Shiny164

Heh, that's fine. I'd've deleted this the post if I'd thought no-one else would be interested Sorry for taking so long to get back to you - I somehow managed not to check my e-mails for about 3-4 days, which I think is a record for me! And yeah, my games on all the memory cards seem to work perfectly. I'd strongly recommend keeping your original save file on its original memory card just in case, though. It never hurts to be safe. Do you have an SD Media Launcher (that's a UK link, equivalent US link)? I think there are some other similar things available, but that's what I used. Sorry if any of the following sounds patronising - I have no idea if you've done any of this stuff before. Equally, I'm sorry if this is at all hard to follow; I'm not good at explaining things. I bought an SD Media Launcher and an SD card, then downloaded GCMM (to download, click the Download link on the right of that page, then the "gcmm_10.rar" link on the right of that page). I extracted the .rar, copied gcmm.dol (in the "gamecube" folder) to the root of the SD card, and created a folder called MCBACKUP in the root of the SD card. (The root of the SD card is when you're not in any folders, so you'll be in something like "F:\" instead of, say, "F:\Blah".) Then I put the SD Media Launcher disc in my GameCube, the SD Media Launcher memory card with the SD card in into slot 1, and my memory card with my Pokemon Colosseum save into slot 2, started the GameCube up and waited for it to load, then selected gcmm.dol. It's fairly self-explanatory after that. There's a button to press (I think it's Y) to back files up to the SD card, then you can switch the memory card for a different one and restore (X button?) the save file to that. If it comes up with error messages when backing up or restoring, try taking the memory card out of slot 2 and putting it in again, then trying again. The restored save file should work okay (mine loads and saves just fine), and you can move or copy it to other memory cards within the normal GameCube memory card menu thingy, instead of those options being greyed out. You can also copy the save files (.gci files) from the MCBACKUP folder to your computer for safekeeping. If you've already tried this or have any problems, let me know. I may not be able to help, but it's worth a try, and I'll try and get back to you a bit quicker next time! Good luck!

I'd really like to to back up my Pokemon Colosseum (and XD when I get around to playing it) save file to my computer, in case my memory card gets lost/broken/etc. I've used MCBackup to copy it to my computer, but I gather copying it back to a different (or reformatted) memory card doesn't work because it's encrypted with the serial number of the memory card it was saved on. Obviously, this (pretty much) destroys the purpose of backing it up in the first place. Has this issue ever been sorted out? Is there some way to unencrypt the save files? I know there are other threads on this topic, but it looks like the most recent one is over a year old, and someone may have figured it out in the meantime. Has anyone tested whether copying the raw image of the memory card and then restoring it to a different card, or the same one after reformatting, works? I can't find anything that says either way, and I don't really want to buy a USB Memory Adapter in order to back up and restore memory card images, only to find out it doesn't work. For that matter, is there an application that can backup/restore the images without a USB Memory Adapter? (I have an SD Media Launcher.) Thanks Edit: Never mind! I bought a couple of spare memory cards and tested some stuff out. It seems to work just fine just backing up the save files with GCMM 10 and my SD Media Launcher :biggrin: I'll leave this here in case anyone's looking for the information. And then if you restore the backup, you can copy/move it between memory cards as you normally would on your GameCube.

Oh, wow! You guys are awesome! Pup, thank you so much for your help with the checksum! I really appreciate it. I am now the proud owner of my very first edited-myself-without-corrupting-it save file, thanks to your research codemonkey85, thank you very much for your offer of making a trainer detail-changing program! I don't need it, since I've got the changes I needed working now, but it was really kind of you to offer Will the program you're working on now be able to convert DS -> GBA, or only GBA -> DS? 'Cause I bet there are a few people out there who've Pal Parked a Pokemon and then later regretted it.

Arqui used an AR code generator in the end, and gave me the download link so I could use it as well. That sorted out what I wanted to do, but I'm still interested in directly editing the save file, since I'm not a massive fan of cheat codes and they don't seem to be too fond of me either :-) The main issue I came across was checksums - if you know anything about how they're calculated for the Pokemon GBA games, that would be wonderful! Also, I think the trainer details (name, ID, SID) are somehow linked to the amount of money the player has, since when I copy-pasted the entire block that the trainer details are stored in from one brand new save file to another, the trainer details all came out exactly as planned, and everything seemed fine except that I had $?6371 (yes, that question mark was intentional). So if you know anything about that I'd be very interested as well, but I'm not expecting anything since it's probably not an issue that comes up all that often! codemonkey85, this many seem like a stupid question, but why would you want to do that? I mean, if you have the ability to directly edit your save files, wouldn't you also have the ability to back up and restore them? So you could take a backup of the GBA save, Pal Park your Pokemon, and then restore the backup so that your Pokemon are still on the GBA game. I'm not criticising or anything, just curious. And probably missing something blindingly obvious.

Have you checked that you've set its Met At place (top-right of the Pokesav screen) to (Pal Park), i.e. 55, and its Region/Version (in roughly the middle of the Pokesav screen) to one of the GBA games? That seems to work for me.

I was kinda hoping so, to be honest. They might not be watching this post any more though.

Okay, thanks! I think I've narrowed the checksum location to one of two places in the save file I have right now, so I guess I'll just keep looking for how to calculate what it should be. I am sort of wondering what they were thinking when they made the games like that, though. Wouldn't it have been simpler for them to have everything in fixed locations? Surely they didn't just do it to make hacking harder.

I'm trying to figure this out myself at the moment. I've found where the Trainer name, ID, and Secret ID are stored, but I don't know where the checksum is or what to change it to. Does anyone know how to work it out? I'd really appreciate any help you can offer.