[Other] Shedinja's HP; Deoxys stats (FireRed)

I've tried buffing Shedinja's health several times (talking base stats ofc) and it doesn't seem to work, almost as if the game has a check for when the current Pokémon is a Shedinja, and forces its max HP to be 1, unless it's a transformation. I've also attempted to change Deoxys' stats and found that to be impossible as well, and I've seen people asking about similar topics for Emerald, so, TLDR, how do I edit Shedinja's HP and Deoxys' base stats in FireRed? How would I allow the player to change their Deoxys' form?

BirdstarCat13 said:

I've tried buffing Shedinja's health several times (talking base stats ofc) and it doesn't seem to work, almost as if the game has a check for when the current Pokémon is a Shedinja, and forces its max HP to be 1, unless it's a transformation. I've also attempted to change Deoxys' stats and found that to be impossible as well, and I've seen people asking about similar topics for Emerald, so, TLDR, how do I edit Shedinja's HP and Deoxys' base stats in FireRed? How would I allow the player to change their Deoxys' form?

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I figured out how to change Deoxys in Emerald and i'm assuming it's the same in Fire Red. Convert Deoxys's stats (in this case attack forms stats) from dec to hex and put a 00 byte between each value. Search for these bytes with a hex editor and you will find where the stats are stored. I was able to correctly change Deoxys speed in emerald to Deoxys attack this way. The only thing I cannot figure out how to change is the back sprite and the party icon.

BirdstarCat13 said:

I've tried buffing Shedinja's health several times (talking base stats ofc) and it doesn't seem to work, almost as if the game has a check for when the current Pokémon is a Shedinja, and forces its max HP to be 1, unless it's a transformation. I've also attempted to change Deoxys' stats and found that to be impossible as well, and I've seen people asking about similar topics for Emerald, so, TLDR, how do I edit Shedinja's HP and Deoxys' base stats in FireRed? How would I allow the player to change their Deoxys' form?

Click to expand...

That's more or less what the game does to handle Shedinja's HP. There are a couple of solutions in this thread.

struedelmuffin1 said:

I figured out how to change Deoxys in Emerald and i'm assuming it's the same in Fire Red. Convert Deoxys's stats (in this case attack forms stats) from dec to hex and put a 00 byte between each value. Search for these bytes with a hex editor and you will find where the stats are stored. I was able to correctly change Deoxys speed in emerald to Deoxys attack this way. The only thing I cannot figure out how to change is the back sprite and the party icon.

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By the looks of it the speed form's back sprite is treated as the normal back sprite's second frame, so Wichu's advanced sprite editor will be able to edit it. It shares its palette with the normal form so you'll need to edit both forms if you want to change that.

Buffel Saft said:

By the looks of it the speed form's back sprite is treated as the normal back sprite's second frame, so Wichu's advanced sprite editor will be able to edit it. It shares its palette with the normal form so you'll need to edit both forms if you want to change that.

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Oh cool that turned out to be surprisingly easy. I still have no idea where to change its speed form icon though unfortunately. It doesn't seem to be as simple as the back sprite since every icon editor ive looked at just shows normal form only

struedelmuffin1 said:

I figured out how to change Deoxys in Emerald and i'm assuming it's the same in Fire Red. Convert Deoxys's stats (in this case attack forms stats) from dec to hex and put a 00 byte between each value. Search for these bytes with a hex editor and you will find where the stats are stored. I was able to correctly change Deoxys speed in emerald to Deoxys attack this way. The only thing I cannot figure out how to change is the back sprite and the party icon.

Click to expand...

Ok but that doesn't help me with trying to ADD IN the other forms.

Buffel Saft said:

That's more or less what the game does to handle Shedinja's HP. There are a couple of solutions in this thread.

Click to expand...

So, that helps with Shedinja, but what about Deoxys? How would I go about adding in the other forms and editing the stats? In theory, I could just add in all forms as separate species and create Evo items to swap forms but that'd be a pain for the player as they'd have to buy a new stone any time they want to change their Deoxys' form.

BirdstarCat13 said:

Ok but that doesn't help me with trying to ADD IN the other forms.

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There are only 2 forms programmed into each gen 3 game by default. You have to add the missing 2 in yourself either by making IPS patches with different forms (cosmic emerald did this) or by making items/conditions that evolve them. The alternative is using ASM to modify the initial form switch (likely impossible because it uses the excess space on a sprite sheet to get away with sprites for two forms in one sheet).

