From what I've heard, all Pokemon games starting with Platinum have a completely static in-battle RNG, meaning that it is impossible to advance it in battle without making a move. This is in contrast to games D/P and earlier, where the outcome of the RNG can be changed by waiting or pressing buttons in between turns.
According to Kaphotics from Smogon, this means that it is possible, in real time, to perform certain actions before a battle that would (for example) predetermine your side to land several critical hits in a row or something similar. This would obviously cause a lot of problems in Wi-Fi battling, which is why it has not been publicly revealed how the in-battle RNG can be manipulated. It's for the same reason that Kaphotics has decided not to submit his TAS of Pokemon White here; the input file would also reveal methods of in-battle RNG manipulation.
However, according to Kaphotics, all the Pokemon games (or at least the most recent ones) use the same or very similar RNG mechanics. If the mechanics behind one are revealed, they will also be revealed for all the others.
Barring the unlikely case that Game Freak chooses to overhaul the RNG mechanics entirely, does this mean that it will never be possible to submit a TAS of a Pokemon game past D/P without also opening avenues for dishonest Wi-Fi players to 'cheat' without any third-party devices?
In my opinion, while Kaphotics decision is a honourable one, it is also in vain since there's no way you can prevent cheating in any situation. Especially in games where there's a reasonable payoff and absolutely no real long term consequences for cheating. (Getting banned doesn't count as anyone can create another account and continue cheating).
1Cheat?If both players decide to manipulate luck on their favor,isn't that just normal?It's just another step on the game's learning curve,to manipulate RNG.
2The pokemon community has long bothered me with banning luck based items,moves(OHKO clause is ridiculous and disables so much more diverse cast of sets) and evasion skills in a game that is a RPG and luck based by nature,and the entry hazards dominance on its meta is big evidence of how much the series has become of an "amputee".Reminds me of the smash community.
3If someone already knows the intricacies of the system,who can tell if somebody isn't already winning battles with knowledge of this?Spreading the word might help to counter this precious info.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
@grassini:
1) It's theoretically not a problem if both players do it. The problem is that the vast majority of people on Wi-Fi will probably not know about it.
2) This is Wi-Fi, not Smogon. Nothing is banned.
3) The number of people in the world with this knowledge is definitely in the single digits. And I believe they're all honest people who've agreed to never abuse this online.
I'd like to emphasize that this apparently applies to every game that either has been or will ever be released in the future. So if someone submits a TAS of HeartGold, the leaked knowledge of the in-battle RNG could be used for unfair advantages in Wi-Fi battles 10 years from now, unless Game Freak overhauls their RNG mechanics.
1)But how will they ever know about if it hasn't been leaked?Just like many people don't know about efforts,natures,meta,is anybody responsible for informing them about it?
If someone is,then the word must be spread about the game's RNG.
2)Yes and,for that,i was grateful when i used to play it.
3)Ok,i don't know about that..
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
IMO the best way to get a stronger RNG for the next pokemon game is to flagrantly and publicly abuse it as much as possible. Nip the problem in the bud so to speak :)
(And the fact that programs like RNG Reporter exist mean that understanding of how RNG works is strong and that the capability is there anyway)
I'm a competitive Pokémon player myself, and for this and other reasons, I'd get very suspicious if someone insisted on hosting all their wi-fi battles with me. It shouldn't matter for official tournaments, because those are played from the title screen (thus being harder to manipulate), and the DS isn't powered off from one game to the next. (I can still see it being theoretically possible to cheat under those circumstances; e.g. you could power it off and on again without the event staff watching; but the event staff would have a reasonable opportunity to catch someone cheating like that, the same way that they'd have a reasonable opportunity to catch someone switching their cart.)
I guess I'd rather the knowledge be public simply because someone else might have already determined the information, and been cheating with it, without such a strong sense of honour.
(BTW, if this works on Poké Balls too, the information would be very useful in preparing for tournaments; we could RNG the catches as well as the Pokémon's stats.)
But yeah, if someone manages to top the GBU ladder with this (preferably singles, because doubles is used for all official tournaments), it'd be a clear sign to TPCi that something is broken. They wouldn't be able to fix it before probably the sequels to X/Y, though.
I'm a competitive Pokémon player myself, and for this and other reasons, I'd get very suspicious if someone insisted on hosting all their wi-fi battles with me. It shouldn't matter for official tournaments, because those are played from the title screen (thus being harder to manipulate), and the DS isn't powered off from one game to the next. (I can still see it being theoretically possible to cheat under those circumstances; e.g. you could power it off and on again without the event staff watching; but the event staff would have a reasonable opportunity to catch someone cheating like that, the same way that they'd have a reasonable opportunity to catch someone switching their cart.)
I guess I'd rather the knowledge be public simply because someone else might have already determined the information, and been cheating with it, without such a strong sense of honour.
(BTW, if this works on Poké Balls too, the information would be very useful in preparing for tournaments; we could RNG the catches as well as the Pokémon's stats.)
But yeah, if someone manages to top the GBU ladder with this (preferably singles, because doubles is used for all official tournaments), it'd be a clear sign to TPCi that something is broken. They wouldn't be able to fix it before probably the sequels to X/Y, though.
Tbh, the simplest way to cheat undetected is to use a program like pokesave.
However, according to Kaphotics, all the Pokemon games (or at least the most recent ones) use the same or very similar RNG mechanics. If the mechanics behind one are revealed, they will also be revealed for all the others.
It's not just the same RNG mechanics, they like to re-use the same process for tons of stuff because why change what works? PKM structure, scripting structure, rand call ordering/operations, saves...
