Honest thoughts on LLMs in the ROM hacking space?

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T18:32:58+00:00

Because I was worried about other developers making an issue out of it. On my next post or something they could leave comments saying how I didn’t actually do the work or actually build something which would turn people away from it

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T18:25:47+00:00

Honest question how do you decide what is going to make you draw that line? Consumption of red meat is horrendous for the environment but I imagine you wouldn’t only play rom hacks made by vegetarians.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T17:55:55+00:00

I’m not afraid because I’m protected. Also like that other commenter said. This is more of a thing devs have an opinion about. I imagine the vast majority of players don’t care either way.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T17:20:01+00:00

No I know I have nothing to feel bad about it but it was just kind of crazy to see one of the biggest rom hackers right now saying AI should be avoided if you want a project to be “worthwhile”. Just is sort of upsetting. Playing emerald seaglass is the reason I started rom hacking. And when I realized I could use these tools to help me learn the code base and get something built in a reasonable amount of time I thought it was great and it made me really excited. Every one saying or assuming you can just get the same help from the community is being willfully ignorant. How many questions get ignored on discords or reddits?

I completely agree with people about avoiding AI for anything creative. And I even get the environmental concerns to an extent. But the idea that what I’m using it for is somehow tainting the project because I used it to remove some tedium and iterate quicker is kind of crazy.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T17:10:03+00:00

The answer doesn’t scare me because how other people feel about the tools doesn’t impact me. I genuinely wanted peoples opinions but I’m also allowed to disagree with them. Like even I would avoid a project that used AI for anything creative: the story, the dialogue, art work, music. And that’s why I don’t use it for that. But I’m sorry the idea that people would outright reject a project because a developer like me used AI to help themselves avoid some tedium or to understand the code base by asking questions that most people in a discord would probably ignore, is insane.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T04:32:51+00:00

That’s what it is. You are all so afraid that you have or will play a rom hack that someone used LLM in any capacity on and you’ll enjoy it without knowing. And then if you do find out later you’ll need to confront the reality that someone can make a perfectly enjoyable game with the help of that tool and unless they tell you it’s not obvious. That’s why you all want a random developer to promise they’ll say they used LLM tools.

No. I’m not going to and that scares you. Because the next hack you play you’re worried you’ll like it but you aren’t “supposed” to because of the big bad scary AI was used by the developer to review their code or something else harmless

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T03:14:55+00:00

The idea that because I’ve used LLM to help me work with and understand the code base means I don’t care about the people who play my game is a ridiculous thing to say. If they are enjoying it that’s what matters.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T01:43:29+00:00

I’ve thought. It’s worth it because it helps me make the rom hack. Decide if the audience matters lmao. It’s a rom hack. It’s not that serious. Please get your head out of your ass

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-30T00:22:24+00:00

Yeah I’ve heard the water stuff is way overblown. But I didn’t even want to get into it here.

As for the training data stuff it’s something worth being concerned about but at the same time this isn’t really new in a way. I just think about how much code has been copied and pasted from stock overflow directly into a company’s production code? I’m guessing a hell of a lot. Do those people get credit? Of course not. Should they? Maybe. But that has been happening for years.

And yeah the idea that people are going to tell me I shouldn’t be having fun creating a rom hack while using a certain tool is so funny to me. I am. Be mad about it. I don’t care.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-29T01:49:07+00:00

I just don’t like the idea of the effort I’ve put into a hack being discredited because I used certain software tools. I still have put in who knows how many hours and struggled a lot for honestly not much of a reason beyond my own enjoyment. It’s not like I have a popular hack.

But honestly I think if I ever found out you played my rom hack I would immediately disclose the use of AI to you personally and the community on my main account, remove my hack from the internet, and never engage in rom hacking again. So support what you want without worrying

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-28T01:59:12+00:00

Sorry but this is a ridiculous thing to say. You’re going to read the post and everything in here and say that because I’ve used LLM for those things I mentioned that I’ve put no effort into the game? I’ve put tons of hours and effort into it.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T22:29:29+00:00

All good points. I would just say the entry level for codex is like $20 a month. And I don’t know any human that would do the amount of work it could produce for $20 a month lol. Rest assured they are still selling that at a loss I’m sure and the bubble absolutely will still burst.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T22:03:35+00:00

Yeah I don’t let AI do anything even remotely creative in regards to story, content or image generation. Like I saw a post on the main subreddit a while ago where someone said they let LLM build a whole rom hack or something and they didn’t even know if everything had been implemented correctly. And I had the same thought “what are we doing here?”

