Second Draft, Part 1
Okay, first Draft 2 update out of many.
I said I probably wouldn’t start on the second draft until after this 3-day weekend… but yeah, right. I did some light work on it while doing real life work too. As it stands, I’ve finished up 11 blocks out of 1001.
That might not sound like much, but the early blocks are where most of the text is. There’s also a bit of repeated text, and a lot of later maps don’t have any text at all. Also, many of these early blocks contain extra-long tutorial text. Some blocks can contain 100+ lines, while other blocks contain 0 lines. In any case, as time goes on, you’ll see the block count increase faster and faster. You’ll see 😉 My plan is to do a manageable # of blocks each day and then on the weekends, do a whole bunch.
Also, as I go through the text with more knowledge of the game’s layout, I find interesting odds and ends. I come across rare text, or stuff I’ve never seen before. One such line is this:
Who would ever think to check behind this one tree in the entire game? 😛 I also just came across another debug menu that lets you access all sorts of stuff in Chapter 7. The main debug room doesn’t have this stuff, so it’d be nice to be able to figure out how to access it sometime. But that’s a job for someone else some other time. I figure the programmers had some NPCs you had to talk to for debug purposes, but then turned them off before releasing the final version.
Anyway, all that aside, most of this first batch of text was from parts of the first two chapters mostly. Lots of tutorial-related stuff too, very text heavy. Some real fun stuff in there, too. Maps 1-10 for those following along with the map viewer.
Meanwhile, Jeff’s been hard at work on other hacking that still needs to be done. He’s already fixed a naming screen bug, a bug that was annoying and also occurred in the original game. He’s also gotten a lot of work done on the Block 0 stuff I skipped, and the ending glitchiness has also been looked at. I updated the to-do list a tiny bit with this progress, though it doesn’t matter too much.
I’ll probably do these Draft 2 updates every 3 or 4 days, but they won’t be anything too exciting. All I remember is that the first couple hundred blocks are the real intensive ones, after that everything speeds up quickly.
Who would carve something insignificant into a tree?
I wanna post first!
cool, me second ^^
thanks mato
Great work, team. Keep goin’!
Cool. Good work. Keep it up.
Can’t believe I’m here 6 mins after. But I REALLY can’t believe people beat me here.
Nice job, I didn’t know there was so much text! Well, I did-but not really -_-
An insignificant carving is only insignificant to the person who didn’t carve it.
heheh that part about the tree is Mother humor for ya :]
Sounds like fun, hope you like changing gears from hacking to script work again!
Mato, I have been following this project since the beginning. It is awesome to see that the hacking side of this project is pretty much nailed down, and you guys are at the drafting stage. It seems like yesterday I came to the original site when the project was first announced. It’s awesome how far you guys have come.
Keep it up guys! It’s so close now! I’m sure the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to be seen!
“I updated the to-do list a tiny bit with this progress, though it doesn’t matter too much.”
EVERYTHING YOU DO MATTERS, MATO!
Woah, the second I read “Second Draft..” I got shivers. It’s amazing how quickly this is coming to fruitation, keep up the awesome work!
you’re the best. i’m so very, very excited for this, and it’s getting closer and closer every day.
Sweet. Mato, if you had to put a percentage on the overall progress of the project, what would it be?
nice. shouldn’t be much longer of a wait, huh?
GREAT JOB GUYS!!!!!
How much longer do you think its going to take? Ive been waiting for 2 years!!!!!
so what was the naming bug out of curiosity?
The ‘insignificant carving’ reminds me of a hidden NPC in the Mushroom Kingdom area of Super Mario RPG. The NPC was also helpful in that it offered hints through the first half of the game.
But I digress. ‘Mato, your patience and dedication is the stuff of legends, and should probably be preserved before it begins to warp and crack.
Do script draft #2 (Mato) — (10/1001 blocks done)
didnt you say 11?
Yay! ~1.1% complete!
Well, there’s the ‘insignificant item’ from Earthbound, too.
Speaking of which, where is this tree, anyhow? 🙂
NOA– no, Reggie should give you guys a medal for all this hard work. Let’s just hope you don’t have to quit your day job for all this, eh? Take it easy.
