I've recently realised I've been out of the loop for quite a few years regarding the state of main series GBA romhacking. Last I checked, there weren't really such things as rom bases full of new content going around and our capabilities were relatively limited if you weren't highly skilled at programming, especially when scripting was involved (that was all illegible hexadecimal-heavy code back then) - heck, we could hardly expand the Pokedex without heavy glitchiness.
I did some elementary hacking with Ruby several years ago, but I only ever imported sprites, repurposed/edited rooms and edited Pokemon spawn lists (with my peak achievement being adding an overworld encounter with Deoxys which involved a bit of copy-paste scripting).
From what I gather, the hacking scene has kind of exploded in the meantime and I'd love to get (re)acquainted with the technology we have (decomps, rombases, new tools...). I've heard things are much more accessible now, but there's been so much development that I don't know where to start understanding what is what. Any pointers and recommendations for what to check out in terms of tools and what can be done with them, and for which games (like, I hear Emerald is now better understood than Ruby, go figure)?
I did some elementary hacking with Ruby several years ago, but I only ever imported sprites, repurposed/edited rooms and edited Pokemon spawn lists (with my peak achievement being adding an overworld encounter with Deoxys which involved a bit of copy-paste scripting).
From what I gather, the hacking scene has kind of exploded in the meantime and I'd love to get (re)acquainted with the technology we have (decomps, rombases, new tools...). I've heard things are much more accessible now, but there's been so much development that I don't know where to start understanding what is what. Any pointers and recommendations for what to check out in terms of tools and what can be done with them, and for which games (like, I hear Emerald is now better understood than Ruby, go figure)?