PowerSave Shinies, Legit or not?

[Rune Knight]

Hey guys, you can change your Pokemon to shiny with the the PowerSave update but it says "this pokemon turn to a traded Pokemon" what does it mean? sounds like they change the SID or something like that.

Anyone knows what it exactly do to make it shiny?

[smitty]

Hey guys, you can change your Pokemon to shiny with the the PowerSave update but it says "this pokemon turn to a traded Pokemon" what does it mean? sounds like they change the SID or something like that.

Anyone knows what it exactly do to make it shiny?

It changes the OT ID# of the pokemon so that it will generates trainer shiny value that equals the Pokemon's shiny value. After you apply the edit, the game treats it like it was a Pokemon that was traded to you (since it no longer has the same OT ID# as you.) It will gain boosted EXP and you will be unable to nickname it after the shiny edit has been applied.

[GycioS]

It basicly means you're not the owner anymore.

[Shady Guy Jose]

But do they have anything that could be flagged as illegal?

[smitty]

But do they have anything that could be flagged as illegal?

No

[BeUndead]

We don't know how TID and SID's are generated yet (as far as I know), and so it's possible that the Powersaves hack gives it an illegal combination.

[smitty]

We don't know how TID and SID's are generated yet (as far as I know), and so it's possible that the Powersaves hack gives it an illegal combination.

No one has been banned from using Powersaves shinies. Also, TID and SID have been worked out for this gen. You can use PKHeX to study them if you want. You can use either a Powersaves backup to look at the files en masse like in Pokegen (you can easily see the values in the newest update) or you can use one of the box dumpers like KeySav to dump the .pkx (or .pk6 files if you prefer that extension) as individuals which can be loaded into PKHeX. You can find instructions on how to use those tools in Kaphotics' threads about them. They are actually all pretty handy tools to have if you do a lot of trading on various boards since you can give exact IV's and check IV's again like back in the Instacheck days (although the checking part has to be done after the trade is complete now).

Also, before anybody who comes along and only halfway reads this post (no offense to BeUndead but this is meant for others who may come along afterward and partially read this), you cannot use PKHeX to inject pokemon.

[BeUndead]

-snip-

Don't worry, I won't take offence.

I understand that we can view the TID and SID, I was referring to the manner in which the numbers are generated. I believe there are 65536*65536 combinations, and it's quite possible that not all of these can actually be generated when starting a new game. If/when the RNG for generation of TID and SID becomes known (or public), it's possible that a Powersaves hacked shiny can be proven illegitimate if it has a TID and SID combination which isn't obtainable (legitimately). There were certainly some combinations which weren't possible in past generations (when TID and SID abuse was a thing).

[smitty]

Actually, the formula for generating the TSV and Pokemon SV are known for this gen. It is the same as in gen 3 with one small tweak to the formula which makes wild shiny encounters a bit more common. There is a nice article on Bulbapedia on this as well as all of the quirks with it in past gens.

Now, what Powersaves does is that it manipulates the TSV of the capturing/hatching original trainer which is determined by the OT ID# and the Secret ID number. For simplicity's sake, lets say the actual formula is TSV = OT ID# + Secret ID#. We know that we want the TSV to equal that of the Pokemon's SV (so now we have a fixed number for TSV). The secret ID is left the same (I've dumped before and after files and can confirm that this is the case) so that number remains constant. That leaves the OT ID# as a variable. Now we do know that there are a limit to OT ID#'s (65535 iirc) so anything above that would be a red flag. However, Datel could easily program their edits to generate OT ID#'s within the boundaries. Other than this one change, everything about the .pkx file is the same (from PID on down.) I have yet to hear about Powersaves generating an OT ID# outside the normal range.

[BeUndead]

-snip-

My apologies, I don't think I am explaining myself well enough.

The TID and SID are stored in 2 bytes; and so have the range 0x0000=0 and 0xFFFF=65535 as you say—there is no way for Powersaves to generate one outside of this range.

These are generated the moment the game is started (in previous generations, this was sometime between selecting your character's name, and gaining control of them).

However, in previous generations at least not every TID could be matched with every SID.

I cannot think of any off the top of my head, but as an example; if your TID was 65535, it's possible that the game could never give you the SID 00000, because that pair is never generated by the RNG.

Since (I assume) Powersaves just uses the reverse of the formula for calculating the Egg's SV to set the TID and SID to a combination which makes the Pokémon shiny (for example; SID = (LID XOR HID) XOR TID), this may not always result in a legal TID and SID pair.

[smitty]

I understand what you are saying now, but is honestly cannot ever recall that ever being an issue that has ever come up. Granted it is actually a pseudo-RNG, but if it was a major issue, then somebody should have been flagged by now since this system has been implemented since gen 3. Also, Powersaves has been out now for long enough and there have been several tournaments since support was added that if it was an issue, one would think that it would have come up at least once by now especially since several of these occurred strictly over Wi-Fi and subject to whatever hack checks Nintendo has in place.

[BeUndead]

True, and it's largely irrelevant.

But if/when we do discover the TID and SID generation algorithm, it may be possible to detect some previously Powersaved shinies as illegitimate—of course, a lot of combinations are legitimately generated, so it's quite possible that the hacked combination would be fine.

My guess would be that Nintendo's checks don't take this sort of thing into account when checking—hell, Premier Ribbons from Pokécheck make it across Pokémon Transporter no problem, and those were added (I assume) specifically to mark the Pokémon as cloned/external to the game. But regardless, it's one (future) possible way they may be detected (by the community, not necessarily by Nintendo).