Pet Peeves of a Hacker

[Mana1]

Both hackers and players have things that really get them annoyed - both in the design, the actual hacking or playing - even on forums. Let this be a vent for any negative thoughts so we can have a laugh about it rather than getting down.

So, here is my (hopefully short) list of hacking pet peeves.

1. When people demand new Graphics
2. When a new game comes out and everyone insists you include those new Pokémon
3. A-Map errors
4. Playing through the same map over and over whilst perfecting a script
5. Playing an 'alpha' that takes five minutes

Who's next?

 

[giradialkia]

I should say one thing here:
I don't want to see anyone say "I hate when a hack isn't finished" or "I hate when a hack isn't in English". They're... just not fair to point out, seeing as they really have nothing to do with the quality of a hack/skill of the hacker (at least the latter statement doesn't).

There are a few things that actually annoy me about hacking, though, some of which you've mentioned.
1. I hate when I spend a lot of time inserting new tiles, and eventually get really tired of them. It's my own problem, but... still very annoying.
2. I'm also a bit annoyed by the repetition necessary when testing scripts and stuff; although when I finally get what I want to happen, that makes it worth the while.

When PLAYING hacks, there are some things I find annoying:
1. As stated above, when there's an alpha up, but it literally covers the first few maps/events. Just hold OUT and wait until you can give us something we can play for a little while- there's no need to try and keep people hooked by giving them the tiniest of tasters- people often post threads (that I can't approve) asking for a list of full hacks. People prefer having more to play, even if that means they have to wait a bit longer.
2. Of course, general errors. I mean a hack doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be presentable. So tile errors and stuff shouldn't be present- and EVERYBODY can come to recognise tile errors if you stare at A-Map long enough. Generally, I think people should step back and spend longer learning the basics before jumping right in and posting a thread for their hack.
3. This last one's a personal thing, one that only moderator's of this section have dealt with- when I get a thread that has no screens or anything, but it offers a download. I have to test the download to see if the hack actually has enough progress to warrant a thread. Usually, it's FireRed with the first few maps edited- most often the paths in Pallet Town are changed to the Tall Grass, the houses are replaced with caves, etc. I remember more than one hack (from different people) where you end up going to fight Moltres, Articuno, Zapdos, Lugia and Ho-Oh as soon as you step outside the door. I guess this returns to my previous pet peeve- people spending far too little time on learning about hacking, finding out how to do the generic 'awesome' things, doing said 'awesome' things, and immediately posting it.

 

[hinkage]

I hate how some tiles require many different versions of the same one. Like, how you have to make a billion tree top tiles because they're all on different backgrounds. Or how Wesley's trees are bigger than two tiles wide, so you have to make special tiles for each edge. Most monotonous and annoying thing ever.

What I hate about the threads people make is that new games always "look good so far" even if they don't. Threads like that I don't even comment because I'll get infracted. Also, how people post every little thing they add. EVERYONE CARES, GUYS.

 

[Dreg]

1. When people demand that you use assembly or learn it. Why should I?
2. When people expect new graphics for the hack. Really, do you not like the original GFX?
3. When people use the same custom musics in a hack over and over again.
4. Like giradialkia, when people say that they want a hack in English instead of said language. This may be the only language that they speak.

 

[NurseBarbra]

Well I may as well add my 2 cents.
1) I know it doesn't stick out to many people, but inconsistancy when using the word "Pokémon". In most hacks I've seen, the scripter normally sticks to "Pokemon" which is fine by me. What gets me however, is a scripter who does this: "Welcome to the world of POKéMON. In the world of Pokemon there are many species, such as Pikachu!, An electric Pokémon." ...Moving on.
2) People not planning events through fully, sometimes destroying continuity. I'm sorry, but if you plan an event so that you fight the rival who has, say for an example, a shelgon level.52 in there party as one of their pokemon, I don't want to fight them 10 minutes later with a level.50 Salamence... This just destroys the immersion.
3) People complaining about tiles. Deer god, people, Tiles are quite possibly the most difficult to insert, and this is coming from someone who excels very well in tile insertion, it's very very time consuming and annoying to A) find the right tile with the right pallet so that it won't disrupt the flow of the rest of the tiles, B)Change the pallet of the tile if you need to, which normally takes about half an hour to get at least partly right, and C) Map with the tiles so that they look well together not just pallet wise, but visually, to then only have a joe soap complain about what is the best part of an hours work.

