[Other] Questions About Expanding Your Rom

[BrandoSheriff]

I know it's possible to expand roms to 32 MB and double the amount of space. But my questions are:

• If this is such a helpful thing, why aren't most hacks on expanded roms?
• Are there any disadvantages with expanded roms (ex: losing compatibility with certain tools, maybe)?
• If you were to use this extra space, how would you even create pointers to those offsets?
• With someone like me who's inserting almost 100 new cries and about 30 or so new songs to an already in-progress FR rom hack, would it be wise to expand to ensure I have the space?

 

[GoGoJJTech]

I know it's possible to expand roms to 32 MB and double the amount of space. But my questions are:

• If this is such a helpful thing, why aren't most hacks on expanded roms?
• Are there any disadvantages with expanded roms (ex: losing compatibility with certain tools, maybe)?
• If you were to use this extra space, how would you even create pointers to those offsets?
• With someone like me who's inserting almost 100 new cries and about 30 or so new songs to an already in-progress FR rom hack, would it be wise to expand to ensure I have the space?

Expanding isn't always mandatory, but if you need space.. you need space lol
Expanding to 32MB has no setbacks at all, just that advance map 1.92 can't point to the extra space (but you can use the first 16MB just for this stuff)
Normally pointers to the first 16MB look like
XX XX XX 08
Pointers to the second 16MB look like
XX XX XX 09
No joke, it's that easy
Also, if you're releasing and you have a ton of FFs, it's wise to trim the FFs so you have a smaller file size for everyone, helping dl speeds and hosting space, which is why most hacks don't have a full 32MB. But if you need it, go ahead and do it.

 

[BrandoSheriff]

Expanding isn't always mandatory, but if you need space.. you need space lol
Expanding to 32MB has no setbacks at all, just that advance map 1.92 can't point to the extra space (but you can use the first 16MB just for this stuff)
Normally pointers to the first 16MB look like
XX XX XX 08
Pointers to the second 16MB look like
XX XX XX 09
No joke, it's that easy
Also, if you're releasing and you have a ton of FFs, it's wise to trim the FFs so you have a smaller file size for everyone, helping dl speeds and hosting space, which is why most hacks don't have a full 32MB. But if you need it, go ahead and do it.

Really? I just put 09 instead of 08? Lol, that really is easy! xD

I think I'll hold off on expanding for now until I'm sure I'll need it to insert my songs, which I just moved to be one of the last few things to do on my "checklist" after all the A-Map related stuff.

So it's possible to trim off unnecessary FF's? Like, say I expand and finish the hack, I can just chop off the FF's after the last piece of actual data?

 

[GoGoJJTech]

Really? I just put 09 instead of 08? Lol, that really is easy! xD

I think I'll hold off on expanding for now until I'm sure I'll need it to insert my songs, which I just moved to be one of the last few things to do on my "checklist" after all the A-Map related stuff.

So it's possible to trim off unnecessary FF's? Like, say I expand and finish the hack, I can just chop off the FF's after the last piece of actual data?

Yeah, FFs are your choice of space. Either you want em or not :D
So you can have a single byte ROM to a 32MB ROM, nothing more nothing less and it'd work.

 

[BrandoSheriff]

Yeah, FFs are your choice of space. Either you want em or not :D
So you can have a single byte ROM to a 32MB ROM, nothing more nothing less and it'd work.

That's interesting to know. Rom hacking is a lot more versatile than I previously thought!

And with that, that's all I needed to know. Thanks for clearing things up and answering my questions man! :D