What bug did the original programmers leave in the naming screen?
Brandon: “Who would carve something insignificant into a tree?”
Shigesato Itoi?
Congrats. Shouldn’t be too difficult now.
Wow, that’s great!
I really can’t believe how fast this is progressing now. I wasn’t here anywhere near the beginning, but since I started coming here a few weeks ago you guys have made leaps and bounds. I really can’t wait for it all to be finished, but then on the flipside I won’t have anything to look forward too and I won’t be able to read your comments any more =[
Hahahaha, oh man, this is not the game it was when this project started. Before it was like a summer trip that you plan for years but is always “that thing we’re doing some day.”
Now we’re packing our bags, buying plane tickets and cleaning up the car, because this thing is coming so fast we can count the weeks down on our fingers. Mato, this is the final stretch!
1, 2 Jango! Good job, keep up the great work.
You’re the very best, like no one ever was..
tellisk said:
What bug did the original programmers leave in the naming screen?
I’ll likely be corrected if I’m mistaken, but it has to deal with the cursor wrapping around the edges of the screen. If, starting from the letter ‘A’ you pressed left, you’d wrap around to the rightmost letter on the top row. then you’d press Up, and it would wrap around to the OK option at the very bottom right corner.
Here’s where the glitch is. If you now press right, instead of wrapping to the leftmost option “Don’t care” it would wrap to the second one in, (In the japanese version, seems to be an alphabet switcher)
Tomato, I was going through the map editor, and I noticed at least 100(probably way more than that) of the maps are blank? Is there any sort of significance to that?
“I should check the blog before going to bed.”
*new update*
Gah! I just finished catching up! X)
Ahh, I was just watching a WIP tool-assisted run for Earthbound Zero (beginning to beating Starman Jr. in 8 minutes, Lv03 afterwards) and it really made me want to play that and M3.
as usual, well done mato.
we all stand behind you!
Keep on Truckin’ Boys!
😀
Hey Mato, are you going to keep us updated on how accurate you keep the translation (i.e. how much you have to rewrite due to cultural differences) as you go along?
woot!
Damn, man, and I thought you were going to rest now. I guess this is like rest after the mind-bending hacking, but still. Take care of yourself.
I suggest this music for this part of the process. Purposeful, yet calm and relaxed.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=opE-eeefX7w
Okay, this may be a bad question to ask, but why is there a second and third script? I don’t understand the point of it, and I’d like to know why.
You realize that you put so much effort into this Mato? like that sparrow thing, some other guy might of gone ” Meh, I’ll just tell them not to talk to the sparrow in the readme”
so thx 😉
Sooo… Is this is the script the last thing you’ll have to do, Tomato? (Well, I mean, doing it, revising it, fixing it, revising it, and fixing it further… I know that’ll take some time on its own…)
I wouldn’t be surprized if when you use a food item behind Boney, he steals it from you!
Awesome! Yay for Mother 3!
And, yes, I managed not to ask a question this time. *Slaps head* Lol.
Honestly, that “useless info” from the tree is funny, makes it more realistic, etcetera, but it’s a bit of a waste of space, don’tcha think?
Of course, I’ve been reading the whole thing, it’s just that one thought strikes me kinda funny.
yay this is great news! not that you’ve made progress bu that there are going to be updates throughout the second draft! I was expecting to be completely in the dark until it was done 😛
Jeeeeff, if you’re reading this, reply to my PM =/
Cubear: That’s funny in that it’s just uninteresting enough for it to have made sense that Mato didn’t bother explaining it, and yet his not explaining it resulted in people asking what it was (and I’m sure there’ll be more who don’t bother to read your comment).
Godstriker8: eleventeen percent.
Jeff**: See a few updates back.
fakestarboy & tellisk: Yes, it’s along the lines of what Cubear mentioned.
8BitWalugi: Yes, I forgot to update it to 11.
NecrosaroIII: There are lots and lots of empty maps. The text blocks for these are empty, so as time goes on and we hit more and more of those maps, things will seem to speed up a lot. Also, some maps that appear blank actually have a layer on top of them that make them look blank, if you turn that layer off you can see underneath.
