

Algorithm for Capturing Pokémon - jonshariat
http://www.dragonflycave.com/rbycapture.aspx

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beefhash
Please note that the data provided there only applies to the first generation
of Pokémon (Red/Blue/Yellow and Japanese Green).

Second generation (Gold, Silver, Crystal):
[http://www.dragonflycave.com/gen2capture.aspx](http://www.dragonflycave.com/gen2capture.aspx)

Third generation (Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald) and forth
generation (Diamond, Pearl, HeartGold, SoulSilver, Platinum):
[http://www.dragonflycave.com/capture.aspx](http://www.dragonflycave.com/capture.aspx)

For a general overview and comparison of changes, the Bulbapedia page is worth
a look:
[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate](http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate)

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habosa
Wait, so you're saying jamming "ABABABAB..." doesn't make it more likely? How
could all my 5th grade friends be wrong!

~~~
withdavidli
I always held the down arrow. It worked about 30-70% of the time.

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r4pha
In 60% of the time, it worked every time.

\- From
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357413/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357413/quotes)

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jebus989
I can't believe ~=< 30% health gives the same catch rate as 1hp, so many
wasted save/loads trying to get the other guy down to a slither of health.

~~~
blueskin_
I used to catch most things by spamming Ultra Balls without focusing much on
damage/status unless it was a high level. Legendaries were the main thing that
might need repeated reloads - for those not familiar with the games, most
legendaries are a one-shot deal; if you fail to catch them and either lose or
defeat it, you can't try again without starting a new game, so everyone always
saved before attempting to battle them so they could reload on failure. There
are a few legendaries that are exceptions, which moved around and could be re-
encountered if not caught, but they were in generation 2 and upwards.

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GotAnyMegadeth
In Gen I you could just save before attempting to catch one, so if you did
kill it you could just restart from your save point. You couldn't really do
this in Gen II for the Legendary Dogs because they showed up randomly, and
sometimes you had the horrible decision of; never catch Entei or redo those
last 3 hours of cave...

~~~
blueskin_
The legendary dogs only moved between areas when you did, so you could wait
until you were in the same area as one, save, _then_ have multiple tries at
catching it; the main difficulty was in quickly incapacitating it so it
wouldn't run away or else capturing it on your first turn without any
weakening.

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blueskin_
I remember when people used to have all sorts of "tricks". The most common
ones I remember were holding down or B+down, or going ABABABABABAB as fast as
you could. Nobody had any evidence they worked, but so many people tried. I
suppose they could theoretically manipulate the RNG if it used weak sources
such as unsanitised user input, but that seems unlikely.

~~~
skizm
Just like Skinner's superstitious pigeons, if you ever caught a pokemon and
happened to be holding B+down at the time, there was a small part of your
brain that wanted to believe that helped some how. So you do it every time in
hopes of increasing your odds.

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danielweber
Steps 2 through 5 say that throwing an Ultra Ball at a Slept/Frozen Pokemon
will have at least a 1/6 chance of catching anything. Was it that easy to
catch a Legendary in Generation 1, and this is something they've changed?

Also, Generation 1 had Nest Balls and Net Balls, didn't it? Those are missing
from this list.

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b0b_d0e
Generation 2 introduced the more exotic pokeballs through that whole apricot
side event stuff. Generation 3 introduced several new balls including the Nest
and Net balls that you were mentioning
[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9_Ball#Introd...](http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9_Ball#Introduced_in_Generation_I)

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withdavidli
Finally! Something useful on this site! XD! _busts out gameboy color and
become more blind than I already am_

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zacinbusiness
I actually downloaded GB4iOS from emu4ios.net a few weeks back and have been
playing Sapphire. It's a lot of fun when I want to take a short break from
work.

So here's a cool question/poll:

What Gameboy hardware did you own?

I had an original Gameboy, a Gameboy camera (no printer), a silver Gameboy
pocket, a Gameboy Color, and a red Gameboy Advance SP. The Advance SP was
awesome but my roommate in college stole and sold it to buy cigarettes.

I also had a Virtual Boy and an original Nintendo DS.

*Edit: I also had one of those lighted magnifier/speaker rigs for the original Gameboy which meant I could play Metroid after dark and feel like a SPY!

~~~
GFischer
I will never understand why the original software owners aren't monetizing
Smartphones like mad.

These games could be ported to iOS and Android with minimal changes and still
be succesful.

I tried a Final Fantasy for Android and it was decently playable, I was hoping
for Final Fantasy Tactics (which according to Wikipedia was released in 2013
but only for Japan), and very especially for a followup. Square Enix seems to
be among the very few that do that, I guess Nintendo doesn' want to
cannibalize their mobile platform (they're facing a typical Innovator's
Dilemma).

~~~
zacinbusiness
Absolutely. I would easily drop $10 on a proper emulator app and then even the
same for a couple of games. Mario, Final Fantasy, Metroid. And my wife isn't
really a gamer at all but she loves Animal Crossing. So I hooked her iPad up
with an emulator and an Animal Crossing rom because she's just not going to
carry around a dedicated gaming device.

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darxius
Are these algorithms just reverse engineered from pokemon ROMs found online?

Pretty cool nonetheless.

~~~
blueskin_
Most of the roms are fairly well understood from a reverse engineering
perspective; especially gen 1 (red/blue). That's how bugs that were known back
in the day but people weren't sure /how/ (note how some like the item
duplication bug or the Mew bug were sometimes called 'cheats') are now fully
explainable (usually as memory management bugs).

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danielweber
They've also reverse-engineered the RNG. You can capture a high-level Pokemon,
and then brute-force the RNG on a common desktop PC faster than the game can
generate it, so you will have a high chance of getting some rare thing to
happen, provided you can hit the button within the proper tenth-of-a-second. I
looked at writing this but got busy with other things.

Generation 4/5 also had a number of other ways to manipulate another RNG, that
basically made capturing high-IV and shiny Pokemons almost trivial. People
wrote Windows desktop applications to tell you exactly how many times to flip
a coin to get the RNG exactly where you wanted it.

There's a big debate in the Pokecommunity whether or not this is cheating. You
can probably figure out both sides big arguments already.

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blueskin_
>Generation 4/5 also had a number of other ways to manipulate another RNG,
that basically made capturing high-IV and shiny Pokemons almost trivial.
People wrote Windows desktop applications to tell you exactly how many times
to flip a coin to get the RNG exactly where you wanted it.

Great, you probably just got me playing again. There goes my free time ;)

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rtpg
This is a pretty good example of why we use mathematical symbols to describe
calculations and control flow instead of english phrases.

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sebgeelen
in this case some gif or icon would be even better! imho.

