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-

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Part of me likes the idea (Since pokemon rom hacking has been popular for years), but the other part of me doesn't feel right giving pokemon its own section. I mean, I can see the practicality in having a separate section for it, but wouldn't that entail other games to also have their own sections? For example, you could argue Mario should also have his own section for hacking since Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. (And probably more) have hacking tools for making custom levels, music, and graphics.

Not that I'm opposed to the idea, but it kind of opens up a can of worms for what constitutes being a section or not.

 

[FAST6191]

I was approaching it less from a "this has tools and as such"* which I can see being a tricky issue and more from a "this floods the section unnecessarily which is bad for everybody".

*the only games that really are in the running if we restrict it to the GBA and DS are NSMB, fire emblem, mario kart, advance wars ( http://www.warsworldnews.com/ in case you missed some of the good work there), the world ends with you (although that has died down a lot), maybe final fantasy and phoenix wright but they have never even came close to overwhelming the section for a day (the occasional AP patch threads or destined to fail translations aside) let alone the week at a time pokemon has been known to do.

 

[machomuu]

Wait, do you mean just for DS Pokemon hacks? Because I, myself, am a third generation Pokemon hacker (my preferred operation of hacking is scripting), and I love hacks such as those made by Destinejagold, as well as ShinyGold, Rijon Adventures (which is scripting gold) and many others. I just think the emphasis should be for the GBA as well.

Also, have we even fully hacked the DS games yet? It's a huge discussion over at PC (Pokecommunity) and it has been since the DS games were first released.

 

[FAST6191]

Well we rarely exclude things in the DS when it comes to hacking up until major projects (if someone posts in the DS hacking section with a quick GBA question few will note the "wrong" section beyond maybe an opening line and then usually attempt to help then) and I see no sense in excluding GBA stuff from a the potential pokemon hacking section either (I do however vote to steer clear of multiple sub sections at this point). It might be good to make it customary to label your hack according to system or even "version" or game but that can be left until later.

"Fully hacked"- granted compared to the likes of the GBA or maybe GBC stuff in many regards it is nowhere close (looking at the likes of the GBA ASM hacks) but compared to just about every other franchise on the DS with the possible exception of some of the final fantasy games which is about the only thing that competes on the tool front (font, script, sound, some game logic/save editors, some graphics stuff if it was not already basic 3d although as mentioned the "franchise as a whole" does not see anywhere near the volume of hacking work) it is very well documented.

Give or take issues with distributing (discussion is fine) injected code from other works (think standard undubs or script transplants) we do love all hacks here at GBAtemp but if say someone wanders in and asks for script help for most games we are at least going to have to explain tables or maybe shiftJIS if we are lucky and pointers as well as issues with text systems where for a pokemon game you could just as easily point at http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=94499&hl= (afraid I am not too current on the pokemon tools at this point in time) and maybe give some tips on line width if it was not already included.

You touch on it yourself as well- many pokemon hacks are fairly high concept and ignoring the different skills can have say one person take a fair bit of time and crank out something almost at total conversion level where if you spent the same amount of time aiming to achieve a similar thing on just about every other DS game you might just get a rough spec of the game and a few rudimentary tools (for an example see the likes of the inazuma eleven project and ask yourself how quickly could a similar pokemon hack be constructed given the tools that exist).
I reckon a dedicated pokemon section could provide a bit more of a nurturing environment for such activities and I hope this does not come off badly but along similar lines if one of us cracks a tough compression scheme and file wrapper that uses it that is great and sharing such work is certainly not to be discouraged but the big draw is certainly when someone can take their pokemon game, apply a patch and effectively be playing another game or section thereof (I recall a GBA era hack (although it went unfinished/only as an example as far as I know) that came with a save and turned pokemon from the grind and story game to something resembling a tactical battle/maze/puzzle game- think the likes of a big gym or the league but magnified and without the option to grind beforehand).

It is certainly not my intention to reduce the amount of pokemon stuff or create a rift just to allow people to hopefully get what they want more easily (I am sure we have all clicked on less than brilliantly titled posts....) and stop things from getting stifled by different levels of maturity in tools and knowledge (doing the whole harsh truths bit- most rom hackers are not great fiction writers, level designers or artists and vice versa). Depending on how it goes I might even see if we can not get an RSS feed of the last few threads/posts in either section to keep them tied together at some level.

 

[chyyran]

No. Just... No. Why does Pokemon deserve it's own hacking Section? What makes it better than all of the other games?

 

[FAST6191]

@ ron975 I had wanted to avoid ragging on pokemon and while I certainly have no great love of the series (or more accurately what path it took (or stood around at the starting point of) as the games rolled on) and agree some of the people playing pokemon hacker do a serious disservice to many across the field and beyond that is very much besides the point.

It is not that games deserve their own section because of any great quality but that what goes on in the pokemon hacking world these days is a bit removed from the rest of hacking (I am loathe to throw around terms "? game creator/maker" but the volume and reach of the tools and RE work that went on means they go to the same parties) and popular to the point of drowning out some of the other nice stuff coming down the pipeline for other games (have a look in the last few pages of the hacking section and tell me you do not have to wade through things to get non pokemon related stuff- this despite several great projects and hacks being released or approaching something worth seeing during pokemon hype) but not enough for it not to get lost in the noise itself.

