[beebmam]

These days it's far easier to read/edit the memory of running programs than the serialized data saved to disk in save files.

[lostgame]

Well; isn’t that why a lot of traditional ROM hacks historically (at least in the SEGA Genesis/MD hacking scene I was involved with) used savestates as rudimentary ROM hacks? EG - hasn’t it been easier to manipulate data in runtime memory, eg in a savestate; than within the ROM?

Asking because I don’t actually know, I’m just recalling a lot of my early ROM hacking, and indeed discoveries in ROMs, by manipulating memory and savestate rather than the ROM itself.

[drx]

Savestate hacking used to be easier because everything in a savestate is uncompressed and raw. Tile graphics, level layouts, palettes, sprite mappings, etc.

To hack a ROM you need to know how to decompress the data, and then recompress your changes. A given game might use multiple compression formats.

[deaddodo]

I couldn't tell you without a specific example, but I would suspect distributing an edited ROM would be much easier than save state hacking.

In a general sense, I suspect the latter is more popular because it's not illegal to modify/distribute save state data; ROMs certainly can be.

[anthk]

They distribute delta binary patches on the form of IPS formats.

[deaddodo]

Which gives me even less reason for why they would distribute modified ephemeral data vs source data to alter game logic.

Obviously, if you want all 151 Pokemon captured, you would do that through a save state. But if you want increased chances of capturing Pidgey, it would certainly be easier to distribute a ROM (or delte, in this case) with those new ratios baked in.

[steponlego]

We used to break into the monitor for research sometimes too. Great times, no real OS in the way either.