Pokemon Sword 2018 Beta Leaked....???

[pokemon4eva]

We know about the poor state of the GS and DP betas just months before release, with some amount of cut content, so not like troubled production is something new to GF. And according to Masuda, the production for gen 3 was so bad for him, that he had to be hospitalized.

You know, you are right, but I still want to at some point see a world where they all exist and the shitshow it causes

So, Yugioh nowadays?

 

[Kurona]

I think my favourite part of all this is "train survice"

 

[Magcargo]

Beta wild battle music:

Hide

 

[Yung Dramps]

Beta wild battle music:

Hide

Doesn't sound that much different than the final version. I think there might be some different background instrumentation at points but it's hard to tell

 

[ttr]

I'm actually surprised with a lot of what was shown, from what was shown on the stream / pictures on twitter, it seems like a lot of the early game was layed out either with textures / waiting for them. Gloria's model also appears to be the final design, indicating that there may be more finished not shown / not found / not in this build. Overall, for a version of development 20 months before the game was released, it feels like it is a version 20 months out. I don't think there is much signs of development / productions issues that could be gained from what we have seen yet. This build is so far out from release and does not include many Pokémon (including new ones), but I am intrigued as to what may be discovered yet.

Some other thoughts:

• The title screen screams to me like a dev placed their favorite Pokémon in to showcase the lineup that you see post-Leon
  Video of Final Game's Title Screen

  alternative view with flipped angle starts at 1:06
  Most of the Pokémon are in their neutral pose, with Pikachu in the middle standing where the trainer would be. I would think it would be a mockup of what the title screen would look like afterwards, but also to fill in and have a title screen. The logo seems to be closer to a final design to me though, I wonder if there was a conscious design change or if it always was designed to be a place holder.

• The LGPE references / data make sense, as it seems like the logical foundation to build the game off of, with the Alola features added back in (like the Rotom dex/minimap). But, after coming back to the title screen:
  Development Title Screen

  https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1319030583503278086
  It says "Press Start," not the A button like in the final game or LGPE, but the same as US/UM! It may be a holdover from USUM, and instead of building Sw/Sh off of LGPE, it was built off of US/UM and LGPE menus / features were added in. Those two games may have had a parallel development cycle, since Pokémon Camp uses LGPE backgrounds in the version shown. I figure that once more that was leaked today is examined more then a bit more of the development history can be determined clearer.
  • Edit: the other leak today first thought to be LGPE is apparently a older version of Sw/Sh, so I'm crossing out my ideas here, but still the "Press Start" on the title screen interests me. Time to wait and see!

• Dynamax as shown here:
  here:

  https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1319060444351500294
  appears to be still in development, with all trainer Pokémon having red bars above their HP similar to the shields and the attack covering one person. I wonder if Dynamax was meant to be used by all Pokémon in the max raid battles, seeing as all of them have the bars. Either way, the presence of the bars (even in a 1v1 battle) does signal to me that Dynamax was still in flux with how it would be implemented.
  • Note: Articuno's sprite used in the battle are from LGPE, probably will be its sprite once Crown Tundra gets released.

 

[Yung Dramps]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1319092777993502720

Notice what looks like a giant Pokemon at the route 7 bridge. Could be a first definitive indicator of something cut for time constraints, i.e. an actual fight with a gmax Pokemon instead of Leon just saying he happened to fight one

 

[R_N]

I know the focus is on the mysterious giant pokemon (I wonder if those are just place holder models rather than explicit proto versions of pokemon) but I'm pulling out the eyesemoji at avalugg likely having a middle stage scrapped

I've always wondered if they'd let slip a scrapped pokemon through their codenaming scheme, so its interesting to see one linger to today.

 

[ttr]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1319105921050660864

welp, the supposed LGPE leak is just an earlier version of Sw/Sh from '17, so we have even more!

 

[Plague von Karma]

For the record, a lot of the stuff on these files appears to put this in the same pile as the other Pokemon leaks for the past 2 years. So the hacked assets from the iQue server, which handles a lot of Nintendo's Chinese dealings. In which case, this development build is likely from 2018, and was kept by the guy who was arrested for hacking Microsoft and Nintendo at one point. There is a news article here, and minor acknowledgement here. The leaks led to Glitch City Laboratories shutting down, due to the way they researched games being compromised with the release of so much source code. In addition, the two main individuals involved with the hack were previously notable members of the website. Helix Chamber attempted to remove references to developer emails and such with these leaks, but bad actors released them early without these precautions taken. It's partly why I haven't covered this stuff much on my blog, it's kind of...a morally grey area.

