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Advice for ROM Hackers


Arch
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1. It takes time to learn ROM hacking, and even more time to refine those abilities.

My first “project” was an FE8 reskin called Secrets of Darkness. It made it to about Chapter 5x, and included an eerily cany descendant of FE4’s Alec (named...wait for it...Alex), because he was my favorite character from the first generation. I couldn’t figure out battle palettes, and somebody else helped me with the mugshot insertion (this was before the advent of the Event Assembler and FEditor).

Make no mistake, ROM hacking is a hobby that requires a willingness to learn. It won’t just come to you. No matter how fantastic your ideas may seem, there’s no such thing as a “make game” button. At the end of the day, it comes down to your commitment to development. Not just to game development, but to the personal development of your own skills.

2. Nothing comes out perfect on the first draft.

MRHX8F9.pngBlinuAp.png

The screenshot on the left is the first public screenshot I showed of the project (complete with a tile change error), on the right is the same chapter’s final draft. The map was completely redone, and the entire plot was reworked. Dream of Five’s first few chapters went through some pretty substantial changes in response to outcry over the difficulty.

Stubbornly clinging to your first draft only inhibits your ability to refine the product.

3. Listening to criticism only helps you in the long run.

This harks back to the previous point. I’d like to preface this one with an important distinction: “listening” doesn’t mean “do everything you’re told.” Rather, it means being open to constructive commentary and understanding that, as a designer, you aren’t infallible.

Alfred Kamon's Midnight Sun project offers a sterling example. In the first post, he offers special thanks to "those harsh but lovely fellas that killed me psychologically offered their critiques back in 2012 when this project was first announced." Alfred admitted that the original project felt rushed and didn't meet his personal expectations, and so he decided to scrap it entirely and begin anew. Such things happen; it's a healthy part of the development process. He took those criticisms, soldiered on, and ultimately wound up with a far more impressive product.

Take what is useful to you, leave the rest.

However, it's also important to understand the difference between constructive criticism and simple negativity. This is one area where the community-at-large could stand to improve. Offering constructive criticism fosters an environment that promotes development, rather than tearing down newcomers who are "below" our collective standards.

4. Nobody builds a full-length hack by themselves.

It’s important to understand the demands of developing a ROM hack. You need graphics (mugshots, animations, title screens, etc.), maps, events, and a script--at the bare minimum. It's a monumental task for any one person to undertake. My projects would’ve gone absolutely nowhere without all of the assistance I’ve been given over the years. Teamwork is absolutely essential for success.

The best way to get help is by asking for it. However, you also have to be able to back up that request with some actual substance. Putting together a rough draft, a proof of concept will get you much further than a topic with an idea and a plea for others to do the dirty work for you.

5. Planning is the most important part.

Projects are a massive undertaking, and shouldn’t be started on a whim. The more effort you devote to thorough planning, the better off you'll be in the long run. Obviously, planning shouldn't be static. Elibian Nights started with around seven planned tales, and eventually expanded to thirteen. Change is a natural part of the development cycle. What's important is building a solid, organized, and thought-out foundation to base your project upon.

Spreadsheets are your friends. Nowadays, all of my project concepts start on a Google Doc (it's great for collaborative work). Here's a sample doc, outlining vanilla FE5.

6. Don’t be constrained by the traditional structure.

As long as I’ve been developing Elibian Nights, there have been a number of relative unknowns who’ve tried to make their names by copying that concept and porting it to another continent. None of them got very far, obviously. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Personally, I’d rather be outdone than be flattered--I’d rather have two quality, unique games than one game and a shallow imitation. If a newcomer looks at my project and thinks “I want to make that,” and answers that inspiration with “Elibian Nights in Magvel,” then they’ve missed the point entirely. This means understanding the difference between “inspiration” and “imitation.”

Part of what I feel makes Elibian Nights so note-worthy is that it abandons the traditional Fire Emblem structure in favor of a segregated party with no level progression, putting the emphasis on focused storytelling rather than a grand 30-chapter narrative. That’s the point. Don’t confine yourself to the standard notion of what a Fire Emblem game ought to be, or to anybody else’s notion for that matter. Dare to be different, and be bold with your ideas. At the same time, develop a project that you'll be capable of completing. Not every hack has to be a 30-chapter masterpiece. A quality 10-chapter hack would be much more well-received than a mediocre 30-chapter game whose length is decided not because it's what works best for the project itself, but out of resignation to the "normal" way of doing things. By freeing yourself from these conceptions, it only serves to increase creative freedom.

But, above all else, work hard at honing your craft and you shall be rewarded, so that you may one day ascend to FEU to live among the hackgods.

If, of course, you think there's anything I've missed, feel free to add to this with your own personal advice. Hopefully this can be a valuable resource for newcomers and veterans alike.

