ROM Hack Pokemon HG/SS fix discussion

[hannahbailey2008]

Stupid question: Does the freezes-after-24-event anti-piracy kick off at the very beginning of the game, or is there a trigger for it as well (like the 3-event one has the 3rd badge for the trigger)?

And I read somewhere that if you save the game and do a soft reset, it resets the count back to 0? Could that be examined and somehow used for a patch/fix?

The anti-piracy starts at the very beginning of the game. 24 events until freeze for 0 badges, 21 for 1 badge, 15 for 2 badges, and 3 events for 3 badges. Beyond that the game tends to freeze right after the "Continue" screen.

Saving + soft reset does reset the counter, but it's SUPER annoying after 3 badges and useless after 4.

Dang, that's complicated, Nintendo really thought this one through.

Does anyone know how it resets the counter, and can the piece of code that does so be emulated and somehow activated at the beginning of each event or something? Sorry if I'm unclear.

 

[ccgriffith]

Stupid question: Does the freezes-after-24-event anti-piracy kick off at the very beginning of the game, or is there a trigger for it as well (like the 3-event one has the 3rd badge for the trigger)?

And I read somewhere that if you save the game and do a soft reset, it resets the count back to 0? Could that be examined and somehow used for a patch/fix?

When the game is turned on, the count begins at 0, or 24, or whatever.

You can effectively play the game, saving alot, once it crashes just reboot. Up till you get too many badges, that is...

Damn shoulda just trained or smthing without going for the 3rd badge until a patch was found...too late now =/

You can remove the 3rd badge with cheats I believe.

PokeSav, there's one for the computer, and one that'll load right on your flashcard (need to DLDI it though)

 

[Hecatia]

On topic: How about making it so that you don't actually enter a building? Like just wipe out a roof, door, and walls.

no cuz then the entire pokemon map+ all buildings would have to load at once i arlredy thought of that and it would require tons of re-programing but i do like the i dea of some how emulating a soft reset and putting the event count at 0

Remember when the event count goes to 0 or -X it freezes so we want the value frozen at anything over 1

 

[hunt3rshadow]

we dont have enough soilders to fight this war do we?

We should have more people training younger people so we can have more soldiers. We need to build an army of coders and hackers ;D

 

[mikeychunn]

Can you permanently freeze the event counter?

 

[Zidane24]

I may have something useful to offer

I saved and soft reset (counter gets reset...keep this in mind) RIGHT IN FRONT of Whitney and beat the gym grabbing the third badge. I immediately saved and expected to only be able to the gym (if that) and to my surprise I was able to...

I next went to the underground area of Goldenrod where I met Lyra...saved...then headed underground further

Down here I fought the two trainers, grabbed the item(can't remember what it was), and then saved. The game froze at this time.

I booted the game back up and saw that the three event rule was in place

So from my observations...it would seem that one of two things was apparent here:

1) The counter wasn't updated to its lesser maximum until the previous code was able to be updated (hence the non-immediate change to three events)
2) The counter and its' maximum is set up start-up (hence why the counter got updated)

I hope that helps a bit

 

[edes]

On topic: How about making it so that you don't actually enter a building? Like just wipe out a roof, door, and walls.

no cuz then the entire pokemon map+ all buildings would have to load at once i arlredy thought of that and it would require tons of re-programing but i do like the i dea of some how emulating a soft reset and putting the event count at 0

Remember when the event count goes to 0 or -X it freezes so we want the value frozen at anything over 1

1337? 9001?

 

[Zowayix]

Dang, that's complicated, Nintendo really thought this one through.

Does anyone know how it resets the counter, and can the piece of code that does so be emulated and somehow activated at the beginning of each event or something? Sorry if I'm unclear.

Even that wouldn't work past 4 badges.

AFAIK selecting "Continue" and loading the game world counts as 1 event, and since the "event counter until freeze" is set at 1 after 4 badges, you wouldn't be able to continue the game.

 

[hannahbailey2008]

Does removing a badge via PokeSav remove just the anti-piracy checks, or all the stuff associated with the badge (like ability to use HM moves)? I mean, if it's just the anti-piracy stuff, then we could try that?

Or since the AP is based on the number of badges, what about setting the number of badges at the start of the game to -8 or something?

 

[Drium]

FURTHER WORDS OF ADVICE:

FIGURE OUT HOW SOME OF THE EMULATORS CAN RUN THE GAME PERFECTLY USING SOME AR CODES.

