[Other] Some Questions to Decide between Binary and Decomp | (Maximum Number of Trainer Battles in Pokemon Emerald?)

[LeadingEfficiency37]

Hi there,

I started a Binary Pokemon Emerald Project using a popular Rom Base.
Currently I am afraid that I create the Hack I envision and work on it - and then suddenly realize in the Middle of it that it wasn't the best Options with the Things I was planning to do, and should have actually used the Pokeemerald Decomp insted (Currently decided against it because the Barrier of Entry, but still early enough in the Project to Switch over again).

So I have a couple of Questions to help me better decide if I should keep on going with my Binary Rom Base, or switch over to the Decomp and Start anew.

1. What is the Maximum Amount of Trainer Battles I can have in the Pokemon Emerald Rom? And is this Number expandable in Some way, like just adding new "Space" so to say, or removing Re-Battles of Trainers to free up Space for new individual Trainers (Removing the Match Call Feature)?
2. How much of a hassle would that be? I have seen that the main Problem is finding empty Flags for the New Trainers. How would I go about doing that with very little coding and scripting experience?
3. Would increasing the Maximum Amount of Trainer Battles be easier in the Pokeemerald Decomp?
4. How high is the Barrier of Entry really for Starting with the Pokeemerald Decomp without knowing C or any other Coding Language? Obviously I'd need to learn the Basics, but so I'd also have to with Scripting and Hex Editing in the Binary. How Difficult is it to get up and running with the Decomp and Edit Maps, Trainers and Pokemon? Without Diving into advanced Stuff?

Thanks for the Help in Advance!

 

[Anon822]

Hi there,

I started a Binary Pokemon Emerald Project using a popular Rom Base.
Currently I am afraid that I create the Hack I envision and work on it - and then suddenly realize in the Middle of it that it wasn't the best Options with the Things I was planning to do, and should have actually used the Pokeemerald Decomp insted (Currently decided against it because the Barrier of Entry, but still early enough in the Project to Switch over again).

So I have a couple of Questions to help me better decide if I should keep on going with my Binary Rom Base, or switch over to the Decomp and Start anew.

1. What is the Maximum Amount of Trainer Battles I can have in the Pokemon Emerald Rom? And is this Number expandable in Some way, like just adding new "Space" so to say, or removing Re-Battles of Trainers to free up Space for new individual Trainers (Removing the Match Call Feature)?
2. How much of a hassle would that be? I have seen that the main Problem is finding empty Flags for the New Trainers. How would I go about doing that with very little coding and scripting experience?
3. Would increasing the Maximum Amount of Trainer Battles be easier in the Pokeemerald Decomp?
4. How high is the Barrier of Entry really for Starting with the Pokeemerald Decomp without knowing C or any other Coding Language? Obviously I'd need to learn the Basics, but so I'd also have to with Scripting and Hex Editing in the Binary. How Difficult is it to get up and running with the Decomp and Edit Maps, Trainers and Pokemon? Without Diving into advanced Stuff?

Thanks for the Help in Advance!

1. By default Emerald has 864 trainer slots out of which 855 are used. This number can be increased and the theoretical maximum value is much more than you would ever need. Since it's easier to edit trainers than to add new ones, you might start by replacing trainers that you don't need like the unused and match call ones, instead of adding new ones.

2. No idea. You'd probably follow a tutorial like this. Not the easiest thing to start with especially since there doesn't appear to be a tutorial for emerald.

3. Yes (probably). I've never expanded trainers myself but I imagine you would just change the MAX_TRAINERS_COUNT constant and let the compiler do the rest.

4. The biggest barrier is just installing the damn thing, but there are several tutorials for that and you can always ask for help if you run into problems.
After that you can start experimenting with it and learning how to change the things you want to change.

You don't necessarily need to know any programming to use the decomp. For example, editing maps, scripts and wild encounters is pretty much the same as with binary hacking but you just use porymap instead of advance map.
Editing some other things like trainers is a bit more tricky since their data is stored in code files but you can probably figure out how to edit them by just looking at the existing data, even if you don't know C.
The one thing that you might actually need to know C for is solving merge conflicts in case you end up using various feature branches.