Edited by Arch
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Part of what I feel makes Elibian Nights so note-worthy is that it abandons the traditional Fire Emblem structure in favor of a segregated party with no level progression, putting the emphasis on focused storytelling rather than a grand 30-chapter narrative.

This style of narrative that EN uses is why I believe it is a breath of fresh air the gaming industry desperately needs even though it's a hack. It's not a commercial game, there isn't a commercial team behind it and it's not even an indie game because it is largely founded upon what was originally in the ROM. It still manages to be not only original, but cleverly so.

By the way, Arch, your post is riddled with excess tags, some of which set the color to black, which may not work well on other skins.

The one time I had a plan to make a Fire Emblem hack was going to involve a single massive map that had small caves or fortresses explored as separate maps, but with most of the action taking place in the hub world...with the player able to consciously or, perhaps, be forced to change which "army" they were commanding and follow just about every story there would be to follow. There was going to be a rather lax plot that was mostly open ended and entering a new region of the map was planned to have some big text show up saying the name of the region, giving the game an almost Zelda feel. Indeed, I've always thought the ~30 chapter linear story format was dull, even with the gaiden chapters (which would become obnoxious rather than welcome if there had been more, despite that they do little to provide an escape from the story's linearity with how few there are).

Of course, while I was on the right track in terms of innovation, perhaps, it was a grandiose endeavour, and even though I'm one of the guys who can basically do whatever he dreams up as far as ROHM acking is concerned I still abandoned the project. Part of that may have been because of my waning interest in the series, though it's possible part of me wanted to finish the hack to have something Fire Emblem related I truly enjoyed so that I could take something more from the series. It's definitely good to have ambition, but practical steps must be made to reach such lofty goals even more than a practical goal requires.

There's a lot of smart people here who have contact info in their profiles and are more than happy to ask any sincerely well formed questions too

Edited by Izayoi
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probably the best advice someone ever gave me (it was actually hextator above who said this to me IIRC) was "just do it"

"oh, you want to write an app to dump FEditor scripts from raw data? just do it."

"oh, you want to learn how to write ASM? just do it."

don't be afraid to step up and be an innovator- a lot of the hard parts of ROMhacking have been done for you already, but it's those who figure out something new that are remembered as the top generation of hackers.

protip- at the time of this post, i am less than 17 years old and most of the stuff i've done was a few years before this post; if some random high schooler can do it pr much anyone can

Edited by CT075
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This style of narrative that EN uses is why I believe it is a breath of fresh air the gaming industry desperately needs even though it's a hack. It's not a commercial game, there isn't a commercial team behind it and it's not even an indie game because it is largely founded upon what was originally in the ROM. It still manages to be not only original, but cleverly so.

By the way, Arch, your post is riddled with excess tags, some of which set the color to black, which may not work well on other skins.

I wrote it up in Google Docs and the WYSIWYG went all haywire with it. But thank you for the kind words, man. It means a lot coming from you. Even though I didn't write this to have people sing my praises, I just wrote it up to share my experience and the lessons I've learned from it.

There's a lot of smart people here who have contact info in their profiles and are more than happy to ask any sincerely well formed questions too

Anybody can find my skype contact on my profile. That's the best way to contact me; always happy to help those who need it. Edited by Arch
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  • 5 weeks later...

protip- i am less than 17 years old and most of the stuff i've done was a few years before this post; if some random high schooler can do it pr much anyone can

disagree entirely

you're definitely much, much smarter than the average person with a much larger background in this sort of thing

what matters more than age or even the years of experience is the actual quantity of experience, knowledge, and ability to learn that somebody has, IMO

you can't really quantify this so we tend to so with "years" of experience but even that isn't consistent

the average person, IMO, isn't up to certain tasks (in this case doing the stuff you did, Cam) unless they had something to back them up in the way like previous experience, a tutor, etc.

I don't have a source for this, it's an opinion based on my own experiences, talking to countless new hackers and other people throughout the years, etc., I've literally met hundreds of "newbie" hackers over the years thanks to my contact information being in the Ultimate Tutorial and FEShrine being a sort of hacking haven for newer hackers,

It's not just a matter of effort, I wish it were, but part of the point of making tools and documentation and tutorials is to make things more accessible for those who can't figure things out on their own and aren't able to achieve higher-end stuff

other advice for ROM hackers? don't hack, lol. wait for BwdYeti's FE engine or whatever. However hard you think hacking is, it's probably harder. If you insist on hacking, go small, don't rework chapters, and learn from actual game developing protocol and such.

Biggest downfall of people is that they insist on perfectionism and don't know when to draw the line or just don't draw a line at all. You need to at some point say "this isn't great/how I want it but I can't spend anymore time here or the success of the project is at stake". You might think "I can just take as much time as I need to" but no, that's not how it really works for successful people and projects, you'll lose motivation, so will the people around you (like the ones helping you), if you're into having "fans" of your hack they'll also lose interest, and 9 times out of 10 the hack either ends up dying or becomes so inactive (as far as having visible progress or a presence goes) you'd mistake it for a corpse.

