Puzzledude's seminar on romhacking

Are you one of those retro fans who are actually capable of hacking and modifying games for old consoles, or do you want to become one? Why bother at all!

First of all, no matter how good your game is, someone will most certainly not like it.

If you make the game too difficult, someone will most certainly not like, but! if you make the game too easy or normally difficult someone will most certainly again not like it, claiming it is too easy.

You will even come across such paradoxes, that a fairly easy game will be regarded as too difficult by some and yet too easy by others. So to conclude: no matter the actual difficulty, you'll always get the difficulty of your game wrong.

If your designed levels are based on exploration, someone will certainly call your game boring due to so called Backtracking. If you then decide to change that onto the better, don't bother, your edited levels, which will remove the backtracking, will certainly be called too Linear, which is apparently again no good. So to conclude: no matter the actual exploration factor, you'll always get the level design wrong.

If you decide to change the gfx, someone will certainly not like it, since they will claim the old gfx was better and the new one is too radical, custom made and thus no good. If you however decide to keep the original gfx, your game will be called "vanilla". So to conclude: no matter what you do with the gfx, you'll always get it wrong.

If you decide to implement special new music engine called MSU-1, don't bother, someone will definitely like SPC better. If you however keep the SPC, they will certainly tell you, that you are out of date, not switching to MSU.

If you mannaged to actually finish the project, you will come across painful testing. You will test and test and test, but why do you bother, you will certainly miss a bug or two, and when a player will come across such a minor problem, he will call your game (which you painfully tested for bugs) bugged. So why bother: no matter how much debugging you'll make, someone will still call your game bugged.

No matter how much you will check the grammar of the texts in the game, you'll surely miss out something. So why bother: no matter how much you will try to find spelling mistakes, someone will most surely find some and call your game a spelling horror and then add: this is common in those "custom made fake games".

If you designed your game to be used with save states, someone will call this a poor design, if you designed your game to be used without save states, they will use them anyway, making your game too easy - again. So why do you bother?

No matter how much TXT info files you will write, someone will surely patch your game to the false original rom, claiming you did a poor job with your game, since it doesn't load.

No matter how much TXT info files you will write, someone will surely patch your game to the false original rom, claiming you did a poor job with your game, since the game crashes in the middle of the playing. If you tell them to obviously check the CRC before playing they will tell you, that they've never heard of such a thing. So why do you bother?

If you tell them, to patch to a non headered rom, someone will definitely patch to a headered rom and claim your game to be bugged or not working, not knowing what went wrong.


If someone by somesort of a miracle likes your game, they will surely abuse it, by putting it onto the cart and sell it for money, making you look like the bad guy, who promotes piracy, since you are making "hacked" games. Your txt warning of "fair use" and "personal use" and "no rom or cart distribution" would be like an ant yelling at the supernova.

No matter how "just" your intentions are, in the eyes of the authors who made the original game, you are a thief, who just abused their intellectual property. In their eyes you are a pest, who is responsible for illegal cart distribution, since you made it happen. You can also be regarded as the person, who gave their game a bad name, since your game can never match the original one. In their eyes you are thus producing illegal derivated work of a poor/false quality and trying to benefit of it. So why do you bother?


That's what you get because you have programing/level designing talent/non talent and simply like an old game. Maybe being smart is not a good thing at all.

Make your life complete and quit romhacking to save your self a lot of trouble. Don't bother.

I have something to say about the above post. Puzzledude, you have proven yourself as an expert zelda 3 hacker. You have extensive knowledge on this game that is very impressive. Being a game developer is not an easy job because we face such criticism from players, but I will assure you that your work has not be in vain.

Yes, its true that it is hard to please everyone, but I think the best way to go about it is just to have a good attitude and not a pessimistic one.

Parallel Worlds got much negative criticism because of simply how the game is presented to players. It's not very friendly to the average player. I, myself took hours and many save states just to get the first sword in the guardhouse.

The best way to avoid this is just to make a better game experience.

As for rom hacking, while I have seen many poor rom hacks for certain games that doesn't mean that all rom hacks will be poor.

