So whats your ROM hacking story?

[Cartmic]

I was reading through the 'Why do we hack?' thread and thought it would be nice to see not only how people got into ROM hacking in the first place, what happened from that time to today.

I'll begin.....

I never was really into Pokemon, until my friend lent me Pokemon Yellow.
I loved the game, that triggered getting into the Trading Card game,
that eventually faded away as did watching the cartoon.
I used to do Amateur Dramatics, in between one rehearsal
I got into the discussions of pokemon games and my mate
mentioned that he had Pokemon Yellow on his computer,
I thought that was really cool for some reason.

So eventually I managed to find out about emulation
in the next few months I searched around for roms
and a discovered a few hacks from BG and ER Translations
These being Pokemon Generations, Pokemon Orange Island Adventure(OIA).
OIA I was amazed by these and really wanted to start making my own pokemon games.
My first few were shamefully based already hacked games, the First one Pokemon Emerald.
Now eventually I made a hack based around the story of Robin Hood called Pokemon Forest, I whittled that off in 2 days(terrible it was as you'd expect.)

Move on a few months, and I began wanting to make my own world, inspired by Pokemon Aqua, and OIA, and eventually the Beta of brown.
I began working on a game called Pokemon Crion Adventure, which eventually became Pokemon Violet. I did so much to the hack on various different versions of it, I had planned everything all on paper, I spent ages laying out the whole land of Crion(with viable towns) on A4 sheets of paper across my room; my room still to this day still has a load of early stuff lying around on my shelves. I eventually released a few betas not ones I was too proud off, eventually college got in the way and for 2 years I gave empty promise after empty promise. It Seriously annoyed me, also I had lost my hard drive backup(as I had to reinstall everything) hence loosing most of my violet work, I eventually decided to give up.

One day (last month) I was having a tidy up to my surprise I found my hard drive backup and a version of violet that I had totally forgot about. It was the most complete version I had, all the mapping done including the town map, the thing that went wrong on it, I think It was a version where I got stuck on the route gates and went away from ROM hacking for awhile and forgot about it. So as soon as iv finished the work I have to do for university for after Christmas, I will get windows back on this machine and really work on it.

 

[Blazichu]

That is a long story, but a good one xD

Well I started off getting really into emulation at first, such as the VBA and Project 64 later on. Then I thought to myself that there was a way to edit games. So I conducted a search and found at site...it is down now. This site had many tools and had some rom hacks. I searched around some more about rom hacking and found alot of older hacks such as Citymon: Reio and Thunderstar. I played them, until I thought I should learn and give it a shot. At first I tried out Gold seeing as it was my favourite game at the time, and after a few months I started on Cobalt Blue. Then about 3-4 months later I found these forums and started the thread today known as "Pokemon Cobalt Blue". After many months, I got a bit bored and tired of Cobalt Blue, mainly from the glitches it had. So I conducted a new hack, Plasma Red. This hack was going to start out as a Ruby hack after trying to figure out connections I stopped as I could not figure them out and the Birch script was glitching up. So I decided to make it into a Gold hack and today it is still being worked on. Earlier this year, I announce my third and final hack, Golden Red. This hack has only had minor changes and I hope to get it up sometime next year.

 

[thethethethe]

Wow, those are some good stories. I haven't been here as long as you two have, but I guess I'll tell you my story.
The first Pokemon game I played was Pokemon Blue. I think this was when I was about 8 or 9. Then I got Pokemon Gold at about age 11. So I'd collected Cards, played the games, watched the show, but slowly I seemed to completely forget about Pokemon. Then a couple of years later, my friend showed me emulators like visualboy and project 64. So I'd play Emerald, Ruby, Leaf Green, and other GBA games. Then one day that same friend showed me Pokemon Quartz and Chaos Black. He and I both thought, when did Nintendo make these? We'd never heard of anything like these anywhere. So After a little research I found out they were hacks. So off I went in search of hacks. I found hacks like Brown, Shiny Gold and one of Cartman's early South Park hacks(No beta) but Shiny Gold interested me the most, and since I was so dissapointed that it ended at Ice path, I was hoping to find a full version. I then went off to search for one and it led me to Pokecommunity. I joined just to download Pokemon Shiny Gold. Too bad the beta version I downloaded was the same as the one I'd already had, ending at Ice path.

