A disclaimer of course: I COULD BE TOTALLY WRONG HERE! This isn't a video claiming "here is how it is done." Rather, I'm just explaining my research and observations, and attempting to form a hypothesis on how it was done. It could very well be that they are all hand-designed entirely, and all these "rules" are merely coincidence.... But that doesn't mean that has to be the end of the discussion. Let this be a starting point for those more knowledgeable on the matter. I haven't seen any other videos on this topic specifically, and I want more solid answers!

"We humans, which I am." 🤔 Sounds like something a non-human would say

As a color blind person this was super confusing

New Good Quote: "An algorithm wouldn't be able to tell the difference between what is dirt and what is Diglett."

“We humans, which I am” New Pokemon Theory: Lockstin is a Zororark.

Lockstin heres another series idea aswell- use your flow chart to calculate what shinies couldve looked like in gens 6-8 using these methods.

Game freak: shinys will be a fun thing for people to collect, but it shouldn’t be an extreme passion Shiny hunters: that’s where you are wrong

I'm honestly in the ring with you of there being both a general algorithm and hand picking. Only an algorithm would CHOOSE to make shiny jigglypuff/wigglytuff nasty hue shifts instead of white rabbits with red eyes.

no human with a heart could ever create the crimes against humanity that are gengars and garchomps' shinies

It's obvious that they are from the future, and that's why they are shiny. Because everything is chrome in the future.

Lockstin: we humans - which I am. Me: hmmm how much longer can he keep us from the truth I wonder?

"Or making sure important Pokémon have decent shinies" Makes sense "Like Pikachu" You lost me

Given how broken the first two generations are, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were just a bug they turned into a feature

THE COLORS LOCKSTIN, WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

Their algorithm could have done all of these functions seperately, and then presented all the results to the developers and they selected from that list

My favorite thing is when Lockstin plays the invisible piano with his hands when he really wants to make a point.

It could be that the Artists had an algorithm to pick the colour but they hand coloured the sprites, this might explain why there are exceptions and NEAR misses So yeah, you've created a flow chart of awesome I know it might be wrong, but that doesn't matter

Lockstin! Make a series where you redesign shinies from Gens 1-5 to fit some sorta reference or real world reasoning! I, aswell as others, would be very interested to see what you come up with

"Porygon 2, Cobalt Blue" No no, its Porygon 2 the electric boogaloo

I could have seen them way back when just running the sprites through a couple different color changing algorithms and picking and choosing what they liked, with a couple exceptions if none of the color variations looked very good.

So, who's gonna tell him that Beedrill's *NOT* a flying type? Edit: And that Paras/Parasect is *NOT* a Poison type.

Lockstin: Oh yes. Right. Human. The thing we are. I am human. Of course. What else could I be.

About "diglett's dirt": I think diglett was never supposed to have different colour dirt, it's simply that due to colour pallette limitations diglett's dirt was the same colour as the nose, so if you change the nose the dirt also changes. In 3rd gen thanks to better hardware the dirt and nose use different colours so by changing one the other doesn't automatically

If this is true as well as having the random shifts and changes, I think overall shiny quality would have been greatly improved by having 3 results generated for each line and having someone make a 10 second decision on which to go with.

I wanna see what all the newer shiny Pokémon would look like with the algorithm you’ve found, like designing Pokémon’s shinies based on your algorithm.

14:31 ah yes, beedrill and scizor. My favorite flying types

Its probably something like: "Go run this algorithm, These pokemon however, Apply these fixes if it comes out looking off or if its one of these XYZ pokemon" Then the guy went through and the head dev went "Ohh i like those change these to these and add this line to the code to make it more variable"

I've been watching this video since it has come out and I just noticed a flaw, you're using the Crystal sprites here. Spinarak and Sneasel's original colors changed in Crystal but their shinies stayed exactly the same(some other pokemon changed colors but only with minor differences.). So instead of Sneasel being a purply-blue that turns pink, it's an orangish-brown that turns pink. I'm not sure if this matches up with the triads or anything since I haven't tested it out yet but I'd still like to point it out.

