Is Sonic hacking... "dying"?

I've been holding off from responding to this topic for a couple of days. Partly because I am only permitted out of the salt mines for 6 seconds each day to draw nourishment from the sunlight (which does not leave much time for writing provocative messages to people on the internet,) but mainly to allow the levels of snark in my blood reach levels which are safe for human exposure.

As far as I'm concerned, that someone could think that Sonic hacking is "dying" is faintly preposterous. I don't understand how exactly one could follow the subject and reach that conclusion.

The release and revision of Sonic hacks has always moved at a ponderous pace (with the exception perhaps, of MarkeyJester's brain). In that respect, I see no difference. Things have changed though. The proliferation of tools, tutorials and split disassemblies have lead to more advanced modifications. This, in turn, raises the bar in terms of what can be achieved by and what is expected of, hacking projects. More ambitious hacking projects take longer to come to fruition. Combine this with a preference among some hackers of the occasional big release over frequent public updates, and the forums can seem quite slow.

As for these contests mentioned, I have witnessed similar events occur on IRC (notably the 3 hour boss competition held by qiuu, snkenjoi and Destructiox.) Such events are good fun and act as a great catalyst for further work.

On the topic of those people who wish for other people to personally teach them to do what is already documented at length, I choose to say nothing.

 

Pretty much this. If you set yourself a time limit to do something, build it up a few times, you might get something good out of it. Show it off, keep it private, do whatever. It's their hack, if they have done something good, that's fine.

Although said "contest" was kept privately, perhaps a similar public contest could be done at some point. It has been suggested before, I don't know what happened then.

 

I believe the Basic Questions & Answers Thread is not an absolute substitute for live coaching. Each person learns in a different way; I've learned to program by myself by reading up the available documentation, others like to ask questions to another person that possesses the skills. In the Q&A thread, some people give an answer with a lengthy explanation of how it works — whether you understand the answer or not depends on your existing knowledge, and perhaps some people do not realize that they should ask more questions to make sure they fully understand —, others will give a short answer that solves the problem but doesn't explain how it works, and some questions are left unanswered because nobody knows or nobody has the time to answer it.

I coached Malevolence when he started hacking; I think we were in #retro, he asked a programming-related question, I provided an answer and we continued chatting in private. He would come back to me to ask me more questions; he'd ask me to explain every single instruction of some routine, or he'd put comments on a whole object's code and he'd ask me to check if his comments were accurate. Through this process in which I provided instant feedback, he learned ASM quickly and started programming whole new bosses. These days, I don't see him much on IRC; I can only assume he's working hard on whatever free time he has on a project of his own.

I'm also considering writing a tutorial in which I'd introduce ASM programming by making a simple game (I thought of doing a Breakout clone for the Megadrive) step by step. When I'm writing an answer in the Basic Q&A thread, I have to assume the person I'm helping understands some concepts, like the hexadecimal system or conditional branches, otherwise I'd be repeating the same explanations over and over. This guide is meant to fill that gap; learn the basics, then come back with a specific problem and hopefully you'll understand the answer. But don't expect such a tutorial soon; I want to finish my assembler and get a working IDE first (I plan to use that tutorial to attract "customers" :v.

 

>bitches and moaning

wat

Yeah. I realize there is a general help topic, but that doesnt exactly do what I was talking about in my post. Aerosol was on point when he said we meant more, "hands on"

 

FraGag is right, everyone learns things differently. But in the long run, it's practice that makes perfect. The Basic Q's&A's thread is a great start, and there's plenty of websites you could visit to learn more about 68k asm (or Z80 asm, depending on which game you're hacking. :v and you could even ask members for help privately. How more "hands-on" could you get than practice? And you don't fully have to focus on the programming part of hacks, add new art, and music.

 

On a personal note, it's my own slack attitude which has delayed any release of Sonic 1 Lunacy numerous, numerous times.
+ - That, and the uncertainty of whether I'll be booed out of retro with rotten fruit being pelted at me to screams of 'it's too hard!' And when I consider this prospect, it genuinely turns me off hacking for a while.  
Well, that and this.

But to ask me the simple question of 'is sonic hacking dying?'

No. We still have the Sonic Hacking Contest which, if I recall, had a new record of entries last year. I wouldn't be surprised if even more are entered into this year's.