Timing problems/feeling of more lag is inherent to lots of romhacks - don't throw away your original roms

[r0ach]

This isn't a problem with all romhacks but it does affect A LOT of them. You see people say things like "this romhack makes the original version obsolete now," but if you test how each one physically controls back to back - or better yet, just open two instances of retroarch at the same time and switch back and forth - you'll notice controls are worse on a LARGE number of romhacks.

I noticed this on releases like the "Comprehensive ATB Enhancement" for things like Final Fantasy 6 - A Soldier's Contingency and the default one to apply to normal roms:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8513/

Theoretically, this hack would be a superior turn-based implementation than the default game, but you can feel inputs being a bit heavier/stiffer due to it. Some people will say it doesn't matter because it's an RPG, but it's a problem in lots of action games as well. The SA1/fastrom/whatever hacks typically feel nothing like the original game for how it controls:

https://www.romhacking.net/reviews/5590/

I threw away all my romhacks using stuff like this after noticing it. There are some instances where the romhack will actually be better than the original game, though. If you use the Mega Man 7 refit hack and apply only the individual patches of faster charge shot, player i-frame increase, new damage data, untouchable rush, and stronger charge shot only as individual patches, it will feel the same as the normal ROM for how it controls and thus make the original obsolete:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3336/

 

[DunkeyKong]

That's actually quite important to know, I'll take a note of that. And thank you for sharing!

 

[Isegrim]

This topic reminds me...

I remember buying SNK vs Capcom: The Match of the Millenium on Steam, an emulated re-release of the much acclaimed NGPC game sometime ago. People were complaining about serious input lag on it. Digital Eclipse said when they asked SNK about it, they replied it was inherent. When I played it, I notice I couldn't do my combos that incorporated supers as often as I wanted to, in fact I often dropped them. It did have a nice rewind option to make up for it and hacked so unlocking characters would happen at a much faster pace.

Nonetheless, some people claim there was serious input lag, not just from people who played in on unofficial emulators but even from people who owned an actual NGPC with the original game.

Now fast forward to a month ago and I started playing the same game with an emulator in my Mac and...my combos are not dropping. Except for Kyo, all my combos into Super work more often now.

I now personally think something got broken in the Steam version. In my opinion, I think there may have been some input lag inherent in the original version but not enough so it still plays very well. The Steam version might have increased the input lag even more so to the point of being more difficult to play considerably.

In any case, the emulated one plays better.

 

[r0ach]

There are some cases where romhacks control vastly better than the normal roms, but those are kind of rare. Like this Startropics hack which removes....8 frames of input lag:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3307/

I've been running through all my romhacks and comparing them to the original roms to test for bogged down feeling. For instance, I have two Chrono Trigger modded roms and both those seem to feel more heavy in movement and inputs than the normal rom. One of the FF6 ones like Revised Old Style Edition or Ted Woolsey Uncensored (I forgot which one) had inputs feel the same as the normal rom, though.

Then I noticed an Illusion of Gaia romhack that only adds sprint button felt heavier than the normal rom, but this one that adds sprint + tons of other crap didn't feel as heavy as the older one that only adds sprint:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8854/

A lot of roms will feel more sluggish as just a baseline without being hacked at all, though. Like if you compare Golden Axe 1 or 3 vs Streets of Rage 3, you can feel that Streets of Rage assembly being better/more efficient/twitchier by default. Or things like Genesis Mortal Kombat 1 Arcade Edition hack vs any Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 mod. The controls of 3 feels like it crushes the 1st one.

Besides some games feeling twitchier or sluggish by default unmodded, theoretically a mod that doesn't do anything besides alter some integer value like "strength" should probably not ruin the rom's controls, but ones like that Final Fantasy 6 ATB system mod which probably alters how often the game is polling for some variable seem to be noticeable in degrading inputs/making controls feel a little more heavy.

 

[celestialempire]

No one was ever "throwing out" original roms. The preservation community takes preservation literally and won't prioritize rom hacks or other deviations, and besides in order to make more rom hacks you would have to have access to master roms anyway.
That being said you make a good point to bring awareness to the stability issues!

 

[cjl8336]

I once brought that to the attention of a certain "community"...
1. That one user does nothing but change two lines of code to activate fastrom and calls it hacking
2. This modification ruins shoot em ups as it removes the necessary slowdown programmed into the game routine in order to dodge projectiles