mod.card

-- Sharing metadata (25-community-and-ecosystem.md 3.2).  Read by tooling
-- and the manager detail pane; never by the loader's merge.
return {
  summary = "The overworld as a 3D diorama, and battles fought on it: real occlusion, tilt-shift, over-the-shoulder fights.",
  author = "DramaticShape",
  contact = "https://github.com/DramaticShape/DRAMATIC_SHAPE",
  tags = { "graphics", "3d", "voxel", "render-pipeline", "presentation",
           "battle" },
  differences = {
    changed = {
      "with VOXEL on, the overworld draws as 3D geometry instead of flat tiles",
      "occlusion comes from a depth buffer rather than a y-sort, so buildings really hide what is behind them",
      "with 3D-BTL on 2D-3D A, a battle draws over the map's nearest clear ground instead of over a white field",
      "with 3D-BTL on a B rung, the fight is staged on two discs against the sky with no map drawn at all, which works on every map including the caves and shop floors that have nowhere to stage a fight",
      "with 3D-BTL on STADIUM A or STADIUM B, the same fight is staged with the Pokemon Stadium battle models in place of the flat pics -- 148 of the 151 species, skinned and animated, playing the animation the move being used actually calls for; Exeggutor, Tangela and Magmar have corrupt animation data at source and keep their battle sprites",
      "the battle's text box and menu are frosted glass over that ground rather than an opaque white slab, on the same panels the HUDs sit on",
      "the map's NPCs are culled for the length of a battle, so the wipe plays over an empty map",
      "a battle's letterbox voids go black rather than white, because the battle canvas is no longer white",
      "the engine's TILT and GBC FX rows are taken OFF the OPTIONS menu and held at off for as long as this mod is installed -- TILT is the flat fake of what this mode does for real, GBC FX is a full-screen pass over the top of it; uninstalling puts both rows back",
      "hotkeys 3 and 5 are taken over from those two, which have no key and no row while this is loaded",
      "SELECT in free roam steps the VOXEL ladder exactly as hotkey 3 does -- the button has no overworld job in Gen 1, and phones and pads have no number row; menus keep it untouched",
      "on the 1ST and 3RD rungs ONLY, the grid walk is replaced by free camera-relative movement: collision, warps, ledges, encounters and scripts still run through the engine's own machinery, and every other rung leaves movement untouched",
      "on the 1ST and 3RD rungs the mouse cursor is captured for free look; left click is A, right click is B, and any touch off the overlay's controls drags the view",
      "on the 3RD rung the character turns to face where they are walking rather than where the camera looks, so a strafe reads as one; standing still they come back round to the camera's bearing, which is the one A talks along",
      "on 1ST and 3RD the wall-collision sound is gone: a free walk slides along every wall it grazes rather than refusing a discrete step, so the bonk rang twice a second for walking down a corridor",
      "the BATTLE BG options row is taken OFF the menu and pinned to WHITE for as long as this mod is installed -- the mode fills the window with the map, so the row's own question (what to put in the voids around the battle) has no voids left to be about, and its WORLD setting drew a second dimmed copy of the overworld under the arena; uninstalling puts the row back",
      "a staged battle's camera can be steered by the player -- right stick, touch drag or mouse to swing it around the arena and raise it, wheel / Q / E / pinch / stick click for the lens -- between the shot the rig was solved for and a side-on view of the arena, and it opens the lens as it goes so both Pokemon stay framed; the angle and lens carry into the next battle",
      "with BACK SPRITES on the battle camera is held at the solved shot, because that setting pins your own Pokemon to the menu's slot while the foe stands on the map and no angle holds a half-framed, half-solid composition",
    },
    added = {
      "VOXEL options row and hotkey 3 (OFF / 15 / 35 / 50 / 75 degrees / 1ST / 3RD -- a first-person camera and a third-person one, both with free look and free movement)",
      "T-SHIFT options row and hotkey 6 (OFF / 1 / 2 / 3), the miniature blur",
      "V-GRID on hotkey 5 and V-CURVE on hotkey 7",
      "Q and E zoom whichever camera is in front of you -- the third-person boom, a staged battle's lens, or the engine's own survey zoom on an orbit rung -- alongside the mouse wheel, a two-finger pinch, and the pad's left and right stick clicks (out and in). 1ST claims none of them: the eye is in the player's head and there is no distance to change",
      "WATER on hotkey 9 (FULL / SKY / OFF, FULL by default): the water surface becomes a field of pixel-tall voxel columns rising and falling as waves, reflecting the sky, the sun, the moon and the cast standing beside it -- and, on FULL, the shoreline, trees and buildings behind it, by a screen-space ray march",
      "3D-BTL on hotkey 8 (2D-3D A / 2D-3D B / STADIUM A / STADIUM B / OFF, 2D-3D A by default), battles fought in 3D -- 2D-3D stands the game's own pics up as cards and STADIUM replaces them with the Pokemon Stadium battle models, while A stages the fight on the map and B on two carried discs against the sky. Only the STADIUM rungs need a ROM, and they are on the row once those models have been built (see below); 2D-3D B is generated in Lua and needs nothing",
