The (Un)official Pokemon GB/C Hacking Support Thread

[Sawakita]

Sawakita, I heard you had a sort of messy collection of information about stuff that could be really useful to first-generation hackers. I know you probably want to clean it up before you post it anywhere, but could you post at least some more of it even if it is messy? Just the most useful stuff?

Most of my notes are about ASM. Anyway I use to post my notes (in a cleaner way than the one I wrote them down originally) at Skeetendo: for example there is the "R/B Scripting Guidelines" thread, and some notes in the "RGBY Map Headers" thread.

no one's hacking RBYG because they're too hard

It's not true. Generally no game is harder or easier to be hacked. Say that more tools exist for FireRed, if you really have to.

I am curious, it seems that there is a color palette that I have no idea what it is used for and it is between the "POKEMON" text from the title screen palette and the mew palette. I cannot seem to find what it is used for, even with VisualBoyAdvance's palette viewer showing which palettes work with which screens.

You're talking about the palette whose ID is 0x0F, right? Here's my dump of SGB's PAL_SETs data (the format is RGBDS-compatible!):

Spoiler:

;STARTING OFFSET = 0x72428

PAL_SET_00:
;used as base for RAM_palettes
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_01:
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_MEWMON
	dw PAL_GREENBAR
	dw PAL_YELLOWBAR
	dw PAL_REDBAR
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_02:
;battle starting (black pics)
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_BLACK
	dw PAL_BLACK
	dw PAL_BLACK
	dw PAL_BLACK
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_03:
;TownMap
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_0C
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_04:
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_BROWNMON
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_05:
;slots
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_SLOTS1
	dw PAL_SLOTS2
	dw PAL_SLOTS3
	dw PAL_SLOTS4
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_06:
;titlescreen
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_LOGO2
	dw PAL_LOGO1
	dw PAL_MEWMON
	dw PAL_PURPLEMON
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_07:
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_MEWMON
	dw PAL_BADGE
	dw PAL_REDMON
	dw PAL_YELLOWMON
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_08:
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_MEWMON
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_09:
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_PURPLEMON
	dw PAL_BLACK
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	dw PAL_ROUTE
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_0a:
;gamefreak intro
	SGBpack PAL_SET,1
	dw PAL_24
	dw PAL_REDMON
	dw PAL_VIRIDIAN
	dw PAL_BLUEMON
	db 0
	dw 0,0,0

And here are the constant values corresponding to each label in the previous spoiler, for the reference (in first place, thanks to IIMarckus for these):

Spoiler:

; super game boy palettes
PAL_ROUTE     EQU $00
PAL_PALLET    EQU $01
PAL_VIRIDIAN  EQU $02
PAL_PEWTER    EQU $03
PAL_CERULEAN  EQU $04
PAL_LAVENDER  EQU $05
PAL_VERMILION EQU $06
PAL_CELADON   EQU $07
PAL_FUCHSIA   EQU $08
PAL_CINNABAR  EQU $09
PAL_INDIGO    EQU $0A
PAL_SAFFRON   EQU $0B
PAL_0C        EQU $0C
PAL_LOGO1     EQU $0D
PAL_LOGO2     EQU $0E
PAL_0F        EQU $0F
PAL_MEWMON    EQU $10
PAL_BLUEMON   EQU $11
PAL_REDMON    EQU $12
PAL_CYANMON   EQU $13
PAL_PURPLEMON EQU $14
PAL_BROWNMON  EQU $15
PAL_GREENMON  EQU $16
PAL_PINKMON   EQU $17
PAL_YELLOWMON EQU $18
PAL_GREYMON   EQU $19
PAL_SLOTS1    EQU $1A
PAL_SLOTS2    EQU $1B
PAL_SLOTS3    EQU $1C
PAL_SLOTS4    EQU $1D
PAL_BLACK     EQU $1E
PAL_GREENBAR  EQU $1F
PAL_YELLOWBAR EQU $20
PAL_REDBAR    EQU $21
PAL_BADGE     EQU $22
PAL_CAVE      EQU $23
PAL_24        EQU $24

;SGB Commands
;1st value is command
;2nd value is packages number
SGBpack: MACRO
	db (\1 << 3 | \2)
	ENDM