Zowayix wrote:
without also opening avenues for dishonest Wi-Fi players to 'cheat' without any third-party devices?
They'd need a cheat device to pull it off. However, I've demonstrated on my YouTube that it is possible to 'hide' the AR by removing it before booting the target game.
For tournaments, you can ensure that they aren't cheating by having them visibly start their games with the power off. Too bad the tournament interface takes a little bit of time to get to from a restart.
grassini wrote:
3If someone already knows the intricacies of the system,who can tell if somebody isn't already winning battles with knowledge of this?Spreading the word might help to counter this precious info.
Keeping quiet has worked well thus far :)
Patashu wrote:
IMO the best way to get a stronger RNG for the next pokemon game is to flagrantly and publicly abuse it as much as possible. Nip the problem in the bud so to speak :)
(And the fact that programs like RNG Reporter exist mean that understanding of how RNG works is strong and that the capability is there anyway)
Pretty true, but that'd likely ruin the online (and tournament) interaction. RNG of Pokemon is inherently good; you can share the Pokemon you obtain with your hard work. For RNG in battles, it's a selfish thing that can't be done without cheating or emulating.
ais523 wrote:
(BTW, if this works on Poké Balls too, the information would be very useful in preparing for tournaments; we could RNG the catches as well as the Pokémon's stats.)
But yeah, if someone manages to top the GBU ladder with this (preferably singles, because doubles is used for all official tournaments), it'd be a clear sign to TPCi that something is broken. They wouldn't be able to fix it before probably the sequels to X/Y, though.
It does work on Pokeballs, but why when you have false swipe. All in-battle rand() determinations are from the BRNG. As for topping the GBU ladder, xfr/bond697/myself have joked about it. Sure, doing it for the lulz would be cool, but other things are more important to us (personal life/school). If someone let the cat out of the bag, you might see it happening like 4ch gaming the Time Magazine polls.
==
When starting a battle, they generate a battle seed to operate entirely separate from the main PRNG and use it to calculate the random decisions. We know how that seeding routine works, and it's possible to game that seeding to get a luck riddled set of frames. It's essentially the same thing as RNGing a Pokemon, except that the timer0s are not constant (as they vary with time - main PRNG seeds at boot with the same starting set of params). The amount of parameters that play a role in seeding is quite large, so there's an exponential amount of seeds possible in Gen V relative to Gen IV. Only with an emulator (or using AR codes to cheat) can you abuse the BRNG seeds (because timer0 is veryfast). No player can naturally do that!
The main vulnerability isn't that they openly give you your opponent's team (although they do, lol scripts).. it's that they don't sanity check. It's a quick fix to do the handshaking... but they haven't bothered because they don't expect people to abuse their games to this extent. The exploit is not just RNG related; someone's opponent on RM figured out a different way to exploit it. It's quite easy to put the pieces together, which is why I'm quiet about it all.
We haven't let the information go to waste; at Pokecheck we've added battle video processing/playback emulation which has been a quite popular addition to the site's functionality!
Oh, if the seeding happens on a timer every time the battle is started, I'm suddenly very relieved; that seems to be completely unexploitable at VGC (where you'd surely be noticed if you were using a metronome to time when the battle started in order to aim it approximately, and you wouldn't be able to retry). So the problem would only be for wi-fi play.
(And because of your understandable desire to prevent the information as to how that person was cheating getting out, I'll mention the curious behaviour of Hypnosis when battling between DP original and Platinum, and leave it at that. Their method was a lot less clever than yours, though. And I'm curious as to what would happen if the cheater's opponent tried to upload the battle video. My guess is desync, at the least.)
3If someone already knows the intricacies of the system,who can tell if somebody isn't already winning battles with knowledge of this?Spreading the word might help to counter this precious info.
So, X&Y are out, can anyone test if the RNG is the same?
There are no 3DS emulators.
There are no tools for 3DS consoles to do a savestate.
There are no cheat tools for 3DS.
Also, this here: DO NOT ASK ABOUT XY RNG ABUSE
Warning: Might glitch to creditsI will finish this ACE soon as possible
(or will I?)
I got a 403 Forbidden error when I tried to go to that thread, or anywhere else on the Smogon forums, although the main site works fine.
Here's the contents:
Every new set of games brings people asking when they will be able to RNG abuse and where to find information on the subject. Well not this time. We are asking people to please be patient about this as the 3DS is looking to be a challenge to do any form of in-depth rng research so we have no idea when we'll have that information available and useable in any feasible manner. Please do not make threads, posts, or pester researchers about the subject or you will be infracted and have your post/thread deleted.
When the time comes, if it does, a new thread will be made much like we have done for the previous gens and information will be kept there and you may ask questions there.
Thank you for reading this post.
So, X&Y are out, can anyone test if the RNG is the same?
There are no 3DS emulators.
There are no tools for 3DS consoles to do a savestate.
There are no cheat tools for 3DS.
Also, this here: DO NOT ASK ABOUT XY RNG ABUSE
It's just because i really wanna see a Platinum/HGSS TAS, i don't even have a 3DS XD
As we approach the 10 year anniversary of this thread, #ReleaseTheInputs
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
I wonder how much of this still applies now. NDS Wi-Fi's been shut down, and I know at least some parts of the Switch Pokemon games use secure RNG that can't be manipulated. (Not sure if that applies to battle RNG, and not sure about the 3DS games.)
well, as long as 3ds games are around it should stay the same:
Link to video
i doubt it will ever be reconsidered to release the information
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
