News

This is NOT a help thread! If you want help with something, ask elsewhere.


Essentials v21.1 has now been released. This version contains improvements to messages, more sound effects and a new battle rule, plus a few other tweaks and a number of bug fixes. Download it today!

There is a v21.1 Hotfixes plugin which adds some bug fixes.


The trend these days is for Essentials to get a new release each year. This is mostly unintentional, and a year just seems to be how long it takes to make a version's worth of changes. Still, here's the next one. This post is a summary of the bigger changes, and you can check out the change log linked above to see a more exhaustive list of what's new...

This is NOT a help thread! If you want help with something, ask elsewhere.


Essentials v20.1 has now been released. This version mainly adds bug fixes, including ones tackling memory leaks and maps appearing in the wrong places. Download it today!

There is a v20.1 Hotfixes plugin which adds some bug fixes.

It's been almost a year since v19.1 came out, so it's about time for a new release of Essentials. Look below for a summary of the bigger features, and read through the change log linked above for a more exhaustive list of what's new.

Gen 8 Content

A lot of Generation 8 content has now been added to Essentials. This includes the usual collection of PBS files...

Essentials v19.1 has now been released. It's full of bug fixes, text characters in the naming screen, gif support and a working Battle Factory. Download it today to get all this good stuff.

You do not need the v19 Hotfixes plugin. v19.1 contains all the fixes it provided and much more.


You may not have been expecting a new version of Essentials, only seven months after the previous one, but surprise! Not only is it being released so soon (compared to the gaps between previous releases), but it's a very important step forward.

Before we get into it, I should say that Essentials is now open source on GitHub, and this has directly helped others to contribute to the development of Essentials. I wouldn't have been able to do all this by...

You may remember that Essentials exists. It hasn't had a new release in nearly three years now, so you'd be forgiven for forgetting that it exists. But exist it does, and now there's a whole new version!

So what's in it?

Battle system overhaul

This whole thing started when I decided to rearrange how using a move in battle works, from "each target is attacked separately" to "the move hits all targets at once". I grossly underestimated the workload involved in this, and then things spiraled out of control and v18 became a whole battle system overhaul. Lots and lots of things have been rewritten and improved, and I can't possibly describe them all in this post.

The most notable feature is that triple battles...

Hi everyone!

This is a progress report for the next version of Pokémon Essentials, which will be version 18. Before I begin, no, I'm not announcing my retirement or anything like that. This really is just a progress report.

The next version of Pokémon Essentials, v18, is intended to be focussed on the battle system. More specifically, the battle system code is being tidied up and rearranged to make it better and easier to work with, and with some new features which this post will talk about.

So what's happening?

1. Tidying up and rearranging

The battle system is currently crammed into just a few long script sections, which makes them tough to navigate. Chunks of code are often in unreasonable places, or at least could be relocated to somewhere better (e.g. duplicated code that can be consolidated). Some battle mechanics don't work quite right, such as the timing for throwing a Poké Ball. Some mechanics I just want to make work differently, such as making a move hit all...

There was a longer gap between v16.2 and v17 than there was between v1 and v10.

A Quality Update

• Essentials v17 was focussed (vaguely, more or less) on making quality of life improvements. Things that make the game easier to play, or look nicer, or easier to develop. This includes the new Ready Menu, which is a much improved version of registering an item that can register multiple items at once and show moves you can use in the field; the option to choose whether you want to input text via cursor or direct typing; various improvements to Debug options; the addition of the "pokemonforms.txt" PBS file; and support for AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards, not to mention moving the F5 key all the way down to the more easily accessible F. There are plenty of other changes I've made that would fit under this heading, but I'll let you read through the...