Why are the GBC gens so ignored?

[Mr.Mako]

Title of this thread says it all. I'm posing this question to you all in an attempt to better understand why gen 3 gets so much more love and attention than gen 1 or 2.
Looking at the Rom Hack Hall of Fame there have only been 2 hacks to take the title hack of the year that weren't gen 3 with those hacks being Pokemon Ice in 2004 and Prism in 2007. those results get stranger when in 2007 Shiny Gold came in second and then in 2012 when Crystaldust and Liquid Crystal were at second and third respectively and then the following yeah Liquid Crystal took home the gold (pun intended). That information shows there is some clear love for gen 2 and to a lesser extent gen 1 present here. That love also kinda shines through in the most recent popularity contest where Polished Crystal took home best gameplay alongside *shudders* Adventure Red.
Now I'm going to guess people gloss over gen 1/2 hacks because you cant have 9001 Pokemon (spoilers ShantyTown cracked it for the Pokemon Red disassembly), there are no Gen 4 tiles (still don't get the appeal), follow me, Mega evolution, Z-moves (was I not supposed to mention that is possible in gen 3?), and whatever crazy newer thing that you kids like in your gen 3 fire red (work with emerald already) hacks.
With such promising gen 2 hacks like Pokemon Orange (which is acting like a gen 1.5) and Pokemon Paradise Green being made its really kinda sad to see gen 1 and 2 hacks not getting much love. That's enough of my rambling. What do you guys think? Are gen 1 and 2 hacks getting enough love and why? Let the discussion begin

 

[Aryan 10]

I agree with you... Gen 3 is easier for hacking because there are various tools, tutorials, resources, research and development specially firered.... And now people only want to make emerald great again..... Anyone not cares about Gen 1 & 2...............

 

[PiaCRT]

I think a lot of people don't realize that Gen1/2 hacking is not the beast it was just a few years ago where you had to do disassembly yourself to even make a proper map or script in Red version. In it's current state I'd argue it's a lot easier to hack the games due to the games being completely disassembled.

Gen 3 has been spoonfed to hell when it comes to tools and patches that people don't want to give it a try with something that has a smaller support network. Sorry to say but those tools that are nearly 10 years old now aren't perfect and their creators are MIA. It's shown in a lot of these shoddy hacks with almost no effort put into them that plague Progressing Hacks and the Launchpad.

If people were to jump on the Gen 1/2 hypetrain a bit we could have even better tools for editing things and making life that much more simple. In gen 1 we've already broke the threshhold of 255 Pokémon, but we don't have enough talent for Crystal to figure it out yet. That right there would mean after we break that barrier we can branch off and do Mega Evolution, formes, and even things like Shadow Pokémon with a lot less work.

Some people will complain about the graphics but I don't think that's the case. There's plenty of ROM hacks for firered that attempt to use GBC graphics and they were received well. There's even demand for ROM bases that do this.

I have made guides for getting started with the disassembly and I encourage anyone interested in it to check it out. There's a functional Map editor and plenty of hacks that have put their works on github to reference code from for new features like Rangi's Polished Crystal.

I also plan on making video tutorials for people that are more visual learners and have issues with trying to understand a written guide. That's all I have to say.

 

[Blah]

GBA's hardware is better, and so you can do fancier stuff. But most people pick their ROM base from personal bias, and so you have this population distribution amongst ROM hackers.

 

[TheGamingPaladin]

GBC is very limited in space, so if players want to make Hacks that can be "retrofitted" onto a GBC Cart, they have severe limitations.

meanwhile the GBA Carts have A LOT of free space for creativity, allowing hackers to upgrade the Pokedex from 386 to 721, as well as add other features.

 

[PiaCRT]

GBC is very limited in space, so if players want to make Hacks that can be "retrofitted" onto a GBC Cart, they have severe limitations.

meanwhile the GBA Carts have A LOT of free space for creativity, allowing hackers to upgrade the Pokedex from 386 to 721, as well as add other features.

I don't think you've bothered doing much research on it, there's plenty of space in a Crystal ROM. And even if you run out you can delete stuff like beta maps for even more space.

 

[TheGamingPaladin]

I don't think you've bothered doing much research on it, there's plenty of space in a Crystal ROM. And even if you run out you can delete stuff like beta maps for even more space.

fair enough, i've never looked at the inside of a Pokemon Crystal ROM and how much space would be in there, i was merely assuming what i said because of the size of Gen 1/2 ROMs VS Gen 3 on GBA.

 

[PiaCRT]

fair enough, i've never looked at the inside of a Pokemon Crystal ROM and how much space would be in there, i was merely assuming what i said because of the size of Gen 1/2 ROMs VS Gen 3 on GBA.

