Hack Prevention Research Proposal (ask if you can help!)

[ΩDonut]

I recently became the proud hatcher of a 30\31\31\31\30\31 Adamant male Slakoth. Given the astronomical odds of hatching such a Pokemon legitimately, I'm looking for a more viable way of showing its authenticity besides my good standing in the community.

Several weeks ago, at our local GameStop tournament, CardRaider told me that, without my realizing it, I already had a measure of hack prevention in place. Apparently Pokesav has trouble with in-game symbols such as apostrophes, which means that anyone trying to edit a Pokemon with my OT of O'Donut would end up with a Pokemon that had an OT of O?Donut.

Now never having actually owned an Action Replay or whatever it is people use to download their data for Pokesav editing, I can't look into this myself, nor do I have a lot of first-hand information of how they work. So I have a few questions for those of you capable of hacking Pokemon data:

- How effective is this against other methods of hacking? Does an Action Replay code have trouble with this as well?

- Is there a way to edit the IVs, moves, nature, etc. without ever touching the OT data on the DP cartridge? If someone can circumvent overwriting the OT name of the Pokemon on the cartridge, then this whole thing is moot.

- Does this work with other symbols, such as the heart and the smiley face?

If simply having weird symbols in an OT is proof against all of these measures of hacking, people could have a pretty workable scheme for proving that their Pokemon are legit - at least until the Pokesav authors figure out how to get it to produce symbols properly.

 

[BoBBa]

So how do we know a pokémon is fake? When people can't copy the trainer name.
Doesn't that still give the problem of people who just create a good pokémon with their own trainer name and say they hatched it themselves?

 

[Akayfortyseven]

You can change symbols on pokesav iirc, you just re-type it as long as it isnt Japanese or one of the ingame symbols (i.e, ' will show up, but one of the little faces wont).

I know this because when I got trapped in my Japanese pearl (darkrai glitch), my friend has to use pokesav to get me out, and it fucked up my name, but deleting and re-naming sorted it.

This makes me think its on reading that the name comes up scrambled, it also occurs with the boxes as well since they have spaces.

(Oh yeah, I posted in your trade thread)

 

[Tangerine]

You can change symbols on pokesav iirc, you just re-type it as long as it isnt Japanese or one of the ingame symbols (i.e, ' will show up, but one of the little faces wont).

You can hack Japanese characters in. Has to do with Windows itself really, which is why your name was screwed up when your friend edited your save.

- How effective is this against other methods of hacking? Does an Action Replay code have trouble with this as well?

As long as you know what symbol exactly the game uses (it probably uses another symbol aother than the ' on the keyboard), you can hack anything in in terms of character.

- Is there a way to edit the IVs, moves, nature, etc. without ever touching the OT data on the DP cartridge? If someone can circumvent overwriting the OT name of the Pokemon on the cartridge, then this whole thing is moot.

Yes. Pokesav can Edit stuff without touching the OT data. I'm sure Pokemon Maker could do that too.

- Does this work with other symbols, such as the heart and the smiley face?

I know Japanese Fonts have things like Hearts/Diamonds etc built in. I guess if you can figure out which bits correspond to the other, you can hack it in.

In the end, if you know what you're doing, you can create "completely legit" looking Pokemon quite easily. Even legendaries and such, can be hacked and pass through loadingNOW's cheat detector if you know how it works and such.

PS: Grats on the Slakoth. I wish I had my game so I could trade with you =(

 

[Akayfortyseven]

Ah, thanks for that Tang, maybe my friend didnt have a Japanese language pack installed? He is using 2000...

 

[Jibaku]

There's a Japanese Pokesav and Windows Applocale too.

One thing I know about the Japanese pokesav is that spaces don't appear at the end of the name after you insert the pokemon name in. I'm unsure about English pokesav though

 

[ΩDonut]

Since I haven't seen any of this myself, and would like the opportunity to, I'd like to trade one of my Pokemon to someone who can mess around with the IVs and moves and trade it back to me without any visual trace of the hacking. Any volunteers?

 

[Akayfortyseven]

Jibuka ;), wouldnt that need Japanese character packs installed as well? If so, then im sure it wouldnt be so different to the English one, as the different character sets are intergame compatible.

 

[Tangerine]

Jibuka ;), wouldnt that need Japanese character packs installed as well? If so, then im sure it wouldnt be so different to the English one, as the different character sets are intergame compatible.

I really didnt wish I would have to explain this (mostly because it *is* a way to tell if some things are BS and such), but I'll do it anyway.

Yes, it has to do with Japanese character packs. Obviously your computer needs to be able to type/input Japanese! If it still screws up, you probably need to set the non-unicode program settings to Japanese - then you should be able to edit them in as you see fit.

 

[BoBBa]

I'd be willing to help

 

[Flakari Leader]

Since I haven't seen any of this myself, and would like the opportunity to, I'd like to trade one of my Pokemon to someone who can mess around with the IVs and moves and trade it back to me without any visual trace of the hacking. Any volunteers?

I could try and help out with that.

The only difficulty with this I see is that we don't know your secret ID, although I could probably make it not look hacked, getting that thing into GTS (I think) would be difficult. xD

 

[f1stzero]

In pokesav, you can edit the moves, IV, EV's, Nature, Date Egg received, where it was caught/ hatched, OT, Trainer ID, shiny or not, Item its holding, pokeball its in and basically the whole nine yards. As for the symbols not working correctly , I don't know since i don't use it.
But you can also change your in game name and ID number

 

[Esoteric]

AFAIK, there's an Action Replay code (at least, an Action Replay code for the GBA games) that lets you change your name using the in game system (i.e. the screen that you're shown at the beginning of the game). So this method of "hack checking" wouldn't work for Pokesav OR Action Replay.

There's an online checker for this if you can get your Pokemon in .pkm form (trade to a friend who has Pokesav and get them to send you the file). It's not 100%, but it's not bad either.

http://pokeguide.filb.de/

 

[BoBBa]

I really don't know how you can see in pokésav whether a pokémon is illegal. Except for that the Secret ID is...well secret xD.
But you could outsmart that by giving it your own trainer ID and secret ID (which you can see in pokésav).
So I don't have a clue on how to see if a pokémon is illegal or legal.

 

[Irizz]

That cheat detector works well for D/P legends and pokesav-edited pokemon. But is faulty when you check pokemon who were bred,etc.

 

[Sir Spanky]

Apparently Pokesav has trouble with in-game symbols such as apostrophes, which means that anyone trying to edit a Pokemon with my OT of O'Donut would end up with a Pokemon that had an OT of O?Donut.

From my testing with the program - I too noticed this. Often unrecognisable characters, and even spaces become question marks.

However all you need do is alter it back to the correct symbol in Pokesav, and it will remain normal until you muck around with it again.

 

[Meultima]

Insofar that I know, the most reliable way to look at authenticity is to have someone with an AR to look at the code, which details information like town of origin, game origin, and other data. However, a hacker that knows what they are doing can oftentimes make little to no mistakes that you'll need to look through it with a fine-toothed comb.

 

[X-Act]

That cheat detector works well for D/P legends and pokesav-edited pokemon. But is faulty when you check pokemon who were bred,etc.

The cheat detector doesn't work for bred Pokemon, period. You're not even supposed to input bred Pokemon to it.

 

[Sir Spanky]

And in Pokesav you can completely change the Pokemon (to your specification) that the daycare man is currently holding.

 

[ΩDonut]

Really? Well, there goes any chance of this being any kind of hack protection scheme. Thanks for the input, guys, I'm locking this.