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[Other] Hacking on a Mac

9
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11
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  • Seen Jul 4, 2014
Hey guys, I'm new to hacking but interested in hacking gen 1 & 2 games. Problem is, I have a Mac and it seems like a lot of the tools that are available for PC aren't available for Mac. Any suggestions on tools to use?
 

miksy91

Dark Energy is back in action! ;)
1,480
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15
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You're bound to find some hex editing utilities that work with Mac too. Apart from those, I don't know if any kind of windows emulator exists for Mac (like for Linux there is) but if such is, you can use it to run all kinds of tools.

But you don't really need that many programs for gen I or II hacking anyway. Having a map editor and hex editing pretty much everything else is all you really need to make an interesting hack to be played.

If you want to hack Red or Crystal, you can build your hack on disassembly which don't need to use tools at all although I'm pretty sure you can "insert" data you make with tools to the disassembly so they are still handy to have.

As an example, I hack Silver myself and all I really need are:
-Johtomap (map editor)
-GoldFinger (hex editor)
-pksv (for building complicated scripts that I can't hex edit, I rarely use a hex editor for scripting though)
and a couple of tools for asm hacking.

So anyway... the reason why you don't really need any other tools than that is because you can use a hex editor for doing literally everything. But things such as mapping are something that normal human mind isn't just capable of doing by writing data as bytes. Other things are more than doable with a hex editor only - it just takes some time learning how to use it properly.
 
330
Posts
10
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  • Age 32
  • Seen Mar 29, 2024
Hey guys, I'm new to hacking but interested in hacking gen 1 & 2 games. Problem is, I have a Mac and it seems like a lot of the tools that are available for PC aren't available for Mac. Any suggestions on tools to use?

Hacking gen 1 and 2 can actually be easier on a Mac than on windows. I highly recommend using the pokered or pokecrystal disassemblies rather than hex editing, as miksy suggested. Although, if you're just learning the basics of gameboy programming, hex editing is a grey way to learn those skills (pointers, asm, data structures, etc. )

You should also use the gameboy emulator called BGB. It is a windows program, but you can still run it using Wine, which is a windows emulator for Mac.

I hack with a Mac, too, by the way!

If you need help with setting up the disassmblly, there are several people over at the Skeetendo forums who would love to help you out. Check out the IRC channel.

Anyway, like miksy said, there aren't many tools for gen 1 and 2. However, when you see te disassembly project(s), you'll see that the only tool you might need is a map editor.
 
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