[NA] Erroneous changes made to SAV files

[MicroChip]

PokeGen Version: 3.1.9

Save Device: NDS Adaptor Plus 3.01

Game Version: English

Back in the day I did some hacking and programming for the first 3 generations of Pokemon games. My first test with any new program version was to open/save the file without making any changes which should result in identical save files. I did this test with the latest version of PokeGen and here are the results:

(In all of these examples, PokeGen did correctly adjust the checksum for the changes it made)

Diamond/Pearl

A902 - byte changed from 00 to 01

AA06 - byte changed from 00 to 02

B376 - byte changed from 00 to 01

B6CE - byte changed from 00 to 02

Platinum

B6C6 - byte changed from 00 to 01

B7CA - byte changed from 00 to 02

C13A - byte changed from 00 to 01

C492 - byte changed from 00 to 02

HeartGold/SoulSilver

1407,140A,140B,140D,1419,141C,1421,1427,1438,143E,1469,1472,1477 - bytes changed from 00 to 02

9F42 - byte changed from 00 to 01

A046 - byte changed from 00 to 02

A9B6 - byte changed from 00 to 01

AD0E - byte changed from 00 to 02

Black/White

1C800 -> 1D297 data changed in entire range

40800 -> 41297 data changed in entire range

(both ranges contained identical information and had identical changes made)

I don't know what data is contained at these locations in the save files but these changes may have an effect on gameplay at some point in the game. For some of the Gen4 games I dropped the leading 4 for the saves in the higher range.

Attached is a ZIP file containing the original saves for all 7 games. These save files came from the original game cartridges, have never been edited by any programs or played on any emulators.

Pokemon_Saves..zip

[Codr]

Yay, someone did some work for me.

I'm going to constantly edit this post as I find the reasons for these, so keep checking.

Diamond/Pearl

A902 - byte changed from 00 to 01

AA06 - byte changed from 00 to 02

B376 - byte changed from 00 to 01

B6CE - byte changed from 00 to 02

All 4 of these are the result of the Wonder Card/partial card data being synchronized with their indices in the save file. This is fine.

Edit: The same is true of the Platinum offsets.

Edit 2:

HeartGold/SoulSilver

1407,140A,140B,140D,1419,141C,1421,1427,1438,143E, 1469,1472,1477 - bytes changed from 00 to 02

9F42 - byte changed from 00 to 01

A046 - byte changed from 00 to 02

A9B6 - byte changed from 00 to 01

AD0E - byte changed from 00 to 02

9F42-AD0E are the same as the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum changes.

The others are Pokedex language flags, in this case, being set from nothing to English. My data says that HG/SS, unlike Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, set the data to the native language of the game when a Pokemon is seen. So if yours were zero before, either my data is wrong, or this was edited by something else.

Edit 3:

Black/White

1C800 -> 1D297 data changed in entire range

40800 -> 41297 data changed in entire range

0x1C800-0x1D297 is the Mystery Gift block. The block is encrypted with a partially random value by the game, so PokeGen does the same each time you save. This is the reason for all the data being changed.

0x40800-0x41297 is the copy of the Mystery Gift block in the backup half of the save data.

Edit 4:

I did some testing and discovered that I was misinterpreting the information I had. HG/SS also sets the byte to 0 when a Pokemon is first seen, so those shouldn't have been flagged with 2 (English). It doesn't hurt anything, but it'll be fixed.

Edited July 3, 2012 by Codr

[MicroChip]

Thanks for all the updates.

[MicroChip]

One additional note for the Black/White games...

I have not used the C-Gear or GTS on these games and the data in my gamesave files from address 47F9C to the end of the file contain the value FF. After using PokeGen it replaced the values at address 54712 and 54713 which seem to have not effect on my game right now. I used HxD to change both values back to FF and my game is still working just fine.

[Codr]

PokeGen is correct with all of these.