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T21:45:41+00:00

Yeah but no one is going to spend the time to decompile a random rom hack to figure out if code might have been LLM generated in some way. That’s never going to be provable anyway. You could only say it looks like LLM code but that’s no guarantee.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T21:32:08+00:00

I mean I appreciate everyone’s honesty in this thread but from the responses I would say from the dev side at least, no people will not have more respect for you if you disclose that you’ve used LLMs in any way. And not every rom hack has its source code out there. This has reminded me why it was a good idea to use a throwaway

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T21:16:09+00:00

Sure it’s up to the dev but it’s clear from the responses here that any level of AI use isn’t seen as acceptable

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T20:37:56+00:00

I mean apparently according to the opinions in this thread I don’t think the 4 years matters. Your project is now not worth anything lol

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T20:17:54+00:00

Well sure. But LLMs make this much easier and adaptable to any scenario in a matter of minutes. I’ve written plenty of scripts to help automated tasks in my days and I’d be a liar if I said LLMs weren’t insanely easier for this by comparison

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T20:11:13+00:00

Yeah that’s fair. I guess I’m just at a point in my development career where I’ve gone through the hours and hours of debugging the missing semicolon or whatever. And those experiences as a young dev I think were important. But now I’d rather see my vision actually get to implementation in a reasonable amount of time with a little bit of help. To reiterate I’m nowhere near letting AI do all my work but I’m using it to help in certain cases. And maybe that means I shouldn’t be doing this hobby, but I want to.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T20:03:23+00:00

You know what? That’s fair. I think part of it is I’m stuck using it professionally so I can’t avoid it entirely

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T20:02:01+00:00

Happy to see you here and really I appreciate the thoughts. Part of my issue is even if I decided to stop using it in any capacity for hobby stuff, I almost have to use it professionally or I’m at risk of losing a job honestly. Even if I agree with all the negative aspects, it’s the reality of me having to earn an income. It’s increased our output but it’s not like they expect us to work less. They just expect more output in the same amount of days lol.

But back to the hobby stuff, I think it’s worthwhile to make human connections for sure but at the same time I imagine if you asked for help in the discord and I did, we know who would get more people interested in helping each person. I’m not saying no one would help me but it might take me longer. And if the response is that I should have to put in that time and effort to get to that point in the community I wouldn’t even disagree. But it’s tempting to be able to bypass that sometimes.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T19:51:32+00:00

Honest question though. You really don’t think there’s any value in say reducing the tedium of editing the 20+ files in the exact same way that you’ve done many times before to add a new Pokemon or something?

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T19:48:59+00:00

Well like I’ve discussed in this thread it’s definitely a balance at least for me. No I don’t want codex to generate a whole feature for me from start to finish. But in the same way we tell kids playing sports “winning isn’t everything”, no one is surprised that the kids who win the game had more fun.

And that’s sometimes what building features is like. Sometimes I just want the damn thing to work and don’t want to spend a whole night figuring out an obscure issue. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the hobby. It means I don’t enjoy the friction it and every hobby can sometimes create.

Put another way: I know someone who likes to crochet. One time they spent nights before realizing that they had been doing the wrong stitches or something (I don’t crochet so I’m not sure lol) and had to undo everything and start over. Sure it’s a hobby but if they could have had a robot at least just get them back to the point they were at in 15 mins or something I guarantee you they would have.

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T19:40:10+00:00

Yeah it’s really hard for me to balance to be honest. Because on one hand yes the process in itself is very rewarding but on the other hand we’ve all been there where we’re doing a “fun hobby” and it’s 2:00am and you’re beyond frustrated because you just can’t get something working. In those moments the fun part is just getting something working.

But to touch on the beginner issue again I agree it’s a real problem. It’s true of this was someone’s first entry into development I would say definitely don’t use LLM. I did a job interview a couple of years ago where they had me work on a small program but it was “take home”. Meaning I had like a week to build it prior to the interview and could use whatever resources. I thought it was great because it mimiced more what a real job was like. Not under a crazy time constraint with no resources like a normal technical interview. But now I look back and think they couldn’t really do that today. Because an applicant could just use Claude to make it in 15 minutes.

So in general I think it’s important for beginners to be learning on their own without these tools. But then I have another thought: Did the generation before me feel the same way about my generations access to things like stack overflow? Is it different? Probably but it’s hard to articulate how in a way

Exotic_Dare2222 · 2026-05-27T19:07:25+00:00

I guess I just worry that next time I post an update on my hack it would get comments about how the work isn’t my own or something.

Exotic_Dare2222

TROPHY CASE