A rom hack can be good or bad, it just depends on how the author made it.

I actually have always valued the idea of remaking an already existing game and creating a new game out of an old one. By working with limitations and restrictions it makes the creative process very interesting and challenging.

For example, Conker's tail is really the shield in Zelda. That just so happen to be a brilliant way of transforming the shield into something else.

I think rom hacking is an art within itself. It's a special kind of game. Rom hacks offer fans of the original a whole new experience and some of these experiences bring back memories and revitalize good times.

Regarding legality, honestly who cares. They have made their money on their product already. So I see no harm in creating a derivative work. Sometimes as a company you have to let things go eventually.

As for cart making, let us think of a second. Fact, people enjoy playing rom hacks and some prefer to play on original hardware. Many could play on a flash cart, but some are hard core fans and collectors who prefer a dedicated cart.

So because people want carts there is a demand. Now, because there is a demand for a product then obviously there needs to be someone to supply that demand. This is why cart makers exist.

Just think about it, if a rom hacker made a hack and didn't offer that hack on a cart to purchase then someone else is simply going to do it.

Cart makers exist because rom hackers exist. We, the rom hackers are responsible for the cart makers. So we can't complain because they only exist because of us. (well there are cart makers who just make reproductions, but what I'm saying is that if hacks didn't exist then people wouldn't be selling them on carts)

My personally opinion is that if you make a hack then be prepared to sell it on a cart yourself. If you don't sell it someone else will. Its as simple as that.

The Conker game is unique because it used the msu1 which needs sd2snes so if carts are going to be made they will cost a lot. Sd2snes cost like $160 for just the board (usd) so its pretty pricy. It can still be done, but why bother paying that much for a dedicated cart?

Most people I assume will get an sd2snes or just play on the emulator. I don't think cart makers will be able to make much profits off this game because they will not want to pay for the high priced sd2snes board.

In conclusion, we have all worked very hard to make this Conker game. Our missions is simply just to make a great game and then release it for all to enjoy and be proud of our accomplishment.

So that is the goal. We have to be positive about the final stages of the game and try and make it the best we can. If we succeed in making an outstanding game then it doesn't matter if people like it or not. If the game is good then it should be self evident to any player.

Perhaps Puzzledude was simply running low on H20...?

Just you watch, once the Conker game is almost finished everyone will be excited and will have a positive attitude.

Careful Heinzenberg!

Wasn't he that weirdo that just got banned? LOL

Better to just ignore them and do your own thing then bother making such long rage posts.

Not really rage. It is actually more like a warning for all those who want to get started with romhacking, and the text was deliberately drawn into (false) pessimism. There is a positive side to the craft as well. And criticism is actually half/half.
I've written the above text when I first saw Goddess of Wisdom on a cart, so it is quite far back.

Cart makers exist because rom hackers exist.

Yes, thats the sad truth.

Careful Heinzenberg! Always keep your cool to other members!

SunGodPortal wrote:

Careful Heinzenberg!

Wasn't he that weirdo that just got banned?

I actually wasn't aware of this drama until the next day, due to different time zones.

You know I actually thought this thread was going to be like a tutorial or some informative information about rom hacking. Like I opened the thread thinking I was going to learn something new like how improve my hacking skills. LOL

By the way, I hope everyone here knows that once the Conker game is actually released we will see record zeldix site views. In other words.... this place will fu*king blow up with activity. FYI, just remember that I said this and am predicting the future.


Wow, I see a thread on a hacking seminar from Puzzledude!

I can't wait to see what kind of rom hacking tips and tricks he has to offer.

Puzzledude: Quit rom hacking because people hate.

Wow, awesome seminar. I learned so so much. I wonder what other brilliant information he has to offer us.

I saw this on RHDN as well. If your "seminar" is about how there will always be someone who dislikes your work or finds problems with it, this is hardly a revelation and perhaps you should reconsider why you are doing this hobby. I use the word "hobby" because ROM hacking is recreational, unless you're a sleazeball like repros or proto sellers who try to make money off of it.

Maybe this might help.