 

[Darthatron]

Most annoying thing: People who never try new things and expect every one else to do the hard stuff for them.
Least annoying thing: People who try new things and ask for help and tips. Not for the work to be done for them.

 

[Mr]

I've worked on a hack before, my computer died and I lost all of my work on it.
When I work on a hack I get annoyed because I realize that I may never get the Pokedex to work correctly. I don't think I'll be able to get the world map working. I also doubt I'll be able to do the title screen.
I can create maps and small scripts, but it just doesn't seem to be enough.

I get really annoyed! I want to make a hack and share it, but I just can't get far enough through development. Here I am trying again. I probably won't get much farther than the first gym before I give up again.

 

[Magius]

I hate it when people fail to understand how a sprite needs to be a certain format to be inserted into ROMs.

 

[Cloyster93]

Bad spelling/grammar tends to irritate me somewhat when playing through a hack.

Oh, and people using leetspeak in their hack's.

I just prefer hack's to look professional and to resembles proper games as closely as possible. At least, I if I had the skills needed to create my own hack, that's something i'd strive to achieve.

 

[teejermiester]

1. WHENEVER a non-hacker criticizes a hack. I mean, I'm okay with "I think your storyline could use this or that or try this," or other helpful little suggestions, but when they come out and say something like "I don't get why you couldn't make the pokedex a little better. I mean it couldn't be THAT hard. You call yourself a hacker?". It just makes the "critique" seem like an idiot.

2. Incorrect grammar/spelling in hacks

3. People who want to hack, so they go and ask a team to come and help them with it, even if it's just a scripter or a tile inserter. LEARN TO DO IT YOURSELF.

4. Lack of a storyline. Certain hacks just seem to have absolutely no storyline except for the occasional rocket grunt or rival battle. I mean, it isn't that hard to incorporate a large script once every so often. It makes the hack very unappetizing, even if it has beautiful maps or potential.

 

[botface23]

Whenever a new game comes out and that same day people demand mods/modding tools

 

[Cyru]

When the player talks. It just seems so unproffesional and doesn't make it feel as if you are playing the game.

 

[F1r3k1ng]

Its annoys me most when the creator makes it stupidly difficult to figure out what to do in the game, it also annoys me when there's piles and piles of text or really long events.

 

[miksy91]

I've been keeping an eye on the facts that people point out here and think having a discussion instead of just doing all that would be a good thing.

For instance,

Its annoys me most when the creator makes it stupidly difficult to figure out what to do in the game, it also annoys me when there's piles and piles of text or really long events.

This kind of stuff does happen in my own hack because I want it to be more RPG-like. You've got to talk to people to hear what's going on which should give an idea what to do next. It also contains long events with lots of talk but the storyline requires it. So even though you said all that, I don't think it can be applied to my hack or what do you think ?

P.S
Assuming you meant having "useless" events with lots of talk and game made so that it's very unclear what to do next: do a random thing somewhere that nobody mentions in the game.

 

[Platinum Lucario]

Well as far as I can point out the things that I get annoyed about when creating my ROM hack is quite simple, when I start thinking to myself "oh, I better get on with making the tiles for Pokémon Dimensions of Time", I start drawing the tiles and then when it comes to inserting them into a .dib file... the colour has to be at the correct decimal values that are shown on the palette data in for the tileset, as while I'm inserting them... it gets frustrating when I find some of the colours on the tileset invalid and turn into the last colour on the palette, which then means I have to re-colour the pixels into the correct colours as being the same as the palette, but oh boy... it sure does get frustrating. xD

As for playing the ROM hacks though, I haven't played a ROM hack in ages, to be perfectly honest. xD But of course... there are things that I wouldn't appreciate in a ROM hack, it doesn't frustrate me or anything, but rather makes me politely tell the person what needs to be fixed and all that, which means the bugs, glitches and movement permission issues. They're always something I would at least let the ROM hacking team of the ROM hack, that is whenever I play one. ;)

 

[ascension7]

I don't like it when incorrect grammar is used in hacks. If the creator's first language isn't English, then I can let it slide, but if it's obvious that they didn't put much time into the game's text, it's simply annoying. Also, I don't like it when people expect much more out of a hack than is possible - many people don't know how hard it is to do certain things. I don't mind it too much though, because sometimes it provides a challenge for the hacker to do something groundbreaking and new.

