Trouble giving Pokemon 11 Character English names

[STUD]

Im trying to create Pokemon with PokeGen that have english names with the 11 Character Limit. I looked at the character map and it doesnt show the English style lettering so I just typed in a nickname. When I activated the code within my game it had the correct name except it was followed by a bunch of ????. Also the last letter was slightly covered by the symbol indicating it was a male Pokemon. The name I used was exactly 11 characters. Anyone know how to get the ??? to not appear? Or rather a way to properly nickname a Pokemon with an English text nickname? Thanks.

[Codr]

I wonder if this is what others meant by having problems with 11-character nicknames. The game actually limits you to 10 characters, as it saves a character for what's called a terminating character. It signifies the end of a string (series of characters).

[STUD]

Thanks once again for your help Codr!

[AllyKat]

Everyone forgets that in the English games you can ONLY set 10 character long nicknames. For Pokémon, without a Nickname the game displays the species name regardless of length. Hensforth the occassional Pokémon with a name longer than 10 characters. The game does not even read the Nickname field if the nickname flag is turned off.

Thanks to the Global Trading Center shortly after Diamond & Pearl came out, I learned that even though the games do not read the Nickname on same language Pokémon. However, if you say end up with a Pinpul from Japan and Turtwig from France that do not have Nicknames, they will show their proper language knames. Which implies they read from the Nickname field because it a foriegn species. So, as I can confirm when they evolve they take the name that matches the language game they are on. This implies if you trade an 11 character English name Pokémon from a US Pearl to a Japanese Diamond, something in its name WILL change. (Probably just drops the last character.) If anyone can confirm this it would likely help the people making PokeGen better!

[Codr]

Hensforth the occassional Pokémon with a name longer than 10 characters.

Example?

Thanks to the Global Trading Center shortly after Diamond & Pearl came out, I learned that even though the games do not read the Nickname on same language Pokémon. However, if you say end up with a Pinpul from Japan and Turtwig from France that do not have Nicknames, they will show their proper language knames. Which implies they read from the Nickname field because it a foriegn species. So, as I can confirm when they evolve they take the name that matches the language game they are on. This implies if you trade an 11 character English name Pokémon from a US Pearl to a Japanese Diamond, something in its name WILL change. (Probably just drops the last character.)

From what I understand of what you've typed, it seems like you don't understand how nicknaming works between multiple languages of the games. As you mentioned, not having a nickname flag will result in the Pokemon's nickname data being unused. It would be a simple matter for the game to then use the origin value to determine which language list to pull the species name from. For a Pokemon that IS nicknamed, I'd imagine the name would simply be truncated to the maximum character limit on that game. I think it's five for Japanese.

[AllyKat]

Example?

I could have sworn there was at least one Pokémon whose name was longer in the first 150 but I guess I am wrong.

From what I understand of what you've typed, it seems like you don't understand how nicknaming works between multiple languages of the games. As you mentioned, not having a nickname flag will result in the Pokemon's nickname data being unused. It would be a simple matter for the game to then use the origin value to determine which language list to pull the species name from. For a Pokemon that IS nicknamed, I'd imagine the name would simply be truncated to the maximum character limit on that game. I think it's five for Japanese.

The problem with that is that NO where in the Japanese versions of the game is a list of the English names and the same can be said for the other way around. No where in the code is a spot in the Diamond and Pearl games for lists of multiple languages of names for the approximately 500 species. What is present since at least the 4th games is multiple language character sets. The North American games are typically set to hide the option of using the Japanese character sets. Who knows why but we all know there is the option in Black and White to enter in English characters.

I do agree... the Japanese games would just cut off the ending.

(I would be willing to place money on the programmers come the 6th generation will changing the Japanese games to 10 character names for better global compatibility.)

[Codr]

The problem with that is that NO where in the Japanese versions of the game is a list of the English names and the same can be said for the other way around.

I'm not sure about Platinum and below, but the English versions did in fact have Japanese species lists. As for English to Japanese, the non-Japanese cartridges could simply be programmed to always fill in the nickname data with the species name and set the nickname flag upon trading. If trading an English Pokemon to a Japanese game can result in the nickname flag not being set, and still uses an English name, that would be something fairly baffling.

No where in the code is a spot in the Diamond and Pearl games for lists of multiple languages of names for the approximately 500 species.

493. I can't verify this, however, but I'd wager that you're wrong, at least for the non-Japanese cartridges.

Edit: Uh, I don't know how this post got so screwed up.

Edit2: It seems that there aren't actually any language lists aside from the one native to the cartridge in Diamond/Pearl at least. So what exactly does happen if an English non-nicknamed Pokemon from Diamond/Pearl is traded to a Japanese Diamond/Pearl? If it doesn't result in the Pokemon having a Japanese species name or the nickname flag set, I'll be confused. (This is all curiosity, btw. This has no benefit to PokeGen, given the addition of the nicknamed checkbox in the next release.)

[Guest]

If a foreign Pokémon is traded to a Japanese game:

• In 4th Gen: The full name is displayed.
  
• In 3rd Gen: The first five letters are displayed in fullwidth alphanumeric.

Keep in mind that in 3rd gen, if a foreign Pokémon isn't nicknamed, it will get the nickname flag once traded to a foreign game.

Once you trade it back to a same language game, the nickname flag will be removed.

About names and nicknames...

The game reads from "Pokémon name" regardless of the nickname flag being activated or not.

The nickname flag is there ONLY to determine whether or not the Pokémon's name will be changed upon evolution to match the current game's language.

Let's say we got:

• A Pokémon with a nickname: The game will read "Pokémon name" to display the nickname. If the Pokémon evolves in a foreign language cart, the name will stay the same due to the Nickname flag.
  
• A Pokémon with no nickname: The game will read "Pokémon name" to display the name. If the Pokémon evolves in a foreign language cart, the name will change to match the cart's language since the nickname flag isn't there to prevent it..

Hope that cleared up a bit.