Most Generation PRNG Help / Information

[Noah3475]

Hello, wonderful users of Smogon forums!

I am trying to RNG a Starter Chimchar in Pokemon Diamond, specifically:
Relaxed Nature, 27/31/31/03/31/31 IVs, Male Gender.
My target Seed is 26030754, at Frame 1.
The delay of my target seed is 1854.
I am unable to verify my seed. I am RNGing a starter Pokemon, so I do not have the necessary tools to verify my seed at this point.

I tried and failed multiple times. Most recently, I got:
Hardy Nature, 16, 21, 26, 31(HP)/4-23/12-31/4-23/12-31/0-17 IVs, Female Gender.

I am trying to follow along with the guide provided by Smogon, but I have several questions:
I am attempting this on a New Nintendo 3DS. Does this matter?
The guide says to "restart your DS" at one point. Do I need to turn off my system and turn it back on, or is going back to the Home Menu sufficient?
When I enter the Seed 26030754 in Seed to Time, scores of options appear when I click "Generate". Are any Date / Time / Delay options superior to others? I am currently using:
Date 2022 / 01 / 01, Time 03 / 22 / 15, Delay 1854.
How exact does my timing need to be (closing the Current Time page, starting the game) when I am using Eon Timer? 1 Second? 0.1 Seconds?
I rapidly press A and Start so that I can make it to the Load screen before the Eon Timer finishes; does pressing A and Start before the File Load screen appears do anything regarding the frame?

 

[shiny finder]

I am attempting this on a New Nintendo 3DS. Does this matter?

No, but see next comment

The guide says to "restart your DS" at one point. Do I need to turn off my system and turn it back on, or is going back to the Home Menu sufficient?

While going back to the home menu is sufficient, I'd recommend modifying the procedure slightly. Rather than booting the game at the end of the first timer, I'd suggest syncing your clock and EonTimer start times (like normal) then immediately boot the game while the first time is counting down. This will make the process (a) SR when the first timer ends, then (b) click continue from the main screen when the second ends. The 3ds can have a fluctuating/long boot time, and this should eliminate that variable. That said if you prefer to use the standard method as you have been, it works too.

When I enter the Seed 26030754 in Seed to Time, scores of options appear when I click "Generate". Are any Date / Time / Delay options superior to others? I am currently using:
Date 2022 / 01 / 01, Time 03 / 22 / 15, Delay 1854.

Doesn't matter, pick whichever date you like the best.

How exact does my timing need to be (closing the Current Time page, starting the game) when I am using Eon Timer? 1 Second? 0.1 Seconds?
I rapidly press A and Start so that I can make it to the Load screen before the Eon Timer finishes; does pressing A and Start before the File Load screen appears do anything regarding the frame?

The only input that matters (technically) is the final one to start the game on the continue screen. Gen 4 requires accuracy to 1/60th of a second, so you'll need to act as close as you can to the timer to get your seed. Consistency is the real key tho. Any button presses you do in the meantime to get thru the load screen don't matter, so feel free to spam A to get to the final screen when you have to press A.

 

[Miki40]

Is there a way to rng the lottery in pokemon platinum?

 

[Noah3475]

While going back to the home menu is sufficient, I'd recommend modifying the procedure slightly. Rather than booting the game at the end of the first timer, I'd suggest syncing your clock and EonTimer start times (like normal) then immediately boot the game while the first time is counting down.

Thank you so much for your reply, shiny finder! I adopted the changes to my process that you suggested.
I changed the spread I am aiming for to a Chimchar with a Jolly nature. After a couple tries at this, I got a Jolly Chimchar, but almost all of its IVs were off target. Is there anything I can learn from this regarding how close I am to my target seed or other factors? Or was obtaining the right nature just a coincidence?

 

[Uberbiscit]

Thank you so much for your reply, shiny finder! I adopted the changes to my process that you suggested.
I changed the spread I am aiming for to a Chimchar with a Jolly nature. After a couple tries at this, I got a Jolly Chimchar, but almost all of its IVs were off target. Is there anything I can learn from this regarding how close I am to my target seed or other factors? Or was obtaining the right nature just a coincidence?

If the IVs are different, then you are on a different seed and hit a different delay.

Check the nearby delays and look at their first frame. In your case, if you're aiming for a delay of 1854, check 1856, 1852 etc. Copy the corresponding seed from those delays and check their first frames.

The odd/even delays are not consistent in Diamond so I would also check the odd frames too.

