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[brief preface, this post is about the issues in hacking binary roms,
as most if not all of the differences/considerations involved in choosing between the two
are no longer relevant for decomps]
Ok click bait aside, the creator of HMA has added another cool tool to the proverbial toolbox of features that is Hex Maniac Advance.
One that has caught my eye, especially with how they premiered it.
The feature is a graphical representation of the rom space. showing different data groups in different colors.
here's a brief description of it from the creator.
They then went on to show comparison of the generated images of several different vanilla roms.
What caught my eye, and what I'll be showing here, is the difference between Fire Red, & Emerald.
Most of us that have hacked for a while, know at least something of the differences between the two,
and have probably heard the anecdote that Fire Red is better because it has more space.
But we accepted it as true but we never really knew (least I didn't) how much that difference actually was,
and if it really made that much of a difference.
Now we can.
First up is Fire Red.
If you refer to the breakdown at the top, you can tell that the dark grey space, is unused space,
i.e Free Space, we can use to add things.
While this is Emerald.
Huge difference, according to the HMA developer, the excess of light grey data taking up all the space,
seems to a large degree to be because of the animated sprites in emerald.
(edit wrong color, meant the extra light blue, since that accounts for the about doubling of the sprite data.
The grey is other data, which I guess, accounts for other emerald specific stuff, like berry trees, contests, and battle frontier etc.)
Since each pokemon has 2 frames per front sprite that's twice as much data,
that's probably not the only thing, but you get the picture.
I just wanted to share this for the community, because I thought it was really interesting
and would be useful for helping those starting out decide what they should hack.
And I also want to say this, this is all just information, and information should always
be used to help in making the best decision for you, not make the decision for you.
as most if not all of the differences/considerations involved in choosing between the two
are no longer relevant for decomps]
Ok click bait aside, the creator of HMA has added another cool tool to the proverbial toolbox of features that is Hex Maniac Advance.
One that has caught my eye, especially with how they premiered it.
The feature is a graphical representation of the rom space. showing different data groups in different colors.
here's a brief description of it from the creator.
They then went on to show comparison of the generated images of several different vanilla roms.
What caught my eye, and what I'll be showing here, is the difference between Fire Red, & Emerald.
Most of us that have hacked for a while, know at least something of the differences between the two,
and have probably heard the anecdote that Fire Red is better because it has more space.
But we accepted it as true but we never really knew (least I didn't) how much that difference actually was,
and if it really made that much of a difference.
Now we can.
First up is Fire Red.
If you refer to the breakdown at the top, you can tell that the dark grey space, is unused space,
i.e Free Space, we can use to add things.
While this is Emerald.
Huge difference, according to the HMA developer, the excess of light grey data taking up all the space,
seems to a large degree to be because of the animated sprites in emerald.
(edit wrong color, meant the extra light blue, since that accounts for the about doubling of the sprite data.
The grey is other data, which I guess, accounts for other emerald specific stuff, like berry trees, contests, and battle frontier etc.)
Since each pokemon has 2 frames per front sprite that's twice as much data,
that's probably not the only thing, but you get the picture.
I just wanted to share this for the community, because I thought it was really interesting
and would be useful for helping those starting out decide what they should hack.
And I also want to say this, this is all just information, and information should always
be used to help in making the best decision for you, not make the decision for you.
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