#Pokémon20 on Daily Experiences Recount

[Squeetz]

The first ROM hack I ever played was Pokemon Quartz.
We were on vacation in Thailand, walking about in one of the bigger cities, when I came across a stand/booth whatever have you, And I noticed a GBA box with the 'Pokemon' label on it and a picture of Gyarados.
At first I thought it was some sort of unreleased game, so naturally, I had to have it. I bought it.
At the time, I didn't even know what a ROM hack was, or that there was a way to edit Pokemon games to your own liking.
My first impression of the game was good, there were new "Pokemon" and a somewhat new story.
I didn't think much of the sprites or the broken English, but looking back at it now, it's what gave the game a certain charm.
When we got back home, I showed it to my friend, but I can't really remember any more than that.
Fast forward a year or two, where I stumble upon Advancemap (I don't remember how).
Fiddle around, making crappy map edits and whatnot.
I then remember I have a book which I used to draw fakemon in, I get the idea to sprite them in Paint.
Made a few crappy sprites, tried to insert them using Pokepic I think? - Either way, failed miserably.
Also remembering respriting the Potion to a syringe for some reason.


So yeah, that was my beginner experience with ROM hacking, which all started by buying that bootleg copy of Quartz.
I'd love to look through that fakemon book I had, but I can't for the life of me find it. I'd have a good chuckle, that's for sure.
What I was really impressed by Quartz is how it was all made by one guy, 386 fakemon sprites by one guy alone (Although I'll agree, some of them have lesser quality than others).
I really think Quartz was a cornerstone for Pokemon ROM hacking in general, because everyone who make/play Pokemon ROM hacks have heard of it. (Don't quote me on that)
Whenever it's mentioned, it gets both positive and negative responses, but I think we can all agree that due to its age, its one of the most iconic ROM hacks out there.
Before I turn this into another rant of me praising Quartz, I'll end it at that.
I'm not the best at putting my thoughts into words, and I'm sure I missed something I should've said, but this is just my little story.

 

[Deokishisu]

I believe the first ROMHack I ever played was Quartz as well. I stumbled into this community in, like late-2005 by googling how to make a Pokemon game. Quartz was the only hack at the time that was complete, so I went through it. I remember laughing at the Fakemon and grammar, but I thought it was super cool that someone knew enough to be able to make something like that.

When I joined, it was still the wild west of hacking. Maybe 3 people actually knew what they were doing, and even then, those people were light-years behind the best hackers we have today. We didn't have an easy way to insert tiles. Anything with a tilemap was a relative mystery. UnLz GBA was our only graphics editor with any reliability. Our only script editor, ScriptEd, was buggy, had no dynamic offsets (that was a HUGE change in hacking when it finally came around years later), and a clunky scripting language that was impossible to get used to. Hackmew was our only ASM hacker, and wasn't that good at ASM. I don't think anyone knew what behavior bytes did, not like there was a map editor that could reliably edit them. There were almost no useful tutorials. Heck, we didn't figure out how to enable the National Dex in Firered for a good year and a half after I started hacking. Doing the same in Ruby (which was still hacked back then, as Emerald was completely misunderstood) took years more after that.

I set out to make my hack, one that was sure to be the best hack ever made. It was a Johto remake before Johto remakes became a thing. Problem was, I knew nothing. I was using EliteMap because that version of Advance Map was newer and more buggy. I couldn't script for beans and ScriptEd couldn't decompile several types of scripts (Trainerbattle scripts was one, I remember) without breaking them. Again, half the stuff that is the bare minimum for a hack these days was completely undoable and not at all understood. I worked on it for a couple months, learning as I went. Eventually I figured out how to do pretty much 80% of the scripting that I'd need to do to get the hack going. Mapping was slow, but it was okay. I couldn't mess with tilesets at all, so that limited me somewhat.

And then, a thread appeared for ShinyGold. At first, I hoped that zel would fail and give up, but as the weeks rolled on and zel zoomed past my hack with his progress updates and first beta, I decided to throw in the towel on my remake. I figured I'd never be able to match the quality (which, looking back, was just okay. Definitely not superb), the update speed, or his skill as a hacker. So I dabbled in a veritable TON of hacks for the next year or so. I was just a kid, so I had all the time in the world. I must've had 30 or so terrible practice hacks, all given up on when a better idea struck me or I broke something I couldn't fix, that honed my skills. I still have some of the later ones sitting around on this computer somewhere, actually.

Eventually I released Orchid Version, my first public hack. To be honest, it was awful. No, it was. Trust me, I just replayed it a week ago to see what I did. I think it had a really cool concept, but I just couldn't execute it well. I broke the ROM accidentally like a route and a city past my first beta. As it turns out, I corrupted the first byte of the ROM and I fixed it in two seconds last week. I was embarrassed and angry and didn't want to redo everything I had already done, so I said that I had a computer virus and postponed the hack while I thought up what I wanted to do. A few months down the line, I cancelled the hack entirely and gave up on it, and went inactive in the community for most of high school, lurking every month or two to see what was up.

I became active again shortly after Black2 came out and this is the most active I've ever been. The community has changed so much in the ten years I've been here. The Scrapbox has come and gone and come back as the Beginner's Lounge. I've seen countless noobs show up asking for someone to make their hack and when they get no reply are never seen from again. Closed-source mentality making way for open-source everything and shared research. And I've seen beginner hackers flourish and become the greats of today.

