[Other] Stop Binary Hacking; It's Holding Back the Entire Community

[Team Aqua Leader Archie]

Now, with this happening, what do you gain?
Instead of saying that you want Romhacking to be closed, you should help the two to coexist. I think that would add +20 to you, but there is nothing wrong with wanting a +1.

I do not want romhacking to be closed. Just the opposite. Supporting the rise of decomps over binary is supporting the openness of the community.

 

[Doctor Breeb]

While I don't have anywhere near the amount of experience you have in this field, I think this argument isn't worth it. I get what you mean. I've seen the benefits. I've heard the benefits. Especially from a certain individual who displays themselves as the leader of Team Aqua. As for myself, I'm in a limbo between these two methods. I'm not actively making a hack. I've been wanting to make a hack for years, but my commitment and free time has dwindled since that flame ignited itself.

Let's look at things this way. My favorite hack is Glazed by Lucbui. I first played it in 6th grade. If decomps existed back then, no matter how much assistance I got with them, the commitment would just die out. I wasn't as tech savvy as I am now. Then I look at some newcomers nowadays. A couple of years ago, when Haven's tool HMA was less convenient and user-friendly than it is now, I saw many people ask for help with very simple tasks. Some people couldn't navigate the tool at all. For example, all they had to do was use ctrl+f or ctrl+g, but they didn't have the slightest idea what anything meant or how to use the program at all. They weren't savvy with computers at all. All they knew how to do, if I had to guess, was browse the web and play computer games. Nothing more. Probably didn't even bother with the file explorer too often outside of whatever was necessary. Now try to tell these people how to setup and use pokeemerald.
They'll say:
"What's an environment variable?"
"What's a git?"
"I don't understand any of this."

Sure. You could help them out step-by-step. I think that would be daunting, but that's up to you. Even after you help them, they still won't grasp the basics for a while. If they're still interested, they'll keep coming back to you for more help. Asking the same questions they asked yesterday, or last week, or last month. Over time, they'll either improve and need less assistance, or they'll just walk away because the commitment is too much for them.

I want to make a hack with a new region and story. I still intend to do so. If it's gen 3, it'll likely be with pokeemerald. If it's with Skeli's CFRU, are you going to cry because I'm not contributing my work to the wider community? Even if I were to use pokeemerald, it would be with the expansion repo. Most people who will be using pokeemerald long-term would likely be using the expansion repo without writing any new code to change the inner workings of the game, like I would. At that point, if my hack were to be open source, the only differences between it and most other people using pokeemerald would be the same things that make any hack different from one another. Dialogue, graphics, maps, trainer teams, you get the idea. That's not a contribution. That's not improving the scene as a whole. That's just releasing hacks with the same skeleton, but they're each wearing different clothes. Some hacks will add new things to the table. At that point, it is a contribution. That won't happen very often.

New battle engine? Unless you're going for something completely unique, it already exists.
Following Pokémon? At least three repos exist, right? I don't know why there are three of them, but I guess you could pick one.
Name a miscellaneous feature. Common ones have already been created for use in the decomps. The only way for someone to contribute to the community in the decomp side of things nowadays would be to develop something that hasn't been developed yet. I don't know how large or small that list is, but the features become more and more niche the farther down the list you go.

In the end, I see what you mean. Will decomps be the future? Yes, but it will take time for it to be the sole method of doing things. Look at electric cars. Are they being impacted because cars that run on gasoline are still being made? Are cars that run on liquid fuel holding back people who want to purchase their first car? I don't know. I'm not in the automotive industry, but that's a good analogy to your argument here. In the future, electric cars will likely be the only type of vehicle on our roads. The transition period is just very long. Looking at this now, I know you're going to say, "Electric cars are still being developed. Decomps are ready." For that, all I have to say is that a transition period still exists for binary to decomp. Binary no longer has to rely on Advance Map because of Haven. Sure, you didn't downplay his efforts with HMA's development. From my interpretation of your post, you think the efforts, while good in nature, were a complete waste of time because they weren't used for the benefit of the decomps. Your post may be intended as an informational post, but all I saw was trash talk for one method. Splitting this community even more than it already is. Anyways, have a good day and a happy new year. One day, you'll see the future you desire in this post.