Now looking at the image posted earlier, it's easy enough to list what was there and what isn't since it uses the Dex numbers. Some of these names are romanized Japanese names, others codenames used for a long time. However, once you get to Gen 6, the numbers become a bit iffy, and appear to use Index Numbers...order of creation. However, you can just view the demo to deduce most of it.

• Charizard x2, doesn't seem like one is Charmeleon
• Blastoise
• Beedrill
• Pidgeot
• Ekans
• Arbok
• Pidgeot
• Pikachu
• Magnemite
• Marowak
• Aerodactyl
• Vanilluxe
• Joltik
• Furfrou
• Greninja
• Tyrunt
• Aurorus
• Avalugg

854 and 855 I'm not sure about as I don't remember seeing anything later. It's the dex number of Sinistea and Polteageist, but I'm pretty sure this is the index number of a Pokemon designed in Gen 6 or 7 that was made pretty late in the design process. They usually make a bunch of designs and cut them, but keep the index numbers until much later. I'm probably missing something.

Anyway, sorry if any of this has been posted before.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Sorry for the double post, but I haven't seen the placeholder Y-Com icons get posted yet! Clefable's looks hilarious.

 

[doipy hooves]

I don't know if it's from the same source, but if true I respect knowing about Pokemon Sword years in advance and giving mercy to gamefreak.

Helix Chamber attempted to remove references to developer emails and such with these leaks, but bad actors released them early without these precautions taken.

Going off topic but this really misrepresents what was actually going down. All Helix Chamber had in terms of leaks was the (2018-2019) mediated zip file of Gen 1 assets from Ganix (that they made a hoax out of for some reason), not the full source. Helix Chamber didn't have anything to clean up or release early; they had already shown their hand, and their content kind of dwindled from there to be honest.

I recall that the dev emails/bug reports were part of the Gen 1 and 2 source leaks (pokemon pink), which were posted on 4chan standalone in 2020. But Helix Chamber really had nothing to do with anything at that point.

 

[Plague von Karma]

I recall that the dev emails/bug reports were part of the Gen 1 and 2 source leaks (pokemon pink), which were posted on 4chan standalone in 2020. But Helix Chamber really had nothing to do with anything at that point.

The correction is appreciated, but as far as I know, this detail is wrong. RacieBeep had gone on about the fact that Helix Chamber intended to clean the Gen 2 Debug Leak at one point. It was released early by a bad actor. This is why the prototype community on 4Chan was calling Helix Chamber hoarders in the first place.

 

[Goatee McGee]

For the record, a lot of the stuff on these files appears to put this in the same pile as the other Pokemon leaks for the past 2 years. So the hacked assets from the iQue server, which handles a lot of Nintendo's Chinese dealings. In which case, this development build is likely from 2018, and was kept by the guy who was arrested for hacking Microsoft and Nintendo at one point. There is a news article here, and minor acknowledgement here. The leaks led to Glitch City Laboratories shutting down, due to the way they researched games being compromised with the release of so much source code. In addition, the two main individuals involved with the hack were previously notable members of the website. Helix Chamber attempted to remove references to developer emails and such with these leaks, but bad actors released them early without these precautions taken. It's partly why I haven't covered this stuff much on my blog, it's kind of...a morally grey area.

Now looking at the image posted earlier, it's easy enough to list what was there and what isn't since it uses the Dex numbers. Some of these names are romanized Japanese names, others codenames used for a long time. However, once you get to Gen 6, the numbers become a bit iffy, and appear to use Index Numbers...order of creation. However, you can just view the demo to deduce most of it.
View attachment 283635

• Charizard x2, doesn't seem like one is Charmeleon
• Blastoise
• Beedrill
• Pidgeot
• Ekans
• Arbok
• Pidgeot
• Pikachu
• Magnemite
• Marowak
• Aerodactyl
• Vanilluxe
• Joltik
• Furfrou
• Greninja
• Tyrunt
• Aurorus
• Avalugg

854 and 855 I'm not sure about as I don't remember seeing anything later. It's the dex number of Sinistea and Polteageist, but I'm pretty sure this is the index number of a Pokemon designed in Gen 6 or 7 that was made pretty late in the design process. They usually make a bunch of designs and cut them, but keep the index numbers until much later. I'm probably missing something.

