[Other] I want to make a ROM Hack for my friend's birthday

[AzureManaphy]

Hello!

My friend's birthday is on the 28th of April, and I've never made a ROM Hack before, I saw the Beginner's Directory but I want just a little bit of insight if that's okay.

I want it to be short, so here are my ideas, I just want to know if a complete beginner can do these in 8 days or not.

-Fire Red, with the latest upgrade patch of all the Pokémon from newer Gens.
-No name selection and a sudden start with a full party.
-Tough battles with edited trainers, people that he knows in real life wishing him a happy birthday, as well as their dialogue.
-Map editing.

I think that's about it, is any of this possible for me? Or should I just give up on this now and do it next year?

(Yay lurker's first post)

 

[Pixel64]

There are patches out there with the updated 'mons/mechanics. I know CFRU is a good one, but I could never get it working on my potato computer and lack of understanding. I believe there are other patches that are a bit more simple to apply.

For the full party at the start, you could give him a pre-edited save file.

The edited trainers are likely doable as well as the dialogue, depending on how many trainers you are going to do. Dialogue+parties for every single trainer might be stretching yourself too thin, but as you do them you should be able to gauge how fast you can do them and if you have enough time.

"Map editing" is a bit vague, I'm not sure how many and how complicated they will be, so I can't really give my opinion.

 

[Asith]

Your time limit is short, but depending on the amount of free time you have, the things you want to get done are doable for sure.
I'm sure there are patches that add in new gen pokemon data, even in binary hacking (which is definitely better for a small beginner project imo). Try looking in the binary resources forum. Finding a working patch for that should ideally be your first step.

No name selection and a full party start are also doable. This is a super easy way to skip all of Oak's intro and tutorial, so we go straight from title screen to overworld, which might be best for your "sudden start". We can easily set the player's name to whatever we want via hex. Alternatively, this should skip just the player and rival naming part, leaving the rest of Oak's intro, which we then have to follow with some asm to set a static player name in the overworld.
A full party start is as easy as running givepokemon commands in a level script at the beginning, as long as you don't want to control their stats and moves exactly. (That is also possible, but would require compiling another bit of asm).
I'd be happy to help you with these since your project sounds pretty fun :D

Trainer editing is very easy through binary tools like ATrainer or Gen3Tools, and their dialogue is just text editing which again, is very easy. PM me if you want more advice on those.

"Map editing" is accessible through advanced map, but depending on how crazy you want to go with them, it might take some time to master.

Also a word of advice before you start; try to make backups before every major change. Heck, just make a ton of routine backups regardless. Binary hacking is a little volatile, and you're almost guaranteed to lose work at some point. Make backups and make them often.