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Pokemon Showdown

ยท 3 min read
Travis Blanks
Travis Blanks
Jack of All Trades

I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Showdown recently. I try to post all of my matches on YouTube. They've been the bulk of my videos for the past few months, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. They are very easy to make. All I have to do is to cut the video every 2-3 battles, export it, find a good screenshot in the clip for the thumbnail, then upload it to YouTube. I've gotten a surprisingly good response from my viewers. I still have no idea how YouTube's algorithm works, but people who play Gen 3 OU (The category I play the game in) have flocked to my channel.

An Adobe Premiere Pro Project containing Pokemon Showdown Clips.

I really enjoy playing Pokemon Showdown. I feel like it's a good way to train my brain for Melee. I have to make decisions fast because the game is on a timer. I prefer playing Pokemon Showdown over playing Chess or Go, which I've tried playing both online and in-person at community events when I stayed in Albuquerque. I'm not sure if I'm getting the same benefits from it because I don't feel as drained as I do after a match of Chess, Go, or Melee. The decision making in those games really takes a toll on my energy levels. Especially Melee with its added pressure of execution. Maybe I like it more because I win a lot more in Pokemon Showdown than I do in any other competitive game I play. Losing a lot really leaves me in a depressed state. I'm not giving up on Melee though. I still feel like I can be the best in the world at that game.

An old Smogon forum posts containing info on how to use a script to change Pokemon Showdown battle music.

After playing Pokemon Showdown so much, the music gets really repetitive. There's only 3-4 songs that play when you enter a match. On the search for a solution to this, I found an old post on the Smogon forums about a script that can be used to change the music in Pokemon Showdown. My first attempt at running it caused the game to not play music at all. I saw that as a good opportunity to play random music from a folder using VLC Media Player while playing Showdown. For a few weeks, I had no clue the script was causing the issue. I didn't even know it was still running until I saw on my Google Chrome extensions that it was still enabled. When I found out the script was halfway working, I decided to dig deeper and figure out why it wasn't playing any music. I've been using VS Code CoPilot to help me debug the script. So far, I've gotten my music to play during battles half the time. Other times, no music plays at all. I'll keep trying to debug the script, and once it's completely functional, post to the Smogon forums about the fix. I don't know if there are other solutions out there, but based on my web searching, there doesn't seem to be anyone who uses music outside of Showdown. Hopefully people will find it useful.