Originally posted by NetSplit

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Everyone seems a bit too quick to attack others without even considering if it's deserved or not.

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Originally posted by BGNG

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ROM-less Editing - It is Not Unreasonable

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Originally posted by NetSplit

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So what, you're claiming that everyone was thinking, "He's a newcomer, let's bash him!" or what? While it may not have been what he was talking about, it's not like people had to act the way they did. They could have simply TOLD HIM. Instead, we have people saying "Give up romhacking right now," "This is officially a sad day for acmlm's board," and "This kids shouldn't jump into the 12ft deep pool when he's only just adapted to the kiddie section" (when, mind you, his question wasn't advanced or anything of that sort). One person even 'seriously' suggested banning the guy for a few years, while another person just laughed at the question. Seriously, what the fuck? It's so hard to just answer someone's question and not act like like a jackass? If people are going to act that way when they post, then they should really not fucking post in those threads. We can't just tell everyone to 'give up romhacking right now' because they ask a simple question. Clearly, this doesn't apply to everyone, but a hell of a lot of the people who posted in that thread had something nasty to say and nothing to contribute to the conversation. You may not be trying to be mean to the poor guy, but lots of people were.

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Originally posted by Disch

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Originally posted by NetSplit

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Everyone seems a bit too quick to attack others without even considering if it's deserved or not.

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Welcome to Acmlm's Board.

Reactions are typically either:

1) Completely useless filler. "I agree" "I haven't tried this yet", etc.

2) Nice to the point of being hollow. (Unobjective compliments and asskissing when they're obviously not warranted)

3) Filled with extremely overdue rage and flames.

4) A copy of the prior post, in reworded forms. This is especially noted when the prior post was a flame -- then suddenly the thread turns into a flame war.

Very few people on these boards actually have brains capable of independent thought (maybe not very few overall -- but percentage-wise). Which is why I find myself coming here far less these days.

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Originally posted by Rom Manic

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If this gets done, it opens a doorway into editing Nintendo 64 graphics, not only modifying textures, but adding new polygons directly and other 3D objects.

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Originally posted by DJ Bouche

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I'm just going to ignore the drama

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and get straight to the point that I've always seen ROM-less editing as a major advantage and a great feature. In fact for my private hacks I usually use something such as a ROM-less editor which uses an external format that gets converted to the internal ROM format upon insert. For me, it's ideal to design your part of the game totally outside of the ROM, and compile everything into the ROM when it's ready to go, which makes allocating space a one time thing and as optimised as possible..."ideal", as in not always possible, but I try to aim for that.

Believe it or not, in the professional world of game design, you don't have ROMs to do this shit (since it all compiles in one go later), and they rely on external resources for things such as level editors.

Take this into consideration: A team of ROM hackers are putting up a ROM hacking project for F-Zero X. One person is working on graphics, one person is working on music, another on level editing. It would be convenient for the map designer (especially if he has minimal knowledge of ROM hacking, for example, but may have awesome F-Zero X Map ideas, or previous experience with non-emulation-related mapping), to have a level editor that just works, without the need for ROM and crap. In this case the designer can just save levels on their HD with virtually no limitation, and the ability to trade the files to the project manager, for example.

Another simple example is if you are forced to go somewhere and need to work on a ROM hack. You don't have the particular ROM or a ROM you are working on, but that doesn't leave you unable to design maps for it. Then perhaps an ROM-less level editor would be the solution.

Not only is the idea of ROM-less Editing "not unreasonable", but it is FAR from unreasonable. It makes the program more professional in design IMO.

[not the best examples, but eh I tried ]

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Originally posted by HyperHacker

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It's certainly possible, but in most cases impractical. Consider your FZX editor. It can create courses without a ROM, sure, but you need one to test the created courses, modify existing ones, edit other things (vehicle stats perhaps; this could be done without a ROM, but it'd be difficult to work that way), and eventually you need to insert all the data into one anyway lest you simply have a lot of cool 3D shapes.

Graphics are one of the biggest issues. You can do it without a ROM but then you're stuck with the built-in graphics. If you make your own in the ROM, the editor still shows the old ones. Extracting them allows you to use them without the ROM, but you still need it to extract them in the first place.

Most online editors, I imagine, just have a copy of the ROM on the server and modify it in memory. Assuming it was aquired legally, this should be legal because the ROM is never distributed.

One final interesting note: There's some Tetris Attack editor that edits the levels right in ZSnes's memory. This can be considered ROMless as the editor doesn't need to ever access the ROM, but then the emulator still needs it. The biggest issue in this case is how the editor works. If it modifies the ROM stored in memory, then it's no different than a standard editor. If, on the other hand, it modifies the decoded level data in the emulated RAM (which I imagine it does), then it's quite different. It never needs to access the actual ROM and could theoretically edit a knock-off PC version using the same format, hence no ROM involved.

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Originally posted by Xkeeper

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Originally posted by DJ Bouche

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I'm just going to ignore the drama

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way to be a champion! now if only more people did this instead of just creating more drama. dlkgadhsglkadjgs

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and get straight to the point that I've always seen ROM-less editing as a major advantage and a great feature. In fact for my private hacks I usually use something such as a ROM-less editor which uses an external format that gets converted to the internal ROM format upon insert. For me, it's ideal to design your part of the game totally outside of the ROM, and compile everything into the ROM when it's ready to go, which makes allocating space a one time thing and as optimised as possible..."ideal", as in not always possible, but I try to aim for that.

Believe it or not, in the professional world of game design, you don't have ROMs to do this shit (since it all compiles in one go later), and they rely on external resources for things such as level editors.

Take this into consideration: A team of ROM hackers are putting up a ROM hacking project for F-Zero X. One person is working on graphics, one person is working on music, another on level editing. It would be convenient for the map designer (especially if he has minimal knowledge of ROM hacking, for example, but may have awesome F-Zero X Map ideas, or previous experience with non-emulation-related mapping), to have a level editor that just works, without the need for ROM and crap. In this case the designer can just save levels on their HD with virtually no limitation, and the ability to trade the files to the project manager, for example.

Another simple example is if you are forced to go somewhere and need to work on a ROM hack. You don't have the particular ROM or a ROM you are working on, but that doesn't leave you unable to design maps for it. Then perhaps an ROM-less level editor would be the solution.

Not only is the idea of ROM-less Editing "not unreasonable", but it is FAR from unreasonable. It makes the program more professional in design IMO.

[not the best examples, but eh I tried ]

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Pretty much what he said, the only problem siwth ROMless editors are...

1. inability to make sure that the edited content works as planned
2. inability to plan exactly where something goes

Essentially, if the game adheres to a very strict format, you could design a whole new game (in essence), only to find out only ~5% of the creations you made won't work without severe gutting (etc).

However, a well-written editor will check for these things, so the point ended up being moot regardless. Great, I just spent ten minutes writing nothing useful. $pc++;

Didn't Mario Improvement 3 have something like this, the Freeform Mode, anyway? That made creating levels easier...

And, one last fun fact: it seems like most of the more experienced ROM hackers tend to use ROMless editors, judging from what I've been hearing in this thread.

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