SCscheibo·Jun 2, 2025
The C API provided here is unquestionably anemic, though perhaps makes more sense when understood to exist more to facilitate bindings written in other languages (Python, C++, Rust, etc) and not as an API intended to be used by developers setting out to write an application in C. The two main reasons the C API kind of sucks is that (1) C does not support namespaces/modularization (2) C does not have convenient standardized bitfield support that works cross platform. Finally, I can't really imagine someone wanting to leverage this engine from C and balking at spending an afternoon writing a friendlier wrapper API specific to their use case. That being said, if you have suggestions for improvements please open an issue on GitHub to discuss it.
Team validation is an an orthogonal problem, and is almost completely solved by PKHeX (https://git
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hub.com/kwsch/PKHeX) which already does a better job at it than the original game developers. Pokémon Showdown's custom rules are almost all enforced at team validation time, and the standard clauses/rules which require modifications to the engine (e.g., EBC, Sleep/Freeze Mod, Desync Mod) are all supported already by this engine when -Dshowdown compatibility mode is enabled. Your other requests (Unown/Spinda/PP UPs) are all client concerns and thus would be implemented at a higher level than the engine shared here. Your switching scenario will also be handled whenever the generations it is relevant to get implemented. Pokémon Showdown already supports the concept of "maybe trapped" so presumably handles the scenario you're detailing, though if not I'm sure they would appreciate being made aware of any bugs that might exist.