Lothis: I’m not making any major changes, but stuff that does need to be changed will be in the final translation notes. I get the feeling if I bring up individual lines, people will over-over-analyze them and argue back and forth, just because there’s nothing else to do. People here already make big arguments out of single apostrophes and commas 😯
Sandman: Because the first draft is a rough draft. It’s not formatted, and it’s very rough. Second draft will fix this and fill in any little holes and just improve things a lot. Third draft will then use fresh eyes to smooth things out and make things less “translation-ese” like. This isn’t uncommon or anything, even professional translations go through several drafts. Unless they’re really rushed or the people involved don’t care.
Moulinoski: There’s still some little hacking that’ll be left, which I’ll mess with during Draft 3.
Twyleiht: It takes maybe 50 bytes of ROM. The programmers really wasted space all right, but 50 bytes is nothing. We’re finding entire songs, entire maps, tons of graphics never used, etc. etc.
Hey Mato, I know you mentioned making sure that the patched ROM is compatible with different emulators, I’m just wondering if you’re going to test gpsp, the GBA emulator for PSP? Cause thats what I’m hoping to play it on 🙂
The part of this update that really made me smile was about Jeffman fixing a bug from the original game. It just seemed so passively mentioned, when really, that’s a core case of the true fans not only doing it, but going above and beyond. Kudos guys, there is nothing insignificant about this update.
mato i couldent find it do you know which update?
http://mother3.fobby.net/2008/05/23/main-script-hacking-mostly-done/
oh I got it thanks Mato! wow 4 to 5 months! dam hehe 🙂 keep up the good work tho!
You know, in binary, 11/1001 is 3/9… yay!
Great work Mato, and don’t push yourself too hard.
Excellent job as usual.
And little things like that insignificant writing on the tree really make Mother games what they are to me 🙂
I must say something,
something insignificant.
Here: Welcome to th
Mato, what do you think about starting to give demi the blocks you’ve already done? That way you could totally get stuff done quicker. It’s like an assembly line.
He prefers to play the game in full before starting on the third draft. Which is how I’d probably want to do it too, if I were in his situation.
Hey! That tree! I remember it!
I was the one who carved into that tree!
But I can’t remember what I carved… It must have been really insignificant…
XD~~~
will you add in the stuff they left out? after all the script drafts and hacking that needs to be done of course. i just think it would cool for people who have played the game already to fight a new monster or w/e.
They aren’t adding those monsters, and they shouldn’t. There is no way to know how they would have been implimented.
Mato its good that you started and already finish 11 blocks,also its cool that by translating and hacking you keep finding things in the game that were left out.
I want to find that tree… where is it? I’m on a Mac so I can’t use the map viewer. It’s somewhere in Tazmily, right? Or perhaps…by the ropeway station? I wouldn’t expect you to be there yet, though.
It’s by Duster’s house.
Tell him to get playing, then, if he hasn’t! 🙂
About those songs, have you considered restoring them to the sound player, even if they’re not used in game? (or were they in that, already?) That’d be another cool extra!
If what Mato says is true(and it most often IS), then the second draft will [exponentially?] get done faster and faster if the later blocks contain far less text than the ones in the beginning do. The light at the end of the tunnel is very bright!
By “fresh eyes” you mean me, right? Because my eyes are so fresh. They are practically sassy. When they were making a scale to compare the crispness of vegetables, they started with my optical nerves. :D
Hey…11/1001 blocks done, right? But…zeroes don’t count for anything, right? So basically you’re done 11/11! Hey! Congrats! That was speedy!
…heh, just kiddin. glad most of the hacking’s done. reviewing the script should be like a vacation. enjoy it while you can 😀
Ahaha, I always think it’s funny that this game will be programmed more efficiently then the actual official product…
Sweet! This game has more secrets than we first imagined, hm? First the debug room, then all this… all I can say is, neato. 😀
great work, this is the time updates slow down and all we can really do is wait. it should be late September or late October when we play this, that is without any unseen problems with exisiting work..