This isn't rocket surgery, guys. Rather than looking at the roms, look at how some programs or cards can already run them and what they are doing that's different, and then try to incorporate that into the game itself via patch.

 

[gillman]

Ok so I took a look at the AceKard firmware and it seems like it is set up very differently than my M3 Real's current firmware. The Acekard firmware has 2 files which look like they are used in loading games.

One is ak2loader.nds (195 KB) and the other is akloader.nds (197 KB)

On my M3 Real the file which I believe loads games has a different file extension and is called startnds.eng (149 KB)

I was able to unpack the ak2loader and akloader files since they are .nds files.

The files included in these were:

arm7.bin
banner.bin
header.bin
y7.bin
y9.bin

The akloader also contained the file arm9.bin and it is 4720 KB in size.

I then tried to unpack the startnds.eng file by renaming it start.nds.
While DSLazy was able to do this I just got a very large (almost a gigabyte) arm9.nds file, which doesn't seem right at all and doing this was probably pretty
dumb.

If Anyone has any crazy ideas I'm willing to test them out, but I really don't know a thing about how to edit these files.

 

[Mana94]

Well, if he's a genius, let hope he can fix crack this AP thing.

and if the Hex edit worked on the JAP version of HGSS couldn't we do the same thing for the USA version?

We have been hex editing alllllll day. We have made lots of progress and found out how to get about 4 more events to go but...that's pretty much it.
We need a solution! Get some devs on here

 

[Moonfail]

This isn't rocket surgery, guys.

Can you give it a try, then?

 

[gumgumthegum]

Does removing a badge via PokeSav remove just the anti-piracy checks, or all the stuff associated with the badge (like ability to use HM moves)? I mean, if it's just the anti-piracy stuff, then we could try that?

Or since the AP is based on the number of badges, what about setting the number of badges at the start of the game to -8 or something?

wow you must be really smart.. lol

 

[tiobarioca]

did you guys try to freeze the counter above zero instead of 0? maybe its a countdown
ive read a lot of posts and it seems like you are trying to freeze only at 0.
sry for bad enlgish

 

[xDlmaoxD]

Ok so I took a look at the AceKard firmware and it seems like it is set up very differently than my M3 Real's current firmware. The Acekard firmware has 2 files which look like they are used in loading games.

One is ak2loader.nds (195 KB) and the other is akloader.nds (197 KB)

On my M3 Real the file which I believe loads games has a different file extension and is called startnds.eng (149 KB)

I was able to unpack the ak2loader and akloader files since they are .nds files.

The files included in these were:

arm7.bin
banner.bin
header.bin
y7.bin
y9.bin

The akloader also contained the file arm9.bin and it is 4720 KB in size.

I then tried to unpack the startnds.eng file by renaming it start.nds.
While DSLazy was able to do this I just got a very large (almost a gigabyte) arm9.nds file, which doesn't seem right at all and doing this was probably pretty
dumb.

If Anyone has any crazy ideas I'm willing to test them out, but I really don't know a thing about how to edit these files.

Fail attempt, anyone can open a firmware and read the files it has xD

 

[Hecatia]

Does removing a badge via PokeSav remove just the anti-piracy checks, or all the stuff associated with the badge (like ability to use HM moves)? I mean, if it's just the anti-piracy stuff, then we could try that?

Or since the AP is based on the number of badges, what about setting the number of badges at the start of the game to -8 or something?

changing the badge number would be be bad fix and could have bad effects

 

[edes]

FURTHER WORDS OF ADVICE:

FIGURE OUT HOW SOME OF THE EMULATORS CAN RUN THE GAME PERFECTLY USING SOME AR CODES.

This isn't rocket surgery, guys. Rather than looking at the roms, look at how some programs or cards can already run them and what they are doing that's different, and then try to incorporate that into the game itself via patch.

Actually, that's why it's acting differently on some flashcards, because Nintendo has to create a check for each one of them. That is the part of the firmware makers, to fix what Nintendo uses to detect the piracy.

 

[gumgumthegum]

well im goin to bed gonna buy it tommorow....

 

[Drium]

This isn't rocket surgery, guys.

Can you give it a try, then?

I did not say I knew how to do it.

Just that you guys are looking at the wrong thing for the wrong problem.