Pokemon Gamma Emerald solo dev spent 2 years working "12 hours a day" building their remake "from scratch," including 384,000 frames of animation
The solo developer behind a fan-made Pokemon Emerald remake says they've been working 12-hour days for about two years to bring their project to life, during which time they created a whopping 384,000 animation frames and a whole lot more.
Pokemon Gamma Emerald launched into early access last week. Its creator, UndreamedPanic, describes it as a free, "built from scratch" remake, with this early build containing around three to six hours of gameplay. The project adds some quality-of-life improvements not found in the original Emerald, as well as additions like a day/night cycle and the option to let your Pokemon follow you around like in HeartGold and SoulSilver.
As spotted by Dexerto, on social media, Gamma Emerald's dev is adamant that "this is not a rom," nor is it a mod. "I built the assets like sprites, animations, models, music, UI, entire gamma engine myself. Calling it a mod is literally dismissing all of that haha," UndreamedPanic writes. "This is an original creation from scratch. It took 2 years to build with me working on it everyday for 12 hours a day." In a different post, they add: "I've been working to death."
Part of that was the project's animation – in a separate post, UndreamedPanic says "I did 384,000 frames of animation in the past 18 months," which definitely helps explain where those 12-hour workdays came from. Elsewhere, they reiterate: "I built this from the ground up, 0 rom, all me."
Although Gamma Emerald is in early access, UndreamedPanic said at launch that "I am not gonna fix bugs or look at them for a while, I REALLY need a break from this project." After those years of work, I don't think anyone could blame them for having a rest.