Drastic Clock help

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Cuz_Singh
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2014 8:23 pm

Drastic Clock help

Post by Cuz_Singh » Tue Jul 22, 2014 8:30 pm

I bought Drastic a few days back and it has been amazing completing pokemon platinum again on my phone so thank you Exophase!

I have a quick question regarding the custom clock feature. I'm trying to manipulate the in-game RNG for pokemon which involves starting the game on a specific second. How does the 'seconds' part of the clock work as it doesn't seem to start from zero when it is set?

Thanks.

Exophase
Posts: 1715
Joined: Mon Aug 05, 2013 9:08 pm

Re: Drastic Clock help

Post by Exophase » Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:13 pm

Sorry, I'm not really sure what the question is. When you talk about starting the game at a specific time, do you mean the time that's set when an in-game save is loaded?

Cuz_Singh
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2014 8:23 pm

Re: Drastic Clock help

Post by Cuz_Singh » Wed Jul 23, 2014 3:27 am

Sorry, I'll explain a little more.

In pokemon you can manipulate the RNG of the game by hitting a certain seed. This seed is based on the time you start the game (pressing the game icon on a real DS) and the time you press continue from the in game menu.

I have an in game save set up in front of a stationary pokemon and I need to reset and load the game at a specific date and time, for example, 26/07/14 01:58:10. Using the drastic custom clock I can set the date, hour and minute the game starts at but not the second.

So I guess I need to know more about the custom clock; what second value is used when the custom clock is set and when it starts counting up.

Hope this makes sense!

Exophase
Posts: 1715
Joined: Mon Aug 05, 2013 9:08 pm

Re: Drastic Clock help

Post by Exophase » Wed Jul 23, 2014 9:43 am

Oh okay, turns out the real reason I was confused is because I didn't actually realize that the time chooser widget didn't specify seconds (it's an interface issue, internally there are seconds). Lordus says he'll see if it can be changed to include this, but right now it starts at 0 seconds.

The custom time is applied when the game starts, so it'll probably take multiple tries to get it to land at a certain time when you load the save even if you set the seconds. You can make a savestate at the continue screen and reload it if the time you waited isn't right. The savestate will keep the time it was made at.

Cuz_Singh
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2014 8:23 pm

Re: Drastic Clock help

Post by Cuz_Singh » Wed Jul 23, 2014 8:08 pm

Thanks for your reply.

After a bit of trial and error it seems the custom clock actually grabs the second value from the Android system clock when the emulator is closed. For anyone that may be interested on how to start a game on particular second, here's how I ended up doing it:

1. Set the date, hour and minute to whatever you need it to be from the Drastic system menu.
2. Press back and hover over the quit/exit button.
3. When your phone clock hits 1 before the second you need, press quit.
4. Load up the game as usual.

For my above example, I would set the custom clock and date to 26/07/14 01:58 and wait until my phone clock hit :09s (synced with computer clock to make it easier) and press quit. Open Drastic and reload the game. There seems to be approx 1s delay between clicking your game and it loading up which is why I used :09s. Once you hit the right second you can use savestates to avoid doing it again.

Probably a long-winded way of doing it but it seems to work fine!

Exophase
Posts: 1715
Joined: Mon Aug 05, 2013 9:08 pm

Re: Drastic Clock help

Post by Exophase » Wed Jul 23, 2014 9:02 pm

Ah, I wouldn't have guessed that it didn't just set the seconds to 0. Although I guess this makes sense.

If it helps, this can be used to check the startup time easily: http://www.drastic-ds.com/Watch.nds

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