A few questions about hacking GBA FE

[Cecilyn]

I am new to hacking, so forgive me if these are basic questions that I have. I have looked through some tutorials and have a very basic grasp on what some of the more important programs do (Event Assembler, Nightmare, FEditor, etc.), but there's something I don't quite get: It's stressed that ROMs are illegal to send and not to do it, yet all that I have seen regarding making edits to FE7 involve altering a ROM of the desired game. Is there a way to compile these edits into a patch? So far, I have seen nothing that says/shows how to do this.

Second: As I understand it, pointers refer to specific resources within the game's data (Character portraits/descriptions, conversation images, etc.) and therefore to change say, the background when Lyn is talking to you in the FE7 prologue, you change the pointer from the tent background to whatever you want it to be. My question: Is there a way to view a coherent/indexed list of pointers and what they refer to? How do I know to change the pointer in Event Assembler from 0x00 to 0x18 in order to have Lyn speak against the backdrop of a castle garden instead of her tent?

Any help with these two questions would be most appreciated!

[Katie]

Making a patch is actually super easy. All you need is a patching tool, most of which let you make patches in addition to applying them, a clean rom, and your edited rom. The patching tool should have an option to create a patch, select it, and it'll ask for the original unmodified file and the new modified file. Select your clean rom and your edited rom, respectively. Congrats, you've made a patch.

[Cecilyn]

UPDATE: I reworded my second question to be a bit more clear and asked it on the FE subreddit, and I got an answer for it. The rewritten question:
 

Quote

 

[ROM Hacking] I've looked at a few tutorials about rewriting chapters, and I have an issue. By using Event Assembler to disassemble a chapter from FE7, there are strings in the code that indicate resources that the game uses; for instance, in the prologue there's the line

BACG 0x0

which tells the game to put up the background for Lyn's tent when she is talking to Mark. By changing "0x0" to "0x18", the background displayed becomes the garden of a castle.

What I would like to know is, is there a place where all such references are kept in an easy to read form? I know what resources 0x0 and 0x18 refer to only because they were specifically mentioned in a tutorial; I have no idea what backgrounds 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, et cetera refer to, and no way of knowing without changing the code umpteen times. Is there a repository that lists what all of these strings refer to?

 

And, the answer (u/MysticBlade: you are a lifesaver!):

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In the Event Assembler folder, look in the EA Standard Library folder. There's a file called Convo Background Definitions.txt, it tells you what each number is and lets you just type that definition in instead of having to remember what number relates to what background when making events.

 

[Primefusion]

There also a PDF that shows pictures of each background and what value to use in your events. Get it here.

[Cecilyn]

Thanks for the PDF, it'll be very useful!