Who else thinks that they should bring back the shiny ditto transforming into a shiny version of the pokemon its fighting? Edit: the ditto thing was from gen 4, and after that it just poofed.

I might as well reach out for an answer: The Spaceworld 1997 sprites have completely different regular and shiny palletes that could possibly follow one of the patterns *exactly*. So... if you wanna look at those and make a followup or just reply, there's an idea.

I was thinking about a simplified chart. An algorythm could generate multiple choices for the developers to pick the one they prefer (for example "do you prefer left shift or right shift?") although the few disgusting exceptions are a counter example to this solution. It would be quite manageable with 251 for the 2nd gen.

“An algorithm wouldn’t be able to tell what is dirt and what is digglit.” Thank you for that

Gyarados' shiny theme makes sense, because they're already always enraged, so being even more enraged is rare, and makes them red.

oh speaking of shinies, i'd love to see something about the kaskade shinies at some point, and ofc great vid as always :)

You know it’s serious when the intro plays just over 8 minutes in.

I’m late to the party here but this is an extremely cool reconstruction of an algorithm from its inputs and outputs, and you did an excellent job taking us through your thought process. I do hope we get some official answer on how early shinies were made. If your flowchart is right, I’d love to hear how the devs came up with things like the type rules and the pink rule

"Well, actually, Lockstin, you're referring to Misdreavus when you say Mismagius..." Damn, I love this character. I can point all the errors in a video and the snobby know-it-all takes the blame... Oh wait...

I just noticed that the color schemes of the shinies for the legendary birds are nearly identical to that of their Galarian forms. It could have been an inspiration for the galar forms.

Just dropping a comment to say I appreciate the amount of work that goes into these videos. Even if it IS just a theory it is fascinating to look into and learn. Over heard broadening my horizons in quarantine.

The sprites popping in and out, the explation of technical attributes, and the music! Man, this video was so well made. All the way down to the impromptu phone call.

I thought this was just going to be a surface-level overview or something, didn't realize that it was over half an hour long. It's definitely really compelling, and even if this wasn't how it was done or there wasn't an algorithm the sprites probably were still following a ruleset somewhere along these lines - there's too many coincidences and weird parts otherwise.

Looks at shiny espeon: "Look how they massacred my girl".

Wow, this is cool. I'd love to see a follow-up where you use this flowchart to remake some shinies, or do classic shiny coloration for later Pokémon.

I love these videos, Lockstin, all the explanation and almost Color Theory kind of info, so fun to watch! Also why I love your language and sound videos so much!

Thank you for making videos, especially during this quarantine (:

Is this going to be the story of the Pidgeys and the Beedrills?

Me before watching these vids: 😀I like drinking water Me after: I prefer to consume hydrogen monoxide in liquid state obviously 🧐

One thing to note about "same colors" is that in photoshop they might be the same but in game they might be different. For instance, if you have two pokemon that share colors, they might actually has that palette swapped but still used artistically the same; White/Purple/Yellow/Black into White/Yellow/Purple/Black. It's visually the same (the two pokemon use purple in similar places), but if the algorithm affects the second and third color differently, then when they are shifted they come out different. To explain this a different way, sprites in old games had two pieces of data; Where pixels go, and which palette to apply. The pixel data would use numbers; This pixel is the color "3", this pixel is "1", this is "0", etc. Then the palette gets loaded which says "0" is white, "1" is red, "3" is purple, etc. If you load a different palette (a literal palette swap), then instead you could get white, blue, and green (importantly, 0 is generally white/transparent). You can see this happen with glitches where a sprite or tileset gets mixed with the wrong palette that wasn't built in the same order (one palette might put light colors where another put dark) and thus looks incredibly wrong. You can even see this in one of the GBC pokemon games because there is a normally inaccessible palette chooser in the data that the Coin Case can access.

My dude Lockstin putting in that effort. My guy, I would have done the same just to see if it made sense. Thanks for using your Gnoggin so I can use mine somewhere else.

