#i barely got into the void glitch st sll i have so much more to say. but its almost 6 am and i have 25 more resets to do before i can sleep

[nbmudkip]

pleasepleaseplease do dump about glitches!! im really into video game glitches too, but my knowledge isn't great when it comes to pokemon-related glitches... i would love to hear more :3

HOKAY HOKAY OKAY SO. HOUGH WOW THERES A LOT I COULD GO OVER. i guess for this ask i will simply talk about tweaking and a bit of the void glitch in pokemon DPPT and HG/SS!

alright so. in all gen 4 pokemon games, the overworld map is split up into different chunks made up of 32x32 tiles. each of these chunks is also divided into four quadrants.

[an display of the individual chunks and their quadrants in a route from hg/ss. the black lines represent the edges of chunks, whereas the red/blue lines represent the edges of the quadrants within each chunk.]

in order to keep the overworld transitions seamless but also minimize the strain of loading too much at once, the developers set up a system so that only four chunks are ever loaded at once: the chunk the player is currently inside, as well was two chunks directly next to that chunk, and one chunk diagonal from it. which three other chunks are loaded at a given time is determined by what quadrant the player is in. for example, if the player is in the northeastern quadrant of a chunk, then the chunks loaded will be the ones directly to the north, east, and northeast of the current chunk.

the game determines which quadrant the player is in, and thus which chunks should be loaded at any given time, via a set of invisible lines dividing each chunk into quadrants. these are referred to as load lines, as whenever a player crosses one, the game checks which quadrant they are now in, and loads the correct nearby chunks accordingly.

HOWEVER. there is a weakness in this system that can be exploited for interesting results. if the player crosses multiple load lines quickly and repeatedly (usually using the bike) without ceasing movement at all during the process, the game can’t keep up with the updating chunks and becomes confused as to exactly what should be loaded when and where. at any point where a vertical load line and a horizontal load line cross, the intersection of said load lines makes a perfect point to repeatedly cross over multiple load lines quickly. the process of crossing load lines like this to confuse the game is called tweaking.

[a visual representation of the four tiles surrounding the upper accessible load line intersection in jubilife city. this is a commonly used section of tiles for tweaking.]

in the vast majority of patterns, tweaking simply freezes the game. in others, it loads invisible walls where certain chunks should be, loads black abysses that are covered in invisible collision, or alters the character’s Z-axis position. however, by following specific patterns at specific speeds, it is possible to force the game to either load a certain chunk from one part of the map where another chunk should be, or simply load nothing at all. it took years for people to really understand the load lines and discover multiple reliable patterns for tweaking. some of the most famous reliable tweaking patterns include the zorch tweak (using the fast bike, tile pattern 3124343, unloads the chunk directly to the west of the player), shortzorch (fast bike, tile pattern 42121, same effect as zorch but easier to execute), and basic slowbike (slow bike, tile pattern 12421, fully visibly loads the chunk northeast of the player over the chunk to the northwest of the player). [the numbers in the tile patterns listed hear correspond to the way in which the tiles are labeled in the above image.]

[an example of two commonly used forms of properly executed tweaking. the first shows the northwestern chunk of jubilife city (which contains the pokétch building) having not loaded in at all, resulting in an empty but traversable abyss in its place. the second shows the chunk to the east of jubilife city (part of route 203) loaded over that same northwestern chunk, replacing certain areas like the pokétch building with grass and trees. the first image is an example of a properly executed zorch tweak, while the second is an example of a properly executed basic slowbike tweak.]

improperly loaded chunks like this that are still traversable are known as “abysses”. when abysses are loaded in, the game becomes confused about what is supposed to be loaded, so things like collision and loading zones are usually altered or entirely disabled within them. however, this can be reverted by opening any full screen menu, which refreshes the graphics. by positioning oneself at a certain area of an abyss and then refreshing the graphics to load in the original chunk, the player can access areas that should be off limits or or enter loading zones from directions they shouldn’t be able to.

[a gif demonstrating someone performing a basic slowbike tweak in jubilife city, loading part of route 203 over part of the city, then positioning themself where the door to the pokétch building should be had the chunk loaded correctly. they then open the pokédex to refresh the game’s graphics, loading in the chunk that should be present, allowing them to enter the loading zone for the building’s door from above. when they enter the building, their movement direction is maintained, and they are pushed down through the doorway into the out of bounds area surrounding the building’s interior.]

using tweaking in the above manner to access the out of bounds areas outside of a building’s interior results in the player being pushed into what is referred to as the void, thus triggering what is known as the void glitch. now, it is important to note that the void glitch, while technically existing in all gen 4 games, is only really usable in diamond and pearl. the developers found out about the void glitch due to a glitch exclusive to the japanese versions of diamond and pearl called the surf glitch in which players could access the void by surfing onto and through a statue in the pokemon league. by the time platinum was released, tweaking and the void were not entirely patched out, but the developers added in a vast collection of invisible wall traps, collision, and freeze traps that render the void in platinum, heartgold, and soulsilver virtually untraversable.

it should ALSO be noted that while the void is a thrilling and vast thing, it is also extremely dangerous to mess around in if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing! due to the void not having valid map data, moving around in it acts differently from just traversing the map; you are essentially actively moving your character through areas of the game in which RAM is stored. going far enough out in the void is especially dangerous—especially if you’re traveling to the north for an extended period of time, you run the risk of plowing directly into certain volatile data including pokemon party, trainer name, and id data. accidentally manipulating these in the wrong way can easily corrupt your save file. there are also certain adverse effects that can happen in the void, such as the screen suddenly blacking out, freezes and crashes if you accidentally trigger something that should not be triggered, and Black Screens of Death: areas that, if you save and reload your game in, will cause your game to instantly freeze upon loading, forcing you to reset your save data.

basically, it took over a decade for people to really start to understand how the void works and how to manipulate it constructively, and it is not something to be played around with in a save file with pokemon you care about. (following pre-established routes through the void to do things like catching shaymin, darkrai, or arceus is completely safe however! it’s really only experimentation that can be dangerous, so feel free to follow routes in any save file you like.)

i could keep going on about the void glitch itself, its intricacies, and how you can use it to access the event-locked darkrai, shaymin, and arceus without cheats, but i am quite tired and i would like to get to 600 soft resets for my chimchar before i go to sleep tonight, and this is also getting very long so i am going to cut myself off for now. i will talk more soon in the responses to other asks! i hope this made sense and was enjoyable! also if you want to do more research on your own, i highly recommend checking out some videos covering the void glitch on youtube (PokeTips has a good one i know) as well as the youtube channel RETIRE, which has been documenting research being done on the void glitch as well as other gen 4 glitches for years now!