calling ends loose is just another form of slutshaming :/ (Patreon)

for various reasons, i have strong hopes that the dark ages are over
as anyone who's checked the dev blog knows, i'm like 90% done with the episode's story. but for some more detail, all that's left is the episode's gym.
this basically means i don't have to care, the story gym is honestly not actually 10% of the work, it may not even be 5%. whatever the case i can do it in my sleep.
the gym puzzle though?
hm...............................................................
well, it's not too complicated. and actually i already did the hard part for it earlier when i was assessing if i could use this concept in a way that would be acceptably accessible to all players

before tackling that, i'm taking a respite to round up some of my many loose ends that i've acquired.

e-terrain is dropped from mareep. sorry. it's just too tanky :/

aya gets her grind on. USUM tutor stuff helps a bit but also she used to be way OP so i had slashed all her IVs; gave her those back, among some other stuff. 

went back to fix up some encounters so the other "lost pokemon" from E16 had a home. after E16 there were a handful of pokemon that could have been gotten from the old city or past parts-- but not the new one. most of those were deliberately held off on and then restored in the desert and desert accessory areas, but the drowzee and jigglypuff lines could be theoretically missed if the player didn't get them earlier (or didn't breed before returning the 'gllys to linda/santiago)
fuckin' jigglypuff, dudes.
(y'all know i had way too much fun with that quest)
anyway those two have been added back in in a Place

also one other thing we're doing is gutting and redoing the Last Ace AI handler. i'm sure i've talked before about how we use a switch that we turn on for important battles so that the opponent trainer save their aces for last (for the draaaaama~ ...and often because its' their win condition. but you know. drama.)
the thing is this expectation causes some problems when their ace is by far the best pokemon to use in a scenario
i really dislike it when trainers send out their ace mid battle just cuz it's the strongest thing they have, it feels so bad to be able to cheese it early on, it's like reading a book from the climax. but sometimes like by types and moves and such it reallllly is a waste of a pokemon to not use the ace. so eeeeh
buuuuuuuuuuuuuut even now that can still happen if the trainer has u-turn or volt switch on one pokemon and the ace is their only other one living
feels bad
so,
beh.
basically what we're doing is we're dropping the current switch that does that stuff and adding the provision to reserve the ace as a strong suggestion (as opposed to numerically mandated rule) for all trainer's last pokemon. for normal run of the mill trainers, this could be a little awkward... but i suspect it will go un-noticed and un-mattering, much like most of those trainers themselves.
focusing on important trainers, the end result is they'll still be cautioned against using their ace early, but they could conceivably do so
and then
i've added a new last ace switch that is even harder, better and more don't-use-this-pokemon-yet than ever before
...mainly because i can limit that switch's usage to only those few battles that actually very strictly matter in terms of the trainer having a story reason to hold off on a pokemon until the end, or where they refer to a specific pokemon in their one-left text
...which is basically is just four PULSE battles and corin-rouge...
..and make sure that those teams don't use voltturn >>;
so that's easy
strictly speaking i could've just used the same switch as before, and it's a little messy not to, but that also means i'd have to correctly remember the location in-editor of every single important battle in the game to go remove that switch on all but those five battles and that's just
not worth it, when the opportunity cost of using a duplicate switch is basically the time it takes to type four numbers in six places in the script

so that bit still has to be put corrected into the AI itself buuuuuuuut that's marcello's territory, my end of it is set and move the fuckenine on

this has been ame's early am update ramble thanks for coming to my ted talk