I do though know that the palette following the Saffron City one is the green/blue for the stars in the Game Freak Logo,

Actually here you're wrong: palette after Saffron city's one (Saffron_city_palette_ID = 0x0B, so the palette that follows is ID = 0x0C) isn't used for stars in gamefreak logo (in fact they use 4 different palettes: 0x24 [sort of yellow], 0x02 [viridian city's palette], 0x12 [red], 0x11 [blue]). Palette after Saffron city's one is in fact used when TownMap is displayed (check PAL_SET_03 in the first spoiler I put).

then we have the colors for the japanese text and for "<Color> VERSION" followed by the POKEMON caption palette and after that the one that really stumps me as to what its purpose really is.

it has the usual faint rose color, a pink, a purple, and a black, but I edit it and nowhere in the game at all seems to be effected..

As you can see, proved in the spoiler, palette 0x0F is never used. On a side note, since you come from a community where ASM is widely used, you should use it to figure out things that bamboozle you. On another side note, I suggest you not to use VBA, but instead use BGB which is focused on DMG, GBC and SGB systems, better than VBA (which also is less accurate in emulation).


Also, from a previous post of yours:

The PokeCommunity is still in its infancy.

PokeCommunity is not exactly a ROM hacking community (not mainly, anyway). Skeetendo (by the way it's not my site, like you assumed; I'm just a member) itself, even though is filled with more documentation and information about 1st/2nd gen hacking than any other site I am aware of, is relatively small because (and I hope I'm not wrong here), way before I started hacking, a big site used to exist, called twilight hacking, that was erased from the net by a user, for no clear reasion, about a couple of years ago (almost no trace remains of it, right now, except some docs saved by some wise hackers). So Skeetendo is the reincarnation of Twilight Hacking, as far as I know.
Some documents are also located at Datacrystal (ROM maps, RAM maps) and Bulbapedia (some data structures).

 

[Gamer2020]

Something I am wondering out of pure curiosity... I know there really isn't a scripting system in Pokemon Red but that instead it used some kind of ASM. Is there any documentation or some guide for editing the "scripts" in Red?

 

[kringlur]

Something I am wondering out of pure curiosity... I know there really isn't a scripting system in Pokemon Red but that instead it used some kind of ASM. Is there any documentation or some guide for editing the "scripts" in Red?

Well, there's this thing in my signature, but to my knowledge there's some random threads on stuff (mostly on Skeetendo) and the tons of resources that were once available were lost on Twilight's demise. Then the people who know the most just don't post many tutorials. So there's some stuff like "how to edit map headers" and "how to change the level of this trainer's pokemon" as well as general "this is ASM" but not a huge, in-depth, Red-specific one as far as I know (and some of the bigger collections of data on Red are just plain wrong to start with, apparently?)

 

[IIMarckus]

PokeCommunity is not exactly a ROM hacking community (not mainly, anyway). Skeetendo (by the way it's not my site, like you assumed; I'm just a member) itself, even though is filled with more documentation and information about 1st/2nd gen hacking than any other site I am aware of, is relatively small because (and I hope I'm not wrong here), way before I started hacking, a big site used to exist, called twilight hacking, that was erased from the net by a user, for no clear reasion, about a couple of years ago (almost no trace remains of it, right now, except some docs saved by some wise hackers).

Twilight Hacking wasn't exactly "big"—it was smaller than Skeetendo is now. Most of the important stuff has since been recovered or rewritten, although there was a pretty good bitflags list that I haven't seen since.

A bigger forum back in the day was Cheat and Win, which had some familiar names like Tauwasser, Hyperhacker, Coolboyman, and Cartmic; it disappeared due to age, but I saved a few good threads that I need to repost sometime. However, most of the stuff was very primitive except what came from the German community (which was as advanced then as it is now).

 

[kram65536]

Most of my notes are about ASM. Anyway I use to post my notes (in a cleaner way than the one I wrote them down originally) at Skeetendo: for example there is the "R/B Scripting Guidelines" thread, and some notes in the "RGBY Map Headers" thread.

either way it is a start, but it is rather easy to accidentally make such an assumption.

