ROM Hack Rom Hacking Help

[SkyAeolus]

So bear with me a minute, because by coming here to post I'm being VERY desperate. I've already visited Reddit and TREZ to no avail.
I'm looking for those select few who actually know how to ROM hack. I've tried a bit with pokemon and that's nice and all, but I would much rather start a project with Battle Network and I CAN NOT get any information from anyone.
I'm just curious how people started, where the jumping on point was, how I can start and what tools are available to me to ACTUALLY start a passion project. I have the capability to do so, and I can make the time, I just need access to the knowledge to actually start.
So please reply if you can help me in any way, even if your ROM hacks have nothing to do with the series, where did you start? How did you begin? What's helped you most along the way?

 

[FAST6191]

I did write a guide to it here (it covers both GBA and DS as they were my interests and similar enough).
https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/

For the very first things then many years ago I poked around the directories of games. Things sort of followed on from there. I similarly had a gameshark that could find cheats for my N64.
GBA wise it was many years ago and the tools available were worse than what we have now so I am not sure what that will do for you.
Technically I started by altering the font of Final Fantasy 3 on the NES so I could run it in pocketnes on the GBA (the screen size is different and the way pocketnes worked around it broke the font).

Other things I have seen.

I have seen people use tools like you mention, get frustrated at their limitations and clunkiness and take it up in earnest.
I have seen some learn to make cheats, then as things get more complex they realise they can do fairly well at more general ROM hacking. For instance if you are learning to make an infinite jump cheat you are probably watching what the game does and how it does it, and if you know that you can also find the graphics location most likely and so on and so on.
I have seen some learn to program the device. If you can follow along with something like http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/video.htm and http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/asm.htm then you can most certainly figure out how a commercial game displays it
I have seen some start from scratch and learn what it is to make devices, games and how it goes together. It makes sense -- if you have read https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/duels-planeswalkers-all-about-ai-2014-02-13 then you will understand why most card games on handhelds are bad and why changing the deck radically is going to mess things up other than for human-human play. I don't know if I would suggest this from the start but the better people at ROM hacking will tend to go back and fill things in.
I have seen some follow a specific tutorial and then quite rightly realise that most games are made similarly and they can then adapt it.
Similar to above I have seen some people follow the tutorials, adapt it and then run smack into a harder version of it (say graphics but this time with compression also at play), solve that and then you are in.

As with most things it helps to have a project to motivate you -- very few people learn for the sake of learning, at least at first.