 

[HustlerJim]

Absolutely stupid opinion that if haven and skeli weren't making binary stuff they'd magically be contributing to the decomps. That's their choice. Even if they weren't making binary stuff they're still free to not do anything for this scummy elitist camp. There's no difference to the cOmmUnitY.

I do not want romhacking to be closed. Just the opposite. Supporting the rise of decomps over binary is supporting the openness of the community.

Yes, you and op are the pinnacle of openness.
Never seen people building open-source software be so absolutely not open in my life

 

[Ryuko72]

I do not want romhacking to be closed. Just the opposite. Supporting the rise of decomps over binary is supporting the openness of the community.

In order for your method to open doors, it needs Romhacking to stop being binary on the side. I don't know what to say, or how something like this can be optimal, it seems more monopoly than anything else, but anyway, what am I going to know if I'm just another random internet user xD

 

[Sierraffinity]

I don't really post on PC these days but I felt the need to add my two cents here for whatever reason.

While I understand the core intent of this post and the desire to save people time, energy, and frustration, there's no denying that this post comes across as somewhat elitist due to its insistence that binary hacking needs to be dropped in favor of decomp hacking. Unfortunately, diplomacy is hard, which is why "diplomat" is an actual job title. What needs to be acknowledged is that at the end of the day, people are free to choose whatever method they want to use, and trying to tell someone that they should drop what they're doing and switch over to something new and unfamiliar will almost never work. Instead, I find that talking to people and telling them the benefits that I've personally gained from switching to decomps is less antagonistic and more likely to get someone to consider it for themselves.

My own personal experience with binary hacking was that it was a nightmare for me. Granted, I was working on binary hacks during 2008-2014, and there are certainly more advanced tools and methods out there now that would have made it less painful, but no tool can completely eliminate the core problems that binary hacking has. Buggy tools led to frequent corruption of random data in the ROM, oftentimes leading to problems I wouldn't find until far later in development (even post-release, which was... not great, to say the least). It got to the point where I tried to quietly retire from the scene out of sheer "done-ness", and when that didn't work, I tried to make my own toolset that would take into account all of the little things and edge cases I'd run into in the course of my work (anyone remember Awesome Map Editor/Awesome Script Editor? No? Just me?). This is about the time that I started college and began learning proper development methods, and also when I came across the decompilation projects, which were still in their early stages.

Even though they were still in their infancy, I knew that the decomp projects were the actual solution to the problems I had with hacking, rather than new binary hacking tools. Instead of working with 16MB blobs of bytes, you had plain text files, image files, MIDIs, wave samples... Basically, the entire ROM was laid bare, in plain English words that you could search through or add to version control systems, turning what was previously an exercise in frustration to find or change data through tools or hex editors to a simple search through a codebase, much like actual software development. I joined the effort to fully decompile the ROMs because I knew of the massive potential they had, and even started porting CrystalDust over before the pokeemerald decomp was anywhere near completion. There was no way forward besides decomps, to me anyway.

Nowadays, with the 3rd gen decomps fully complete, there is, to me, no reason people that are just starting out with their hacks shouldn't be using the decomps for them. Even smaller hacks which could use a few binary tools and be done would benefit, despite a slower ramp-up time with setting up a proper development environment. Their creators would also be better poised to make larger and more intricate hacks in the future with that prerequisite knowledge out of the way and even be able to leverage this knowledge directly for other programming work in the future, which is not true for much of what binary hacking has to offer. That being said, I will not begrudge people for their individual choices. If they've seen the potential that decomps have and choose to go with binaries, then that's their choice and more power to them for it. It's a hard and often frustrating endeavor to do things right with binaries, but it's where I cut my teeth originally and overcoming the challenges posed by them (especially the need to work directly with assembly) is probably what led to me getting an actual software engineering job in the end.

