Why are almost all the Pokemon Rom Hacks/custom games based entirely on gen. 3 (e.g. firered/emerald)? Is there any hope for upgrading the base rom?

[tommychai]

This is an enquiry which I have just made on Reddit and would like to post here for a faster response (if possible, by the developers themselves):

"I'm genuinely concerned about the lack of updates in the generation base rom of all Pokemon fan games. Although most developers do follow up on the features of new Pokemon versions (e.g. B2W2, mega evolutions), almost all the Rom Hacks and Custom games continue to use Gen 3 as their base roms (e.g. firered/emerald). As a result, top hacks like Resolute, Glazed, Flora Sky and many many others do not update on stat changes, learnsets (leveling moves) and items. Consequently, new moves like Dragon Rush, Draco Meteor, Dark Pulse or Psystrike are often missing in most of these hackroms, while pokemons like Garchomp in Dark Rising and Lucario in Glazed could have been made more stronger by the generation update. New items, like Choice Specs and Choice Scarfs which have become important pieces of the game, could not be sought, and cheaters who want to use GameShark/AR to make things easy, form their best team or learn new movesets also find it impossible due to the limits of gen 3 rom.

While I recognise these developers' efforts to expand and venture on the exciting and uncharted waters of new storylines and mega evolutions, have anyone ever thought of also updating the gen rom of the hack versions? In fact, why have almost all the developers not updated their gen based roms at all? Or what is obstructing them from doing so? [I read somewhere in the Hack forum that scripts are rendered impossible for Gen 4 roms onwards, but is that really the case and why?] They could have been made more incredible.

(Although there are Pokémon Blaze Black & Pokémon Volt White, its sequel, Storm Silver and Flawless Platinum [etc.], the usage of Gen 4 and above base roms in general remains uncommon, and in fact they remain the 'cleaner' versions that follow the main storyline with few altered features.)"

 

[ANARCHit3cht]

I would imagine, and I'm not a rom hacker by any means, that there is already such a large pool of available research and tools in place that it makes it far easier to continue working with what is available. It would seem to me(again, not a rom hacker) that new tools, methods and ideas would have to be made from the ground up to work on higher gen roms. It's easier for people to develop ways to bring new features to these Roms than it is to do all the work to make hacks of higher gens which already have these features.

It could also be an effort to remain on GBA emulators because they generally perform more reliably than DS emulators.

 

[SpartaLazor]

Because Gen III has more research done for it and is just easier to hack than anything beyond that. Gen IV games don't use tile sets - they use 3D maps that emulate tilesets, if I'm not mistaken. That's not the easiest thing in the world to do.

Besides, with all the research of Gen III, why would there be a need to delve into other gens? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[Lycanroc]

SpartaLazor summed it up pretty well; Gen III works well enough - any battle mechanics can be implemented thanks to all the research done on it - and an upgrade to Gen IV would be too much of a hassle for what it's worth. Hacking the DS titles is a completely new process with significantly less research; it can be done, but why would you when RSE/FRLG work just fine?

 

[DizzyEgg]

Tbh all hacks you mentioned are pretty poor in terms of new mechanics. Most hackers care more about the story and tiles than stuff like new items or updated moves. Tho I'm trying to change that trend as you can see in my signature.

 

[khkramer]

SpartaLazor summed it up pretty well; Gen III works well enough - any battle mechanics can be implemented thanks to all the research done on it - and an upgrade to Gen IV would be too much of a hassle for what it's worth. Hacking the DS titles is a completely new process with significantly less research; it can be done, but why would you when RSE/FRLG work just fine?

Well for one I would love romhacks with the B2W2 battle engine.
The animated sprites just make battles feel that much more 'dynamic' and fast-paced when compared to gen 3 titles or earlier gen 4 titles.

The perfect Pokemon game in my opinion would be Emerald with the battle system of BW, ofcourse this is not possible in 3rd gen so I appreciate any efforts that go towards further research of the DS games.

Why do X when Y works just fine is a good mindset when you never want to progress beyond current possibilities ( I'm exaggerating a bit here :P )

 

[BluRose]

Well for one I would love romhacks with the B2W2 battle engine.
The animated sprites just make battles feel that much more 'dynamic' and fast-paced when compared to gen 3 titles or earlier gen 4 titles.

The perfect Pokemon game in my opinion would be Emerald with the battle system of BW, ofcourse this is not possible in 3rd gen so I appreciate any efforts that go towards further research of the DS games.

Why do X when Y works just fine is a good mindset when you never want to progress beyond current possibilities ( I'm exaggerating a bit here :P )

animations themselves aren't actually that hard to implement; even my friends and i did that like back in november!
the hard part is actually finding sprites :P

lol it is totally possible; the beauty of hacking the code itself is that hardware becomes the limit. a better illustration of what is currently limiting us: lack of sprites
perhaps a better use of these would be to modify the existing ds-style resource thread to have full animations and not just second frames, à la same system

why do X when Y works just fine is a limiting mindset in most cases, but the thing here is that gen iv is all about 3d. we have the gen iii roms split open; the only thing that could possibly make what we can currently do better is coding/documentation of an animation scripting system a disassembly, which people are actively working on at the moment anyways
and besides, one thing that people mostly consider when actually deciding "hey, let's hack" is which game they played as a child; nostalgic value leads many to their rom of choice, hence a large population choosing fire red/emerald atm
i do think that people will progressively get more interested in gen iv hacking in the upcoming years, but hey, this has been said since 2012