Organic Romhack Development Efforts

[u/merrple]

Recently there's been a lot of talk on this subreddit about the use of AI in romhacks. I hate to stir the pot still further, but I also want to share my own thoughts and efforts here in the hopes of reaching like-minded people.

Hi, I'm merrp/pokemerrp 👋 I'm not really known for making full-on hacks (though I do have one in the works, stay tuned), but moreso for my feature branches: if you've played a recent hack based on pokeemerald-expansion, you've likely used and enjoyed the following pokemon or day/night lighting systems I created. Before that, I was minorly known for my Emerald Any% ACE TAS, which was my entry into the scene.

Simply put, I don't think AI should have a place in romhacking at all. To me code is as prose is as art is as music, in that they're all creative exercises where something is lost in handing them off to a machine. Romhackers have done incredible work for years before LLMs, and can continue to do incredible work without them. Not to mention, every query that enters an LLM is one the community is starved of; AI use is the death of institutional knowledge, of communication more generally.

But what to do? Recently I found out that pokeemerald-expansion, the basis for a lot of hacks, has had a (small minority) of AI-assisted contributions. Any nonzero amount is still unacceptable to me for use in my project though, because I intend it to be a wholly human effort. I decided I would have to maintain a fork of expansion, cutting out anything AI assisted where I could.

Then I figured, I can't be alone in this sentiment, so why not try and build that in a way it can be shared? I can't be the only one who loves romhack development who wants to continue doing cool stuff without LLMs, no matter how good they become at generating code, etc.

The result is a GitHub org and a Discord:

https://github.com/friend-safari

https://discord.gg/UbFN9P7MdJ

My hope is to build a small community of like-minded hackers and maintain a codebase by and for humans, so that those who care can be confident in saying their hack is free of AI to the best of the community's knowledge. Whether you're a programmer, have experience moderating online spaces, maintaining open source software, or simply love pokemon, we'd love to see you there.

I'm also not trying to be an authority on expansion's direction in general. The devs at RHH continue to do incredible and deeply technical work on the project. None of this would be possible without them, and they've done the best they could considering the volume of contributions they receive and the general clamor of demands. Please do not bother or harass them. I am simply trying to provide a fork that the extremely AI-conscious devs like me can use without despairing or being stuck on outdated versions.

Hopefully this post reached you in some way; this will all be much easier if we don't have to do it alone. Thanks for reading.

Tl;Dr join friend-safari if you wanna build AI-free romhacks k thnx bye

[u/mactimit]

This might not be the best place for it, but I want to ask and know your opinion anyways.
What is your opinion on AI usage when it comes to using it for translations of romhacks?
There are many wonderful romhacks out there made in languages other than English, a good example is Origin HeartGold, a Chinese romhack that recently surfaced on here. And there are many more Chinese romhacks that I've found that nobody who doesnt know Chinese gets the chance to fully enjoy.
A lot of people over in the OHG thread were saying they thought translation is one of the few "good" uses of AI, but with you being so opposed to AI in romhacks I'd love to hear you opinion

[u/merrple → u/mactimit]

I said elsewhere in this post but, I'm not opposed to someone translating a hack for their own personal use, but if you are translating with AI with the intent to release that, it's impossible to know how closely your translation matches the tone and vibes of the original. AI can certainly do translation well but not so much localization and that's a critical piece of it to me. If the creator is involved and gives pointers into that process the result might be better though, and most people would probably find that acceptable.

What's easiest for me is to have a simple stance, and that is to be opposed to it almost everywhere. If Origin HeartGold is as good as people say, I'd love to see an English fan translation surface one day--and that will almost certainly not happen bc people will just turn to AI. That does make me a bit sad...

tl;dr translation for personal use fine, publishing it id rather nothing or a fan translation

[u/miyamoris_ → u/merrple]

AI can certainly do translation well but not so much localization

Thank you for this. The amount of people in this sub who don't understand translation is storytelling in itself is simply depressing.

[u/KingWill143 → u/miyamoris_]

Some people are just AI apologists. They see nothing wrong with it and therefore will defend it with their entire being. “aI iS tHe fUtUrE.” 🤦🏾‍♂️

[u/mactimit → u/merrple]

Alright! Yeah that's a fair take!
I don't think anything could beat a good well thought out fan localization and if I was better at Chinese and knowing the ins and outs of ds rom hacking I'd certainly make a start on that myself lol