A little under a month passed, and I decided that I'd try to figure out how these hacks were done. So I downloaded as many tools as I could find and starting testing them out. Surprisingly I found advancemap and elitemap really difficult to use at first, so I tried to find something that I found easier. That led me to Irish Witch's and foullump's scripting tutorials and some basic Hex editing tutorials. So wierdly, I learnt how to script before I started really trying things like Elitemap. About another month had passed, and I had joined a team, was scripting for Rocket's Revenge and was helping on quite a few other hacks. Eventually, I decided to have my first attempt at my own hack. It lasted a little less than a week. After some re-thinking I began working on Legend of Dragons, and I've been working on it since.
I guess that's it.

 

[destinedjagold]

Such nice and inspiring storyies ya have.
Well, the same with thethethethe.., I am not here as long as you were.., but oh well...

I was addicted to PKMN when I first saw the episode. And since my parents were as strict as ever, they won't let me go outside to have fun, it made me more addicted to PKMN.
There, I strived to go with the flow of time; watching every episodes, collecting PKMN stuff and playing pretends. But I wasn't exposed to any GameBoys that time. I think I was still little that time, hmm.., about 8-10, I think...

Since then, my parents noticed me and my bros became addicted to PKMN, and so one day, my father bought a PKMN Game installer CD for a computer for us to play (and to decrease our chances of going out -_-)... There, in the CD, are some nice PKMN games; Blue, Green(yuck), Red, Yellow, Gold, SIlver, Crystal, TCG, and the Red Project Studio, and ofcourse, an emulator.

Years have passed by and life was getting rough for me, but still PKMN remained in my heart. We moved to another island of our country, and there, we started a new life...

Years later, our life was getting pretty nice, and one day, my father bought a computer and it's internet connected! Since I was exposed to the computer in an early age, researching was easy for me. Since I lost the CD, I tried and run a search throught the internet. And there began unlimited ROM downloads! YAY! ^_^ And I accidentally ended up with VBA...

A few months later, my brother (Manaphirachi - not an active member of the community), saw some nice videos of Tamashii in YouTube. And there, he accidentally discovered A-Map. He began using the tool, and to our surprise, it can edit PKMN Advance ROMs! O_O

Later, I discovered pkmncommunity while searching through Google for more PKMN Games for us to play.., and here, I saw some cool hacks displayed right before my eyes. It caught my interest and began understanding the basics. Mapping was too easy for me, and so I tried to understand scripting, which, I learned from the posts, can be the only way to put some new events, and so I tried it.

I did understood the basics, and then began my very own hack, 'PKMN Ruby Destiny - Reign of Legends'.., but it was just a simple edit and mapping changes with all legendaries available. It had so many errors and so, it made me depreesed and began to understood hacking more...

I asked for some help, and then came thethethethe in the forum, and really helped and answered all my hacking questions and concerns... of course, there were others, too, who helped me out. ^_^

Then I gain contact with Tamashii and then, I asked for some tips. Then, a few months later, rose up the remake of my first hack. It has been a challenge, though, but it was worth the fun. ^_^

I think that's all I got. Thanks and good day everyone~

 

[zel 2.0]

I think most of you already know it, but, here it goes...

You know that I was a RPG Maker dude for a lot of time before getting into rom hacking. I never completed any of my projects, and I always found something else to make a project with the various versions of RPG Maker. Till I finally tried to make a Pokémon like game. I found it too hard to make, and then there was that comment that rom hacks were better than RPGM games. So then I searched the web for Pokemon rom hacks (thinking "Oh yes? Let's really see if that comment is right..."), and that's how I stumped into Brown (and into another hack set into something like the Orange Islands), I really loved Brown, so that made me feel more interested into rom hacking, so, with a little more investigation, I landed on Pokecommunity (this like sometime around the last quarter of 2004)

Apparently GBC hacking was the top thing at that time and GBA was at its diapers, so, there were some tools for GBC and almost none for the GBA ones. So, willing to try I downloaded a few tools and with not too much idea of a storyline, I tried to make something that would start in Kanto and go all the way to Johto (something like the anime), but, I really couldn't change much more than some texts, moving some sprites and changing a bit the mapping, so I obviously ended up getting frustrated and left rom hacking and went back to RPGM.

