Chit-Chat: ROM Hacking Daily Chit Chat

machomuu said:

Though it still makes me feel as if there is so much untapped potential that can and should come out of Pokemon rom hacking. I've watched as the capabilities of hacking have evolved and, similarly, how the hacks have. Yet, the more time that passes, the more I wonder "Why aren't there more non-Pokemon hacks" or "Why aren't there more gym-less or team-less hacks out there?" I can completely understand an up and comer thinking learning that they can make their own game and then immediately jumping for the GF formula, but I find it staggering how few hacks actually try to be either of those (and, that I know of, no complete ones exist).

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As much as I understand you, even though I've restarted work on hacks countless time, not even once did I actually start to make something different. Yes, there were times I had plans for a game taking place in the past, with no centers, evil teams or gyms, but I eventually always go back to the original Gamefreak formula. This is probably because I've always had trouble with storylines, so I prefer to have a basic storyline that I'd advance as I progress on the hack. The most "different" I want to get this time is that I'm not planning on including a proper evil team. I love thinking of new small features and side-quests for the game, planning the sequence in which you visit towns and earn badges, assigning different pokémon to different areas, and hiding legendaries. I prefer this much more than thinking of a complex, dark story for example, that wouldn't allow much freedom and then implementing it. Plus, I've seen people with great unique ideas, but in the end it gets so complex, that it either becomes too hard to implement, or the story becomes too much for a Pokémon hack.

Another thing is, I've noticed a lot of the fans seem to enjoy "mainstream" hacks a lot, even though there aren't any different hacks that are complete, people still seem to like earning gym badges, and there are some who actually enjoy spending hours on a hack after finishing the main story just to catch all Pokémon available. It might be because people look for hacks to keep them occupied until the newer games are out, or they don't own a DS/3DS, so in my opinion most fans would prefer a "common" pokémon adventure rather than something different.

I know I'm probably not trying to do something different because I might not be that good at it, and I enjoy creating a hack with the elements of normal pokémon game, so as long as there are still people who play hacks like these and enjoy them, I have no plans on doing something very different, at least for now.

I'm not sure if this falls under stuff we can talk about in this thread, as this seems to be more about general Pokemon Romhacking discussion and not about the forum itself. (Please ignore my question/give me the what-for if warranted!)

Does anyone else not particularly like the new setup for the Emulation and ROMHacking section? I mean (and I hope my overall intuition is wrong), I think that the Beginner's Lounge is something that we've seen before, and will just be a Scrapbox/Simple Questions Thread hybrid of doom! I love the guiding sentiment behind it (helping out noobies is something that everyone should do more often, including myself!), but I sincerely hope that it doesn't devolve into a blind leading the blind scenario again, or a moderating nightmare for our wonderful mod team.

My main gripe is how the Toolbox/Tutorial/Resource Thread got merged together. I feel like that it is now way too cluttered and makes it unnecessarily difficult to find the things you need. Tools and Resources I could maybe see, but Tutorials should definitely be separate from the Toolbox in my opinion. Why were they merged, if I may ask? What was the thought process behind it? I feel like we should be making things easier to find by distinctly separating them, not clumping them all together for people to sift through.

But this is just one person's opinion. I'd love to hear other people's feedback and perspectives! If we can all collaborate with our feedback, maybe we can do the impossible and make a section that is best organized and perfectly suited for our amazing community.

I did actually have the same thought about the Beginner's Lounge basically being a mix of Simple Questions and the Scrapbox of old, but until it poses a problem I think it's fine. I visit there regularly and see quite a bit of feedback for hack ideas, as well as answers to questions being supplied quickly. For now, it's fine, I'd say.

On the topic of the Toolbox/Tutorial/Resources mesh...don't know how I feel about that. It seems cluttered, and I think that it makes finding certain tools, tutorials, and resources rather difficult in some cases. Unless they're popular, in which case you can just sort by views. But regardless, it still seems pretty cluttered.

Well, the main reason Tools and Tutorials were merged was because even though the result would be a cluttered section, threads can be filtered by their prefix anyway.

So (am I allowed to do this) I wanna ask a question here :)
What do you guys think makes a hack bad?
The things that I dislike the most in a hack are extreme level curves, bad grammar, and lots of scripts being reused/text edited from the actual games.

I for one dislike capitalization, I generally like hacks a lot more if everything is in lowercase, obviously use upper case to start sentences and names and whatnot, moves too, it's why I have a soft spot for Dark Rising 2, everything is so nice text wise.

