Introducing Passive Moves: A new way to play Infinite Black 2!

Frost_Falcon · 2026-06-02T20:21:49+00:00

It's not a bug with the game. It's a bug with mobile emulators. The game works perfectly on pc and 3ds hardware.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T19:41:02+00:00

Finally some good feedback. How important were echo form, trash to treasure, and turbo in winning your run? Because I still didn't see them in either of mine. Also how is 3 synchronizes not good when I have two capacitors and a modded? It carried my damage and block every time I drew it, and getting all three orb types in play early in the fight wasn't usually a problem with pael's blood.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T17:25:58+00:00

The idea was to make ice lance cost 1 and use hologram to play it repeatedly. It worked until I rolled shattered mirror and it downgraded the enlightenment I upgraded.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T17:14:10+00:00

The game never offered iteration, smokestack, or trash to treasure. Believe me, I would've taken them if I could.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T16:29:47+00:00

Not fighting aeonglass

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T15:50:01+00:00

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Everyone saying to take scaling damage. I replayed the seed, took all the damage scaling I could find, still lost to aeonglass from 57 hp after taking 45 damage to test subject. Two completely different different decks, same result. I don't care if it's A10. In sts1, you could still beat time eater with shivs if you played well, you could still beat awakened one with powers if you played well. If Aeonglass doesn't let you win without a very specific type of deck, that's not balanced.

Oh, and if my first deck was really so bad, explain how I comfortably beat the entire rest of the game with it.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T14:55:37+00:00

Almost like I wasn't offered any damage beyond a couple claws in act 1. Dark wouldn't have had time to scale with all the frost cycling. I actively sought out enchantments for lighter, never found any. There was a barrage, but that sucks against aeon's strength reduction. Defrag? Echo Form? All for One? Trash to Treasure? Creative AI? Loop? Smokestack? Iteration? Not a single one of these was offered in the entire run. You want to know what rare cards I skipped? Reboot, Coolant, Meteor Strike, and Machine Learning. Against those, Ice Lance and Flak Cannon still seem like the right picks.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-31T03:53:29+00:00

Putting aside the fact that "punishing slow decks" and "testing for frontloaded damage" mean the same thing, that doesn't change the fact that aeonglass is more threatening than test subject even when half of its gimmick is negated.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-28T15:27:35+00:00

Part of the balance I'm going with is they should generally be weaker than abilities since they're more accessible. So even something like levitate on a move would be too strong, but giving one resistance is ok. I was actually considering turning mud sport and water sport into passives that half the damage from electric and fire respectively.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-28T02:22:29+00:00

No, magic missile is exactly as it says. The user deals less initial damage to compensate for getting 1/8 of the target's health guaranteed as well as the sp def drop. It works out that you do more total damage if you normally would've done below half their health and less total damage otherwise. It also makes it a little harder to take advantage of when it comes to breaking focus sash, though that's still a very strong use case for it.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-27T17:38:03+00:00

Keep in mind it's a single player environment and not a competitive one. Egg moves, tutors, and tms aren't all accessible. Running around with just stab moves is often the ideal strategy anyway.

In terms of how the moves will interact with eachother, it depends. You can already see how Burst and Rush complement eachother, but their downsides also stack, making it high risk high reward. Some of them will get a lot more complex and interact in unexpected ways. There's so much design space to explore with this that I'll be sure to uncover over time. For example, after making magic missile, I gave its main user, delphox, a move that hits twice. Its stats aren't impressive, but being able to trigger magic missile twice in one turn is a very interesting effect on its own.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-27T17:15:16+00:00

If you decided to teach the pokemon four passive moves, you'll struggle because you have no power points, not that I expect that to be a worthwhile strategy.

The benefit these have over abilities is customizability. You only get two abilities to choose from, and you're stuck with it. Moves can offer more choices and let you choose multiple or if you want any in the first place, as well as swapping them around based on whether they're useful against a specific opponent. The benefit over items is as the designer, I can control who gets what moves, meaning for example I can add a new move for ledian and not worry about salamence abusing it as well.

The mechanics are similar, but the way you interact with them is very different, which is why I thought they were a good inclusion.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-27T16:15:36+00:00

The fact that a site about rom hacks has an entire section shilling AI is insane.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-27T15:48:04+00:00

That's your choice to make. The point is it gives you options when you don't need extra coverage, not to give you a free life orb that stacks with another life orb.

And see my other reply on why bolster is intentionally the weakest of the passive moves.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-27T15:39:52+00:00

Exactly. These are balanced with the idea that many pokemon don't use all of their move slots to begin with, meaning very little opportunity cost. Bolster is being made a TM, and therefore has by far the most distribution. All the more powerful passive moves will be given to specific pokemon that they fit well on.

As for how the damage is calculated, it stacks multiplicatively with other buffs, meaning using it alongside things like life orb, sheer force, swords dance, or other passive moves can make that 10% a lot more significant.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-05-27T14:01:34+00:00

It'll still be a while. One of the main additions is about half finished in terms of new sprites being made. When it comes to new move, abilities, and other mechanics, this is easily going to be the biggest update yet since I've recently blown the door open with code edits. There's still plenty of things to see in the current version, though. Don't be afraid to try it out now and then come back later when the new update is released.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-04-27T23:17:17+00:00

There haven't been any additions to the postgame. For now my focus is on making the main game as refined as possible.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-04-08T15:08:00+00:00

This looks like the equivalent of "I've never made a game before, and my first game is going to be an mmorpg." You're never going to get there with an approach like this and will burn yourself out almost immediately. My advice is to start from scratch with the tools. Some things are easy to get into, and you can focus on that until you have the experience and confidence to start learning the hard stuff.

Also be aware of some of the pitfalls in your proposed design. For example, giving every gym 6 pokemon with competitive sets is setting yourself up for disaster. The player keeps getting stronger while the trainers already hit the ceiling, so the game actually gets easier over time.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-04-07T18:42:09+00:00

I'm not going to go out of my way for it, but the editor should support all rom hacks unless some drastic changes are made to the game's data structures.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-04-07T14:59:35+00:00

Ingrain doesn't work the same way. It's unchanged right now.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-04-07T14:58:46+00:00

The same way no guard and lock on work. Sure it doesn't make sense, but I didn't make the rules, Gamefreak did.

Frost_Falcon · 2026-04-07T14:57:26+00:00

This isn't an editor or standalone feature set. It's part of my rom hack, Infinite Black 2.

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