You're talking about the palette whose ID is 0x0F, right? Here's my dump of SGB's PAL_SETs data (the format is RGBDS-compatible!):

Spoiler:

;STARTING OFFSET = 0x72428

PAL_SET_00:
;used as base for RAM_palettes
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_01:
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_MEWMON
    dw PAL_GREENBAR
    dw PAL_YELLOWBAR
    dw PAL_REDBAR
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_02:
;battle starting (black pics)
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_BLACK
    dw PAL_BLACK
    dw PAL_BLACK
    dw PAL_BLACK
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_03:
;TownMap
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_0C
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_04:
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_BROWNMON
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_05:
;slots
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_SLOTS1
    dw PAL_SLOTS2
    dw PAL_SLOTS3
    dw PAL_SLOTS4
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_06:
;titlescreen
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_LOGO2
    dw PAL_LOGO1
    dw PAL_MEWMON
    dw PAL_PURPLEMON
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_07:
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_MEWMON
    dw PAL_BADGE
    dw PAL_REDMON
    dw PAL_YELLOWMON
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_08:
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_MEWMON
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_09:
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_PURPLEMON
    dw PAL_BLACK
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    dw PAL_ROUTE
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0
PAL_SET_0a:
;gamefreak intro
    SGBpack PAL_SET,1
    dw PAL_24
    dw PAL_REDMON
    dw PAL_VIRIDIAN
    dw PAL_BLUEMON
    db 0
    dw 0,0,0

And here are the constant values corresponding to each label in the previous spoiler, for the reference (in first place, thanks to IIMarckus for these):

Spoiler:

; super game boy palettes
PAL_ROUTE     EQU $00
PAL_PALLET    EQU $01
PAL_VIRIDIAN  EQU $02
PAL_PEWTER    EQU $03
PAL_CERULEAN  EQU $04
PAL_LAVENDER  EQU $05
PAL_VERMILION EQU $06
PAL_CELADON   EQU $07
PAL_FUCHSIA   EQU $08
PAL_CINNABAR  EQU $09
PAL_INDIGO    EQU $0A
PAL_SAFFRON   EQU $0B
PAL_0C        EQU $0C
PAL_LOGO1     EQU $0D
PAL_LOGO2     EQU $0E
PAL_0F        EQU $0F
PAL_MEWMON    EQU $10
PAL_BLUEMON   EQU $11
PAL_REDMON    EQU $12
PAL_CYANMON   EQU $13
PAL_PURPLEMON EQU $14
PAL_BROWNMON  EQU $15
PAL_GREENMON  EQU $16
PAL_PINKMON   EQU $17
PAL_YELLOWMON EQU $18
PAL_GREYMON   EQU $19
PAL_SLOTS1    EQU $1A
PAL_SLOTS2    EQU $1B
PAL_SLOTS3    EQU $1C
PAL_SLOTS4    EQU $1D
PAL_BLACK     EQU $1E
PAL_GREENBAR  EQU $1F
PAL_YELLOWBAR EQU $20
PAL_REDBAR    EQU $21
PAL_BADGE     EQU $22
PAL_CAVE      EQU $23
PAL_24        EQU $24

;SGB Commands
;1st value is command
;2nd value is packages number
SGBpack: MACRO
    db (\1 << 3 | \2)
    ENDM

by illustrating what you just did there, you may have beat me to the punch of locating exactly what I need to get classicMap GX rendering colors, so thanks, the new continuation will give you credit for that, even though that is not what I was looking for.

Actually here you're wrong: palette after Saffron city's one (Saffron_city_palette_ID = 0x0B, so the palette that follows is ID = 0x0C) isn't used for stars in gamefreak logo (in fact they use 4 different palettes: 0x24 [sort of yellow], 0x02 [viridian city's palette], 0x12 [red], 0x11 [blue]). Palette after Saffron city's one is in fact used when TownMap is displayed (check PAL_SET_03 in the first spoiler I put).

I knew about &H24 in the Copyright/Gamefreak screen. but you just cleared for me what the others are, very useful indeed. I am very new to pokemon roms and somewhere halfway between beginner and intermediate with z80, while advanced with 68k, though an index or pointer is very familiar to me due to my experience on a sega genesis.