However, I do want to make sure that the people making this choice are properly informed as to what they're choosing. The binaries, by their nature, are hard to work with correctly, no matter what tools you choose to use. There's always things that can go wrong, be it with faulty tools or outdated tutorials or simple human error, that are hard to go back and fix later when you find out that a bug created months ago is just now cropping up when you've made it to a later section of the game. Version control is incredible for this because if something like a bug like this crops up, you can go back through a detailed history of exactly what changed and when, and figure out what needs to be fixed. Hell, you may not even be able to create the bug in the first place because it would cause a compiler error to do so.

That's actually a benefit of decomps that I think people might actually see as a 'drawback' or 'complication' that they don't have to face with binary hacking: error checking. When you (or a tool you're using) makes an improper edit in the decomps that doesn't make sense to the compiler, it will spit out an error that will inform you of what is wrong and often enough information to tell you how to fix it. If you (or a tool) makes an improper edit to a binary file, the binary can't tell you what happened. With luck it'll be something you were directly working on at the time and the issue will be immediately apparent, but often the bugs will hide away in an irrelevant part of your game and you only take notice months later during release when someone comes up to you with a bizarre bug report that you then have to spend ages tracking down and fixing, if you even have the knowledge of how to do so in an opaque 16MB binary blob.

The fact that binaries can't tell you what went wrong is why I think some people may confuse "no error checking" with "ease of use". If you take a patch and apply it to a binary, if nothing immediately goes wrong, then congrats, it worked... you think. You might have just overwritten data but you wouldn't know until you actually ran across a problem in game. If you merge a branch in Git, you might get merge conflicts or compile errors. These things seem like a huge headache in the moment but they're actually preventing these sorts of bugs from arising in the first place. A merge conflict is sorta like the decomp equivalent of a patch overwriting data in a binary, except here the error is obvious and you can actually do something about it at merge time. In the software engineering world, this is the difference between a compile-time error and a run-time error, and lots of work goes into figuring out how to turn run-time errors into compile-time errors so these problems can be caught at their introduction and not when someone goes to actually use the program.

Speaking of bugs though, when you do get inevitable run-time bugs in decomps (because the compiler can't catch things like logic issues), debugging them is so much easier with the proper tools and things like symbol names. With decomps, you get the ability to debug in environments similar to PC software, with breakpoints and proper names for things, instead of needing to step through piles of assembly code and keep notes on what you think things mean in a separate text document you need to keep referring to. You also have to debug far less often due to the whole compile-time error paradigm that binary hacking just doesn't have an equivalent for.

Phew... anyway, that was a lot of words to basically say: decomps have a whole slew of advantages over binaries and my belief is that most people should make new hacks using them (and migrate their existing hacks over if they can), but I will not begrudge anyone choosing to hack binaries or make tools for them instead, because at the end of the day, this is a hobby that people are participating in for fun. For me, the fun is found in solving challenges related to implementing certain features or completing sections of story, but others might enjoy solving the weird bugs and other problems that can arise in binary hacking. Like I said earlier, more power to them. To me though, decomp hacking brought back a lot of the fun that had been buried under binary hacking frustration for a long time, and I probably would have left the scene a lot earlier had decomps not come about. I implore anyone here to get properly acquainted with the decomps before making the decision of which path to choose.

 

[Blah]

You should really try to express yourself more succinctly. I read until the part you said you had over 18 years experience, and then my perspective was an ironic "OK boomer".

The decomps have been a great tool for me, and it's been great advancement overall. In terms of adoption, you need to improve the barrier to entry (setup and use) the project and maybe more tools like Porymap which interface well with the file systems for common tasks like modifying or adding PKMN.

