Pokémon data substructures (Generation III)

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This is the list of Pokémon data substructures in the Generation III Game Boy Advance games, Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald.

Format

A Pokémon's data is slightly more complex than the rest of the Pokémon data structure. It is stored as four distinct substructures, each 12 bytes in length. (The Notes section below explains some of these fields in greater detail.)

Growth Attacks EVs & Condition Miscellaneous
size
(bytes)
offset
(bytes)
size
(bytes)
offset
(bytes)
size
(bytes)
offset
(bytes)
size
(bytes)
offset
(bytes)
Species 2 0 Move 1 2 0 HP EV 1 0 Pokérus status 1 0
Item held 2 2 Move 2 2 2 Attack EV 1 1 Met location 1 1
Experience 4 4 Move 3 2 4 Defense EV 1 2 Origins info 2 2
PP bonuses 1 8 Move 4 2 6 Speed EV 1 3 IVs, Egg, and Ability 4 4
Friendship 1 9 PP 1 1 8 Special Attack EV 1 4 Ribbons and Obedience 4 8
Unused 2 10 PP 2 1 9 Special Defense EV 1 5
PP 3 1 10 Coolness 1 6
PP 4 1 11 Beauty 1 7
Cuteness 1 8
Smartness 1 9
Toughness 1 10
Feel 1 11

Substructure order

The order of the structures is determined by the personality value of the Pokémon modulo 24, as shown below, where G, A, E, and M stand for the substructures growth, attacks, EVs and condition, and miscellaneous, respectively.

00. GAEM 06. AGEM 12. EGAM 18. MGAE
01. GAME 07. AGME 13. EGMA 19. MGEA
02. GEAM 08. AEGM 14. EAGM 20. MAGE
03. GEMA 09. AEMG 15. EAMG 21. MAEG
04. GMAE 10. AMGE 16. EMGA 22. MEGA
05. GMEA 11. AMEG 17. EMAG 23. MEAG

Encryption

The four data substructures are stored in an encrypted form. Decrypting the data involves two steps: actually decrypting the data, and validating the decrypted data. To obtain the 32-bit decryption key, the entire Original Trainer ID number must be XORed with the personality value of the entry. This key can then be used to decrypt the data by XORing it, 32 bits (or 4 bytes) at a time. To validate the checksum given in the encapsulating Pokémon data structure, the entirety of the four unencrypted data substructures must be summed into a 16-bit value.

Notes

PP bonuses

The PP bonuses byte stores the number of times PP has been increased for each move in the attacks substructure. Each move has two bits, meaning the PP of each move can be increased 0 to 3 times.

Bits Move
0-1 Move 1
2-3 Move 2
4-5 Move 3
6-7 Move 4

Pokérus status

Pokérus status is stored in a single byte, with the upper and lower halves representing distinct values.

Bits Interpretation
0-3 Days left until Pokérus is cured
4-7 Pokérus "strain"

Any value from 0 to 15 is valid for the strain, with 0 indicating that the Pokémon does not have Pokérus at all. The number of days can be any value from 0 to 4, although for some "strains", some of those higher values are also invalid. If any bit is set in the "strain" and the number of days is at 0, the Pokémon has been "cured" of Pokérus, as indicated by a small black dot on the Pokémon's status screen.

Origins

Trainer gender tells the game how to color the name of the Pokémon's Original Trainer on the Pokémon's status screen. If Level met is 0, it is interpreted as the Pokémon having been hatched from an Egg; however, the games only differentiate a hatched Pokémon from other Pokémon if its current Trainer is the Pokémon's Original Trainer. If a hatched Pokémon is traded, its origin text on the status screen is displayed just like a caught Pokémon's and will not say "Hatched" or "Egg".

Trainer gender Poké Ball caught in Game of origin Level met
Bit 15 Bits 11 - 14 Bits 7 - 10 Bits 0 - 6
Value Gender Value Ball Value Game Value Interpretation
0 Male 1 Master Ball Master Ball 1 Sapphire 0 Hatched
1 Female 2 Ultra Ball Ultra Ball 2 Ruby >0 Caught or other
3 Great Ball Great Ball 3 Emerald
4 Poké Ball Poké Ball 4 FireRed
5 Safari Ball Safari Ball 5 LeafGreen
6 Net Ball Net Ball 15 Colosseum or XD
7 Dive Ball Dive Ball
8 Nest Ball Nest Ball
9 Repeat Ball Repeat Ball
10 Timer Ball Timer Ball
11 Luxury Ball Luxury Ball
12 Premier Ball Premier Ball

IVs, Egg, and Ability

IVs for each of the stats from HP to Special Defense take up the lowest 30 bits of this field, each IV taking 5 bits. Bit 30 is a 1 if the Pokémon is still an Egg or 0 otherwise. Bit 31 indicates the Ability the Pokémon has: 0 indicates its first Ability, while 1 indicates its second Ability (if it has one).

In the table below, bit 0 is the least significant bit of the 32-bit field and bit 31 is the most significant.

Bits Stat
0-4 HP
5-9 Attack
10-14 Defense
15-19 Speed
20-24 Special Attack
25-29 Special Defense
30 Egg?
31 Ability

Ribbons and Obedience

For most of the Ribbons, a value of 0 indicates that the Pokémon does not have the Ribbon while 1 indicates that it does. For the Contest Ribbons, the values 1 to 4 indicate that the Pokémon has the Ribbon or Ribbons for (respectively) the Normal, Super, Hyper, and Master Ranks of that Contest.

In-game, the descriptions of the last 7 ribbons (corresponding to bits 20-26) are blank by default. What text appears there is determined by the method those ribbons are attained. Also note that some of these ribbons are unobtainable and/or had different names prior to Gen 5. For a full list of possible descriptions see here.

Bits Ribbon
0-2 Cool
3-5 Beauty
6-8 Cute
9-11 Smart
12-14 Tough
15 Champion
16 Winning
17 Victory
18 Artist
19 Effort
20 Battle Champion Ribbon
21 Regional Champion Ribbon
22 National Champion Ribbon
23 Country
24 National
25 Earth
26 World

The highest bit of this field, bit 31, determines the obedience of Mew and Deoxys. If this bit is not set, Mew and Deoxys cannot be traded to or from Pokémon FireRed, LeafGreen, or Emerald, and will always disobey the player in battle in those games (except in link battles). If this bit is set on a Pokémon that is transferred to a later generation, the Pokémon will be treated as having had a fateful encounter.[1]

See also

Links

References


Data structure in the Pokémon games
General Character encoding
Generation I Pokémon speciesPokémonPoké MartCharacter encodingSave
Generation II Pokémon speciesPokémonTrainerCharacter encoding (Korean) • Save
Generation III Pokémon species (EvolutionPokédexType chart)
Pokémon (substructures) • MoveContestContest moveItem
Trainer TowerBattle FrontierCharacter encoding (GameCube) • Save
Generation IV Pokémon species (EvolutionLearnsets)
PokémonSaveCharacter encoding (Wii)
Generation V–present Character encoding
Generation VIII Save
TCG GB and GB2 Character encoding
Project Games logo.png This data structure article is part of Project Games, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon games.