(This thread no longer serves a purpose, unfortunately)

[bdt2002]

Wasn't sure where else to post about this, so I guess by default Smogoff is the correct forum

Hello everyone, it's bdt2002 again. By this point you've probably gotten used to the Ukulele Pichu profile picture along with my usual manner of posting, and that's great and all, but you might have seen it just changed. What's with that, you may wonder? I was trying to edit my profile picture for something that's going to be happening tomorrow, but when I went through to edit it, I don't know if I pressed a wrong button or something but now my profile picture is apparently Krookodile's Gen 5 sprite. Realistically speaking I could always just go back and fix this later, but curiosity got the best of me just now and I started asking myself, why Krookodile of all things? My best guess is that if you delete your profile picture, you'll get a leftover sprite or model of a randomly chosen Pokémon as a sort of placeholder. I want to test this theory later so there's a chance that my profile picture might not be a Krookodile later, but in the off chance I were to "re-roll", so to speak, and get Krookodile again, that would make things a bit more interesting since the odds would indicate the random selection process would yield a different Pokémon for every user and/or Smogon account. I'm actually kind of hoping that does happen, since it could make for a fun little game to see what Pokémon everyone gets as a result of this.

So, uh... yeah, I guess that's everything I needed to say. Kind of a random thread topic, I know, but maybe this could result in something...? Who knows.

Edit: If you do decide to test this on your own, make sure you have your existing profile picture accessible somehow just in case you want to change it back to normal.

 

[Neko]

Wasn't sure where else to post about this, so I guess by default Smogoff is the correct forum

Hello everyone, it's bdt2002 again. By this point you've probably gotten used to the Ukulele Pichu profile picture along with my usual manner of posting, and that's great and all, but you might have seen it just changed. What's with that, you may wonder? I was trying to edit my profile picture for something that's going to be happening tomorrow, but when I went through to edit it, I don't know if I pressed a wrong button or something but now my profile picture is apparently Krookodile's Gen 5 sprite. Realistically speaking I could always just go back and fix this later, but curiosity got the best of me just now and I started asking myself, why Krookodile of all things? My best guess is that if you delete your profile picture, you'll get a leftover sprite or model of a randomly chosen Pokémon as a sort of placeholder. I want to test this theory later so there's a chance that my profile picture might not be a Krookodile later, but in the off chance I were to "re-roll", so to speak, and get Krookodile again, that would make things a bit more interesting since the odds would indicate the random selection process would yield a different Pokémon for every user and/or Smogon account. I'm actually kind of hoping that does happen, since it could make for a fun little game to see what Pokémon everyone gets as a result of this.

So, uh... yeah, I guess that's everything I needed to say. Kind of a random thread topic, I know, but maybe this could result in something...? Who knows.

Edit: If you do decide to test this on your own, make sure you have your existing profile picture accessible somehow just in case you want to change it back to normal.

There seems to be a set Pokemon for each username by default. You would've seen it when you first make a smogon account, since its the first profile picture they assign to you.

For example, I'm always Kyurem (for Neko, but Fishstickscat [my previous name] has a different Pokemon), regardless how many times I reset it.

How they assign it is a mystery, but people stripped of profile pictures always default back to a gen 5 mon sprite

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

i was a feraligatr when i first joined all those years ago... then the forum was redesigned and i became a grotel.......and now i am an oddish...life is full of wonder

 

[doipy hooves]

i was a feraligatr when i first joined all those years ago... then the forum was redesigned and i became a grotel.......and now i am an oddish...life is full of wonder

This thread inspired me and now I can tell you that the original round of default avatars were determined by modulus on the user ID. Since then the avatars seem to have been rerolled a couple times in some other fashion based on username that is not particularly obvious, but we can still find answers in the past to figure out how many avatars there were in the pool of Gen 5 sprites + some alternate forms + some CAP sprites from the BW era like Malaconda, Tomohawk, and Necturna.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...hoping-this-isnt-deleted.3590446/post-7229946

when smogon moved from vbulletin to xenforo, people's default avatars were changed to gen 5 sprites based on their user number

you're user 348970 and have whirlipede; user 348971 has whiscash; 348972 has whismur, etc

This post helped me to figure out the theory and was helpful that Whirlpede is 26th from the last alphabetically of the mons in BW, including Wormadam-Sandy and Trash as the only forms after that point and not gender differences, and this aligns with 348970 % 687 = 661, so there were 687 avatars present in the pool at that point.

A 2015 archive of the avatars folder can be used to confirm the exact order of sprites, and shows there are 702 rows (701 sprites), so there were 14 sprites added at some point.
Thanks to this post I have an answer to why this is the case:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...d-durantly-mark-2.3489219/page-2#post-4873574

I pledge my sword and my dbz toys to my beard brother chaos

CHAOS REPLIES:

"holy shit bidoof is the perfect default avatar for you ck"

(can't waste my 9k..)

6227 % 687 is 44, and Bidoof is 44th in alphabetical order in Gen 5, excluding forms. However the Arceus forms are present in 2015 and are still being assigned in the present day, so they must have not been there initially. Incidentally there are no Arceus-Fire/Fighting/Flying sprites there, and they are still not present in the present day (and no Fairy), but there is a duplicate arceus-normal and arceus, so the difference of 14 sprites is from the 14 Arceus forms.

BIG ASHLEY's ID of 253000 % 687 = 184, and Feraligatr is the 184th image alphabetically if you start counting from 0 and exclude the Arceus forms. Since Cutefluffysheep joined in 2016 but fits the 687 pattern, I feel like the Arceus forms were not originally distributed as default avatars until the next redesign, as can be seen with https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/dylanabbott.402639/ having a Water Arceus avatar currently.

 

[a fairy]

nerd