That concludes my first phase... More than a year passed after that...

The second phase begins at the first quarter of the previous year (2006). Once again, I was kinda bored of playing the same games, and I was bored of Pokemon actually. So, I remembered about rom hacking and I went into searching once more. Not too long I was again at Pokecommunity and this time GBA hacking was more developed and Baro's Quartz was the first completed GBA hack around (I think), so I gave it a try, and I was really surprised with it (even though the storyline was not much changed, but I loved all the new Pokes) Anyway, his work really turned back the rom hacking fire in me.

I kept looking at other people's projects and by that time there were a few people attempting to make Gold remakes, they always caught my attention, and from all those projects, I remember about As_Stars_Go_Out's Gold Remake. It had pretty good mapping, but, unfortunately, it lacked any kind of scripting.

So, since I got interested into rom hacking once again, and I was also interested about Gold Remakes, I started with my own version of a remake, so then I joined Pokecommunity on June 2006 to download some tools (and make one or two questions at the Simple Questions thread) and I became a lurker of PC while I worked in the shadows on my game, always wondering how everything would turn out (since when I was at RPG Making I never posted my work and I never completed anything) After a few months of work, I thought "well, if we don't risk, we will never know", and then Shiny Gold came out into the light (and its thread got deleted a few weeks after due to a backup PC had to do... >.<), people started liking the effort I put into scripting, so that always made me happy and allowed me to keep putting effort into the game.

And basically concludes all my story up to now, I really hope this "second phase" keeps on for a few years, actually. But, that, only future will tell...

To Be Continued...

I really don't have much to say after I got into my second phase, because I'm really determined to keep up with this project so I don't really plan on doing other stuff. All that I learn and that I improve reflects on the work on Shiny Gold. Being a rom hacker has brought me many friends and many hacking partners (and maybe some people who could hate me, even though I really don't hate anyone), I've had a lot of good moments (like, getting some awards and getting help from more and more people), and some not good (for example, when I had to close my first thread and make the new one), but all in all, I know that there's still a lot to learn in the future.

 

[Caina]

Such beautiful memories.....

Actually, the story of why I started hacking was I founded pictures of PKMN Hacks on Google... My elder bro, I didn't even searched in Youtube for PKMN Hacks ya know...O_o.

Anyway, It all started with a picture I found in Google while I was searching for a nice picture of PKMN.... and there, I found out a picture with new tiles. And to my surprise, it was a hack. As I got inspired by that picture, I started searching for PKMN HACKING TOOLS in Google, and my bro don't know about it! And to my surprise, I accidentally downloaded Advance Map, which I don't know that it was a hacking tool for PKMN.

And there, I told my bro about it! and we where amazed about it, so, as months passed, I started hacking with...maps are only changed... until I found that my bro landed on this site, he got more inspired, so he uses the computer more than me. He starts hacking too much in which I can't hack well anymore.

And because of that, I started loosing interest in hacking. So I just played online games 'till I can't stand the pressure anymore..." I WANNA HACK!!!! DUH!!! "
So there! I seated on our computer and BANG! hacking again, I tried to spend more time so that he can't hack! hehehe

That's meh story...

Thankz Guyz....

 

[~*Pikafan*~]

Wow, so many words in those posts... my eyes hurt...:knockedou

Now for even more.

My story is pretty long, so get ready for a lot of text.

