Table of Contents

TBA

What is the difference between ROM hacking and Pokémon Essentials?

Pokémon Essentials is a utility for making Pokémon fan games via a platform called RPG Maker. It helps with making a Pokémon game using some existing assets without starting completely from scratch. Meanwhile, ROM hacking involves using Hex Maniac Advance to edit an existing ROM (.gba file) where all of the original 386 Pokémon, 354 moves, etc. are present. Games edited this way are ROM hacks, which are also Pokémon fan games.

What is HUBOL?

HUBOL is short for "Haven's Unofficial Build of Leon's DPE/CFRU Rombase." It's a utility that adds modern-gen mechanics (like Z-moves), Pokémon, moves, and more. With it, you can make your ROM hacks as robust as Pokémon Radical Red and have them configurable in Hex Maniac Advance! Important: Make a copy of your regular FireRed ROM first! To apply it to the copy of your clean ROM, go to [Utilities], [Misc], and click [Apply HUBOL DPE CFRU].

This page has some more information. Note that this is only available for FireRed v1.0 and not other base ROMs.

Can I get Generation 9 Pokémon?

Not really. The HUBOL only adds Pokémon from generations 4 to 8, and there hasn't been a ROM base compatible with Hex Maniac Advance that contains the Paldea roster. You will have to manually replace existing Pokémon to fit in the generation 9 Pokémon. Also, there are no plans on making this a feature built into HMA.

Can I edit the "?" slots between Celebi and Treecko?

There are a handful of empty spaces in between. You can edit them, but there are caveats. Note that all 25 spaces share the same palettes, sprites, and cries. These slots are hard-coded to use Unown's cry. Also, there are no Pokédex entries for these slots, so catching them in Pokémon Emerald will cause crashes. Some of these problems can be worked around, however.

Solutions

In the Pokémon table, click on one of the "?" slots. For the three times that you see "This is used by 25 pointers.", you will need to click [Repoint] and [All] so that HMA makes the necessary copies. You will then be able to edit the sprites freely.

You can use the givePokemon command to give players one of the "?" slots to bypass the Pokédex.

Can I edit Pokémon Radical Red (or some other ROM hack)?

You cannot. Hex Maniac Advance is not designed for editing other people's ROM hacks. Lots of them have data shifted around that Hex Maniac Advance cannot pick up on, so if you tried to open the ROM yourself, you might not see every Pokémon, table, item, etc. There are ROM bases like SCADE and HUBOL you can use if you want a head start in making your own ROM hack.

How do I add new abilities?

Adding abilities is actually a lot harder than adding moves. While you can go to data.abilities.names and expand the table with the [Add n New] button, all of the abilities' effects are hard-coded in the battle mechanics themselves. Thus, it is difficult to change how much health a Pokémon needs to be at for its Blaze boost to activate (for instance), and it is almost impossible to add more speed-boosting abilities like Slush Rush and Sand Rush. There are some guides out there that will help you add certain abilities, such as this one from PokéCommunity, and there is a guide for using an HMA script that adds Pixilate-style abilities.

Note: If you are using HUBOL, lots of abilities from generations 4 to 8 are already in the game.

Can I extend any table using the [Add n New] button?

Absolutely not! Lots of tables are actually unsafe to expand, even though they let you press that button. Some of the main tables that are not safe to expand include Pokémon (both names and stats), Moves, Move Tutors, TMs, Trainers, and Pokédex entries. There are some tables that are safe to expand, however, such as abilities, trainer classes, and the big wild Pokémon table.

Some tables need a "light switch" to become safe to extend. Click [Utilities], and hover over [Expand]. A few tables can be extended after clicking their corresponding utility; namely, moves and move tutors.

How will I know which tables are safe to expand? First, make backups of your ROM so that you aren't punished for making mistakes. Second, ask us in the Discord server!

Can I edit the ??? type?

This one's interesting. You certainly can replace this type with a new type, but Eggs will have that type, and the type will not be physical nor special. This means that, by default, ???-type attacks will deal no damage.

If you want to add the Fairy type to your ROM, you can follow this guide and keep the ??? type intact. Things like HUBOL and the CFRU often add the Fairy type for you.

HMA crashed! What do I do?

If this happens, click [Copy a crash message to the clipboard]. You can report an issue on GitHub or join our Discord by clicking on the corresponding link. On Discord, paste your crash log in #hma-bug-reports and describe what happened before the crash. If you are on an older version of HMA, you should get a newer version because the bug you might be facing could have been fixed already.

It's recommended to save your file often when editing your ROM hack. If HMA crashes, it's safer to quit without saving.

HMA showed a debug assert! What do I do?

If you see a message that looks like this:

...then HMA hasn't quite crashed, but there is a conflict with your game data and the data HMA is trying to show. Click [Debug], and copy the stack trace. If you haven't already joined our Discord server, click [Report] to join. Paste the stack trace in #hma-bug-reports, as well as what you were doing prior to this pop-up. Regardless of the circumstance, HMA should never show any debug asserts!

Can I delete maps? Can I "start fresh" by having no maps at all?

No to both of these. It's always better to leave a map unused. Maps don't take that much space, and your game could run into other issues (like crashes) if it tries to load such a deleted map by other means. As for a clean slate, it would be very, very tedious to remake all the new houses, Pokémon Centers/Marts, and routes. Editing the connections of different maps will still save time and work in the long run.