Thanks, ddrussianinja! Looking forward to seeing you at East!
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"Hey there! I'm new. Nice to meet everyone.
So if you're like me, you are really interested in taking part in the PAX Pokemon League, but you want to get some practice before the big event.
However, you've probably noticed that this is kind of difficult. Playing through Pokemon's official WiFi battling system prevents you from playing 6v6 battles. There are servers for Pokemon Online and Pokemon Showdown that can be more helpful, but the rules for the current popular metagames don't really match up with the rules for the League. Specifically, the Restricted Pokemon pool opens up a lot of possibilities that you can't really try in some metagames since a decent number of them are currently in Ubers, and any competitive OU team isn't built with the Item Clause in mind, reusing Leftovers and Life Orb for most competitive builds.
So unless you have a lot of friends nearby to play IR battles with, there's not really an easy way to try out a potential team for PAX.
I know this was brought up a couple years back and the solution was for people to just use the Reddit Pokemon League PO server (rplserver.dyndns.org), which shares many of the same rules, it appears to be currently down and as far as I know it doesn't account for the Restricted Pokemon pool.
So I decided to just go ahead and set up a Pokemon Showdown server specifically for the PAX Pokemon League.
If you want to join, go here: [url1dd]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/~~67.249.197.97/[/url1dd]
I've set up formats for both Singles and Doubles since I've gotten the impression that some of the Leaders (such as Drake and Lily) may challenge people to Doubles matches.
Both of the formats account for ALL of the official rules as defined here: [url1dd]http://paxpokemonleague.net/rules/[/url1dd]
Yes, this means I edited a number of the scripts in order to get the Self KO Clause and the Restricted Pokemon rules to work properly. If you want to check the code, I've attached the modified zip file: [attachment=01dd]Pokemon-Showdown-PAX.zip[/attachment1dd]
Some quick answers to possible questions you might have:
[b1dd][size=1501dd]Why Pokemon Showdown instead of Pokemon Online?[/size1dd][/b1dd]
Because I like Pokemon Showdown better. Yeah, Pokemon Online would have made it easier to implement the Restricted Pokemon and the Self KO Clause, but I like the interface for Pokemon Showdown more. Additionally, Pokemon Showdown runs in the browser, it doesn't require you to install anything, and it has full support for OS X, Linux, and Android (if you use the Chrome browser). Also, since the central Pokemon Showdown server handles graphics and things like that, there's less burden on my end than there would be if I hosted a Pokemon Online server.
[b1dd][size=1501dd]Can I host my own Pokemon Showdown/Online server instead of using yours?[/size1dd][/b1dd]
Please do. Honestly, I'd rather not host a server, but it doesn't look like anyone else has stepped up to do this yet. If the mods for the League or anyone else wants to use my code, it's fairly straightforward. Download and extract the zip file in Windows/OS X/Linux. Install [url=http://nodejs.org/1dd]Node.js[/url1dd]. Open up a command prompt terminal and change to the extracted directory. Type in "npm install" and hit enter. Then type in "node app.js" and hit enter. There. Now you have a Pokemon Showdown server that uses the PAX Pokemon League rules. Now either set up port forwarding for port 8000 to allow others to connect to it, or just use it locally. For more info or for the original source code, go here: [url1dd]https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown[/url1dd]. If you want to set up a dedicated Pokemon Online server instead, please go ahead and do that too. I'd be happy to play there if that's what people would prefer, I just don't want to be the one to set it up.
[b1dd][size=1501dd]How do I get a username/password for Pokemon Showdown?[/size1dd][/b1dd]
Since Pokemon Showdown keeps all of your team data in cookies, not on the server, there's not really a whole lot of reason to have a username/password. You can set your username when you log in and so long as no one else has claimed it with a password or is currently using it on one of the PS servers, then you can use it for your session. But if you want to have an account with a password just because you want to have a consistent username or something, you'll have to play and win a ranked match on Pokemon Showdown, just not on my server because those matches don't count towards the Pokemon Showdown ranking system since they don't have a ladder for this ruleset. You'll have to play on one of the public servers. The only actual reason you might want a username and a password is if you want to take part in the Pokemon Showdown ladders or if you want to set up an admin account for your own Pokemon Showdown server.
[b1dd][size=1501dd]Can I play by myself on your/my server?[/size1dd][/b1dd]
I'd understand if all you want to do is build a team and make sure it passes the rules or to build two teams and just play them against each other as a sort of overly-complicated damage calculator. This is easy to do on any Pokemon Showdown server. Either open a new incognito window (in Chrome) or use InPrivate Browsing (in Internet Explorer) if you want to run two teams simultaneously. Pokemon Showdown uses cookies to keep track of teams and your user info.
[b1dd][size=1501dd]What specific changes did you make to the original code?[/size1dd][/b1dd]
Specifically, I commented-out the built-in formats, added the two that are available, implemented a rule for Limited Pokemon, implemented a rule for Self KO clause (I needed to change the function for determining a tie to allow for this), and I changed it so that it allows you to battle the same opponent more than once in a row without having to directly challenge them (assuming no one else is available). The code files I edited were battles.js, rooms.js, and data/formats.js.
[b1dd][size=1501dd]Are you going to PAX?[/size1dd][/b1dd]
Yes, I'll be going to PAX East 2013 later this month. It will be my second PAX, but it will be my first PAX as a PPL Challenger.
If anyone has other questions/suggestions I'll be happy to hear them. Also, if the server doesn't work for whatever reason, let me know and I'll try to figure out what's wrong."