BirdstarCat13 said:

So, that helps with Shedinja, but what about Deoxys? How would I go about adding in the other forms and editing the stats? In theory, I could just add in all forms as separate species and create Evo items to swap forms but that'd be a pain for the player as they'd have to buy a new stone any time they want to change their Deoxys' form.

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Yeah, making them separate species is probably the best way to do it. The game needs to read Deoxys' stats from somewhere and that'd be the simplest way for it to do that.

IMO using evo stones would be less annoying than the official method of flying to a specific location and talking to a meteor to change its form. Maybe you could look into making a key item that switches Deoxys' forms so it only has to be acquired once?

struedelmuffin1 said:

Oh cool that turned out to be surprisingly easy. I still have no idea where to change its speed form icon though unfortunately. It doesn't seem to be as simple as the back sprite since every icon editor ive looked at just shows normal form only

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I've got no idea either unfortunately, I don't know how the game handles the extra icon sprite.

Buffel Saft said:

Yeah, making them separate species is probably the best way to do it. Maybe you could look into making a key item that switches Deoxys' forms so it only has to be acquired once?

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That's definitely a great idea, but how do I make the item a key item? Is the "type" of item based purely by the pocket it goes in? I know that G3T's item modifier lets you change the pocket, but if I, say, made it so the Thunder Stone goes in the Key Items Pocket, would that instantly be enough to make it a key item? Other than that I can probably do everything else necessary to make an entirely new items for "evolution" (and I already have name ideas L M A O)

BirdstarCat13 said:

That's definitely a great idea, but how do I make the item a key item? Is the "type" of item based purely by the pocket it goes in? I know that G3T's item modifier lets you change the pocket, but if I, say, made it so the Thunder Stone goes in the Key Items Pocket, would that instantly be enough to make it a key item? Other than that I can probably do everything else necessary to make an entirely new items for "evolution" (and I already have name ideas L M A O)

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Item Manager lets you change the type of item. You're also going to need to know how to assign a custom script to an item which is a bit of a process in its own right. Then, to be honest, I actually have no idea how you'd really even go about writing a script like this since I'm assuming you'd want your Deoxys to keep its IVs, EVs, and levels. Hell, even if it didn't keep those it'd still be super confusing cause I have no idea how you can tell XSE to identify Deoxys specifically in your party and then remove and replace it. I know you can remove a Pokemon in a specific party slot but I have no idea how you'd have XSE specifically replace only Deoxys.

Basically writing a script to change Deoxys forms in a logical way seems pretty much impossible. Which probably explains why no hacks really have this kind of form switching system in place.

Edit: Unless the plan is to have these be evolution stones and then Deoxys just basically evolves between forms. In that case it's be pretty easy

struedelmuffin1 said:

Unless the plan is to have these be evolution stones and then Deoxys just basically evolves between forms. In that case it's be pretty easy

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Hi yes hello that is precisely what we were talking about

Deoxys forme change is included in the [EM][FR] Pokemon Overworld Form(e) change.

Skeli- said:

Deoxys forme change is included in the [EM][FR] Pokemon Overworld Form(e) change.

Click to expand...

That's way too complicated for something that I would only be using for one Pokémon since I'm not including any of the others that are listed there in my hack...when I can just use evo stones to do basically the same thing.

struedelmuffin1 said:

I still have no idea where to change its speed form icon though unfortunately.

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FRLG and Em have the icon sheet of the main Deoxys form used in them attached right below the sprite sheet that contains the icon frames of Deoxys' base form, which comes all the way from RS.

In FRLG, the icon sprite of the Attack/Defense form can be found in the offset 0xE3A408, and it uses the palette at 0x3D3740.

In Em, the icon sprite of the Speed form has 2 different versions for whatever reason. One is in the offset 0xD3BBF8 and the other one is in the offset 0xD3BFF8.
Both use the palette at 0xDDE1F8.

Pics below:


As y'all can see, Deoxys' Speed form's icon has 2 different versions. I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing the one at 0xD3BBF8 is the correct one.

Credits for these findings go mainly to PokeCommunity Discord user Blackforest and Pret.
The former found the offset where the Attack/Defense form is located in FRLG, while I found the palette and the offsets for Em thanks to the latter's decompilation projects.

If anyone sees anything wrong or incorrect here, please feel free to correct me.