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Your Rom Hacking History

chrunch

    • 1,344
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    15
    Years
    • Seen Dec 10, 2021
    What is your History as a Rom Hacker?

    As for me, I started Hacking in 2009, and began my first hack attempt in Dec 2009 that I posted on PC. at the time, my maps were terrible, I only knew the simplest scripting, and I didn't know how to insert tiles. After a while (Feb 2010), my ROM crashed, and I paused my hack to improve my hacking skills. in July 2010, I came back with my second attempt at a hack. The mapping was much improved, and I could script better. Unfortunately, It never made it to a release, and due to some issues, I had to pause it again... And now I come to recently, when I had another go at hacking in July 2011, with my hack, Elite Quest. It's still going, and I've recently released an alpha.

    So that's my brief hacking history... post yours.
     
    I don't remember why, but I started hacking around Spring 2009, I downloaded a ton of tools and started a really awful hack of Ruby called Pokemon: The Time Warps, because I had no idea how to script, the project went nowhere and barely had 10 minutes of gameplay. After that failure, I quit hacking for about a year and came back to do a hack of FireRed that essentially doubled the levels of all Trainers Pokemon. I was very proud of it and posted it on a forum, unfortunately the site I uploaded the file to was unreliable and replaced my hack. Afterwards, I decided to get serious and make a real hack, so I learned how to script and started a new hack that I am still working on to this day. I think that pretty much sums it up.
     
    Uh... I started ROM hacking during Spring 2010. Then I started a horrible hack called Legendary Adventure or something... I forgot what happened to it, though. I think I lost the ROM. Then I made a hack called Hoenn Crisis or something, but that ended in failure because of some weird bug I couldn't fix. Then there was Lunar Aurora, which I stopped because I felt bored copying Sinnoh maps... And then I remade Legendary Adventure (I renamed it Destiny) and this hack had lots of various versions (I had some betas so you can check it out). Afterwards I was on a hiatus so I stopped hacking for a while, then I came back and made Crimson. Crimson is... still being worked on, yeah. But honestly I can never have the time to continue it. I'd hate to stop continuing it though, so it may be a while until I release a beta for it. After that I plan to continue where I left off on Destiny.
     
    I don't remember the dates exactly, but I think I only seriously started about a year or so ago. Basically from there I started on a long list of hacks that never really went anywhere and, needless to say, never saw the light of day. In fact, they very rarely ever saw their second town. (Man, I really need to commit to something.) And throughout, I have been pretty on and off with hacking. By that I mean that I usually at least attempt to work on something for a little while, quit, stop, and repeat the process again anywhere from weeks to months later. When I am actually doing it, I do like hacking, and I do like coming up with stories and scripts and stuff like that, but it's everything else that keeps me from actually getting a project moving. The only aspect of hacking that I'm decent at is the scripting, which is all behind-the-scenes stuff. Everything else, including everything graphical, I can't do at all. So that would probably be the reasons I've never actually progressed.
     
    Started with Super Smash Bros Brawl in March 2010 :P

    Moved on to G/S/C in June
    Then FireRed in March 2011
    Made Pokemon Awesome in June-July 2011
    Made Pokemon 2Awesome July-Aug 2011

    :D
     
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    Pokemon Crystal Onyx in Spring of 2009, it went decently far before I got tired of it/ran out of material for it. There's an alpha out.
    Pokemon Faze Version in the late summer of 2009, went off and on until about December when I let the whole thing die. Never had any releases.
    Got into competitive Brawl and didn't do any ROM hacking for a long time.
    Tried to get back into it last week, but having some problems with the first ROM I downloaded, causing me to lose two days worth of work, and for some reason I can't make level scripts work in the new AMap.
     
    When I first learned about ROM Hacking, I tried to hack Firered, I changed maps and Pokemon, just experimented with the tools... XP I have terrible luck at scripting, I mean I try to make a basic talk script and when I talk to the person it shows the buy/sell/quit on the left hand corner then it blacks out! o.O'' So after quitting Pokemon hacks, I went on to Super Mario World. I only edited a few levels (made them insanely hard and fun) but I never uploaded it anywhere and I have no idea where it went :P So up till now, I got bored on my holidays and I'm also anticipating a R/S/E remake so, I decided I'll make a challenging and fun Pokemon Emerald Version, which I called Pokemon Synthetic Emerald. So far its going good with a DEMO out. Just waiting for some feedback lol. Thats my history!
     