You're competing with CFRU/DPE, which is always going to be a quick start to a fantastic ROM base. These are awesome projects which help see more hacks and more people involved in the community. The title of this post (which is all I'm willing to read) is incorrect and in poor judgement.

 

[X_Zenith]

.....Repond . ..

Sorry if this hurts , i think you like decomps much and that is what i do (binary) . I suggest if you had posted this thread at decomps and disassembly then it would had been great . As posting here for decomps doesn't makes sense. I definitely think it is a topic for you i think that Decomps and disassembly was the correct place for this. Like something suits you but it is not necessary it suits to the whole world or only single person. I respect your experience of (9 times my exp.)18 yrs , and age . But seriously brother the main problem is everbody wants his hack to be the best with either binary or decomps, they are in level for now nothing is advanced till . We have to research a lot more to get that level . You see binary emerald is most less used and decomps pokefirered is not much used and reason is these both have both much resources like Dizzy egg's engine which is updated for till gen 7 . Or ghoulslash 's only items till gen 8. And community at the current time is very sleepy posting new things like asms on asm resource thread or on simple modifications thread that is it.

 

[X_Zenith]

As someone who knows and understands full well the merits of your argument, if I were to ever consider making another hack, I still wouldn't use the decomps in their current state. For two reasons:

1. The only aspects of ROM hacking that are even fun to me any more are solving the problems that people love to say about "you can't do that on binary." Sure, binary hacking can be frustrating at times, but I know what I'm doing and the joy comes from overcoming those frustrations. And yes, I know decomps have their own share of frustrations, but what I find fun is up to me and no one else.
2. The Emerald battle engine upgrade is currently far inferior to the CFRU's. First off the CFRU's is actually complete, unlike Emerald's which is still missing several features. Second, the AI in the EBEU isn't nearly as good as the CFRU's. And third, most of the attack animations in the EBEU came from an older version of the CFRU. I've since updated many of those animations -- updates which are not reflected in the EBEU. So until the EBEU surpasses the CFRU's battle engine, I wouldn't willingly switch. And you could argue "But, Skeli, unless you quit binary hacking and improving the CFRU how are they supposed to pass it?". I'm one programmer who's barely done anything to it in the last year while they're a team of several. I think they have all the advantage they need.

In a few years your argument might have more weight, though, but who knows.

Best answers by Skeli and and jo19.sh92 i think the same brothers , but posting and everytime telling decomps , decomps , oh our Decomps I don t like that . I actually say today i am till with binary today and the reason is my old pc which is windows 7 and it can not even go for inserting C injections like CFRU so how it would go for decomps? And i couldn't afford new one. That is the problem because of which 1/4 people are binary rom hackers

 

[Martmists]

While I understand the core of the post, do you believe this holds true for all pokemon games in the series? For some platforms like GBC/GBA/DS I can understand, but for Switch (and I believe some also exist for 3DS?) we have tools like Exlaunch, which do patch the binary but are mostly based in actual code. Where would you draw the line to where these forms of "pseudo-binary hacking" should or should not be used?
In other situations (mostly the DS games), large parts of the binary are yet to be decompiled; pokediamond didn't start until just a few years ago, and it's unlikely HGSS/BW will get there anytime soon. Would binary hacking be an appropriate solution in those cases as there is no proper decomp yet, or should they instead spend months decomping the game to not have to deal with binary hacking?

 

[X_Zenith]

While I understand the core of the post, do you believe this holds true for all pokemon games in the series? For some platforms like GBC/GBA/DS I can understand, but for Switch (and I believe some also exist for 3DS?) we have tools like Exlaunch, which do patch the binary but are mostly based in actual code. Where would you draw the line to where these forms of "pseudo-binary hacking" should or should not be used?
In other situations (mostly the DS games), large parts of the binary are yet to be decompiled; pokediamond didn't start until just a few years ago, and it's unlikely HGSS/BW will get there anytime soon. Would binary hacking be an appropriate solution in those cases as there is no proper decomp yet, or should they instead spend months decomping the game to not have to deal with binary hacking?