 

[shiny finder]

Is there a way to rng the lottery in pokemon platinum?

Never tried it but you might find this comment helpful

Thank you so much for your reply, shiny finder! I adopted the changes to my process that you suggested.
I changed the spread I am aiming for to a Chimchar with a Jolly nature. After a couple tries at this, I got a Jolly Chimchar, but almost all of its IVs were off target. Is there anything I can learn from this regarding how close I am to my target seed or other factors? Or was obtaining the right nature just a coincidence?

Np!

To add on to what uberbiscit said, you'll have to search around nearby frames for your seed and early frames for other seeds to find what you actually hit. It's possible you hit the right seed but wrong frame, wrong seed but right frame, or wrong seed and wrong frame....and you'll have to check all of em. This post has a guide to this extent but if you know the IVs/nature/etc you got, can re-search for those parameters in the time finder (RNG reporter) or searcher tab (pokefinder) to find the seed and frame you actually hit. If you want to know the delay, you'll have to generate the times for that seed and find the one corresponding to when you entered the game. It's rather tedious I'm afraid but doable.

The right nature was likely just coincidence.

Sorry for the late reply, been gone for a couple weeks.

 

[gabraltar]

does anyone know anything about the rng in BW2's join avenue lottery? i.e what rng it uses and when it decides what prize you get?

 

[sumwun]

Do GSC, RS, and all core series games after gen 3 use their clocks to seed their RNGs? Where does FRLG get its seeds from? Emerald is the one where the random number depends on the number of frames after starting/soft resetting the game and nothing else, right?

 

[shiny finder]

Do GSC, RS, and all core series games after gen 3 use their clocks to seed their RNGs? Where does FRLG get its seeds from? Emerald is the one where the random number depends on the number of frames after starting/soft resetting the game and nothing else, right?

A clock/timer is involved in some way, yes, tho the emphasis on it changes as you go thru the gens. There's a bit too much to cover adequately (and I couldn't even if I wanted to try), so I'd recommend perusing stuff like this to see what goes into RNGing each one. To answer your questions tho, FRLG seed creation is mentioned in this post (see hide tag; spoiler: it's a really fast timer). Emerald is unique in that the initial seed is 0 every time, yeah.

 

[lats]

Do GSC, RS, and all core series games after gen 3 use their clocks to seed their RNGs? Where does FRLG get its seeds from? Emerald is the one where the random number depends on the number of frames after starting/soft resetting the game and nothing else, right?

worth noting that it is possible to change the initial seed of Emerald (and dead battery R/S by extension) legitimately with the contest hall painting method discovered in recent years

 

[darwinV96]

Hello i have found an TID/SID combo in Pokemon Platinum that gives a modest 31/31/31/31/31/31 shiny at 626 delay. But the eon timer gives me 14 seconds between game boot and load save file which is not enough so i am out every time. What can i do?

 

[shiny finder]

Hello i have found an TID/SID combo in Pokemon Platinum that gives a modest 31/31/31/31/31/31 shiny at 626 delay. But the eon timer gives me 14 seconds between game boot and load save file which is not enough so i am out every time. What can i do?

Welcome to Smogon! Depending on how close you are, you could SR at the end of the first timer instead of booting the game from the menu. That might give you a little extra time. But if you just can't manage it quick enough, then there's nothing else you can really do other than find a new seed/time.

 

[Zoap]

Haven't RNG'd in ages and very inexperienced in Gen 3 but wanted to check here before going down the google rabbit hole. I'm not planning to abuse my TID/SID(although it looks like this is now a possibility) but was wondering if one emulator if there are any resources for tracking frames via Lua Scripts or through Desmume/VBA. Its a Japanese Emerald if it makes any difference and will be going for a shiny mew. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Tatertot]

Haven't RNG'd in ages and very inexperienced in Gen 3 but wanted to check here before going down the google rabbit hole. I'm not planning to abuse my TID/SID(although it looks like this is now a possibility) but was wondering if one emulator if there are any resources for tracking frames via Lua Scripts or through Desmume/VBA. Its a Japanese Emerald if it makes any difference and will be going for a shiny mew. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi! Devon Studios has the most up-to-date guides for emulator RNG with luas, just use Google Translate to translate the webpage (unless you can read Italian).

https://devonstudios.it/rng-guides/3rd-gen/

 

[KryptixGG]

