Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
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Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#2This appears to be a phenomenal document containing a lot of fascinating info on ROM hacking in general - while the document does explicitly appear to cover GBA and DS most specifically (at 300+ pages, I could only skim through it, here) - it covers surprisingly fundamental basics about game development, emulation and core programming concepts.
This will be a document I'll keep around for the foreseeable future. Amazing work.
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#3Back in the '80s there was a lot of save game file hacking going on. My buddy and I would look at save game files for all the hot fun games in the hex editor and try to figure out what values we could change. Bard's Tale had a fairly simple layout, which we painstakingly figured out by, for example, using one item and seeing which values decremented. BTII or III, can't remember, went to some length to prevent this easy hacking of the save state. By the 1990s it was common for save game files to be obfuscated in various ways, making the process much more of a pain in the ass.
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#4Back in the '80s there was a lot of save game file hacking going on. My buddy and I would look at save game files for all the hot fun games in the hex editor and try to figure out what values we could change. Bard's Tale had a fairly simple layout, which we painstakingly figured out by, for example, using one item and seeing which values decremented. BTII or III, can't remember, went to some length to prevent this ea…
These days it's far easier to read/edit the memory of running programs than the serialized data saved to disk in save files.
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#5Is there any URL we can switch the top link to, that contains some of this information but doesn't do an automatic file download as https://gbatemp.net/download/gba-and-ds-rom-hacking-guide.33... does? (Those make annoying links for frontpage submissions, even when the content is good.)
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#6Is there any URL we can switch the top link to, that contains some of this information but doesn't do an automatic file download as https://gbatemp.net/download/gba-and-ds-rom-hacking-guide.33... does? (Those make annoying links for frontpage submissions, even when the content is good.)
Yeah, even just a(n automatic) "[pdf]" in these submission titles would help. Or the site could just not force download since most browsers can natively read PDFs, etc.
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#7The 3DS hacking scene is still pretty active. Great form factor devices, fully jailbroken. Guide is pretty easy to follow at 3ds.hacks.guide :)
I've got mine as the best form-factor emulation station (for older games) you could imagine :).
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#8Is there any URL we can switch the top link to, that contains some of this information but doesn't do an automatic file download as https://gbatemp.net/download/gba-and-ds-rom-hacking-guide.33... does? (Those make annoying links for frontpage submissions, even when the content is good.)
Seems like just taking out the word download after the slash does the trick:
https://gbatemp.net/download/gba-and-ds-rom-hacking-guide.33...
The info isn't embedded on the page, but the download button for the PDF is unforced but available
Edit: Looks like this thread has the info from the PDF embedded:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentatio...
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#9This is a surprisingly well written /book/. Thanks for the link.
I used to do game save file hacking on palmOS as a teen. Was a hoot. Eventually turned to full blown “cracking” of software. That was a fun hobby.
Re: Nintendo GBA and DS ROM hacking guide (2016)
#10Very comprehensive resource for someone trying to get into rom hacking in general.
The GBATEK specification [0] mentioned several times in the guide (not limited to the GBA, it also covers Nintendo DS, DSi and 3DS) feels like a real treasure trove of technical data.