Well, my main questions are these:
1. Is there something like a Touhoumon rom base that is available to me? I am thinking of using Fire Red specifically, although I am probably not opposed to using Emerald if there is a good enough reason for it. I don't know Japanese and am therefore not in any position to try translating the original 1.8 to use as a base. I am aware of
this but unless the translation is complete, I can't really use it (and I don't know whether I need permission as well?). There is also
this but I would almost definitely need permission for that (but I mean, if I can get permission then that's fine...).
2. Is there something like English documentation of the puppets, moves, types, abilities, and etc. of 1.8? The closest thing I can think of is
this. If I'm not using a Touhoumon rom as my base, then I guess I'll be implementing the Touhou stuff myself...
3. Speaking of which, where can I find sprites that I can use? Mostly, I'm talking about puppet sprites. I would prefer to implement even the th15 and th16 characters as puppets, but those are not the only puppets that I am asking for sprites for. Some puppets may not even have sprites yet for all I know and I understand if so.
In truth, I don't really know much about making a rom hack, and I have not yet made the decision to work on one but I am currently reviewing my options for resources that I can use. Once I know more about what is available to me and what I can expect, then maybe we'll see.
I do realize that this is going to be a lot of work. Especially because I am not planning to use a standard 1.8 puppetdex. I want the puppets to represent the capabilities of the characters more than they do in 1.8 and so I would prefer the puppets to be less balanced than in standard 1.8 (although I'm not satisfied with the 1.5 puppetdex either). Unfortunately that means some puppets will just be flat out better or worse than others, but I would like to find something of a middle ground and avoid making any (evolved) puppet totally useless competitively. This is going to be difficult to say the least, especially seeing as I think some puppets like Yukari puppets deserve legendary-like BSTs because in Touhou they are crazy strong, but I think I will want to tone that down a bit too or else I will never find that middle ground. I was going to avoid going above a 680 BST but now I think maybe it should be more like 620, hmmmmm. Maybe something like a range of 420 to 620 for evolved puppets? Of course, stats aren't everything though so that is just something of a guideline that I'm thinking of and not a hard limit.
The way that I'd like to do it is to have one unevolved puppet of each character and then 2-3 evolved forms that you can choose between for each one. I am not planning to categorize them based on things like Power and Speed and Defense and Assist. I don't know how I'll name the evolutions but in essence I think my plan is to make something like a "normal path" evolution where it's capabilities seem most representative of the character it is based on, and then 1 or 2 "alternate path" evolutions for those who would prefer to do something else with that puppet.
One of my overall goals for this hack (if I make it) is to leave something good in the capabilities of each and every evolved puppet so that no matter who your favourite is, you will have fun using them, while also feeling closer to that character because of the more representative (and less balanced) dex.
Just having 3 forms (including the unevolved one) for each puppet is going to make for a big dex, and I am not sure how much I will be able to expand the dex, which is why I'm cutting out the idea of having middle evolutions. These days though, some people are even expanding the dex of Fire Red and Emerald to like 802+ entries, but I don't exactly have much hope that I'll be able to push it out that far without just using a rom base that has that work done for me (there are some like that, like
this and
this). Although, I haven't done much research into that so maybe I could even manage to push it out that far on my own, for all I know.
