Since Pokemon GO has come out, people have been hunting through the code like a pack of Rattatas looking for food, or information. One such website of people doing this is SilphRoad, and they’ve found something interesting: Evidence of Shiny Pokemon and Dittos coming to Pokemon GO.
The Pokemon GO APK has always held secrets, and people have proven in the past that changes in there can harken some beautiful changes to the game, like the daily quest functionality that was recently added to the game, and teased before in the code.
Some notes about the Ditto-related code from SilphRoad:
- Ditto appears to be able to be ‘encounterable’ in the wild. It is not clear whether this is enabled yet, or whether it will appear as Ditto before capture, but the species is almost certainly ‘capturable’ (as opposed to acquirable only through non-wild-encounter)
- Ditto appears to be able to be used in battle
- Sounds for different Ditto effects have appeared (not included, so as not to spoil the effect!)
- A background graphic for Ditto has appeared (dark purple)
- A small ‘spotlight‘ graphic has appeared for ditto that may indicate a different appearance either on the map, or elsewhere
Other changes in the seemingly useless v0.47.1 patch include new sponsors, including the single word “Knife”, and some breadcrumbs for possible shiny Pokemon. The words “shiny” and “rare” have appeared in the code, along with an audio file that plays when you encounter a “rare” Pokemon. There are no new sprites in the game, so this might be a joke, or they’re just preparing for the introduction of our palette-swapped little friends.