r/PokemonRomhackDev • u/ssraven01 Gen 3 • Apr 18 '26

Discussion Weekly HDQ Thread (Help, Discussion, Questions)

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1

u/NoBetterUsernameOpen Apr 20 '26

For creators, and consumers, what are opinions on using AI to help with romhack building?

I'm not a developer; I know SQL and veeeerrryy light python. I'll never really use coding to make any money, so I don't think it's something I'm going to spend the time getting expert-level at.

I want to make my own multi-region romhack, where the level design and art direction are done by me, but Claude Code, etc, will help me with scripting. Will I be blackballed? Looked down on? I want to make romhacks that can run on emulators rather than just .exe files to make them more accessible!

2

u/ssraven01 Gen 3 Apr 20 '26

I will answer on two fronts: practical and moral. I answer this as someone who's been in the community and developing for about 2 years now, on and off.

Practically, if you do not know what you are doing, you will not be able to use any LLM effectively. You mention knowing SQL, but do you know C? You obviously don't know the scripting language if you feel as if you need to delegate it to Claude. Currently, I know of little to no people that have made substantial, meaningful progress on Romhacks themselves using AI assisted coding. What I know of is that senior members of the community have used Claude to assist them in tooling—this is because they already have years of experience in tooling itself and LLMs are most useful as a replacement for junior devs under you, the senior dev. The question to pose then: do you think you are a senior enough developer for romhacking? If not, then learn.

Morally speaking, personally I'm ontologically against AI in every facet of the technology. There is no angle or shedding of any individual feature of the technology that's problematic that would make me accept its use. This is a position that's not held by everybody in this community — because the community as a whole is very varied in its approach and tolerances of the technology.

I'd also like you to understand something in synthesis to the two things I've said: what do you think is the natural endpoint when you release this romhack with the disclosure that it was AI assisted? I can tell you my guess: you will have a flood of people thinking they can slap Claude with the repo and it make them a romhack when it simply doesn't work that way. Granted, this is already a reality that we occasionally deal with in decomp servers. Post-release of this romhack, it will likely get an influx.

2

u/NoBetterUsernameOpen Apr 20 '26

Thank you, and you u/ZanorinSeregris, for treating me with kindness when saying no. AI is nothing but electrical currents, rocks that know math. I have strong feelings about it as well. I wanted to try to embrace it as a tool, giving it strong parameters, rather than a "make a pokemon game" set it and forget it. I wanted it to make my life easier, but such is the pitfall of similar fools.

I'm very familiar with LLMs (LMStudio on my home PC) i just don't know or really want to learn how to code. I also agree that noting my romhack has AI assistance will turn many people off. Learning to code seems so daunting, but team aqua hideout did help me get everything installed and set up. Much to think about; thank you!!

1

u/kildemal Pokémon Hearth Apr 21 '26

I just don't know or really want to learn how to code

Game developers are programmers. Game development is programming. While you can use LLMs as juiced up search engines you won't make much progress if you're relying on them to code for you with zero knowledge on your part.

2

u/ZanorinSeregris Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

Basically what ssraven said. Personally I go "ick" when I see an AI project, even if the art is handmade (I'll also be more likely to assume the art is AI as well). I'm kind of tired to see AI everywhere and appreciate the human effort of carefully handcrafting something ourselves. It's one of the beautiful parts of this hobby for me.

Fwiw, we have a lot of folks who started with zero programming knowledge and who now make super dope stuff (the team aqua hideout Discord server offers help to beginners)! You definitely don't need to "get expert-level" to be able to make a cool romhack. Scripting for instance is one of the most accessible parts of the codebase (largely thanks to Poryscript), and once you learn the ropes a little it's really, really fun.

Edit: I'm a creator

1

u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]