Hello GSH

[Privjet]

Hello, I'm new to this forum and new to ROM hacking in general but I have some experience with reverse engineering and hope that it will be of some use to me.

I found my way to this forum through one of AtriusV's movies, saw the link for a golden sun editor and i was hooked. As I said I've got no experience and hopefully I'll learn quite alot during my time here. :)

[Salanewt]

Hello Privjet, and welcome to the Golden Sun Hacking Community. As long as you follow the rules, you should have fun here.

Yeah, I started like that too. Trust me, you will probably learn at least a little bit here, and then learn much more when and if you try with a different game.

Have a nice day.

[Tetsuya the Azure Blade]

Welcome to GSHC, Privjet. I'm sure you'll like it here. And as far as  hacking experince goes, You'll learn more about ROM hacking as the time goes on. And I don't know ANYTHING about Golden Sun hacking. As I'm a NES Mega Man hacker and most if not all of what I know can't really be applied to the Golden Sun games. So if you want tips on hacking the Golden Sun games ask either Corvidae or Atrius, But on the other hand if you want to know how to hack a NES Mega Man game then ask me and I'll try my best to help you. And reverse engineering IS very similar to hacking.

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Welcome to the forums, and enjoy your time here!  What type of reverse engineering specifically do you have experience with?  It could help quite a bit.  Anyway, feel free to ask me any questions you may have about ROM hacking.

[Aile~♥]

Ooh! A new member!

Hmm, I'd normally give a repeat of my thing about the global mod being evil except that she's not the global mod anymore, which kinda leaves me with nothing to say .

[Privjet]

@Salanewt Thank you :) But I got no clue on how to begin learning it. Any noob guides out there?

@MegaDarkNero Haha, sure megaman is awesomely hard, if I find my time for it I'll definitely try :)

@Atrius Well, it's kinda embaressing but I began with reversing on application cracking challenges on hackthissite.org and hellboundhackers.org. But I have also reversed some tiny bits of Diablo I in IDA. Great program, though a little costy :/

@JamietheFlameUser haha well, you can start with who the current global mod is :)

[Tetsuya the Azure Blade]

Well, Privjet I think the game you should hack first are one of the Pokemon GBA games, As they're the most commonly hacked games that I know of. Since there are tons of tools and quite a few Pokemon hacking guides on the internet. What did you mean when you said "sure megaman is awesomely hard, if I find my time for it I'll definitely try." were you referring to the gameplay or about hacking Mega Man? Oh, There's no GM here at the moment (although I don't know why) And isn't application cracking illegal? But that doesn't matter to me at all because ROM hacking is technically illegal, I mean you're modifying the data of a copyrighted piece of intelectual property without permission of the respective owners.

[Privjet]

Is it such big difference hacking different games? I mean both use midi sounds and probably use some of the same functions, or are all GBA roms uniquely designed and developed?

Oh, sorry if I my response was misleading, I meant the gameplay :)

Well it depends, the apps I was cracking were released by the site for entertainment and educational purposes only, but if I crack a copyright protected software then it's illegal. Same as rom hacking :)

[Tetsuya the Azure Blade]

I think you misunderstood me there, Privjet. As I suggested that you have had previous experiences with (GBA?)ROM hacking before using a hex editor on a Golden Sun (1&2) ROM. The way that Golden Sun stores its data is a bit....Different from the way most other GBA ROMs do so Golden Sun 1&2 tend to be a bit more challenging to hack. Is it because saved games are stored in a....I'm gonna say backup library (wrong?) and I think they use checksums (wrong again?)

[leaf]

Hello Privjet, and welcome to the boards!

@Nero: As far as I know that's only relevant for save game hacking? It stores your save file in multiple libraries to protect against corruption during a save. Checksums are a fairly common way of making sure data isn't corrupted, even though a failed checksum may play just fine, and a successful checksum doesn't guarantee that data hasn't been tampered with... Oh, and if tampering with data against the original creator's will was illegal, gameshark would be illegal. It's not anywhere near as black and white as you put it. While there are many many things the original artist of any work can claim they have the right to, fair use goes a long way to keeping things accessible to the consumer without making them criminals for every small thing they might do with a work. Once something is in your possession, there is nothing the original artist can do to control how you enjoy the work, unless you infringe upon the original artist's rights of distribution. It goes deeper than that (such as cases of transformative works), but if you care about the topic enough, you'll look it up yourself. This is just the super-condensed version that skips over a lot of the finer points.

[Aile~♥]

Wut?

[Tetsuya the Azure Blade]

@Leaf: The reasons I don't know how to "really" hack GS2 are V:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/file/561356/30811

http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/file/561356/44956

[Sajin]

Hello there Privjet!
Well, like the others said: enjoy your time here, read the rules, etc etc...
Cya around!

[Salanewt]

As for a beginner's guide, I could only really reference you to a few guides for specific games, since almost all games are different (though some are similar). If you really want a guide for a game, the best and most detailed one I could produce would be for the first Mario & Luigi game, but I do not think I am quite ready to produce a guide for it yet.

I could give you a link to a more difficult guide, with a bit of information about the Nintendo DS as well as the GBA.

http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm

Oh, there is also some CPU data there it seems. Well, Atrius first referenced me to this guide, but I am still a beginner according to it's standards.

I hope it can help you, even if it is not today.

Have a nice day.

[Atrius (He/Him)]

I could give you a link to a more difficult guide, with a bit of information about the Nintendo DS as well as the GBA.

http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm

Oh, there is also some CPU data there it seems. Well, Atrius first referenced me to this guide, but I am still a beginner according to it's standards.

It does get very technical and can be difficult to understand at first, but that is the guide for all things GBA/NDS hacking.  It has detailed information on every little aspect of how the GBA and NDS work, I reference it all the time while I'm working on various GBA hacking related things.