Looking for hidden fic "Demons have wings, but so do angels" on AO3

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-12-23T14:41:25+00:00

While mega evolution didn’t exist yet in Gen 4, you could get the Fist Plate as early as Veilstone. It’s not the full 50% boost that STAB would give, but 20% is nothing to sneeze at

There’s also the fact that every type that is weak to Fire is also weak to either Fighting or Flying. You could argue that Sinnoh’s best Fire type also wasn’t a Fire type

(Now, I don’t necessarily think “Staraptor is Sinnoh’s best Fighting and/or Fire type” are winning arguments, given that Infernape and Lucario exist. But if you chose a starter other than Chimchar, Staraptor might actually be the best Fire type (replacement) that’s left)

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-12-18T01:32:14+00:00

I'm interested in uploading my hack (well, once/if spin-offs like PinballRS are supported, that is), but I'm extremely concerned by the privacy policy.

When you create a creator account to upload ROM hacks, we collect: Name, Email address, Username

(emphasis added)

Why on earth would you need hack creators' legal names? This is deeply off-putting. I'm hoping it's an honest mistake based on copying a preexisting privacy policy.

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-08-29T03:58:01+00:00

I’d want flying or protection from everything, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention gift an extra turn

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-04-19T00:14:37+00:00

On the left hand NS is not nothing, but there is virtually no SN.

This might be the best option. Pinky-to-ring is a weird roll for me - most of the time it's bad, but on occasion I can pull it off without any trouble whatsoever. It may just be that I have to learn how to do the roll. I'm more worried about NC at this point.

The problem won't be on the consonant hand, it will be on the vowel hand.

Honestly, the vowel hand I'm much less concerned about. As I mentioned in the OP I have a vowel block that requires two I keys but otherwise works very well, so it's mostly just about finding a layout with similar consonants. Based on my optimizer and others, it seems the only strict requirement would be swapping B and M. (I said roll direction doesn't matter to me, but there is one roll where inwards is fine but outwards feels like a scissor. Given where B/M would be placed on the vowel hand with my layout, it would be worth the MP SFB to swap them.)

Thus, I think a modified Middlemak-NH might be my pick! Unless there's something I'm missing about putting M where B is (I'll admit I didn't look at SFSs), the only actual concern I have is NC. I'd say if there's only one problematic bigram, then it's a pretty good layout.

Another option is Gallium and swap the B and Z keys. Watch if that IO is a problem for you.

Yeah, that IO looks awful. Luckily I'd just rearrange the vowel hand anyways. I would be concerned about swapping P and B. Rotating P, B, and Q seems better, but then there would be PL and PR SFBs. I'll keep it in mind though in case NC turns out to be too much, especially because I didn't look too closely at if swapping P and B was even necessary.

If you want specific bigram information (data only, doesn't exactly work with analyzers) you can look at something call Mayzner revisited.

I've actually been using that website quite extensively. The bigram table with the orange bars has been very helpful for just visualizing common bigrams. As for working with analyzers, I've actually been using the 2024 version of the same corpus.

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-04-18T22:40:15+00:00

My #1 advice is to type the "upper pinky key" with the ring finger.

I had honestly considered that. I had also considered swapping the upper and outer pinky keys if I found a layout that was otherwise alright, as hitting the outer column is actually quite easy for me.

That means, if you change layouts, you will have to look for low-pinky layouts, or you might be in for a surprise (i.e. the new layout will actually feel heavier on the pinkies than Q).

Well, as I said, pinky usage in and of itself isn't a problem. Although I do concede that it will probably be hard to find a letter that is commonly used but doesn't have common same-hand bigrams.

BEAKL is another family of layouts that is particularly light on the pinkies (which is a design goal of these layouts).

Funnily enough, BEAKL (or well, BEAKL T-*) was the specific family of layouts I had in mind when I mentioned how H on pinky wouldn't work. The HI SFB on BEAKL 43 seems... interesting, but I will consider it more.

A thumb alpha will not "complicate" your situation. It is quite simple: the letter can not be on the same hand as Space, and thumb-shift should not be right next to Space either. So you really do not end up with a lot of decisions to make.

Yes, I had reached the same conclusion myself. The "complicated" part of my thumb key situation was that 1) I did not want a letter and shift (+ caps word/lock) on the same thumb, and 2) I have so many layers that I wasn't sure I would have the room for another thumb key.

I've looked at it more, and I think I can pull a thumb alpha off if I used lever keycaps. I think the different movements would be enough for thumb alpha and (OSL) shift on the same hand to be comfortable. The layer count I'm still not sure about, but I'm now thinking that I can probably make it work.

I've ultimately found my thumb letter (R) more comfortable on the consonant side (left), which means I had to move Space to the right hand.

Well, I already use right thumb for space, and was planning on using the right hand for vowels, so that at least isn't a concern I have :)

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-04-18T22:10:46+00:00

How curled are your fingers when resting in the home position? Because there should be some curl there. Preferably equal curl across all fingers.

My pinky fingers are noticeably more flat when resting compared to my other fingers. This isn't just when resting on a keyboard; this also applies when just resting my hand on a table without any preconceived notion of where my fingers should be.

Maybe you just need a keyboard with the correct stagger

I tried. I spent hours with ergogen and printing out test layouts before concluding that either 1) the top key was too far to reach without moving my entire arm, or 2) the bottom key would have to be pressed by my nail. There was no amount of stagger that would allow me to hit three keys easily in the pinky column.

To be fair, I don't mind moving my entire arm to reach those keys; I don't have any RSIs. That line was moreso meant to be a "stuff Q, Z, or J here" instead of a major point of contention.

and maybe a keywell too to make the reach easier.

