, but for other non-HM field moves (Dig, etc).
- Type advantages over major bosses as they come up. If the water gym is early then I either want a grass/electric type or a good candidate for a Thunderbolt TM on my team by then.

So if I was to use a team builder program built for this kind of stuff, that's what I'd be interested in looking up. "What are my options for types/TMs/etc before badge #4?" "What are my attacking options for STAB before level 20?" and such.

I do not think I'd have much use for an IV calculator because that's getting into weeds that aren't terribly relevant for me in a noncompetitive setting.

All excellent suggestions, thanks! And I agree on the IV's too, but I needed something else to go on the stats page, and I figured some people would find it useful.

Anyways, here's another screenshot. I think I'm going to make images for the totals of weaknesses and resistances, like I did for the 2x, 1/2x, etc. icons, but for now they're just plain numbers.