Episode 122a - Rom Hacking and Retro Gaming

Welcome to Episode 122a Main Topic

yes it is i the boy - who am i even



    -son of unclemarc


    -stevens type kid


    -longtime mathematics enjoyer


    -"pro" gamer


 


a quick personal history


    -first talk about how i got into older
games


    -wii virtual console, snes emulator in
3rd grade (messing around with lunar magic, despite not knowing
how to use it)


    -got into gba in grade 6


    -got into fe in grade 8, fell out a bit,
got back into it in junior year


    -got into hacking in freshman year of
college


 


retro gaming


    -old games are cool, but good luck
finding the carts and consoles


    -if you're not japanese there goes a lot
of games


    -solve these problems with emulation-
play classic games, translate foreign games, etc.


    -pretty much every system you can think
of has emulators developed


    -of note here is also the ability to play
hacks


 


what the hell is a romhack


    -take a game that you enjoy, and use your
numerous powers to turn it into something new


    -graphics, sounds, level design,
mechanics- the whole nine yards


    -why do you hack? for fun, to learn about
old stuff, to show off to people


    -it's like making a game, but you kinda
have to be purely passion driven (no profit for you)


 


what do ya need, anyway


    -a rom, obviously (yeah sure i totally
dumped one myself)


    -patience and perseverance


    -whatever hacking tools exist for the
game you wish to tackle


    -god there's so many of them


    -game specific tools (ex. lunar magic,
febuilder)


    -assemblers/disassemblers


    -debugging emulators (ex. no$gba)


    -graphical tools (ex. usenti, paint if
you hate yourself)


    -sound stuff (usually working with midis,
either custom made, downloaded, or ripped from other games)


 


decomp vs. binary


    -binary hacking is more straightforward
to setup (usually)


    -decompilations/buildfiles allow much
more freedom


    -buildfiles also give you powerful
version control


    -if you screw up, bug fixing is far more
merciful


    -binary has you burning edits into your
rom- scary!


 


i just told you buildfiles are rad but anyway use binary hacking


    -that all being said, binary hacking
tools are probably the best way to start


    -the simplicity allows you to acquaint
yourself with the nitty gritty


    -gonna be honest, i started with very
little knowledge on the specifics


    -never thought i'd casually pick up
hexadecimal


    


you don't even have to do it all yourself


    -lots of hacking communities have tons of
resources


    -graphical/musical assets for the
artistically unable


    -engine hacks so you don't have to
reinvent the wheel adding cool shit


    -documentation on the inner workings of a
game


    


but sometimes you gotta


    -gba assembly haunts my dreams


    -thankfully, other options exist


    -pokemon decomps use C, CHAX is a
somewhat recent thing in fe


    -with the gui methods, you can do a ton
of stuff without ever touching asm


    -just gotta be clever and maybe rub an
elbow or two


    


screw it, fe hacking scene history


    -nightmare (good old csv editing),
various general use gba tools


    -apparently hackers used to map in ms
paint


    -feditor is a nightmare hellscape


    -despite this, we still had hacks


    -shoutout to the last promise, made by a
highschooler with the equivalent of rusty sponges


    


    the golden age begins


    -event assembler- insert data with a powerful
and versatile tool


    -buildfiles insert most of their data through
EA


    -in march 2017, skillsystem dropped- a
revolution in the hacking scene to turn fe8 into a game as
feature rich as modern entries


    -emblem magic- an all in one gui hacking tool
dropped in august 2017


    -then febuilder dropped in september 2017 and
kinda overshadowed it


    -an aside on pokemon romhacking making you
download like 80 things


    -builder is a gift from a god known as 7743-
easy to use UI with a ton of features and some underrated
debugging power


    -skillsys got ported to builder early on, and
it has a ton of ui to complement it


    -ever since, we've had tons more hacks


Links

https://romhacking.net





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Intro and Outro music credit: Tri Tachyon, Digital MK 2
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/