Hi, I have a question regarding pokeradar pokemon in pokemon diamond. I have been following the instructions in the following 2 guides DPP / HGSS RNG Manipulation Guide Part 5 - Cute Charm TID/SID and Poke Radar Abuse - Smogon University and INSTANT PokeRadar Shinies??? - YouTube .
I wanna hit the seed: 80d0649 to get the encounter slot 4 dusclops in Route 224 at 651 advancements/ frame 652 depending on how you look at it. I have hit the seed ~10 Times verified by coin tosses, but always been either 1 or 2 frames off getting either the female floatzel, the weepinbell or the gloom. Since the Frame is pretty high I wanted to make sure I made no error in counting journalflips and chatters. I used pokeradar, went to the square right in front of the special radar patch and went 30 frames before the target and then did the rest of advances with chatter pitches verifying that I would be exactly hearing the chatter of exactly 559 advances (M 40) which resulted in me getting the weepinbell - so I was 1 Frame behind the goal for some reason. So I repeated the exact process but this time i stopped when i heard the chatter pitch of 558 advancements (ML 30) which resulted in me getting the female floatzel - so i am 1 frame early. How can this be?
I have used the vs-seeker to stop the random jumps of Veteran Armando in the top corner of the grass patch before saving when setting up for the trys and I can see him doing his periodic vs-seeker-movement during seed verification (not in the very end cause he is barely out of screen when i walk on the patch with the pokemon, I dont see why he should have gone back to randomly turning at that point though).
I dont know on which chatter pitch I need to be to get the Pokemon I want now or why on earth the frame jumps randomly by either 2 or 3. I hope someone here understands whats going on and helps me finally get my Dusclops :(

 

[Lego]

(snip)

Hiya! I've been looking in to this in my free time this afternoon and there are a couple f things I'm unsure of based on your description.
First of all, there's no Slot 4 Dusclops at all - Radar occupies slots 6 & 7 (per https://shinyfinder.github.io/encounter-slots/pearl/Land.html)

Secondly, I'm confused about why you're going at 558/559 when your target is 651/652 - I'm assuming this is a typo of 562 for the purposes of here on out.

I'm not sure how much control we get over slots in Radar RNG, the way I've always done it (and the way I was able to get this Dusclops myself) is by first starting a Dusclops chain to force the species regardless of encounter slot, and then stepping into the furthest patch when the target frame is on frame 1 in RNGReporter (seed 83E2329B). I found I had to be positioned facing sideways to the patch (target patch circled in red) instead of looking away from it, but I was able to obtain your target. I did it on emulator for ease of testing but there's no reason it won't be replicable on your console!

 

[KryptixGG]

First of all: tysm for looking into it.
I got the encounter slots by simply selecting dusclops in pokefinders since pokefinders encounter slots have always been correct for me yet.

The Frame number was indeed a typo.

I dont know if encounterslots are weird in radar rng manipulation. But my Method didnt work and yours obviously did. So maybe I was just being lucky when I did my only other try at radar rnging - which was a Ditto.
I will just try out your method and see if it works for me too - which i highly expect!

 

[alabasterleech]

Subject: Weird Thing Happening With Gen IV RNG Manipulation

This might end up being a little long but I'm going to do my best to organize it well. Solving this particular phenomena has sort of become my RNG manip white whale and I've started posting about it basically everywhere there's a community for Pokemon RNG manipulation in the hopes that I might find someone who knows the root cause of it and maybe just some people to commiserate with (found a few of those, but none of the former)

The Phenomena: In generation IV, the system time second corresponding to the seed I hit randomly changes between two adjacent values on consecutive attempts with no changes to my timer or methodology.

i.e. On one attempt I will hit seed 0xEF100CEF and on my next attempt I will hit 0xF0100CEF.
I have only noticed this on Method 1/J/K gift/stationary Pokemon but manipulating those have also made up the vast majority of my time doing manips in gen IV, so I have no evidence this has anything to do with it. I have also mostly noticed it on HGSS and a little bit on Plat.

Possible Causes And Why I Have Fully Or Partially Ruled Them Out:
1. "Something about your timer calibration means you're actually targeting one second before/after what you want to be."
Were this the case, I'd be missing by one second every single attempt, instead of hitting it some attempts and missing it others.
2. "Your timer is landing you right near the boundary between one second and another so slight variations in your attempts are shifting your result."
This is far more plausible than the first cause but I have two pieces of evidence this isn't the case. Firstly, I'm using EonTimer which naturally has your first and second stage add up to 0.2 seconds after your target second which I feel like should be far enough away from the second boundary that the above described effect would not happen. The second piece of evidence is that I have had scenarios where I will be hitting frames inside of a two second window, say corresponding to system XX:XX:15 and XX:XX:16. I will then change my target second in EonTimer, which just adds 1 second to the first stage, in other words, adds a second to your overall timer without impacting your delay. After doing so, if I were landing on a boundary, I would expect to start landing on the boundary 1 greater, i.e. 15/16 ->16/17. Instead I have started hitting seeds which correspond to XX:XX:17 and XX:XX:18, two seconds over.