Ack! It looks like it’s almost done!
I have to hurry and beat Earthbound Zero!
@Mato: Now this is going to go by as a no but it is worth asking,
would you think of making two different patches, one for the strict translation and one full of randomly placed unused songs/sprites/enemies/other data that would make the cat barf picture look like a HD version of Mother 3 (or not, preferably).
Just pondering my thoughts about your thoughts.
Wow getting real close it seems. This is actually happening. The anticipation is building to an exteme level! Keep up this amazing work guys! Thank you very much!
You are going to be the the very best
That no one ever was
to patch them is your real test
To play them is the your cause
Whoa, you finished all of the major hacking already, and Brawl hasn’t even been released in Europe?
I can’t believe it, all that’s left is the home stretch… It’s really almost done…
Well, I can’t believe you actually go through the trouble of the most simplest things! …THANK YOU!!!
wow, europe is really unlucky if they dont have brawl yet…
It’s like the drawers in the House By The Lake you can buy (for, what is it, $20,000?) in Earthbound! lulz.
mato: how much is a “manageable number of blocks each day”?
Hey i’ve noticed that u are using a program designed to hack the game. are you thinking on releasing it just like the pk hack one for earthbound?
i know you have been working really hard Mato so heres a flash im sure youll enjoy depending on your humor type !!! =D
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/439541
Wow! You guys are a lot closer now than you have been before– just some coding bugs and the major drafts! I’d consider the hard part over, considering a lot of it was hacking experience that you were new to.
Though, since I remember that old Tomato & Farm game you made awhile ago.. I figure you had the coding ability lying inside you 8) Like super powers or something.
hasone: Come on now, let’s not start harrassing me about that kind of stuff. Every block is differently sized. A better way to count is by line count, but there’s no easy way to do that. So please don’t start getting on my case if I’ve only done a few blocks, those blocks may have had a ton of lines.
EDIT: For example, total lines so far is 322. Which makes it more like 4% done.
actually, tomato, I was more curious as to how much text it takes to overwhelm you, and how much and what kind of effort goes into each line. I’ve never done this ‘translating’ thing before, and I was wondering what it’s like.
I also have an annoying habit of asking badly worded questions over the internet.
Sorry.
let’s all laugh and celebrate working 10 hours in a paper factory for the summer!
http://i31.tinypic.com/29f8n13.png
The “insignificant writing” reminds me of how couples in love would carve initials in a heart onto a tree, perhaps some people were in love? 😮
I’m always intrigued to learn about things that are unused/cut out from video games, you should make a big list of everything cut from Mother3 😀
Clearly you should save all the empty blocks for the end. That way you can be on one day: “900/1001 blocks done!” then after 30 minutes of comments you can add another entry of “All blocks done!” and all shall sing praises of your uber fast translating (of empty space :p ).
Chwarming 😀
Just keep chugging along Mato!
I just got a fortune in a cookie that reads:
“Keep charging the enemy so long as there is life.” Appropriate, don’t you think?
Clawclaw: Yeah, then it would be “insignificant” if they had broken up since then. =P
that flash made me cringe, but Mitch’s pic made up for it 😉
Awesome! But why would you read it if it’s not important?
Hmm, this makes me think that we should organize something to get 1001 people each to send a single (‘translated’) LEGO block to Mato on the release day 🙂
Don’t you wish you could be like Naruto and make 2000 clones of yourself Mato?
Good god people just take the block number and what Mato said and have fun with it. Consider him 1.1% done and then piss your pants with glee as it goes faster. Is it that hard? D:
Gives us your code already, goddamn
Man… you guys are f***ing flying on this! A few years ago this seemed like a pipe dream that would never actually happen. Amazing.
If the final patch progress was the earthbound story, I think we would be at magicant at this point. or am I going too far?
oh and @ mitch, awesome! your welcome to th… pic was the best
btw, mitch, do you mind updating your gallery? I wanna see your new ones without looking through 100+ comments
I hate to be the one to say it, but if we’ve waited this much so far, can’t we wait a tad longer? Seriously, at least we can estimate a pre-2009 finish(even according to Mato’s estimates), right?
