ROM Hack Anyone who can explain where to get started?

[Procyon]

Hello everyone,

I'm having some kind of problem here. I really want to learn to edit games, be a better programmer, reverse engineer, do hex modifications, and be a contributer to opensource software, but I don't know what to do first.

I got a little knowledge of hexadecimal, C, JavaScript, HTML (not a true language), C++ (really little), CSS (markup script), and Python.
Only HTML and CSS are the ones I used a lot. I know how to read source code, but I'm sometimes afraid to make a mistake, so there I stop doing modifications, so can anyone help me getting started?

Thanks in advance,
Procyon.

 

[mashers]

Sounds like you have already got started. I would suggest focusing on C and C++. Also look through source code of software you like and are familiar with. Try to find which part of the code carries out a particular function, and then try changing it to do something different. That will help you learn about the language, programming structure etc. If it goes wrong, you can just try again. It sounds like you just need experience and confidence.

 

[Procyon]

Sounds like you have already got started. I would suggest focusing on C and C++. Also look through source code of software you like and are familiar with. Try to find which part of the code carries out a particular function, and then try changing it to do something different. That will help you learn about the language, programming structure etc. If it goes wrong, you can just try again. It sounds like you just need experience and confidence.

Thanks for the tips, and helping me a bit out. I really appreciate it.

 

[mashers]

Thanks for the tips, and helping me a bit out. I really appreciate it.

No problem! One other suggestion is to compile after every change. It doesn't take long to compile, and if you make a mistake the compiler will show an error to explain what is wrong. That way you can trace the problem easily. As you learn more and gain confidence you will not need to compile as often as errors will be less frequent and will be easier for you to fix.