ROM Hack Pokemon Shuffle Preservation Mod v1.1

[admin]

Since Pokemon Shuffle 3DS is a primarily offline game which still requires going online once a day to obtain check in
rewards, and more importantly obtain a few of the Megas in the game, I have made a mod which both moves all files in the Extra Data to the base game, for those of you who haven't downloaded the extra data before they shut off the servers, and for everyone, makes the Megas which were only obtainable through the competition events act like boss stages instead of competition stages. These boss stages give the proper mega stone, a level up if you already had the stone, but regardless also give a jewel and 25 hearts. Additionally, Drop Rate Increase has been ported from Mobile, Galvantula (and temporarily Exploud) have been removed from the Survival Mode pool, the Vivillon sprite bug and the Shiny Genesect special enemy graphics bug have been patched.

You will need a Hex editor such as HxD, Flips (or presumably other patching software, flips is the one I usually use), and a decrypted copy of the Pokemon Shuffle.cia file (either dump it yourself, or go through some other means)

Spoiler: For those of you with existing save data

Installation is slightly more complicated then I'd like, but the first thing to do is back up your save file and extra data using either checkpoint or preferably JKSV, as I've seen installing a new .cia over the base game delete the save data, and you'll need to do a hex edit to your save file anyways if you want to keep it. Also back up your extra data, because you will be deleting it in order for the mod to run properly, and if you want to return to vanilla, you will need access to the extra data.

To delete the extra data after backing it up go into your system settings. Once there, go to Data Management, click 3DS, then Extra Data. You'll want to locate Pokemon Shuffle's Extra Data and delete it. What this does is prevents the extra data files from overwriting the modded files in the base game, as extra data files have some sort of verification on them that prevents me from just modding those. All relevant data from the extra data has been ported over to the mod.

Unfortunately, because I've not figured out a way to deal with code edits for 3DS games that doesn't intimidate me, there's instead a small hex edit to any existing save files which have had specials unlocked. Once you have a back up of your save file, put your SD card into your PC, make a copy of the folder the back up is in, put it somewhere safe, and then drag the one you'll be using for the preservation mod into HxD or your hex editor of choice. Basically, these values that are highlighted in the save data need to be changed to 00 00. Once you're done that, save the edits and delete the .bak file it created.

Spoiler: For those who DON'T have a save file already or don't care about theirs and want to reset

If you don't have a save file or are want a fresh start and are just gonna delete yours, you'll instead be using the save file included with the mod as this one already has specials unlocked, which unfortunately doesn't happen naturally in the game. However, if you don't have a save file, you instead will want to ensure that you nullify the offset of your console through the Luma menu, as the save file will only have specials unlocked if played on a console with an offset of 0. Hopefully in the future, I want to instead make the game just always have specials available without having to worry about this.

Regardless of if you have save data or not, you'll want to patch your .cia file using Flips or whatever patching software you're using. Once you've got it downloaded its pretty easy to patch the file, you just click apply patch and follow the instructions. You have the option to either put the patched .cia file onto your SD card to be installed through FBI, or if you'd prefer to use layeredFS, you can extract the files and put the A4700000, B6680000, and all files which begin with F05 into the folder used for layeredfs. These are the only files changed in this patch, there should be 9 files which begin with F05.

Once this is all done, you should have the game load as version 1.5.0 as opposed to the usual 1.5.11, and upon clicking start, you should be getting a "Attention this game isn't up to date" message, however Special stages should be unlocked. If this is what you see, you're all good to go, the mod is working properly. For anyone using the included save file, Specials can act pretty glitchy before stage 11, or at least stage 6, so I'd suggest not playing them until you've progressed at least that far into the game.

If there are any problems, concerns, or bugs, please reach out so I can either patch them if needed or try to help with anything else related to the mod.

Special Thanks to the people who were involved in figuring out how Shuffle's files worked and datamined the game, for enabling me to create this mod, and to any other member of the community who has contributed anything for the game, you're all awesome!

EDIT: 1.2 is now available, replacing 1.1 on this post, there is also now an alternate patch which addresses SOME but not all of the versions floating around, please make sure your .cia is around 91000kb as the smaller ones floating around will not work for the moment. And make sure that your decrypted .cia file is actually output as a .cia file.

Changelog:
- Victini has RML drops after being caught, but can no longer use jewels to get more attempts, to make up for the now missing comp RMLs until I find a better solution.

- Galvantula Survival Mode patch is fixed and Exploud returns to Survival Mode.

KNOWN BUG:
- Beating a comp boss stage with 99 hearts doesn't give you the stage rewards and then bugs out as if its already given them to you.
- Stages 1-11 give the wrong initial clear rewards, this will be fixed next update.