A recently published patent application jointly filed by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company is somewhat peculiar:
- It doesn’t seem directly tied to any specific Pokémon games
- AFAIK the inventors—Tomohisa Hishinuma & Rita Gunji—didn’t appear in any Nintendo/TPC game credits or other patents
- Their listed location is “Kyoto, JP”, suggesting that they aren’t TPC or Game Freak employees
- My guess is that they are Nintendo (relatively) new hires, assigned to assist Game Freak’s internal engine R&D
The patent publication describes a system for spawning and despawning NPCs. It is intended to address this problem: When spawning NPCs around PC, if some are placed where not visible to the camera, they’d appear fewer than the actual number to the player. The solution is as follows.
Spawn an NPC only if:
- NPC will be placed in the same area as PC (a and b in img 1 below)
- NPC and PC will be in different areas but no obstruction between them (a in img 2)
Do not spawn if:
- NPC and PC will be in different areas, AND there’s an obstruction between them (imgs above)
- NPC will be placed inside a terrain object (img below)
Spawning method:
- Use ray-cast probe to detect obstruction
- Randomly placed or forming groups
- Keep spawning until reaching a predetermined number
Despawning conditions (img below):
- NPC outside a predetermined range, AND
- PC moves beyond a predetermined threshold from NPC, AND
- NPC not being rendered for a set time, AND
- Obstruction between camera and NPC for a set time
This will free up slots for new spawns where the player can see them.
[Speculation based on the R&D work] Game Freak might be planning to utilize Switch 2’s processing power to increase the number of Pokémon spawning in the wild while maintaining efficiency.
Related: Game Freak’s Fluid Simulation Follow-Up Paper
[Originally posted on 2026-11-02 Pacific Time]