15:45 JUST realized the gen 2 shiny colors of the legendary birds are pretty close to the Galarian form's standard colors 🤯 Well, Zapdos and Moltres at least. Articuno gets a little purple in it's shiny, but not as much as Galarian Articuno.

For my work I do a lot of retroactively fitting data to unknown algorithms and the process Lockstin used is actually similar to how I would go about a similar problem - very interesting

This is something I have spent WAY too much time trying to figure out myself. So glad you finally made this video

Imagine being this man, dedicating a big chunk of your time to pokemon related stuff for a living (partially I suppose) its amazing, plus we can enjoy his good content

It would be interesting to watch a video of Lockstin try to design new colours for previously existing shinys

The Charizard "factoid" drives me crazy, look at the original shiny promo art from 2001 that has a shiny Charizard. It's black and red. The in-game sprite was only that color by game limitations. So many odd "color choices" in GSC are clearly influenced by all the weird pallete rules, and are not necessarily 1 to 1 representations of the Pokemon's "actual" color. Shiny Swinub doesn't _actually_ have those ugly red dots.

31:29 Agreed, Espeon needs a new shiny. It's current one makes it look like it's radioactive or absorbed the Master Emerald and became some weird Chaos God Thing.

if you had to ask me bellosum shiny references vileplume because it's one of the first evolution to have a different evolution if that makes sense

8:41. His ringtone is Gourmet race from Kirby which is my favourite franchise created by Masahiro Sakurai *HE'S MORE THAN A POKÉMON FAN!!!! HE'S A KIRBY FAN TOO!!!!!* Just like me yay!

If I had mad respect for him before, then I have INSANE respect for him now.

My favorite line of the whole video by far was "Look at Phanpy! The blue is less saturated, and the red is more! But neither by much. This is the worst shiny."

Lockstin: Making sure important Pokemon have decent shinies. Pikachu,Zapdos,Articuno,Pichu,Combusken,Blaziken,Sinnoh Starters,Regice,Heatran,Palkia,Oshawott line,Forces of Nature,Type:Null,Cosmog,Cosmoem,Rillaboom line,Kubfu,Urshifu and Zarude.

Just for the Devil's advocate sake: If given a Pokémon, and following your chart, how many outcomes can this Pokémon reach, out of the total color swap outcomes possible (given gameboy's limited pallet)? (aside from developers tweaks) Which is to say, if you derive a rule that end up being capable of reaching every color that there is available, this has a very low chance of correlation. In other words, what is your "p value"?

This is the kind of content that makes you one of the best content creators on KZfaq! Always so in depth and interesting to watch!

This video was perfect. Super interesting & you did an amazing job with everything. I’d love to see more on this topic.

Honestly, this whole vid is just showing us how smart and dedicated Lockstin is to Pokemon... thanks for being you!❤️

Shiny Gible : love it Shiny Garchomp : wait is that even a shiny?

I'm glad this video finally exists. Thanks for making the whole thing, Lockstin!

"Differences between what is dirt and what is Diglett." I don't know why but I love that.

The creator of shiny Espeon could easily just like the color :p There probably was some kind of formula or algorithm as a basis but as an artist myself, sometimes we pick colors just cause we like them. Not everything has a reason :p

The bellossom shiny could be a reference to the color of its beta design or the fact that the color of the bodies of the other three in the vileplume line is blue.

Aaaaay the return of the Dragon shirt!!! Would love a rerun on the Dragon and Fairy type shirts, kicking myself for not picking them up when they were available

You should be very proud of this one, Its amazing and super, SUPER interesting. At points I was kinda lost on the relations of colors to each other, around when you started talking about triads and compounds, but that's just me.

i love the newer gnoggin!! less editing and less professionalism make for a better more entertaining experience in my opinion. i love being able to see his personality instead of just him being a neat voice to listen to.

you spend so much time on us man. you don't need to spend a whole week doing these things lol

Speaking of exceptions to the algorithm: Raichu's shiny and normal body colors were swapped after Gen 2, and Spinarak and Sneasel had different normal colors in Gold/SIlver before being changed in Crystal. Spinarak had extra tampering in Gen 3, where its shiny was changed to more closely resemble its normal colors from Gold/Silver.

