Crystal boots from a user-supplied ROM, imports a full cache and is playable:
copyright, the Crystal intro movie, the animated title, gender select, Oak,
and out into Johto. 122 of the cart's 169 script specials are implemented.
Import and data
- tools/make_crystal_manifest.py derives the manifest by importing
make_gold_manifest as a library, with three additive keyword seams. Gold and
Silver still regenerate byte-identical, which is the standing requirement for
touching that generator.
- crystal_symbol_deltas.py and crystal_movie_symbols.py carry the symbol delta:
Crystal renames the credits mons, splits the trainer card, Pokegear and
pack-pal blocks by gender, and replaces the intro and title outright.
- Crystal-only manifest keys: engineFlagOrder (162 flags to Gold's 93, so the
badge block sits one higher) and unownCharmap (the main charmap parser stops
at the first newcharmap so the two cannot contaminate each other).
Extractor
- RomExtractorGen2 becomes three-edition. Crystal corrections: PAL_MAP_BANK
0x13, a flat PICS_FIX pic bank, audio bank 0x5e, the mapSongs id-100 hole,
seven NPC trades, a TradeTexts stride of 8, the five Crystal tileset anim
steps with per-row degrade, and the column-major trainer card portraits.
- New: animated front sprites (frames, bitmasks, play and idle scripts), the
Battle Tower roster, Kris assets, Mobile System GB art, and the Crystal
intro and title via src/import/CrystalMovie.lua.
Engine
- GameVersion gains engine(id) and fixes(id). Gold and Silver keep their
original bugs where the bug is not hardware dependent; Crystal gets the fixes
Crystal shipped: Lucky Number boxes 10-14, surfing onto an NPC, and the
Reflect and Light Screen defence overflow.
- Crystal story: Suicune and Eusine, Celebi behind the GS Ball flag, the Ruins
of Alph chambers, Buena, the Move Tutor, the Poke Seer, and the Battle Tower
including the wInBattleTowerBattle badge-boost guard.
- Kris and the gender flag, animated fronts in battle and the summary screen,
and mon caught data.
Verification
- Every extracted asset is pixel-compared against pret's own source PNGs.
- Gold caches are byte-identical before and after, file for file.
- New Crystal suites plus a T2 Gen 2 tier; the full suite passes.
Gold and Silver had no label-keyed string table at all. The manifests
carried no text section, RomExtractorGen2 had no extractText, and
game.data.text was never assigned, so every call through
src/core/RomText.lua fell back to the literal written beside it. The only
Gen 2 text the cache held was the script text in data/generated/text.lua,
keyed by bank:address for the overworld VM, which nothing can look a battle
line up in.
make_gold_manifest.py now walks data/text/'s five dialogue files for their
labels, the way make_rom_manifest.text_metadata walks pokered's, and embeds
each one's symbol. 889 labels, all of them resolving in both editions.
make_silver_manifest.py inherits the list unchanged and re-resolves the
addresses from pokesilver.sym.
RomExtractorGen2:extractText decodes them into data/generated/rom_text.lua.
The mechanism is the one extractOakSpeech already used for _OakText1-7:
resolve the label, decode from the cart, key by name. What is new is that
the list comes from the manifest rather than being written out in Lua, so
all of data/text/ arrives instead of seven strings.
decodeGen2Text also emits the three runtime name slots it used to drop.
PlaceMoveUsersName, PlaceMoveTargetsName and PlaceEnemysName (home/text.asm)
substitute a battler's name as the line prints, so <USER>, <TARGET> and
<ENEMY> are markers, not glyphs. Skipped as control glyphs, SubTookDamageText
decoded as "The SUBSTITUTE / took damage for" with nothing after it.
Game2:load assigns the table to self.data.text, which is what makes the
existing shared RomText helper work on Gold and Silver at all.
The new cache file is listed in the Gold override rather than bumping
CACHE_FORMAT, so caches built before this stage re-import themselves and Red,
Blue and Yellow are left alone.
bryanthaboi