What's up with 3DS game modding?

[Crystal_tofu]

So i genuinely would love to hear others input on this as i'd hope i'm not the only one out there with the same thoughts.
That being said what's the deal here?

Well i find that as someone who wants to start modding 3DS games, I find it particularly difficult to find tools to do so,
and if i do, there isn't a up to date tutorial for them, and on paper this might make me seem entitled to a certain degree
but i spoke to a friend about this topic and she basically stated that you really just gotta know someone who knows how
to do it, which if she is right i don't exactly wanna rely on others to do it for me as it defeats the purpose of learning the
process, Ohana 3DS is just not the tool for pokemon modding tbh if one plans to do a model swap, CTR studio is great but
afaik not so much for gen 7, for games like OOT3D i honestly am not sure how to touch on that as i seem to hit a brick wall when
trying to do anything close to modding that game especially when aiming for real hardware, KH 3D is probably a good example
of "what happened?" as the most i can find for that game is threads from 2015, and i recall recently having to do a lot of digging just to figure how to mod voices, and despite this not being a modding tool, the save editor specifically for this game was found on an Russian website because the link for it on the OG gbatempt post was dead.

conclusion: i might come off as whiny or repetitive but this is a topic that i wasn't exactly sure how to put into words for a very long time, hence why alot of this might not make much sense, but i hope you can understand where my concern comes from as i completely understand that i am not entitled to anything, I'm just one gal aiming to put this on the table and get some closure on if I'm a dumbass or not lol

 

[Aster453]

As someone new to 3DS modding and romhacking I can relate. It's really frustrating when you just want to do a specific thing with a game and can't find any tools, and when you do so, 0 up-to-date tutorials or explanations. The only feedback I can give is to keep researching and asking other people like your friend suggested. As long as they're only providing the tools or explanations for you, they aren't "doing it for you". I think asking knowledgeable people is also part of the process towards becoming an awesome 3DS modder

 

[Crystal_tofu]

As someone new to 3DS modding and romhacking I can relate. It's really frustrating when you just want to do a specific thing with a game and can't find any tools, and when you do so, 0 up-to-date tutorials or explanations. The only feedback I can give is to keep researching and asking other people like your friend suggested. As long as they're only providing the tools or explanations for you, they aren't "doing it for you". I think asking knowledgeable people is also part of the process towards becoming an awesome 3DS modder

i appreciate you taking the time to reply on this and i'm glad i'm not the only one, at this point i'll continue to do what my friend said as there's not much i can do other than research or ask others like you said, but the main highlight here is that again i'm glad i'm not the only one, hopefully this can shed some light on things and be step towards something positive if that makes sense.

 

[4d1xlaan]

it's not just 3ds tbh. even on switch I might have been interested in modding some bdsp but there is basically no documentation on how to do anything anywhere. the closest there is is luminescent platinum rom hacking documentation (bless their heart for trying) but their documentation is outdated and what I would have wanted to do doesnt actually work or isnt covered in their documentation

sometimes a mod is broken or outdated, and you could just fix it yourself, but the information you would need to know how to do it yourself just doesn't exist. and a lot of the time even if you ask people who know, they don't tell you. example:

crickets after that. I would have been interested in making that fix myself too, I still dont know how you're supposed to open gamesettings to make changes

or sometimes two different mods edit the same file, it should be possible to open that file from both mods and merge the changes together so you can use both mods together. but there is zero documentation on how to actually do it. you just gotta know, or know someone who knows

 

[SylverReZ]

Only use for 3DS game mods would be English translations for games that have never released in the west, or has gotten delayed by a year.

Nowadays, the folks who "create" these mods, have absolutely no idea how to build code from the ground up.

