CAP Prevos - What Now?

[G-Luke]

I wanted to bring this up here as I think it is worthy of discussion. Now that the fully evolved CAPs are fully up to date regarding Generation 8, i believe now more than ever is the time to take the opportunity to do the same with the rest of the prevos. I know everyone is busy, and I know that in the past some trip ups happened in regards to responsibility, but that doesn't means we should leave our prevos out to dry. We decided years ago that we will be retooling our prevos from scratch, and as of right now, several of them haven't been touched since then. Seeing the relative success we have had with a Discord type of update process for the CAPS, I think a similar process could do well for the prevos. as of right now we have

• 22 Prevos (including mid evolutions) that are updated to Generation 7.
• 5 Prevos (including mid evolutions) that are still in Generation 6.
• 5 Prevos (including mid evolutions) originating from Generation 4 that have yet to officially exist.

Thanks to having all of the updated CAP movepools now readily available, updating the 22 Prevos should be a rather simple process that takes relatively the same amount of time that the Discord CAP updates have take. More or less is the same for the generation 6 prevos, at most some extra movepool shuffling and deciding what they should gain from both the Generation 7 and 8 updates. The real meat and potatoes are the uncompleted Prevos from Generation 4, and how we will tackle solving that issue. Once we wrap up the 27 Prevos on Discord, i suggest we go to a full throttle prevo creation process on the latter 5. I know that we are in the middle of a CAP Process right now, and deciding whether or not CAP 27 will also receive prevos is not that far away, and that every time we get into a place of sorting the unupdated prevos out, the next CAP prevo sidelines it, putting us in a never ending cycle. I suggest that once CAP 27 prevo count, if any, is decided, we put a pause on its creation until the rest are completed.

I would like to hear the community thoughts on this matter, and even though my access to Discord myself has been unfortunately severed for the time being, it has always been my everlasting wish for the CAP Prevos to be fully up to date, regardless of my own personal input.

 

[Reviloja753]

I believe what we should do is do a similar process to the CAP updates for all of the unupdated but complete CAP prevos on the Discord, perhaps in a more structured format depending on what is discussed here. Once that is done, we should do threads here on Smogon for the 5 CAPs with missing prevos. If CAP27 also has a prevo or two, I believe we should make that simultaneously with the missing prevos from the fourth generation. I believe these should be threads as we are going to be making Pokemon from the ground up, and even if they are simply prevos of existing CAPs, I do feel it's too soon to be making an entire Pokemon over Discord. I also do not feel it's fair to shelve the potential CAP27 prevo(s) to wait for the others to be done, as I worry that somehow CAP27 will be what is pushed off forever, or we have an issue where CAP prevos are not made until the CAP project afterwards.

The other thing I would like to mention is what I believe to be the main reason that CAP prevos in general have stalled for so long. Every prevo thread has been run by DHR (who is often very busy, super cool dude) or nv (who is even busier, also a super cool dude). Also, the updates, while they all happened in 24 hours, was pretty closer to not being able to do so. I expect that updating CAP prevos will take more effort than updating the regular CAPs, especially with those who were not updated for generation 7. As such, I would like to propose that before we do the pre-evolutions, whether it be updating them or making new ones, we nominate Pre-evolution Leaders. These PLs would not only help run the updates, but also run the threads for creating our missing CAP prevos. It would be a nomination process similar to that of the Update Leaders. While I'm not sure as to how many we should have, I think having at least 5, one for each missing line, would be helpful. I am totally flexible on what the number should be, though. I don't have a particular number in mind aside from having enough to where the prevos can be easily managed.

I would like to hear what everyone thinks of my ideas, so give me feedback here or on the Discord!!

 

[MrDollSteak]

I believe that the most pressing concern regarding pre-evos is sorting out the missing ones, namely Colossoil who has nothing, and then Monohm, Duohm, Protowatt and Nohface that have names, tentative sprites but no artwork. In this regard I think the official artwork is the most important thing to make, as it can then be used to finalise designs. Where possible it should be based on existing sprites for Protowatt, Monohm and Duohm, but I believe Nohface's sprite is a bit tricky and it may be better to make a new design, and then sprite from scratch.

I think that art threads can probably be run simultaneously with Cap 27s pre-evo should it get one, and overall speed the process up. Once this is done I think a discord style move update process with PLs like Revi has suggested will work well.

I know there will likely be less interest in prevos, however, I think a lot of the process will just be looking at the final evolution moves and removing where necessary, and tweaking levels which should speed things up a bit so that we theoretically don't need a massive amount of users.

 

[G-Luke]

Tagging Birkal DHR-107 and cbrevan because I would like to here your specific thoughts on the matter and I'd rather this be wrapped up sooner than later.

