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Got A Question About Modding? This is for you.
Let's talk about modding. No, I don't mean stuff like Skyrim or New Vegas mods, I mean the kind of stuff we host here on Insane Difficulty: modified versions of your favorite old school games. Modding isn't simple, but it's not impossible either, as the downloads section shows. I've been seeing a lot of threads pop up lately, each with their own misconceptions about how modding is done, so I figured now would be a good time to talk about it.
Before I go any farther, this is something that has to be said. No one will make your mod for you. All of us who mod or hack these games do so because we love the game in question. Most games are pretty simple nowadays, and others have a few imperfections, but if polished could have shined like a diamond. We do what we do in order to shine these games to something closer to perfection. We do not do it for attention, or for recognition.
First and foremost, you need to figure out the scope of your mod. There's a pretty good article on this already, so I'll keep this part fairly brief. You need to figure out what kind of mod you want. You have to have some kind of vision. Do you want a difficulty mod? Do you want to rebalance the game and get rid of that one ability (or bring it more in line with the others) that makes everything really easy? You need to be able to answer these questions. You may not know exactly what kind of mod when you start. This is okay, just keep in mind that the lack of a vision will spell death for your project in the long run. Scope Creep is a very real concern, and something you always need to be aware of.
This next one is possibly the most important thing to understand: Time. Modding a game is a huge time commitment; it's not something that will be finished quickly. Any good mod has months, sometimes years of work put into it. Taking breaks is fine; no one will fault you for that, but this is something that needs to be understood. As a result, burn outs are a very real concern. Take breaks.
Alright, now that we have that out of the way, let's get into how you're actually going to mod your game. I'm going to list off the different tools you can use to accomplish this from the simplest to the most complex.
Editors
Thankfully, we have a wide range of tools at our disposal. The simplest and most popular of these are game editors. These are not universal, as no two games have exactly the same code. The quickest way to find one would probably be to use Google. For your benefit, I'll list off some popular games that we know to have functioning editors.
- Final Fantasy Tactics
- Final Fantasy [I-VII]
- Chrono Trigger
- Golden Sun
- Golden Sun: The Lost Age
- Dragon Warrior [1-4]
- Megaman [1-6]
- Ghosts n' Goblins
- Pokemon [Various]
- Fire Emblem [8] – The Sacred Stones
- Super Mario World
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
There are, of course, more than I've listed here, but you can do some research and find them rather easily. Zophar's Domain has a ton of them.
There are, however, times when a game does not have an editor, like Breath of Fire III for example. What do you do then? Well, at this point it's a lot more difficult if your game doesn't have documentation. Either way, at this point you need to rely on a few other tools.
Hex Editors
Hex Editors are basically what you're going to be hacking the game with. It basically opens the ROM or ISO and allows you to go in and edit the bytes of data (displayed in hexadecimal form) contained within. I won't go into this too much, as there are many, many resources available to you via Google. My preferred hex editor is HxD, if you're curious.
Tile Molester
Tile Molester is more for palette editing than tweaking the actual game. It essentially converts hex values to a color map. Each hex value corresponds to a different color. You can import palettes to make it easier. I'll be the first to say that editing color palettes via Tile Molester is a massive pain, as some of our modders can attest to.
See how that has "Patch" and "X" to the left and right of the usual title? That's done with Tile Molester.
Another thing to note is that you cannot load an ISO itself into Tile Molester, only ROMs. You can, however, extract files from the ISO and load them in Tile Molester. That's how you edit item icons or World Map Ramza in Final Fantasy Tactics.
Disassemblers
Let me just say right now that disassemblers are currently out of my league. I don't use them, because I don't know Assembly, the language that these games are coded in. If you don't know Assembly, you're not gonna get anything out these. Essentially, a disassembler allows you to track the data being called by the game so that you can find the bytes you're looking for easier. They're highly advanced.
I'd like to also add that if your game doesn't have an editor or extensive documentation, a disassembler is really your only option, because unless you know what bytes to change in a hex editor, you're not going to be modding anything.
As you can see, modding isn't something you can get done in five minutes with no effort. It's a process. You will never know everything when you begin; you will learn more modding your game than you ever could by playing it. Anyone who has a mod on here will tell you that.
Modding is fun, though. It's like breathing new life into a piece of your childhood to share with others. Always remember that no one here started modding knowing exactly what to do. We all started from the same place: with that one desire to make a clouded diamond shine.