I feel like some of the reasons for some colors looking like an algorithm did it (the diglet in gen 2), but also there is the arguable reasoning that they just used less palette limits, and they compressed that usage in the normal diglet's color, putting red as partial shade,nose, and dirt color, so if a developer would want to change the nose to blue, its gonna change the rest too, so either the dev would have to redo and see if they can even add additional palettes to diglet or just go the safer route and just change that one palette to desired color, regardless of whatever else changes color, its just dirt and didnt look bad by old standards, so thats a second possibility. They also couldve followed a standardized format for colors, and then did specific alterings on certain pokemon.

thank you for posting i was running out of stuff to watch

Love that the intro played 8 minutes in XD

Really enjoyed this video. As a computer science student, this seems definitely very plausible and I would not think Devs would go into the trouble of hand picking every shiny color. Subscribed!

Great video. The more in depth it went, the more I thought it may also be the algorithm generating several different shiny options, and the designers have the final say on which uses variant 1, 2, 3 and so on.

16:52 Paras and Parasect aren’t poison types but probably would be if three types were introduced

>the devs making sure important pokemon have decent shinies Guess the Eeveelutions don't count as important... Friggin' green Espeon! Blegh!

Epic in-depth theory. I love that you use logic to explain things!!

14:59 Dragonite's gen 2 shiny is so much cooler than the one we have today

8:15 wait, this was all just the intro?!?!?!

This video is so interesting ♡ I would love to see your reaction when you see gen 2 shinies through pokemon Stadium 2 cause they change drastically and that "Barnie" Charizard looks pretty good xD (Also just looking at those classic animations-I promise it won't be a waste of your time ♡)

This is really cool, think its the first time some went to in depth to how shinies were made, and thank god you did it for only one week, I feel like my brain would rot from just a bit more than a week

I just got back into the Pokemon games recently since the first gen came out when I was kid (currently playing Pokemon Black) and happened to discover your channel. I really appreciate the effort and research that you put into your videos as well as your presentational style. This one really blew me away though. Thanks for being a great youtuber. I just wanted to show my appreciation. You're awesome!

Here's my opinion: Shinny pokemon were only made to make a higher demand for pokemon by making them rare and have better stats. Basically making a palette swap and making an artificial demand by making them rare.

I think they had an algorithm that made the shinies, and the developers would sometimes mess with the shinies

All your videos i keep staring at the background while i listen. I like your pokemon statues so much they look really cool im talking about the ones on the right

It would be interesting to look at the game code and see exactly how the pallets change from non shiny to shiny. There might also be some consistancy between which "slot" of the pallet gets changed. They might have set up the pallets in a way like {black|white|main color|main color shadow|main color highlight|off color} so they could have set the algoryth to change the off color more drasticly. So for a pokemon like scyther which has alot of greens, they might have had to use the off color slot for more diverse greens. Hence why the shiny scyther suddenly has a weird looking shadow

Lockstin: says important pok'e mon like cover legendaries always have developer tampering Shiny Groudon: *Snot color intensifies*

"Or make some pokemon have decent shinies like pikachu" haha as if pikachu's shiny is decent XD

You should explain why pokemon were chosen for their gen, like copperajah for galar. There are a few pokemon I believe poses this same question: "Why is X chosen for this region, which is based on Y, when their origins seem to have nothing to do with Y?" A few I can think of is Copperajah, the genies, and Cofagrigus

Props to this video! it's obvious that a lot of effort went into it. It's too bad that youtube doesn't reward more for videos like this because it's really interesting and a lot of thought went into it.

Given how bad some early shinies are I dont doubt they were made by an algorithm. Now to get that flowchart and make it into an actual algorithm to test it out

As a programmer, i'm going to say that the shinny colors are just Unnused colors of the pokemon made by designers... but this is waaaaaay funnier.

I always assumed - since there is a Colorchanger in the debug - since the Pokemon draws the Palate from different Colors, you can program a bit that shifts either the "Mainpallet", the "Highlightpallet" or both. But I think too that they looked over them.

This is your best yet most underrated video, I love it