The best way is seeing a third way where both can be used , that will be useful for a rom hacker , a binary in decomps hack would be a hit

 

[Hiroshi Sotomura]

While I understand the core of the post, do you believe this holds true for all pokemon games in the series? For some platforms like GBC/GBA/DS I can understand, but for Switch (and I believe some also exist for 3DS?) we have tools like Exlaunch, which do patch the binary but are mostly based in actual code. Where would you draw the line to where these forms of "pseudo-binary hacking" should or should not be used?
In other situations (mostly the DS games), large parts of the binary are yet to be decompiled; pokediamond didn't start until just a few years ago, and it's unlikely HGSS/BW will get there anytime soon. Would binary hacking be an appropriate solution in those cases as there is no proper decomp yet, or should they instead spend months decomping the game to not have to deal with binary hacking?

People appear to agree with the premise that because the code for the games from the DS and beyond are part of a filesystem, it's a lot easier to work with and delivers a couple of the benefits you"d get from a decomp — like the content being organised well, and being able to use source control on them to check out and revert edits. It's still going to, generally, be a mess of bytes (being compiled machine code), though, so it's inevitably not going to be the same, hence the efforts to turn that around.

But we're neither here nor there with anything outside of Gen 3 ROM hacking yet.

 

[Akiak]

I think this is a decent message which I can mostly agree with. That being said, I've already witnessed a lot of mean-ness and snobbery directed towards binary hackers, and I feel like this is just encouraging more of that.

Here's the bottom line: we hack for fun. We can do what we want. You draw comparisons with fossil fuels but there is no parallel. Binary hacking isn'r ruining anything for anyone.

By all means, tell people about all the advantages of decomp. But if people still want to binary hack...just let them, for god's sake. You don't need to worry about it.

 

[U.Flame]

While I don't have anywhere near the amount of experience you have in this field, I think this argument isn't worth it. I get what you mean. I've seen the benefits. I've heard the benefits. Especially from a certain individual who displays themselves as the leader of Team Aqua. As for myself, I'm in a limbo between these two methods. I'm not actively making a hack. I've been wanting to make a hack for years, but my commitment and free time has dwindled since that flame ignited itself.

You should give yourself more credit, you've already made multiple complete hacks for MAGM, so you're speaking from a place of experience here. Your opinion holds as much weight as any other hacker here

 

[dearman4]

I once tried to make the switch to decomp, didn't like what felt like a steep learning curve. But I have thought about recreating my binary hack in a decomp environment over the years. I understand that decomp has a lot more flexibility and even though people talk about data corruption in binary, I have only ever experienced it once so maybe I've just been lucky?

However, when I see people talking about decomps in this manner, it really just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's hard for me to give you the benefit of the doubt here, your post feels antagonistic under the guise of a hard truth or tough love.

I love doing binary hacking, I have fun with figuring out how the game stores hex data and decoding it so I can make my own tools out of spreadsheets, it's a part of what I like about the hobby. That being said, I can recognize that decomps are inherently better in the long run, and as you and others have pointed out, it will be the only game in town eventually. I don't mind that eventuality, natural evolution of the craft and all! I just really don't like the false equivocating with fossil fuels, the clickbait title that really feels like it was meant to incite negativity, and the overall tone of your post.

Truly, you are not WRONG about decomps, however you are going about it in a seemingly deliberately antagonistic fashion. I'm sure you're frustrated with how every time you attempt to politely explain the benefits of decomp hacking, people scoff and stay with what is in your opinion an outdated form. That doesn't mean you should say things that you know are going to rile people up just so you can feel your point is made.

