[MinusOne]

Hello All

I have been doing some research on the Variety Channel on the radio to see if it can be used for verification/tracking as well as frame advancement. The advantage of this is that the radio works in the champion's room, whereas the phone inexplicably doesn't, so anyone trying to RNG Raikou/Entei/Latias/Latios has to use the roamer method to verify (which can't tell you if you hit the right second) and count one-by-one frame advancements on the radio, which is tedious (and frustrating if you miscount) if you are going for a frame in the thousands. Another advantage is that locating your seed/frame is faster since the radio outputs are chosen from a much larger pool than the Elm responses (a unique sequence from a pool of 22 can be much shorter than a unique sequence from a pool of 3).

I present my results here (hidden so no-one has to scroll past a wall of text).

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Since the radio outputs are each generated from just one RNG call, there must be a fairly simple relationship between the generated value and what appears on the screen. It turns out (I can post the full results if anyone is interested) that the basic chosen output index is simply:

<RNG value> MOD <Number of possible outputs>

with one caveat...

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The number of possible outputs depends on the programme currently playing. Serial Radio Drama (01:00, 04:00, 07:00, 10:00, 13:00, 16:00, 19:00 and 22:00 for one hour) has 22 outputs indexed as follows:

0:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 1: "Angry Maximo""
1:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 2: "The Screaming Old Man""
2:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 3: "Unforgettable Emotions""
3:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 4: "Hot Blooded""
4:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 5: "True Friends""
5:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 6: "The Old Man's True Face""
6:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Episode 7: "The Real Me""
7:  "The Young Pokéathlete Maximo - Final Episode: "The Real Maximo""
8:  "Johto Case Notes: File Number One"
9:  "Johto Case Notes: File Number Two"
10: "Johto Case Notes: File Number Three"
11: "Johto Case Notes: File Number Four"
12: "Johto Case Notes: File Number Five"
13: "East: Why... Why did I meet you just now?"
14: "East: West, this is such a quiet place."
15: "East: ...Huh? West, it's started to rain!"
16: "East: You know, West, there's a very nice path in Ecruteak City"
17: "West: Eek! East! H-Help!"
18: "Pario: I rebel against society and ride a Bicycle"
19: "Pario: I left my hometown and came to the Johto region"
20: "Pario: What do you think? There isn't a guy around who could beat me!"
21: "Pario: You're the leader of Kanto? Let's battle!"

Pokémon Search Party (00:00, 03:00, 06:00, 09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00 and 21:00 for one hour) is a little trickier. According to Bulbapedia, more outputs are unlocked as the game progresses. I don't know what exactly triggers the unlocks and I also don't know if I have them all. At the moment I know of 13, but there may be some I have yet to see. I have tested that all 13 of the ones I have seen correspond to the indices 0 to 12 though, so either I have seen them all or the number of indices in the table changes dynamically. Here are the ones I have seen:

0:  "At the end of the day, our search party's efforts were in vain. They eventually had to leave the..."
1:  "At the end of the day, our search party's efforts were in vain. We weren't able to find any UNOWN..."
2:  "The search-party leader looked up at the Johto sky and shouted a promise."
3:  "The forest was dark and gloomy. We could hear the crunching of fallen leaves under our feet."
4:  "The leader of the search party looked out at the Lake of Rage"
5:  "The inside of the cave was covered in a thick ice, just like a freezer."
6:  "The voyaging search party tried to think of a solution to the puzzle"
7:  "The forest was brighter than they thought it would be."
8:  "We heard that there were Pokémon here, but we haven't seen any yet."
9:  "The members of the Pokémon search party are riding their Bicycles"
10: "The search party has become lost!"
11: "The search party has gone on a long expedition out to the Sinnoh region."
12: "The search party had just about reached the limits of its physical strength"

Since Buena's Password (all other times) does not advance the RNG, it cannot be used for this.

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That caveat I mentioned? the Variety Channel will not repeat an output. If the RNG calls for an output of the same type as the previous one, the no-repeat rule is invoked and the output index is incremented by one (wrapping round to 0 if the last output is to be repeated).

The no-repeat rule has a couple of other characteristics:

- The output that actually appeared is used to determine if the next one should be shifted. For example, a sequence [4, 4, 4] becomes [4, 5, 4] because the third frame sees the second one as 5, not 4. This also means that [3, 3, 4] becomes [3, 4, 5] for the same reason.

