Speedhack Marathon Logs

http://i.imgur.com/Sug48Hc.png

You asked for a workspace, you get a hastily thrown-together workspace as I just closed everything before seeing this (ignore Word, I'm doing something else atm). I haven't actually accomplished all that much today besides half a Prankster implementation, although I ported Sand Rush, Quick Feet, and part of Trick Room along the way. Going to take a bit more work to get Prankster working by the looks of it, though- it's looking like the best approach is to hook into a later part of the method instead of rewriting it. These are probably going to be the only custom abilities I add, at least right now- don't want to get too caught up in this and not actually make the game proper.

Day 1

To be honest, I didn't have much free time today, so I didn't get much done.
I only had time to change a few OWs and add a few tiles.

Some tools I used include Advanced Map and Nameless Sprite Editor. My hex editors will be HxD and Translhexation.

Here's a picture of my "workspace" I guess: Clicky

I really plan on doing some serious work tomorrow. :)

Guess I better do this now so I don't forget later~ =/

Here's a screenshot of my 'workspace':

Eh, bonus points if you can list every one of them...

I got a lot done today, actually. Here's a list of some accomplished tasks:

- Finished palette editing
- Finished tile inserting
- Finished all decapitolization
- Inserted new music
- Did some mapping
- Inserted new Pokemon sprites, icons, edited their names
- Added some animations for tiles
- Changed some beginning text

Day 2: why did you pick the base ROM? Any particular features you favour or can take advantage of?

Click to expand...

Ruby is the base ROM that I'm most comfortable with (been hacking it for a long time).

Change log:

Not too much this time, real life is kinda overwhelming me right now. =/

- Inserted new music
- Inserted general & important scripts
- In-depth planning
- Some mapping

There's a handful of reasons I picked Emerald. Firstly it's not the ROM I'm most comfortable with, which is good as if I picked FR I'd no doubt be frustrated with all the battle engine hacking I *could* be doing. Secondly, it apparently has better Doubles AI. I have no clue if that's true or not, but I intend to have a lot of Doubles so I'll take it.

Things I've now actually done:

-Finish implementing Prankster (and Gale Wings). Might add some moves but that's it for abilities.
-Apply the physical/special split, manually setting moves.
-Added in the icons routine for Emerald (thanks Tlachtli and RaileysXerilyasRX)
-Throw together a handful of maps and the framework for earlygame. Still minimally scripted (A-Map and XSE)
-Applied diegoisawesome's intro-fixing patch, merged the protagonists into one house, and cleared out a bunch of scripts.
-A small bit of messing around in YAPE.

I'm still a bit behind, especially graphically @_@
Screenshots will come this evening when I hopefully have some events going.

Day 2

I chose LeafGreen because I've always liked it better than FireRed, and I like the challenge it provides compared to FireRed (which isn't really that much). Plus, I've only ever seen two hacks for LeafGreen, so I thought it would be unique.

There's nothing special that I want to actively take advantage of, but I do like how easily hacks from FireRed can be adapted, so I will no doubt use that. Otherwise, I'm just going for it.

DAY ONE


Aaack, I couldn't post this yesterday, because my electric went out :/ But I'll post it now.

Anyway, here it is, for Day 1.





Yeeeah, not a lot going on here. I didn't do much except completely erase Pallet town's map and change its second tileset. I also found out that WINDOWS 8 IS GARBAGE. I can't use Advance text... I'll have to dig out my old computer and steal its .ocx file.

Day 3

Honestly, my hack doesn't look too impressive yet. I've just started on scripting and such, so there's not much to share.

I'm sure with this screen you'll be able to see where I'm going with this.

I'm not really planning anything too big feature-wise, but I'd like to think that my features would be an interesting story and events and such.

DAY 2

I picked Fire Red, because I had some previous corruptions experience with it.
No specific features I wanted, just that I found out NSE can't edit Leaf Green Sprites.

I didn't do much today either(I know, I'm such a procrastinator...)but I got some new tools and (I think) finished mapping Not-Pallet town. I also kind of thought out a plot for it, and I have a general idea for the male protagonist's design. The female, on the other hand... I just don't know -_-

Day 3: what's your hack look like right now? Give us a screenshot of your best thing - no matter whether it's feature-complete or not. What big thing are you thinking of putting in that you haven't yet?

Click to expand...

Keeping up with this contest is becoming really tough, as real life is killing me right now. -_-

Anyway, here's yesterday's screenshot:

What big thing are you thinking of putting in that you haven't yet?

Click to expand...

Custom mini-game.

Changelog:

Not much this time. Like I said, real life is hitting me hard right now~

- Inserted important script
- Inserted new music

late day 3:



Echoing the life difficulties, not sure if I'm going to get anywhere today. What I do have though:

-Sprites for the starters, props to Smogon's XY sprite project and MrDollSteak's 64x64 sprite projects. (Would just use the latter but it's sadly incomplete, and I'm not a good enough spriter to fix the back myself)
-Applied Chaos Rush's patch to remove Emerald's animation system.
-A script to hand out the starters, and some NPC chatter.
-Some move editing. Not done with this yet (though also not going to do much with it).
-A minor bit of assembly I'd like to keep under wraps for now.

