why haven't you finished your ROM hack?

Lack of time, motivation, and having a lot of different ideas and projects in mind (not related to Pokémon). Also one of the biggest factors is that I started my Emerald rom hack in spring of 2018. Since then, a whole new pillar of 3rd gen rom-hacking had emerged - dissasembly. Though I completely understand it's importance and convenience, I have nor time nor desire for learning how to use it. In turn, my rom-hack becomes outdated. Still, I'm planning on finishing that thing in some form or another sometime in early 2020s and move on to something else. Don't wanna leave my little hack in the dust on my hard drive.

everytime I get started.
I have to move cross country for work, and have no access to my PC.

Rom Hacks fail for the same reasons any project fails. Lack of coordination, scope creep, poor planning, etc.

Very few Rom Hackers ever set out a plan for their rom hack and STICK with it. The moment you deviate from the path you set, you might as well say goodbye to your hack honestly. Most rom hacks don't ever even get to releasing a beta because they think they have to add more features, or more Pokemon, or this or that script, or because they don't want people seeing their bugs. Since most hacks tend to be solo projects, there's only one personal accountable, and it's pretty hard to be accountable to yourself.

I don't think those things are specific to rom hacks. However, it is very true that there's kind of a drought of new ideas and talent, a lot of us who were rom hacking when we were 14-18 as a niche hobby are probably preoccupied with our actual jobs programming.

I have the idea but not the ability or knowledge. Essentially, I'm in way over my head and have hardly even started.

it's too much work bro i would spend months and make very little progress, i was usually happy with what i'd made but it was never worth the time, i come back to this forum every now and then and think hey that was cool I should get back into that then it hits me how much I'd have to do, I always wanted to go above and beyond too which didn't help

Learning C is daunting, as is designing a ton of new Pokemon and making a whole new region... I wish I had a team, honestly, but I don't want to exploit people.

My reason is I have 2 gyms/8 completed and then I decide I want to stop everything and redo it all in the disassembly version instead, which means learning how to use the disassembly project despite there being little to no documentation for most things. Saying it that way kind of makes me want to finish the thing first and do my next one in the disassembly though.

im happy to script for people i just dont like doing the dialogue.......

thats kinda where the com hack fell down :(

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And I actually really enjoy dialogue lol

cuz i dumb as fuck

For me back in the day, speaking 2006-2010, it was the lack of time. Early on things were still fresh and a lot of the info available today wasn't discovered yet and even less documented. Progressing was slow and tiresome since most of the important work was done step by step via pure hex editing. By the time tools got more refined and stable I was already grown up and other, more important, parts of my life demanded attention. The joys of adulthood!

Every now and then I still check these forums and the communities latest advancements. There is plenty mindblowing stuff floating around which would've been thought impossible 14 years ago. I still have a backup of an old project which I worked on for roughly two years back then, like 2008-2010, and it is both playable and probably decent. That is considering the standards and set of "expected" features were way less back then, think of a more refined basic game but it looks and plays like a generation 3 title. Speaking of generations, while it is tempting to return and play around with both C and asm again, I am way out of touch with the franchise as a whole. The last generation I played was 3, if you don't count SoulSilver that is, and the sheer plethora of new pokemon, abilities and mechanics (such as changed to the battle system, stats and so on) is something I'm simply not interested in.

Because I was a 14 yo kid who didn't commit to learning how to code properly.

My career!

I feel like a lot of the time when you start a new project, particularly if you've never done something like it before, you tend to underestimate the amount of effort it would actually take to finish it.

Consider how long it took for GAME FREAK to finish Pokemon Gold/Silver. It was delayed for years after the initially announced it because all the stuff they wanted to add to it took longer than expected. That was a professional game company with many people who were getting paid to work on it all day. Considering that most ROM hacks are made by one person in their free time, it's no wonder it's so hard to finish it.

I remember I started trying to make a ROM Hack in 2012 when I was 14. It took a year before I could really get started on it because it was a lot more difficult than I had initially expected. I'm glad I stuck with it though, because if I didn't, then I never would have been able to learn about ASM. Doing ASM projects was really helpful because it got me to think about problem-solving in a new way, which I would say is a plus.

It's like trying to write a book. I'm sure plenty of people have had "the most amazing totally best idea ever" for a novel, wrote one chapter, got bored/busy with other stuff and then forgot about it. I can't even count the number of unfinished drawings I have because I took a break and then forgot I hadn't actually finished it lol.

I'll never truly finish. Every time I fix a bug in good ol' red & blue, I seem to find another strange gamefreak bug a few weeks later that no one has heard of and only occurs under very specific circumstances.

I am just starting my romhack, a lot of bad stuff has happened to me lately. But I believe I'm going to keep going for a long time, since the fan game I'm creating is the only thing that manages to distract me from this horrible year.

I keep having more ideas ...., or tools don't work how I expect so I have to give up on ideas or come up with ways to make it work, further bloating my tasks list. Also doesn't help that my imagination exceeds my knowledge so I have to learn as I'm dong anything.

years ago I was trying myself at my pokemon gold romhack, called fool's gold, and I wanted to edit some pokemon stats, movesets, encounter tables, trainer battles. But at some point I dropped it from lack of patience. I wouldn't be able to perform every little change in hex and I could not make myself to learn the necessary ASM skills. And basically I never have any idea for story because I restrain myself of dreaming big.

well basically, I have three bugs that need to be fixed but I have no idea how to do that..... If I knew then I would have been finished with my rom hack last week.

I keep having to start over, well that's not the main issue, the main problem is still that I have far more ideas than knowledge or experience.
I've made a small dent so far, but each time I move forward I either have a new idea, or run into a limitation of methods and need to change tools.

I started hex editing and adding features with tools, to my vanilla firered.
Then I found out about CFRU, held out for a bit, then gave in a decided to use that, since the extra space and features would be useful
if not necessary for what I had planned.

Then I realized that couldn't do what I needed, so now I'm trying pokefirered, but I need to figure how to port the CFRU added stuff before I can get back to adding/making my stuff, and also re-add everything I changed in binary.

Dr.GameboyRetro said:

well basically, I have three bugs that need to be fixed but I have no idea how to do that..... If I knew then I would have been finished with my rom hack last week.

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for curiosity's sake what are the bugs? and what's your rombase?

Meister_anon~Master_o f_None said:

I keep having to start over, well that's not the main issue, the main problem is still that I have far more ideas than knowledge or experience.
I've made a small dent so far, but each time I move forward I either have a new idea, or run into a limitation of methods and need to change tools.

I started hex editing and adding features with tools, to my vanilla firered.
Then I found out about CFRU, held out for a bit, then gave in a decided to use that, since the extra space and features would be useful
if not necessary for what I had planned.

Then I realized that couldn't do what I needed, so now I'm trying pokefirered, but I need to figure how to port the CFRU added stuff before I can get back to adding/making my stuff, and also re-add everything I changed in binary.






for curiosity's sake what are the bugs? and what's your rombase?

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It's a rom base of Pokemon Gold. The bugs are the old man in cherrygrove city dissapears in his scripted sequence and the rival pops up before his scripted event where you battle him.

Dr.GameboyRetro said:

It's a rom base of Pokemon Gold. The bugs are the old man in cherrygrove city dissapears in his scripted sequence and the rival pops up before his scripted event where you battle him.

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hmm are you using level script? I've heard that sometimes issues like that can occur, but that's advance map, and I don't know if gen 2 hacks use advance map also.

That's the best I can come up with, but hope you can get that sorted.