Pokemon rom hacking sub forum

[FAST6191]

Such a thing has been kicking around in my head for a while now so I thought I would post-

Short version- I am suggesting pokemon hacking get a section to itself.

Long version/reasoning and suggestions on how to best create such a thing

We have a great DS rom hacking section (arguably one of the main ones in English language discussion of DS rom hacking) which has spawned many hacking projects, attracted many hackers and taught several more, acted as a hub for a lot of hacking projects (even if the bulk of the work has been conducted away from here most projects will come and make a thread on it as and when or otherwise maintain one here) as well as a place to find some great discussion on various things and it has been this way for several years now but pokemon frequently (release times especially but even in "peace time") overwhelms it which is not brilliant for anybody concerned with nothing getting the attention it deserves as a result.

Similarly pokemon hacking is somewhat apart from most other aspects of DS rom hacking in that it usually revolves around GUI driven tools and existing formats (or indeed something of an entirely reversed engineered rom/codebase) where other hacks if they have tools tend to have generic tools (usually command line or with simple GUI wrappers) for formats and certain techniques or ones released internally to project members or as a source dump or something similar at the end stage of a project.

It should also provide a better place to stick a bunch of good threads for pokemon where they might be out of place in the would be main rom hacking section (many pokemon questions and threads). If needs be I will tap out a few things that might be useful or generate a few lists of links and upload a bunch of tools and the like to filetrip (many tools and pieces of info are scattered across cheap hosts with less than brilliant lifetime/uptime as a result), toolkits might be left for another day though.

Under no circumstances should this be considered a slight on pokemon hacking- it is an entirely valid aspect of rom hacking (the game has a fairly nice engine, once you get past all the checks and annoyances (which others will usually have done and provided workarounds for) it has some nice formats to play with and there are lots of tools and knowledge floating around to boot- such things make it the reason that the series has as many hacks and tweaks as it does) just that it is both different enough and popular enough to hopefully sustain a section of its own. The line of logic used is the same as the one used when we decided to split homebrew off from what was NDS Game Development, ROM Hacking and Translations, some of the cheat stuff or to split 360 scene releases off from the 360 section.

There will probably need to be debate as to how harsh things might have to be with regards to what goes where- the need for some high end ASM hacks or hacks to a format like SDAT (an ultra common audio format across DS roms) might well be better suited to the main rom hacking section where the pokemon section might focus more on tools and other such things or perhaps for a more rom hacking related example the reason we have translation indexes, translation requests and a few other choice sticky threads (I do however argue pokemon is more diverse than can be sorted in one thread). Pokemon hackers have over the years been some of the first to embrace aspects of SDAT hacking after proof of concept stuff, fix up tools like narctool, build a few compression related tools, clean up some of the first disassemblers, pull apart many SDK formats and tweaks to them so the lines are a bit blurred in some regards.

Whether it comes another section or a sub forum (nesting forums like this might not be the best) might also need some discussion but that can probably be left to the admins. If some ideas on how to kick it off and what sort of things will be needed that is probably best to conduct in a thread like this.

The elephant in the room so to speak is the existence of dedicated pokemon hacking sites, I however argue there is no sense in pushing people away and for all the differences there are still enough similarities and transferable skills to have people float between the two as desired.

Discussion-

 

[Deleted_171835]

I agree with a Pokemon hacking sub-section. It would help remove the large amounts of threads regarding Pokemon in the general NDS - ROM Hacking and Translations section.
I'm sure it would be active enough to justify the addition of it.

 

[Nathanaël]

Nathanaël likes this.

 

[Ikki]

I don't like the idea of a Pokémon hacking section, at all. Not that I don't like hacking the games, but there's Whack a Hack for that.

But I do dig the idea of a Pokémon section. It's certainly a way too repeated topic which I'm sure annoys more people than just me to see when browsing for interesting threads. I think to keep it in another section would be nice.

 

[Waflix]

I don't think Pokémon ROM hacking has evolved away from conventional ROM hacking, it's just very simple and a lot of people do this. This makes a lot of ROM hacks (about 75% of them is crap).
I also don't think we should add a subforum. This would cause a lot, and I mean really a lot of members that only post once or twice with a new account, and then never come back again. For things like Pokémon hacking I think you should go to the PokéCommunity.

 

[heartgold]

I don't think Pokémon ROM hacking has evolved away from conventional ROM hacking, it's just very simple and a lot of people do this. This makes a lot of ROM hacks (about 75% of them is crap).
I also don't think we should add a subforum. This would cause a lot, and I mean really a lot of members that only post once or twice with a new account, and then never come back again. For things like Pokémon hacking I think you should go to the PokéCommunity.

You are directing our temp members to another site?

Anyway I like the idea, I felt pokemon always needed its own subforum.

 

[Vulpes Abnocto]

I don't think Pokémon ROM hacking has evolved away from conventional ROM hacking, it's just very simple and a lot of people do this. This makes a lot of ROM hacks (about 75% of them is crap).
I also don't think we should add a subforum. This would cause a lot, and I mean really a lot of members that only post once or twice with a new account, and then never come back again. For things like Pokémon hacking I think you should go to the PokéCommunity.

