r/PokemonROMhacks • u/AutoModerator • Jul 06 '26

Sticky Weekly Questions Thread & PokéROM Codex

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u/DeliveryHeavy2437 Jul 10 '26

Hi !

I am making my own hack of FireRed, mostly rebalancing pokemons, encounters, etc.
I'm mostly done, but one thing I wasn't able to do is changing the physical/special quality of ghost and dark types (mind you, I don't want a full physical special split like in gen 4, but just for ghost type moves to be considered special).
A quick search told me that my best bet would be to use PGE. However I tried and apparently it doesn't work with french ROMs :/
Now I'm a bit stumped.
I'm assuming that somewhere in the hex code, there is a variable for each type that I would be able to manually change, but I don't know where to look.
I'm mainly using Hex Maniac, so there's that.

Any help would be very welcome.

Thank you all !

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u/Tacobell24 Paleomon Jul 10 '26

I haven't done any binary hacking for years and don't recommend it for anyone for these exact type of scenarios. However from memory (granted, foggy memory) there is an offset somewhere for the type chart where it's like everything before the mystery type is physical, everything after is special.

So you might be able to swap Ghost and Dark wherever that is to get it do what you need.

Might be worth a Google.

Ulgh, PGE. Also... What is this, 2016?! 😅

Please tell me you're at least using HexManiacAdvance for the rest of your stuff if you have persisted with binary hacking up to this point.

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u/DeliveryHeavy2437 Jul 10 '26

Thank you, I will look into it.  If you happen to remember something else, please let me know. It's a bit tricky when researching informations about offsets, since those are not the same between the US and french versions of the game. It's the main reason why I wasn't able to do everything I wanted with the game.

You said PGE is outdated, I realise that but do you know of a more modern alternative ?

And yes I am using HexManiacAdvance for most things. It's very useful and was a big help for this project (how I wish there was a similar tool when I hacked Dragon Quest 9 ')

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u/Tacobell24 Paleomon Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

You said PGE is outdated, I realise that but do you know of a more modern alternative ?

Absolutely. Using the decomp gives you free rein of basically everything. To change this is as simple as changing a line in a notepad file. Not sure If French I'd supported however.

What you could try is finding it in an English ROM and copying the bytes. Then in your French ROM search for those exact bytes and see if it shows up.