Pokemon Showdown

Pokemon Showdown is a simulator of Pokemon battles. It currently supports singles battles in Generations 4-5 (HGSS, BW, BW2).

Installing

Pokemon Showdown requires Node.js (versions 0.6.3 through 0.8.22 are known to be supported), so install that if you don't have it yet.

Next, obtain a copy of Pokemon Showdown. If you're reading this outside of Github, you've probably already done this. If you're reading this in Github, there's a "Clone" button in the top left, or if you're really lazy, there's a "ZIP" download button. I recommend the Clone method - it's more time-consuming to set up, but much easier to update.

Pokemon Showdown is installed and run using a command line. In Mac OS X, open Terminal (it's in Utilities). In Windows, open Command Prompt (type cmd into the Start menu and it should be the first result). Type this into the command line:

cd LOCATION

Replace LOCATION with the location Pokemon Showdown is in (ending up with, for instance, cd "~/Downloads/Pokemon-Showdown" or cd "C:\User\Bob\Downloads\Pokemon-Showdown\").

This will set your command line's location to Pokemon Showdown's folder. You'll have to do this each time you open a command line to run commands for Pokemon Showdown.

To install dependencies, run the command:

npm install

Copy config/config-example.js into config/config.js, and edit as you please.

Congratulations, you're done setting up Pokemon Showdown.

Now, to start Pokemon Showdown, run the command:

node app.js

You can also specify a port:

node app.js 8000

Visit your server at http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/~~SERVER:PORT/

Replace SERVER with your server domain or IP, and PORT with the server's port. You can leave off :PORT if it is 8000 (the default).

Yes, you can test even if you are behind a NAT without port forwarding: http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/~~localhost/ will connect to your local machine. Some browser setups might prevent this sort of connection, however (NoScript, for instance). If you can't get connecting locally to work in Firefox, try Chrome.

The reason your server is visited through play.pokemonshowdown.com is to make it more difficult for servers to see a user's password in any form, by handling logins globally. You can embed this in an iframe in your website if the URL is a big deal with you.

If you truly want to host the client yourself, there is a repository for the Pokemon Showdown Client. It's not recommended for beginners, though.

Setting up an Administrator account

Once your server is up, you probably want to make yourself an Administrator (~) on it.

config/usergroups.csv

The easiest way to become an Administrator is to create a file named config/usergroups.csv containing

USER,~

Replace USER with the username that you would like to become an Administrator.

This username must be registered. If you do not have a registered Pokemon Showdown account, you can create one using the registration form.

Once you're an administrator, you can promote/demote others easily with the /admin, /leader, /mod, etc commands.

localsysop setting

Alternatively, if you do not want to use config/usergroups.csv, you can use the following method to become an Administrator. In your config/config.js file, you can set exports.localsysop = true and then any users who join from 127.0.0.1 will automatically become Administrators, even if they are unregistered.

If you are running Pokemon Showdown on a remote server (such as a VPS), you can still connect from 127.0.0.1 using an SSH tunnel:

ssh user@example.com -L 3000:127.0.0.1:8000 -N

Replace user by your user account on the remote computer and replace example.com by the host name of the remote computer. Replace 8000 by the port that the server is running on. You can then point your browser to http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/~~localhost:3000/ and it will connect to example.com:8000, but it will consider you to be connecting from 127.0.0.1, so you will become an Administrator.

Browser support

Pokemon Showdown currently supports, in order of preference:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Chrome/Firefox/Safari for various mobile devices
• Opera
• Firefox for Android
• IE9+

IE8 support can technically be added without too much difficulty, but it doesn't run PS fast enough to be usable.

As for older browsers (Firefox 3.6), I won't go out of my way to support them, but if there's a simple fix, you can suggest it to me and I'll implement it.

Community

The Pokemon Showdown development IRC channel is #showdown at irc.synirc.net.

The Pokemon Showdown forums are hosted on Smogon Forums.

License

Pokemon Showdown's server is distributed under the terms of the MIT License.

Credits

Pokemon Showdown was created by Guangcong Luo [Zarel].

Developers

• Guangcong Luo [Zarel]
• Cathy J. Fitzpatrick [cathyjf]
• Bill Meltsner [bmelts]

Contributors

• [Marty-D]
• [The Immortal]
• [Joim]
• Cody Thompson [Rising_Dusk]