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It's been a recurring theme of discussion over the years but I've yet to see it be addressed, and honestly it never really occurred to me until recently when I noticed pretty much all Gen 1/2 hacks have someone on the thread saying it should be a FR hack instead. But even on Gen III, I notice there is a considerate debate between Firered and Emerald as the superior ROM base. So, I wanted to open a discussion to why people look down on certain ROMs over others.
It's not a superiority thing, it's just that FireRed is the easiest base to edit for ROM hacks. The ease to edit it allows for more features to be added, that's it.
It's not a superiority thing, it's just that FireRed is the easiest base to edit for ROM hacks. The ease to edit it allows for more features to be added, that's it.
I don't think it's exactly fair to claim editing Gen 1/2 is harder, especially these days where the disassembly projects have given hackers a level of control of those games that Gen 3 can't as easily reach.
From what I've noticed the general bias towards Gen 3 and FireRed in particular is the number of tools readily available for people to use. FireRed in particular has a number of tools that make it very easy to visualize the hacking process and doesn't require many specialized skills to make something half-way impressive, which a number of different bases can't boast the same for. Maybe this is where the "easier/harder" debate comes in but who knows.
if u have any coding experience, gen ii is the way. disassembly projects are the bomb and help out so much, it's amazing. so many things can be done so simply just by knowing, and everything's helpfully named (oh warm fuzzies just thinking about it).
gen iii has a better graphics engine + more space to do things on. if you're a really great coder/good with graphically-appealing things then gen iii is the way~
the debate between emerald and fire red is frivolous because emerald is literally fire red with more engine features (except in different places). at a high level of hacking, there is simply no debate to be had. i understand that entry-level people like fr more, and sensibly so. i still like fire red more though
for me, it's just a bias against emerald. i had an emerald cartridge that corrupted at least 99 times a year when playing it and ptsd after shiny pelipper died nowadays so never emerald~
and even then some still hack ruby because of personal preference. eing15 does some amazing things with the "messy" codebase that is ruby, and really, it's just nice to see some things like that sometimes <3
Not at all, at high level it's the hardware that becomes limiting, not the base. You'll see a lot of Ruby hacks created by talented people who are doing things that most others would be unable to replicate regardless of the base they choose.
It doesn't really matter if you hack FR or EM regarding generation III. There are features, which are in FR that are not in EM, but EM has more features built into the ROM in general. That said, if you're programming for the GBA, then you don't exactly care. It may save you some time implementing a few things if you pick one over the other, but in my eyes picking between the two is a fractional choice which holds little consequence.
As for the stigma given to people hacking ROMs like Leafgreen, Ruby/Sapphire there is somewhat of a justification. The general reasoning is basically that Ruby is a buggy/less featured version of Emerald (so instead of Ruby you should hack Emerald) and Leafgreen is a less researched version of FireRed. These are just facts, and actually do contribute to how well you can hack the ROM. So there are some serious merits to consider when choosing to hack some of the less popular generation III ROMs, as their alternatives are just easier to hack and in some cases better in general. Tools and such are also most of the time specifically coded to only handle the popular ROMs as well :)
However, when it comes to Generation II games and people asking others to switch to Generation III games instead, I find this unreasonable. First of all, the GBA is not the same as the GBC. You cannot expect the GBC to do things that the GBA can, and the GBA can't do what the DS can. By extension, asking someone to hack gen iii instead of gen ii is like asking someone hacking FR to hack Platinum instead. It's a completely different monster, and generally people hacking gen II grew up with it and prefer it to gen III. It's a completely different dynamic.
Mostly though, people prefer to hack the ROM they grew up playing. I think that's fair, and we should respect their opinions. The grey area arises when they wrongly tell others to also hack their preferred ROM for reasons that they themselves aren't sure about. The whole thing is kind of silly, however I would prefer if everyone hacked the same ROM for the console they're making the hack for. My reasoning is if more people are hacking the same version, the more research we can get on that ROM and the more we can increase the quality of ROM hacks. We've come a far way since the start, and we've still got a long way to go :)
It's been a recurring theme of discussion over the years but I've yet to see it be addressed, and honestly it never really occurred to me until recently when I noticed pretty much all Gen 1/2 hacks have someone on the thread saying it should be a FR hack instead. But even on Gen III, I notice there is a considerate debate between Firered and Emerald as the superior ROM base. So, I wanted to open a discussion to why people look down on certain ROMs over others.
I know nothing about genII hacking, so I'll just address the genIII rom issues.