- On opening the radio, the "previous" value is initialised to 0. If the first frame is also 0, it will see this as a repeat and shift it to 1. This value is reinitialised whenever you close the PokéGear or select a tab other than the radio. This can interfere with predicted no-repeat shifts, as entering a, for example [4, 4, 4] sequence at the second frame will show [4, 5] since the second frame did not see the first one and so did not shift to 5.

I have also created a simple seed verifier/frame tracker program called RadioSeed to put this research to use.

Here are the instructions (also hidden so no-one has to scroll past a wall of text)

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NOTE To anyone using Pokémon Search Party: RadioSeed assumes that the list of episodes you can get is exactly the same as the one in the research section above. Pokémon Search Party episodes are unlocked as you do certain things in the game and I'm not sure if I have seen them all. If you are not getting sane results with this method, verify that you can see all the episodes listed. If you see one that is not on the list, please PM me so I can add it. Any information on what you have to do to unlock all the episodes would also be helpful.

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1. Download the program. Here is a link. It works on Windows only and you will need the .NET framework (Microsoft provides this as a free download).

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2. Assuming you got it started up OK, you will need to enter the date, time and delay of the seed you are trying to hit. Also enter the second and delay ranges within which you wish to search when verifying your seed. If you only want frame tracking, select that mode and enter a max frame to track up to. It doesn't matter whether you have roamers released for the purposes of seed verification as the program can search the first 30 frames of each seed.

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3. Select your chosen output source:
Pokémon search party plays for one hour from 00:00, 03:00, 06:00, 09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00 and 21:00.
Serial Radio Drama plays for one hour from 01:00, 04:00, 07:00, 10:00, 13:00, 16:00, 19:00 and 22:00.
If your time is outside this, you will get Buena's Password, which cannot be used as it does not affect the RNG. If you still want to use RadioSeed for frame tracking (for example if you are in the champion's room and have used roamers to verify your seed), you can close the lid of your DS (putting it in sleep mode does not affect the RNG) and wait for the hour to change. Professor Elm-based tracking is also available for convenience.

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4. Click "Generate". The grid will fill with seeds or frames (depending on your choice of mode) and the corresponding outputs. A key will also appear for your chosen output source as, in verify seed mode, the outputs have to be written shorthand to fit in the grid.

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5. If in verify seed mode, you will be presented with the first ten outputs for each seed in your specified range. Attempt to hit your seed (see the general RNG help for details on that). If you can't see immediately what seed you hit, click the "Search" button.

If in track frame mode, you should be able to follow the outputs through the frames. If your frame is far away, you can advance rapidly to somewhere in the vicinity of the target, then use the "Search" button.

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6. Repeatedly click the bottom-right button on the radio and drag the pointer back to the centre of the grid (so that no station shows) (or call Professor Elm if using that method). In the search window, for each output that appears, select the corresponding text from the drop-down and click "Add". It will appear in the search sequence and the number of matches will be updated. Continue to do this until the box shows "1 match found".

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7. If 0 matches are found, then either this seed/frame is outside the generated range or the sequence may have been entered incorrectly (this can happen if you brush against another radio station while dragging the pointer). You can "Remove" the current entries from the search list and start a new search if you wish. When exactly 1 match is found, click "OK". If in verify seed mode, the seed you hit will now be highlighted in the main window. If in track frame mode, the NEXT frame (i.e. the one you would hit if you encountered your Pokémon now) will be highlighted.

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8. That's it! If tracking frame, you can continue to do coarse/fine advancement until you reach your target. If you missed your seed, try again from step 5. If you hit your seed, you can put the program in track frame mode, enter a max frame if you didn't already and go back to step 4 to begin advancement to your target.

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NOTE: the frames displayed may not be exactly what you see in the game. You may see outputs one above or one below the ones displayed (in the output key, one above the top is the bottom and one below the bottom is the top). This is due to the no-repeat rule (see the research for details) and may occur if your entry point (the frame you were on when you opened the radio or after selecting a channel other than the bottom-right) is something other than frame 1. The search function is designed to deal with this and will always produce accurate results, but there is no way to account for every possible entry point into the sequence in the main window. This is quite a rare occurrence anyway and the frames should align again after a few more advancements.

Good luck with your RNG projects.