Why are there more PGT slots than PCD slots in Gen4 if you can only hold 3 mystery cards?

[Duxa]

So in later generations its just 1 mystery gift file per mystery gift. Why isnt that the case for Generation 4 (why have PGT and PCD?)? And why are there more PGT slots than PCD slots since you can only hold 3 Mystery cards? Its 8 PGT and 3 PCD slots.

Here is a screenshot of my save (acquired during the events whenever they happened at GameStop and ToysRus) - http://imgur.com/a/r5bjI

Also why is there Dragonite PGT in slot 2 but Jirachi PCD in slot 2? I acquired both but Dragonite Mystery card was deleted to make room. If I boot up the game the 3 mystery cards I have are Celebi, Jirachi and Suicune. 

Just using logic I guess PCD files are actual mystery cards? Then what are PGT files? And why is Jirachi one missing?

Thanks!

Edited January 19, 2017 by Duxa

[Kaphotics]

PCD are the cards, pgt are the gifts. Cards stored the distribution text AND a gift file.

You can always store gifts, trash cards, and receive more cards for later. It's how the game was designed, no need to store distribution text for everything and waste space.

Jirachi hasn't been activated, and Dragonite still has to be picked up.

[Guest]

Pretty much, because Game Freak felt like making it work that way.

PCD is the Wondercard itself, PGT is the gift. PCD contains the gift as well, but for some reason they decided to have the gift also stored in a different location.

I'm pretty sure the only legitimate way to get more than 3 PGT at once was to receive the Manaphy Egg from Ranger (which for all intents and purposes is a PGT with no associated PCD), if you already had other gifts then it would add itself to the list and you likely could go over 3. Not sure how anyone would have gotten over 4, though. I guess they put 8 slots in as a buffer just in case they'd ever use it, but never really ended up making use of it.

D/P doesn't actually delete the card nor the gift when you receive an event, it just deactivates them when picked up/trashed, and they no longer show up in-game. It would be pretty difficult for me to tell you exactly what happened for you to end up with mismatched PCD/PGT in the same slots without knowing exactly how you've done things since you started receiving events, though.

(This has to be a D/P save file, correct? Also be careful with this, PKHeX doesn't handle Mystery Gift info properly right now for Gen. IV and may corrupt stuff irreversibly if you don't keep backups.)

@Kaphotics as far as I'm aware, it isn't possible to trash a Wondercard without picking up the gift, isn't it?

[Kaphotics]

2 minutes ago, Ammako said:

(This has to be a D/P save file, correct? Also be careful with this, PKHeX doesn't handle Mystery Gift info properly right now for Gen. IV and may corrupt stuff irreversibly if you don't keep backups.)

@Kaphotics as far as I'm aware, it isn't possible to trash a Wondercard without picking up the gift, isn't it?

Has been fixed on the latest commits (~3d ago); as for trashing it's been too long for me to remember.

"Gifts are transferred via Wonder Card, which players can store up to three of. This forces players to discard used Wonder Cards so that they will have no more than two cards before receiving another Mystery Gift."

[Duxa]

9 minutes ago, Kaphotics said:

PCD are the cards, pgt are the gifts. Cards stored the distribution text AND a gift file.

You can always store gifts, trash cards, and receive more cards for later. It's how the game was designed, no need to store distribution text for everything and waste space.

Jirachi hasn't been activated, and Dragonite still has to be picked up.

What do you mean by "hasnt been activated" ? When I look at my boxes Dragonite is in there so he was claimed whenever I got him, and Jirachi is part of my party, so he was also claimed whenever event happened. Could it be that Pkhex is not reading the save correctly? The save was dumped from retail cartridge.

Im using build from yesterday (PKHeX Build 1434)

Edited January 19, 2017 by Duxa

[Kaphotics]

Just now, Duxa said:

What do you mean by "hasnt been activated" ? When I look at my boxes Dragonite is in there so he was claimed whenever I got him, and Jirachi is part of my party, so he was also claimed whenever event happened. Could it be that Pkhex is not reading the save correctly? The save was dumped from retail cartridge.

You'd have to inspect the card/gift details; possible that the cardID is 65535 (thus 'received'). Later games have a distinct flag indicating if the gift was used or not.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Kaphotics said:

Has been fixed on the latest commits (~3d ago); as for trashing it's been too long for me to remember.

I just saw, thanks

(I just went and tried quickly, when gift hasn't been claimed then the Wondercard can't be trashed.)

[Duxa]

15 minutes ago, Kaphotics said:

Has been fixed on the latest commits (~3d ago); as for trashing it's been too long for me to remember.

"Gifts are transferred via Wonder Card, which players can store up to three of. This forces players to discard used Wonder Cards so that they will have no more than two cards before receiving another Mystery Gift."

I see... so that makes sense that I could have gotten jerachi without a PGT file and only with PCD. It also makes sense what @Ammako I must have gotten Dragonite, which came with both PGT and PCD, then Jerachi distribution only came with PCD, so it overwrote Dragonite's PCD but since there was no PGT then Dragonite's PGT remained. Weird...

As a side note, I merged latest commit but in title it still says (20161231) so makes it hard to determine if Im actually running the latest commit. Any way to check?

Edited January 19, 2017 by Duxa

[Guest]

No, they always had both PCD and PGT. The PCD contains the whole of the PGT, yes, but when you receive a Wondercard it copies the gift from the PCD (Wondercard) into a different area in memory.

I couldn't really tell how your PGT/PCD ordering ended up this way without knowing every detail of what you did since the start (which would have been 8 years ago and I wouldn't really expect someone to remember every detail this far back. :p)

Though I guess I could try and reproduce it, and if I managed to then I'd be able to tell, but that sounds like an awful lot of trial and error.

[Kaphotics]

4 minutes ago, Duxa said:

As a side note, I merged latest commit but in title it still says (20161231) so makes it hard to determine if Im actually running the latest commit. Any way to check?

The text string is just the 'latest release' date; I added it since the last release to make it easier to identify what version users were using (if they were reporting issues).

I only update that string when I push a new version, so don't worry about it.

[Duxa]

6 minutes ago, Kaphotics said:

The text string is just the 'latest release' date; I added it since the last release to make it easier to identify what version users were using (if they were reporting issues).

I only update that string when I push a new version, so don't worry about it.

is there a way to see which commit is being used though? Possible to add to "About" page maybe?

[Duxa]

11 minutes ago, Ammako said:

No, they always had both PCD and PGT. The PCD contains the whole of the PGT, yes, but when you receive a Wondercard it copies the gift from the PCD (Wondercard) into a different area in memory.

I couldn't really tell how your PGT/PCD ordering ended up this way without knowing every detail of what you did since the start (which would have been 8 years ago and I wouldn't really expect someone to remember every detail this far back. :p)

Though I guess I could try and reproduce it, and if I managed to then I'd be able to tell, but that sounds like an awful lot of trial and error.

Yeah probably not worth it. And you are right, I dont remember how I did Black/White distributions other than driving to gamestop nearby for those, much less these that were like 3-4 years before that.