Anyway, sorry if any of this has been posted before.

855 is Stakataka. The name is literally beast ishigaki, with ishigaki being Stone Wall.

854 is Bruxish. The name Kawahagi literally means Thread Snail Filefish. At first, I thought it was Goodra because of the name, but seeing the actual fish makes me doubt that's the case.

 

[Magcargo]

Don't have any footage, but apparently the 3ds model animations, cries, etc. all got screwed up in the porting process to the beta.

For 3D Modelers / game devs out there, how difficult is the 3d model porting process in general? Is it as simple as running a script that makes changes to each model or is it a lot more complicated? Could the distorted audio of the cries also be fixed?

 

[P3DS]

Some things I noticed, and have seen about

• It only has 20 pokemon in the beta
• This was likely their halfway mark on full development (according to most sources, they started full development in september 2017 and this is March 2018). We can see how far through they actually were.
• We can see how rough it is with older models, with missing textures and bad lighting. And we do know they had issues with transferring the alola models, meaning they had to create the new ones (this was likely from a catalogue of higher quality models optimizer for their need. See the Pokémon TCG adverts for what I mean)
• We were supposed to have rotom dex back? Interesting. The minimap would have been a nice idea, except that, in handheld mode, it would be barely visible... I see why it was cut.
• While full camera movement was available in the beta, it was likely the camera just wasn't locked. Common for dev builds.

 

[Rapti]

This beta fully confirms that Gamefreak wasn't lying about having issues with the models for all Pokemon. Going into this game they clearly had all Pokemon and megas in mind but looks like porting over caused issues as was theorized by some. It must have been unfixable in time for release so they had to cut a bunch of mons and salvage what they had and then redistribute them across HOME, IoA, and CT.

The sad part about this is that:

-If they had spend their time improving battle animations instead of wasting time on camp animations (be honest how much time have you actually spent on pokemon camp?) far less people would have accused them of lying

and

-Nobody would have noticed if they had only delayed Home; we had to wait a year between a game's release and Bank anyway, let's say it takes two years to release Home, say is because of the jump between the 3Ds and the Switch, there'd been some grumbles sure but it'd would have been nothing compared to what did happen

 

[Worldie]

The sad part about this is that:

-If they had spend their time improving battle animations instead of wasting time on camp animations (be honest how much time have you actually spent on pokemon camp?) far less people would have accused them of lying

you severely underestimate the importance of a feature like Camp when it comes to the main audience (japanese kids).

It's one of their biggest selling points.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

you severely underestimate the importance of a feature like Camp when it comes to the main audience (japanese kids).

It's one of their biggest selling points.

Or just kids in general. If Emerald had something like that you fucking know I would have used it a ton.

 

[Rapti]

you severely underestimate the importance of a feature like Camp when it comes to the main audience (japanese kids).

It's one of their biggest selling points.

Or just kids in general. If Emerald had something like that you fucking know I would have used it a ton.

I seen this claim before from Worldie and I yet to see any evidence of it, like seriously, I spent time around children, teacher and parenting sites and japanese blogs and news sites and, if anything, all I found out is that kids mainly engage the franchise for the cartoon not the games

yes even in Asia


anyways I'm saddened that we only seen a placeholder for the male character when the female one was already finalized

don't make the male main characters secondary Gamefreak :<

 

[Codraroll]

Notice what looks like a giant Pokemon at the route 7 bridge. Could be a first definitive indicator of something cut for time constraints, i.e. an actual fight with a gmax Pokemon instead of Leon just saying he happened to fight one

It's just so ...baffling ... to see they had a good idea for what to do with this scene (if only for a cutscene) yet couldn't finalize it. I wonder what circumstances led them to go for the "tell, don't show" approach? That there is a pretty spectacular scene with rampaging Dynamax 'mons, the bridge makes a nice setpiece showing the epic scale of the Pokémon, and the looming form of Toxtricity over the bridge would be a good callback to the hillside carving in Turffield. They had a very climactic and epic moment all lined up. What went wrong here? Lack of time? If so, why the heck wasn't such a central plot moment given adequate priority?

