I'm not interested in a shiny Nosepass, but to me, it looks like you're chaining in Trophy Garden...anyways, assuming you were chaining using Normal patches, the reason why your chain broke is simple but, in essence, stupid. When you are using Normal patches to chain, if the two patches in Zone 1 and Zone 2 are Sparkly patches, and they are "touching", like they are in the above scenario, then the patch in Zone 3 has the highest chance of continuing your chain. According to a "13mjvr" user at SPPf, the chance of the patches in Zones 1 and 2 transfer to the patch in Zone 3...or something along those lines. Look for his guide, if you can.
By "zones", do you mean the concentric squares around the player (at the time of activation) at various distances? Are you suggesting that it would have been better to have entered the patch 3 cells away than the patch 4 cells away? Where does this info come from?
From personal experience, I've determined a few things about the radar, myself:
-The game always picks a single patch to shake at each 1, 2, 3, and 4 cells away. There cannot be two cells at the same distance from the player. (Diagonals count as one unit of distance.) Sometimes, the game picks a cell which doesn't actually contain grass for one or more of its shakes. (It simply ignores whether a cell contains grass or not.) In these cases, the particular shake in question is dropped and doesn't happen. If all four shakes are dropped, the "grassy patch remains quiet."
-There are only three types of shakes (possibly four if there are two kinds of shiny patches, but I don't believe so): regular shaking grass, flashing grass (three little dots that flash), and shiny grass. Differences in the appearance of flashing grass are but illusions caused by
aliasing.
-Many of Shuko's original rules don't really apply. No harm comes from entering a patch with another adjacent, or from entering a patch when not all four shakes occur. It is very important that you only enter patches at distance 4, and that the patch you enter has the same style of shake (excluding shiny patches, of course!) as the one you entered
previously.
Are you suggesting that the famous "most distant patch" rule doesn't always apply? You may be closer to that Nosepass than you think, wanted or not!