- For the main page about items, see Items.
- For a description of how item effects work, see Item effects.
- For adding, removing, counting and choosing items in the Bag, see Manipulating items.
This page describes how to define an item.
Defining an item
An item begins with its definition. This means that is is listed in the PBS file "items.txt", so that it can be recognised by the game as an item. This alone does not give the item an effect, but you must start by defining it before you can use it.
This page only describes how to define an item. See the page Item effects to find out how to add effects to defined items.
PBS file "items.txt"
The PBS file "items.txt" lists all the defined items in the game. Each line in this file is one separate item.
Every line in this file follows the same format. Firstly, here are some examples:
1,REPEL,Repel,Repels,1,400,"An item that prevents weak wild Pokémon from appearing for 100 steps after its use.",2,0,0, 217,POTION,Potion,Potions,2,200,"A spray-type medicine for wounds. It restores the HP of one Pokémon by just 20 points.",1,1,0, 266,GREATBALL,Great Ball,Great Balls,3,600,"A good, high-performance Ball that provides a higher Pokémon catch rate than a standard Poké Ball.",0,4,4, 329,TM42,TM42,TM42s,4,10000,"An attack move that doubles its power if the user is poisoned, paralyzed, or has a burn.",3,0,0,FACADE 510,TOWNMAP,Town Map,Town Maps,8,0,"A very convenient map that can be viewed anytime. It even shows your present location.",2,0,6,
Each line is structured as follows, with commas separating each part:
Part | Information | Description |
---|---|---|
1 | ID number | This number must be different for each item. It must be a whole number greater than 0. You can skip numbers (e.g. the sequence 23,24,25,197,198,199,... is allowed). The order in which items are numbered is not important.
ID numbers are obsolete and not used for anything. |
2 | ID | This must be different for each item. This is how the scripts refer to the item. Typically this is the same as the item name, but written in all capital letters and with no spaces or symbols. In the scripts, the ID is used as a symbol (i.e. with a colon in front of it, e.g. :POTION). The ID is never seen by the player. |
3 | Name | The name of the item, as seen by the player. |
4 | Name plural | The plural form of the name of the item, as seen by the player. For example, "Potions". |
5 | The Bag pocket number the item is stored in. By default, this is one of:
| |
6 | Price | The cost of the item when the player buys it from a Poké Mart. Note that when the player sells the item to a Poké Mart, it is sold for half this price (by default). If an item has a price of 0, the player cannot sell it. |
7 | Description | The item's description. Typically, HMs, TMs and TRs will have the same description as the moves they teach, but they don't need to.
If there are any commas in the description, you must surround the entire description with quote marks. If there are no commas in the description, there's no harm in having those quote marks anyway. If there are any quote marks in the description itself, you must put a backslash before each of them, e.g. |
8 | Usability outside of battle | Is one of the following values:
|
9 | Usability in battle | Is one of the following values:
|
10 | Special items | Is one of the following values:
|
11 | HM/TM/TR move | This field is for HMs, TMs and TRs only, and contains the ID of the move that it teaches.
A species is compatible with a HM/TM/TR if and only if the move it teaches is listed a a Tutor Move for that species in the PBS file "pokemon.txt" (and in "pokemonforms.txt" if appropriate). The species having access to that move via its level-up moveset or as egg moves will not count. See the page Learning moves for more information. |
Item icons
Each item has a single icon, which is located in the folder "Graphics/Items" and called XXX.png
, where XXX
is the ID of that item.
If the icon for a machine item (a HM/TM/TR) does not exist, then it will instead try to use other icon(s):
- TM - Tries the icon named
machine_XXX.png
, whereXXX
is the ID of the type of the move it teaches. - TR - Tries the icon named
machine_tr_XXX.png
, whereXXX
is the ID of the type of the move it teaches. If this isn't found, it tries the icon that a TM would use. - HM - Tries the icon named
machine_hm_XXX.png
, whereXXX
is the ID of the type of the move it teaches. If this isn't found, it tries the icon that a TM would use.
The item icon can be any size, although 48x48 pixels is traditional.
An item's icon can be animated. For it to be animated, its graphic should contain a number of frames in a row, and each frame must be exactly 48x48 pixels in size. No matter how many frames there are in the graphic, one complete cycle will last 1 second, so having more frames means less time is spent showing each individual frame. Both of these values (48 pixels and time per cycle) are defined as constants in class ItemIconSprite and are easily changeable; note that they apply to all item icons.
Items can also have unique small icons for display in the party screen when they are held by a Pokémon. These are located in the folder "Graphics/Pictures/Party" and called icon_item_XXX.png
(for non-mail items) or icon_mail_XXX.png
(for mail items), where XXX
is the ID of that item. If there isn't a unique icon for an item, it will use the default icon_item.png
or icon_mail.png
instead.
In addition to the above, each Mail item also needs its own background picture. This picture is located in the folder "Graphics/Pictures/Mail" and called mail_XXX.png
, where XXX
is the ID of that item.
Mail background pictures should be the size of the game screen.