It started out with Red and Blue. I got it for my birthday, I think my 5th. I loved the game and I always played it. But I was an idiot back then, for I didn't know the value of any of them and I let my brother trick me into getting rid of my stongest, a Blastoise named Chris level 43 for his Wartortle level 20. As time passed the Johto games came out and I became smarter witht the value of pokemon and movesets, and I actually became much better. Crystal was my favorite game. But when they came out, my friends thought pokemon was Gay. They ditched it, but I didn't, and when they found out I didn't, I was ditched too. So I kept playing and keeping it a secret while trying to get my friends back. One year, someone thought they overheard me talking about pokemon and they kept asking me if I did. I got so nervous and started to make a big lie about it. Luckily it worked. Near the end of the school year, everyone kept on asking me if I still liked it and some other stuff. I kept on denying it, saying I stopped playing a few years ago. But I lied again. So the new games came out and a lot of people besides my best friends forgot I did. Now when Diamond and Pearl came out, I accidentally brought it with me on a trip. I was so scared and and nervous that I only stayed underground in the game because people wanted to use my DS. So this year, on the last 3 days of summer, my brother found out about Shiny Gold and started telling me more about VBA, which we tried to download but it was a fake and almost destroyed my brother's computer, allowing some guy to take it over. But we got rid of him, and we found the real link. Back to Shiny Gold, he tried downloading it and found a tutorial on how to. That's how we got here. He found pokecommunity in that tutorial on Youtube, and we both joined. In September I started hacking and having all of these ideas, but I wasn't any good. So I started asking people on how to hack, especially Zel and Thethethethe. So that leads up to me now, with no one knowing about me hacking except for my family and Pokecommunity.

Man, that's a lot of typing. My fingers hurt. @_@

 

[Frostbite]

I've been a fan of Pokemon ever since the Red and Blue days. As far as I could remember I've always wanted to make my own Pokemon game, especially in the days of Gold and Silver.

It was a little over a year ago, maybe two that I discovered the Advancemap program. I tinkered around with it, editing maps and some Pokemon. It was nothing very special but something that I could do in my spare time. I never tried to actually make a hack but, as time went on my ambitions changed. I attempted to make a G/S/C remake (Johto Legends) but I failed to work on it as much and didn't make any progress besides the first two towns. I didn't even know how to script at the time!

Well a month later I played a beta of rijonAdventures (one of the first hacks that I actually bothered to play) and I absolutely loved it. I loved the new and "fresh" feel that it gave me when I played the game. That feeling lasted throughout the entire time that I played the hack.

For the following months I remained dormant in hacking. Actually, I made some edits to some roms but I ended screwing up and running into existing offsets and making the game glitch, rendering the rom useless. The summer of this year I learned how to script and I've become very good at it now. With my limited knowledge, and inspired by rijonAdventures, I released my first "actual" hack Pokemon Azure Horizons. It's development is still going on.

...and here I am now.

So that's my story.

 

[Ivysaur]

Well, everything started on last December, when i found the wondeful world of emulators. After playing all the games I never played before, I found a section with pokemon hacks in the page I used to go. Most of them were crappy minor edits, such as texts, sprites, etc, but one of them caught my eye. It was not other than Brown. I actually never finished it, but it was enough to make me search for more hacks in google. And then I found the WAH.

First I got Ambar, a little beta funny enough to make me look for more. Then I downloaded Quartz, which I thought was the full version (I even doublepatched it onto Ambar, getting a nice mess), but, instead, I found an even better game. I beat it in two weeks, of which I spent two days just laughing (the oceanic museum must be the funniest zone in a videogame EVER!). So, finally, I downloaded the last one of them, Shiny Gold (I still wonder why I never got Naranja, since the WAH was originally made only for it). First, I got the Spanish B2, but, when it finished in the Lighthouse, I got the uber-glitched beta 3. Then I joined my first forum ever, SP, to report them. Zel said that he had already made a fixed version in "the other forums". Since he usually spoke about "the other forum" being more updated, and then SP close for making a backup, I ended up joining these "other forums". But, hey, we are only in March.

So, when reading the old thread, I found a report about the Kanto glitch. Since I had already finished the beta, I started investigating it, and ended up with a 20 video-long series in Youtube. There I met Foullump by helping him get to B3, and I found out that he was going to make another hack. Since I was interested in seeing how the game was made and finding the reasons of those weird glitches, I asked him for tools. I wanted to learn the basics of mapping and scripting, and he helped me in it. Finally, he posted some videos about his game, and I filled several posts just with glitches, so he suggested me testing the game, and actually I liked it. By coincidence, zel also asked me to test SG. I found it more entertaining than mapping or scripting, so I decided to get specialized in it.

