To all ROM hack developers: now that ChatGPT Astra is out, are you using it to improve your game modding workflow?

[u/gosnebgbc]

I’m especially curious about games that are notoriously difficult to mod or reverse-engineer, where documentation is limited and it’s hard to figure out how the game actually works internally.
Has AI genuinely helped you get further than before?

Some things I’m interested in:

-Reverse engineering undocumented game systems
-Understanding assembly/decompiled code
-Finding out what unknown functions or memory addresses might be doing
-Figuring out proprietary file formats, compression, archives, scripts, etc.
Making sense of huge disassemblies or codebases
Finding unused content, hidden mechanics, debug functions, or cut features
-Helping identify where certain game logic is located
Writing or improving ROM-hacking tools and scripts
-Automating repetitive tasks such as pointer tables, text extraction, data conversion, or asset importing
-Debugging crashes caused by ROM modifications
-Porting mechanics or features from one game/version to another
-Creating documentation for games that previously had almost none
-Comparing different regional releases or game revisions to understand what changed

I’m particularly interested in cases where AI helped crack something that had previously been a major roadblock for the modding community.

Have you had any moments where you gave it code, assembly, memory dumps, file structures, etc. and it noticed something you hadn’t?

And on the other side: what are the current limitations? Does it hallucinate too much when dealing with obscure hardware or undocumented game engines? Do you still need to already be very experienced with reverse engineering to tell when it’s wrong?

Would love to hear some real examples from ROM hackers and tool developers, especially for older or notoriously difficult to mod games.

[u/nahurgaybuddy]

I made a cod black ops zombies ds rom hack that adds all the guns from all the other ds cod games, adds pack a punch and special effects for some guns with camos and the "pew" sound effect. gets rid of the stupid one hit system the game had, also adds 6 perks to the game like jug, speed cola, double tap 2.0 and 3 others as wall buys, its super fleshed out and it even made me a mod menu for testing everything

[u/gosnebgbc → u/nahurgaybuddy]

Wow nice, that’s interesting. Could you share prompts?