Have faith!
Mato, if I was dying of cancer, would you give me a patch with your first draft on it?
so, Mato…..while hacking around, did you find any info on the “final” boss never used? You know, the ONE. Could you also elaborate on this? Or at least direct me to a forum topic where it is explained? Becuase I can’t sleep at night, it’s disturbed me almost as Giygas…
it scared the #### out of the programmers too. That’s why they never “used” it
Was it reggie please tell me it was reggie
Sweet work, Mato. I always enjoy seeing the updates.
I’m amazed that you still find time to answer everyone’s questions while still being so busy with everything else. Thanks for taking the time. I know everybody appreciates it.
I noticed something on the “To-Do” page. It says you need to replace two japanese voice clips. If I remember correctly, Earthbound’s voice clips were left over from the japanese version, so why not keep it consistant? Unless those clips are really important.
Some of you guys are asking extremely stupid and irrelevant things. If I was translating this and had to read such drivel, I would probably stop reading these comments altogether. Please, I know it’s asking a lot of the Internet, but for Tomato’s sake, stop asking questions like “lol howlong for blox a day u do matololz” and “lol cancer i hav wud u giv me trnalatd pach cancer roflcopter” The guy is doing this out of love for EB and for free, don’t make it any worse for him.
“insignifigant writing” typical, but humorous, mother humor for you.
You mean “voice clip.” EB only had one, which was “OK Desu Ka”, and we’re leaving that one in Japanese for M3 as well. The two clips that are being replaced are unrelated to that; one of them you can’t skip over because it’s part of a mandatory cutscene, and the other one is probably so scarcely encountered that it’s more of a ‘hey, why not?’ kind of thing. I dunno, maybe Mato can explain it better.
Okay Mato, a small question:
Lets say the 11 finished blocks are Train A, and the 990 unfinished blocks are Train B. Train A is in the North most train station of San Fransisco, and Train B is in the exact center of Tokyo Japan. Train B is a magical train that can drive over water, but it has a speed equal 1/2 the speed of Train A. Train B typically goes 47.892 m/h and goes on the rout that will take it to the other train in the shortest amount of time except during every other night at 7:00 in its current time zone when a sparrow attacks it (at which point it moves backwards for 25 minutes). Train A is moving at 22.103 m/h toward Washington D.C. with respect to railways. At what time and at what exact location will Train B meet Train A???
Just kidding…
Keep up the good work, Mato!
# JeffMan said 1 minute ago:
You mean “voice clip.” EB only had one, which was “OK Desu Ka”, and we’re leaving that one in Japanese for M3 as well. The two clips that are being replaced are unrelated to that; one of them you can’t skip over because it’s part of a mandatory cutscene, and the other one is probably so scarcely encountered that it’s more of a ‘hey, why not?’ kind of thing. I dunno, maybe Mato can explain it better.
Anyone raeding Jeffman’s comment out loud, make the japanese pround and pronounce it Des, not desu.
Please dont think im being rude, my cat’s just gone nuts and i forgot what i had to post.
P.S im doing an EB0 playthrough on youtube
here’s my profile link: http://www.youtube.com/8BitWalugi
PM me if you’re so curious about the spelling error.
This music could never be more appropriate at this point:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lIO1sajyx_o
Oof, the sound clip question again, heh. Pretty much just as Jeff said. The goal is to make it as professional-quality as possible, and these clips would not have been left in Japanese. Players will go “wtf?! what was that?!” if the clips are left untouched, and we’d have to then explain what they say anyway. One is during an important cut scene, and another I didn’t even know existed until recently, but as I mentioned, if left untouched, it will be a very “wtf” moment.
And no, subtitles aren’t an option. Plus it’s a little crazy to want subs for clips that last .5 seconds. Had there been actual substantial voice acting I’d probably keep them in Japanese and figure something else out.
hur hur who asked about subs?
I understand that one of the voice clips is from when they’re playing rock-paper-scissors (jan ken pon, in Japanese, but I don’t think they put the three in order). They often shorten that down to just ‘janken’ when talking about it. Anyone who has watched Naruto subtitled should recognize it easily enough 🙂 And you’re right that the u in desu isn’t pronounced. They love to drop ‘u’s in various places during normal speech.
