The development of ROM hacks and projects based on the Pokémon series continues to evolve, and one of the teams that has attracted the most attention in the recent scene is the one behind Pokémon Luminescent Platinum, an ambitious modification of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (BDSP) that has stood out both for its technical depth and its enormous amount of content.
Following the completion of Luminescent Platinum, the team is already working on an even more ambitious new project: Re:Illuminated, which promises to once again redefine what can be achieved within the BDSP engine.
In this interview, conducted with the collaboration of Blup, the project's official Spanish translator, we spoke with the team about the past, present, and future of their projects.
Luminescent Platinum (Past and Learning)
1. How did Luminescent Platinum come to be, and what motivated you to develop it on BDSP?
ttin: Honestly, I just immediately saw potential and set about documenting places that were easy to modify. In the beginning it really wasn't that deep, I wanted to see romhacks in it, so I wanted to teach people how to make them. Over time, people joined in to help remake Renegade Platinum, and as new discoveries happened, we decided to add more features.
One fun example is us discovering that the "second slot encounter tables" from the DS games were still in the game, and we developed a way to activate them. So when we figured out how to add new Pokemon, we said "why not add regionals/evolutions of currently existing Pokemon?".
2. During the development of the project, which part of the work turned out to be the most technically or creatively challenging?
ttin: I would definitely say that there was an internal race to figure out inserting new Pokemon. We figured it out piece by piece - first we got adding new forms with different textures, then new meshes with shared rigs, but nobody could figure out new rigs until one day, Yisuno just disappeared for a couple weeks. I'm going to pass the question over to him to tell the story.
Yisuno: So well basically I built a model using Unity so I got the same type of asset than BDSP model asset files. Then it was a matter of emptying the BDSP asset except the non-model stuff and then transferring EVERY. SINGLE. ELEMENT. From the custom file to the game one.
I'm talking like probably hundreds of text files exported to then being imported and maintaining its pathID number, because one single wrong file breaks the entire asset and the game will crash. After that, it was modifying certain scripts inside the game asset to make locators point to the new elements from the custom asset (bones/transforms, mostly).
After that, I booted up the game and saw a weird white model that looked like a certain Fairy type Eeveelution that wasn't from BDSP. I screamed so loud my parents thought there was something wrong with me (maybe there is idk).
And yeah our group discord exploded that day after I shared the news.
3. Now that Luminescent is officially closed, what do you feel it contributed to your knowledge and experience in BDSP ROM Hacking?
ttin: It's a bit hard to answer that question, as people tend to see Luminescent Platinum as a cohesive romhack due to tight creative direction, but it was never meant to be that internally. Luminescent Platinum was a research project - we would say "let's figure out how this works", research it, crack it, document it, and decide on a feature in Luminescent Platinum that utilizes that knowledge.
4. What was the main lesson you learned from this project that has been useful for your next one?
ttin: Continuing from question 3, the entire project is the lesson in of itself. Though, more ambiguously, we've learned to keep our cards closer to our chest now, because sometimes it SEEMS like a feature is feasible, but it ends up being just way too much work, or ends up not being fun in testing.
Transition toward Re:Illuminated
5. At what point did you decide it was necessary to move from Luminescent Platinum to something entirely new like Re:Illuminated?
ttin: We changed our entire engine modification scheme. We went from something called "Starlight" to "Exlaunch" and it was a major change almost necessitating the move alone.
6. What limitations or pending ideas made it impossible to continue expanding Luminescent Platinum and justified starting from scratch?
ttin: You caught that "almost", then? Yeah - it wasn't strictly necessary. We could have developed a save importer, but when we're rewriting huge parts of the story, we'd rather people experience our story than 50%+ simply importing their save and never seeing it.
Re:Illuminated (the main project)
7. For someone completely new to the project: how would you describe Re:Illuminated, and what sets it apart so radically from Lumiscent Platinum?
ttin: New story, Natdex, overhauled engine (meaning our settings can be in the settings menu, it's easier for us to remake or create new features, and less memory issues!), more character customization, and so much more.
8. The project has been presented as "far more ambitious". What are the biggest goals or features you are building right now?
ttin: Some of the major things are story rewrites to make the story make more sense with the "space-time shenanigans" that Cyrus is messing with. I'm afraid I can't say more at this time.
9. What major technical changes are you making to the code that make it incompatible with Lumiscent's save files?
ttin: As mentioned in 5 & 6, it's more about NOT sinking a large amount of time into making a "save importer" that was self-defeating insofar as letting people skip some of the biggest pieces of our new mod.
10. The team has stated that BDSP is the future of ROM Hacking. What advantages does this base have over any other?
ttin: I think scripting is considerably easier in BDSP than gen 3/4 due to better data segmentation into ROMFS. Every item, trainer, and even sentence said is its own file in BDSP. Beyond that, we have a bunch of projects that we're starting that will make asset creation mostly irrelevant unless you're doing a heavily custom region.
Community and participation
11. How is the community reacting to Re:Illuminated, especially after the recent announcements?
ttin: Impatient. Being the creators of the tooling for mapping, the first to add the natdex, and fully overhauling massive parts of the engine takes time.
12. There is a collaboration form available on your Discord. What kind of profiles are you currently looking for?
ttin: At this point in time, the biggest things we need are people who can help us make chibis (3D modeling/rigging), help us script (experience with high-level scripting - very easy if you've worked on Gen 3/4 or with languages like LUA). Folks who have worked with pret would also be useful for helping with decompiling which is a major first step towards any engine mods we make.
Personal closing
13. Beyond Luminescent and Re:Illuminated, we know you are also developing resources for BDSP ROM Hacking, such as an additional base and tutorials. Could you give us a preview of these development and learning resources?
ttin: We have a variety of tools and tutorials we're making. This last week, great progress has been made on a scripting tool to work with the Re:Illuminated rombase, we have tools for automatically converting assets into BDSP friendly formats, and so much more.
14. How do you imagine the future of BDSP ROM Hacking in three, five, or ten years?
ttin: The biggest thing I can say here is that I hope OpenDPR picks up. If that gets finished, I can imagine full fangames using the BDSP engine to create new experiences more vast than the likes of unbound. In the near future, I think you're going to see mostly feature recreations from other mainline games and romhacks slowly emerging.
15. And finally: if you could give one piece of advice to someone who wants to start in BDSP ROM Hacking, what would it be?
ttin: Honestly just jump in and mess around with tools like Impostors Ordeal. Start small, make backups, and don't be afraid to just mess around. You never know what you could accomplish.
Conclusion
The work of the team behind Luminescent Platinum and Re:Illuminated reflects a constant evolution between technical research and creative design. What began as an experiment to understand the inner workings of BDSP has turned into an ecosystem of tools, ideas, and projects that aims to redefine the future of ROM hacking in this generation.
If this interview makes one thing clear, it is that we are still only seeing the beginning of what is possible within BDSP.
You can find more information about this team in their official website.
And that’s all for now, see you next time!
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