kenesu-h/ypokestats-api

A Lua script that aims to make Pokemon data - through Lua-compatible emulators - accessible to other applications.

yPokeStats-API

From yPokeStats: "yPokeStats is a LUA script that can display a lot of information about Pokemon games".

yPokeStats-API is meant to make this information available to applications outside of Lua-compatible emulators. In the process, it also allows applications to automate emulator inputs in a more accessible way.

Why

This is mainly a project for fun, but it was also developed with the intent of enabling the remote play of DS games - although mainly Pokemon games.

I also kinda wanted an excuse to practice React and web app development.

How

The API builds upon a modified yPokeStats by exposing the available data using a TCP stream. JSON is used in the rudimentary protocol developed for communication on this stream.

First, I had to modify yPokeStats' data tables since it wouldn't recognize my Black and White 2 region. Its other scripts were reformatted too since the original formatting was... very rough, to say the least. I believe I edited one of the files to fix a crash, though I don't remember which file that was - the Git log will probably tell you. A lot of data is still missing - specifically for Gen 5 moves and abilities - but this fork of yPokeStats should still function like the original. Probably not for Gen 3 and prior though.

TCP and raw socket capabilities were introduced by forcibly loading a LuaSocket dll compiled by Paul Kulchenko, the main developer of ZeroBrane Studio. There's probably a simpler way to do this, but I was kinda frustrated by the fact that emulators dynamically loaded Lua, again through a dll - this meant to me that I had to load libraries by directly loading a Lua script or dll. LuaSocket had no Lua script, so I needed a dll that was compiled in a 64-bit environment. Luckily, Paul came in clutch.

JSON was parsed and encoded using json.lua, which has a loadable Lua script. However, it had to be modified to account for the fact that yPokeStats stored Pokemon game data in a variable called "table", which json.lua happens to use because it uses Lua's built-in table library. As a band-aid solution, I had to modify json.lua to reference Lua's table library as "table_lib".

Usage

1. Clone the repo.
2. Grab Kulchenko's compiled LuaSocket dll and put it in the root of the repo (where ylingstats.lua is).
3. With your Lua-compatible emulator, launch the script while running Pokemon.

• This step assumes that you've setup your emulator for Lua. This usually entails lua51.dll being in the same folder as your emulator's executable.

Examples

A working example of a web app communicating with the API can be found in app-example. It's very rough, but it's able to show a live preview of your current party. It also has some buttons for remote control. I honestly can't see myself finishing and polishing it. At minimum, it should be a basic example of what can be done using the API.

The example uses Rust for the backend and TypeScript + React for the frontend, so you'll need to install Rust and Node.js respectively in order to run the whole web app. I'd write directions, but I'm currently pretty cooked.

Can I contribute and/or fork this?

Yeah, of course. All of this work is unpolished, undocumented, and quite rushed compared to my usual projects anyway. I just hope this is a good enough foundation to build something major.