24 Comments
Page 1 of 1Hart-Hunt
06 February 2014 - 09:55 PMWhile that list provided by Advent really is useful, please don't be discouraged if the game you're interested in is not on the list. Every game can be modded and hacked, with enough time and dedication, and of course as he said, having a clear vision of your project. But be sure to know that you'll need to learn ASM, as a start, and you will become dizzy quite frequently with all of those numbers floating there.
And as a gift, for anyone trying to mod SNES games, this is my God:
My God3Archael
06 February 2014 - 10:08 PMThis is the best article I have ever seen on this site. Awesome work. We should link plenty of people here whenever they ask about these topics.2Advent
06 February 2014 - 10:09 PM2auraplatonic
06 February 2014 - 11:16 PMHart-Hunt, on 06 February 2014 - 09:55 PM, said:
While that list provided by Advent really is useful, please don't be discouraged if the game you're interested in is not on the list. Every game can be modded and hacked, with enough time and dedication, and of course as he said, having a clear vision of your project. But be sure to know that you'll need to learn ASM, as a start, and you will become dizzy quite frequently with all of those numbers floating there.
And as a gift, for anyone trying to mod SNES games, this is my God:
My God
I second this as well, I have learned alot in the past couple weeks by studying this and comparing to the code. Its a beautiful thing21Advent
07 February 2014 - 05:11 AM0DrROBschiz
07 February 2014 - 10:32 AMExcellent Article
Been thinking long and hard about taking the plunge!1Advent
07 February 2014 - 10:39 AM4Advent
07 February 2014 - 10:02 PMI had a piece of information incorrect regarding Tile Molester; that has now been fixed. Thanks to Secondadvent and Raven for letting me know.0CrazyClown
19 February 2014 - 03:43 AMSo a question; what kind of documentation are you talking about and where do I find it?0Advent
19 February 2014 - 07:28 AMCrazyClown, on 19 February 2014 - 03:43 AM, said:
So a question; what kind of documentation are you talking about and where do I find it?
Documentation pertains to a sort of 'map' of the ISO or ROM in question. It tells you what bytes of data control what, showing you what values you need to alter in a Hex Editor in order to achieve the desired result.
As for how to find it, my first inclination would be to google something like "<name of your game> hex offsets" or "<name of your game> hex documentation." Failing that, you might check romhacking.net, as they have some documentation for games that you could parse through.
Failing that, you'd have to use a Disassembler in order to document the structure of the ISO/ROM yourself and go from there.2CrazyClown
19 February 2014 - 06:29 PMThanks Advent, I found a site affiliated to zophar gamehacking.org they don't seem to have any documentation but gameshark codes and i was confused since there was a note there that says what it does in a hexadecimal function.
EDIT: well bad news for me there isn't any documentation about wild arms 2...guess i will study other documentations and pick something up from there and try to disassemble wild arms 2.0mr big meow
28 February 2014 - 03:15 PMCan someone tell me what program or programs are used to make custom animation for FFT. For example abilities used by Marksman class.0Advent
28 February 2014 - 05:06 PM00ForTheRobot
12 November 2014 - 11:15 PMWow great, this topic is kind of what I have been looking for. I have been interesting in getting into modding old game too! It seems really fun to try. I am currently in school learning about programming and such, but I am just a novice. I like to play old games mostly, but I agree I wish they could just be "harder" haha. I am glad I found this site, and this topic on the forum about some beginning ideas on the HEX editor.
0Ludovician
13 November 2014 - 05:19 AMKeep in mind that if you decide to start a project, you need to be aware that it's a lot of work, and you will need to manage your scope properly.
Edit: Now I see that Advent made the same points above, so this post is redundant. Oh well.0Mishrak
13 November 2014 - 06:14 AMIt's still a good reminder. It's really easy to start something. It's also really fun. It's much harder, and much less fun, to finish it.0Advent
13 November 2014 - 08:44 PM1Hart-Hunt
13 November 2014 - 08:53 PM1Advent
13 November 2014 - 09:05 PM0ForTheRobot
14 November 2014 - 06:42 AMGreat! Thanks for the advice.
Yes I am a novice at this stuff, and only beginning to trying to understand it. I am interested as well, but I know that's only a start.
I still need to read and learn how to read and understand how to change things properly. Even work the programs themselves ^^;;
But I will be browsing some of the other topics too!0TherCiny
28 March 2016 - 12:40 AMthis is an awesome testimony. I am very happy for this good news for you. Congratulations
God is good
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