Hacking a hack

[CryptoTest]

As somebody whose never done anything remotely similar before, how easy it is to make a patch for a pre-existing rom hack? One of my dreams has always been to try Snakewood as a more balanced, complete game, even if just mitigating the grindiness with EXP All. How possible is that to make a patch for?

[FAST6191]

By and large it is going to be as easy as making it for the base game -- most ROM hacks don't change too much. There are certainly exceptions that radically change things or use up all the available space, memory and CPU time. That said never heard of Snakewood but looks like it might be a Pokemon Ruby (GBA game) hack.

Some pokemon games might use disassemblies or leaked code (don't think this was a part of the gigaleaks) which can stop basic cheats from working. That said basic cheats and save editors might be an option in this if you only want to bump some numbers to lessen grind.

[Sliver X]

It's simple if you have access to the tools used to make something. You would simply edit the hacked game with said utilities and make whatever changes. You'd then diff your end result ROM with the original hacked copy to get a patch that can be applied over the original hack, or against the base game itself for a patch that would work on a clean ROM.

It would be considered an adendum patch. Several of those were made off hacks I did in the past, and while people asked my permission first, I personally don't care (I consider all my ROM hacking works as Creative Commons licensed things), but I'm sure some other hackers would so it would be polite to ask first.