Hello, Everyone!
I’ve recently starting to work on my rom hack, and I have a question regarding the size of the ROM I’m working on. I heard in a FEBuilderGBA YouTube tutorial video that every time I click on [ Write to ROM ] I add a small space to the ROM. I know a clean FE8 ROM is around 16,384 KB.
Should I worry about the size of the ROM that I’m working on?
And if yes, is there a upper limit that I should avoid surpassing? (like not to have my ROM file bigger that 50,000 KB for example)
Yes, your ROM should not exceed 32mb. While saving may take some space each time it is performed, I personally have been saving rather liberally and I’m not anywhere close to that 32mb limit. Using large amounts of custom resources like custom animations eat away the space available rather quickly, so be mindful of that.
Is there a way to decrease the size of the ROM? and how can I do that?
To my knowledge there are not many ways to decrease Rom size. One way to do that is to rebuild it, but rebuild may not always be successful and can result in your Rom getting messed up, so if you attempt it make sure you have a back up.
FEBuilder has a Rebuild function that gets rid of empty space introduced during editing. The reason the size increases every time is because FEBuilder generally does not overwrite data.
If you still want to reduce the size, there should also be an option to remove unused assets somewhere in the program.
Buildfiles are slightly more efficient on space, but switching methods to save space should only be necessary if you’re adding a LOT of battle animations or sound samples.