Could there be too much data?

[TheEncoreBee]

Hello everybody, I am new here!

I would imagine getting into hacking in the future, and I was wondering! Could one add too much data into a patch, so that the emulator would not be able to run it, because of not being optimized to do so?

Or do I not really have a clue of what I am talking about?

[Kirb1337]

i think the max rom size is 32 mb . the fe7 rom is 16 mb , easily expandable , and have free space within the 16 mb , so you should be good.

[Eliwan]

Yes.

However, it's not going to actually happen--

For some size references for GBA hacking, a mug takes up somewhere in the realm of 0x1600 to 0x1800 bytes; song data takes up maybe 0x1000 bytes per minute of song...

Maps are also pretty small in terms of byte size in rom; events are quite compact and animations despite taking up a fair amount of space take up nowhere near enough space to let you get trapped without it---

because the rom can hold up to 0x01FFFFFF bytes of stuff in it (32 megabytes); and the vanilla rom doesn't even use all 16 megs that it is aligned for.

If you just manage your revisions & make sure to not redundantly insert something; or make sure to overwrite the old thing when you insert a new copy of it

(easily done if you don't use feditor)

then you won't ever have a problem with running out of space

[TheEncoreBee]

Well, then one would be able to add a lot more!

Thank you for the information!

Edited January 27, 2017 by TheEncoreBee

[Stanツ_]

I want to clarify:

Sure you can add a lot of "data" to the rom, but keep in mind that raw space is not the only limitation you are going to encounter: without doing some *really* heavy engine modifications, the amount of characters/classes/chapters/maps/tilesets/animations/musics/background/mugs/... (or anything that is indexed with "only" 1 byte) is limited to 2^8=256 (or 254 even since I believe indexes 0x00 and 0xFF are often reserved). You are also limited by the size of graphics/maps, because the engine, and more importantly the actual GBA hardware, can not handle higher sizes (I believe the biggest map you can get is of tile size ~30x30). And other stuff like that.

Of course, for a standard hack, the base engine is plenty enough to do most things you'd want it to have, but this does mean you can't just make a hack that combines the three GBA games together in one without losing any content (for example). Or making a 10-chapter long hack that happens entirely on one big 100x100 map.

Please tell me if I said anything absurd there, I don't really know that much about actual hacking, I mostly just looked at how things work and not done much myself (yet... ?).

[Kirb1337]

1 hour ago, StanH_ said:

a hack that combines the three GBA games together

why would anyone even want to do that ? i can understand why someone would want to combine fe6 and 7 but 8 too?

also

Quote

• Location: Brittany, France

oh hai there

[Eliwan]

2 hours ago, StanH_ said:

I believe the biggest map you can get is of tile size ~30x30

i think it's closer to 55x45

(rows are more expensive than columns; i'm pretty sure 45x55 doesn't work)

[Tequila]

I believe it's 43x38 (or somewhere around there) in 7/8; I heard 6 has larger limits but I don't know them off-hand.

To address OP's question, yes, there can be too much data, but you are highly unlikely to hit it.

[Blademaster!]

As someone who is running close to hitting the too much data issue, even at 32MB, it's something you're barely likely to hit unless you add in pretty much every spell and battle animation available in the community, which is what I did.

[CT075]

i'm pretty sure if you manage your space well (read: don't use FEditor) you could probably fit the majority of what this community has produced without much fuss; spells and animations are reasonably big but not that big. it's music that takes a fuckton of space.

(incidentally you could absolutely fit all three gba games into a single ROM if you tried hard enough)

Edited January 28, 2017 by CT075