Research I Have Tried To Do And Want To Do:
My current goal is to find a situation where the phenomena happens to me with some consistency and then I want to start changing things to see if I can make it happen less. While I don't believe it is the second cause I described above, I would like to try changing where I'm landing within the second to see if that helps any, say by landing four or five tenths into the second rather than two. I'd also like to try doing more research with different devices. I have a 3DS and a New 2DS XL that I've been using where this has been happening and recently I got my DS Lite out of storage so if I can find some situation that makes this happen a lot, I'd like to try on a device not in the 3DS family.

The problem is, I haven't yet been able to find any such scenario. Or at least, I don't have access to one at the moment. I first noticed this happening a lot when manipping the Kanto starter you can get in HGSS but at the time I was more concerned with getting the shiny Charmander than I was with solving this mystery. I have since tried a bunch of trials reviving fossils in Pearl with no luck and I am about to move on to trying the same thing in HeartGold. Unforunately, all my saves are either 1 or 2 badges in or so deep into the post game there's nothing left to do, so to try most things I will need to play through most or all of a game which is something I don't have much time (or any desire) for at the moment.

UPDATE: From additional testing, I have determined that this only occurs on 3DS-family systems, so if you are also in this boat the only advice I have to offer you at this time is to do you manipping on a DS/DS Lite/DSi instead. My assumption now is that this is entirely caused by how the DS mode on the 3DS works but I know basically nothing about that so I can't gain any more insight.

What I'm After:
Primarily knowledge and secondarialy commiseration. If you have any information about why this happens and how to make it happen more/less or even any hypotheses I did not mention, I would love to hear them. If the same thing has also happened to you, please also let me know and please also let me know on what game and system as well as what you were trying to manipulate. More people experiencing this makes me feel slightly less crazy and more anecdotes about when it occurs may prove enlightening if I get enough of them. The plural of anecdote is data or something. (I wouldn't know, I've taken a single lab science course in my life)

 

[Novus]

Voltorb Flip is what happened to the Goldenrod Game Corner in HeartGold and SoulSilver when PEGI realized that, actually, gambling is bad and having slot machines of any kind just got your game a PEGI 12 rating at the time HG/SS released. But as it turns out, Voltorb Flip in HG/SS is actually useful for something other than causing an early onset of a receding hairline: It's a reliable method to find your MT/IRNG seed and advance dozens of frames at a time. If you can hit seeds consistently, this is probably uninteresting to you. If you can't, this might just be relevant to your interests.

For reasons unknown to anyone but the developers of the game, Voltorb Flip runs exclusively off the IRNG (or Mersenne Twister PRNG). Perhaps because the quality of the IRNG is slightly less awful than that of the main LCG PRNG? In any case, while Voltorb Flip is active, no other IRNG events occur: Voltorb Flip essentially has exclusive control of the IRNG.

Recently, the way Voltorb Flip boards are generated has been documented. Given only a rough approximation of the current time, it is possible with a negligible probability of failure to recover the actual seed. The timing is so forgiving that at least several minutes in each direction can be tried. This recovery is also not very CPU-intensive and feasible to do in the browser. At that point, it is possible to correctly predict Voltorb Flip boards. Scotteh made a JavaScript-based utility for seed recovery and board prediction (which conveniently completely obviates the need to actually play Voltorb Flip).

Given the current state of the IRNG, it becomes possible to plug the seed into e.g. RNGReporter and roll new boards until you get close to a frame that gives you an egg with a Pokémon of the desired shininess and/or ability and/or nature. This requires you to know the exact frame of each board (and how much generating a new board would advance it). Usually, a board advances the IRNG state by about 30-80 frames, but sometimes that can be even more, making it feasible to hit higher frame counts within reasonable time. The 50,000 coin limit, at which point you will be kicked out of Voltorb Flip, forms a hard limit on how many boards can be rolled while winning. It would, however, be conceivable to roll unlimited boards by just starting a board and quitting it every time. No public tooling for displaying this information currently exists, but may be of interest.

