Pokemon: Game Making or ROM Hack Tools?

[Hiroshi Uwishicarwei]

Which do you think is the best? I vote for the ROM Hacking Tools.
This thread determines whether:
A. Game Making
The tools are listed on the sub-title of the Game Development Forum.
This is whether your too lazy to keep opening different programs like Hack Tools for ROMs...

B. ROM Hack Tools
You know, there is a bunch...
This determines if you are smart, maybe just bored, or hate to work on school work and do complicated stuff like this...

After you vote, Tell why you think (what you chose, goes here) is better...

[Signomi]

I believe it's essential for you to realise that this community has an Emulation section for which topics under ROM Hacking and the such fall into, there is also a seperate section called Game Development that is in contrast with Emulation although the two may be quite similar in appearance. This doesn't seem to be anything you don't already know, in which case I come to ask you this: Why do you post it here? Other Voting Polls is a forum for miscellaneous polling topics, I don't see your rationale for posting such a topic within a forum respective for off-topic discussion. So can you please think more carefully about your topic placement in the future? It doesn't take much to do so and it would save you from a lot of hastle.

I'll move this to Emulation since this is the closest I believe this topic can fit into. If there is still a gray area with this movement, the moderator(s) of Emulation are free to do what they feel is best to their judgment with this thread.

Incidentally, JAing_The_AfterShockWave, please do rethink your signature height as well. We follow by the strict limit of 500 x 300 pixels in width + height for images. Your image is a blatant excession of this limit by 193 pixels.

~Moved

[loadingNOW]

it's actually quite an interesting topic to discuss in romhacking - and more people should ask themselves this question. But i think the starters approach is to simplified.

The fundamental question is what you are interested in. Do you want to make a pokemon game OR are you interested in the fundamental working principles of the exsisting pokeomn games.

If you want to make a game without spending weeks lerning programming programming or if you hate math - but you are a good good artist or writer. DONT DO ROMHACKING (unless your friend does that part but in that case getting a team to work properly is hard). You will achive nothing your hack will suck and you could do so much better just using something like rpgmaker

if on the other hand you are a nerd interested in programming math and so but suck at stories and art romhacking will be your choice.

Tools like Advance Map might blur the line a bit but still... if you don't meet hex youre not actually doing any hacking . Also i don't mean this in a bad way: for gods sake do what you can do best and enjoy most, that way you will achive way better results.

I do romhacking. that's what I do best but i prefer to play games made by artists and story people, hell thats why i play adventures and not multiplayer shooters online.

[Virtual Chatot]

Alot of people are going to hate me for saying this, but I personally think that making a Pokemon game is RMXP or Sphere is the best. You can go only go far hacking, but with game engines the possibilities are endless.
You don't have to worry about inserting tiles, or the rom crashing.
I still have a heart for hacking though :3

[Wichu]

I agree with VC. Personally, I have nothing against ROM hacking, other than ROMs being illegal. Also, hacks have features which would be hard or impossible to have in a game. Off the top of my head, attack animations (making over 300 from scratch would take forever), ability to play on actual consoles (either through flash carts or the emulator for the PSP), and the ability to link with the official games.

But I'm going with game making, just because of the sheer freedom available. When you make a game from scratch, you have infinite possibilities. There are no limits to how many Pokémon you can insert, no 16-colour limit for sprites, no tileset limitations. But that's not it - not the main reason.

The main reason, at least for me, is that unlike hacks, which are stuck with the systems already present in the ROM, game makers can modify and add to the underlying mechanics as much as they want. In my own game alone, there is the physical/special split, an improved D/P style Pokédex, much more info on the summary screen, improved stat boxes in battle, a 'shortcut' pocket in the bag, the ability to change the trainer's clothes, expansive maps (64x64 tiles) 4 times the size of D/Ps (32x32) and 10 times the size of R/S/E's (20x20), and a completely new menu system (details coming soon :P) with a way to quickly change the order of your team. Not to mention all the D/P Pokémon, moves, abilities and items, as well as tons of new ones. In other games, I've seen higher resolutions, 5 regions, and online play. None of these I have ever seen in a hack.