There were better ways to go about this and while I can sympathize with the frustration you no doubt have felt over people feeling decomp is too complicated to attempt, I cannot condone passive aggressiveness. I hold no ill will toward you, I just feel today you made a bad call in how you voiced your frustration.

Ultimately, some people like myself just enjoy binary hacking and if they were the types of people who would make improvements to the decomp community, I think they'd naturally gravitate there. Attempting to force people to your way of thinking never works. You can only make things truly better on your side. I've seen some people mention other utilities like Porymap to make Decomp hacking more palatable, and that's a good idea! People love gui's. I think that's something worth thinking about, ways to make the decomps more approachable. I hope that there will be some progress in that direction soon :)

 

[Doctor Breeb]

You should give yourself more credit, you've already made multiple complete hacks for MAGM, so you're speaking from a place of experience here. Your opinion holds as much weight as any other hacker here

Well, you're not wrong. I've released two "game jam" rom hacks. One of them winning. The other being way better, but submitted late and worked on with a partner. That one was fun though. Great to work with someone regardless of how the contest results turned out. I have two incomplete hacks for MAGM as well. One of them being submitted for the sake of it. The other being unsubmitted and still sitting on my hard drive. The unsubmitted one has more complete content than the other, but is still heavily unfinished.

I was comparing my amount of experience with his. He seemed more knowledgeable as a result. I don't mean to downplay my experience. I'm looking forward to the day I make "that one big hack".

 

[HunarPG]

The main issue is seeing this post as Elitism which it's clearly not
The thing is we all can agree decomps are better and we should always suggest Decomps to a new user if he don't like it and want to go to binary it's their choice
Rather than saying decomp are harder and binary is easier choose what you want you should always suggest decomps and let the user pick for himself
This kind of gatekeeping is keeping binary alive more than anything

 

[Lunos]

1. The Emerald battle engine upgrade is currently far inferior to the CFRU's. First off the CFRU's is actually complete, unlike Emerald's which is still missing several features. Second, the AI in the EBEU isn't nearly as good as the CFRU's. And third, most of the attack animations in the EBEU came from an older version of the CFRU. I've since updated many of those animations -- updates which are not reflected in the EBEU. So until the EBEU surpasses the CFRU's battle engine, I wouldn't willingly switch. And you could argue "But, Skeli, unless you quit binary hacking and improving the CFRU how are they supposed to pass it?". I'm one programmer who's barely done anything to it in the last year while they're a team of several. I think they have all the advantage they need.

With all due respect, I don't think it's fair to compare the CFRU and the Expansion. They clearly have different goals and different definitions of completion.
Last time I checked, the CFRU was missing moves such as Ally Switch, many abilities, certain mechanics such as the damage reduction of Super Effective moves against Flying-type Pokémon while Delta Stream's weather condition is in effect, and battle types like the SOS Battles introduced in the Gen. 7 Pokémon Games.
These are all things that the expansion either has, or has already started to look into.

That's not to mention that the CFRU has issues of its own which you didn't talk about at all.
If you want to talk about the cons of the expansion, it is only fair to talk about the CFRU's own too.
For example, the CFRU has an extended saving time which is not present in the expansion.
Its latest versions have a problem with the DNS system which you know that I mentioned on the CFRU's repository through an existing Issue ticket dedicated to it, and that at the time of this post is still present.

Hell, as I double checked right now, I'm noticing a new issue; the information bar in the start menu isn't being hidden when you change the Button Mode to LR like it is in vanilla, which as a Player is one of the very first things I always do. Granted, that could have been a change made on purpose. That I don't know.
You may consider it complete, but personally, I wouldn't. Not when it has issues that can be spotted without much effort.