Yeah a good amount of that space is taken up just due to the graphics. You aren't entirely wrong, though. Gen 3 can be expanded to be 32MB with no drawbacks while due to the way the chip GSC is built on, increasing the ROM to 4MB or 8MB would break a lot of stuff like the RTC, which only works due to the chip its on.

Gen 3 has a lot of space but most do not know how to use it properly nor do they use as much as you'd think. 99% will not even come close to using the free space in a vanilla Firered ROM.

 

[Aryan 10]

I founded that Pokemon Brown is 2mb in size and Pokemon Prism is 4mb in size this means we can increase the size of gen 1 & 2 games

 

[PiaCRT]

I founded that Pokemon Brown is 2mb in size and Pokemon Prism is 4mb in size this means we can increase the size of gen 1 & 2 games

Prism is 2MB, at least my copy of the leak is. If it wasn't I don't think Day/Night would be working.

 

[TheGamingPaladin]

Yeah a good amount of that space is taken up just due to the graphics. You aren't entirely wrong, though. Gen 3 can be expanded to be 32MB with no drawbacks while due to the way the chip GSC is built on, increasing the ROM to 4MB or 8MB would break a lot of stuff like the RTC, which only works due to the chip its on.

Gen 3 has a lot of space but most do not know how to use it properly nor do they use as much as you'd think. 99% will not even come close to using the free space in a vanilla Firered ROM.

*whistles* 32MB definitely sounds like plenty of space for Pokemon Hacks.

 

[Aryan 10]

Prism is 2MB, at least my copy of the leak is. If it wasn't I don't think Day/Night would be working.

You have Prism with 2mb size I really want to try it... because the Prism that I played is 4mb in size... I cant send my 4mb Prism rom because linking roms is against the rules and I don't have a patch....

 

[Turjo]

Because, GB/C is a lot old, not many people played the gen 1-2 games.
Most of the players are high schoolers or bigger

 

[Logan]

Also: no one is allowed to post Prism on here even in patch form.

 

[Mr.Mako]

How about a little less prism (rip) and a little more discussing the topic. Kinda figured that's what hashtag was gonna say when I saw he posted but alas twas for naught.

 

[Delta Nite]

I guess Pia Carrot is right. The thing is, with the disassembly, you need to know basic coding, being at least a little familiar with command line and etc. Most people prefer using tools, and those are really limited. Using the disassembly can sometimes be easier than having to edit .ini files all the time for simple stuff.
However, recently people have been using C to code Fire Red and Emerald, and that's amazing. But still, even if you know basic programming, you can't just learn how to do stuff by just looking at the source code (because there isn't one yet) like it is possible with pokered and pokecrystal. For Gen 3, even if you know C, you have too keep finding stuff in the IDA, searching for decade old tutorials, dealing with .ini and etc. I know it's not that hard if you really want to, but I prefer using the disassembly because all the code is open and I can find how the game does anything I'm curious about.
I hope more people are open to help with pokeruby and pokeemerald, because having disassembly of those would be amazing.

TL;DR: Gen 3 has tools for noobs so its easier to do really simple stuff; Gens 1 and 2 require basic programming knowledge to do simple stuff but you're not depending on old and buggy tools; Doing complex things requires a lot of programming and hardware knowledge on both the GBC and GBA but IMO the disassemblied games make Gens 1 and 2 a bit friendlier.

 

[Trev]

Yeah, coding literacy and comprehension is the biggest drawback for me, alongside the difficult mapping process. I definitely love the idea of easily-edited and inserted graphics, but that's the only perk I see at this moment. The reason people like tools so much is because it makes otherwise uninterpretable data readable and easy to edit, and since Gen 3 has the largest set of tools, people are obviously going to flock towards it en masse.

It's totally possible to make not-shitty hacks in Gen 3 if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, many people don't take the time to actually learn the in's-and-out's, which is where the majority of shitty hacks come from. I'd definitely love to see more Gen 2 games though. I love how fast they run and I have a penchant love of Crystal anyway...

 

[Aryan 10]

First, we need a good trainer editor for gen 1...... then we need a Pokemon Editor just like the one in G3T or PGE........

 

[I-Like-Shiny-Pichu]

I mean if you have basic reading comprehension and typing skills you can do that easily in the disassembly without using tools. I don't really see the point in making tools to assist those who can't even type a handful of words, that's just encouraging people who should probably learn basic skills and then come back to it later. Editing trainers and maps etc requires literally 0 coding knowledge, only time you're gonna need that is when it comes to adding new features, which I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume the majority of new hackers aren't going to try and do.

 

[Aryan 10]

If we have tools we can do anything anytime and new hackers also try to hack gbc games