I'm-a Makin Mah Hack! BLAAAARGH!!!

[Yuushi-the-Yoshi]

Yeah.... excuse the title. I was taken over by Baby at the time. (To my defense, Dragonball GT sucks.)

My opinions on the Dragonball metaseries aside, you (hopefully) read the title. I am in the midst of making a Pokemon hack (to be named Pokemon Lapis Version), and I may need to ask you guys some questions, along with the general discussion. It is an Emerald hack, so... yeah, 3rd generation. (My personal favorite generation, by the way.) ANYWAYS, On with the questions.

1. How do I edit the title screen?
2. Can anyone recommend a good sprite editor? I wish to edit Brendan and May's attire.
2 1/2. CAN I GET A HEAL (or a cheesburger) PL0XX0RZ?!
3. How can I link events to sprites? (i.e. a Jirachi sprite-I need to have the Jirachi battle with it.)

Moar later.

Moar Krabs.

[Josiah]

Making a ROM hack isn't that easy. First off, you need to so some web searching and find a program that can actually extract the source code, art and music files, and other assets from the ROM file. From what I know, even once you have the program it can be a difficult process. Second, you have to actually know how to program in whatever language the extracted source code is in. Creating events (like your Jirachi fight) and doing pretty much anything other than sprite or sound edits requires programming knowledge. If you're not a well versed in some version of C coding (which is probably what the game was written in), I recommend you just give up now.

As for editing art like the sprites and title screen, once you've extracted the art files any half decent image editor will work. Photoshop is the best, but even MS Paint works ok if you know what you're doing.

[Yuushi-the-Yoshi]

Well I have already started on the hack. Heck, I've even completely changed Artisan Cave into a place called Johto Cave (where every Johto Legendary can be caught). It's just these specific questions that I need answered.

[Josiah]

Well, I answered the sprite and title screen questions for you (it's a matter of extracting the art files and editing them in Paint, Photoshop, or another image editor). As for connecting sprites and events, that's all a matter of programming and I don't believe we have any programers on the forums, you may have better luck asking somewhere else.

[SuzuTitor]

Oh god, why Emerald? Emerald has to be the most unstable ROM of the 3rd gens. The most stable ones would have to be FireRed/LeafGreen.
Enjoy your constant crashes and memory loss.

By the way, if you want to start learning how to ROM hack, please don't start with Pokemon 3rd gen. Most NES/GB games are a good place to start learning. Try playing around with Red/Blue first.