EDIT: And keep in mind these are just the ones I'm personally aware of, and I'm no longer an avid binary hacker. I barely used the CFRU myself.
But hey, I might as well add something that I'm just remembering.
At some point, while helping people in the past at the community's Discord server, I came across at least 1 or 2 configs of the CFRU that when disabled, impeded you from injecting it into a ROM at all.
You won't see that in the expansion, and if you (figuratively speaking) do, make sure to report it either on RHH's Discord server or the Pokeemerald-expansion's GitHub repository, and it'll be fixed asap

The point about move animations is whatever. That's a completely subjective topic.
The expansion doesn't need to use the new animations, though I will conceed that many of them could use a revamp, such as Draco Ascent's.

I can completely agree with the rest though. The AI is a bit messy and likely inferior, and the project is still missing features that the CFRU has within its scope, such as Dynamax Battles.
These are both being worked on, mind you. The AI is modified at a constant rate adding new logic and fixing whatever issues as they pop up, and the Dynamax Battles are being slowly worked on inside of a Draft Pull Request in the expansion's repository.

 

[HustlerJim]

The main issue is seeing this post as Elitism which it's clearly not
The thing is we all can agree decomps are better and we should always suggest Decomps to a new user if he don't like it and want to go to binary it's their choice
Rather than saying decomp are harder and binary is easier choose what you want you should always suggest decomps and let the user pick for himself
This kind of gatekeeping is keeping binary alive more than anything

Mate I don't know if you're blind but I've highlited the parts of your post that completely disagree with the op. That's why his post is obviously elitist. He's not SAYING suggest decomp and let the user decide like you. He's saying "binary hackers are holding everyone back". This isn't just about the user. He's saying that somehow someone else's decision to binary hack is holding YOU back. THAT is elitist and entitled as heck and op needs to get his head out of his ass

 

[Skeli]

With all due respect, I don't think it's fair to compare the CFRU and the Expansion. They clearly have different goals and different definitions of completion.

I was comparing battle engine to battle engine. Please refer back to my statement:

The Emerald battle engine upgrade is currently far inferior to the CFRU's

Notice how I wrote "CFRU's" and not "CFRU". I.e. "The Emerald battle engine upgrade is currently far inferior to the CFRU's battle engine upgrade"

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Last time I checked, the CFRU was missing moves such as Ally Switch

Yup, the only move I never did and will never do. I consider it complete, even without that niche move. If Ally Switch not being implemented were the only thing stopping people from using the CFRU, I imagine they won't have much luck period since the expansion doesn't have it implemented yet either.

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battle types like the SOS Battles introduced in the Gen. 7 Pokémon Games.

First off, I abhor the SOS battle mechanic. It was incredibly frustrating trying to catch Pokemon in Sun & Moon when they would keep summoning help and you couldn't throw a Ball until one of the enemy Pokemon were defeated. And second, there actually is a bit of experimentation I did with that kind of battle in the CFRU (see Pokemon Unbound climax on Difficult and higher).

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many abilities, certain mechanics such as the damage reduction of Super Effective moves against Flying-type Pokémon while Delta Stream's weather condition is in effect

For example, the CFRU has an extended saving time which is not present in the expansion.

Its latest versions have a problem with the DNS system

See the dev branch. Admittedly I'm much worse at responding to my messages and open issues than I should be, but all of those issues have already been fixed for months.

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That's not to mention that the CFRU has issues of its own which you didn't talk about at all.
If you want to talk about the cons of the expansion, it is only fair to talk about the CFRU's own too.

Notice how you've reported bugs, while I referred to the overall state of what the expansion contains. I could have just as easily said as well "look how many issues the expansion has open", but I didn't because I accept that bugs will happen.

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The point about move animations is whatever. That's a completely subjective topic.
The expansion doesn't need to use the new animations, though I will conceed that many of them could use a revamp, such as Draco Ascent's.

You're right, it doesn't need to. But if the quality matters to me, I can assure you it matters to other people as well (even if it doesn't matter to you).

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the Dynamax Battles are being slowly worked on inside of a Draft Pull Request in the expansion's repository.

