Hacking Sky3DS+ Alpha Sapphire Save issue

Nanobytez · Aug 30, 2016

Hey, so I'm having some issues possibly with Sapphire itself since every other game works just fine. Alpha Sapphire though.. when I save and shut the 3DS off and reboot Alpha Sapphire, it deletes the game. Why is that and is there a way around this? :S

Quantumcat · Aug 30, 2016

Nanobytez said:
Hey, so I'm having some issues possibly with Sapphire itself since every other game works just fine. Alpha Sapphire though.. when I save and shut the 3DS off and reboot Alpha Sapphire, it deletes the game. Why is that and is there a way around this? :S

I'm not sure about Sky3DS, but I know with Gateway you have to close the game with the Home button for it to save. So maybe try that instead of shutting down the console directly.

c4388354 · Aug 30, 2016

you are probably using a trimmed rom, the pokemon games put the save in the rom file (not a seperate .sav file), if the rom is trimmed, there will be no 'save area' for the game to save to.
if your game is around 1.79gb / 1.80gb then it has been trimmed. The clean untrimmed rom should be exactly 2.00 gigabytes (which is 2147483648 bytes) in size.

If it is trimmed, you can use "3ds rom tool" to untrim the rom, use the command line: "rom_tool -r game.3ds" to untrim your rom.
you can find it here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/3ds-rom-tool-rom_tool.349314/ once untrimmed then the save should stay when you exit and restart the game.
(there are probably other more user-friendly tools that can untrim a rom if you aren't familiar with command-line programs)

Kayleea · Aug 30, 2016

Encountered similar problem while using my sky3ds plus. Seems to have found the answer here. Cheers!

Nanobytez · Aug 30, 2016

Quantumcat said:
I'm not sure about Sky3DS, but I know with Gateway you have to close the game with the Home button for it to save. So maybe try that instead of shutting down the console directly.

I did some searching and seen this and tried it, didn't work.

c4388354 said:
you are probably using a trimmed rom, the pokemon games put the save in the rom file (not a seperate .sav file), if the rom is trimmed, there will be no 'save area' for the game to save to.
if your game is around 1.79gb / 1.80gb then it has been trimmed. The clean untrimmed rom should be exactly 2.00 gigabytes (which is 2147483648 bytes) in size.

If it is trimmed, you can use "3ds rom tool" to untrim the rom, use the command line: "rom_tool -r game.3ds" to untrim your rom.
you can find it here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/3ds-rom-tool-rom_tool.349314/ once untrimmed then the save should stay when you exit and restart the game.
(there are probably other more user-friendly tools that can untrim a rom if you aren't familiar with command-line programs)

My rom is 2,147,483,648 bytes. I did try redownloading but it was from the same source. I guess I need to find a new source. I will try the rom tool though just in case. Thanks for the suggestions!

rom_tool just says failed to open file. And I can't seem to find a rom that isn't .cia... =/