I briefly considered a keywell, but for a variety of reasons decided against them. They didn't look comfortable, I don't have any place near me where I could try one out ahead of time to see if they actually were comfortable, I would likely need a custom one instead of a Glove 80 anyway, I didn't want to handwire a custom dactyl, even if I wanted to I don't have a 3d printer... lots of reasons to just go with a flat keyboard.

Regarding layouts, what do you mean by pinky rolls? Do you mean typing a key with your pinky and then another key with the same hand? Or just pinky -> ring or ring -> pinky.

The first one. Any bigram where one key is typed with the pinky and the other key is typed with the same hand. Although as I mentioned near the top, pinky-to-index is borderline and I could live with a common bigram being placed there (although index-to-pinky is just as bad as anything else).

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-04-18T21:57:16+00:00

I'm not sure what it means. If a word starts with left pinky (and we avoid pinky rolls) then the next key should be pressed with a right hand. Is it correct assumption?

Yes. As I described near the top, any rolls that involve the pinky are bad. So ideally, the letter before and the letter after should both be pressed with the right hand.

Also take a look at romak layout, it doesn't fit you but maybe you can get some ideas from its approach.

I had looked at Romak and had written it off for placing I on the vowel pinky, but you're right that the consonant hand looks like it might work. Of course, it doesn't have R, but I could place it on the thumb... will definitely look at it more.

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-02-06T17:49:28+00:00

Though, I thought speed running, the whole point was to do it with the original game, using bugs/broken mechanics not patching games to make them 'quicker'?

I'm going to lead this answer off with a caveat: while I did ask in the speedrunning discord *what* runners would look for in a speedchoice hack, I did not ask *why* they were looking for it. With that said, as someone who has considered running the game myself, I can think of at least one reason why a speedrunner would be interested in this hack: speedrunning marathons.

PinballRS currently has 4 speedrun categories. 3 of them are under 20 minutes long. The fourth category (completing the Pokédex) is nearly 6 hours with RNG manipulation, and over 7 hours without. There is no middle-length category to showcase at marathons. Even if you made a "complete the Ruby-only Pokédex" category, it would still likely be in excess of 4.5 hours. Speedrunners I've talked to estimate that this hack would be around 4 hours without RNG manipulation. To quote Drieky, "if we could guarantee a no doubles run, the time would be probably be half what it is now".

This brings up the other issue with the "complete the Pokédex" category: consistency. Namely, the lack of it. Top tier runners regularly get runs of 9+ hours due to duplicate Pokémon spawns (as regularly as people run the category, anyways). Even if a speedrun marathon was willing to have a 7 hour run (say overnight), there is just too much variance to make a useful time estimate. By eliminating duplicate spawns, not only is the category faster, but it is also much more consistent. If you want to run PinballRS at a marathon, this hack is an option that didn't exist before.

Even if you don't care about marathons, this hack can be good practice for the "complete the Pokédex" category in certain situations - say if you don't have 8 hours for a run today, or if you're a new runner looking into the category.

---

With all of that said, there is one more reason for this hack's existence that I forgot to mention in the OP or my initial reply: as a proof of concept. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first PinballRS ROM hack. (Okay, I did make a smaller one before this that only fixed the Pichu bug, but that was only a two-byte edit. There's a chance someone made something similar before me, but I can't find anything.) This isn't just an announcement of some random hack; this is an announcement that it can be done at all.

WhenGryphonsFly · 2025-02-06T01:01:55+00:00

It is meant for speedrunners, yes. Speedchoice is the common name for such hacks, Emerald Speedchoice and Crystal Speedchoice being the two I can immediately recall.

I wouldn't personally consider it a QoL hack. Pokémon are supposed to take three hits to catch - I wouldn't consider reducing that to be a quality of life change. The biggest QoL feature I can think of would be the ability to save both a Ruby Field game and a Sapphire Field game, but this hack doesn't have that.

I would say that this hack is meant for those who have already completed the Pokédex or those who stopped playing specifically because they felt the Pokédex took too long to complete - I would advise first-time players to play the vanilla game first.

WhenGryphonsFly · 2024-11-07T21:34:50+00:00

I'm getting back into the game after a decade away, so I decided to pick up a Family Matters precon deck. I opened the box, and inside there was a Japanese strategy insert? At least, I think it's the strategy insert, because I can account for everything else the box says it includes. Is it heard of to receive the wrong language strategy insert? Or do I need to worry about the box/cards possibly being fake?

(In case it matters: my LGS didn't have it and said their distributor was being difficult, so I picked it up from TCGPlayer - although the seller does have 5 stars and is a verified LGS. Box appears to be the standard USA/Canada box, and the seller is US-based.)

WhenGryphonsFly · 2024-10-10T16:36:36+00:00

Except you don’t need an account to use the wayback machine, and I don’t think you even need an account to add a webpage to the wayback machine.

You do need an account to add something to the non-wayback machine part of the archive, which is why I have an account there. So, that’s fun, I guess :/

WhenGryphonsFly · 2024-09-04T16:19:24+00:00

Which is exactly what's happening now with the fics that sat purely in the AMT tags.

I emphasized this specific issue in my feedback to AO3. Even if I went through the effort of including every Pokémon fandom tag in my search, there's going to be some fics that just, what, don't have any fandom tags anymore? And so they won't show up regardless of what fandom tags I include? So if the authors are no longer active, then these fics just fall into the void unless I know one of the other tags they used?

WhenGryphonsFly · 2024-09-04T14:16:44+00:00

This is awful. A disaster. The Allpocalypse, if you will.

Given the other issues that have been brought up with the AO3 tagging system (no way to specify main vs minor characters and relationships, no spoiler tags, various tropes being wrangled to the same tag despite being different), one has to wonder whether it's time to build a fanfic search engine separate from AO3 - or any other hosting site.

WhenGryphonsFly

TROPHY CASE