Jonathan

Oh wow this conversation moved really fast! Alright, thanks for confirming my questions. I can't imagine how much work you'd have to do programing this stuff in, and especially considering kaphotics' point about you being able to close your DS once you encounter the Pokemon, it certainly doesn't seem worth the effort. Thanks for elaborating on the order in which your program does the series of events we were discussing, it actually explains why RNG Reporter takes ridiculously long to search for results. You are right of course, about the initial seed only generating the first Pokemon caught on the startup. Your post certainly sheds light on how complicated it would be for Codr to implement all the data in RNG Reporter. Regarding some spreads not being available on certain days, I feel this must be the case: I don't think you could advance the frame enough to go through all the RNG iterations in a single day. A lot of the conversation that followed went way over my head; like I said I only have limited experience with RNG abuse. But two things that came out of the conversation made me realize how hard proving the legitimacy of a Pokemon actually is (besides all the obvious indicators of course): 1. My initial post didn't take into account that not all Pokemon are caught on the first frame; thousands can advance before the Pokemon is caught. 2. Even if you encounter a Pokemon on the first frame of your initial seed, you could shut your DS off for a month and then capture it. These two points make proving a Pokemon's legitimacy extremely difficult, to the point where it really wouldn't be worth programing into PokeGen in my opinion. Moreover, I suppose you could technically argue the legality of any PokeGen-created Pokemon as such: suppose the PID & IV combination was legitimately available on 4/5/2010 at 9:52AM after 1046 frames had advanced. The Pokemon you have was met on 4/10/2010. Who's to say you didn't open your DS on 4/5 at that time, encounter the Pokemon after 1046 frames had advanced, left your DS closed for 5 days, and then caught your Pokemon?

Okay, thanks for the quick response. I know this is irrelevant as far as passing Nintendo's checks and even some of the most comprehensive hack checks out there goes. The question was more for my own "peace of mind" (or obsessiveness depending on how you look at it) that the Pokemon from PokeGen could 100% be recreated without an external device. The only way I think one could prove a Pokemon generated from PokeGen isn't legit is through the program RNGReporter (more info here if you're interested: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52180). The program provides the missing link between the DS Date & Time and the initial seed. I guess one could use RNGReporter to ensure the Pokemon created with PokeGen could have actually been created on a given day, and then the Pokemon would be completely legit. So as I understand it, this is the Pokemon creation process from start to finish in the actual games: DS Date & Time --> Initial Seed --> Legitimate PID & IVs (based on the 4 RNG calls) --> Legitimate Pokemon PokeGen, as I understand, essentially begins at the second step, carrying out everything thereafter exactly the way the cartridges do - although the initial seed used in creating the PID & IVs is not explicitly stated in your program, correct? I assume one could back out the original seed, but I'm guessing you didn't explicitly include it in the program as it just confuses the average player without providing any useful information. So I know this is essentially what I asked in my last post, but now that I've given this some more thought I think I can phrase this a little better: the only difference between PokeGen and the way real Pokemon are created is that PokeGen can choose any initial seed on any particular day, while the actual games have a limited number of initial seeds to choose from on a particular day. Is that correct? This would mean that PokeGen gives you more "legitimate" PID & IV combos than there are in reality, right? I'm sorry for all the questions, it's mostly me just thinking out-loud and wanting confirmation (or an explanation why I'm wrong) on my musings

Hey Codr, first I want to just say how amazing this program is, you've done a truly fantastic job. It's so nice to see how dedicated you are to the program and the efforts you've gone to to help people in this thread. After exploring the program a little bit, I still have one question about ensuring the legality of the Pokemon created. A lot of what I'm about to say concerns RNG manipulation, which I read about a couple months back, so forgive me for any flaws in my argument. From what I remember, the initial seed is set by the date and time on the Nintendo DS system when the game is launched. This means all further RNG invocations, and therefore a Pokemon's PID and IVs, are pre-determined by the initial seed. Is this taken into account by PokeGen in some way I'm not thinking about, because there's no way to input a date & time anywhere. My concern is that if the date I met my Pokemon on is a day on which I could have never obtained the initial seed that led to my PID & IVs, then the Pokemon could be viewed as hacked, right?