PCNY Gotta Catch Em All Station

[Kaphotics]

25 minutes ago, RodrigoTR said:

I explored the sevafiles provided in PkHeX, some are still flagged as illegal, PkHeX database might have to be updated or these Pokemon might not be completely reconstructed to their fullest original state. Someone with more experience may want to look into that as I dont know how the flagging system works.

Nobody has collated a complete list of event properties to compare against for Gens 1-3; PKHeX only compares against what it knows about (in-game data only).

[RodrigoTR]

4 minutes ago, Kaphotics said:

Nobody has collated a complete list of event properties to compare against for Gens 1-3; PKHeX only compares against what it knows about (in-game data only).

Oh, so PkHeX only knows how to flag correctly events from gen 4 onwards because we dont know how prior events were stuctured and what were its properties to their full extent?

[Kaphotics]

11 minutes ago, RodrigoTR said:

Oh, so PkHeX only knows how to flag correctly events from gen 4 onwards because we dont know how prior events were stuctured and what were its properties to their full extent?

Gen1-3 events were created by an external process (event machine/device) then injected to the recipient's savegame. Gen4 events onwards send the game the template, which whe game uses to generate the gift when redeemed in-game.

https://github.com/projectpokemon/EventsGallery/tree/master/Released

PKHeX compares the pkm against the event templates. No templates for gen1-3? Can't compare against what is not available!

[RetroAli]

Tony, myself, and Julie (from pokemoncenternewyork.com) did a Q&A last night regarding the history of the PCNY machine & the store itself if anyone is interested/has questions.
 

 

[Home_Rowed]

I'm just tossing this idea out there, maybe get the machine over to Shonumi (reverse engineers unique and obscure GBC and GBA devices and functions, such as the GBC Infrared sensor, GBA MMBN Battle Chip Gate, and the Pokemon Crystal Mobile Adapter GB, among other things, all to add to their emulator, GBE+) or the REON Dev Team (they also work on the Mobile Adapter GB, adding support for the other games it had, trying to recreate the servers, I don't know if they work together) and maybe one of them can emulate the special GBA like hardware to allow the NR disc to actually transmit the event via the Dolphin emulator to GBA emulator connection feature. I think it was stated in the stream that the BIOS was dumped, but it was exactly the same as a standard GBA. So there must be some other hardware in there that has to be analysed and reverse engineered, which would likely take a long time. Obviously it would be up to the owner to contact these people and see if they're trustworthy of the equipment, but if no one else is working on the hardware, maybe let the owner know. Also, I don't know these people, for all I know they might not be interested in this, or not have the time.

[RetroAli]

2 hours ago, Home_Rowed said:

I'm just tossing this idea out there, maybe get the machine over to Shonumi (reverse engineers unique and obscure GBC and GBA devices and functions, such as the GBC Infrared sensor, GBA MMBN Battle Chip Gate, and the Pokemon Crystal Mobile Adapter GB, among other things, all to add to their emulator, GBE+) or the REON Dev Team (they also work on the Mobile Adapter GB, adding support for the other games it had, trying to recreate the servers, I don't know if they work together) and maybe one of them can emulate the special GBA like hardware to allow the NR disc to actually transmit the event via the Dolphin emulator to GBA emulator connection feature. I think it was stated in the stream that the BIOS was dumped, but it was exactly the same as a standard GBA. So there must be some other hardware in there that has to be analysed and reverse engineered, which would likely take a long time. Obviously it would be up to the owner to contact these people and see if they're trustworthy of the equipment, but if no one else is working on the hardware, maybe let the owner know. Also, I don't know these people, for all I know they might not be interested in this, or not have the time.

The machine was sent back to the owner a few weeks ago. Everything regarding the PCNY machine has been shared/is being worked on by users on ProjectPokemon.

Also off-topic, but I highly recommend anyone to check out Shonumi's blog if you haven't - lots of Game Boy related posts/gems in there. And check out the REON Dev Team Discord if you want to learn more about the Mobile GB Adapter.

[dannydstk]

Thanks for everyones work on this! I really enjoyed both videos.

[TheSchilling]

The machine was sent back to the owner a few weeks ago.

why this?

[theSLAYER]

It was mentioned in the video. IIRC it was so that they reduce the chances of them destroying the machine. The faster it's sent back, the more unlikely they'll have chances for destroying the machine.

[RetroAli]

17 minutes ago, TheSchilling said:

The machine was sent back to the owner a few weeks ago.

why this?

It was on loan from the owner for the video...

