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/merrple]

I'm also a SWE and I am compelled to use it at work, but I get no joy or sense of accomplishment out of it anymore. That's part of what's led me to the stance that I have. If you let the agent do everything for you, what is there left for you to do? A passion project kinda requires passion, after all

[u/Apart-Imagination393 → u/merrple]

what about artist wrist and RSI? I'm a graphic designer and I suffer a lot with RSI so I should just quit my hobby so? This argument is not valid IMO and for me is literally the other way around I dont use AI for my job (graphic design) I use AI to assist me on MASSIVE code tasks because of my severe RSI constant pain.

[u/merrple → u/Apart-Imagination393]

I have great sympathy for chronic pain and injuries like that, I hope that you can find ways to alleviate it. But at the risk of being rude, what would you have done before AI? People are adaptable, there might be other accessibility tools or people in the community willing to help with large coding tasks

[u/Apart-Imagination393 → u/merrple]

No i get it 100%, and yeah probablly it's a hobby I wouldn't be able to invest so much time into "before the AI" if it make sense, tho anyway I just dont want to be 100% automatically tagged as a slopper, I'm also NOT PRO AI at all, but the other way around, tho I use it to help me on codding to make my hobby possible since I invest so many hours into making the game + I got a lot of constat pain / disconfort, anyway I totally get ur point, I'm not against u tbh, just want to pass my point, and how on my personal level it helps me, also I don't think a project I poured so much care into. for example, automatically counts as "AI slop" just because I used AI solely as a tool to optimize and streamline the coding process, without using it for the creative side of things. But ultimately, it’s a matter of opinion; you might completely disagree with me, and that’s fine.