ROM Hack Patching vs Loaders

[spruced]

I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong place.

My question is, what's the difference? Like, can I run clean dumps of games on the AKAIO 1.7 firmware without AP patches and running into any problems down the road, or do I need both? I am a bit confused at what loaders do, and haven't found very clear information looking around this site and the web.

Any info would be great. Thanks.

 

[jurassicplayer]

Well, patching is mainly for modifications, translations, bypassing AP, etc. The loaders are updated to bypass the AP (anti-piracy) and flashcart specific, except in the case of YSMenu.
In a short explanation, patching is mostly for those people who don't get updated loaders like some of the older flashcarts with dead teams since a majority of the patches are for bypassing AP. People with updated loaders don't have to go through the hassle of patching to bypass AP.

 

[Rydian]

Imagine a loader to be an automatic patcher, but it doesn't actually patch the original game, it leaves the original ROM untouched, so for example if you wanted to apply a translation patch to it later, you could just do it instead of having to reget a clean ROM.

Letting the loaders/firmware do the patching is the better idea (and hey, it's way less work) and that's usually how it's done... except that some flash carts aren't getting loader/firmware updates anymore, so people with those have to rely on patches.

Loaders/firmware may take a few weeks after a game is released to get updated, so people sometimes patch and then just reget a clean ROM later if they really want to play the game quickly

 

[spruced]

Thanks a lot for the info, really clears things up.