Character encoding (Generation I): Difference between revisions

This article is incomplete. Please feel free to edit this article to add missing information and complete it. Reason: French, German, Italian, and Spanish character encodings

In Generation I games, proprietary character encoding is used to store text data. Different language versions may use different encodings, some more different than others.

Fixed-length user-input strings are terminated with 0x50. If a fixed-length string is terminated before using its full capacity, the content of the remaining space is undetermined.

Note that 0x7F is a space (" "), not empty. All non-control characters print in one character.

In some contexts, some characters may display differently than suggested below. For example, in the character input table, ^E_D is 0xF0 instead of the Pokémon Dollar symbol, and in the English Pokédex, the feet (') and inches (") symbols are 0x60 and 0x61.

English

Due to how text is rendered in the Generation I Pokémon games, all characters take up the exact same amount of space (i.e. the games effectively use a monospaced font). Some ligature characters exist to display two characters within the width of one (e.g. the character 's is the same width as s).

Legend

• Variable text characters are characters whose values are overwritten in certain contexts to render different characters. Their default values are displayed in the table above; alternate possible values are detailed below.
• Control characters are special code points that either print a particular multi-character string or serve some functional purpose (such as marking the end of a line of text).
• Map tiles are sprites loaded from the current map's tileset. They are usually graphical rather than text.

The full list of characters that are available for user input are: A-Z and a-z, space, and the following: ×():;[]PKMN-?!♂♀/.,.

Notes

• 0x00 is a null character, used to mark null values and occasionally used as a delimiter.
• 0x60-0x6C are bold letters leftover from the Japanese version. Only V and S are used in the English version, appearing on the VS screen at the start of a link battle.
• 0x6D (default value) and 0x9C are both colons, but are visually distinct: 0x9C is bold relative to 0x6D. 0x9C is used in almost all cases (including in user input), except in the display of total playtime.
• 0x6E-0x6F, 0x76-0x78, and 0xE9-0xEB are Japanese katakana leftover in the character table from the Japanese version. They are not used in the English version.
• 0x74 is an interpunct leftover from the Japanese version. It is not used in the English version.
• 0x79 are box-drawing characters used to draw the boundaries of text boxes. In the games themselves, they are rendered with Poké Balls in the corners.
• 0x7F is a space.
• 0xBB-0xBF and 0xE4-0xE5 represent an apostrophe followed by a letter. These characters are used to render contractions in dialogue, so that the apostrophe does not take up an entire character-worth of space.
• 0xC0-0xDF are usually blank, although some parts of the game may load characters in these code points.
  • Letters with umlauts that are user-enterable in the German version (ÄÖÜäöü) are located at 0xC0-0xC5 in Western languages other than English.
• 0xE8 and 0xF2 are both periods that render identically.
  • In the Japanese games, the two code points represent visually distinct characters: 0xF2 is a decimal point and 0xE8 is punctuation. 0xF2 is used for user input; 0xE8 is used in the name of Mr. Mime.

Control characters

Code points within the 0x49-0x5F range (with the exception of code point 0x4D, which defaults to tile 0x4D) are control characters. Instead of loading the tile they would correspond to from VRAM, they execute a piece of code. Additionally, the null code point 0x00 (which is not in this range) can be considered a control character.

There are three main categories of control character:

• Functional: Performs some function other than simply displaying text
• Static display: Prints a fixed string (which may contain multiple characters)
• Variable display: Prints the value of a text variable (which may contain multiple characters)

The static display control character 0x5D "TRAINER" is used as the Original Trainer of Pokémon obtained in in-game trades. Due to being a control character, this means that if the Pokémon is traded to a game in a different language, the Original Trainer is automatically updated to display "TRAINER" in that game's own language.

Variable characters

Code points in the 0x60-0x7E range vary depending on the context in which they are rendered. Normally these code points contain the characters listed in the table above, but in certain contexts different characters overwrite them. Even when some characters from this set are replaced, others may remain as their default values.

The alternate tilesets listed below are some of the alternate characters that use these codepoints. They are not necessarily a complete list of all cases in which these codepoints are overwritten.

HP bar tileset

This tileset is loaded when the game needs to draw HP bars, such as in battle and on status screens. (Note that screens that load this tileset may load additional tilesets that override some of these characters as well.)

Other tilesets

These are some of the other characters that can replace the default characters in certain tilesets. The following is not a single tileset, but a list of instances of various tilesets that overwrite characters

Tilemap sections

The game sections off various areas of the tilemap loaded into VRAM and each character code directly corresponds to a tile in the tilemap. Not all tiles in the tilemap are accessible via character code, but many are.

1. VRAM addresses 0x9000 to 0x9480 correspond to a portion of the current tileset of the map. Character codes 0x01 to 0x48 and 0x4D directly correspond to them. For example, while the player is outside, tile #3 is the animated flower so character code 0x03 will place the animated flower in text, but in other locations (such as in battle or in a cave), a completely different tile will be displayed.
   1. Characters 0x49 - 0x5F are also in this same section, but with the exception of 0x4D, they are control characters that link to code rather than the tile they would normally correspond to.
2. VRAM addresses 0x9600 to 0x97F0 partially corresponds to characters 0x60-0x7F. This is where the user interface tiles are stored, such as bold letters and tiles that are used to draw borders for text boxes and menus. The space character is also in this range. These tiles can sometimes change, meaning that characters that reference them may print out a different tile image; however, they are far more consistent than tiles in the 0x9000 to 0x9480 range.
3. VRAM addresses 0x8800 to 0x8BF0 corresponds to characters 0x80-0xBF. This is where the main font is placed when rendering text.
4. VRAM addresses 0x8C00 to 0x8DF0 are split into 2 tile sections:
   1. The range 0xC0-0xDF is reserved for certain areas that need extra space for extra tiles. As such, they are usually unoccupied, so normally only print blank characters. The player info screen is an example of a screen that uses some of this space.
   2. The range 0xE0-0xFF includes numbers, some symbols, and more user interface characters. The player-enterable characters ^P_K, ^M_N, and gender symbols are also stored here.

French & German

Italian & Spanish

The lowercase m (0xAC) in the French, German, Italian & Spanish version is stylized differently compared to the English version.

Japanese

Technically all characters under 0x60 are control characters, the majority of which have the behavior of causing a specific character from the main font (0x80-0xFF) to be printed with a diacritic in the space above it. Those characters that have different, more complicated functions are detailed below.

0xE4 and 0xE5 cause the following character to be printed with that diacritic above it.

Japanese control characters

This section is incomplete. Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it. Reason: Incomplete or missing functions for control bytes. Alternate defaults in different games/other languages

• 0x4A: Prints が
• 0x52: Prints the player's name.
  • In Pokémon Yellow, the default value is ゲーフリ1 in Japanese games.
• 0x53: Prints the rival's name.
  • In Pokémon Yellow, the default value isクリチャ in Japanese games.
• 0x54: Prints ポケモン in Japanese games.
• 0x59: Prints the inactive Pokémon's name in battle. (In specific circumstances, the game may "pretend" that the inactive Pokémon is actually active and vice versa.)
  • てきの　 in Japanese games.
• 0x5A: Prints the active Pokémon's name in battle. The default value is empty. (In specific circumstances, the game may "pretend" that the active Pokémon is actually inactive and vice versa.)
• 0x5B: Prints パソコン in Japanese games.
• 0x5C: Prints わざマシン in Japanese games.
• 0x5D: Prints トレーナー in Japanese games.
• 0x5E: Prints ロケットだん in Japanese games.

This data structure article is part of Project Games, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon games.