How do you guys test your hacks?

I just wonder how you guys test your rom hacks while you are in the process of hacking. Particularly for things that occur later in the game. Do you guys run the emulator(likeVBA or MyBoy) and start from the beginning every time you test? Or is it possible to effectively hack a saved ROM?

I use VBA and just hold down the space bar to speed stuff up. I start from the beginning though.
I dont use MyBoy as that is a pain to download the hack on your phone on the SD Card and then locate it and start playing it.

It should be perfectly fine to test a saved game, assuming that each time you go to test again you haven't changed the memory of previously encountered things in the save file (flags, variables, etc.)

Hmm I wouldn't really know anything about this but you should probably make save states just incase you know what area of the game you need to go back to. This would save some time to see what you can improve.

I always use save states, it makes testing a lot easier. If you want to test something later in the game, you don't have to play through it. Just make an early game warp lead there, test what you want, then change it back.

i use vba in fullscreen mode ( to see errors) and fast forward, and myboy on phone

I've always used No$GBA as my emulator because my computer had problems with VBA. I was able to save while testing it. I actually played through the whole game during that process and I still use that file. I've found that I have to save a lot, especially when trying out complex additions to the hack, but although I've had a lot of crashes, my game is still fine.

Usually, I'll just add new warps/events or change movement permissions and then immediately delete them after the test is done.

I use VBA to test the roms, but I don't know if people know that if you go into VBA's settings, and turn the audio off, it speeds up the game to almost 400%. And then I just use save states.