Oh, and it is much easier to do stuff, too. What you call 'scripting' here, we call eventing. From what I've seen, eventing is a lot easier than scripting, but with more commands available. Also, adding a new Pokémon or trainer is as simple as adding some stats into a text file, and putting the sprite into the right folder. New moves, abilities and items are also easy to insert with a bit of scripting knowledge (not hack scripting - we're talking about programming languages here). And mapping also seems a lot simpler, with multiple layers, among other things.

All in all, I like game making more than hacking, due to the huge amounts of freedom not present in hacks.

[E-Bag]

Originally Posted by loadingNOW

it's actually quite an interesting topic to discuss in romhacking - and more people should ask themselves this question. But i think the starters approach is to simplified.

The fundamental question is what you are interested in. Do you want to make a pokemon game OR are you interested in the fundamental working principles of the exsisting pokeomn games.

If you want to make a game without spending weeks lerning programming programming or if you hate math - but you are a good good artist or writer. DONT DO ROMHACKING (unless your friend does that part but in that case getting a team to work properly is hard). You will achive nothing your hack will suck and you could do so much better just using something like rpgmaker

if on the other hand you are a nerd interested in programming math and so but suck at stories and art romhacking will be your choice.

Tools like Advance Map might blur the line a bit but still... if you don't meet hex youre not actually doing any hacking :P. Also i don't mean this in a bad way: for gods sake do what you can do best and enjoy most, that way you will achive way better results.

I do romhacking. that's what I do best but i prefer to play games made by artists and story people, hell thats why i play adventures and not multiplayer shooters online.

I agree with what you said about Tools like Advance Map blurring the line. But on what you said about hex and what Chatot said, if all your using is tools, you can only do so much, but when your actually hex editing you can do pretty much anything.

[IIMarckus]

Originally Posted by Heatran

Alot of people are going to hate me for saying this, but I personally think that making a Pokemon game is RMXP or Sphere is the best. You can go only go far hacking, but with game engines the possibilities are endless.

The truth is actually that hacking is less limited than games made in Game Maker and such. The difference is that the learning curve is so high that actually taking control of the game engine through ROM hacking requires a lot of experience, that only a tiny minority of ROM hackers have.

[Charliezard]

Games made in game maker are limited, as is rom hacking. The limits exceed my knowledge but they are there :P.
If I'm making I prefer rom hacking, cuz it's got all the pokemon, n moves already in it :P and I just plain enjoy it more...
If I'm playing I couldn't give less of a damn as long the outcome is fun :P

[Eeveon]

I agree with Heatran, Wichu, and gabe_k.
I think game making is better.
For one thing, there r so many stuff u can do.
(Example: Door animation from Raptor.)
I might be making a ROM hack now, but I'm thinking about making an RMXP game.(For Pokemon)

[zel 2.0]

Since I've used both I think I can give my opinion in this matter.

It's really simple: If you aim for something made completely from scratch, like a whole new game, then RPGM (or anything similar) is the best bet for that, since it gives you a lot of freedom. While, if you aim for something that already exists (like, a Pokemon-based game), it'd be best if you tried rom hacking.

In terms of learning difficulty, rom hacking is a bit more difficult, specially if you want to change the original stuff a lot. But, since there are a lot of tools already for rom hacking it's not like you cannot do a lot of interesting stuff in a rom hack.

And that's as much as I can say. Because surely everyone has their own preferences (but making this question in the rom hacking area will give you a biased answer, I'm sure of that)

[Wichu]

Originally Posted by IIMarckus

The truth is actually that hacking is less limited than games made in Game Maker and such. The difference is that the learning curve is so high that actually taking control of the game engine through ROM hacking requires a lot of experience, that only a tiny minority of ROM hackers have.

Wrong. No matter how advanced you are at ROM hacking, there's things you'll never be able to do that you can do with game making, mainly due to the constraints of the emulator. For example, GBA games (including ROM hacks) can only have a palette of up to 256 colours per sprite, while in game making, there's no such limit. Also, with ROM hacks, your screen size is stuck at 240x160, the GBA's size. A game made from scratch can have a much larger resolution. Finally, there's no way you'd be able to incorporate online play into ROM hacks. Yes, there probably is an extension to VBA which lets you do multiplayer via the internet, but even with that, you wouldn't be able to make a GTS-like system where players can upload and trade Pokémon, or a MMORPG where you can see everyone else playing the game at once.

