[Other] Problems with Gen III Suite, PGE and A-Tack

[MovingTheStone]

Okay so, I've recently been trying to make a Pokemon romhack for close sharing, and from what I heard the two best programs to do an overall edit of the Pokemon were Pokemon Game Editor (PGE) and Gen III Suite. However, despite many attempts and trying to do things different, both of them didn't work for separate reasons. Also I tried using A-Tack separately, and I found an issue there too. Note that I use Emerald, US version, 1.0 for these.

First, with PGE, whenever I click the Attack Editor, it tells me that the "RecordNumber" argument isn't valid. When I click the Pokemon Editor, it tells me something along the lines of "Invalid Argument = 33641 is not valid for SelectedIndex", when I click on a bunch of other options it says "Lenght cannot be less than zero", and so on. I have no clue what any of those mean, and I don't even know if it can be fixed.

Second, Gen III Suite. The program works fine for the most part, but after I edit a bunch of stuf (say, change some sprites and rename Pokemon) and relocate for free space a couple of times (even if I allocate it to FF, I get an error that says "Traceback (Most recent call last): File '<string>' line 4007, in GetOffset NameError: global name 'pnl' is not defined". After tht, I get told to restore the .ini which does nothing, and I can't change any sprite after that. This isn't that much of a hassle since I can use other sprite-editing programs, but it's still a bother.

And finally, A-Tack. Since the version I downloaded comes with the comdlg32.ocx file, I suppose I have to do as every guide says and place it on System32, but nothing happened and the program is still unusable.

Thanks for your understanding, and I don't know if this is a problem exclusive to my laptop or it's general. Still, thanks in advance for help.

 

[Asith]

from what I heard the two best programs to do an overall edit of the Pokemon were Pokemon Game Editor (PGE) and Gen III Suite.

Wherever you heard that is incredibly outdated. Those are old tools that come with a heap of problems, and A-Tack is even worse. I'm not surprised archaic tools don't work on your device
Every single one of those old tools today is completely replaced by HexManiacAdvance.
All you need to make a full rom hack today is HexManiacAdvance, AdvanceMap, and XSE - the latter 2 only if you're changing the story and region.
HexManiacAdvance is also on its way to replacing AdvanceMap and XSE anyway.
It's a much safer and frankly easier approach than the tools you're trying to get working

 

[MovingTheStone]

Thanks for the quick answer, dude. The reason I was using such outdated tech was mostly bc every discussion I found was from 2014 and the like, it's good to see that the romhacking space is still ongoing.
Still, HMA seems to be super complicated. Maybe I can use a mixture of them?

 

[Asith]

Thanks for the quick answer, dude. The reason I was using such outdated tech was mostly bc every discussion I found was from 2014 and the like, it's good to see that the romhacking space is still ongoing.
Still, HMA seems to be super complicated. Maybe I can use a mixture of them?

I wouldn't suggest that, not because those old tools are necessarily bad, but because they are buggy. A lack of knowledge when those tools were created mean they accidentally do things that could break and corrupt your rom permanently, so I really can't recommend using them when there's a non-buggy replacement in HMA.
Moreover, HMA isn't super complicated! It actually aims to replace those old tools with as little user-adjustment as possible. HMA has similar GUIs to all those tools, so you can do all the same changes just by clicking a few buttons and drop-downs in the exact same way. HMA seems complicated because of the Hex view and offset navigation, but these aren't necessary to use. They're more like advanced features, I suppose. There's not much difference in using G3S and HMA on the outside - HMA is just much smarter on the inside

 

[MovingTheStone]

Yeah, I quickly figured that the big wall of numbers isn't that necessary. The only part that kinda gives trouble is sprite importing since I can't find a way of importing 4-sprite sheets, it only lets me do it individually per sprite.

BTW is there a way to do Physical Special split? I'm using a patch but HMA doesn't show the division. The patch I'm using is simply called "Pokemon Emerald - Physical Special Split"

 

[Asith]

Yeah, I quickly figured that the big wall of numbers isn't that necessary. The only part that kinda gives trouble is sprite importing since I can't find a way of importing 4-sprite sheets, it only lets me do it individually per sprite.

Yeah, I'm not sure if sprite sheets are supported in HMA. I've rarely seen them used anymore

BTW is there a way to do Physical Special split? I'm using a patch but HMA doesn't show the division. The patch I'm using is simply called "Pokemon Emerald - Physical Special Split"

If you've applied a patch, the division is already there in the game. The way most PSS patches work is by using one of the unused byte columns in the data.pokemon.moves.stats.battle table to signify whether a move is physical, special, or status. You'll have to use the wall of numbers for this, but it's easy. Just navigate to that table and you'll see two grey unused byte columns. One of those is being used (the one that's not all 0). Simply edit the number of whatever move you want. 0 = physical, 1 = special, 2 = status
Of course this depends entirely on if that's how the patch you used works or not. HMA doesn't know how the creator of that patch did it. HMA has it's own PSS implementation now which avoids that problem, but since you've already used the patch, it would be probably be safer to stick with what you have and not cause a conflict between implementations

 

[MovingTheStone]

One last question (hopefully): Does HMA have some sort of Mart editor, or is there another newer Mart editor tool? Bc Advance Mart is also obsolete and won't load in my PC.

 

[Asith]

One last question (hopefully): Does HMA have some sort of Mart editor, or is there another newer Mart editor tool? Bc Advance Mart is also obsolete and won't load in my PC.

Marts are handled entirely in scripts and don't need a specific editor. HMA's script editor will suffice. Find the script of the mart (navigate to the map itself and double click on the mart npc) and you'll see the mart script, with a list of the items. Editing it is pretty straightforward

 

[MovingTheStone]

Does PHE allow you to edit starters? Or is there a more modern program to do it apart from Advance Starter?

 

[Asith]

Does PHE allow you to edit starters? Or is there a more modern program to do it apart from Advance Starter?

If you're still using emerald, the answer again is HMA. Try searching for "starters" in the goto bar (ctrl+g). When I said HMA replaced all those old tools, I really meant it

 

[MovingTheStone]

When I do that, it tells me "The Address F8000000 is not within the size of the data". This happens even in a vanilla rom.

 

[Asith]

When I do that, it tells me "The Address F8000000 is not within the size of the data". This happens even in a vanilla rom.

Right, I didn't mean typing starters and pressing enter. I just meant it filters out the buttons below the bar (you can think of these buttons like bookmarks). After typing in "starters", you can find the place you want to go under scripts.newgame.starters

 

[MovingTheStone]

Is it possible to increase the max number of evolutions with HMA? Or it's hard-coded to be 5 max?