Survey: What screw-ups while rom hacking make you the most mad?

[destinedjagold]

Oh, and Ctrl-Z on XSE. My god...

This.
Especially if we're writing a pretty darn-big script (my starter script on RD:BT).
XSE's undo feature is absolutely HORRIBLE!

 

[slim spazzy]

The worst mistake i ever made when rom hacking was when i did a ton of mapping and frogot to save -_-

 

[~Anbuja]

Neglacing creating back ups and loosing the work of a day or more.

Or forgetting to make a back up and doing a mistake, but you realize you made a mistake and try to get the ROM which hasn't that error.
But you still work on the errored ROM without realizing you continued on a screwed up ROM.
And when you do you could freak out :<

 

[GoGoJJTech]

When you added 493 pokemon and snover's cry won't load letting me know that snover to arceus won't haVE VOICES!! GASP GASP
Nah but I don't get mad. I mean, I added pokemon and stuff

 

[ShyRayq]

So, I make a lot of backups..like..a LOT.
Backups for little things, because I am extremely cautious, and nervous I might stuff something up BAD.

But the worst thing is..after a long edit, and many backups, I go to test the rom, and there's a BIG problem that wasn't in the rom before the long edit. And then I'm like...oh god, where did I go wrong?
Then I have to check EVERY BACKUP. It doesn't take that long, but its still annoying.

 

[karatekid552]

So, I make a lot of backups..like..a LOT.
Backups for little things, because I am extremely cautious, and nervous I might stuff something up BAD.

But the worst thing is..after a long edit, and many backups, I go to test the rom, and there's a BIG problem that wasn't in the rom before the long edit. And then I'm like...oh god, where did I go wrong?
Then I have to check EVERY BACKUP. It doesn't take that long, but its still annoying.

What I like to do, is make a back up and update the change log every time I make a change. It is more tedious, but it pays off huge in the long run.

 

[Near~]

Well this really wouldn't be my fault but it makes me RAGE.

Spoiler:

When I am mapping and almost done i start adding the "Finishing Touch" and my laptop's mouse pad goes all over the place putting tiles EVERYWHERE Its nothing I can't fix but very annoying happens in 4/6 maps I make so its very frustrating, wouldn't you think?

 

[AkameTheBulbasaur]

One thing that I find really annoying about hacking is in reality mostly my fault. It's that I can't actually finish the game I'm working on. About every month or so I tell myself "This game is 100% complete!" and then I think of another city I want to add, or another update to move sets I want to make, or an upgrade to all the sprites or another feature I want to implement. I suppose there's nothing wrong with having a constantly updated game, but I wish I could just say "I'm finished!" and mean it.

 

[madmaz]

It makes me rage that I can follow a tutorial perfectly, and obsess over it multiple times and yet still can't make a trainer battle me with certain pokemons...
So far I've had 3 errors
1, Purple'ish background when I spoke to him
2, He saw me :D he challenged me :DD but then it was a ? pokemon level 0, to which when I spoke to him after my game crashed
3, Red background when I spoke to him

I've tried different tutorials and I've also tried to do it my own way, its pretty damn depressing

 

[Germaniac]

Overwrited something without knowing it for a long time, have to go back many steps -_-

 

[Karinmo]

Well the most tedious thing for me is hex editing, but im pretty experienced with it now, but when I did start ROM hacking, I hated accidentally overwriting freespace and having to repoint it, then go BACK to all the tools I used the offset or FS in and change it. I learned now to make backups and note about every offset I use.

 

[Dreg]

One thing is for sure: when you make changes to a game, forget to make backups, try your hack out, and it crashes. You are then thinking to yourself "what did I do wrong", and then you are right back to square one. :/

 

[M0ZEPH]

Would have to be getting a rom and doing about 20 hours of mapping on it before playing it, and realising the rom doesn't even work.

 

[Avara]

Spending ages painstakingly editing a Pokémon's menu icons from scratch to discover when you finish it that it's ever so slightly off-centre... =|

 

[RichterSnipes]

Two things for me:

1. Hexecute. Good lord is that program unstable. I'm afraid it could crash just by me looking at it in a mean way! The only reason I use it over A-Text is to look at the whole ROM for possible text to change, but even that advantage seems small.
2. Item editing mistakes. There's so many things you have to add/change to get it right. Doing one of those steps wrong can resort in losing a substantial amount of time spent hacking if the damage is great enough.

 

[LocksmithArmy]

I think I get most annoyed when I type a beautiful level script... and it does not work... i rework the script maybe 5 times, each time it should work but it does not... finally i realize its cause A-map alters the 0000 to FFFF for the var number... after fixing that it works fine... then im sad cause my first script was much prettier than the condences altered and reworked script (works the same just looks worse) that is is now... :(

What I like to do, is make a back up and update the change log every time I make a change. It is more tedious, but it pays off huge in the long run.

I dont actually keep a change log... my change log is my backup folder...

I have a folder where I toss all my backups...

say my game is called "Pokemon - SuperDuper.gba" after i change the title screen I toss a copy into the backups folder and call it "Pokemon - SuperDuper 01 title screen.gba" then i rework the first town called "green town" and toss a copy in the backup folder and rename it "Pokemon- SuperDuper 02 green town.gba"

this way I never lose track of which file has which changes... and i dont have to reference a file to figure out what "version 0.0175a" means

 

[Zen-senpai]

Basically anything with the word "tile insertion" in it.

I swear, I would pay someone to insert as many tiles as possible for my hack...

 

[Le pug]

Basically anything with the word "tile insertion" in it.

I swear, I would pay someone to insert as many tiles as possible for my hack...

... Go on? ; )

Lol jk. If you need help with tile insertion, check out the link in my signature. A lot of people have said it has helped immensely.

What I like to do, is make a back up and update the change log every time I make a change. It is more tedious, but it pays off huge in the long run.

This sounds like a good idea but ever since I was introduced to github, I upload a lot if backups and instead of overwriting them just collect every one I've ever had plus a nice description of the changes I made

 

[Hiatus]

It'd definitely have to be scripting (for me, of course). When I was still into ROM hacking few years back, I'd always make some mistake when writing scripts, and it'd take ages to finally find what was wrong; these moments would literally force me to pull my hair every time. Also used to have difficult time inserting tile-sets alongside, but thankfully, though, I managed to improve myself on it over time.

 

[pastel_fallout]

Imputing the wrong scripts for dialogue. >.> Broken boxes and beautiful gibberish text is absolutely wonderful. not.
Also messing up with sprite replacement; making a missingNo-esque... Thing.