What do you guys do first in hacks (and some other related questions)

Hello there. I'm new to the ROM hacking community (and just game making in general) and while I am learning all sorts of new things, I'd still like to discuss things as well.

To pros and beginners and everyone inbetween: Where do you start with your game hack? After planning and outlining and drafting and concepts and all that (or if your like me a little bit, after choosing a concept and hacking by the seat of your pants)?

I'm planning on starting with my town map, so that way I know where everything goes. Though I have FireRed as my base so I have lot more space to work with, which is needed due to the amount of wildness I have planned.

So where do you guys start on your hacks, after planning and concepts?


ALSO, unrelated to my main question but still related to hacking, is there any pokemon editors that allow you to change evolutions to some of the weirder ways introduced in Gen IV onwards? Because I'd like to have all trade pokemon evolve while holding an item (not using it) and also I'm planning on creating an Eevee evolution that requires a Smeargle to be in the party.

Also, since we have Feebas involve into Milotic through max beauty, I was wondering if there was unused code or something similar that would allow a pokemon to evolve with max toughness or coolness. I wanted to use that was to start a branch evolution with a pokemon I'm pretty sure many of us used in the gen I, at least, for a small while.

I am not into hacking ROMs nor having any skills or experience but I think you should begin by:
- making sprites for pokemon and editing pokedex, stats etc... to meet requirement of your concepts.
- making OWs for player and characters...
- implementing the Map and pallets to be used for towns and cities design..
- scripting bla bla bla

Caramel-O said:

I am not into hacking ROMs nor having any skills or experience but I think you should begin by:
- making sprites for pokemon and editing pokedex, stats etc... to meet requirement of your concepts.
- making OWs for player and characters...
- implementing the Map and pallets to be used for towns and cities design..
- scripting bla bla bla

Click to expand...

Trust me I have absolutely no skill either!
But you make amazing points.

And motivation is a big point to make as well.

Harry up man, and make a thread of you hack! can't wait to see what are you going to plan!!
Once you have done it, would you mind to give the link? Thanks (;
GOOD LUCK!

Always like to make a few maps first, get a real visual feel of where we're going.

For adding new evolution methods check this out (it's a bit more complicated than a tool though).

As for how I start a hack, personally I just make the first map, if I'm happy with it start scripting. If I don't feel like scripting move on to the next map. I don't need much planning, a loose concept is enough for me. I know if I did meticulously plan everything I'd probably end up changing it 1000 times. As things progress I eventually get a clearer picture of what I want to do!

Stormzy said:

Always like to make a few maps first, get a real visual feel of where we're going.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea. Making maps is probably best to do first.

chrunch said:

For adding new evolution methods check this out (it's a bit more complicated than a tool though).

As for how I start a hack, personally I just make the first map, if I'm happy with it start scripting. If I don't feel like scripting move on to the next map. I don't need much planning, a loose concept is enough for me. I know if I did meticulously plan everything I'd probably end up changing it 1000 times. As things progress I eventually get a clearer picture of what I want to do!

Click to expand...

Thank yous~ I'll check out the page~

I have a general idea of what to do now. I feel like I should draft some more or plan more. But doing stuff by the seat of your pants is really good too.

For me, I always come up with a concept first. Just an idea for the kind of story or style of hack I want to make. If I can't come up with a concept that excites me, then I won't have any motivation to finish the hack.
As for the hacking itself, I usually start by editing the titlescreen and creating the intro, just to get those things out of the way.

Plan, plan, plan, 100%. I used to like creating one map, scripting all the events, editing any OWs that appear on the map and moving onto the next map. I found out the hard way that this isn't really efficient for me. This time around, and in any future hack I do, I'm getting all maps/tilesets/animations done, and any ASM routines I need inserted, first. That way you've got your own personal "rom base" that you can make use of should you want to use the region again.

I prefer to map everything first, scripting is my enemy and always will be. Doing sprites isn't too bad.

So mappi seems to be a general consensus of what to do first~ Besides drafting and planning of course.