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[Other] How did you learn ASM?
- Thread starter Ac3s
- Start date
DarkenedEclipse
Project Oak
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I had the same question too and I still do XD really just look up HackMew's knowledge on PC, there's a whole section where he talks about ASM
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- Seen Apr 11, 2025
It was quite a few years ago now when I was still interested in Sonic games rather than Pokémon hacking, but as far as I can tell my learning ASM was essentially inhaling some of the reference materials from this old thread. I think it helped that the 68000 is a very friendly assembly language - ARM7 took a little getting used to, and stuff like the Z80 or Intel - basically anything with dedicated accumulator, index etc. registers rather than general-purpose ones - still scares me.
I started out hacking by studying how hex editing works and soon became familiar with hacking all kinds of data.
Once I understood more about pointers, I realized every data I'm editing is pointed to from somewhere and by searching for those pointers, I noticed "something different" there. I knew this was some general code making the game do what it does and I could edit a bit of it (mostly asm instruction parameters) with a hex editor.
Later on, a person called Sawakita linked me a web page explaining the basics behind assembly of GB CPU and studying that, I figured how to write simple routines and after gaining more experience, figured out how to debug code and remake some of the original in-game routines and not just write new ones from scratch.
(Before all this, I had literally no programming experience although I have now. It all came naturally but it sure did take some time to learn as well.)
Once I understood more about pointers, I realized every data I'm editing is pointed to from somewhere and by searching for those pointers, I noticed "something different" there. I knew this was some general code making the game do what it does and I could edit a bit of it (mostly asm instruction parameters) with a hex editor.
Later on, a person called Sawakita linked me a web page explaining the basics behind assembly of GB CPU and studying that, I figured how to write simple routines and after gaining more experience, figured out how to debug code and remake some of the original in-game routines and not just write new ones from scratch.
(Before all this, I had literally no programming experience although I have now. It all came naturally but it sure did take some time to learn as well.)