Do you view Hacks as "inferior" to Fangames?

[tImE]

I used to be a hacker before, and a prettyy good one too.

I personally think Hacks and Fangames are equals.
Just with different Pros and Cons.

The main part of why I stopped hacking and moved over to game making, was
because Hacks are MUCH more unstable to work with.
You have to make a backup pretty much before everything you edit.

And if you fail to backup, sooner or later, the Hack will get bugged and unplayable.
That's why I think Game Dev is better, since it never gets corrupt, and you have more
freedom to make what you want without having to know ASM hacking.


I do often find Hacks to be more enjoyable though, as many hacks focus more on storyline than graphics, and also because of the portability.

I find Fangames more enjoyable when the graphics are at it's best, and when the games
outclass hacks with stuff like Weekly systems, seasons, longer games etc.

Stuff that would be impossible to do in Hacks.


tldr;
Hacks = Good story, portable via flashcarts, but unstable to work with
Fan Games = Good graphics, bigger freedom, easy to work with.

 

[The 100 Mega Shock]

Not really that impossible, the most completed fan game takes up 800MB of storage data, a Ds cart can go all the way up to 2GB plus the .exe of the game launcher uses 300KB of ram and 1-10% on a single core processor. And there is software to port the RMXP games over but has limits to 32Bit graphics.

The DS doesn't even have a 32-bit sprite mode. Also the maximum size of a DS cart is one brand-new game that comes on a 512MB cart, the nearest size before that being 256MB used by quite a few more recent DS titles.

But storage size isn't an issue. The DS only has 4 megabytes of RAM to hold everything that it needs to access in - Pokémon sprites, battle graphics, interface graphics, music, sound effects and everything else that it needs.

And I don't know if you're talking about the EasyRPG engine, but that's only designed to interpret RPG Maker 2000/2003 games and has no current development for the DS.

The DS just can't interpret all that stuff and run a bunch of RGSS scripts at the same time - it's not powerful enough.

 

[miksy91]

As a hacker myself, I mostly value effort that had to be done to accomplish something - not so much as what it looks like. Sure most fangames turn out more fun to play because of their originality. Then again, the game creator might not had to figure out that much to implement the features of the game.

To tell the truth, hacking and game making cannot be compared.
Why? They both have their own purposes.

The point of game making is to create a fun game to play. It doesn't matter how you do it. You'll have to learn a little bit about the program and its functions until you get to the point when you know all that's required to make your game.
Some want even to advance from there which is a good thing though.


But, hacking is different. You do research with the game's database with a hex editor and try to figure out where different kinds of data is stored and their structures.
After you know these, you can start messing around with them.
Then again, there is a lot of stuff of which understanding requires a better concluding skill. All the time, by researching more and more, you get better and one day, will be able to understand hardcore stuff like how the game's engine works.

So, hacking is basically researching and developing your brains whereas game making is designing. Not many of the rom hackers of this forum are really rom hackers nonetheless...

I find it that in ROM Hacks there is not really any freedom unless you can hex edit everything and replace all of the tiles, because you are stuck with what is in that rom. While in Game Development you can make your own tiles, there is more freedom and you can code virtually anything under the sun as Luka S.J. has showed.

That's exactly what rom hacking is.

 

[tylerab01]

That's impossible. You'd have to write the RPG Maker engine from scratch to work with the DS, and it'd be heavily (If not completely) constrained by the RAM and processing power of the DS. You'd need to make specially crafted games that could run under the system's limitations if you ever got a working engine. It would probably not support RGSS either.

Well hate to break it to you, i have a friend on DeviantArt that found this program that codes the file so that i can be played on the DS.

https://tylerab01.deviantart.com/#/d32quee Read all of the comments!

 

[The 100 Mega Shock]

Well hate to break it to you, i have a friend on DeviantArt that found this program that codes the file so that i can be played on the DS.

https://tylerab01.deviantart.com/#/d32quee Read all of the comments!

the before project it was in RPG MAKER XP but DevKitPro and C++ lenguage I moved it NDS ^^.

Sounds like he re-programmed the game in C++ by hand to me. Which is a completely different thing and something that requires a skilled programmer, bringing us back to square one.

DevkitPRO is simply a development library for the DS that contains code compilers and the common code that developers use to make use of all the different bits of the DS hardware. It doesn't do anything special like automatically convert a game made in some random language like RMXP/RGSS.

 

[Nineko]

If you want the standard mechanics with a few new features, new storyline, new maps or somesuch, there isn't really any need to reinvent the wheel - it's all there for you in the originals anyway, and if you have the necessary skills to make a good fangame, chances are you can make an even better ROM hack (besides, fangames are only a little bit less illegal than ROM hacks).

If portability is an issue, just develop your fangame for the DS!

In the end, what matters is vision, dedication, ability and a lot of free time on your hands. Very few people possess this rare combination of qualities, resulting in very few good (let alone finished) fangames and hacks alike.