I'm not interested in starting any game. I don't have time for it. Currently, I'm helping in five games (four testing, making texts in the other one), and I have got a bunch of friends. I'm pretty happy now. Even though some glitches I never understood still haunt me. I have recurrent nightmares with Farfetch'd's, invincible Quilavas and bad eggs.

If you read the whole post, you won a cookie~

 

[ShyRayq]

Well It all started when my friend showed me a pokemon game. It was firered Then i saw pokemon on tv and then i was stuck with pokemon until My dad brought me a Gameboy Advance Sp when Emerald just came out. My dad also brought me emerald and leafgreen
then i found my friend playing a sapphire hack on vba and i wanted it so i searched around and saw Emerald 386 and downloaded it with vba and i got addicted to vba and then my friend had a SG cartridge on his GBA and i saw that SG was a hack so i saw a tutoral on how to get it and i found this forum and joined. i wanted to hack too so i down loaded alot of hacking tools and a few roms and now here i am at PokemonCommunity

 

[Teh Baro]

Well, everything started on last December, when i found the wondeful world of emulators. After playing all the games I never played before, I found a section with pokemon hacks in the page I used to go. Most of them were crappy minor edits, such as texts, sprites, etc, but one of them caught my eye. It was not other than Brown. I actually never finished it, but it was enough to make me search for more hacks in google. And then I found the WAH.

First I got Ambar, a little beta funny enough to make me look for more. Then I downloaded Quartz, which I thought was the full version (I even doublepatched it onto Ambar, getting a nice mess), but, instead, I found an even better game. I beat it in two weeks, of which I spent two days just laughing (the oceanic museum must be the funniest zone in a videogame EVER!). So, finally, I downloaded the last one of them, Shiny Gold (I still wonder why I never got Naranja, since the WAH was originally made only for it). First, I got the Spanish B2, but, when it finished in the Lighthouse, I got the uber-glitched beta 3. Then I joined my first forum ever, SP, to report them. Zel said that he had already made a fixed version in "the other forums". Since he usually spoke about "the other forum" being more updated, and then SP close for making a backup, I ended up joining these "other forums". But, hey, we are only in March.

So, when reading the old thread, I found a report about the Kanto glitch. Since I had already finished the beta, I started investigating it, and ended up with a 20 video-long series in Youtube. There I met Foullump by helping him get to B3, and I found out that he was going to make another hack. Since I was interested in seeing how the game was made and finding the reasons of those weird glitches, I asked him for tools. I wanted to learn the basics of mapping and scripting, and he helped me in it. Finally, he posted some videos about his game, and I filled several posts just with glitches, so he suggested me testing the game, and actually I liked it. By coincidence, zel also asked me to test SG. I found it more entertaining than mapping or scripting, so I decided to get specialized in it.

I'm not interested in starting any game. I don't have time for it. Currently, I'm helping in five games (four testing, making texts in the other one), and I have got a bunch of friends. I'm pretty happy now. Even though some glitches I never understood still haunt me. I have recurrent nightmares with Farfetch'd's, invincible Quilavas and bad eggs.

If you read the whole post, you won a cookie~

Actually wah was firstly made for quartz by me and Jose (ambar's author). when we left the web, sergio took control of it, so it got obviously more naranja-oriented.

 

[Virtual Chatot]

I downloaded everything off of Whack a Hack and then started having fun.

I think that's how the majority of ROM hackers started, they wanted to have fun

 

[Death_Mande]

It all started when my friend back in third grade, had pokemon silver for PC. I completly forgot about it until i remembered that day. I searched for pokemon yellow for PC and what i found were ROMs. I asked to myself, "If pokemon yellow has a ROM, i wonder if Ruby and Saphire does too" so i searched for the whole GBA series through google.


A few days after that, i came across WAH, when i first downloaded Elite Map. Seeing as it was too dificult i decided to download Advance Map. then i downloaded every tool there was in that site. The ones that didnt work, i just deleted them.

