Hoenn Diary

A playthrough journal for vanilla Pokémon Ruby
The cart runs in a GBA SP. This runs on the phone sitting next to it.

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What it is

One self-contained HTML file (~240 KB) that plays travel journal for an original Ruby cartridge: an illustrated, pan-and-zoom map of Hoenn stitched to a full chapter-by-chapter walkthrough with 189 checkable checkpoints, every boss team in the game, the secrets and side quests placed exactly where they unlock, and a Pokédex tracker that counts only what one cartridge with no link cable can actually catch.

All progress lives in localStorage. No accounts, no server, no build step at runtime. Sprites load from Pokémon Showdown's public Gen 3 sprite CDN.

The three tabs

DIARY — the whole run as one thing. A hand-drawn SVG Hoenn (animated sea, smoking Mt. Chimney, the Sootopolis crater) where a red thread traces your journey: dashed ahead of you, solid behind you. Every numbered stamp is a chapter; tap one and the journal opens to it. Chapters hold checkpoints, gym teams with movesets and a battle plan, every Team Magma fight with exact levels, rival battles that adapt to your starter, items worth grabbing, and what's catchable nearby. Side-quest cards (Feebas's six tiles, the Regi code, the Trick House ledger, dead-battery survival) sit in the timeline right where they unlock. The map pins fill with golden progress arcs as you check things off, and a "next up" chip always knows where you left off.

DEX — all 202 Hoenn entries with Gen 3-correct types, abilities, stats, and every Ruby acquisition route (encounter rates, levels, gifts, fossils, statics, breeding). The headline number is honest: 186 is the most one vanilla Ruby can ever hold, and once you tell the app your starter and fossil picks it becomes your number (178). Sapphire exclusives, trade evolutions, Jirachi, Deoxys and Latias sit on a shelf labeled needs a link cable or event; the starter and fossil lines you didn't pick move to the road not taken. Neither counts against you.

TEAM — a six-slot scrapbook with nicknames and levels, plus a gym radar that compares your team's typing against the actual rosters of every gym, Elite Four member and the Champion you haven't beaten yet.

   

Accuracy, with receipts

Every trainer team, level, moveset, TM and version mechanic was checked against Bulbapedia's Ruby/Sapphire data, not Emerald's, because guides love to mix them up. Things this diary gets right that the internet often doesn't:

• Sky Pillar opens after the Hall of Fame in Ruby/Sapphire. Pre-Elite-Four Rayquaza is an Emerald thing.
• The Regi caves use the R/S rituals: right-right-down-down + Strength, stand still two minutes, Fly in the center. The Rock Smash version you read about is Emerald.
• Altering Cave is not in this game. At all.
• In Ruby, Maxie steals the Blue Orb (the wrong one) and you get the Red Orb.
• The lottery ladder is PP Up → Exp. Share → Max Revive → Rare Candy → Master Ball, and the Lilycove rooftop clearance sale is real (post-champion, announced on TV).
• Real-hardware honesty throughout: what a dead CR1616 battery kills (berries, tides, lottery), what survives (everything else, including Feebas hunting), and the 366-day berry glitch.

Put it on your phone

1. Hit the Deploy with Vercel button above (framework preset: Other, no build command, output directory: root). Vercel serves index.html as is.
2. Open your deployment URL in Safari on the phone.
3. Share → Add to Home Screen. It installs with its own icon and runs standalone, like an app.

No Vercel? The file works anywhere static files are served, and index.html even survives being AirDropped around as a single file.

Rebuilding from source

The app is generated, never hand-edited:

data/species.mjs      @pkmn/dex pinned to Gen 3  → species.json   (types, stats, abilities, evos)
data/encounters.py    PokeAPI, version=ruby      → encounters_ruby.json (every wild slot + rate)
data/manual_data.py   the authored layer: chapters, checkpoints, teams, side quests, map geometry
build.py              stitches it all into index.html

npm install          # only @pkmn/dex, only for regenerating species data
npm run data         # refetch species + encounters (cached, polite)
npm run build        # data + template.html -> index.html

URL params

Param	What it does
?selftest=1	runs the 36-test in-page suite, prints results
?demo=1	loads a mid-journey demo state (in memory only, never saved)
?ch=lavaridge / ?side=s-regi	deep-link to a chapter or side quest
?view=dex&mon=feebas	open a tab / a Pokémon's page
?k=2&cx=320&cy=350	start the map at a zoom and position

Disclaimer

Fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Creatures Inc., GAME FREAK inc. or The Pokémon Company. No game assets are bundled; pixel sprites are hotlinked at runtime from Pokémon Showdown's public sprite archive. Species and encounter data from PokeAPI and @pkmn/dex; facts cross-checked on Bulbapedia. Code is MIT.

_{made for a GBA SP and the iPhone sitting next to it}