I also like when people put some thought into altering movesets and evolutions, like I get you have to alter evolution because its a rom but you can atleast make them interesting, with movesets I like to imagine if the pokemon itself could actually do the move as opposed to if the typing matches up.

Something else thats good is if on the routes the abundance of different pokemon is made clear, I like a massive selection of pokemon when i'm grinding instead of having to see the same thing over and over again.

Postgame stuff is cool, it shows the hacker has some cool ideas left over to implement rather than just leaving you to your own devices.

Dark Sneasel said:

So (am I allowed to do this) I wanna ask a question here :)
What do you guys think makes a hack bad?
The things that I dislike the most in a hack are extreme level curves, bad grammar, and lots of scripts being reused/text edited from the actual games.

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Horrible sprites, Horrible SCRIPTING, Horrible tiles, Horrible mapping, Horrible hacker.

pretty much sums it all

Dark Sneasel said:

What do you guys think makes a hack bad?

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One word: gramerz. Use demz.

But really though. If you're going to make a great quality hack, don't fill it up with horrible spelling, punctuation, and grammar. And please, please, PLEASE use the é. Enough said.

Kenna18155 said:

And please, please, PLEASE use the é. Enough said.

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Why? Pokemon is pronounced that way normally, no need to accent anything.

machomuu said:

Why? Pokemon is pronounced that way normally, no need to accent anything.

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Well having Pokémon instead of Pokemon looks cooler lol

Do you think anyone will try to remake Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby after their releases?

Syndrome10 said:

Do you think anyone will try to remake Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby after their releases?

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I'm not sure how different Hoenn is going to look for the 3DS, but it's possible that people might copy the changes and additions that will be made in the remakes into Ruby, Sapphire and even Emerald.

Syndrome10 said:

Do you think anyone will try to remake Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby after their releases?

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I'm sure, if nothing, there will be a surge in tile-rips and any new sprites (from the rumoured new formes) will be here, there and everywhere :P.

Magic said:

I'm sure, if nothing, there will be a surge in tile-rips and any new sprites (from the rumoured new formes) will be here, there and everywhere :P.

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Indeed but doesn't that always happen when a new game is realesed? lol

Shadowraze said:

Indeed but doesn't that always happen when a new game is realesed? lol

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Yeah exactly XD as soon as new sprites/tiles come out they are in every new hack coming out.

I'm sure there will be some ORAS demakes, although I'm more interested in any new features we might be able to replicate and benefit from.

Magic said:

Yeah exactly XD as soon as new sprites/tiles come out they are in every new hack coming out.

I'm sure there will be some ORAS demakes, although I'm more interested in any new features we might be able to replicate and benefit from.

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Definitely they would probably have new mechanics for the game which will be cool. :D

I doubt any project will be good enough to port 3DS to GBA but we can wait and see I guess. I do, however, expect there to be a spate of tiles modelled off of the OR/AS ones.

I doubt we'll be seeing a true demake of any of the Generation 6 games for a while simply because of the complexity of the new features added -- particularly mega-evolution -- that would be far too difficult / time consuming for most people to want to do, at least in my opinion. Then again, we probably thought the same of the Generation 4 games, and GogoJJTech is doing a great job of proving us wrong in that regard.

machomuu said:

Why? Pokemon is pronounced that way normally, no need to accent anything.

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I like it when ROM hacks look official. Like they're from Nintendo. Have you ever seen Nintendo spelling it like "pokemons?" Or how about "POKEMON?" Nope. Sooooooo many hacks don't use the "é" or even add an "s" to the already grammatically incorrect "pokemon." In my opinion, it looks SO much better when you spell it correctly, capital letters and all.

Kenna18155 said:

I like it when ROM hacks look official. Like they're from Nintendo. Have you ever seen Nintendo spelling it like "pokemons?" Or how about "POKEMON?" Nope. Sooooooo many hacks don't use the "é" or even add an "s" to the already grammatically incorrect "pokemon." In my opinion, it looks SO much better when you spell it correctly, capital letters and all.

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But it's not misspelled, largely for the reason that you can't say Pokemons. Heck, technically speaking if Pokémon were the only correct spelling, Pokémons would probably be correct, too. But phonetically, it would naturally work out to be pronounced Pokemon. I can understand if you like it because it looks better, but one isn't more correct than the other.

You do realize that they added the "é" (which, honestly, I don't even know how to find without copypastaing it from somewhere else) so that American speakers wouldn't pronounce it the same as "Pokimon", right? They added it for the convenience of those who would inevitably pronounce it wrong.