Question About ROM Size

[HarveySlayer]

So is there a limit to how much I can add to a firered rom? Like if I double to size of every map and give every trainer 6 pokemon hypothetically, am I going to run out of space or will the compiler handle this issue for me?

 

[Anon822]

So is there a limit to how much I can add to a firered rom? Like if I double to size of every map and give every trainer 6 pokemon hypothetically, am I going to run out of space or will the compiler handle this issue for me?

Rom size is normally limited to 32 megabytes. Maps and trainers don't use a whole lot of space so you would need to add a LOT of those before you would even get close to running out of space. Audio and graphics is what usually takes the most space.

 

[HarveySlayer]

So if I am not adding any sounds or graphics, I will be fine? What will the error be if the rom does end up being to large?

 

[MapleFall]

So if I am not adding any sounds or graphics, I will be fine? What will the error be if the rom does end up being to large?

If you don't modify anything, the ROM won't get bigger

 

[MapleFall]

This is the reason for the 32MB limit：
08000000-09FFFFFF Game Pak ROM/FlashROM (max 32MB) - Wait State 0
0A000000-0BFFFFFF Game Pak ROM/FlashROM (max 32MB) - Wait State 1
0C000000-0DFFFFFF Game Pak ROM/FlashROM (max 32MB) - Wait State 2
0E000000-0E00FFFF Game Pak SRAM (max 64 KBytes) - 8bit Bus width

 

[HarveySlayer]

So the ROM size is just determined by a couple lines of code?

 

[Anon822]

So if I am not adding any sounds or graphics, I will be fine? What will the error be if the rom does end up being to large?

You will be fine as long as your changes don't add more than ~23 megabytes of new data to the rom, regardless of what that data actually is. So you could run out of space even without adding new graphics or music, but it is a lot less likely.

Even if you do add graphics and music, it's still not very likely that you would run out of space. And that's why you shouldn't really have to worry about rom space, unless your compiled rom is starting to get close to 32mb in size.
I'm not sure what error you would get if that did happen, but you would likely run into something like this way before that, luckily it can be fixed easily.

 

[HarveySlayer]

Wow, 32 mb is a lot bigger than I first realized

 

[RoyPokeStar]

If you don't modify anything, the ROM won't get bigger

 

[D.B.]

Would combining the first three regions into one game with Emerald and FR graphics exceed the size limit? I would like to see this project made and would make several adjustments to trim down the size if needed, but I am wondering if this idea is far too big for adjustments to make enough of a difference.

 

[Anon822]

Would combining the first three regions into one game with Emerald and FR graphics exceed the size limit? I would like to see this project made and would make several adjustments to trim down the size if needed, but I am wondering if this idea is far too big for adjustments to make enough of a difference.

You could add quite a few new regions to Emerald before running out of space.

Here's a rough breakdown of the space taken by Pokemon Firered's maps:
- Map layouts: 488 kB
- Tilesets: 415 kB
- Scripts & text: 409 kB
- Map headers: 84 kB
- Trainers: 47 kB

That's a total of around 1.4 megabytes. As was mentioned earlier, Emerald has around 23 megabytes of free space.

 

[D.B.]

You could add quite a few new regions to Emerald before running out of space.

Here's a rough breakdown of the space taken by Pokemon Firered's maps:
- Map layouts: 488 kB
- Tilesets: 415 kB
- Scripts & text: 409 kB
- Map headers: 84 kB
- Trainers: 47 kB

That's a total of around 1.4 megabytes. As was mentioned earlier, Emerald has around 23 megabytes of free space.

Thank you for answering. That's good news.

Above, graphics and audio were said to take up the most space. Are these graphics referring to individual sprites, or perhaps animations and intro / outro art?

 

[Anon822]

Thank you for answering. That's good news.

Above, graphics and audio were said to take up the most space. Are these graphics referring to individual sprites, or perhaps animations and intro / outro art?

By graphics I meant any kinds of tiles and tilemaps, especially uncompressed ones. You can look at the sizes of compiled files yourself, but were talking about a few kilobytes per image here. It's not really an issue unless you're adding tons of them.