decymin

No problem, here you go. Started a completely new game for this. Set clock to 12 am (midnight). Saved. No battery involved. S-nobatt-12am..sav

Here you go. It's a Sapphire game (English). No battery in it. Started a new game, set the clock and saved. S-nobattery-clock&.sav

You mean, start a new game on a game with no battery to begin with, set the clock and save?

Oh, I hadn't seen that at all! I've tried it now and it worked! I can't believe it, finally! (I'd need more time to test and see whether the berry master gives out berries again, but the rocket launch center is back to 0 and the berries grow, that's all I wanted! ) Thank you so, so, so very much for all this, for creating the tool, sharing it, replying to all the feedback/requests and actually implementing the RCT thing just because I asked for it. Thank you so very much! Now I can finally go back to simply playing the games instead of having to worry about corrupt save files and dead berries. Thank you so very much! I will make sure to spread this information to others in my situation, as this is a fix for both the situation after having replaced the battery as well as after having played and saved in VBA (Visual Boy Advance) with the real-time clock set to on. Again also a big thank you to everyone else who replied to my posts and provided information and insight. I'm sorry for taking up so much space of this thread with my problem(s) but now it finally works again and I can leave you to other things. I'm off to grow some berries now!

Thank you very, very much, that site seems to have found the very heart of the problem, and even proposes solutions. Sadly, so far I haven't managed to get it to work. I replaced both the time stamp value (and later also the starting adventure time stamp value) with 0 (all 5 bytes). I used Psavfix to create valid checksums so the game wouldn't say the save file is corrupt. I tried it on two games and it didn't work. Berries don't grow. The guy at the rocket launch center still tells me that 9999 rocket launches have happened so far so whatever the VBA did to the save file is still not undone. Also, I looked at the save files of new games I started and played a bit (started with working battery, then saved without battery, than replaced battery and played on, to create the same situation I have with the other games; no VBA to mess things up involved). Their time stamps are all zeros anyways, so I don't know what I could change there to make them work again. Is there some other value I could change the hex code to? I have no idea how the time (and date?) are converted, and if this is explained on the linked website, I didn't understand it. Can anybody tell me if I did something wrong or could try something else? I feel like I'm so very close to the solution but something keeps me from doing that one thing I still need to do. If all fails, I guess I'll have to find a GBA flash card somewhere and use the program that the guy wrote to change the clock settings, not the save file time stamp. But even with this, I'm not sure I'd be able to change it to a date that will work with the extreme time stamp(s?) the VBA put onto my saves. In any case, thanks a lot to everyone so far for investing time and energy into this. I am very, very grateful.

Wow, thanks a lot! That makes a lot of sense and would explain all the weird time stuff I have encountered so far. Not sure what you mean there: Reset it to what exactly? I don't have save files from before I exchanged the batteries, if you meant restore it to the value it had before the battery had run dry … That would be awesome! It's so hard to find the info I want about this, as there are just so, so many sites just talking about how to replace the battery.

Okay, I have done this now too. I used the new save file I created on the (German) Emerald cartridge (attached to my post above), opened it in VBA with the real-time clock DISabled, and saved again. Here it is. EM-VBA-nobattery-2.sav

Attached to this post is a save file from the same (English) Sapphire game, saved right after having set the clock ('battery-1st-.sav'). As Sapphire is a game for which I have replaced the battery, I have also attached a new save file from my (German) Emerald game (also saved right after having set the clock) that has never had any battery problems so far ('EM-battery-1st.sav'). In both games, the player is male and called 'Michael'. Nothing but setting the clock was done in the game. Again, Sapphire is English, Emerald is German. To avoid confusion, here's again what I did to get the save files from Sapphire: I started a new game and saved right after having set the clock (that is the save file attached to this post here called "battery-1st-.sav"). I copied that first save file onto the PC. I loaded that save file on the game and saved again ("2nd save battery" – one of the files I attached to my previous post). I transferred my old '1st save' file from the PC to the game cartridge. I took the battery out of the cartridge and loaded the 1st save file and saved again ("2nd save no battery" – one of the files I attached to my previous post) I then also tried the same thing with VBA (using the 1st save file from the game cartridge). First I tried it with the real-time clock off and saved – only 2 instances are different in comparison to the "2nd no battery" save from the cartridge. Then I loaded the 1st save file again but with the real-time clock on and saved – lots of changes, as VBA seems to handle the time differently than the game is used to. I hope this helps. If you need more save files, please let me know. I could do the same thing again with a different cartridge, I could upload the VBA save files, etc. I'll try my best to help. Also, so far I have found common differences between the battery-on and battery-off versions of several saves only at offset 0x11ff6 – however, while it seems to be that this offset has the same value in save files with the battery off (but I need to look at more save files to check this), in saves with the battery on, the value there is always a different one. There is also always a difference at offset 0x11012 but the value there is different also between the various battery-off saves. Not sure if this helps. battery-1st-.sav EM-battery-1st.sav

I only have one Emerald game, it’s German and the battery is still working. So for getting a battery-off new game save, I'd have to disable its battery. I'm afraid I can't do that at the moment as it is my only remaining game where the battery still works and I use it to grow berries. If that game stopped working as well I'd be very sad. Does it have to be Emerald, though? I can offer (English) Sapphire (see attachments), and could also do (German) Ruby, and Japanese Ruby and Sapphire. If it has to be Emerald, I'll see what I can do. battery_POKEMON_SA&.sav nobattery_POKEMON_.sav

Thanks so much! <3 According to the (not really informative) replies in this thread, VBA messes up the time in save files when you transfer them to your cartridge. I checked, it actually changes things but I have no idea which things exactly. If it helps, I could upload different versions of a save file I used to experiment and look at the hex code. I started a new game, then copied that save file and did some things with it (always using the 1st save file to do something else): a new game (cartridge) a 2nd save in that new game with the battery on (cartridge) a 2nd save in that new game with the battery off (cartridge) a 2nd save in that new game with the real-time clock on (VBA) a 2nd save in that new game with the real-time clock off (VBA) The 2 '2nd save' files from the cartridge only differ in 2 hex locations. The 2nd save file with the real-time clock off from the VBA also has changes in 2 hex locations when compared to the battery-off cartridge save. The 2nd save file from the VBA with the real-time clock on has 19 or 20 differences when compared to the cartridge save files which I guess is what 'messes up' the time events when playing on the cartridge. However, the time-based events didn't work right after replacing the battery (with no VBA influence at all) either. So even if I say that I just need to not use VBA at all, I still need a way to make the game re-enable time-based events as it won't do it on its own.

Wow, very cool! I have been waiting for something like this for ages. One question: Can you use this to re-enable time-based events in save files to use on GBA games? I have been trying to get my GBA games to work properly again after replacing the battery without having to restart the game, and while there is lots of information on all kinds of things you can change by manipulating your save file (after you have sent it to your PC), I haven't found anything so far on how to simply tell the game that time-based events should work again, now that the battery is working again. I guess you have invested lots of time into understanding the save file structure. Do you know what one would have to do to tell the game that time-based events should work again? If your save-game editor could also take care of this (or if you could tell me what to change in the save file hex code), it would be amazing. (When I transfer my save file from the GBA cartridge to the PC and use it with Visual Boy Advance with the real-time clock running, it works fine. But when I then transfer and use the same save file on my GBA game, it doesn't work – the clock is running but berries don't grow etc.)