Chit-Chat: ROM Hacking Daily Chit Chat

[Blah]

Was anyone here into RPG Maker 2000/2003 before ROM hacking?

Myself and a couple of friends had a fairly ambitious game planned, set on a world consisting of a few islands bordered by impassable waterfalls. Part of the conclusion would have been that the waterfalls actually went down to an even larger ocean, and that other waterfall-bound islands probably existed far away, like discovering that the Earth is only one terrestrial planet among many. Basically setup for a potential sequel.

Like so many RM2K projects, we never got beyond a half-hour demo release, although it was fun designing the world map, sprites, weapons, etc. And at one point I was tired of RPG Maker's bad algorithm for "make an NPC walk towards the player" and tried implementing A* search, which in retrospect was a terrible idea given the lack of actual data structures. (RPG Maker XP, with its scriptable Ruby support, would have been a better choice, if it had existed at the time.)

Personally, I have not used RPG maker before. When making the initial decision of RPG maker and ROM hacking, I decided to pick RH because the barrier to entry was so low (we've got a tool for everything). But if you're hoping that ROM hacking offers an easy solution for "npc to player", you will not find it :P

People normally hard code the pathing and movements an NPC takes, rather than having the game generate the movements. Though this is a neat idea, and would definitely be a nice exercise/QOL addition to the basic scripting library. Luckily, it wouldn't be too difficult to code because the array of NPC structs contain X/Y positions so simple subtraction does the trick (ignoring collision and NPCs too far off screen not being rendered).

 

[Chaotix]

I have come back to this site after so long and forgot everything about making rom hacks time to relearn. How is everyone

I am the same way, haha. I've known about rom hacks for 10 years but I always messed around with it a bit then gave up. Just started looking around again last week and I've learned how to do so many new things as well as working on learning ASM. Some of the tools now a days are so beautiful compared to what was around last time I tried stuff; Like Gamer2020's PGE and Colors' Cry Editor, for two quick examples.

 

[luuma]

I hear john gba lite has trading enabled nowadays! I'm stoked for that, how have people's experiences been with it? Ever managed to use the feature?

 

[Trainer 766]

My Boy! emulator enables you to trade too. And that feature is implemented like.... 2 years ago.

 

[Crizzle]

So, what happened to those hack awards? Is that still going on?

 

[BluRose]

So, what happened to those hack awards? Is that still going on?

soon™, young crizzle, soon™
:P

actually curious about this myself honestly, i'd totally understand entirely ditching them at this point

also, are mods/people who run the show still hoping to see new hacks to choose from as 2017 goes on?