Why there aren't many DS hacks?

[The Silver Fox]

There are many GBA Roms available on the web and PC, some of them are good and some are excellent.

But why there are negligible amount of rom of DS hacks on web?. I can only see blaze black and volt white.

 

[adelgirl]

I have heard it is because they are harder to hack.

 

[U-Hacks]

That is because DS roms are difficult to hack.

 

[Trainer 766]

As you can see, the only NDS Rom Hacks you mostly see are difficulty hacks. And there's no hack (with the exception of Light Platinum NDS and Heart Red) that has map changes. So I'm guessing limited amount of tools/research or even the difficulty of hacking it.

 

[Blah]

I think the lack of a well made map editor is the reason why. You need something that's reliably stable. Once a map editor exists, for most people hacking DS games would be the same difficulty as hacking GBA games. The difficulty curve exists in learning the new tools.

The programming is what changes mostly due to some hardware changes. Most of our GBA hackers still don't know how to draw a pixel to the screen yet, so I think DS Hacking is a far ways for us. But we'll get there eventually :P

I would jump on the DS bandwagon really quickly if we got a nice Map editor for ANY of the Pokemon DS games.

 

[Buffel Saft]

The lack of a good map editor is definitely the biggest reason, but I'd say the DS tool selection in general is what keeps people away. There are a few basic things like trainer, move and Pokemon editors around, but none of them are complete, and only a few are bug-free. SDSME and PPRE are close to being very good editing suites, but both were abandoned before all the bugs were ironed out, and they tend to break things if you don't know which parts of them to avoid. As a result, there's a lot that simply can't be edited without using a hex editor, and that seems to scare off a lot of beginners.

 

[Platinum Lucario]

The reason for it is very clear: While there is already map editors for D/P/Pt/HG/SS/B/W/B2/W2 (which are NPRE and SDSME), the development of those map editors hasn't gone very far.

But they're both open source though, so if anyone is a programmer and is interested in developing NPRE and/or SDSME further, improving them or forking them into a totally new project, you're more than welcome to do so. They really need attention, so if you're a developer and want to help improve them, these programs really need your help. ^^

 

[immacksg]

It's much harder to hack DS Roms. The most Complex DS Rom Hacks I've seen as of now have been a Diamond-based Remake of Ruby, and Light Platinum DS. I'm pretty sure they've both been cancelled.
The most you'll find at this point is just minor changes like difficulty, sprites, text, music or encounters.

 

[Trev]

I would jump ship so god damn hard if there was a decent map editor for DS games. I've wanted to make a game in HGSS for the longest time. Unfortunately, I can't figure out any of the map editors, so I just can't get behind it.

 

[Derxwna Kapsyla]

Pretty much what's been said already; DS Rom Hacking is just underdeveloped. The tools are incomplete most of the time, but a good portion are open source so other people can contribute/pick up development. And yeah, one of the biggest hurdles is the lack of a user friendly Map Editor.

There's also a huge and significant Advance-Era Bias. I've asked the question before: "Why don't we have more DS Hacks?", and the answers I got were along the lines of:
"Why would/should we research hacking the DS games when we can do everything the DS games can in Fire Red/Emerald? We can recreate the Skill Split System, we can expand the Pokedex to 800, we can implement every move, every ability, we've even added Fairy! The only thing the DS games could offer us now is Pseudo 3D Graphics."

Of course, that's not word for word, and I just combined basically every answer I got into one, but that's the general stances I heard in the past. There's a lot of complacency in the Rom Hacking scene because Gen 3 has tools for everything, and it's extremely user friendly. Because we have so much documentation, so many tutorials. With all this documentation, all these resources and tutorials, why would people want to go and do DS Hacks?

The same reason we do Gen 2 hacks, and Gen 1 hacks. Because we can, and we want to. I would love to see more development in the Gen 4 hacking scene, not just in making actual hacks, but breaking the engine over our knees like we did with Gen 3. Like we have with Gen 1 and 2. A new frontier to establish ourselves in, new challenges, more unique and diverse things. Watching as the engine becomes the plaything of the fans, as they twist it, manipulate it, and make it suit their needs, and in the end, make something even more magnificent out of it.

 

[BelmontSlayer]

DS games are definitely harder to hack, GB/GBC Pokémon games actually have the best and most powerful tools in my opinion. There are some pretty good GBA tools too and even the 3DS scene is getting some good hacking tools now, but I'd really love to see more DS hacking tools as well.