Evidenced Proof for why you shouldn't hack emerald

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

[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.

... an overview of what's going on within the entire rom, at a high level. So I finally made... this.

What you see is a very high-level overview of FireRed. The colors are as follows:
Grey: There's data here, but I'm not really sure what. Probably code, but it could be unrecognized data or scirpts.
Blue: Pointers
Purple: Text
Grass Green: Data tables. Stuff like pokemon stats, trainer stats, etc.
Sea Green: tilemaps, tilesets, palettes, and other sprite-related data.
Dark Grey: Unused space

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.

 

[Hillsy13]

That's a really interesting find. I do want to point one thing out that I believe changes things a bit though. If you expand your rom to 32mb, you can actually just repoint all the cries to the expanded free space. This results in an absurd amount of free space, which in my opinion makes debates on the amount of free space available a little frivolous. A cool find nonetheless though!

 

[Anon822]

To elaborate on what Hillsy13 said, all the gen 3 games are 16mb roms so regardless of which game you decide to hack, you will have 16mb (an entire rom's worth) of free space in addition to what is shown here.
That's more than enough space for most hacks, so I wouldn't choose a baserom based on this information alone.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

To elaborate on what Hillsy13 said, all the gen 3 games are 16mb roms so regardless of which game you decide to hack, you will have 16mb (an entire rom's worth) of free space in addition to what is shown here.
That's more than enough space for most hacks, so I wouldn't choose a baserom based on this information alone.

well yeah, but that's provided you've expanded your rom, I was just speaking for binary, where its much harder to expand the rom.

But I guess that's harder to tell, since the thread got moved to discussion, I'll make sure to add that to the main post, but I initially had this in the binary section.

 

[Hillsy13]

well yeah, but that's provided you've expanded your rom, I was just speaking for binary, where its much harder to expand the rom.

But I guess that's harder to tell, since the thread got moved to discussion, I'll make sure to add that to the main post, but I initially had this in the binary section.

Actually, it's really easy to expand your rom for binary hackers. All you have to do is use the rom resizer in XSE.

 

[kalarie]

@Meister_anon~Master_o f_None

Doubling the ROM size for binary hacking takes one click of a button in XSE (or PGE iirc).

 

[Outwitter]

A massive hack like Glazed that spans across three regions is based on Emerald. So, I don't see any issues with opting for Emerald as a base. In my opinion, it boils down more to the availability of resources and tools, which I think are in abundance for Fire red, that's all.​

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Actually, it's really easy to expand your rom for binary hackers. All you have to do is use the rom resizer in XSE.

huh ok then, lol now I'm wondering why I keep hearing people say its so difficult, or that they had to expand it "by hand";
can't believe I never even saw that thing.