Hihihihi! I’m Ochain, new to this community and to rom hacking in general…so bear with me as I try to learn, but I’ll do my best to be a sponge for information and advice. Rom hacking seems a lot more accessible to get into nowadays, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi and to get some advice for getting started.
I’ve been messing around with FEBuilderGBA (hopefully I’m not a moron that’s using the wrong tool?) to at least learn the basics. I have a bunch of ideas for the future, but for now I know it’s better to suppress them and start small so that I can learn, rather than going straight for the deep end.
So, I started editing FE8 with my first goal being to swap enemies and allies. I figure this will give me good experience in character editing, unit placing, skills, a bit of eventing, etc. Maybe I’ll alter the story/maps to reflect playing as the enemy as well, but I don’t want to get too in over my head.
Is there anything you all think would be good to look into while getting started? Obviously there’s a whoooole lot that goes into this and I don’t want to gloss over something that might be important early on. Thanks!!!
Check out resources such as FEBuilder tutorials, as well as the asset repository (you really can’t miss it) for free to use assets. FEBuilder is extremely intuitive to use, so don’t stress too much about learning stuff, as it’s probably easier to use than Scratch.
Past that, my advice to you is to actually not rely too much on tutorials to learn how to do things, and instead use trial and error as well as cross referencing other hacks’ eventing to see what you can learn and what you can improve.
Also, make friends. Friends are very important. They make for good free lab- I mean helpful assistants in your endeavors.
And most importantly, don’t be me and burn yourself out due to nonstop hacking 4 hours straight a day for a whole month to get your hack done.
If you want some design advice, I’m probably not the best person to give considering my track record with how I design my hacks, but I think there’s a few things in the dev process that might be helpful to you.
-Always bounce ideas off of other people, their feedback might not be helpful, but at least you can gauge general opinion of what people like.
-Don’t be afraid to use F2U assets for your work, mostly everybody does that. It’s a matter of how you use them.
-This is more of a personal take, but I personally like designing my games around the hardest possible difficulty rather than on normal mode or such. It saves a lot of time when thinking about balance, at least for me.
-Do math. Please. I mean for everything. Calculate stats, etc. Pay close attention to enemy growths and bases. It’s easier to make errors at the start when it comes to those things than halfway through the game.
-Use a grammar checker.
-It’s a good idea to check out other hacks and gauge what’s cool and what’s absolute dogshit to add into a hack. At the end of the day, any concept could work with well enough execution(?), but it never hurts to find out what’s a riskier play and what’s not.
-If you’re starting out, I suggest keeping your eventing to a minimum to start off. Try to use a minimalist approach to your starting and ending events that minimizes complication. Once you’re more experienced, you can try out harder stuff. I think a good basic rule in general is that Occam’s Razor is your best friend while you’re learning the ropes.
-There is nothing you can do to prevent someone from finding a bug in your hack one hour after you’ve released it. I call it Romhacker’s Curse. Just try and make sure to get rid of the gamebreaking ones, though.
-Work alone if you’re the impatient type, like me. Trying to coordinate a team is painful, unless you’ve got a good grasp of everyone’s pace and set good time.
-Ambition is the killer of nearly every unfinished hack. Know your limits, both technically and mentally.
-If you’re taking feedback from someone, remember to consider their skill in FE in mind before taking what they say to heart.
-The creative process is different for everyone when hacking, so find a set of steps when hacking that fits your mojo. Personally, I like making maps before thinking about chapter flow, and then plan out enemy layout before going into actually eventing the map. Superfluous things like writing and aesthetic come last.
-REMEMBER TO CREDIT PEOPLE WHEN USING THEIR FREE TO USE ASSETS.
-Don’t be afraid to try out something you think is stupid and ridiculous and throwing it at other people to see if they think it’s also stupid and ridiculous.
-Don’t make another FE8 rebalance. I’ve seen like 5 already and I think we’re already running out of ways to make a rebalance past just stat inflation and skill bloat. (I’m joking for the most part but holy fuck there are a lot of FE8 Rebalances)
-I did mention to make friends before, but just be wary to not befriend people who are just there to leech off of being credited in a hack.
One piece of advice that I wish I had been told at the start of my romhacking journey is to start small. I highly recommend against starting with a full scale 20+ chapter hack, this will almost inevitably lead to a lot of headache since you’re both learning the craft and trying to make a masterpiece in the same breath. I personally recommend starting by just messing around in builder, just get comfortable with the software before trying to use it to create something for real. Once you feel like you can use it effectively then I would recommend starting your real project, this may take weeks or months, it all depends on how quickly you learn. One thing though is that creating large scale projects will take a lot of time to develop, expect to spend many months or years on a full scale project if you decide to make one (short hacks are viable too )
Overall though, just remember that you will make many mistakes, everyone does. You may create something terribly balanced, leave a game breaking bug in your hack by mistake, there are many things that can go wrong but don’t let that stop you, as long as you have the drive to improve you’ll eventually get to a point where your hack projects are well regarded but it won’t happen overnight.
I hope this advice helps, feel free to ask for advice on the Discord server, there are plenty of helpful people that will point you in the right direction or simply give their take on a design philosophy, it never hurts to ask for input!
Take breaks. touch grass. go outside. Like @theghostcreator said, projects take a long time and unfortunately sometimes they don’t garner enough attention. You’ll get burned real fast if you force yourself to grind on in every single day. Burnout =bad for creativity= not great designs. sometimes you gotta look at it as a marathon more than a sprint.
Check out MarkyJoe’s “Creating Chapters in FEBuilderGBA” video on YouTube for a general chapter tutorial. Most things will be learned through trial and error. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and remember that if you have something in mind you want to implement, someone may have already made a patch for it, so check the “Patch” option in Advanced Editors.
i’d actually disagree with checking out MarkyJoe’s tutorial
no flak on the man but that stuff is way too much info, and you probably won’t absorb a lot of it compared to if you spent the time just messing around with febuilder
again, the best way to learn is through trial and error, and it will save a lot of time if you just mess around instead of trying to absorb info through tutorials.
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