If I wanted to hack another series of titles. . .

[bunny: spider bitten]

Is there any data that's fairly consistent with all GBA titles that I can just bypass when searching for the data I'm looking for?

I figure this may not be the best place to ask, but "ROM hacking" isn't specifically limited to FE.

[Metal Rabbit]

I guess that would depend on the series.

FE for example is easier than others because the games share some data that only hackers would know about. Anything else can be hex-edited.

[Tino]

You can hack any game you want :o

[Metal Rabbit]

I misunderstood...

[bunny: spider bitten]

No, you got it right. I was just hoping for a better answer.

I know all about hex editing, I've just never figured out how the editors went about finding the pointers in each title in the first place.

If there's some sort of trick, I'd like to know it. But my first guess and the most likely answer is there is no such trick.

[Metal Rabbit]

Well, I'd refer you to a member named Arch. He's an accomplished hacker/editor and he shows other users how to do it too.

[flyingace24]

Well, I'd refer you to a member named Arch. He's an accomplished hacker/editor and he shows other users how to do it too.

No offense to Arch, but I don't think he's ever actually found anything. Arch, correct me if I'm wrong, buddy. He knows how to edit stuff very well, but that's after the data has already been documented and found.

What I do when searching for stuff is use a hex editor with a search function for one (HxD is my hex editor of choice and I like how a lot of people use it now after seeing my first text editing tutorial). It depends on what you're looking for really. I'll use the FE6 Support Editor I made for you as an example.

The first thing I did is find out what the actual data was in the game (I looked here on Serenes Forest for that). I saw that Roy supported with 10 characters, had a 56 base level and 4 growth level with Lilina. I used that data from there. Lilina's character number is 0x(I forget off the top of my head, let's pretend it's 0x1F). 56 is 0x38 in hex while 4 is 0x04. Using that, you kinda just search for it.

However, if you don't know any of that stuff, generally a corrupter works very well. It basically just screws over a certain part of your ROM. It may seem stupid at first, but when you mess up something, you can test your ROM to see if anything happened. If something did happen, you'll know that the data is located in the section you corrupted. You can then just keep repeating the process until you find something. It's kinda like using a phone book and splitting it in half until you find the name that you want.

EDIT: Fixed some spelling errors in my post.

Edited October 6, 2008 by flyingace24

[bunny: spider bitten]

I already considered that, though. And I'm looking for values in the thousands.

[flyingace24]

Values in the thousands can still be converted to hex.

2419 is 0x973 in hex. But as almost all the data in almost every game is, the bytes are reversed. So you'd have to search for 73 09.

Searching takes a very long time though. And it only works if you know what you're looking for.

[bunny: spider bitten]

And if the address I'm looking for appears multiple times, how do I sort through the options?

[flyingace24]

You can do one of two things.

1) Mess around with the values and test if anything happened.

2) Check around the data and see if you can locate any similar data (that you know for sure is correct). For example, I searched for Roy's supports. Say I found the data for Lilina and Roy's supports. I also know that Roy supports with Marcus. If I find Marcus' support data around the same area, I know I am in the right place. If not, try the other options.