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why haven't you finished your ROM hack?

ROM hack? I hardly knew 'er!
 
Wobb said:
i keep restarting the hack

this time the plot is great tho
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this is one of the reasons for me, I keep starting over or redoing parts of the game because I think I can do better

also 10 years in there are 10 new generations of Pokémon that I want to insert and the thought of that just kills any motivation I might have
 
I think that you might have better luck with a community rom hack if people did stuff that they liked separately, and then came together at some point to merge it all into one big rom. Sure you'd get something chaotic and abstract art-ish, but that can be cool. A "how do I make this map and this dialogue and the Fakémon … go together?!" deal.

In my experience central planning and coordinating hobbyists don't mix.
 
Pleasure said:
We should all just funnel our strengths into, like... a Community Rom Hack. With so many people working on a single project, it's sure to get finished.
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Teams literally NEVER work out. I personally am one of the only scripters/asm geeks willing to help out on teams (skills in high demand on the launchpad), but never actually get to do much past setting up routines and patches, because production never gets all the way to me and the storywriters, spriters, mappers, etc never actually make anything for me to insert into the rom so I'm stuck doing nothing until everyone quits and the leader abandons the project... seriously I've been on like 3 teams and they all last like 1-2 months tops.

That's why I haven't finished a hack yet. Because teams NEVER work out. But about a few weeks ago I said "screw it" and now I'm finally making my own project, and already I'm further along then any of the teams I worked on ever did! :D

Disturbed said:
we would need a squad of scriptybois that wont abandon us
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....and I need a squad of everythingelsebois that won't abandon me if I'm going to even remotely consider joining yet another team.
 
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Because ROM hacking has been a dying art. Look at how many active threads there are in both the completed ROM hacks and progressing ROM hack forums. Gen III is like 14 years old now and anyone who is interested in playing Pokemon wants to play the newer games or they are too busy playing Fortnite or some crap like that. The talent for this site is very few in numbers for anyone older than 18. Think of people like karatekid, danny, gogojjtech, josefig, etc. They were young when they started and now they aren't doing anything with it. It's just a hobby. A very specific hobby of a certain type of game that came out at least 14 years ago. With a limited audience and limited interest, and the decision to use their free time for other things, most people give up.
Personally, I enjoy doing it because I think it is fun. It is something I have invested time into that I can hand down to my kids one day and be like "look what your dumb ol' dad did when he was younger". While for some it is growing old and going to college and leaving behind ROM hacking (if they ever even decided to learn it beyond changing a few pixels), for some it is moving on to a new hobby or a new chapter. I've managed to stick around even after doing five deployments and having two children. I'm not as fast as I'd like to be with it but then again, I'm not really doing this for anyone but myself. I wish it were more popular or at least I wish the community was what it was just a few years ago. It promotes creativity which I think is a dying trait in society.

tl;dr: romhacking is a dying art. it was at its prime in 2014 and slowly died from there. I haven't finished 'cus I like to try for perfection in my scripts and maps. And I prefer my other hobby (D&D) or spending time with my family over doing it these days. (Sorry, losing Discovery 2.0 kind of killed ROM hacking for me)

tl;dr2: Without a true community, ROM hacking will die with your unfinished ROMs
 
Le pug said:
Because ROM hacking has been a dying art. Look at how many active threads there are in both the completed ROM hacks and progressing ROM hack forums. Gen III is like 14 years old now and anyone who is interested in playing Pokemon wants to play the newer games or they are too busy playing Fortnite or some crap like that. The talent for this site is very few in numbers for anyone older than 18. Think of people like karatekid, danny, gogojjtech, josefig, etc. They were young when they started and now they aren't doing anything with it. It's just a hobby. A very specific hobby of a certain type of game that came out at least 14 years ago. With a limited audience and limited interest, and the decision to use their free time for other things, most people give up.
Personally, I enjoy doing it because I think it is fun. It is something I have invested time into that I can hand down to my kids one day and be like "look what your dumb ol' dad did when he was younger". While for some it is growing old and going to college and leaving behind ROM hacking (if they ever even decided to learn it beyond changing a few pixels), for some it is moving on to a new hobby or a new chapter. I've managed to stick around even after doing five deployments and having two children. I'm not as fast as I'd like to be with it but then again, I'm not really doing this for anyone but myself. I wish it were more popular or at least I wish the community was what it was just a few years ago. It promotes creativity which I think is a dying trait in society.

tl;dr: romhacking is a dying art. it was at its prime in 2014 and slowly died from there. I haven't finished 'cus I like to try for perfection in my scripts and maps. And I prefer my other hobby (D&D) or spending time with my family over doing it these days. (Sorry, losing Discovery 2.0 kind of killed ROM hacking for me)

tl;dr2: Without a true community, ROM hacking will die with your unfinished ROMs
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I like this post.
 
Our team hack is still in the works. Every team member's time and effort put into all the different facets of the hack keeps fueling my motivation, it's just a downright fun project to work on.
 
hjk321 said:
Teams literally NEVER work out. I personally am one of the only scripters/asm geeks willing to help out on teams (skills in high demand on the launchpad), but never actually get to do much past setting up routines and patches, because production never gets all the way to me and the storywriters, spriters, mappers, etc never actually make anything for me to insert into the rom so I'm stuck doing nothing until everyone quits and the leader abandons the project... seriously I've been on like 3 teams and they all last like 1-2 months tops.