[RetroAli]

Hello all,  our second video going into a deep dive of the history & technical aspects of PCNY/the machine is up. Hope you enjoy! Also shoutouts to Gridelin for the special appearance. 
 

 

[XxPhoenix1996xX]

I just want to thank everyone involved in this project.

Is always amazing to find, recover and preserve events that we thought lost, but this is something special.

From finding this hardware we've learned tons about the mechanics of the distribution machine itself and the code making possible to recreate even more events/campaigns.

I hope that with this kind of discoveries and videos makes people know and get even more interest in this world. 

Some of us thought this would never be possible, now I think that everything can be. Probably we'll find the Mew/Celebi Machine too! 

Thanks to the owner of the device for letting us preserve the information about this.

Thanks to RetroAli and Hard4Games - Tony for your effort and dedication to make people know about this. Flood the market!

Thanks to our amazing event research team for their time and love for preservation. @Sabresite @Deoxyz @ajxpk @Gridelin 

And thanks everyone in this community for supporting this project. 

[RetroAli]

On 3/7/2020 at 1:12 PM, XxPhoenix1996xX said:

I just want to thank everyone involved in this project.

Is always amazing to find, recover and preserve events that we thought lost, but this is something special.

From finding this hardware we've learned tons about the mechanics of the distribution machine itself and the code making possible to recreate even more events/campaigns.

I hope that with this kind of discoveries and videos makes people know and get even more interest in this world. 

Some of us thought this would never be possible, now I think that everything can be. Probably we'll find the Mew/Celebi Machine too! 

Thanks to the owner of the device for letting us preserve the information about this.

Thanks to RetroAli and Hard4Games - Tony for your effort and dedication to make people know about this. Flood the market!

Thanks to our amazing event research team for their time and love for preservation. @Sabresite @Deoxyz @ajxpk @Gridelin 

And thanks everyone in this community for supporting this project. 

Thank you!

I seriously want to thank everyone in the Discord that has helped us decipher all of the technical stuff w/ the machine/preserving it properly because it's been SUCH a huge help. I'm so glad we got this into the hands of the community as opposed to some hoarder. With the PCNY machine popping up, it makes me think even crazier stuff might pop up in the future. (hopefully) Heck I'm still shocked about the Spaceworld demo leaking all that time ago and the fact that someone kept around the PCNY machine in the first place haha. Anything is possible!

[suloku]

Just seen both videos. I actually saw this thread last week but I thought it was for gen 3 only...and I've just now realized it also harvored long lost gen 2 content.

As axpj said, a dream come true. Confirmation of shiny celebi, DV being randomly generated with shiny probability being separated, and even knowing shiny mew was actually available and the only known gen 2 mew distribution!

Really amazing job, thank you very much, I've been years puzzled by those questions.

 

Edit: I was just thinking...IF DVs are randomly generated when the pokemon is already set to not be a guaranteed shiny, there's still the chance of it being shiny?

Also, I think this was already confirmed, but all possible shiny dv combinations can be obtained for a guaranteed shiny right?

Edited March 11, 2020 by suloku

[jlaine3333]

Has anyone preserved a dump of the machine's code yet?

[theSLAYER]

9 hours ago, jlaine3333 said:

Has anyone preserved a dump of the machine's code yet?

not in any usable form yet, no.

[Uncle Beth]

This is so exciting!!! I know this is a little old now but has more progress been made towards preserving this distribution?

[theSLAYER]

8 minutes ago, Uncle Beth said:

This is so exciting!!! I know this is a little old now but has more progress been made towards preserving this distribution?

It is preserved by the collectors with all the necessary hardware.

The distribution method itself is not shared to the public for various reasons, including difficulties emulating the hardware.
However, all the mons have been shared publicly. The algorithm used for PIDIVs of the mons are also public, but will require some level of technical skill to understand what it means.

[theblokeman]

if someone backed up the writer code would there be any way to mod a gameboy player to plug into controller port 4 and become the writer?

[theSLAYER]

7 hours ago, theblokeman said:

if someone backed up the writer code would there be any way to mod a gameboy player to plug into controller port 4 and become the writer?

They can’t get it working. If they got it working, I would think they would have made a video about it.

[theblokeman]

in the original video by hard4games they talked about the writer device being built off the gba and also how the gba almost starts up when put in port 4 but stops when its almost done. maybe there's extra data written to the gba bios when its turned into the writer so the software is trying to check for that to finalize the initiation process although like you said if something like this could've been done then someone would probably make a video about it