Expanding the PC Boxes of Fire Red. Is it Possible?

I've been thinking, seeing the fact that it is now possible to expand the number of Pokemon to your heart's content, I came across one tiny problem. No, it's not with the programs used to add the new pokemon and expand the number of Pokemon available. It's the fact that you're still limited to the fact that there's only 14 boxes in Fire Red that can be used, which limits you to only be allowed to have 420 boxes to use. That's all fine and dandy if you just want to have 420 (429 counting your party, and the two daycare centers in the game.) slots available to store Pokemon in. The question is, is it possible to expand that number of PC Boxes? If not, would it be possible to create a Pokemon Bank clone that's exclusive to Pokemon caught in the rom hacks? I'll admit, it could be hard to make a Pokemon Bank clone that is compatible with rom hacks as the program wouldn't be able to keep up with whatever rom hack you'd load up, but it could be worked around by possibly providing a folder that contains the icon sprites for the pokemon, as well as the edited inis you used in things like the Advanced Sprite series and G3HS for examples.

It would take up too much memory so it currently isn't possible.

Okay. Would it be possible then for a Pokemon bank clone that's compatible with rom hacks?

I'm not too versed up on Pokémon Bank but doesn't it work on wi-fi? There's no wi-fi capabilities on the GBA so I highly doubt it. I'm struggling to think any feasible way for anything like that to work. Unfortunately more PC Spaces/Bank seems to be just too much for the available hardware.

Lucariokid13 said:

Okay. Would it be possible then for a Pokemon bank clone that's compatible with rom hacks?

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No, it would not. Pokemon Bank is reliant on Wi-Fi which means that it automatically rules out anything before the NDS. Beyond that, the kind of programming required to configure a more modern game to recreate Pokemon Bank is beyond NDS hacking's capabilities.

I mean, you could code something that rips the Pokemon from the save file and stores them in a file or something. A local Pokemon Bank, if you will.

Deokishisu said:

I mean, you could code something that rips the Pokemon from the save file and stores them in a file or something. A local Pokemon Bank, if you will.

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That's what I meant. When I was saying a Pokemon bank clone, i meant in terms of it being used to store any pokemon that you don't want on your save that you caught at the moment into the clone Pokemon bank. It would just be local and no wi-fi needed.

Lucariokid13 said:

That's what I meant. When I was saying a Pokemon bank clone, i meant in terms of it being used to store any pokemon that you don't want on your save that you caught at the moment into the clone Pokemon bank. It would just be local and no wi-fi needed.

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Then yes a program that can copy Pokemon from a save file is quite possible. As you can see here the save format is well documented.

Lost said:

Then yes a program that can copy Pokemon from a save file is quite possible. As you can see here the save format is well documented.

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It'd probably have to be made, sort of, agnostic when reading the data to make it fully compatible with most hacks. So, it would just rip them from the save file and only read, like, the nickname or something. That way with changed species/attacks/etc. it would still be able to be used.

You can expand the number of boxes. With JPAN's save block hack, you will have almost 4kb to spend on save RAM. That's more than enough for another box. http://www.pokecommunity.com/showpost.php?p=6993092&postcount=206

It'd take some extra work to get that box to display and work according to your intentions. I think it may be beyond your capabilities atm.

It's not that hard if you shrink the pokemon data kept in box. You can get rid of TiD and have something like trade index. Checksum, ribbons data, game version, etc. could also be ignored. That would require lots of work tho.

DizzyEgg said:

It's not that hard if you shrink the pokemon data kept in box. You can get rid of TiD and have something like trade index. Checksum, ribbons data, game version, etc. could also be ignored. That would require lots of work tho.

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I can imagine. Especially for someone like me that still hasn't fully understood how Fire Red handles certain things even though I've been attempting GBA rom hacking since 2009.

But can you increase the number of boxes on the pc or not?

Castor said:

But can you increase the number of boxes on the pc or not?

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entirely possible but also impractical

Castor said:

But can you increase the number of boxes on the pc or not?

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The problem is having space in SRAM. When you save your game, those extra boxes have to be written somewhere in the save, and the space is limited. Even if you freed enough up and compressed the Pokemon format, you'd still need to rewrite how boxes are handled, how the memory is allocated, how Pokemon are read/written, etc.

So yeah, you could technically. But you can also technically go to the moon. The question is not, "Is it possible?" but instead, "Is it feasible?"

Lucariokid13 said:

Okay. Would it be possible then for a Pokemon bank clone that's compatible with rom hacks?

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Well I mean there IS Pokémon BOX RS but I don't think it can be hacked...