You are directing our temp members to another site?

Anyway I like the idea, I felt pokemon always needed its own subforum.

Hang around until the next pokemonsoon and you'll see just how often we (I) direct people to pokemon-centric sites and forums.

 

[The Pi]

Mmm, I don't like the idea of a pokemon section, (it would be a second EOF, so no point)

But since the hacks of pokemon do range between the DS and GBA (and less so the GB(C) ones too) it does sorta deserve it's own section.

And also, when "Pokemon Grey" (or whatever) comes out that will keep the normal Rom hacking a little tidier.

There's a few negatives to the idea but are over shadowed by the postives so...

Agree +1

 

[machomuu]

But since the hacks of pokemon do range between the DS and GBA (and less so the GB(C) ones too) it does sorta deserve it's own section.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[1234turtles]

how about just making a gui tool rom hacking section.
most of the pokemon games will fall under this plus any other games with gui tools.

 

[Phoenix Goddess]

how about just making a gui tool rom hacking section.
most of the pokemon games will fall under this plus any other games with gui tools.

I think it would be a bit empty since there aren't very many tools out there. Not enough for its own section, anyway.

 

[boktor666]

To put this simple, i dunno what to think of a seperate section. If you look at the total of 4th and 5th gen rom hacking on pokemon, it's still in the most early stages. Diamond was one of the release games, and there is still no real uber hack tool wich lets you change maps, due to 3d models. Same goes for B/W, we can alter some things, but it's still in the most early phases of hacking.

I can imagine that people want the subsection, but wouldn't that be unfair to other hacked projects? If you give some ROM hacks their own sections, then this forum would explode with pointless sub-forums. A lot of hacks theresaid, are bad and pointless, there's simply not enough good stuff on this forum to put it in there. If you're looking for real good hacking pages, just find the specialists on other sites. Pokecommunity is a good one.

It would be nice if there were a sticky, that would make up for the lack of a subsection.

 

[loco365]

To put this simple, i dunno what to think of a seperate section. If you look at the total of 4th and 5th gen rom hacking on pokemon, it's still in the most early stages. Diamond was one of the release games, and there is still no real uber hack tool wich lets you change maps, due to 3d models. Same goes for B/W, we can alter some things, but it's still in the most early phases of hacking.

I can imagine that people want the subsection, but wouldn't that be unfair to other hacked projects? If you give some ROM hacks their own sections, then this forum would explode with pointless sub-forums. A lot of hacks theresaid, are bad and pointless, there's simply not enough good stuff on this forum to put it in there. If you're looking for real good hacking pages, just find the specialists on other sites. Pokecommunity is a good one.

It would be nice if there were a sticky, that would make up for the lack of a subsection.

You're kidding right? I'm making a hack of Diamond currently, and I hope to bring it here. And, if we get a Pokemon hacking section, it's be the first true 4th Gen Hack.

 

[FAST6191]

Start

At lot of thoughts are floating around my head on this matter right now and trying to form something coherent from it let alone something that can justify this call is proving to be a challenge. First though I have not really floated around the other sections of the site looking for pokemon stuff so whether it is full section for pokemon related activity and not just pokemon hacking is called for is not something I can speak on at this point.

First though Re: Pointing people elsewhere. This is the internet where I understand the actual model is more people will tend to only stop coming when you start having nothing of worth (which I truly hope will not be any time soon for GBAtemp)- think all the webcomics, news sites, comedy sites, video sites/channels, information sites, forums and other such things you added to you daily/weekly/once in a while rounds and why any might have dropped off. I probably want to work a phrase along the lines of "build it and they will come" in this post somewhere as well.

Some waffle/background

The following feels horrible to type out and is not the sort of thing I like doing, thinking about or reading especially in public as it just seems very distasteful* although that I consider it as such probably speaks volumes about my general outlook on life and why I do things the way I do.

*if you are familiar with the general lack of respect afforded to those playing advertising, sales, HR/management, finance/accounting/bean counting, search engine optimisation...... by those that get their hands dirty (literally or figuratively) or if you prefer "do stuff" it is a related concept. That is not to say any of those are universally unnecessary, not requiring serious skill to pull off, pointless (what few abilities I might have in any of those areas I value alongside any of my "main" skills) or even in need of being toned down but well you can see where it is heading (short version my actions are very much not those of someone who wishes to play businessman and have a have a habit of causing great alarm to those that would- it seems "because it is cool" and "why not" are not justifications that work all that well).