And I understand that they’re ‘done’, it’s just that they don’t play loudly enough for whatever reason.
What I still wonder about are those hash problems he mentioned in that older hack. You’re not hashing everything down to one byte, are you? I hope we’re at least using a full 32 bits, because any hash of lesser size can be expected to have collisions on you, period, end of story with the number of different strings we have. But with a full 32 bits, hash quality (dispersion) will be back in play. I’d use that one hash I posted, in spite of the fact it uses a MUL instruction, because you can’t get much of anything faster that still has the dispersion you’ll need if you’re getting collisions. If all else fails, you *can* ‘optimize’ the MUL by replacing it with a shift and add for each 1 bit of the thing you’re multiplying by, but I’m not sure how fast the MUL instruction is and whether or not that saves any actual clock cycles 🙂
Honestly, though, I think that it skips enough work that it’ll only cause at most one frame of lag while the text is being drawn, then no noticeable trouble once everything has been drawn. But I have no way to profile that code and test it…
8BitWalugi: just responding in advance to that because that’s almost always the next thing to follow “why in the world are you changing voice clips”.
A Fan: Yeah, we’re using 32-bit hash values right now. The problem with the algorithm is that we’re finding some odd cases where identical checksums are produced for different strings, so we need a good one for short streams of data. We tried a simple XOR checksum which didn’t work out, and then we went for Fletcher’s Checksum, which is currently holding out, but is apparently risky for small data samples. Would you mind linking yours again?
[Edit] The lag frames aren’t caused by the algorithm, that’s a whole other issue. 😛 The algorithm is for determining the ‘redraw flag’, which lets the game know when to weld up some new tiles. Logically, it should only have to weld new tiles if it’s a new string, so we need a way to determine whether or not the string is new; however, “logic” and all its definitions can be thrown out the window when dealing with the menu programmer. 😛 If it fails, the text glitches and shows parts of one string and parts of another. The lag only happens when there’s a lot of varying menu text on the screen and you click around a lot, because it welds stuff as it updates the sprite text list, and it gets updated constantly. The only way to fix that would be either to optimize the welding routine (not going to happen, in all likelihood) or change the order in which the game updates the string list, putting the bigger strings at the end so the lag is less noticeable.
… so people that dont know jap can understand?
OMG! matoand jeffman are on the site! i feel so royal…
sorry bout that.
oof, gonna record new voice clips asap, sorry about the delays ;_;
have you guys tested the game on Rudolf’s GBAExploder?
It wasn’t anything significant?! But… but…
THE INSIGNIFICANT THINGS PROVIDE FRUITFUL EXPERIENCES THAT THOSE WHO DO NOT UTILIZE INSIGNIFICANT THINGS COULD NOT COMPREHEND
^…what?
The hash info is here:
http://isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/fnv/
This is very good even for highly-similar text (which should include short strings). You might want to look at the 1a version, too, it says specifically that it’s good for short strings of less than 4 bytes.
Don’t let fancy terms like offset_basis and FNV_prime make it sound complicated. They’re just numbers that were specially chosen by complex mathematical means. For the 32 bit hash, you have these:
32 bit FNV_prime = 16777619
32 bit offset_basis = 2166136261
They’re just plain numbers, you don’t have to care too much why they were chosen 🙂 There are 64 bit (and higher) ones, too, but that’d just slow you down. All you do is a simple bitwise xor and a multiplication in the loop. The theory of why is hard, but the implementation is easy.
You probably already know this, but an “octet” is just the fancy way of saying byte while making absolutely sure they know you mean 8 bits, no more, no less (yes, some systems use a differently sized byte; but normal people don’t)
Here’s the excerpt on the FNV1-a version with the info you care about. Note that that pseudo code is the _whole_ algorithm, even though that page has tons of other info and crap you may not care about:
—–
There is a minor variation of the FNV hash algorithm known as FNV-1a:
hash = offset_basis
for each octet_of_data to be hashed
hash = hash xor octet_of_data
hash = hash * FNV_prime
return hash
The only difference between the FNV-1a hash and the FNV-1 hash is the order of the xor and multiply. The FNV-1a hash uses the same FNV_prime and offset_basis as the FNV-1 hash of the same n-bit size.