As the months passed, i began to imrpove my mapping skills a whole lot, and started to compare and remake my old, glitchy maps. One of my ROMs (which had a lot of work in it) got messed up and i decided to quit ROM hacking.


A couple of weeks after that, when i got bored and decided to ROM hack again, i serached for more tools to use. So thats what i did. I found strange sites with weird fake ROM hacking tools until i came across Pokecommunity. I found myself reading foullump's scripting tutorial when i decided that day to join pokecommunity.

A couple of months passed after i joined and i went back to the scripting tutorial to learn on how to script. After helping random people with their hacks, i decided to make my own. But seeing that the ROM got messed up after 4 weeks of work in it, i have stopped ROM hacking since then. That happened about October 6th.




Well there you have it. Boy my fingers hurt...​

 

[S_Vaporeon]

The first hack I played was Pokémon Quartz.
And later... Pokémon Orange.
Man, THAT was a ridiculous game but it had a good story and it was pretty.
I'd like to make something like that.
Don't know how.

 

[Tentachu]

OK, here's my hacking story:

I had been playing the games since 1999 and by 2001 I was running the 'new' Pokémon game (Pokémon Gold) on an emulator. I used to run the emulators at school (my school folder was over 1GB, this was back in 2001 when most hard drives were < 10GB. In comparison, most of the other folders were 10MB at most) and eventually everyone was running them. I discovered Goldmap and PokéText and I made a lot of hacks (mainly map edits, not much new gameplay). Eventually, RSE came out, but I couldn't really get to grips with the complicated EliteMap after the incredibly straight-forward Goldmap, and so stuck to ol' GSC. Eventually, in 2007, I decided to try RSE hacking and managed to edit Pokémon and their cries. I haven't tried making a proper hack yet but maybe someday I will...

 

[Jeremy]

Well sweeties I was born a Nintendo fan, but let's a few years later. XD

When I first got the internet (around 1998), my first intention was to get games for my PC, then I heard about emulation. I downloaded a bunch of ROMs and stuff, then I heard of something called ROM hacks and a group called Challenge Games. I checked out some of their hacks, The Legend of Zelda: Outlands. It was, and still is, awesome! ^^ Then I heard about Zophar's Domain, and played some Super Mario Bros hacks. Then ambition grew in me, and I knew what I wanted to do. make hacks and then never finish them =p

I first started making simple level edits of Super Mario Bros, and Super Mario World. Then I learned how to edit palettes in NES games, which help me get used to a hex editor. I never got into any serrious hacking projects since I just did it out of pure fun and to challenge my lil brother to the most difficult levels in Super Mario Bros 3 he has ever seen. XD

When I got better, I decided to hack Pokémon Blue, just for fun, then when I heard that I could edit compressed gfx in Gold, that's when I decided to make a serious project. The premise was to make my own Pokémon game, and have me as the main character. After over 9000 project attempts and just plan half attempts, I finally was satisfied with one hack, Pokémon Ice. =p

So yeah sweeties, I'm old school. =p

 

[Creqaw]

I was searching for AR codes for fire red then when i saw a post on some forum, are there codes for Pokemon Chaos Black i thought is CB a new game? never heard of it so i was searching for that and ended up with Mewthree Inc. at that point i also discovered rom hacking tools and Pokecommunity and i downloaded some hacks and was pretty impressed by them then i wanted to make my own hack
i started hacking fire red
mapping was no problem
spriting was harder and postponed that
and then scripting i was reading a bit and saw that new hackers had problems with scripting i also thought it would be hard but infact i found it pretty simple and learned scripting fast but at the point where i needed to compile them into the game...
the big problems started
i could compile them but almost none of them worked and the few of them that worked didn't have text but weird characters so i asked some people to test my scripts and al of them worked perfectly i thought that i was using the wrong compiling programs and searched for more and after i tried Scripted diamondsomething and pokescript and they al failed to compile the scripts after that i stopped hacking for 3 weeks to go on vacation to america after i came back i started again and tried some other programs and none of them worked correctly the only program that works for me is Advancemap

at that point i quited rom hacking and never started again

 

[+Sneasel™]

I have a very big story...

