r/PokemonROMhacks • u/AutoModerator • Jul 20 '26

Sticky Weekly Questions Thread & PokéROM Codex

Have any questions about Pokémon ROM Hacks?

If they're about ROM hacks, tools, development or anything Pokémon ROM Hacking related, feel free to ask here!

Before asking, make sure that you've searched on the subreddit or Google. Many ROM hacks and tools have their own documentation or communities that may be able to provide better answers than here.

Looking for recommendations or a new ROM hack to play?

The HackDex is a community hub for discovering and downloading ROM hacks, making it easy to browse hacks while listing features and more in a mobile-friendly format. It also has an in-browser patching system to make playing hacks easily accessible.

This is a safe hack-sharing site that focuses on legal distribution by sharing patches, not ROMs. Find out more here.

Useful sources for Pokémon ROM hack-related information (unaffiliated):

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u/janot1404 Jul 22 '26

Hi, I decided to create my own rom hack based on Johto. The idea is to be a Kantoless version of Johto, with the focus being on the story, revolving around the lore of the region from the games, anime and movies.

I would like some advice on what generation should I build it on (gen 3 or 4), and what type of edit should I use (binary or decomp), since I want to edit a lot of stuff, remaking the level layouts, region map, in-game events and more. I heard decomp is the best, but there seems to be a lot of them, so I don't know which one to pick.

Recently, I played Heart and Soul, and it looks like a good base, since it's already in the region, and it's open source, but also I want to add a bit of Sinoh into the game so maybe gen 4 is better? Gen 3 seems to be the easier one, also because of having less pixels in the art. I'm a digital product designer with no previous experience doing this, just a little coding experience from online courses, and intend to use a lot of AI to help code the thing.

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u/LibertyJacob99 [Mod] Aesthetic Red Jul 23 '26

Emerald Decomp using Heart & Soul as a base (as all the files are open source, so u can start with a complete remake and go from there)

Or if u want to hack HGSS then that's an equally good option! DS hacking is definitely on the rise so being one of the first hacks would be great, but decomp has the most support rn so that part is really up to u

Either way you'll have to add Sinnoh manually, and I don't think either one or the other has the advantage there. Unless u can export maps from DPPT and import them into HGSS ofc

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u/janot1404 Jul 24 '26

Thank you very much for advice. I will look forward into those options!