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If I could turn back time...

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DrFuji

[I]Heiki Hecchara‌‌[/I]
1,691
Posts
14
Years
No, this thread is not about pop stars who have gone way beyond past their use-by date and straddle a cannon half naked.

Imagine if you had the ability to travel back to the point where you first decided to make a ROM hack and speak to the past version of yourself for an hour. Rather than telling them that week's lottery numbers, you decide to waste your precious opportunity and tell them something you know about ROM hacking. Basically, what would you teach a past version of yourself/ advise them to do in terms of ROM Hacking?

Would you tell them to improve their initial hack's story so it didn't involve Team Galactic and Team Magma chasing a shiny Sandslash while combating the 'Pie Patrol' for control of Hoenn? Perhaps you would plead with them to stop making team threads that die within two days of their creation? Maybe you would teach them how to script so they don't have spend a year using A-Text.


Personally, I would teach myself how to insert tiles. I spent just under half a year working with the default tilesets and by the time I learnt how to tile insert, I was sick of hacking in general and ready to quit. While the lesson itself doesn't seem like much, I'm sure it would have made a huge difference to how I saw ROM Hacking back then and made me more motivated earlier in my hacking career.
 
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Kevin

kevin del rey
2,686
Posts
13
Years
Ohh. I would teach myself to script instead of using that Advance Text tool. Step by step to make it easier for myself. That way my first hack thread would've looked more nice and more different rather than simple map / script edits.
 

teejermiester

Minnesotan, you betcha!
320
Posts
13
Years
Definitely tile inserting, because there aren't any clear tutorials saying you HAVE to recolor the tiles into the colors in the palette. That confused me for a LONG time.
 

Truality

Left for good
1,006
Posts
12
Years
  • Age 32
  • Seen May 17, 2013
Sincerely enough, I'd convince my past self to never bother with ROM Hacking and concentrate on other things. I have my reasons for it. But what's done is done.

But let's say I can't do otherwise and have to teach me something from ROM Hacking. Well, that would be scripting, yeah. Took me 2 months to quit PKV.
 
275
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Oct 9, 2019
"Get better control of your anger. Learn to step away from the computer when things get too frustrating. Save yourself some frustration. You'll get discouraged less, and you'll be less likely to burn out."
 

Full Metal

C(++) Developer.
810
Posts
16
Years
I would turn back when terms like 'repoint' , 'assemble', and 'compile' scared me immensely and tell myself "It's not that big of a deal, genius."
 
126
Posts
14
Years
  • Seen Aug 5, 2013
Senior Darthatron stole my answer.

I don't think I would change one single thing about my ROM hacking experience. I've found that everything I've done has just led to a better understanding of what ROM hacking actually is. My initial reaction to this was: "I would tell myself to never bother with Gen 3 hacking and go straight to Gen 1 hacking." However, I quickly realized that I would not be able to hack Gen 1 very well without my background in Gen 3 hacking.
 

Putin

Anspruchsvolle Narr
52
Posts
13
Years
To always keep no less than three backups of the same rom at the same time on each machine, and when I back it up overwrite two of them with the new version while leaving the third in case I screwed something up.

Hacking for four years, just figured this out like two months ago.
 

Lord Varion

Guess who's back?
2,642
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 29
  • Seen Jan 6, 2015
I would say scripting ... but, I still can't make heads or tails of it.
Anyway, It would be mapping, my mapping use to suck badder than it already i
 

EdensElite

No0b, but getting there.
190
Posts
12
Years
  • Age 28
  • UK
  • Seen Jul 4, 2014
My hacks storyline. So I wouldn't have wasted all of summer on basically nothing.
 

Mr. Magius

  
244
Posts
16
Years
Haha, most people have said either tile inserting or scripting.
I'd have to go with scripting. For six years of ROM hacking, I'm still to this day dumbed to scripting. I can write basic scripts but I find it extremely difficult to be bothered to write more complex ones. Should've gotten started with that, instead of writing hundreds of useless storylines. .__.
 

Co500

Nostalgia Edition
563
Posts
15
Years
I'd definitely say teach myself to script, its so much easier than looking like a noob and asking everyone to help me out.
 

shinyabsol1

Pokemon DarkJasper!?
333
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Nov 23, 2022
Definitely scripting. It took me forever to grasp how to organize scripts, how to use flags and variables, how to compile/decompile scripts etc...

Yeah...it would have been better for me if I could have skipped all the trouble and understood scripting better from the beginning (less frustration).
 

Curt_09

Also known as Chozo
557
Posts
15
Years
I would teach myself to sprite, so I wouldn't have to rely on trying to get someone else to do it.
 

~Teh Panda~

Back in hacktion
918
Posts
16
Years
  • Seen Jul 20, 2022
Basically I would say this...

"Skip that its gonna be BS and never finished, and that one, oh and that one, and yeah, also learn how to sprite earlier, script, ASM, etc...", because I have a lot of cancelled projects, and I mean A LOT, I really needed to get my head straight and work on ONE thing...
 
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