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