Warning: Wall of text containing a bunch of personal stuff about my experiences and stuff. :P
I joined in 2008 to do ROM Hacking, although I joined RHO (formerly PHO at the time) first. I remember one of my first posts was asking if it was possible to have pokemon follow you, lol. Now we know that it's near impossible, and not very easy at all.
I first started doing basic hacking, adding grass, lv 100 pokemon, dumb stuff. Then I saw ShinyGold and Jupiter and I wanted to make something completely new, and awesome. It never happened. I tried mapping, failed miserably. Then I did some scripting, and it seemed to be something that I
could do. So I began doing scripting, getting better over time. I actually ended getting so good at scripting that I made a tutorial, and eventually discovered Hackmew's knowledge. At Hackmew's knowledge, I began to learn ASM. I started with Hackmew's basic ASM, and then went on to modify it, tweak it, and eventually make my own ASM, starting with pseudo ASM, which ended up working, into some more different ASM. I read as much as I could from Hackmew's ASM, but it wasn't enough. I wanted more. So I went to JPAN's ASM tutorial document, and read that. It gave me a deep understanding of the GBA hardware and how the entire game was linked together. I went on to make a season's hack, my first ever ROM modification. It changed the palettes depending on the time of year. After that, I made it modify the tileset data, so that ponds would freeze over.
From there, I started to play with the idea of being able to make custom GUI's and new screens. I began to search up the GBA's hardware specs, and I found GBATek to be a wonderful resource. What to do with it though, was a mystery. Then I found thethethethe's GBA ASM tutorial, which covered basic GBA homebrew concepts written in ASM. Using his tutorial, I managed to make a sign GUI, which I sadly never released and was lost. After that, I made some small tweaking hacks, specifically for JPAN's berry engine for Fire Red. After weeks of tweaking and writing ASM, I managed to get a working-ish system, complete with what is now my
Berry Bag Hack. Unfortunately, that was lost too, along with the berry bag hack. The bag hack had to be redone unfortunately.
At the peak of my hacking career, I tried Linux. I ended up loving Linux so much that I abandoned Windows, and ROM Hacking along with it. Wine existed, and was at version 1.2 at the time, but it sucked too badly to do any real hacking, so I quit for the time being. I also got addicted to Minecraft during beta 1.2_02, and as most Minecrafters do, installed some mods. Now with my switch to Linux, I switched to programming Java instead of C#. And since mods are written in Java, you know what I probably did: I started making mods. I made a mod for apples falling out of trees, different saplings for different trees, wolf collar colors, and my best mod, the Mining Drill block. Ironically, all my mods ended up going into Minecraft, except the Mining Drill block. After getting stressed out by Minecraft modding due to having to update constantly and all the annoying people whining for me to update, I quit modding, and went to Bukkit development. I updated some plugins, and made a few myself, and I enjoyed it. Less stress, more fun. However, people eventually wanted updates, and I didn't feel like doing them. However, I still contribute to the Bukkit github, and I am eagerly awaiting for it to be pulled.
Then I started to lurk. I checked the forums, and I occasionally posted. Then the lurking grew to activity, and when I got an e-mail from LaZ saying that RHO was up, I couldn't resist. I rejoined the scene. I spent my first few months starting to regain my ASM knowledge, looking at old code. Then I began my super secret project, and I also began to play with GUI's again. This time though, more advanced:
That's 100% written in ASM (converted from C code), on a standalone ROM. While I got it to insert into Fire Red, I got stuck on a problem that kinda put the idea on hold for now. But, during my searching, I got the idea to ask Mastermind_X how he did his Ruins of Alph routine. He basically told me it was written in C, and he decided to allow me to release the source temporarily until he cleans his code and releases it himself. However, the code didn't help much, as his memory of how he did it has failed to remember. So, I moved onto other hacks, and practiced my mapping skills (which are much better now). I began work on an abandoned project of mine, SEA, a cross-platform script editor written in Java. It is currently a WIP and semi-stable, semi-unstable. After doing some work, I decided to scour for something to do. After much thought, I managed to stumble upon a crystal remake that was made during my absence, which boasted a custom intro, and lost of custom ASM love in it. It was, unfortunately, fake. However, this did give me the inspiration to do the undone: To make a custom intro. After some small research, I've actually managed to get the game to execute my custom code between the copyright and the titlescreen, and I will soon release my intro hack in an advanced tutorial explaining how to make a custom intro. For those who are curious:
So my journey here has been a long one, and it was ultimately the reason I created my account here. I can honestly say that my stay here has been a wonderful one, and the administration, no matter how strict they are, are freaking awesome, and I thank them for spending their time to moderate here. :)