[Other] How to enlarge ROMs

[ribon22x]

Hello, I'm Ribon22x, a spanish-speaking ROMHacker. I come here to post my first manual on pokecommunity, I've done quite a few already in my language, but this one is the first one I put in here. Hope you like it!

Well, my fellow Romhackers, here I bring you a manual that I've been working on this afternoon for you all, in which I explain how to get more space on a ROM, you might say "More space? This guy is nuts!".

And yes! I am nuts XD. Honestly this manual is still on a debugging stage, that means that there is more investigation to go though to see if it keep working in other situations, and I'll be posting any changes on this same topic. Meanwhile I'd like for you to post your questions or feedback any way this tutorial could get better.


I hope you enjoy them and post your comments.

UPDATES:
- Confirmed, inserting images (using UNLZ, for example) to the new offsets is possible.
- So far only tested on ruby, but I don't think there will be any problems with other bases.

Cheers!

Here I give you the downloading links in 2 different formats

[Neo-Wolf]

You mean expanding the ROM to 32 MB?

[ribon22x]

The truth does not necessarily you must expand it to 32 MB, you can expand what you need and then you can re-expand it if you want.

The maximum amount that you can expand it until you reach the 32 MB ROM, but I do not recommend it, but you can expand it enough to have your space to do what you want.

[NatureKeeper]

WOW. This tutorial rules. Now I can go crazy scriptin'

[hi sir tomato my password is syvniti]

Originally Posted by NatureKeeper

WOW. This tutorial rules. Now I can go crazy scriptin'

You could before, the thing which need to be expanded isn't the rom, it's the hackers idea of the rom's amount of space.

[.Seth]

Or you could just use XSE's built in expander. :/

[SharpPoint]

Originally Posted by hi sir tomato my password is syvniti

You could before, the thing which need to be expanded isn't the rom, it's the hackers idea of the rom's amount of space.

I don't see the need for this tutorial. It's not like they're create a hack so awesome, it needs more space.

[●•ΛΣЯӨЩ•●]

Well XSE also has a Rom expander and compressor if i'm not mistaken...

[ribon22x]

Originally Posted by 非常に高いレベル

Or you could just use XSE's built in expander. :/

But XSE expands to 32 MB, and I personally would not recommend expanding to 32 MB, but is only a matter of emulation.

Maybe that was what they were talking so badly of expander XSE ROMs

[Darthatron]

You can expand it to 32 MB then, after you've finished with editing it, make it smaller. :\

[NatureKeeper]

Originally Posted by hi sir tomato my password is syvniti

You could before, the thing which need to be expanded isn't the rom, it's the hackers idea of the rom's amount of space.

I have a really, I mean the word really long script. No free space in the game seemed to do. It was over 200 raws!

I knew I could expand in XSE, but Advance Map doesn't take more than 6 characters!

The call idea is what made me happy. Now I can script without worries.

[Black pass]

Good tutorial. I prefer to use the original bytes of my rom but it's a good tutorial.

[score_under]

Originally Posted by ●•ΛΣЯӨЩ•●

Well XSE also has a Rom expander and compressor if i'm not mistaken...

Expander and truncator. If it compressed the ROM, it would render it unplayable (unless by some amazing miracle)


In my opinion, you don't need any more space in your ROM. If you somehow manage to waste the whole 9MB of free space, you have probably tried too hard. One average script is 100-200 bytes. This means you could insert between 47000 and 94000 scripts of these sizes without running out of space.

One 64x64 16 colour image is 2KB, meaning you could fit 4608 of them in the free space. Maps are smaller than this.

Originally Posted by NatureKeeper

I have a really, I mean the word really long script. No free space in the game seemed to do. It was over 200 raws!

"#raw" commands are not really meant to be used. If you're using them, you should look up the named equivalent instead (try decompiling again after compiling).

EDIT - Also, with a 200-#raw sized script, you could still fit over 47000 of them on your ROM without expanding.

People need a better sense of scale.

[hi sir tomato my password is syvniti]

Originally Posted by NatureKeeper

I have a really, I mean the word really long script. No free space in the game seemed to do. It was over 200 raws!

I knew I could expand in XSE, but Advance Map doesn't take more than 6 characters!

The call idea is what made me happy. Now I can script without worries.

This even prove my point more.

It's you who need to be expanded, not the rom.

[score_under]

Originally Posted by hi sir tomato my password is syvniti

It's you who need to be expanded, not the rom.

If you're referring to his knowledge of relative file sizes, then I think you made sense for once...