Pokémon GO APK Teardown [0.61.0]

Hey everyone and welcome back to another Pokémon GO teardown. Like previously we are going to look into some of the changes, like continued passcode development, launching with version 0.61.0

Passcodes

First discovered in 0.59.1, this feature is nearing completion adding the service and functionality for redeeming a passcode.

ACTION_REDEEM_PASSCODE
redeemPasscodeServicePrefab
Redeem()

It appears this feature will hide in the Store, once released, allowing trainers to redeem codes for a multitude of things. Hello live events in the summer?

 

Notifications

We already receive push notifications occasionally and in-game messages, but this update released some organization and reworking of this code. It also helped to place these notifications in one of the 4 categories.

  • Marketing
  • Announcement
  • Admin Note
  • Game Event

 

Sponsors

Two new sponsors joined us, codenamed Salamander & Plancha. This makes the list of sponsors now

McDonalds Pokemon Store Toho
SoftBank  Globe Spatula
Thermometer Knife Grill
Smoker Pan BBQ
Fryer Steamer Hood
Slow Cooker Mixer Scooper
Muffin Tin Salamander Plancha

At first you must wonder what Salamander is doing in this list of Kitchen items, but a Salamander is a broiler in the kitchen and Plancha is just Spanish for griddle. So it seems Niantic is staying consistent with kitchen item code names for sponsors, simply getting more creative now.

 

Optimize & Refactor

Lots of code has been rewritten in the scene and pokemon department. Ever since assets for Pokemon (To hide the Gen 2 release) have been moved server side, there has been effort to enhance the download system which gives you images. I’m sure you’ve noticed your pokedex sometimes being empty of images as it slowly downloads them.

Niantic added an additional class of files for Android, so optimizing platforms independent of each other might prove to be succesful as both systems have their own advantages for optimization.

 

New Loading Screen

With the addition of evolve items, we now see Gen 2 Steelix front and center on our loading screen.

Conclusion

This version was relatively small in the scope of things, but is stabilizing the soon to be released pass codes. Additionally, language support for Chinese was added which was noticed in the official release notes here. Thanks for reading! We will be back for the next version.