Things I don't like about hacking... palettes. They can be pretty annoying at times. Thankfully, by now there's many tools to simplify the process, but for editing Pokemon overworlds in HGSS, I had to manually convert colors to whatever system the game uses, and manually place each Pokemon's 16 colors into the file. That was fun [/sarcasm]

 

[SK3]

I would say my main pet peeve is when a hack uses the default maps from the ROM base that was used. If you are just going to add random maps onto an already made region, why not just make a brand new region instead of distorting one that's already perfect?

Also when people look down on a hack for using default tiles. An excellent game can be made with default tiles, you don't need fancy trees or buildings to make your hack have good aesthetics.

 

[Mikke]

1.When ROM hackers try to make their hacks look "hip" and clever rather than professional (ie: when they include leet speak and memes in the dialogue).
2.When ROM hackers are too lazy to create new graphics.
3.When those ROM hackers ***** in threads like these about people asking for new graphics.
4.When people use the default tiles and misinterpret they way they're supposed to be used.

Also when people look down on a hack for using default tiles. An excellent game can be made with default tiles, you don't need fancy trees or buildings to make your hack have good aesthetics.

And an excellent game can be made with ugly graphics, awful music, and a poor storyline. Doesn't justify the game's makers being lazy.

When the player talks. It just seems so unproffesional and doesn't make it feel as if you are playing the game.

Lol, WTF. Do you also find commercial RPGs with non-silent protagonists like Final Fantasy unprofessional?

 

[machomuu]

1.When ROM hackers try to make their hacks look "hip" and clever rather than professional (ie: when they include leet speak and memes in the dialogue).
2.When ROM hackers are too lazy to create new graphics.
3.When those ROM hackers ***** about people asking for new graphics in threads like these.
4.When people use the default tiles and misinterpret they way they're supposed to be used.


And an excellent game can be made with ugly graphics, awful music, and a poor storyline. Doesn't justify the game's makers being lazy.


Lol, WTF. Do you also find commercial RPGs with non-silent protagonists like Final Fantasy unprofessional?

You call that laziness? Have you ever actually tried to hack, because there's a lot that goes into making entire new tilesets. Sometimes people don't think it's worth the trouble, sometimes people aren't capable, sometimes people don't think it's necessary, sometimes people try and fail, and sometimes people don't want to, but calling it laziness is almost never right. Besides, the default graphics are just fine, no sense fixing what isn't broken, only upgrade what's working right. No sense pouring hours upon hours of work on something that you just added because "otherwise it'd make you lazy", that's just wrong.

Also, about Cyru, he's not talking about RPGs in general, he's talking about his opinion on pokemon hack protagonists speaking specifically.

 

[Mikke]

You call that laziness? Have you ever actually tried to hack, because there's a lot that goes into making entire new tilesets.

Yes I did, on my first days of Pokémon hacking.

Sometimes people don't think it's worth the trouble, sometimes people aren't capable, sometimes people don't think it's necessary, sometimes people try and fail, and sometimes people don't want to, but calling it laziness is almost never right.

If people aren't capable of doing it, then that's because they're too lazy, as no rocket science or programming skills are required to replace the tiles and graphics. Like I said, I did it on my first hacking days.

Besides, the default graphics are just fine, no sense fixing what isn't broken, only upgrade what's working right. No sense pouring hours upon hours of work on something that you just added because "otherwise it'd make you lazy", that's just wrong

Oh, give me a break. The point of making ROM hacks is replacing the game's original content with new one. The maps in the official games are fine too, so I suppose people just reuse them rather than making new ones, then?