CK20XX

Dangnabbit, I knew it. In my heart, I knew Ammako was right. But I had to give it a shot anyway. Well... what the hey. Maybe it's time I experiment with actual modding then, though I'll probably have to roll back my firmware first or wait for the latest mod tool releases. I went and updated to the latest firmware revision because Nintendo Badge Arcade required it, but that's more of a cute toy than a game I really want to invest it. I can do without it.

I am attempting something somewhat convoluted. I'm trying to extract a save from a copy of Pokemon Moon I legally purchased from Nintendo's eshop, BUT... I'm trying to do it without modding my 3DS. Instead of modding my 3DS, I'm using Citra, a 3DS emulator. I figure if I copy the contents of my SD card to my computer, I should be able to use Citra or some sort of PC utility to extract the save, edit it with PKHex, then import it back so the purchased game can use it. I do have both Ocarina of Time and Paper Mario: Sticker Star so I can mod my 3DS whenever the time comes. I'm not yet comfortable with the idea though. I tend to be a slow, deliberate person who doesn't make a move until all his ducks are in a row. My firmware version is 11.2.0-35U though. I already got the .xml file for JK's Save Manager. It looks practically empty in Notepad++. I probably need to add something to it to make it recognize Pokemon Moon. Dang do acronyms ever confound me, but I know cfw is "custom firmware" and I know what you mean by entrypoints and payloads. This is a brave new world I'm exploring though, and of course I have to start by attempting something out of the ordinary. I just can't keep things easy for myself. Thanks for putting up with me so far.

I'm in an awkward position. I do want to mod my 3DS and run homebrew but... not now. The homebrew scene is still an arms race, to the point where Nintendo is not only banning offenders, but also offering to pay out bounties to people who help it find and close vulnerabilities in its software. The smart thing to do seems to be to wait until the Switch kills the 3DS, then go hog wild and mod it however I like. But... pokemon, that accursed series. I've skipped every 3rd generation, so Sun and Moon have been a perfect point for jumping back in, and I have loved them. I enjoyed Pokemon the most though when I was using PokeGen to mod my saves in Gen 4 and 5. If I want to do that again, all the signs say I must mod my 3DS first, which is the one thing I'm not yet willing to do. So I downloaded Citra and I've been experimenting with emulating a modded 3DS. I have a legit version of Pokemon Moon that I bought on the eShop, so I copied that over to my computer and strapped it to an operating table. There has to be a way to extract the save from it so I can edit it in PKHex, but, unfortunately, the emulator doesn't even seem to recognize where the save for the game is. I can run the Homebrew Channel just fine, but JK's Save Manager can't find a target to select, and what really blows my mind is that it gives me the same problem when I use a ROM of Pokemon Moon instead of the real deal. I'm so close. Surely this must be a situation where I merely don't know the correct file paths to use or something. Or maybe I'm going about this all wrong and need to scrap everything and start over? Research seems to suggest that JK's Save Manager can only target cartridges, not digital versions.

I would say no. You have to open up the transferred .pkm files in Pokesav/PokeGen anyway to reattach their items and reteach HM moves lost in the transfer. Having to do a slight correction to a nickname as well is hardly an additional inconvenience, especially if the oddity is just a slightly longer or shorter hyphen. Now 4th gen pokemon without nicknames getting their species name stuck in all caps? That's a much greater eyesore.

Many thanks for this program. It emulates the Poke Transfer perfectly for me. Ironically, that's also the only problem I have with it. The changes the in-game Poke Transfer demands have always seemed largely redundant to me, and it's a bit of a bother to transfer 400+ pokemon/.pkm files from last generation, then have to go back and reattach items to all of them. The same goes for useful battle HMs like Surf and Waterfall, especially since you can't access the in-game Poke Transfer until you have legal access to all the HMs in the first place, so it's not like that restriction exists to keep new players trekking down the map in the right direction. Having to go back and reteach those moves can be a lot of work when one has amassed the kind of zoo I have. Actually, I think the only truly illegal carryover HM in gen V is Rock Climb. Cut, Strength, Fly, Surf, and Waterfall all return for Black/White, while Whirlpool can be poke-transferred from D/P/Pt and Defog can be poke-transferred from HeartGold/SoulSilver. Rock Smash returns too, though I didn't notice at first since it was demoted to a TM. So yeah, Nintendo's restrictions on the Poke Transfer make no sense. Are there any plans to soup up this Poke Transfer so it's not merely the same as, but better than the real one?