Hacking Question about ID checks with 3DS and New Leaf save files

[TheBrenguin]

I got screwed over by Nintendo's System Transfer program and my 3DS Animal Crossing New Life file needs to be deleted because of this:

Every time you save your game it generates a new, random "Save ID" and stores that ID in both the SD/Savgame and the 3DS's system memory. Trying to load a save with mismatched IDs will result in being forced to wipe the save.

This prevents two things:

1) Having two towns with one copy of the game by using two SD cards.
2) Reverting to an older backed up save to undo changes you aren't happy with.

Unfortunately, there's a third, collateral damage situation.

3) You back up your SD card, play AC, your SD card dies. You now cannot restore from your backup because the IDs don't match anymore. Your town is gone forever.

Is there any way to bypass this by maybe finding and rewriting the IDs using the files on the SD card or is it just impossible. This is really infuriating.

Thanks!

 

[Pong20302000]

saddly i dont think so

strange feature but i guess it stops save hacks

 

[SuzieJoeBob]

I feel bad for anyone who either goes through situation #3 (SD card dying) or is just simply trying to change SD cards to increase their memory. I understand the system-locked saved data, but locking down the save data to an SD card???

 

[exangel]

Though this wouldn't save anyone with a dead SD card, I am fairly sure that a perfect image clone of the original SD to a new SD would keep the save data intact. I don't have any way to test this with this game, but this is how I upgraded my first SD card to a 16GB Class 10, cloning using a disk image utility. A test would be the only way to find out, with this particular game, if any of the safety checks verify the size of the SD card itself.
I do have a temporarily unused 32GB Class 10 that can be used to test this once I get my own copy of the game.

 

[wiiluver135]

So lemme get this straight...you bought AC:NL as a download FIRST then bought it at retail and then used the System Transfer App and it fucked over your .sav?
THAT IS NOT GOOD, NINTENDO NEEDS TO PATCH THAT APP A.S.A.P! Send them this info so they can look into it and fix it dude.
This is a SERIOUS problem, what if this happens to X & Y when it comes out?!??! It's like that feel when you let you little brother or w/e see you Pokemon game and start a new save and then SAVES IT! Fucking horrible...

 

[bobmcjr]

Glad to see nintendo is adopting the same completely irrational DRM style as devolution by using the id of the storage device. Looks like i wont be buying anything from the eshop if i cant upgrade my sd card for more space. Of course this should be tested first, but nintendo, you really shouldve thought this through considering how you give instructions on how to copy data from one sd to another

 

[Sicklyboy]

Glad to see nintendo is adopting the same completely irrational DRM style as devolution by using the id of the storage device. Looks like i wont be buying anything from the eshop if i cant upgrade my sd card for more space. Of course this should be tested first, but nintendo, you really shouldve thought this through considering how you give instructions on how to copy data from one sd to another

Where is everyone getting the idea that this is locked uniquely to a specific SD card? The only thing I gather from this is that the game essentially saves to BOTH the SD and the game cartridge. If the saves don't match, then you have a "corrupt save".

Let's look at OP's 3 scenarios and see when this would happen -

1) Having two towns with one copy of the game by using two SD cards.
2) Reverting to an older backed up save to undo changes you aren't happy with.

Unfortunately, there's a third, collateral damage situation.

3) You back up your SD card, play AC, your SD card dies. You now cannot restore from your backup because the IDs don't match anymore. Your town is gone forever.

1) Save on card A is different than card B. Game cart has save for card A, so when you put in card B, the saves don't match and you can't continue.
2) You save the game, which saves to the SD card and the game cart. Today is Monday. Come Wednesday, you find you screwed up, and want to go back, because you just happened to make a copy of your save before you started playing on Monday. You restore the save to the SD from Monday, doesn't match the save from Wednesday, so you can't continue.
3) You save the game, and decide to back up your SD card today, being Monday. Come Thursday of next week, your SD card takes a shit. So you restore everything to it, but your AC save is from over a week ago and you've played much more recently. Your saves do not match, so you can not continue.

Edit - now, replace the "save" with likely a hash of the save that is kept on both the SD and the game cartridge, and you have exactly what OP was talking about.

 

[IxthusTiger]

How does it work if you don't use an SD card in your system? I mean, at all, as in you started a game of New Leaf without your SD card.

 

[Poketard]

How does it work if you don't use an SD card in your system? I mean, at all, as in you started a game of New Leaf without your SD card.

Cartridges dont save to SD, so nothing changes.

 

[Pong20302000]

How does it work if you don't use an SD card in your system? I mean, at all, as in you started a game of New Leaf without your SD card.

Cartridges dont save to SD, so nothing changes.

