[Other] What are the limitations of ROM Hacks

[segfault]

Hello,

I have been re-playing a lot of the older generation Pokémon lately and stumbled upon ROM hacks, initially I was intrigued by the possibility of a gen IV remake of Fire Red and Leaf Green though the existing ones I have found don't seem to be anywhere near complete and/or just abandoned.

I was wondering is this due to any sort of limitation with ROM hacking, i.e what can and cannot be done with ROM hacks? I suppose my main concern is that it might not be possible to introduce a completely new use for the stylus and touch screen amongst other features such introducing the Vs. Seeker to HGSS (since it doesn't have one, but it does have a full map of Kanto apparently).

I'm not concerned about the amount of programming involved or artwork that needs to be created (programmer by trade pixel art is a hobby) so long as ROM hacking is not a dead end.

Any information is much appreciated, thank you.

 

[chrunch]

Anything is possible, you could even turn the games into completely different ones if you were skilled enough. The only real limitation is the hardware. That said, hacking them to that extent is very difficult and the DS games haven't been hacked much (there isn't much interest in doing so, most people prefer GBA), so it would be far from easy.

 

[segfault]

Yeah, I can imagine it would be quite difficult. Is there any open source group effort to put together a complete ROM editor package NDS/GBA, in essence something resembling a game engine? I imagine it might pick apart the pieces of a ROM to give users a bare bones starting point for developing their own Pokémon hacks with bits and pieces that could be "dropped in". I could be looking at this all wrong with my pretty vague understanding of what's happening here but I would be interested in getting involved with something like that.


Cheers

 

[Blah]

Yeah, I can imagine it would be quite difficult. Is there any open source group effort to put together a complete ROM editor package NDS/GBA, in essence something resembling a game engine? I imagine it might pick apart the pieces of a ROM to give users a bare bones starting point for developing their own Pokémon hacks with bits and pieces that could be "dropped in". I could be looking at this all wrong with my pretty vague understanding of what's happening here but I would be interested in getting involved with something like that.


Cheers

I don't think the stylus thing you have in mind is possible because the screen size of the GBA is limited, and although the hardware is perfectly capable of processing decent graphical effects in trade-off for FPS, the second input method (touch screen) is obviously not supported. So while you CAN code a touchscreen, you would need to make your own emulator to support it because the GBA hardware doesn't support it.

You would need to develop some sort of cleaver work around to swap between the "touch screen" and the original game screen. At that point, I'm not sure it'd be very much what you wanted. If you're deadset on this idea, you should probably attempt to make an RXMP instead.

There are limitation on the hardware, but 99% of the limitations end up being the hacker's ability.

 

[segfault]

Hi FBI Agent, I think you misunderstand slightly, I'm not trying to introduce the touch screen to the GBA, I wanted to use the NDS and just provide another use for the touch screen as opposed to say for example the Pokétch in DPP. I am aware that there will be limitations posed by the hardware and I intend in staying within these confines.

From what I gather it should be possible to do what I want but the tools are not available (as of yet) to do it easily, so I've started looking into the NDS file format and various other nuances of it in order to begin the long and arduous process of developing my own tools. I very much doubt I will see results quickly but it should prove to be a fun project nonetheless :)

Incidentally, where can I find decent information/specs on the NDS and associated files? Google is turning up old forum posts with mostly dead links. Are there any recommendations for this kind of thing? I've thus far been able to read the NDS header thanks to a wiki but that's about it.

 

[daniilS]

problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm

 

[segfault]

problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm

Perfect! Thank you :)


Edit: Reading through there is some great information here, but it's become quite clear that its far from a complete reference. For instance, at the moment I'm interested in all the different types of file formats found in a NitroArchive, do you know of any additional resources similar?

 

[sonic65101]

Well, I heard that by using UPS patches to can extend a GBA ROM to 32 megabytes, but you can't go more than that. There's probably a lot of other limitations I don't know about. I don't actually make ROM hacks, but I plan to in the future.