A mod for the Pokémon Gen 1 Recompilation Project.
The overworld as a 3D diorama. Terrain is extruded into real geometry, occlusion comes from a depth buffer rather than a y-sort, characters stand as leaning sprite slabs, a shadow map throws real cast shadows across whatever they land on, and an optional tilt-shift pass sells the miniature-model look.
And battles fought on that world rather than on a white field. When something picks a fight the map's NPCs are culled, the engine's own wipe plays over the empty map, and the battle draws over the nearest patch of clear ground — shot over the shoulder, the player's mon low and left and the enemy high and right, with a slow parallax drift behind them and a depth-of-field pass that keeps both of them sharp.
Purely presentational. Nothing here reaches collision, movement, triggers or scripts — it changes what the world looks like and nothing about what it is. The battle arena is where the camera goes, not where anybody goes: no cell, facing, flag or warp is written, so the player is standing exactly where the fight found them when it ends.
Every key is free-roam only, and each one is also a row on the OPTIONS menu.
| control | does |
|---|---|
3, or the VOXEL options row |
OFF → 15 → 35 → 50 → 75 → OFF (camera pitch) |
5, or the V-GRID options row |
OFF / ON — a one-pixel wireframe on every voxel |
6, or the T-SHIFT options row |
OFF → 1 → 2 → 3 → OFF (miniature blur) |
7, or the V-CURVE options row |
OFF → 1 → 2 → 3 — bend the world over the horizon |
8, or the 3D-BTL options row |
ON / OFF — fight on the map instead of on a white field |
| the BACK SPRITES options row | OFF / ON — keep your own Pokémon on the battle menu, seen from behind in its classic slot, instead of standing it on the map; the foe is still out there. Only on the menu while 3D-BTL is on, because it decides nothing without it |
| the DAYTIME options row | SYNC / DAY / NIGHT / DUSK / DAWN / CYCLE — what time it is outdoors, on the diorama and on the flat 2D world; held at SYNC (and off the menu) while VOXEL is FULL |
3D-BTL is on by default and is independent of VOXEL: battles draw on the world whether or not the free-roam camera is pitched over.
Two of the engine's own rows are taken away while this mod is installed: TILT, which is the flat fake of what this mode does for real, and GBC FX, a full-screen present pass over the top of the diorama. Both are held at off rather than merely hidden — a row that is not there cannot switch off a value an older save arrived with. Uninstall and both come back, at whatever they were last set to.
Everything the battle screen draws as a box — the two HUD blocks, the text box and the menus over it — sits on frosted glass rather than on the white field it used to have behind it: the world underneath, blurred and laid back down translucent, with the ink flipping white where the ground it lands on is dark. Nothing the engine draws inside a box moves; only the paper is gone.