However, there is a possibility of failure: In the short trek between Goldenrod and the daycare, the IRNG state may advance in an uncontrolled manner. I'm not sure what the cause of IRNG advancements in the overworld may be, but this has happened to me before. It may thus take a few tries to get the right egg on the expected frame.

 

[Ryuu Davin]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I have a trouble with Pid abuse for cute charm glitch in 4th generation (hgss).
I follow I'm a blisy guide for TID/SID abuse to get a combination for cute charm glitch.
After calibration, find seed to hit, search right date/time, I notice that I can't hit the right second.

For example: date is 04/19/2024 at 23:47:50 , so i open Eontimer 3.0 and set da date and time to 23:46:00 on my Nintendo ds lite, then press A button in same time star eontimer.
I finished at Prof Oack's last phrase "Let's go to the world of Pokémon! I'll see you later!" as per guide, and wait for countdown end.
My target is 23:47:50
My results are 23:47:47
So try again and set eontimer add 3 more seconds, but my results are 23:47:53

I can't understand what is the problem, I can edit this post later adding seed and delay to hit if it can help..

 

[Bobsican]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I have a trouble with Pid abuse for cute charm glitch in 4th generation (hgss).
I follow I'm a blisy guide for TID/SID abuse to get a combination for cute charm glitch.
After calibration, find seed to hit, search right date/time, I notice that I can't hit the right second.

For example: date is 04/19/2024 at 23:47:50 , so i open Eontimer 3.0 and set da date and time to 23:46:00 on my Nintendo ds lite, then press A button in same time star eontimer.
I finished at Prof Oack's last phrase "Let's go to the world of Pokémon! I'll see you later!" as per guide, and wait for countdown end.
My target is 23:47:50
My results are 23:47:47
So try again and set eontimer add 3 more seconds, but my results are 23:47:53

I can't understand what is the problem, I can edit this post later adding seed and delay to hit if it can help..

Gen IV can have a even/odd offset, so certain frames can't be hit at all as the game will just "round" it, to circumvent this, try to have a mainline Pokemon GBA game on the DS slot while doing the whole thing, entering the save menu then back to the title screen would also be an option, but it isn't when hunting a specific TID/SID combo. You could also play around this by using a date one year forward or behind the one you're currently using for the RNG (of course I'd corroborate on this being a legit seed).

 

[Tea Guzzler]

does gen 4 pickup (ability) rng... exist? i've looked around online and haven't found anything useful, and i don't have an english gen 3 game to just clone a load and send them up via pal park (i only have jp emerald and jp plat, so stuck with the 24hr timer).

 

[Bobsican]

does gen 4 pickup (ability) rng... exist? i've looked around online and haven't found anything useful, and i don't have an english gen 3 game to just clone a load and send them up via pal park (i only have jp emerald and jp plat, so stuck with the 24hr timer).

I bothered to look around and it seems that it exists, it's rather recent, however, so there aren't many resources. In any case, if you know about aiming for a specific Gen 4 RNG seed and how Pickup works, using this should come in handy, do note that at the moment there's only support for Platinum and HGSS (rip DIamond and Pearl). I can also help by trading you for free the items by AltWFC if you'd prefer.

 

[Tea Guzzler]

I bothered to look around and it seems that it exists, it's rather recent, however, so there aren't many resources. In any case, if you know about aiming for a specific Gen 4 RNG seed and how Pickup works, using this should come in handy, do note that at the moment there's only support for Platinum and HGSS (rip DIamond and Pearl). I can also help by trading you for free the items by AltWFC if you'd prefer.

unfortunately i don't think this works (or i have something egregiously wrong). entering the battle on the rng the program spits out doesn't result in the desired pickup output (both accounting for battle advances tab in pokefinder and being on/near target rng when using sweet scent; by "output" i mean the mons activating pickup at all), and the same frame seems to give different pickup results for no apparent reason. tested this on both retail and emulator and neither worked. the one thing i didn't test is launching the game on the rng the program spits out, but every output i got had over a million delay. i have ase set up on a copy of pearl, so there won't be any need for trading with altwfc, but it would be nice to be able to do it natively within hg.

 

[Noah3475]

I have been attempting to RNG manipulate Pokémon Diamond with Eon Timer. Through several attempts, it functioned perfectly, but it now beeps a random number of times at random intervals, rendering it nearly useless. I have tried to change different settings, delete and redownload it, to no effect.