My concern is how the EUR/USA versions will work in conjunction with badges that I already have as part of my home screen. NNID is what worries me the most. In the past, logging into the JPN version would allow us to connect just fine. Now when you get to NNID login, it logs in, and it must immediately route you to the version of the games' servers based off your emuNAND. So that's why we've been getting the "Please check back later, we're not open yet" message in English, because instead of logging into the JPN version of the game, it attempted to log into the EUR version on my EUR emuNAND, and obviously wasn't open or available.
Traditionally, JPN/EUR/USA versions of the same game all have different CTR codes, use different save data/directories, and are entirely segregated from one another. With this game, I'm very worried that its a different ball game. This JPN version of this game uses the same exdata ID as the EUR and USA versions do. My main concern is that the first time I log into the new EUR version it will setup and overwrite information stored in exDATA and all my badges I've collected so far will be deleted.
The badges which appear in our home menu badges drop-down menu is data stored locally on your internal SD card. As soon as you win a badge, it immediately writes that data locally to exdata. There is most certainly data stored server-side as well, but what exactly it actually saves server-side is unknown. If we are never able to access the JPN version again, and our exdata is overwritten when starting the EUR/USA version, then we might lose everything we've collected to this point because we would not be able to get back into the JPN version online and potentially retrieve any online backup of our badges.
In a perfect world, we'll be able to get back into the JPN version, have the EUR/USA version installed separately at the same time, have both regions behave like any other two of the same game from different region and be two separate games... which both to the same local directory which in turn shows all the badges we have in the home screen badges drop-down menu.
In a not-so-perfect world, all the badges we have earned so far are stored locally and will stay there - none of the EUR offerings delete or overwrite them, and we can connect to the EUR/USA version from now on and just continue to add to what we already have.
In the world I am afraid of, all the badges we already have earned are deleted or become permanently accessible and we never find out a way to log into the JPN version again.
So again I'll ask - is there any way to spoof NAND version check to say a region other than what it truly is? This is *NOT* a question in regards to region-free games or booting/installing region free CIAs in any manner. I'm asking if it is currently known if it is possible to patch or spoof the string which is returned to NNID when it queries in the background what version NAND we are on. If this is currently undocumented, how difficult would it be to implement? I have heard quite a bit about the capability of HANS - has anybody tried to use it with the JPN Badge Center .3DS? .CIA? What options have you tried? Is it even feasible that HANS has the feature-set (or could implement) what we need to get on the JPN servers again? If not, then why?
Here are few spec sheets in regards to Badge Center's integration into FW/NAND/Home Menu/exdata. Besides Badge Center the only other apps/games for 3DS which use the same exdata ID across all three regions are Pokedex 3D and the Save Data Transfer Tool Not certain how to interpret what this all means for us, but I fear this has "corrupt save game/extra data, deleting..." written all over it.
http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Extdata :
000014d1
Home Menu badge
0000165c
Home Menu saved theme layouts
But then the exdata for the Home Menu itself has 3 separate locations. This could be a positive or a negative depending on which data actually is stored there and the possibility of cross-compatibility with multiple versions of Badge Center installed.
JPN: 00000082 USA: 0000008f EUR: 00000098
Home Menu extdata, this contains home-menu savedata and cached icons for applications.
Finally there's this page:
http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Home_Menu#Home_Menu_badge_SD_ExtData
It gives us the potentially biggest clues:
Home Menu badge SD ExtData
The filesystem for this extdata(when it actually exists) is as follows:
root
├── icon
├── boss
└── user
├── BadgeData.dat
└── BadgeMngFile.dat
I'll go ahead and guess that the guy who said he hacked in 99x of each of these badges which appeared as 0x of each once he logged into NNID. That sounds exactly like what happens when you install themes you didn't purchase from the e-shop - they disappear. Potentially a tool could be written to manipulate these two files in a way which could help us.
