The high concept behind the Gym is akin to a Gen 1 Giovanni situation where the leader is actually a villainous sort and through progressing through the gym you uncover and stop a nefarious plot- only with the limitations of assuming NPC events are not accessible in core gyms- it's more like you discover the villain in the aftermath. This all sprung from desperately trying to come up with a Ground gym theme (besides a mineshaft which every rock gym submission already beat me to) and the idea I came to was a Seismology lab- taken a step further- that's been hit by an Earthquake. Again- all very high concept.
The gym's "puzzles" consist of navigating the Lab-turned-Gym with the building split in two- power outage keeping gates closed- and various damage to the facility impeding travel. Trainers and NPCs all hint that something nefarious is afoot and when the player finally gets to the elevator and climbs the maintenance ladder they find a red herring gym leader who in defeat admits they are covering for the real Gym Leader who is trying to escape. A (pretty obvious) secret hatch leads to an underground lab where a doctor admits to helping in dangerous experiments explaining all the hushed secrets from previous trainers. Finally the confrontation takes place over the underground volcano (and the cages the experimental Pokemon WERE inside) Vivian the Gym Leader was using for power to fuel her experiments as she tries to justify all the Pokemon sacrificed for her research.
Again, it's all very high concept and more like an adventure map- the thing is contained to 30x30 but it's HUGE... I recognize I'll need to tone it back but I'd like to get the community's and mod's take on things before I begin hacking and cutting. I was going for that big final gym with story and villainy angle but that might be better left to the individual community servers/map makers, etc. I have a whole version of the lab before I remade it as destroyed so I can revert to a calmer and more straight forward version if the whole deep story is just a bit too much.
Since I know heavy revisions are to follow I haven't made enemy team compositions yet. They will likely make use of some sheer force Nido's, Dugtrio's Arena Trapping and Golem with a Custap Lead Stealth Rock/Explosion
Image Tour and Download
NPC dialogue v1 (More or less the story to this gym).
The work I put in to this brought up a couple questions I was hoping the fine folks working on the mod could answer?
Adding Trainer Pokemon
I appreciate feedback- constructive criticism is appreciated- scathing remarks are probably inevitable. Just want to make the mod the best it can be.