Day 4

Honestly, the hardest part about making a hack in 7 days is real life. It seems like it really has it out for me this week, and I don't have as much time as I would like/need to spend on hacking.

After that, the hardest is making sure I keep the project small and focused, and don't let it get too big. It's easy to spiral out of control on a small project like this.

Changelog:

Nothing too special today, just getting a lot of scripting done.
Without giving too much of the story away, here's a few screens to sate your interest:

I hope you all like what I've got so far! :)

day 4:

Going to have to second the point on real life causing issues. For me it should ease up tomorrow at 3 PM, which is nice. Today I got a (quick) map and a half done, a couple trainers, and some planning (mostly cutting things down; I now have four and a half major maps left to make and then it's all scripting), but that's about it.

Also I learned I'm still terrible at dialogue. I apologize for my particularly inane trainers in advance.

Oh, and since I missed it last time, something I'd like to have but haven't added yet: Trick Room would be nice to have but I don't know if I'm actually going to go for it. The turn order code has a check for it, but I'd have to implement the timer, a battle script to set the timer, the callasm battle script command (maybe? I might be able to get away without it), and some code at start-up to clear the timer on a fresh battle. I'd also need a guaranteed-safe byte for battles, which'd probably have to be a scripting var because I'm not familiar with Em's RAM use at all.

Days 5 & 6

Honestly, real life is being a total pain right now. I literally have no time for hacking. I could not have chosen a worse week to do this competition. ...Oh well.

Changelog
I finally found time, and got some scripts done. About enough for a demo.

Here's a script that I though was amusing.

Day 7 - Pokémon RocketRed

I present to you all my speedhack: Pokémon RocketRed (a hack of LeafGreen).

The story is simple: you are a legacy member of Team Rocket living with your parents in Celadon City, and the day has finally come for you to become a Team Rocket Grunt! What crazy hijinks will you get up to serving under Giovanni?

Basically, it's just a generic Team Rocket hack, drawing inspiration from the likes Pokémon ToxicPurple.

Unfortunately, I really only had time to make a demo of what my hack would/will be.

Screens
Apart from the screens I've already posted, here's some more stuff.

If you click any of the images, you'll be link to my album on PhotoBucket! ;)

Download
Demo: Here

Credits
Credit to diegoisawesome for some ASM.

Final Thoughts
Ugh, I hate harping on this but I need to chose a better time to try a speedhack. I had no free time the first few days due to family stuff, and then when I thought that I was finally free work called and I was busy the rest of the week. But, other than my lack of free time, I really enjoyed the competition as a whole. It was nice to attempt to create hack in 7 days, and I learned a lot about my abilities as a hacker.

Honestly, I expected to get a lot further along than the small demo I released, but I'm happy with what I've got. I certainly wasn't expecting to make a full game, but I had hoped for something a little more than a "proof of concept"-length demo. :( Oh well.

I actually spent like an hour today working on this ASM routine the ended up crashing the game so I had to scrap that... :( Even if I did learn some awesome stuff about LeafGreen in the process.

If I was given another opportunity to do a speedhack, I would most definitely do it again! I would also recommend it some others and hopefully get some more competition. ;)

I don't remember what exactly was done on days 5 and 6, so I'll just summarize all the stuff I used that I can remember:

-A-Series to insert a couple (literally four) sprites. Props to Layell's resource on Smogon, MrDollSteak's 64x64 sprite resource, Chaos Rush's 64x64 sprite resource, and hemo_globin.
-unLZ for a couple trainer sprites.
-A-Map, XSE, and A-Trainer for mapping and script editing. I didn't want to have any vanilla scripts/maps in but I wound up breaking this rule quite badly.
-Nightmare Table Editor and Move Editor to update moves.
-Tlatchtli's (sorry on spelling) phys/spec icon hack.
-VBA-SDL-H for that one silly ability I wasted time with.
-Chaos Rush's animation-disabling patch, and diegoisawesome's intro-controlling patches were also used.
-YAPE to tweak the playable mons.

The hack itself (Em):
http://www.mediafire.com/download/qc8vc2dl9dl8uta/JamHack.ips



I don't like this hack. I think it's stupidly jokey in tone, and I hate my own writing. My mapping is visibly rushed and not at all creative. The battles are also quite a bit on the mean side, and it's not at all polished. That said, I'm putting it here anyway so I can say I did something.

I think messing with abilities at all was a stupid use of time. It would've been better if I'd just stuck with gen 3 mechanics and focused more time on getting the overworld looking and functioning well.

That said, I'm glad I took part, as I did learn an awful lot about OW scripting from this. There's a surprising amount you can do with it, and I wish I'd given more time to it on this from the beginning instead of focusing on a battling environment nobody's going to enjoy. I'd also be quite willing to take part in this in the future- hopefully not on a week as eventful as the last week of summer classes.

The hack is technically playable to the "end" but that is unlikely to take more than an hour of play. I also haven't playtested it from start to finish so hopefully no problems show up!