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Pokemon Ranger Protoype and Azure Flute


jojo12100

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Terminology might be a bit off, but I stand by my opinion and definition. At no time during development, the debug/test cards were intended for being used with the final game. The true slot-2 distribution carts do actually act quite a bit different than decchi.bin. This file is merely a leftover of a very early version of the game's sources, a file that helped testing the source code. It got into the distro rom by accident, an oversight.
However, if you would even define a C++ source file being an "unreleased" file, then I guess your definition makes sense in its own way!

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I'm not disagreeing with you, either way. :P I think it makes a lot of sense that we can't really call this an event, since for all intents and purposes it was never designed to actually be an event, just something they used as an in-house test.

Do you have any information on how the true slot-2 distro carts worked? If you can say they act quite a bit different, I assume you have some info about how they work. I've been wondering what they do if they are run in GBA mode (I don't expect them to do anything other than display something on screen, but still, curious about what they would display.)

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15 hours ago, Purin said:

It's just a leftover from the testing and debugging phase of the game. This wondercard was never meant to be released, so it's not an "unreleased event" in my opinion. The wondercard description also has the same text as the Old Sea Map wondercard from Pokémon Emerald, in case this wasn't mentioned yet.

However the Azure Flute/Infernape debug test stuff is leftover data used only by the developers. Much like the Litwick, Bulbasaur etc. wondercards in some of the Gen 5 distribution roms.

I agree with this. That's why I wasn't totally sure if calling it an "unreleased event" is the correct term to categorize them as, but it is similar enough to pokemon like Meteor Jirachi, so regardless I think they should all be well documented and archived.

I'd say just distinguish them in two separate categories, "Unreleased Test/Debug Pokemon" and "Unreleased Event Pokemon". I didn't even know about those test Gen 5 wondercards, which we should document alongside the Infernape/Azure Flute.

 

Edit: Just a note, I uploaded a new Infernape wondercard in the post I previously uploaded it in. Just an error fix with the preset OT not being retained when distributed, rather it was using the receiver's OT.

Edited by Deoxyz
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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 years later...

Tests Round 1
Test 1: Renaming the name as B5BE on decchi, and keeping the name in the list in ENG Pearl to B5BE didn't work.
Test 2: Keeping the name B5BJ on decchi, and renaming the name in the list in ENG Pearl to B5BJ didn't work.
Test 3: Renaming the name to B5BE on decchi, and renaming the name in the list of JPN Pearl to B5BE works.

There probably is some kind region tracking, but I can't tell if it's decchi or DPPtHGSS being the side that has the region byte that is being verified.

Interestingly enough, I can't seem to find the list in HGSS.

Tests Round 2
Replacing all bytes that contain 0x01 to 0x02 between offsets 0xC0 to the end, did not make it not receivable on JPN games. (The idea was to accidentally replace a JPN language byte with ENG, but that didn't work)

Maybe what controls it is the script in decchi (script for the wonder card transfer), as opposed to a language byte being checked.

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If you replace every byte from 0xC0 - 0xFFFFF with zeros the distribution cart still works without difference if I remember correctly. So I suppose these bytes are unrelated to the distribution functionality.

In that area you can find the image you can see when booting on a GBA, showing ZP3J (offset 0x514) as well as 9 more similar images.

 

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What is found is, editing the text POKE RANGER B5BJ01- to POKE RANGER B5BJ00- for some odd reason breaks Japanese redemption. Editing the 01 to anything else breaks Japanese redemption :/
I wonder if that's related to language recognition.

edit: It's probably just game cart recognition. NDS games have similar title structure too. Something something 01

Also, removing the AGB header breaks redemption.

Interesting, changing all bytes from range: 0xC0 to 0xFFFFF, to data: 0x01 or 0x0100 breaks redemption too.
Filling them with 0x01000000 re-allowed redemption.
(0x00 made it work fine, as described earlier by BlackShark)

edit2: redocumenting decchi and PCD relations

Spoiler

decchi : PCD
100010 - 10005F : 104 - 153
100060 - 1000FF : 000 - 09F
100100 - 10014F : 104 - 153
100150 - 1004A7 : 000 - 357

it still works when it's trimmed down: final byte being 0x1004A7

Heck, it still works when 0x10010 to 0x100FF are replaced by 0x00s

edit3:
What if we're misunderstanding how the block works.
Maybe it's not looking for a "region code", but rather, the field where extra cards for languages could have been are not populated, hence it can't find a card?
(probably not...)

Given that I blanked out all the apparently unused areas, and trimmed down the size, I'm guessing it's the NDS cart that is searching for a particular value within the 'useless' region. (Given that changing that entire sector to non-00 kills the distribution for JP)

 

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2 hours ago, BlackShark said:

The first pointer seems to exists in US Diamond at 0x2FC7AC.

maybe that's the one. I'll take a quick look at what's there.
edit: Nothing, lol. I'll shift the wondercard down to that location, see if it works

realized what you meant, lol

There's one pointer that points to 0x100100 , but unlike the Japanese one, I don't see another one point to 0x100000 nearby..

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