I've been working on one main hack on-and-off for the past couple of years now, using my spare time every few months when I have the inspiration to push it a little farther. I have a side-project that's probably halfway done that I'd like to release to the community this year, if everything goes well. I work so slowly that there's no point in posting a thread until I'm basically done; why waste all that effort maintaining a thread for sporadic and far-apart updates? All and all, my time here has been great. I've learned a lot, made some friends, and get to be creative when the mood strikes me. Sure, ROMHacking can be a frustrating endeavor, as it always seems like you decide on features that are one-step above your skill level, but you won't ever learn without trying!

 

[Christos]

I believe the first ROMHack I ever played was Quartz as well. I stumbled into this community in, like late-2005 by googling how to make a Pokemon game. Quartz was the only hack at the time that was complete, so I went through it. I remember laughing at the Fakemon and grammar, but I thought it was super cool that someone knew enough to be able to make something like that.

When I joined, it was still the wild west of hacking. Maybe 3 people actually knew what they were doing, and even then, those people (with the exception of probably Knizz, whose weird MSPaint Team Magma Grunt signature I still remember) were light-years behind the best hackers we have today. We didn't have an easy way to insert tiles. Anything with a tilemap was a relative mystery. UnLz GBA was our only graphics editor with any reliability. Our only script editor, ScriptEd, was buggy, had no dynamic offsets (that was a HUGE change in hacking when it finally came around years later), and a clunky scripting language that was impossible to get used to. Hackmew was our only ASM hacker, and wasn't that good at ASM. I don't think anyone knew what behavior bytes did, not like there was a map editor that could reliably edit them. There were almost no useful tutorials. Heck, we didn't figure out how to enable the National Dex in Firered for a good year and a half after I started hacking. Doing the same in Ruby (which was still hacked back then, as Emerald was completely misunderstood) took years more after that.

I set out to make my hack, one that was sure to be the best hack ever made. It was a Johto remake before Johto remakes became a thing. Problem was, I knew nothing. I was using EliteMap because that version of Advance Map was newer and more buggy. I couldn't script for beans and ScriptEd couldn't decompile several types of scripts (Trainerbattle scripts was one, I remember) without breaking them. Again, half the stuff that is the bare minimum for a hack these days was completely undoable and not at all understood. I worked on it for a couple months, learning as I went. Eventually I figured out how to do pretty much 80% of the scripting that I'd need to do to get the hack going. Mapping was slow, but it was okay. I couldn't mess with tilesets at all, so that limited me somewhat.

And then, a thread appeared for ShinyGold. At first, I hoped that zel would fail and give up, but as the weeks rolled on and zel zoomed past my hack with his progress updates and first beta, I decided to throw in the towel on my remake. I figured I'd never be able to match the quality (which, looking back, was just okay. Definitely not superb), the update speed, or his skill as a hacker. So I dabbled in a veritable TON of hacks for the next year or so. I was just a kid, so I had all the time in the world. I must've had 30 or so terrible practice hacks, all given up on when a better idea struck me or I broke something I couldn't fix, that honed my skills. I still have some of the later ones sitting around on this computer somewhere, actually.

Eventually I released Orchid Version, my first public hack. To be honest, it was awful. No, it was. Trust me, I just replayed it a week ago to see what I did. I think it had a really cool concept, but I just couldn't execute it well. I broke the ROM accidentally like a route and a city past my first beta. As it turns out, I corrupted the first byte of the ROM and I fixed it in two seconds last week. I was embarrassed and angry and didn't want to redo everything I had already done, so I said that I had a computer virus and postponed the hack while I thought up what I wanted to do. A few months down the line, I cancelled the hack entirely and gave up on it, and went inactive in the community for most of high school, lurking every month or two to see what was up.

I became active again shortly after Black2 came out and this is the most active I've ever been. The community has changed so much in the ten years I've been here. The Scrapbox has come and gone and come back as the Beginner's Lounge. I've seen countless noobs show up asking for someone to make their hack and when they get no reply are never seen from again. Closed-source mentality making way for open-source everything and shared research. And I've seen beginner hackers flourish and become the greats of today.

I've been working on one main hack on-and-off for the past couple of years now, using my spare time every few months when I have the inspiration to push it a little farther. I have a side-project that's probably halfway done that I'd like to release to the community this year, if everything goes well. I work so slowly that there's no point in posting a thread until I'm basically done; why waste all that effort maintaining a thread for sporadic and far-apart updates? All and all, my time here has been great. I've learned a lot, made some friends, and get to be creative when the mood strikes me. Sure, ROMHacking can be a frustrating endeavor, as it always seems like you decide on features that are one-step above your skill level, but you won't ever learn without trying!

Scizz*

From what I remember Pokémon Orchid was decent, especially compared to the other hacks at that time.

 

[Deokishisu]

Scizz*

From what I remember Pokémon Orchid was decent, especially compared to the other hacks at that time.

Oh my goodness, you're right. Have I had them confused this whole time? Was Scizz even a decent hacker?

I'll allow your nostalgia to improve your memories of Orchid. :P

 

[Christos]

Oh my goodness, you're right. Have I had them confused this whole time? Was Scizz even a decent hacker?

I'll allow your nostalgia to improve your memories of Orchid. :P

He was. He made tools like Advance Text, Advance Mart and a few others.