Some people use FNV-1a instead of FNV-1 because they see slightly better dispersion for tiny (<4 octets) chunks of memory.
—–
Bad dispersion is what you are reporting problems with, BTW, with those collisions you have 🙂
Thanks reidman! It’s cool to see all this stuff coming together so nicely 🙂
@ Larry…
42.
Duh.
Thanks for the hard work!
Tons of maps, sprites, and MUSIC that was never used?!?!?!
Especially with music… especially if it’s BATTLE music… throw that extra stuff in there! I’d love to hear it! I remember how psyched I was when I discovered EB’s hidden song. Perhaps you could add “unreleased” songs to the M3 music player? I dunno. Feel free to be extra-creative! That would be exciting to see new stuff, especially for people who have already played through the game.
Your a god and I am not and I just thought I’d let you know.
Excellently done! I like the tree thing; it has substance.
lemons are sour and i want earthbound!!!
Mato: When inserting voices into star ocean and tales of phantasia, I had a similar problem.
Usually, it was the voices with higher pitches that made them more audible. I’m not sure how critical these voices are, but maybe you can try to bring up the pitch just a little before inserting.
As far as tips for the recorders (reidman and plo), have the microphone with a small noise filter on it (a small puffy/light foam ball thing is fine) and keep the microphone to the side of your mouth, not directly in front of it. The air from your breath makes some nasty noise. Do this away from your computer, the fan from it also causes noise. Do multiple takes in a row, you can always time stretch it slightly. It’s OK if it’s a little quiet.
When whoever gets to the audio editing program, normalize the clip.
You may already know all this, but hey, every little bit helps :). Good luck :).
First time commentor, so please forgive me if this has already been asked. But I have a question about the sounds. Are you working on your voice acting skills to make it sound as natural as possible? Also, do you have to convert the audio to make it fit the game’s format? Or does the game auto convert it for you? I’m not really sure how these things work.
I’m sure the voice acting doesn’t need to be professional so much as childish and fun.
hey mato, what exactly are the sound clips of? i have a recording studio, i could probably do those clips for you professionally.
I appreciate everyone’s offers for help, but pretty much the only thing left sound-wise is the retake of a one-second clip, the rest of the work should be fine and simple. There’s only one clip I’d prefer to be louder, and that’s because it plays during battle when there’s loud music and stuff going on. The voice is kind of drowned out in the original too. With any luck there may be a way to increase its volume using the game’s code.
I must say good job to you all. I have been checking this site for quite some time now, and I have recently begun to check it everyday. I won’t bother with silly questions, because anyone who has read at least one post, and the comments, has seen the same questions over and over at least 20 times.
zomg, i just noticed I haven’t said thax on this update yet
THANKS! YOU ROCK
oh yeah.
THX!
Well, to anyone whom does not run Windows, I’ve had success running the Map Viewer using WINE. Go to http://www.winehq.org for more info.
I’m really looking forward to the final patch. I’m playing through with a translation guide and the menu patch (I don’t think I’d be able to play it without the menu patch), but I’m most definitely going to play through again when the final patch is released.
Now when you say “11 Blocks” are you refering to the black text boxes? If so is there only 1001 in the whole game?
Yeah, I think this block stuff is confusing people. I guess I’ll just do the manual line counts so people will understand better, even though it can be a pain to do that manually 😛
Like I mentioned before, 322 lines are done (didn’t get any done yesterday) out of 7658. Which means 4% is done. Going by lines is more accurate than blocks anyway.
Why are u guys so awesome!!?? Keep up the amazing work. I’m behind u guys 100% 🙂
Heh… what a pity you had to go back to the hash function. It seems so… inelegant. 😛
Then again, I suppose that is by definition what a ‘hack’ is. You gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.