    Sometime in 2001 a friend had told me that his friend showed him how to play Pokemon Yellow on his computer. After looking how to do this myself I found a Gameboy emulator called 'No Cash Gameboy' of which I used to play Pokemon Red. However, my first experience with ROM hacking began while searching for Pokemon ROM sites during which I discovered a selection of Pokémon Red/Blue hacks in 2001 and 2002, these being Pokémon Generations by BG Translations, Pokémon Revolution by Colosseum Translations, and Orange Island Adventures by Dtyler/ER Trans. I had no idea how they were created so I search for a while for Pokemon Game Makers, eventually I ran into Thingy32 a hex editor, MrClick's TileED, and the not long released PokeMap by Phillip Ruben.

    Soon after I was working on editing an abandoned hack, which looking back was hardly a hack to begin with, my game was called Pokemon Emerald which had an unreleased sequel called Emerald 2: Flood, a few months after this another small hack of mine appeared; Pokemon Forest.

    Zoom along to 2003 I began working on a new Red hack, Pokémon: Crion Adventures. After Alpha One was released Crion Adventures became Pokémon Violet which has had countless restarts but none the less is still actively worked on 8 years later.

    There's been a lot more hacks worked on between now and then, RBGY, GSC, and Ruby, but none of them really were worthy of release.
     
    I made two minor hacks.

    G/S/C Enhanced:

    I based myself on the tutorial that allows you to re-enable the Safari Zone in Gold/Silver and actually have Pokémon appear in it.
    What I did was that I put the version exclusive Pokémon in the Safari Zone and added a patch of grass next to Violet City so that you could catch Growlithe/Vulpix early on.
    I also made a Crystal patch that added the Pokémon that couldn't be found in Crystal, except for those Gen I exclusive Pokémon.

    Pokémon Blue enhanced:

    I based myself on a patch found on Pokécommunity that replaces the OW graphics from Pokémon Blue to the overworld graphics from Green.
    Then I edited the wild Pokémon and added the Pokémon that were only found in Red.
    After releasing the version 1.0, I realized that Jigglypuff was really annoying (The one from the intro)
    So I used Tile Layer Pro and swapped the tiles with those from Red, so I now have a fully functional Nidorino in the intro. :)




    If you're interested in them, check out Filetrip.
     
    I can't actually remember when I started hacking fully.

    But I do remember playing Pokemon Naranja as a kid so I found this site, then I worked with a guy called Hackchu on a Yellow remake, which was really bad.
    Then I created my first hack Pokemon Johto Adventures, with little to no hacking skills at the start I actually when quite far with it thanks to the help of my old friend Samike360, then after a while I postponed it to improve on my hacking skills, made a crap hack, abandoned it, the learned to script and carried on Johto Adventures.

    Unfortunately the bugs in the game and my lack of motivation stopped me form working on it and getting into a brawl with Krillian for stealing some stuff. Now though after a hell of a long time off I am back to hacking!

    I consider myself lucky here, starting off as such a noob I got to meet and talk to some awesome guys such as, ckret2, Hackmew, metapod23, Ash493 and Manipulation.
    Sadly I havent spoken to any of them in a long time though....
     
    Umm, Well I've only starting hacking about 2-3 months ago. I guess i'm still a newb :P. Technically, I'm working on my third hack. My first two were lackluster in story, so I made it a priority in this hack and i'm happy with what I came up with. I recently learned how to tile insert, pretty well actually, However I'm still a bit dodgy on inserting tilesets that use multiple palettes. I can script, basically. But I learned how in a day. I could probably do better if I tried hard enough. I am however completely confident on most graphics related things such as TS, Replacing Trainers etc. So I would say i'm on the right track and by 2012 or 2013 I could be pretty good ;L.
     
    Spring 2009, I posted a crappy thread like all the newbies would do. Then it got more serious; I was helping a friend with a kind-of famous hack, Twilight-Road to Dreams, but when he told me he just couldn't go on, I took it over and promised I'd finish it.. but I simply couldn't.
    Later, when I got fed up searching for tile inserters, I tried it myself. And after a year of learning how to tile insert, I finally managed it and made some not-so-cool maps for my second hack, Nirvana: Mystery of the Depths, which failed quite miserably.
    Then I got better at tile inserting and mapping, and remade Nirvana's tileset from scratch. Twice.

    Then I got fed up of being alone and I quit (I was having problems with irl too) for almost a year. Now here I am, helping friends out and thinking of continuing Nirvana.
     
    My hacking history is summarized in my hack thread's intro and PC history, but because I'm lazy, I'll leave the investigation to you. You guys like to stalk, don't you.
     
    Weeell, don't this bring a couple'a memories back. Damn, it's been three years.

