Pokemon Emerald RTC

[cangelo98]

Hello all, I am having an issue adjusting the rtc for my Emerald cart to get all of the time based events to work. I tried enabling the change rtc event from the event flags tab. On the title screen I press left+select+b and it takes me to the menu to adjust the rtc. I can't seem to figure out how it works though. It shows previous time and present time but on pkhex the rtc feature shows intial time and time elapsed. they don't seem to have anything in common because when I change the time in pkhex it doesen't seem to match what I put in game. I'll send a picture to show what I mean. Sometimes I can get the berries to grow or get the Lilycove lottery to work by playing around with it enough but I can't get the man in pacifidlog town to give me the tm every 7 days. He wants me to wait 537 days. Sometime I get it to 8 days but when the next day rolls over he still wants me to wait 8 days. I can't seem to find much documentation on how the rtc works in r/s/e so if someone can give me some insight it would be much appreciated.

[kwsch]

Try applying the Berry Fix. The game has issues dealing with dates 1-2 years after release, which your values might be within.
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Berry_glitch

PKHeX/PKHeX.Core/Saves/SAV3E.cs

Lines 62 to 72 in 3e6a036

	public RTC3 ClockInitial
	{
	get => new(GetData(Small, 0x98, RTC3.Size));
	set => SetData(Small, value.Data, 0x98);
	}
	public RTC3 ClockElapsed
	{
	get => new(GetData(Small, 0xA0, RTC3.Size));
	set => SetData(Small, value.Data, 0xA0);
	}

https://github.com/pret/pokeemerald/blob/6d6a876dbdc0d0e5b89d3b586dd8a8d7e0ce7108/include/global.h#L509-L510
https://github.com/pret/pokeemerald/blob/79c5a5983e4bd4cffd39c1c6ef32d66fc63f516d/src/reset_rtc_screen.c#L581-L601

Here's an example RTC you can try copying:

[cangelo98]

Okay I will give it a shot. I wanted to ask before I start though which column do I put the current time into, would it be time elapsed or initial time? Also does the in game rtc settings differ from what is shown on pkhex because they don't seem to work the same?

[cangelo98]

Update:

My RTC is fully working. Sorry it took a while for an update, I've been busy. I am curious though on pkhex it shows that the initial time is 57095 days. I have no idea what that means because it doesn't match any of the values on the reset rct screen. Can anyone please explain that?

[MrPerson0]

curious to see what happens June 18, 2027. According to the post date here, you will hit 10,000 days on that date and the internal game clock is only capable of handling 9999 days. I'm wondering how screwed up it will be at that point. It should start over at 1 in game but then you're rolling back in time and will more than likely have all the same issues again.

FWIW, I tested it out by using RTCread to change the date on my Emerald cartridge. As mentioned, there was no issue with moving it to 2027 since the game seems to keep track of the fifth digit (in terms of days passed), and daily events worked like usual. As @Lorenzooone mentioned, moving the year past 2089 is when daily events no longer started to occur, probably due to a bug in the RTC. It really isn't a big deal since the RTC rolls back to 2000 after 2099, AFAIK.

That being said, from what I understand, the in-game clock reset mainly changes the "Time Elapsed" value that you see in PKHeX's Real Time Clock Editor. The main thing you want to note is, as long as the Days counter in "Time Elapsed" (in the same RTC editor) surpasses the "Days passed" value in Event Flags > Event Constants, daily events should work once again.

This is why using "Reset RTC" in PKHeX usually isn't enough to fix daily events after you replace a battery. You need to change the RTC clock itself, using GBA or DS homebrew and make sure the days surpass your "Days passed" value. Emulators do this automatically since they match your system clock, and why people recommend changing your cart's RTC to the current date and time.

It also sounds like it would never work moving the save file back and forth between cart and emulator since the emulator updates the time elapsed/berry time to match your pc system time in reference to 1/1/2000.

As long as your cart's RTC matches today's date and time, you can move between cart and emulator with no hassle in regards to the RTC.