Mato, is there any way you could temporarily lower the music volume when the vocal clips play? That’d clean up the problem of it getting drowned out, but it could be more trouble than it’s worth.
You guys are awesome.
I practically love you now o_O
The insignificant writing was actually Boob Wizard written on that tree.
Oh that was rich.
But anyway, great job! Keep up the work ‘Mato. You’re a great dude. Just don’t overwork yourself. :3
After the script 2 is finished, are you going to go back to squishing bugs while demi does script 3? Or will you finish all the bugs before going on to script 3?
Also, I was going over the to-do list and i was wondering what the text “morphing” is all about?
Keep up the good work Mato! I check this site every day!
P.S. What do the clips say in English?
For those interested in playing the translation on the Wii when finished, the VBA port for the console has resentley been updated its currentley running pretty smooth and supports the wiimote, classic, GC controllers.
It can be ran useing the twilight hack or homebrew channel without the need for any hardware alterations.
In a (much later) updates (around when Draft 3 is being done), can you please post a side-by-side comparison of how drastically the script changes between the drafts, for a (very) small section of the script? (as if only 1 or 2 lines out of those 7000+) i.e.
(Script Draft 1)
(Script Draft 2)
(Script Draft 3)
Yeah, I’ll probably do something like that. Maybe in the notes, or as a “looking back” type of thing. Still a long ways off though.
Mato, if you had made an April Fool’s joke saying the patch was complete, how many people do you think you’d kill of cardial arrest?
cardiac, i mean
That would be pretty cool. You could do a “behind the scenes” kind of thing with screen shots, some of the old videos and show some of the revisions made to the scpript and what not. Although thinking about it, I guess that is what the blog is for, huh?
I’m guessing 1337 people.
Arashi: I don’t think Mato would kill people, I think people would kill Mato.
Just finished a pretty big block, 84 lines in it. Puts it at 5.3%. I think a decent ratio for estimating things is 1 hour of work = 1%. I’ll probably do another percent or two before slumberland.
Haha, that would be funny. To change the ‘insignificant’ writing on the tree to say something about Boob Wizards…
But who would get that joke, except us? 🙂
Hmm, so ~100 hours?
Now in this second draft, are you retranslating the text, or are you revising your previous translation?
you know what’s going to happen, right?
well now that the project is finally nearing completetion, Nintendo’s going to pop around and be all “hey guys, we ARE bringing Mother 3 over to America. it’ll be out in Q4 2009. stop this patch stuff. srsly.”
and then the wait will begin again…
I love you Mato.
That’s all I have to say.
I’m on the edge of my seat
Me- Shut up slippy.
slippy- grrrrrrr….
just a little thing i made up on the spot. hehehe…
the final battle is underway…
(8BitWalugi prayed)
Block text suffered 11 blocks of completion.
hurgie.
QUICK QUESTION! what’s block 0 again? is it this thing?
I just want to say thank you for doing this. You guys are amazing for taking on this huge task! This is dedication!
1 percent per hour…that’s like…um…a million hours!!! Is you sure ya’ll don’t need some help? I speaks English–I could take a scratch at it.
chuck norris’ is so super special awesome that:
he has a fist in his beard instead of a chin
he created the internet for us to talk about how awesome he is
his christmas present to us is that he lets us live
if he was a girl he would have an exclamation point instead of a period
if he sticks the middle finger up at u thats how long u have to live
he can speak braille
if u know someone who doesnt like chuck norris u wont know them for long
he always wins rock paper scissors by playing it rock paper scissors roundhouse kick
the only time he was wrong was when he thought he made a mistake
… and yet i am willing to make this last statement *gulp*
MATO U ARE BETTER THAN CHUCK NORRIS! oh good no super ninjas iM O fdnikdfgson vhjkgjhjh85u430
Coconut of enlightment:
Mato has mentioned before that the first couple hundred blocks will be the longest, and it will be pretty simple when that is finished. Be patient, this translation is moving along at light speed considering the professional effort and enormous lack of manpower.
Mato, I was following this blog when it first dawned on the internet. I fully realize This level of awesomeness cannot be contained in just one blog site.
So fast…