I mean, I guess if you're okay with not finishing or you're okay with 10 year development cycles, go ahead. But the biggest thing that ROM hackers can't do is actually finish anything. If you can finish something, you're already a more successful hacker than 80% of the other ones. If you can finish something more than 5 chapters, you're more successful than 95% of them.

This applies more to full custom hacks (which is kinda the norm) than reskins or balance patches. These too are hacks in a general sense but don't usually change the core of the game and therefore have extremely short development cycles (and yet they still often end up taking ages).

in short ur all fgts get rekt n00bsin short, your own work ethic, goals, and willingness to learn are the most important factors to actually making a successful hack. If you want to make a hack in the first place, chances are you already have ideas, and you'll probably come up with new ideas along the way. If you need inspiration, playing other games and also knowing the limits of what you can do as a hacker--there are a lot of them--are great.

As far as becoming an actual accomplished hacker goes, you'll need to step out of the realm of just Nightmare, FEditor Adv, and the Event Assembler. GBAGE, ASM debuggers and compilers, and a hex editor... A lot of people think hex editing is obsolete or whatever but hex editing is how Nintenlord and I originally found out most of the event codes, not to mention it's also what let me find out stuff like where the sound room data is, where other random bytes are, let me fix glitches so that I never had to deal with a game-breaking glitch that rendered my game totally broken, forcing me to go back ages... (hex editor + NUPS + back-ups + knowledge of how everything works = I could solve almost any problem on my own, a skill really important because there would've been absolutely no one I could go to if I encountered a glitch otherwise).

Hex editing can also be helpful for ASM hacking, repointing data, using patches... for smaller hacks it might not be necessary but again, without a full working of your game don't expect to do anything as massive as TLP (I'm not saying TLP is good but it's certainly massive being that people have told me they've played for 80 hours before IIRC, I think some people may have played for over a 100 due to the post-game and replay value--point being that the amount of background work that went into getting it to all function is beyond the scope of any tutorial and in some ways can't be taught).

As a final word

I'd like to point out I'm not against Arch's #3

But a smart person thinks for themselves and has to trust their own instinct to some extent. You can't please everyone, there are always going to be trolls and haters, you don't have infinite time or resources or ability, and you have to know what you want from your hack. If your goal is to please everyone, or as many people as you possibly can, expect a super long and tedious process that may never really end. If your goal is to make yourself happy, you can expect to please some people and not please a lot of other people. Dealing with it, especially when hackers are so open to the people who play their projects, is tough but another aspect of hacking. Unlike in game development, you don't have the liberty of hiding behind communication walls and other things. We can praise or complain about professional, commercial games as much as we want but those people who actually make the game never have to interact with us directly. At best, an in-between will confirm that they hear our words or something, and even then that's just a sort of acknowledgement at best--they don't argue or respond directly to comments nor are they really expected to because they're "big, professional companies" and they can hide behind that. As a modder, you can't, and people know that and will take advantage of that. Don't let them stop you like they've stopped so many others. Don't let them rule your hack for you. But don't ignore them because the fact that so many people are willing to help you and take an interest in your project in the first place is a blessing and the end result of at least hearing out what they have to say is that your own project will probably end up better and you all the happier.

tl;dr

Know what you want, know your limits, and come up with a reasonable compromise. Put in the work and it is possible for the average person to make a good hack. Certainly not easy, but definitely possible.

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You can't disagree entirely because YOU are one of those smart kids who did a bunch of stuff while they were still in high school (before that, even, if I recall correctly).

Here's another huge tip: USE Google. Don't just say you did. Don't just kind of use it. REALLY use the hell out if. Do what I did back when I joined Kodewerx and was tempted to ask Parasyte literally every question I had: pretend you're going to piss a bunch of people off by being a question spamming bastard and answer the question for yourself. If you get into the habit of stopping to think "how rude would it be for me to ask this instead of doing some research and refining my question to be more specific?" then you will ask a lot fewer stupid questions and get a lot fewer stupid answers.

Yes. There ARE stupid questions.

Edited by Kaname
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  • 11 months later...

Wait, if anyone one who finishes a hack is 80% more successful than most hackers, then that means I'm a sucessful hacker in high school.

Binding Blade +, while it does kinda suck, is a finished product, so yay I'm successful.

I know I'm still a noob with lodes to learn, but hey, this boosts my ego. Thanks Crimson Red

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  • 1 month later...

I know I'm going to be the one getting banned for this xD

Someone should maybe lock this so that no one gets in trouble for necroposting, unless the fact that it's pinned means than no one can get banned xD

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  • 4 months later...
  • 7 months later...

There shouldn't be a rule against necroposting in the first place. It's necessary to add new research and documentation to old questions. As long as it's on topic to what was being discussed, I see no problem with it.

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