[profbinks]

The in game RTC reset (not RTCRead) only goes up to 9999 days, so after 2027 you can no longer accurately set the RTC on the cart to allow hot swapping if I understand correctly? The game code would need to be changed another way, either PKHeX or RTCRead but you'd also have to know exactly what to change, because it would be multiple values

[Lorenzooone]

Assuming the RTC Chip's time is correct (do note that it does drift by a few seconds every year or so), it would work fine. Just setting your day to 1 or whatever will work. It's the offset you're editing. Not the chip's time.

[MrPerson0]

Even if the ingame RTC reset itself doesn't read above 9999 days, PKHeX does:

Also, RTCRead is a GBA Homebrew app that allows you to edit your GBA cart's RTC. You should use that or the DS variant to edit yours.

[profbinks]

Can you do this without a DS? I'm just using an OG GBA

[profbinks]

@kwsch the berry glitch isn't relevant here as OP is playing emerald. Nintendo fixed this issue in Emerald which is why Emerald can send the patch over to Ruby and Sapphire via link cable.

[profbinks]

Assuming the RTC Chip's time is correct (do note that it does drift by a few seconds every year or so), it would work fine. Just setting your day to 1 or whatever will work. It's the offset you're editing. Not the chip's time.

Is this in reference to using with an emulator? All that matters is the time and not days? I know playing on an emulator updates the elapsed time in reference to days past 1/1/2000

[MrPerson0]

I'm assuming since the time elapsed also has hours, minutes, seconds, it's technically ahead and days passed is considered lower?

From what I have seen, the "days passed" constant is just a check for daily events (maybe the weekly event in Pacifidlog Town too?), so it doesn't care about hours/minutes/seconds elapsed. Only thing it looks for is if the Time Elapsed moves on to the next day, that's when the "days passed" changes as well.

Also, your initial time definitely looks off. Usually, when I replace the battery on a cart (that used to have a stock battery), I will first do click on Reset RTC so the initial time is set to 0. That way, the current time is set to whatever time is on the new RTC so you can easily edit it with RTCread. However, this might kill off any berries you had planted in the overworld.

When using RTCRead, did you swap the day with the month?

Yeah, that's another thing to note. With RTCread, the first number is the day of the month, the second number is the actual month.

[profbinks]

@MrPerson0 you reset it with the in-game menu first? to 0 days 0 hrs? or set the clock?

[MrPerson0]

No, I just reset it with PKHeX using the "Reset RTC" button. Then, I set the cartridge's clock with RTCread to the current date and time, and from there, everything is good to go.

[profbinks]

Looks to be working properly

Time will tell

[profbinks]

@MrPerson0 @Lorenzooone Thank you both for all your input and timely responses. This level of documentation/troubleshooting support is not something I've been able to find anywhere! Hopefully this helps others who are stuck with the same issue as well.

[jonasknobloch]

However, this might kill off any berries you had planted in the overworld.

@MrPerson0 do you have an idea why that happens?

I was playing around with an Everdrive trying to match its RTC with the current real world time. After updating the RTC, planted berries just vanished. When setting the RTC to a time between "Initial Time" and "Time Elapsed", freshly planted berries became fully grown instantly.

I was wondering what would happen if I set the RTC to a time slightly before "Initial Time" + "Time Elapsed", with the game running when that boundary is crossed. After saving and restarting the berries are gone again. But interestingly if I go back to a time before "Time Elapsed" or disable the RTC altogether, the fully grown berries are back. Doing the same without crossing the boundary in-game, leads to freshly planted berries.

[jonasknobloch]

Is all that intended beahviour? Meaning the berries vanish because they have exceeded their maximum regrowth count?

[MrPerson0]

do you have an idea why that happens?

I believe it's simply due to the new elapsed days being significantly higher than it was before. On a normal save, the elapsed days might hover around 1000 days once the save battery dies out. Once you put in a new battery, set the game's initial time to zero, and the battery's RTC to the current time, the elapsed days will be much higher (8000 or so now). According to Bulbapedia, berries seem to regrow 9 times, so the new day difference is much longer than the growth cycle: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Berry#Growth_and_care

As for your issue with the berries, it might not be documented, but I guess the difference in between the days elapsed is because you didn't reach the maximum regrowth count yet, which would be 9.