Firstly, the stigma of hacking Leaf Green and Sapphire is in my opinion justified and should be discouraged at all costs. Those two games don't differ almost at all from their counterparts except being less researched. Unless you like reinventing the wheel, choosing those two is just plainly stupid.
Secondly, Ruby. The Rom came a long way from being the first choice to get overshadowed by Emerald and Fire Red later. I personally am not fond of this rom as it's basically a poorer version of Emerald. The only reason to even consider it, is the dissasembly that's being worked on. It should be however noted that I don't think beginners and even intermediate hackers could benefit from it greater than they already can with EM/FR resources. For advanced and heavy-graphical projects, it could be a huge help.
Now my favourite eternal EM vs FR subject. Personally, I think EM is a better base and the research done by me(not shared) is on par with that of Knizz. But that's just me, the guy above me is gonna tell you exactly the same about FR.
PS: For anyone hacking Sapphire/Leaf Green I think you're hurting the community by not contributing to research.
My reasoning is if more people are hacking the same version, the more research we can get on that ROM and the more we can increase the quality of ROM hacks. We've come a far way since the start, and we've still got a long way to go :)
Maybe if everyone hacks gen 6, the possibility of making full hacks could be realized much sooner! Unfortunately most people, me especially, don't have the knowledge to hack gen 6, so it could still take a while.
Gen 3 hacks are more attractive graphics/ base feature wise than Gen 1/2 hacks. Just a matter of GB/GBC vs GBA.
Gen 3 GBA hacks are the highest/latest gen hacks that the average user can hack comfortably.
So, in that way there is a bit of a stigma against Gen I/II hacks. Mainly because many people only play Gen I/II games for the nostalgia factor and are more excited/attracted on averaged for hacks Gen 3 games.
There are some pretty good Gen I/II hacks out there but the view of GB vs GBA tends to hold back their popularity a bit.
As far as FR vs Emerald, everyone has their personal preferences based on how they prioritize the different features of the 2 roms. (As for me: Team FireRed, screw Emerald). But honestly, either rom is about equal when it comes to hacking, though FR has a bit more research and support.
Not at all, at high level it's the hardware that becomes limiting, not the base. You'll see a lot of Ruby hacks created by talented people who are doing things that most others would be unable to replicate regardless of the base they choose.
It doesn't really matter if you hack FR or EM regarding generation III. There are features, which are in FR that are not in EM, but EM has more features built into the ROM in general. That said, if you're programming for the GBA, then you don't exactly care. It may save you some time implementing a few things if you pick one over the other, but in my eyes picking between the two is a fractional choice which holds little consequence.
Spoiler:
As for the stigma given to people hacking ROMs like Leafgreen, Ruby/Sapphire there is somewhat of a justification. The general reasoning is basically that Ruby is a buggy/less featured version of Emerald (so instead of Ruby you should hack Emerald) and Leafgreen is a less researched version of FireRed. These are just facts, and actually do contribute to how well you can hack the ROM. So there are some serious merits to consider when choosing to hack some of the less popular generation III ROMs, as their alternatives are just easier to hack and in some cases better in general. Tools and such are also most of the time specifically coded to only handle the popular ROMs as well :)
However, when it comes to Generation II games and people asking others to switch to Generation III games instead, I find this unreasonable. First of all, the GBA is not the same as the GBC. You cannot expect the GBC to do things that the GBA can, and the GBA can't do what the DS can. By extension, asking someone to hack gen iii instead of gen ii is like asking someone hacking FR to hack Platinum instead. It's a completely different monster, and generally people hacking gen II grew up with it and prefer it to gen III. It's a completely different dynamic.
Mostly though, people prefer to hack the ROM they grew up playing. I think that's fair, and we should respect their opinions. The grey area arises when they wrongly tell others to also hack their preferred ROM for reasons that they themselves aren't sure about. The whole thing is kind of silly, however I would prefer if everyone hacked the same ROM for the console they're making the hack for. My reasoning is if more people are hacking the same version, the more research we can get on that ROM and the more we can increase the quality of ROM hacks. We've come a far way since the start, and we've still got a long way to go :)
the hardware limits you all the way at every stage, though, which is sort of why i didn't mention it ahaha
palettes come to mind, i started hacking with unLZ.gba and those were present then and are still present now when adding in new types and making animated title screens, etc., and will forever be present because as you said, it's a hardware thing
i totally get where you're coming from, though~
pray for yamaarashi who's doing like everything on every gen iii disassembly tbh pray for disfire to start again
the hardware limits you all the way at every stage, though, which is sort of why i didn't mention it ahaha
palettes come to mind, i started hacking with unLZ.gba and those were present then and are still present now when adding in new types and making animated title screens, etc., and will forever be present because as you said, it's a hardware thing
i totally get where you're coming from, though~
pray for yamaarashi who's doing like everything on every gen iii disassembly tbh pray for disfire to start again
Graphics is definitely one of the most obvious areas you feel hardware limitations. Additionally, size limitations of the RAM and the reading/writing speeds to EWRAM on top of graphical limitations (only 4 BG layers with static-sized memory allocated). These limitations feel more restricting when hacking, rather than programming for the GBA in general.