That's why I haven't finished a hack yet. Because teams NEVER work out. But about a few weeks ago I said "screw it" and now I'm finally making my own project, and already I'm further along then any of the teams I worked on ever did! :D



....and I need a squad of everythingelsebois that won't abandon me if I'm going to even remotely consider joining yet another team.
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Sometimes I get hate for working on a project with a team and then another project on my own. I think you understand the reason I do this is because teamwork is a lot less productive than most would expect. Everyone has personal lives that get in the way and you end up with 1/7 of what you were planning on getting done each week.

Good on you for sticking with your own project.

As for my team project, I wouldn't recommend joining unless we become more productive lol. We've restarted twice in the past 11 days, but even with that, everyone is busy doing their own thing and not a lot gets done.

i'm not finished because i just started
 
What comes to the team work discussion, just raising this point that I really believe teams can work out, but editing a single rom file is a team is just a no-no. What you can however do is to form a team to edit a disassembly instead.

I believe that beside pokered and pokecrystal, the disassemblies of FireRed, Ruby and Emerald are in pretty good state. Thus a team could do a rom hack based on a disassembly, and use git for proper version control. This would allow everyone to
1) work out their own changes in branches, and have proper pull request and code review process for merging changes and thus ensuring that nothing is broken when more changes are committed, and
2) have clear visibility to the current state of the project.

I have never worked on a pokemon hack as a team before, but I believe that one of the most problematic things about working on a team project is the fact that only the "project leader" understands more or less, how everything is coming along. As others won't immediately see the results of their, or others' work implemented in the hack, this will naturally decrease motivation over time. There is most likely also lots of uncertainty among everyone working on the project as well.

Using git can be used for overcoming the above challenges. I'm not going to write out much details here, but using git for version control of a disassembly is much more justifiable than using git for version control of changes to a rom file - especially if you're working as a team. But this is based on the fact that it can show all changes done to "text files", but cannot show visible changes done to binary files. And even if it could, other team members would have very hard time tracking down, what kind of changes have been implemented to the rom file in a certain commit if the changes would be just binary. Even an IPS file would a more readable format of displaying changes.

But yeah.. I'm not sure how to sum this up very well, but git with disassemblies is the way to go if you want to start a pokemon hack team project. Most hackers don't have experience with either disassemblies, or version control though which lead into teams having some means for distributing code changes to the rom files. That hardly works though, and thus most team projects naturally (but sadly), fail in the end.


Also not rooting up for disassemblies or git here by any means. My own hack is actually an "old class" binary rom hack (= rom hack of a rom file), but I do use Github for version control. It's not so powerful tool for me because I can't use it for tracking changes done to the rom file (because it doesn't display changes done to binary files), but I can at least use it for version control of all my other files (storyline and ideas planning, used flags, documentation, tools etc.). And if my PC got suddenly broken, I would still have all my recent work available there in cloud.
 
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Teams work out


You should stop hiring 10+ beta testers and "I don't have any skills but I can give you some stupid ideas and ruin your game" type of guys and try to find guys with skills. But if you can't find them, work alone.
 
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Kurapika said:
Because I couldn't afford any more time for it, sadly.
Quite sad, seeing all the time I wasted on making my own custom sprites, ASM hacking, ideas brainstorming for the story, ... in vain.
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If you were having fun when you were doing those things, then it wasn't in vain. This is a hobby, the only end goal should be having fun doing it.
 
Spherical Ice said:
If you were having fun when you were doing those things, then it wasn't in vain. This is a hobby, the only end goal should be having fun doing it.
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I agree, I certainly enjoyed it!
But my end goal was that I wanted to share something of my own with other Pokémon fans, but I couldn't reach that point and that's frustrating.
 
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Hey guys!!!
Im working in a new fan game, it´s my first time doing this can you give me some advices from someone who alredy have some experience thanks ('-')


:smile:
 
Just1Player said:
Hey guys!!!
Im working in a new fan game, it´s my first time doing this can you give me some advices from someone who alredy have some experience thanks ('-')


:smile:
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...did you even read the title of this thread? If your goal is to finish a hack, then don't ask for advice in the "why havent you finished your hack" thread. In any case, this kind of question is better off in its own thread.

Be sure to specify hack vs standalone game, makes a world of difference.
 
Sakib66 said:
Teams work out


You should stop hiring 10+ beta testers and "I don't have any skills but I can give you some stupid ideas and ruin your game" type of guys and try to find guys with skills. But if you can't find them, work alone.
Click to expand...

I understand that my comment is a bit off topic. I also understand that your comment was put in the most cynical sense.
... but I can't help but take offense to that comment.

Despite the fact that I was once one of those geeks that used to spend all my time sitting in front of a computer building programs... I'm now one of those people you describe that has "no skills".
- True, I don't hack vid games as a hobby. I also can't remember C language anymore, can't remember how to do scripting anymore, or understand ASM to save my life, and mapping is simply of those things that sparks my curiosity but have no "skills" in that either... but just because I'm one of those people that has "no skills" doesn't make me completely useless either.
- It often helps having a player/beta tester (without "skills") who understands how the average gamer plays but also investigates a game and any unforseen issue, unlike the average gamer. I might not be able to fix what problems I see, but at least know how to explain it in a way for the creator to understand what may need to be done on his/her end.

Don't get me wrong, I have the upmost respect for ROM hackers like yourself... even ROM hackers who discontinue a hack due to any reason.
I hope one day I can afford a computer to learn how to do what you do... but till then, I'm still one of those people with "no skills".
 
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Out of curiosity, does anyone know roughly how many completed fan games, ROM hacks or otherwise, were made by just one person relative to how many were made by teams?
 
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