As you can see, proved in the spoiler, palette 0x0F is never used. On a side note, since you come from a community where ASM is widely used, you should use it to figure out things that bamboozle you. On another side note, I suggest you not to use VBA, but instead use BGB which is focused on DMG, GBC and SGB systems, better than VBA (which also is less accurate in emulation).

whenever hacking, that is exactly what the hacker is looking for, lost or unused data that can be altered to the hacker's intent and repointed, possibly even without killing the engine.

Also, from a previous post of yours:

PokeCommunity is not exactly a ROM hacking community (not mainly, anyway). Skeetendo (by the way it's not my site, like you assumed; I'm just a member) itself, even though is filled with more documentation and information about 1st/2nd gen hacking than any other site I am aware of, is relatively small because (and I hope I'm not wrong here), way before I started hacking, a big site used to exist, called twilight hacking, that was erased from the net by a user, for no clear reasion, about a couple of years ago (almost no trace remains of it, right now, except some docs saved by some wise hackers). So Skeetendo is the reincarnation of Twilight Hacking, as far as I know.
Some documents are also located at Datacrystal (ROM maps, RAM maps) and Bulbapedia (some data structures).

This is where we will have to agree to disagree, and here is why, under the same notion, we could say Sonic Retro but rather a general Sonic site dedicated to the blue hedgehog in every way possible, even where hacking is concerned without exception. Almost like combining Skeetendo, this site, and Bulbapedia into one great community with all the other fan stuff.

Sonic retro's wiki has only 10% of its articles dedicated to hacking, the rest are on things like Sonic X, SatAM, the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic1 (8 bit), Sonic 2, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Adventure, ...

Then there is Sega Retro (an offshoot of sonic retro dedicated to general Sega stuff) which has only 2% if its stuff on hacking, the rest on Sega commercials, various Sega games, and Sega hardware (including arcade).

That's really, really great! I'm confused about the Red/Green rom bit though, if it's compatible with Green why do you need a Red rom...?

because Green (UE) at least the type I described, is a hack of red and PokeConvert could transform any first generation rom except yellow into the other. The supported Green rom, would be the Pokemon Green (english, based on red version), not a translated green(j). Besides, eventually PokeConvert will be able to handle other languages too (except, japanese will be able to only convert between red and green). an advantage such a tool would have, is that it would be able to allow only 1 rom download, but yet still result in having red, blue, and green in perfect english. Thus the red rom is mostly for a totally different program entirely and you need it if you really want to make a pokemon green (english) hack.

I also realized that I have instructions for how to insert alternate characters into Yellow, so your in-game text could have þ and ð for example. I'll make a tutorial on that today and post it, because even if it's easy to figure out I'm not sure there's a tutorial.

great idea, the beginners need that kind og thing to get started and the advanced people would use the address info more to figure out where to edit and the equivilant in asm.

 

[kringlur]

The tutorial for editing the alphabet is here: http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=255215

 

[miksy91]

Twilight Hacking wasn't exactly "big"—it was smaller than Skeetendo is now. Most of the important stuff has since been recovered or rewritten, although there was a pretty good bitflags list that I haven't seen since.

You wouldn't happen to be talking about something like this ? ;)
http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=127374

 

[Sawakita]

You wouldn't happen to be talking about something like this ? ;)
http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=127374

Actually, if you notice, IIMarckus has that same link in his signature. He is probably talking about RBGY bit-flags, instead (especially considering that the "RBY bitflags" link in his signature takes to the no-more-existing thread at Twilight Hacking).

 

[FireSlasher]

i think we should support R/B/Y hacking also, added to G/S/C cause for now two days, i cant find anything on hacking red o.o

 

[Cartmic]

i think we should support R/B/Y hacking also, added to G/S/C cause for now two days, i cant find anything on hacking red o.o

We do, have a look at iimarckus's signature, also take the time to find the link to Skeetendo boards.

 

[Forever Alone]

My signature says it all i really want it im looking for a sprite editor and tileset editor if a cant script very well, one of those too

 

[luke]

This thread hasn't been active in over a thread so unfortunately you cannot revive it. I hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere though!