! This site is a work in progress !
Hacking Generation 1
Method 1: Disassembly (pokered)
This section is a work in progress
list of things you'll need:
- pokered, the Pokemon Red dissassembly (Download)
- your preferred code editor (Notepad++, Visual Studio Code, ...)
after setting up pokered (instructions in INSTALL.md), you can now do anything you want (limits include gameboy hardware and your coding knowledge in assembly)
you can also make a different game entirely from Pokemon Red.
1. Translations - Changing the alphabet
if you're making a translation, chances are the language you are translating to has special characters like Polish Ą or maybe Italian Ó.
but you can add that in!
navigate to: /gfx/font and open font.png.
from there, add the characters you want, but there are restrictions to this:
- the colours HAVE to be black & white. no in between, no other colors.
- the size has to stay as is: 128x64. just don't resize it.
after you're done, you're gonna want to modify the character map. this isn't needed, but it makes life a HELL
of a lot easier. navigate back to the home folder and open charmap.asm in your text editor of choice. then
scroll down until you see Actual characters (from gfx/font/font.png). add your characters, using the template:
charmap "CHARACTER", $e0.
2. Translations - Changing the text itself
then, you're ready to change the text! for example, open data/text/text_1.asm and try to fit these requirements:
- line or text start a line in a text box.
- line or cont make another line.
- text_end, done or prompt end the text box.
- try to fit at most 15-18 characters in a text box.
- start and end strings with ".
when you're done, save the text and compile the ROM (again, instructions in INSTALL.md)
Method 2: Using tools to change an existing ROM
(method may or may not be public sometime after 10 years)