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[Other] Where to Begin?

  • 16
    Posts
    11
    Years
    I have almost no experience in hacking. I am unsure which resources are best for the hacking itself, and do not know a good guide to learn to hack. Linkandzelda's "Complete" guide is anything but complete.

    Basically I am looking for someone to teach me to hack, and help me find the right programs to use. I id have an idea for a game, but it would be easier to just tell it to those who are willing to help. Thanks in advance ^_^
     
    The main tools I use, in relative order of importance for a novice:

    A-Map 1.92 (not 1.95, it's a broken mess) is extremely useful for all sorts of things, and fairly easy to pick up. It's not the best and you might have better luck with MEH, but I haven't personally used it much as it's still in beta I think? (Also if you hack Emerald, look up the .ini a-map has)

    Either Gen III Suite or YAPE is handy for editing the Pokemon themselves. I would pick one and stick with it- YAPE has a better UI, but G3S has more functionality, and will break up movepools in a way that YAPE can't handle if you try to use both.

    G3T has some problems with it and I actually don't use it a lot, but if you're trying to cut down on tool quantity it's great. If it weren't for my attachment to Nightmare I'd use it for move editing more, it has a trainer editor rivaling Unnamed Trainer Editor (and surpassing A-Trainer), and it's got a nice item editor too.

    A hex editor is a must if you want to do anything fancy- I personally use HxD but there are plenty of other options.

    An overworld scripting editor is practically (albeit not technically) required to do anything that isn't a straight-up stats overhaul- most hackers use XSE but there exist alternatives.

    There's a handful of tools out there for graphics editing. I don't actually do a whole lot on this front either- Advance Series (also referred to as Wichu's tools or A-Series) are dandy for Pokemon sprites, but I don't think there's a standard for others. I personally use a combination of unLZ and NSE, but I'm told there's better alternatives.

    BSP is dandy if you want to try your hand at battle scripting. It's by no means required, but it greatly removes the learning curve for adding moves like Quiver Dance or Hammer Arm to your hack, if that's your thing.

    If you want to mess with music, Sappy is (probably?) your friend, but I don't do much in this field so someone might correct me on this. It's also a huge pain to get working, so if you're not huge on music I'd put it off.

    Finally, VBA-SDL-H is helpful for ASM hacking, but that's considered black magic by many and certainly not something you should start with unless you're really confident (and hopefully have experience programming).


    As far as actually learning to use these goes, the best teacher is honestly experience. Mess around, break a few ROMs, get some idea for how things work, and see what you can accomplish with the tools. Try simple stuff, try complex stuff, be prepared to fail or be overwhelmed. Hacking takes practice, much like anything else. Tutorials are great, but it's better to try and fail before consulting one than to rush to the forums first thing.

    With regards to having someone teach you, or implement your ideas for you- good luck with that! There's a billion people out there like you who have ideas, but the people who can actually hack are a subset of that group. Due to pretty much every hacker having their own ideas, you're going to be much better off trying to make your own a reality with your own skill than persuading someone else that your ideas are better than theirs. There's also too much to teach for a tutor to be effective, although nobody'll mind if you try stuff out on your own and ask questions when you're stumped.
     
    I have no experience in hacking either :) But that didn't stop me, I'm working on one now. Everyone starts out new one time.

    I'd start on graphics first (Advance map), while you're working on those you might come up with ideas for towns, storylines or whatever. And map them out on Advance Map.

    Some nice tile resources are KyleDove, WesleyFG, 19dante91, The-Red-Ex, Shawn-Frost, N-sora96 etc on deviantart. You can also just search up pokemon tiles or public tiles there, you'll get thousands. Just make sure that they're not private or commissions for other people.

    Check out other pokemon hacks, play them, look on the threads. Look at other people's maps and sprites. Check out the tutorials section here. It's where I've learned how to do most stuff I know now. Check out tools on here.

    XSE is a good scripting tool (At least, I heard it is. I haven't really used it yet.)

    Advanced Series is very very simple to use. It edits pokemon sprites, icons, and position.

    Overworld editor RE is something I'd suggest.

    Irfanview to index sprites by clicking images, then decrease color depth, then set it to 16 colors, and save as bmp

    Poke Edit pro edits pokemon names, stats, breeding, very simple.

    Scripting is probably the hardest part of a hack, but I guess it depends on the person. It looks scary to me.

    Remember keep backups of your hack rom. Like everytime you're about to do something risky or even simple things like changing graphics. Don't learn the hard way XD

    Decide on what rom to hack. Possible choices are Ruby, Emerald, or Firered. There's almost no support for Leafgreen or Sapphire. Firered seems pretty popular right now. Ruby/Emerald has dive, pokemon contests, etc. A lot that Firered doesn't have. I picked Firered to hack because I heard it's not as much of a coding mess Ruby is. Emerald might corrupt music.
     
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