Well, i liked pokemon until i was about 10.
Me and my friend used to love it, but when my friend moved, i stopped liking it as much.

Then, until i was 11, i played emerald and fire red until i got board of that too.
Then i found a new game, called megaman battle networks (perhaps you have heard of the series).

I played these games even more than pokemon, i was like obsessed.
Then one day, i searched for cheats, cause i was stuck.
Then i did what i even do now: look up cheats on youtube (it works!)
After a while, i came accross one of some guy who hacked it and made custom battles (i was fascinated and wanted to figure out how he did it)
There was a link to some megaman forum.
I went and i learned how to do it, and eventually found out you need an emulater.
So i posted and got a link to download VBA.
Then, since i didn't believe it would work, i download megaman and pokemon fire red (I don't even know why, I just did). Only pokemon worked, and i played it alittle bit more without even trying to get a new rom for megaman.
I was instantly good at the game and liked how you could save anywhere (Shift+F1) and speed up time.
I also liked the cheats tab (I liked to use codes a lot back then.)

Now is when i realized something: if people can hack megaman games
on these roms, maybe they can hack pokemon games too.

Sure enough, i came accross Poke community (I lurked around for about
a year)
My favorite hack was Quartz.
That inspired me to make a hack like quartz.
Then i came across shiny gold (beta up until ice cave)
Played it and then really wanted to learn.

So i taught myself to use tools like advance map, unlz, and advance text.
I sucked really bad until i played Naranja.

Thats when i realized the game isn't about making waterfalls and mountains in everytown. My mapping improved drastically after playing it.
I also learned from Naranja is that the game isn't all
mapping and changing the text, and i soon learned that it was called scripting.

Now i am currently learning to script (doing great, thanks to all that have helped me fix my script when i PM'd them!)

 

[Aden]

Ok, so heres my hacking story.
before I found out what hacking ment, I looked for new Pokemon game releases, and I stumbled upon Pokemon Shiny Gold.

I was intreged and also very interested about all the programming and things that must've gone on.
I decided to do a bit of research, so I googled around a bit and I found out about a system called "Gamemaker"

I first tryed it out, and couldn't figure out what to do or anything so I abandond Gamemaker.
I then looked up tut's on how to use Gamemaker and other systems, and once I'd figured out how to manage the system I started to create sprites for my new game Titled: "Pokemon Underwater Trainer Edition"

I continued work on the game for a couple of months, until one of my contacts sent me a virus that ate through my computer, and in turn corrupted my file.

I knew it was far too late to start again on that file, so I started again on a fresh slate.
I named the new game I was designing ; Pokemon Lost Caverns.

I nearly completed this game, when I teamed up with a freind of mine, and he actually stole the idea and created the game.
It didn't turn out to be a huge sucess for him so I was extatic at his demise.

I stopped working on games after that, until now, and the new game I am creating is called; Pokemon Volcanic Spark Edition.
You can look foward to it's future release.

And that is the climax of my story, farewell.

 

[O' Swine]

Alright guys.... :P
What happened was...
at the start of 2007, i found out about VBA. i downloaded tons of roms and i loved them all.in the middle of the year, i kept playing my fire emblem roms. I wasnt very into pokemon at the time. then, my friend bought diamond, and inspired me to get into pkmn again. so, two weeks later, i bought pearl. i still hadnt completely figured out the world of emulation, so i figured id just download diamond so id have both of d/p. but later, i figured out it was a long hard road to get it. so i stuck with GBA roms. a month l8r, when i was looking at action replay vids, i saw a couple of videos based on Quatz. I knew quartz wasnt a game, so i didnt watch them. but then, i decided to. I was amazed at it, and didnt realise it was hacked, i thought Baro just made a whole new game! At First i thought he was the only one of his kind. Then i found pokecommunity. I then Figured out that you could make a game but quartz was a hacked game. so then i got into hacks. I later found Baro wasnt the only one of his kind. I found so many awesome hackers like, Sergio, Esmas, Concorde, Zel....i could go on forever. I played many hacks and wanted to make my own, then i found advanced map. a month later, i found WAH i got a lot of the tools from there.

I still havent made a hack, but i'm working on it :P
-DM