ROM hacking

[DarkChibimon]

ROM hacking, you like it, you don't or you like some of it? What is your option on ROM hacking.

[MagusKnight]

ROM hacking rocks. I do it to my FFT game.

[Ryan]

I hate rom hacks point blank

[Aura]

Definitely awesome.

[Guilmon and a shotgun]

It would be helpful if you actually told us what ROM hacking is. I mean, how am i supposed to know if i like it or not if i don't even understand what it is?

[Ryan]

ROM hacking, you like it, you don't or you like some of it? What is your opinion on ROM hacking.

Let me explain why i dont like it. First i would have to beat the game first or at least play it. Now i dont want to play a fake game. Unless i played the original. but other than that its not too bad. I just dont like it.

[MagusKnight]

Yes, that's all good, but many ROM hackers will make easy games harder, while not changing the content itself. For instance, powering up the enemies.

[senjuro]

There are LOTS of really excellent hacked ROMs out there, as well as just patches for existing ROMs that tweak/fix game issues. Example: Final Fantasy 3/6. There are a lot of issues with the way the game does things. For example, Seizure damage on Undeads is supposed to be reversed. Gau's rages should be alphabetized. Evade should actually do something, instead of physical AND magical defense depending on the MBlock stat. And so on. There are patches to fix all that.

There are also patches that contain player-made enemies, usually incorporating recolored sprites from other enemies in the game, but featuring dynamic attack algorithms for maximum challenge to serious players, reacting as much to the player's actions as following a flowchart. Kinda complicated stuff, but the people who can do it WELL kinda blow my mind a bit. Must be tricky to reverse-engineer a games coding style to be able to manipulate it so fluently.

[MagusKnight]

Not really, it's really fun to do that stuff, just use percentages. For instance, I had this one patch for FF1 where there is a MEGA ULTRA SUPER KEWL NEATO RAZE BOSS! And I played as him against 4 computer 99's, and recorded all the actions I made and how many times I made them. I also recorded the number of turns, and finally used percentages to make Raze play as I would, and all holy hell I could not beat him!!!

[senjuro]

Well I guess that's the point, to have a dynamic, adaptable opponent that's difficult to defeat. Can't say I've ever tried to use any of those patches, but I've read some of the documentation people have out about their creations...pretty intense stuff indeed.