Doubling .sav's size with a hex editor.

[Kinstrome]

Hello,

I've been abusing Emerald's RNG to get a few Pokemon in a project to get every legally obtainable ribbon in Gen III and Gen IV. Since I had a frame at about 87 million, I used VBA to RNG those Pokemon. Unfortunately, after weeks of work (including four different playthroughs because of my misunderstanding of Gen III mechanics) and after getting everything ready, I've found that I can't convert the VBA .sav into a physical cart file.

I have several different EZ-flash flashcart devices available, and the one that appears to be working best is the EZ-flash IV. However, it apparently has a common problem with Pokemon games where it fails to load the ordinary 128 KB .sav and needs a double-save (for lack of a better term) of 256 KB. A couple places I found suggested that a person with this problem "splice" two identical files together to create that with a hex editor, so that when EZ4 fails to load the first one it has an immediate backup to retrieve.

Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how exactly to do that. I've tried combining two exported battery files in every way I can think, including just adding one file's data directly after another in a hex editor so that the file was 256 KB (which was the suggestion I'd heard) but that didn't work. Putting two identical files (Except for the name, which I don't think can be identical) next to each other doesn't seem to work either. I'm at a loss.

Is there anyone in the know that can help me with this, or has had this problem with an EZ product? Or can tell me another way to get these VBA Pokemon onto a legit Gen III cart? I still need the Mt. Battle ribbon, or I'd just give someone with better technological know-how the pkm files, ask them to migrate them to Gen IV, and trade them to me over wifi.

Thank you for your consideration, and my apologies if this is the wrong forum or if the subject matter is otherwise irrelevant.

[Codr]

[Kinstrome]

Thank you for your response. I actually am able to give the Pokemon any ribbon via Enciclopedia Pokemon, which I'd been using up to this point for pkm files (if you're implying that I should just program the ribbon directly onto the Pokemon in question), but I went through the contests and battle tower anyway for them. I'd consider just putting that last Colosseum/XD ribbon on them via a program only if there is no reasonable way to get those Pokemon onto a retail cart. Thank you for the suggestion, however, and I will probably use that program for other purposes in the future.

[Codr]

I was actually indirectly saying that spending time trying to do things without "cheating" is really, really pointless. It might give you some minor sense of satisfaction just because it's "more difficult", but is that really worth the time?

Regardless, should you still want to do it the slow way, I'll be no help.

[Kinstrome]

I appreciate your input. To be honest, the best thing in the world for me would be for someone to take all my carts and smash them or toss them underwater, or eliminate them otherwise, so I could break myself from the repetitive Pokemon obsession. But those little tedious projects like a 65-ribbon-Pokemon aren't really that different from any other projects, if you view them from a great enough distance. What's the point of RNGing a perfect team, if many people consider that cheating? What's the point of winning a Pokemon regional, if it's overshadowed by the World-level tournaments? What's the point of winning Worlds, if most of the planet doesn't esteem that as a real-life accomplishment? What's the point of having a "real" accomplishment like a great novel, if you're going to be in the ground one day and forgotten at some point? Obviously, it's completely impractical for a person to constantly disqualify his achievements by unreachable standards, so he just exists and doesn't overwhelm himself with the big picture. Likewise, doing little projects is my way of "tending my garden," so to speak.

I'm not totally against putting one ribbon on, though, so if that's what I have to do I guess I'll just ask someone to transfer them from a Gen III emulator to a Gen IV emulator or do what I intended and send it to a flashcart before importing it to a Gen IV game.