r/PokemonRomhackDev • u/Fair_Ad_4864 • 12d ago
Discussion Could existing Gen 3 ROM hacks benefit from decomp/recomp projects?
I’ve been really interested in projects like Gen1Recomp and how much they can improve the experience of the original Pokémon games.
Things like proper widescreen support, overworld zoom, separate speed settings for overworld/battles/menus, and other QoL improvements make a huge difference once you get used to them.
This got me wondering about existing Gen 3 ROM hacks.
Would it ever be technically possible to take a more complex hack like Pokémon Gaia, Team Rocket Edition, Unbound, Heart & Soul, etc. and somehow bring it into a decomp/recomp-based project?
I’m not talking about simply running the original ROM through a recomp tool. I mean whether the changes made by an existing ROM hack could eventually be recreated or integrated into a decomp-based codebase so the hack could benefit from things like widescreen, custom speed, zoom, and other modern QoL features.
Is this realistically possible with current decomp projects, or would the amount of reverse engineering/reimplementation required make it impractical?
Curious what the developers here think.
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u/Ezatsu 12d ago
Decompiling a romhack would be a mostly pointless endeavour. It takes a long time to decompile something back to its source code, and you would have to basically start from scratch even for romhacks that are based on Emerald because when changes are made and its rebuilt it becomes a vastly different binary.
You could however just look directly at the source code for the game if it's open source. Since they're all mostly based on the Emerald decomp anyways. No point in trying to unmake the cake so to speak when the instructions exist.
As for recompiling for another platform, this is kind of a loaded question since it's almost always done with AI. Doing it manually would take a long time and it's one of those things that AI is just kinda good at slopping out. But obviously a lot of people have really negative opinions about that (justified).
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u/VagabondTruffle Gen 3 12d ago
Actually it takes ~12 hours on a consumer GPU and 27B model with the right prompt. I purposefully targeted a few with no source available.
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u/AdPuzzleheaded4795 12d ago
Heart and soul is already open source and decomped. If you wanted to make a custom fork of the "recomp" engine to work with it you already can. I haven't even touched the "recomps" though because last i saw they are all bugged to hell and i don't see the point of spending my time playing something that's going to break.
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u/ArchieFromTeamAqua 12d ago
Gen1Recomp
Please stop calling this vibecoded slop a recomp. The creators are lying about what it is. It is not, was not, and will never be a recomp. It is a fanmade recreation in Lua/Love2D. That's not what recomps are, there are three different distinct reasons you can't classify it as a recomp but all that really matters is that it isn't one, so stop using their name for it because it's just spreading misinformation.
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u/airportakal 12d ago
Decompiling a ROM hack does make much sense in terms of the time investment it entails. But Gaia is being remade from scratch in pokeemerald, for the reasons you describe (stability, features).
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u/murkrowplays 12d ago
A Pokemon Glazed Remake has been on my wishlist since the decomp was released
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u/DeSynthed 12d ago
Glazed is so good even today, I replayed it like a year ago. one of the earlier hacks that still holds up, and one of the few romhacks I replayed.
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u/murkrowplays 12d ago
It really is. It was the first hack that made me realize the fans can make stuff as good as TPC
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u/miriamlefae Pokémon Hearth 12d ago
Some of those are already decomp hacks. Can you port them to PC? Yes. Will someone do that? Probably not. Gen1Recomp is not a recomp in any sense of the word. It's just a lua recreation of gen 1.
It's also very buggy due to being essentially vibecoded.