It is at this point things usually start getting spun off into their own sections (as it did with the other home consoles, phones and related devices, "books, TV and movies", homebrew news, gaming news, user submitted news, NDS - Emulation and Homebrew (it started out in the hacking section), the E3 sections of years past and if it does not work out or the hype dissipates (something it shows no signs of doing or at least not dropping to levels where it can not sustain a small section) it can always be folded back into another section.

 

[Vulpes Abnocto]

What about a sub-section entirely dedicated to pokemon?
Something akin to the EoF: pretty much a place to dump them all.
Twice a year it would be the most used section of the forum.
While I agree that this series doesn't overwhelmingly *deserve* it's own section, they do keep bringing in thousands of newcomers and all of their problems.

 

[Qtis]

+1 to the idea.

I think it would be a good idea although the games aren't that different from one another. The reason for supporting this is so that the hacking section doesn't get cluttered with tons of threads every 6 months when a new game is released

-Qtis

 

[Rydian]

I agree with a pokemon ROM hacking forum (not sure on a pokemon forum in general).

While it might not be seen that often on here, I have visited other forums and noticed some of our same members (who are sometimes more active there), and I've used just a few of the tools and checked out some of the info they have (bulbapedia contains much of the info on how the engines work while the forums usually contain the tools and tutorials) and am amazed. People are passionate about that game to the point that hacking it often goes much, much farther than it does other games, and it's much more prevalent.

I mean shit, just look at this.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate
You can easily see the level to which people take apart these games.

As Fast touched on, hackers for the pokemon games have much to contribute to the DS hacking scene in general. I'm not that big of a pokemon fan (haven't even beaten any of the DS games yet), but I can certainly agree with Fast's purpose. This wouldn't be to "contain" hacking threads, but rather to segregate and encourage them. If there's a dedicated forum for it people are more likely to post in it, and pretty soon you'll have users who begin to organize and categorize the info, helping new users even further.

No. Just... No. Why does Pokemon deserve it's own hacking Section? What makes it better than all of the other games?

If you're not going to read the first post before you reply, don't reply.
And before you say anything, I can tell you didn't actually do it because you're asking for reasons that are in the first post.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

As much as I hate the idea, it does make sense. With all of the hacks and cheats dedicated purely to the Pokemon games, well, it's hard to not justify it's own subforum.

Another idea could be to slap all of the Pokemon hacks in one megathread similar to the Translations thread. (All hacks separated into individual games, completed/abandoned/in progress)

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

As much as I hate the idea, it does make sense. With all of the hacks and cheats dedicated purely to the Pokemon games, well, it's hard to not justify it's own subforum.

Another idea could be to slap all of the Pokemon hacks in one megathread similar to the Translations thread. (All hacks separated into individual games, completed/abandoned/in progress)

Think there's just a little bit too much for something like that, though.

I'm for a subforum. But I think it's a bit unfair to give it JUST DS Pokemon games. Make it all of em. There's a lot of stuff for all systems.

 

[Deleted-236924]

It would be a great place to advertise my (small) G/S rom hack.

 

[duduck]

Honestly, GBAtemp just needs a Pokémon forum with sub-forums for ROMHacks and Troubleshooting.

 

[Zorua]

We can just have a pokemon hacking sticky. A sub-forum is just asking for too much.

 

[nryn99]

We can just have a pokemon hacking sticky. A sub-forum is just asking for too much.

there are too many threads about pokemon, separating them from a normal nds forum would make searches easier because all other non-pokemon related threads are weeded out. and stickying pokemon threads in a forum where it's about general games is unfair for other games. and nds sub-forums already have stickies, adding pokemon-only guides in there would just make that sub-forum crowded.

 

[Vigilante]

+1 disagree
and don't we have the NDS - ROM Hacking and Translations section,its fine already as many people can post hacks for pokemon.

 

[KazoWAR]

+1 disagree
and don't we have the NDS - ROM Hacking and Translations section,its fine already as many people can post hacks for pokemon.

I think you are missing the point. At the moment that is where people are discussing, asking questions, and posting their tools for hacking the Pokemon games. It is just that the forum for general NDS hacking is overcrowded with threads on Pokemon alone. Right now over half of the threads on the first page in the NDS hacking forum is Pokemon only. The idea of making a sub-forum for Pokemon in the NDS hacking forum is to get all the Pokemon threads out of the general hacking forum.

 

[duduck]

Honestly, Pokémon infests every NDS forum. It should have its own forum and its own sub-forums for romhacking and troubleshooting. It's pretty tiresome having to go through at least 3 pages to find something not pokemon related. If all threads were 'new' or 'original', this wouldn't be a problem (because there wouldn't be thousands of them), but as is, it's become a situation.

 

[FAST6191]

Ignoring Super Pokemon Scramble we are now about as far from any pokemon release as it is possible to be yet I believe it remains something worth some consideration (several great projects and threads still drowned out somewhat by pokemon so I thought I might bring the issue back up).

My thoughts remain largely unchanged aside from perhaps having any would be section focused more on tools (I was concerned about keeping tool usage discussion and low level work separate and looking at some of the threads some stuff there is quite low level and involved).