I'll give some example to back up the claim.
We cannot reliably use the BGs and we're only left with a handful of pals to work with in consideration to OAMs once we're in the overworld. That complicates things like weather or special effects you would otherwise be able to do (see PMD series). For RAM limitations, the biggest example is probably expansion. Expanded boxes is a commonly requested feature, and we just don't have the saveblock memory to make it happen without sacrificing other features and work space.
I know you'll probably ask what the heck we need the GBA to be faster for, as for general hacking it's speed is more than enough (infact most people underestimate it's power). Well, EWRAM is being read and written to through a 16bit bus, so for fast and expensive operations you're better off using the DMA chip and working in IWRAM. If you want an example of computation speed and read/write affecting hacking capabilities, I've got a slightly more complicated example for you. The other day Touched and I were talking about overcoming the limitations on the hardware's amount of palettes by changing the palette it's loading after a line of pixels are drawn on the screen. You see the GBA has a few hundred cpu cycles after drawing each row of pixels called the hblank. During this Hblank you could change the palette for an image so that the next line of pixels has a different palette. This ultimately means you could have upto 2(256 * 160) colors on the screen at "once". That's amazing, it's pretty much 160 times more colors than the screen normally is capable of putting out. The sad part is that you can't really implement this. The CPU takes too many cycles to copy a new palette, even from IWRAM into PAL RAM, to the point where the Hblank is not long enough and you'll sacrifice frame rate (no external GPU).
These kinds of hacks would be much cooler and definitely more awesome (to me atleast) than any feature that's currently inside gen III games. Besides, EM and FR are just software written for the same piece of hardware, which means you can port things from 1 ROM to the other with minimal work in most cases :)
Honestly, I feel the bias relates more so towards the fact that when Gen III and IV were the big things still, Gen II was getting that sort of lack-luster approach to furthering it's own communities for Hack Development; that's not to say that Gen II hasn't had a lot done, nor can you say Gen I hasn't either, but really; if you look at it, you'll notice that the amount of truly successful and unique games for Gen I and II that are actually complete are few and far between, and I mean more than just the average difficulty patch for Gold/Silver/Crystal/Red/Blue (Out of order with that, sorry!)
Let me be clear though; for plenty of people running up in the Hack Scene as fresh-minded empty-slate people; they'll usually try to find a game that really is unique and interest them; and often-times you could say as the time has passed, that search has gone up a generation, when I joined PC, I was on the hype-train for difficulty patches for Gen II and Storyline/Innovations for Gen III. I however never took up the craft until two years later when I jumped into Gen II with a personal difficulty patch with an extra two rivals and some new events; I never released it, but I now find trying to pick up Gen III hacking tedious because I started with Gen II. (And let's face it, i'm lazier than the guy/girl above me.... Who now that I actually look at their signature, is probably one of the few people that isn't lazy considering their contributions.)
I probably will just be repeating what everyone else has said but i'll put my own personal opinion on certain hacks.
Fire Red does have a lot more resources but whenever I see a tool or hack made and it's fire red, I groan a little. I have no right to though because i'm not as talented as some of the people here and cannot contribute.
I like Emerald a lot more even though I played fire red more as a kid. I like that there are secret bases, dive spots, contests, a battle frontier and battle tents. Fire red doesn't have any of that. I love the work everyone does though but i'll still be team Emerald. :)
I'll be as short as possible but sharing my PoV on the stigma topic:
Ruby, Sapphire, LeafGreen = Poor counterparts of their counterparts. R/S aren't needed at all when there's Emerald and the same happens with LeafGreen when there's already FireRed, nothing to discuss about over there.
Em vs FR = They're mostly the same thing, esentially. The only way that the choice could matter, is if you're re-using one of their graphical aspects as in maps, tiles or both for whatever reason.
Otherwise, almost everything if not everything that can be accomplished on FR can also be accomplished on Em these days.
Me myself wanted to support Ruby at least spiritually, until this and this appeared on the house.
(Yeah, I know, playing with turbo esentially kills the magic but I don't really care, the normal speed for Gen. III is just unbearable for me, deal with it).