      "the STADIUM animations are driven from the fight: a move plays the animation that species' own battle table names for it (so DIG really does put Diglett into the ground), fainting plays the faint and holds there, and a send-out grows the Pokemon out of the ball and plays the entrance. Damage plays nothing -- the set has no reaction animation in it, and the engine's own flash, blink and HP drain already say so. The eyes blink and go dizzy, and Charmander's tail flame and Weezing's gas are drawn over the body",
      "BACK SPRITES options row (OFF / ON, off by default), which keeps your own Pokemon on the battle menu in its classic slot while the foe stands out on the map",
      "VR options row (OFF / STANDARD / DIORAMA / DIORAMA-MR, off by default; a save that stored the old toggle as true comes back on STANDARD). STANDARD is the mode below. DIORAMA is one presentation instead of a ladder: the world is always the model on the table, cut to an invisible BOX centred on the view -- a square slab of world with a HARD edge, because a flat world is a thing with sides -- which V-CURVE turns into a BALL whose rim is a gradient fade into the same sky (the cut reaches terrain, cast, grass, water and the forest's beams alike), with a staged fight ignoring both and cutting a vertical PILLAR about the arena -- always dissolved at the rim -- and framing the model to it: the fight lifted out of the map as a floating disc. The grips take hold of it: one hand carries the model through the room, both hands turn it and open the viewport out. The left stick's click throws V-CURVE to its top rung and back instead of stepping views; there is no 2D diorama and no first-person one, so the VOXEL ladder is held on an orbit rung while the mode runs and the Pokedex stays away. DIORAMA-MR is the same with the background keyed pure green (no bands, no sun, no haze) for a mixed-reality capture",
      "VR STANDARD (the row's second rung): PCVR through OpenXR on Windows -- the diorama as a head-tracked tabletop model presented at the rung's own angle and framing on the orbit rungs, life-size first person on 1ST, a staged battle snapping the headset (through a fade to black) into the flat game's own over-the-shoulder seat at life scale, a voxel Pokedex flush along the left controller in first person and in battles (menus, dialogs and the 2D battle screen on its screen; the diorama does without it), the sky and its sun and moon anchored in space (bands, GBC dither and twilight glow alike -- nothing in the sky reacts to the head), the floating panel wearing the GB frame near-square rather than the whole monitor-wide window (scaled into the headset, so the picture and its ratio are identical at every window size, fullscreen included), the window as mirror; needs a runtime (SteamVR/Oculus/WMR) and the mod on a real folder",
      "VR controllers (Touch/Index/WMR, rebindable in the runtime): left stick moves, A/B are A/B, either trigger is START, left stick click steps the VOXEL angle ladder exactly as the 3 key and SELECT do; in 1ST the right stick snap-turns 45 degrees a flick; in the tabletop the right stick zooms; under STANDARD a squeezed grip drags the table's height, and in a DIORAMA the grips take the model itself -- one carries it, both turn it and resize the viewport, and the left stick's click throws V-CURVE instead; no controller button leaves VR -- that is the VR row's job",
      "a day/night clock that reaches the flat 2D overworld as well as the diorama -- outdoor maps only, and only when the hour is not midday",
      "an over-the-shoulder battle camera on a slow parallax orbit, with a depth-of-field pass that holds both mons sharp",
      "a sky behind the diorama at the 75-degree rung, outdoor maps only, coloured by the active palette mode",
      "a hand-authored tile shape profile (data/voxel_heights.lua) a mod can extend",
      "SMOOTH TURN options row (OFF / ON, off by default, and only on the menu while VR is ON): turn continuously with the right stick instead of snapping 45 degrees a flick. The snap is the default because a software turn moves the world past a head that did not move, which is the reliable way to make somebody ill in a headset -- but it costs continuity, so the choice is the player's",
      "HORDE MODE, on the konami code (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A) standing in the overworld: the sky drops to a starless violet night, the Lavender Town theme comes up, the camera locks into the player's own head (in VR too), a voxel handgun with working iron sights appears in the right hand, and waves of people -- the map's own NPCs among them -- walk out of the dark to kill you. Score per kill, a random Pokemon cry for each one that falls, no pausing; the horde follows you through doors. Health out is a GAME OVER card with the score and PRESS A, which puts the map, the cell, the facing, the camera rung, the hour, the music and every NPC back exactly as they were. Fire on left click, the pad's right trigger or B, a tap on a touch screen, or the right trigger in VR; reload on R, the pad's X, or B on the right controller; aim down the sights on right click or the left trigger",
      "the horde's gunshot, dry fire, magazine and slide sounds, synthesized on the game's own emulated Game Boy sound hardware (no audio files ship with the mod)",
    },
    known = {
      "needs shader and depth-canvas support; without them the rows still cycle but the world stays 2D and battles draw plainly",
      "water reflections additionally need a READABLE depth canvas; a driver without one draws the flat animated water this mode always drew",
      "WATER on FULL ray-marches the depth buffer per water pixel, so a map that is mostly sea costs real fill rate on a weak GPU -- SKY is the same look minus the ray march, and OFF is the flat water",
