[FR/LG] How does the game save which starter you chose?

[MichiS97]

Hi,

I've got a question about the save files of Fire Red and Leaf Green. How exactly does the game save which starter who've chosen? The reason I'm asking this is that I basically want to be able to choose which of the legendary beasts I can catch after the Elite 4, meaning I could choose Charmander as my starter but still be able to catch Suicune afterwards by changing something in the save file. (Honestly, I'm doing somewhat of a Living-Dex-project and I don't want to beat FR/LG three times just to get all of the three legendaries, yeah, I'm not too strict on the rules)

I guess this isn't as easy as it sounds though, since the game probably stores your chosen starter in a flag and we don't really know much about flags in the Gen III save files. Well, or maybe we do, I got all my information about the save structure from Bulbapedia and that doesn't really give much in-depth insight.

It would be great if someone could help me on this, else I'll do some research on my own, but I doubt that it'd be very easy.

[suloku]

For gba games it's actually easy to find:

1.- Use a script editor to search the script for the starter, then check how many flags are set or how does it work.

2.- Make a couple test to locate flag diferences in the save file

3.- Hope those flags are what is used to decide the roamer instead of something else set elsewhere.

I did this with emerald to change the roaming lati, which also affects which one you get from the event.

Alternatively, you could technically use a custom rom with a custom script that toogles the flags for you when talking to an npc (or whatever you asign the script to). (Also, there will be a way to do this without custom roms soon, even with retail carts).

I'm not sure if there is a fixed correlation of flag# an save offset, but if it is it would help a lot locating them in the save (but with a little testing they should be easy to find).

[MichiS97]

I totally forgot about script editors. That's actually a great solution, thanks!