What's the step towards ROM hacking

[Ryuke]

Like many hopeful. I want to get into ROM hacking. Yayyyy... 

I knew about ROM hacking many years back... however now 2017... there's many different tools (IE: MakeHack and EA ... and FEditor shouldnt be used?

 

So... my question is ... what's the process of ROM hacking (mainly FE8).

Here's the few things I like to first focus on.

What I have done: Read Blazer Ultimate Tutorial, dabbled on FEditor (also crashed my Nightmare-updated game... just by changing text)

1) What's the next step should one take after learning Nightmare (yes.. that's suppose to be the easy stuff .. redirecting pointer)?

Dabble on FEditor more Or Learn EA or ...?

[Tequila]

Here's a checklist of things you can learn (note, some of these are more difficult than others, and it's not necessarily in order):

See how far you can get in this list (courtesy of circleseverywhere):
1. Make Iron Swords have 30 MT
2. Change lord's base STR to 20
3. Change lord's name to Fluffy
4. Change lord's portrait to Moustachioed Villager
5. Change lord's battle sprite to hot pink
6. Create a new class with animations
7. Make a new prologue chapter using events
8. Insert a new map
9. Port a map sprite from another FE game
10. Replace the theme song with the Mario theme
11. Replace the title screen background with a smiley face
12. RAM hack lord's STR to 127
13. Write an ASMC that raises lord's STR to 127

If you're interested in progressing further, I recommend picking a short project and just jump in. MAFC (Make A Fun Chapter) is a perfect opportunity, although you don't have to submit anything if you don't want to. I'd recommend completing this small project before beginning anything big and ambitious; romhacking is very time-consuming, and a lot of people plan out huge ambitious projects, only to give up within a few days because they didn't realize how much work is involved.

EA buildfiles are great for projects (of all sizes, but definitely for the big ones), but have a pretty steep learning curve. There's nothing wrong with using FEditor to learn the basics, but it does have a nasty habit of messing with things that it shouldn't (like eating text, randomly screwing up spell animations, and then like). If you use the buildfile method, FEditor can be used as a resource (to look up text/portraits/animations, that kind of thing), but just don't save anything. It's not actively evil, just...misguided.

[Ryuke]

Let's See

1-4 Done... (Assuming 4... means using Villager portrait.. if he meant drawing a mustache... Oh god... Moulder please help me here)

5 Uses someone else sprite. If not ... FERecolor.

6 -- .... Oh great... no... this sounds hard

7-9 => Sounds interesting to do. *Did watched a tutorial*