 

[Crystal_tofu]

it's not just 3ds tbh. even on switch I might have been interested in modding some bdsp but there is basically no documentation on how to do anything anywhere. the closest there is is luminescent platinum rom hacking documentation (bless their heart for trying) but their documentation is outdated and what I would have wanted to do doesnt actually work or isnt covered in their documentation

sometimes a mod is broken or outdated, and you could just fix it yourself, but the information you would need to know how to do it yourself just doesn't exist. and a lot of the time even if you ask people who know, they don't tell you. example:

crickets after that. I would have been interested in making that fix myself too, I still dont know how you're supposed to open gamesettings to make changes

or sometimes two different mods edit the same file, it should be possible to open that file from both mods and merge the changes together so you can use both mods together. but there is zero documentation on how to actually do it. you just gotta know, or know someone who knows

i couldn't have said it better myself, i debated on addressing the switch side of things, however it wouldn't be wise for me to comment thoughts on something that i have actively tried to avoid as switch modding is just not something i feel comfortable getting into especially how divisive the topic of the switch can be and the constant drama around it, mods or not, as for BDSP despite me not having personal experience evident on my prior statement, most of the knowledge about and common praise i hear for the modding scene came from the creator of Pokemon Project Steelheart who at one point wished they got into BDSP modding instead of DS essentially because how easy BDSP modding is allegedly because it runs on unity. And yeah I also wanted to say the same thing in regards to when you ask people they don't tell you, but wasn't sure if that sounded bad or not, but that's more so on me for not saying it.

 

[SylverReZ]

i couldn't have said it better myself, i debated on addressing the switch side of things, however it wouldn't be wise for me to comment thoughts on something that i have actively tried to avoid as switch modding is just not something i feel comfortable getting into especially how divisive the topic of the switch can be and the constant drama around it, mods or not, as for BDSP despite me not having personal experience evident on my prior statement, most of the knowledge about and common praise i hear for the modding scene came from the creator of Pokemon Project Steelheart who at one point wished they got into BDSP modding instead of DS essentially because how easy BDSP modding is allegedly because it runs on unity. And yeah I also wanted to say the same thing in regards to when you ask people they don't tell you, but wasn't sure if that sounded bad or not, but that's more so on me for not saying it.

This is why I don't like being in the game modding scene.

 

[Crystal_tofu]

This is why I don't like being in the game modding scene.

that's fair, this has just been on my mind since i wanna say 2018 but at certain points i just get utterly disappointed,
especially because of the weird ass ORAS mods that were roaming around back then, jesus christ...

 

[ack]

that's just how modding modern (n64 onwards) console games is. Unless you're working with a game that has all of its assets set up like it's done in that console's SDK, you're gonna have a rough time.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:05 PM

yokai watch, for example, only uses the nintendo SDK file formats for movies and music, everything else is in level5's special formats. And then, the majority of the logic in the game is in special, level5 specific, scripts, except for some parts that are in the executable, but nobody knows how the two interact. And we wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for the community around the game and the people who spend their time reverse engineering it.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:07 PM

oh and fragmentation is also a big problem, with people working separately on doing the same thing and people not sharing their knowledge and such

 

[Crystal_tofu]

that's just how modding modern (n64 onwards) console games is. Unless you're working with a game that has all of its assets set up like it's done in that console's SDK, you're gonna have a rough time.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:05 PM

yokai watch, for example, only uses the nintendo SDK file formats for movies and music, everything else is in level5's special formats. And then, the majority of the logic in the game is in special, level5 specific, scripts, except for some parts that are in the executable, but nobody knows how the two interact. And we wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for the community around the game and the people who spend their time reverse engineering it.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:07 PM

oh and fragmentation is also a big problem, with people working separately on doing the same thing and people not sharing their knowledge and such

i remember knowing someone who was a big fan of yo kai watch, i regret not listening to what they said i remember bits and pieces like how people only now figured out how mod in custom yokai or something along the lines of that, and if that's true then there's just even more merit to your point than there already was, however in terms of scripts i'm from what i know that understandably will take a helluva alot of time to be a thing for most 3DS games, as from i've heard that in itself is a big barrier
for PKMN gen 6-7 modding onwards, which any gen after that is pretty much out of the question till 2078, let's be real lmao