Editing Rival Names

CrocodileHAZARD said:

For anyone reading this:

I'm VERY new to Rom Hacking, as in I decided to explore it literally a day or so before this post. I have about as much skill and knowledge on the subject as a zoo monkey. So keep that in mind.

Anyway, I've only just recently been in a position to give more thought on Rom Hacking. My first, and major, goal was to be able to complete the Pokedex without trading or going through version exclusive BS. This isn't too big a hurtle, since there are already plenty of other people who make Dexhacks and I'm not overly worried about finding one. But the other, much more insignificant, change I'd like in Emerald is changing the name of the Rival.

I've spent the last couple of days searching every avenue I can think of until I eventually arrived here. So far, there's very little results. And the results I do find often don't specifically target this one point and I can't determine if I'm on the right road because to me, a lot of the tutorials on script editing and Rom Hacking are thick as tar and always feel like I'm expected to know a lot more than I do.

I recently spoke with one of the better(ish) tutorial writers and he's told me that what I'm aiming for requires me finding the part of the code where the rivals' placeholder names are (BRENDEN and MAY) and just change it from there.

But to reiterate, NO coding/editing/hacking experience. I'm not really sure of anything that goes between wanting to change the rival's names to actually having them changed.

Click to expand...

git grep "INSERT_SEARCH_TERM_HERE"

Also, just so we're clear, those lines in the strings.c file will only modify the name that is called by an NPC via {STR_VAR_1}, which I think is the equivalent to the good ol' buffers from binary hacking.
The instances inside scrips and trainer battles where the NPC is still called May will have to be edited in their respective files.
i.e data\maps\LittlerootTown_MaysHouse_1F\scripts.inc, src\data\trainers.h and such.

Click to expand...

Please don't worry about feeling overwhelmed at first, everyone does when they get started! Nobody begins their ROM hacking journey knowing it all =)

Are you using decompiled Emerald as your base? If not, this next wee tip might not be any use to you: if you type "git grep" prior to whatever you're searching for, e.g. "git grep BRENDAN" in the command line it'll search the repository for you and return a list of every instance of the search term and which file it's located in.

If you're not using decompiled Emerald (i.e. using tools such as XSE and AdvanceMap) disregard that bit. The differences between binary hacking and using decomps is briefly explained in this post.

Click to expand...

CrocodileHAZARD said:

Thanks, but this angle is actually the only thing I've already got covered. I think.

One of the first significant links to the edits I wanted to make led me to the "Hopeless Trainer Editor", and is actually the program that led me to this site. The program is an easy interface that allows people to edit Trainer battles. I've had no problems using it to change the Rival's names in a battle. BUT, it hasn't changed the Rival's name outside of those battles, and has been the next thing on my agenda. But I feel like I probably jumped in the deep end of the coding pool wearing weighted clothes for all the good present tutorials do for me.



I was lost starting at "decompiled". Wasn't (completely) joking when I said I wasn't much better than a zoo monkey at this xD

During my brief experimentation based on the tutorials I've come across, I've downloaded Advance Text (not sure it's running right, had to go through a few hoops to get it running in the first place), Free Space Finder, Pokemon Game Editor, Pokemon Script Viewer, Hopeless Trainer Editor, HxD, and XSE. Not sure what version I've got running on any of them, and I'm not even sure I've got them running right since what I'm getting hasn't been matching up with the screenshots on whatever tutorials have them.

Click to expand...