      "a screen-space reflection can only reflect what is in the frame: a tree just off the top edge is not in the water below it, and a ray that runs off the side fades into the sky rather than ending on a line",
      "a map with no 3x6 clearing falls back to a 1x4 one, and a map with neither draws the plain battle screen",
      "the STADIUM rungs need the Pokemon Stadium battle models, and the mod ships none of them -- they are that game's data. Press STADIUM ROM on the OPTIONS menu to pick one with the system file dialog, or drop one in a baseroms/ folder beside the game. It must be Pokemon Stadium (US) 1.0 (md5 ed1378bc12115f71209a77844965ba50) -- every offset in the reader is keyed to that cartridge, and anything else is refused or builds wrong models; either way the 151 models are built out of it on a loading screen, in about ten seconds, into the save directory, and the ROM itself is not kept. Until then the two rungs are simply not on the row. Once built, a rung declines per POKEMON rather than per battle: a species with no pack, a standing substitute doll, and the trainer's own pic before the send-out each fall back to the flat card on that side alone, with the other side keeping its model",
      "the STADIUM rungs size a Pokemon by its own model against the set's median, with the range compressed -- the authored heights span sixteenfold, from Caterpie to Gyarados, and a shared over-the-shoulder shot cannot hold that. The order and the feel of the differences survive; the literal ratios do not",
      "three species -- Exeggutor, Tangela and Magmar -- have standby loops that are corrupt in the source extraction, and are held at their bind pose so they stand still rather than coming apart",
      "the arena is where the CAMERA goes -- nobody is moved, so a fight staged across the map is a shot of that ground, not a trip to it",
      "the battle backdrop renders at the GB's 160x144 to match the pics composited over it, so it is chunkier than the free-roam pass",
      "menus and cutscenes are unaffected -- outside a battle the mode only draws the free-roam overworld",
      "terrain meshes are cached per map, so the first frame after entering a large map costs a build",
      "1ST and 3RD need the 3D pass like every rung; without it the level still persists but the world stays 2D and the grid walk stays in charge",
      "in 1ST and 3RD, scripted walks, ledge hops and spinner slides play out as the grid moves they are, with the camera riding along; free control resumes when they land",
      "3RD's boom shortens against whatever stands behind the player, so backing into a wall walks the camera in to their shoulders; squeezed all the way in it draws as 1ST until they step clear",
      "3RD in VR is 1ST in VR: a headset that seats its wearer three cells behind their own body is a well-known way to make people ill, so the boom is declined while a headset is live",
      "rooms have no ceilings, so a first-person look over an interior wall shows the void the diorama always had behind it",
      "VR is Windows x64 only (the shipped loader and the Win32 GL binding): on any other platform -- mobile above all -- the VR row is absent from the OPTIONS menu and the manager's page both, and a stored vr=true carried over in a save is ignored. On Windows it renders the scene once per eye (heavy with WATER FULL or AA up); pad/keyboard/mouse keep working alongside the XR controllers. The loader DLL is found wherever the mod was put -- the dev tree, an installed release's save directory, or an imported archive, from which it is copied once into the save directory so the FFI has a real disk path",
      "VR on and off are both the VR row's job (options menu or manager); no controller button does either",
      "the Pokedex needs a TRACKED left controller; without one there is no device in hand and the floating panel carries the UI as before",
      "while the VR row is ON, 3D-BTL is held ON and BACK SPRITES held OFF (the headset's battle staging assumes both), and both rows leave the OPTIONS menu until VR goes off -- their stored values come back with them",
      "while a headset is live the battle HUDs keep their classic in-frame slots instead of snapping to the window's edges, and the engine's edge-anchored menus (the START menu above all) are held inside the frame the same way, on the flat mirror too -- both VR screens crop to the GB frame, and a block at the window's edge would be cropped away with it",
      "VR swapchains prefer plain RGBA8; a runtime that only offers sRGB shows slightly lifted colours",
      "HORDE MODE needs the 3D pass, like every rung that has a camera in it: without one the code is refused and nothing happens",
      "the horde's crowd are the overworld's own sprite billboards, so at close range they are flat cards the size of a person -- they hold two cells off the player for that reason, close enough to swing and far enough to be seen past",
      "a run is not saved: the score and the best score ride the save slot, but the mode itself has no state to resume, and quitting mid-run simply ends it",
    },
  },
  credits = {
    { who = "pret/pokered", for_ = "the tile and sprite data the geometry is derived from" },
    { who = "pret/pokestadium", for_ = "the decompilation the STADIUM extractor was written against -- the bone matrix chain and where scale is applied (func_800143C0), the rotation basis (func_8000F730), the animation and texture-animation samplers (func_80016FBC / func_80017540), the battle context slots and the move-id constants. No code or data from it is included or redistributed here; see README.md" },
    { who = "The Khronos Group", for_ = "the OpenXR loader shipped unmodified in assets/vr (Apache-2.0; full license text alongside the DLL)" },
  },
  compat = { engine = ">=0.1.37 <2.0.0", modApi = 2 },
}