And if it wasn't possible to feature rampaging Dynamax Pokémon on screen somehow, why keep it in the game at all? I'd say it's worse to have it as an offscreen moment than not mentioning it at all. Rampaging Dynamax Pokémon don't appear elsewhere in the plot, so it could have been removed without affecting anything.

I know the focus is on the mysterious giant pokemon (I wonder if those are just place holder models rather than explicit proto versions of pokemon) but I'm pulling out the eyesemoji at avalugg likely having a middle stage scrapped

This one?

We had another three-stage Ice-type. One so sorely needed, seeing how Ice at the time had half as many three-stage 'mons as the next rarest type on the list, yet reduced to a two-stage. I mourn the loss of the middle brother between Bergmite and Avalugg. It could have been amaz-... uh, adeq- ... uh, something. It could have been something.

 

[Rapti]

They had a very climactic and epic moment all lined up. What went wrong here? Lack of time? If so, why the heck wasn't such a central plot moment given adequate priority?

And if it wasn't possible to feature rampaging Dynamax Pokémon on screen somehow, why keep it in the game at all? I'd say it's worse to have it as an offscreen moment than not mentioning it at all. Rampaging Dynamax Pokémon don't appear elsewhere in the plot, so it could have been removed without affecting anything.

It was definetly lack of time

also, why didn't they show it with still images ala Rose speech with Leon? it really makes you think Nintendo having them move to one of their buildings is them tightening their leash

 

[Codraroll]

It was definetly lack of time

also, why didn't they show it with still images ala Rose speech with Leon? it really makes you think Nintendo having them move to one of their buldings is tightening their leash

Yeah, it really builds credibility to my theory that the game producer did a poor job. It was their call to make, either "This is so essential, we must allocate the right resources to make it happen" or "We have no way to make this happen before the deadline, we'll axe the entire scene and write around it". Instead they went with "We'll pretend the scene was there, only that the player didn't arrive in time to see it."

I mean, a lack of time is definitely an issue, but it's an issue you can plan around. Probably the first thing to be finalized in SwSh's development was the approximate release date. "Q4 2019" was presumably pinned on the calendar before they even knew what console they would be developing for. The deadline was always there, and it's the producer's job to ensure that a game was out by that deadline. If they found out a week before deadline they would need another two weeks to get the Rampaging Dynamax Pokémon scene finished, the production was poorly planned. If the required time was known in advance but not allocated, they didn't have their priorities in order. If it was de-prioritized but not cut entirely, it suggests poor planning again.

 

[AtlasFlame18]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1319140324724428802

Prototype Max Raid Battles

 

[R_N]

This is more a pet peeve but I wouldn't really call SWSH buckling under time constraints being a sign of Nintendo needing to "Tighten the leash"

This isn't wild out of control developers spending way too much money on something going way past its deadlines, I see this is a company that saw the deadlines and reigned themselves in to try & get what they could with the time & Experience they had.

We can definitely tell that those 2 things were probably the big big thing, but we do not have the full context (what was the full production plan? Were there issues in other parts of the game taht needed those developers? did the scene have trouble running? Were they prioritizing other parts of the game? How much other company stuff was going on?) needed to know why they made the cutting decisions they did and how they did them. It's probably more complicated than moron producer being incompetent and hell they probably had some discussions with Nintendo anyway about the state of the game.

Especially when Nintendo's leash is pretty loose with itself anyway.

Which is to say that if it actually means anything (and lmao at this happening during covid anyway) it's probably about more easily providing support as needed.

 

[pokemon4eva]

I seen this claim before from Worldie and I yet to see any evidence of it, like seriously, I spent time around children, teacher and parenting sites and japanese blogs and news sites and, if anything, all I found out is that kids mainly engage the franchise for the cartoon not the games

yes even in Asia

How weird. I thought that the ratings for the anime in Japan have been on a downward spiral since Best Wishes-XY, so I'm not sure if it really influenced that much on game sales. I heard SM was popular enough in Japan to rise it up again, though.