    Back in 2008, I stumbled upon this place and started ROM hacking. Geez, was I terrible. I started Moonshine at this point, I think. I dunno, it took a year or so but by the same time in 2009, I'm pretty sure I could speak with proper grammar and without a ridiculous amount of stupid smilies (:D). But I'm straying. Anyways, going on and off hacking, I learnt all kinds of cool stuff but never had the time, dedication or effort to go all the way. I've been here for the last three years though. On and off, watching as the pros came and went. Saw all kinds of stuff happening. And then Fire Emblem hacking. A totally new experience for me, actually, and bam this forum floated away. I stayed trolling around the DCC, but no longer did I ROM hack Pokemon. I shifted over to FE Universe (now Shrine of Seals) and had a gander at FE hacking, which I picked up relatively quickly as well. I got the closest I ever would've to an actual beta, but, IDK, ran out of ideas, beta tester never finished testing (darn you ACBeetle!) and all kinds of stuff. I tried coming back here, but I couldn't even be bothered finishing the first town. I liked mapping too much - I tried joining a team to map, but nothing interested me. My hacking ran out at the beginning of the year and MtG took over since then. But now that my yearlies are over early, I have to find something to do in class - ROM hack. Fire Emblem: Web of Deceit! Is probably going to come out. Eventually.
     
    Stumbled onto ROMs many years ago as a kid using a different alias. All I really managed to do was blam around with AdvanceMap and generally be an idiot. Got banned from the forum I was on. Gave up.

    Months ago -- with nothing to spend my coding skills on, I started getting interested in ROM hacking again. Found this place. Started working. Mostly worked in AdvanceMap. Quickly grew proficient with scripts. Eventually decided to try my hand at reading and eventually writing ASM -- succeeded.

    Weeks ago -- finally got a new code-related thing to spend my time on; I've been maintaining the code and scripting for a wonderful design community. With that taking up some of my time and most of my urge to code, I've been largely inactive when it comes to ROMs. Still drop by here daily -- got PC in my saved and pinned/app tabs -- but I don't really work on hacks anymore. Just post in help threads or conversations like this one when I feel like it.
     
    I started ROM hacking back in November 2009, wasn't even hacking really, just editing sprites, maps, text edits and little things like that. I continued until about 8-9 months ago. I wasn't expecting to ever come back because I thought I had better things to do I forgot to back up my ROM and lost all my data, thus infuriating me for the past 9 or so months.

    I was thinking last week about restarting the hack that got deleted, but then again since I'm starting fresh maybe I should start something new altogether? I don't know. So knowing me, I gave it a shot only to realise I forgot a lot of this stuff over the course of time. I'd gotten too used to other programming languages and thus had forgotten a lot of the syntax behind scripting, really slow at map making now, and my sprites are still the same. So I'm debating on continuing my old hack or adopting a new one.

    That's my history up till a couple days ago :D
     
    Wow. Its already almost been two years? That's crazy. well, I started in late 2009.

    When I found this site I downloaded all the tools and made a test hack where you can teleport anywhere you want using warp-houses. After that, I tried to make a hack called Pokemon Hematite, which went through some altering to become Pokemon Petra, which some of you might remember... In order to make it, I formed Team Pirate, which failed after about two months. Then, I stopped hacking due to being in plays and marching band over the summer. I restarted the terrible hack and tried again in a slightly different hack, still called Pokemon Petra, the second of the two actually wasn't that bad. That ended recently. Now, I'm working on a hack named Pokemon: Bells of History. This is going to take a while due to my busyness, but eventually a beta will occur.

    I think some obscure hacks were in there somewhere, but I lost them along the line.
     
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    I haven't tried making a project yet, but I know how to map, script, and basically everything you do in hacks, except for tile inserting.
     
    I've only started learning how to hack Pokemon about a month ago.
    The scripting I picked up very easily and I am already starting my first hack which is currently Pokemon - No-name (can't think of a name as of yet).

    I can already map, script and change OW sprites. (Guess I'm still a bit of a n00b)
    Will learn the rest when it is needed.

    That's basically it XD

    I've only started learning how to hack Pokemon about a month ago.
    The scripting I picked up very easily and I am already starting my first hack which is currently Pokemon - No-name (can't think of a name as of yet).

    I can already map, script and change OW sprites. (Guess I'm still a bit of a n00b)
    Will learn the rest when it is needed.

    That's basically it XD
     
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    I've worked on a Silver remake, never posted it.

    A yellow remake, didn't get far due to popularity.

    Pokemon Legends, got bored.

    Another Pokemon Legends, my PC got wiped out along with it.

    And now I'm working on a Blue remake as a Silver hack that's going well.
     
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