And it doesn't change the fact that modifying the base game engine is a lot harder with ROM hacks. I've even yet to see a hack with any new move effects, like Trick Room or Stealth Rock, whereas my game already has 95% of the DP move effects, and quite a few custom ones.

Onvoloper and Zel, hacks coming with all 386 Pokémon, all the moves, items and abilities etc. already isn't really that much of an advantage when you consider that a starter kit for RMXP with all the Pokémon systems has been out for several months.

[IIMarckus]

Maybe I should have said "within the constraints of the system." Regardless, I didn't mean technical limitations, but instead "idea limitations," if you will. You can add new features through ROM hacking; although I hate to needlessly boost Coolboyman's ego, just look at Pokemon Prism. As for graphics, GBA color is plenty IMO, but obviously different people will have different tastes. Again, that's a technical limitation and not one of ideas.

In any case, who said I was talking only about GBA hacking, or even Pokemon hacking in general? ROM hacking can be done for any system, and recently there's been quite a bit of activity in the N64 hax scene -- N64 being a system that doesn't have those graphical limitations you mentioned.

Originally Posted by Wichu

And it doesn't change the fact that modifying the base game engine is a lot harder with ROM hacks. I've even yet to see a hack with any new move effects, like Trick Room or Stealth Rock, whereas my game already has 95% of the DP move effects, and quite a few custom ones.

That's exactly what I said before: "Actually taking control of the game engine through ROM hacking requires a lot of experience, that only a tiny minority of ROM hackers have."


Make games in Game Maker if you want, I'm not stopping you. In fact, I don't have anything against people making games that way, except for one thing: unless my impression is wrong, you have to have RPG Maker installed to run a game made with it. I definitely won't be playing anything like that anytime soon.

[Wichu]

Well, show me a hacker who has added any new move effects, and I'll believe you :P

And you don't need to install RPG Maker - you just need the game files. For ROMs, you need VBA installed, anyway.

[Swampert 22]

I used to make games using Game Maker when I was younger, then I moved onto ROM hacking. Now I find making programs fun, so I guess I would say ROM Hack Tools do it for me!

[Waudby]

I prefer making games with a game maker and not ROM hacking.

Unlike alot of people in the games showcase, I have actually made everything in my game from the ground up, no starter kit or anythign for me, 100% coded myself, and that has given me unlimited control over what I put into the game.

I also have all the pokemon in the game, with all the stats and moves etc, yes at the moment I have no attack animations, but that's only a matter of time til I do.

[Jeremy]

Well sweeties, I like doing both. =3

Yes I make games from scratch, just never finish them. XD I am actually making (not using a convent tool like RPG maker, but writing and compiling the code from scratch.) homebrew ROMs for NES and GBA. I only make games from scratch when I have original characters that reside in their own universe.

I prefer ROM hacking though because it's a lot easier to make a fan game since I don't need to make a new engine or replicate it. Plus, I'm lazy. XD

Why can't sweeties use elements from both worlds and make one awesome game? =3 That's what I'm trying to do. XD

[IIMarckus]

Originally Posted by Wichu

Well, show me a hacker who has added any new move effects, and I'll believe you

Hey, it's possible. I never said it's been done.

Originally Posted by Wichu

And you don't need to install RPG Maker - you just need the game files. For ROMs, you need VBA installed, anyway.

Oh? Well, if that's the case then it's not so bad, but I downloaded a game demo and couldn't get it working. It asked for a DLL file, I got it, and it gave another error that after a bit of Googling seemed to indicate that I would need to install some scripting engine, so... eh.

In any case, I think we can all agree that downloading a self-contained binary like VBA (less than 1 MB last I checked) is a significant difference from downloading a 30MB installer. But again, this is what I prefer.

[Wichu]

But you'll still need the ROM, which is around that much...

And I'm only using a starter kit because I'm, well, starting. If I make another game, I'm not going to use it, since I want to get some more experience with coding. At the moment, I'm basically editing, and I'd like to try coding a system from scratch.