Animal Crossing asks when booted for the First time "Animal Crossing Requires Extra Data to be saved to the SD card, Press A to Proceed"

 

[Langin]

Glad to see nintendo is adopting the same completely irrational DRM style as devolution by using the id of the storage device. Looks like i wont be buying anything from the eshop if i cant upgrade my sd card for more space. Of course this should be tested first, but nintendo, you really shouldve thought this through considering how you give instructions on how to copy data from one sd to another

Explain this:

I have Super mario 3D land on 4GB sd card, I upgraded my card to 32GB, all my saves still work perfectly. Same goes for ALL my other games. So you CAN buy from eShop.

 

[Poketard]

Animal Crossing asks when booted for the First time "Animal Crossing Requires Extra Data to be saved to the SD card, Press A to Proceed"

I really dont think your save file saves to the SD. If they did that, you wouldn't be able to save or load unless you have a SD in your 3DS. But I could be wrong. I have the digital version, so I wouldn't know.

 

[Pong20302000]

I really dont think your save file saves to the SD. If they did that, you wouldn't be able to save or load unless you have a SD in your 3DS. But I could be wrong. I have the digital version, so I wouldn't know.

i doesnt put the save file on the SD -_-
it creates a duplicate of it there to check against for tampering

Nintendo give you a Free 2or4GB SD card for the 3DS
why would it not be there?
all of your spotpass data and mail is stored on it too

suspicious if you dont have a SD card in the slot

 

[Poketard]

i doesnt put the save file on the SD -_-
it creates a duplicate of it there to check against for tampering

Nintendo give you a Free 2or4GB SD card for the 3DS
why would it not be there?
all of your spotpass data and mail is stored on it too

suspicious if you dont have a SD card in the slot

I would think it saves to the NAND, not SD card. The point of it is to prevent having 2 towns, but if it were saved on the SD card you could very easily swap it.

 

[Pong20302000]

I would think it saves to the NAND, not SD card. The point of it is to prevent having 2 towns, but if it were saved on the SD card you could very easily swap it.

no it saves to the SD card, you cannot swap it easily because it is encrypted on the SD card using the consoles private key

and it saves to the cart itself

then checks that both match before game loads

 

[MAXLEMPIRA]

Every time you save your game it generates a new, random "Save ID" and stores that ID in both the SD/Savgame and the 3DS's system memory. Trying to load a save with mismatched IDs will result in being forced to wipe the save.

This prevents two things:

1) Having two towns with one copy of the game by using two SD cards.
2) Reverting to an older backed up save to undo changes you aren't happy with.

Unfortunately, there's a third, collateral damage situation.

3) You back up your SD card, play AC, your SD card dies. You now cannot restore from your backup because the IDs don't match anymore. Your town is gone forever.

Sorry if this is out of the theme... but, that means that I'll can't have two save files in my PKMN Y?? :/ after all, I'll have to buy one game per niece?? :S One question... the downloaded game is stored in the SD card, no? so... how this work?? if I Download a digital copy, the console save the info in the internal storage?? that mean that if I download the game in different SD Card, that will no work??...

 

[Friendsxix]

no it saves to the SD card, you cannot swap it easily because it is encrypted on the SD card using the consoles private key

and it saves to the cart itself

then checks that both match before game loads

That makes no sense at all. Even if it's saved to the SD card encrypted as you say, it's still stored in the 3DS' regular SD card file system. So it would be a trivial matter of making copies of the SD save, along with the cartridge save, every time the player saved his or her town. This would work because encryption doesn't prevent the copying of data, just the tampering of data.

That, and on top of this, I just loaded my save game with the SD Card removed. All it did was prompt me to tell me that my SpotPass data needed to be recreated. After failing to recreate it, the game loaded absolutely fine, and it also saved fine. It also continued to load after resetting the system, SD card still removed. That kind of makes this theory seem... unlikely, doesn't it?

 

[Kupie]

That makes no sense at all. Even if it's saved to the SD card encrypted as you say, it's still stored in the 3DS' regular SD card file system. So it would be a trivial matter of making copies of the SD save, along with the cartridge save, every time the player saved his or her town. This would work because encryption doesn't prevent the copying of data, just the tampering of data.

That, and on top of this, I just loaded my save game with the SD Card removed. All it did was prompt me to tell me that my SpotPass data needed to be recreated. After failing to recreate it, the game loaded absolutely fine, and it also saved fine. It also continued to load after resetting the system, SD card still removed. That kind of makes this theory seem... unlikely, doesn't it?

It sounds like we would have to modify the internal memory of the 3DS, then. Which is still impossible to do with how locked down it is...

 

[Friendsxix]

It sounds like we would have to modify the internal memory of the 3DS, then. Which is still impossible to do with how locked down it is...

There has to be another problem going on here, because I just used an entirely DIFFERENT 3DS, with a different SD Card, and it just loaded and saved my file without any complaints...
That would mean that there is no save "copies" being made anywhere, and the OP is experiencing some other issue.

 

[Phyzoon]

Well, we all know the other AC games used some different methods for saving, specially due to it's size. It is possible that the R4 Dongle only copies part of the save, or that the cartdrige have something like two memory partitions to do this kind of checking to avoid save cheating.