Several years back as I was getting into rom hacking for whatever reason I made a concious decision to locate my GBA and DS hacking work at GBAtemp and to see if I could to try and pull more people to GBAtemp for the same purposes (that is to say help grow a rom hacking community here) as opposed to another site (be it my own or another one) and it looks like I was not the only one to have the same idea. Today it seems GBAtemp is one of the foremost "general purpose" English language DS rom hacking sites going although I will leave it to those wishing to parse site logs and such to try to figure out why- I tried to gather whatever information, hacks and tools I found in my travels, help people with other hacks, generate information, generate the odd hacks (mainly as proof of concept) and generally try to do what is necessary to pull people in but I was certainly not alone in this (see the thanks list of many early hacking projects and cross reference names to here) although I have been a bit lax in recent months. It also has to be noted at the same time rom hacking in general became a lot more accessible (never underestimate the impact of filesystems, the use of formats and standards, the rise of high level languages- compare some of the DOS based programs (as in actually DOS based not just command line) and the new tools/techniques that became viable (some of the search techniques we use today were pretty much still theoretical at start of the GBA era) vs all the stuff with say nes mappers, snes hirom/lorom and more), GBAtemp became a lot bigger in general, it was not like the GBA hacking section before the DS did not have a few people able to do damage in that world and console hacking became a lot bigger.
Enough gushing though so onto why I found myself making the thread earlier on- I feel we have something good going on in DS rom hacking and pokemon which in some ways is a bit removed from the rest of rom hacking as it presently stands risks doing that good thing a disservice not to mention doing itself a disservice. I certainly do not want pokemon gone (I refer back to the idea of having an RSS feed for the last few posts between the two sections to keep them tied together at some level) and would love to see it continue to improve not to mention pokemon hacking does a lot to cross pollinate things (tools, information, hackers (new and old) and such jump between the different sides all the time) and I am well aware of pokemon hacking for various reasons not being held in high regard (an issue I have chosen to dance around thus far in this thread) among many rom hackers (and pokemon not being well liked by those that run these sorts of sites) but believe me when I say I will be back here should it happen for any other game (if the amount of tools and information on mario kart DS keep increasing as they are I will be back making the same thread for that too). Likewise rom hacking sections of sites far smaller than this are split along various lines and that seems to work well for them. As for posting twice and not returning granted a high sign up to contributing member conversion rate is always desirable but 1) so? and 2) that seems to be case whether we do this or not across this forum and beyond.

What I see
- threads that could be answered by pointing people at premade tools ( http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=94499&hl= - old I know but hopefully some 2008 vintage stuff can help demonstrate points- 3 years on and am taken aback if I should see something like that for a rom) or knowledge ( http://www.pipian.com/ierukana/hacking/ds_evos.html ) as opposed to teaching them how to use a hex editor, about compression, about pointers, about packing formats, maybe some hardware knowledge and so forth.

- that in and of itself is nothing major but there are lots of these threads (do a forum search and a search using the search button for a quick overview).

- although there are lots of these threads there are still several notable threads on other subjects- other projects, questions on things that need technically involved answers.

- we have a search engine yes but rom hacking as with many fields that fix, figure out or create things is quite often about background knowledge and having to wade through pokemon hacking threads
does not help which is my main concern. I consider having other threads drowned out to be more unfair than any perceived slight against them by not warranting their own section.

- following on from above it is a "problem" (I would prefer to use a phrase along the lines of "simple fact of life") for all rom hacking that projects will not be finished or find themselves among the celebrated examples of the field but with pokemon pulling focus it sends the signal- noise ratio further in the wrong way for everybody.

- flipping to the benefit to pokemon hacking side of things with tools being a focus the people to help with tools, the people to improve the state of pokemon hacking (see the background knowledge part) and the people to pull apart a new rom from scratch are not reliably one and the same.

If people a sticky or two could better serve then I can go that, likewise if a sort of "pokemon tutorials" thread. If they have suggestions for what might need to go into anything that comes from this you are encouraged to add it. Or on the flip side do I or someone just need to stop finding small new things to add/fiddle with so as to finish up some documents on (or split up some of the existing stuff on) general hacking theory, SDK formats hacking and some game specific stuff making sure they all have bunch of pictures and nice examples, make a big thing of it on the portal and then watch things settle (or not before returning here)?

The one line summary
I suppose then I should end by posing the question of what would it take for a pokemon hacking section to be a justifiable move on the part of the site?

It has not escaped my notice I have effectively restated/rephrased my earlier posts on the subject. It was not my great wish to do that but it appears to have happened.

 

[luluxiu]

A similar EOF: a considerable number of local dumping of all. Twice a year, this will be the most commonly used part of the forum. Although I agree that this series is not * worth * of its own overwhelming part, they continue to introduce thousands of new people and all their questions...

 

[jjjewel]

With the amount of Pokeman hacking currently, I think the game deserves its own sub-forum.

Anyway, that's up to the Mods and the staff.

By the way, is there a Pokemon hacking contest or something like that lately? Or is Pokemon hacking has just become popular all of a sudden? I know the game's popular and we usually have a few hacking threads per month in general for Pokemon. But I think we've been having a few new Pokemon threads per day for these past few weeks.

Not that I have problem with them, but if the Mods consider a new sub-forum for Pokemon hack, I'll support that idea.