Being "slowly worked on" does not equal done. Please refer back to my statement:

So until the EBEU surpasses the CFRU's battle engine, I wouldn't willingly switch

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Let me follow this up by reiterating my point. As it currently stands, the expansion's battle engine is objectively not as advanced as the CFRU's. Will it be one day? Probably, especially considering I don't plan on supporting mine for that much longer anyway. But until then,

I wouldn't willingly switch

 

[evanonline]

Time for everyone's favorite: opinions from a quiet lurker!

I got into romhacking in 2021 as a pandemic project. I'm pretty deep into it now. I picked up CFRU and the older tools simply because it was easily available and accessible. It's the first thing that shows up on a search, in no small part because Unbound is a prominent hack and it has CFRU attached to it, it's easy to jump into and make little changes and see them in-game very quickly. I didn't realize I was going to make a big romhack, or even that I wanted to - I was initially just interested in making some tiny little changes to the game and I realized I was just... having a lot of fun, so I kept going and now I'm making something full. It's been really creatively fulfilling. I have struggled with working on creative projects in the past from being an art school dropout. I had a lot of feelings like I needed to perform to a certain pace to be successful at making things, I needed to have an audience, I needed to worry about making money off my art - that all goes out the window with romhacking. I'm working on something I literally can't make money off of, and it's just fun for me to mess with an old game I played when I was a kid and make something new out of it. I'm cutting through all the crap and just making something with no worries about it, because my livelihood doesn't depend on it. I'm quietly toiling away at my work, it will still be a while before I have anything to show - but sincerely, it has been a very healing experience for me to make a Pokemon romhack.

(edit: and here's a screenshot to prove I'm not talking out my butt and I am making something lol)

So to all of this the biggest counterpoint I have to offer is that working with tools that are 18 years old is actually something of a boon to me. That's 18 years of experience, knowledge, and documentation on how to use these tools and modify these games. I've been able to learn so much on my own, simply with some crafty googling. Meanwhile, when folks ask questions in various romhacking Discords, I often see one particular blunt answer in response - "I don't know, switch to decomps." Okay, but why? Why should I throw all of my work out to switch to a completely new format? Why should I increase the scope of my personal project, throw all the knowledge I've gained out the window? I rarely see a satisfactory answer to the "why". Just that you "should".

I've been at this for over a year now so yes - at this point, I have figured out exactly why it is you should switch to decomps... on my own. And yes, I get it - objectively, decomps are better. They're more flexible. They're going to save you a lot of headaches. I hopped on at something of an inconvenient time - while the decomps have been around for a while now, they've only gained steam very recently with more comprehensive builds, and newer resources like pokeemeraldexpansion. And attention has been drawn to the virtues of decomps with some major romhack releases like ROWE and Emerald Rogue. When I started last year, I looked at all the options and messing with CFRU genuinely seemed like the best thing at the time, both in terms of how much it offered, and in terms of documentation and access to help amongst the community. If I saw someone new jumping into romhacks now, I would very much tell them to use decomps - in no small part because, if they use decomps, then that means if they ask for help online they might get actual help instead of hearing "switch to decomps"!

I've seen too many creatives get themselves tangled up in starting a project over because they found a better way to do it. I COULD start over with the decomps, but what's most important to me is getting this project finished so other people can see the stuff that's been living in my brain. I try to avoid the sunk-cost fallacy, but there's a certain point where upheaval is just foolish and I think after working on my project for a year I'm far past that.

But I think the most important thing, seriously, is that stuff gets made and that people have a good time making it. My experiences with romhacking have been really positive and I want other people to have it - I don't care about the tools they're using as long as they're using them at all. I won't throw around "elitism" or other such words because I think there is a sincere, if bombastic, desire to see the medium pushed forward, but I don't think posts like these are the way to do it. If you want to push romhacking forward with the decomps, the proof will be in the pudding - make good stuff with the decomps, like Emerald Rogue, and people will follow. No evangelism necessary, just results!