 

[DHR-107]

Would have been nice to have a tag here when the thread was made. Considering I am the Prevo leader. Or even a PM to talk to me about all this and what I had planned before this was put up.

As I have always said, we will not do prevos until main CaPs are completed. They take precedence. I've spoken to Dogfish44 a few times about what we can do for the prevos and how we can start to get them out of the hell they are stuck in. As you've quite rightly pointed out, the Updated CaP Prevos into Gen 8 couldn't even be worked on until updates were done. I think Birkal mentioned somewhere they took way too long (and I kinda have to agree). I was hoping to have a smallish gap after updates were done to look at how they had come up and how we could turn them into prevo sets.

That didn't happen because of the length of time it took to get updates sorted and then we literally went immediately into the next CaP.

While I know I have been slack in running prevo threads previously, this is mostly due to very low turnout for anyone to actually help complete them. It honestly does effect my motivation for each project seeing maybe 2 or 3 submissions for any stage past typings (and in a number only One movepool submission, even though its changing some levels and deleting some moves). Especially so when people are "really excited" and then up and vanish when the time comes.

Even so; I had a scribbled plan laid out.

1. Create CaP 27's prevo (if there is one)
2. Update the current Gen 7 Prevos into Gen 8 following Gen 8 sequencing/Move removals etc after updates were complete.
3. Update the current Gen 6 Prevos which never got updated to Gen 7
3.5 Concurrently with creating at least some Typings/art assets for the other prevos which kinda exist but kinda don't
4. Finish those above designs (Movepools/dexes etc)
5. Create Colossoil Prevo

Obviously this is partly conditional on a new CaP taking precedence (but we might be able to continue on in a smaller capacity).

Step 1 is obviously the most important here.

Step 2 could be done by a smaller group of people who know the movepools and how the level up process works.

Step 3 is again relatively easy, even if it could take us slightly longer (we still have parents movepools).

Step 3.5 I was considering some sort of workshop for the art assets where people can just post for different ideas etc, but I'm not sure how well that would go down with artists. Do you guys prefer having a full submission thread? Its difficult to imitate other peoples art, but that's what we will have to work with in the majority of the cases of prevos which are left. I don't want any artist to feel left out if they think they have a better vision than another artist. For other prevos, we only have spritework (Nohface and Krilowatt's prevos iirc) which need full artwork created.

Step 4 is mostly hand in hand with 3 and 3.5. If we can get some momentum going and keep things moving we should be in a decent position.

Step 5 is obviously make the last prevo and "complete" the set. It would have taken us 4 generations and ten years, but we would have everything up and running by the end of Gen 8/start of Gen 9.

Step 6. Maybe recreate CaPLC now that Cawdet won't be stupid (though I hear Scratchet and Pluffle are both kinda stupid).

Also please don't forget this thread https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-gen-4-prevo-voting-thread.3601220/ happened.

Its super late here and I've probably forgotten something, but that's the general idea going forwards. We might also make movepool updates etc available on Discord, at least for the prevos which exist to get them up to date and up to speed potentially faster (I think Birkal wants to post about this).

 

[MrDollSteak]

Now that we are nearing the end of the CAP 27 process, and have Astrolotl's Prevo process, the DLC and CAPTTVI on the horizon, I think now might be a good time to come back to this thread.

I personally really like DHR's proposal and think that order of events is pretty solid for the most part, though I do believe that updating Gen 6 Prevos could occur simultaneously (potentially skipping Gen 7 completely or with Gen 7's being made retroactively). Additionally I think that stages 3.5 and 4 (and 5 too honestly) should be concurrent, because as DHR has mentioned, there is often low motivation when it comes to the prevos, and I think that having a few simultaneous projects going on should somewhat eliminate that, especially when it comes to things like art assets, sprites and movepools.

While the 25 Prevo process was perhaps one of the more laboured ones, I don't think that was specifically due to there being too many threads on the go, but rather because the CAP community was at a natural low point already from the difficulty of the 25 process more generally. I think that we have seen in CAP 27, a huge upsurge in participation (especially relative to Equilibra) and do genuinely believe that there will be more positive energy going into the prevos at this point in time. I think there is a lot of excitement surrounding the DLC and Gen 8, and even CAP 1v1 to an extent, that is bringing people to CAP and wanting to get involved.

 

[Birkal]

I'd like to go ahead and give DHR-107 the power to enact what he's proposing two posts above this one. The moderating team can help him pull together a small team to cover some of these smaller jobs (e.g. Step 2). Perhaps we'll made a nomination/request/message DHR process so people can join the team as they become interested in helping with pre-evolutions. Regardless, I think it's time we move forward with getting these pre-evos finished up.

I'm going to close out this thread in 48 hours, so please use that time to discuss any final thoughts or request more time if needed.