Archive for June, 2008

Second Draft, Part 8

15 years ago by Mato , 280 Comments »

Just a quick progress update today. Got through another big batch of text to push Draft 2 past the 82% mark. Most of the text this time around was very tedious and exhausting, but looking at it in-game, it’s turned out nicely indeed.

For those following along with the map viewer (which is available on the downloads page), this latest batch was from maps 342 to 402. Gonna be real busy again this week, so I probably won’t have much time to work on Draft 2 in any significant way until at least the middle of the week, so updates/mini-updates will be scarce until at least then.

Most of the text in this batch is spoiler-ish or just uninteresting, so here is some text from one of my favorite insignificant characters in the game, who happened to appear in this batch


Anyway, it looks like my guess of Draft 2 being done in July will be spot-on. Nice.

Second Draft, Part 7

15 years ago by Mato , 237 Comments »

A very busy week this week, but I work on the second draft every chance I get. Right now we’re a little past the 76% mark on Draft 2 of the main script. As usual, I should mention that the percentage for the entire overall project is higher, somewhere in the 80%-85% range.

For those following along with the map viewer, this latest batch goes from maps 256-342. Most of that stuff is stuff I don’t want to reveal here, so here are two pics from a batch or two ago.


Meanwhile, Jeff’s been working on little things here and there, and finding bugs every so often. It also looks like the script will wind up a little too big, but I was anticipating that and I’ll deal with it when Draft 2 is done.

In a few days, Draft 2’ll be in the 80%-90% range. We’re getting there.

Second Draft, Part 6

15 years ago by Mato , 230 Comments »

Been very busy with real life translation work, but I also decided to try to kick things up a notch here. The sooner I can get this stuff done, the better for me. So Draft #2 has jumped from 52% to 71%. No loss in quality, in fact, I’ve been pretty impressed by how it’s shaping up in-game.

All kinds of stuff in this latest batch of stuff, but mostly it was text used in lots of individual rooms. For those following with the map viewer, we’re up to Map #256 now. Here are two random pics from that huge pile. I’m trying to avoid story stuff, so sorry for the bleh pics.


Other than that, not too much else to report. Real life work is picking up now, so things may slow down here. We’ll see. I think we should be done with Draft 2 in a few weeks though. Weekends will probably be when most work on it gets done.

Not entirely related, but for those who haven’t joined in yet, this year’s EarthBound Funktastic Summer Gameplay just started, so check that out if you’re feeling bored or EarthBoundy!

Alive and Okay

15 years ago by Mato , 276 Comments »

It’s been a real-life-workathon week, so not too much Draft 2 progress in the past few days. Got a few more % done, hopefully we’ll be in the 60%-70% mark sometime next week.

For now, here are a few pics of stuff from today. Nothing special; most of the stuff I did today was main story stuff I don’t want to show here.


Jeff’s been mighty busy with real life too, but he’s been working on hacking stuff when the chance allows. Very early testing has also started, and a few bugs have turned up and been squished shortly after. Luckily for us, they’ve mostly been very simple bugs so far, which is a good sign.

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Second Draft, Part 5

15 years ago by Mato , 434 Comments »

Worked incredibly hard the past day or two, and managed to push the Draft 2 progress over the 50% mark. Whew. Feel like I just ran a marathon. There was almost no duplicate text this time, so that was a LOT of work. I’d say it takes about 2 hours for each 1% now.

While I’m talking percentages, I should probably reiterate that the percentage you see in that pic there is for Draft 2 of the main script only. The actual project’s progress is much further along than that. I don’t like giving out arbitrary percentages, but if I had to give a number, I’d say the entire project itself is like 80% done. 85%? I dunno, somewhere around there. Given that this project really only began last July, I’d say that’s some insane progress, though I guess on the outside it probably doesn’t seem that way. Some (many? most?) ROM translations take 5+ years, if they don’t die first. Anyway.

For those following with the map viewer, this latest batch covered maps 66-113. And here are a few random screens. Most of the stuff this time was pretty spoilery and central plot-related stuff, so forgive the fewer (and less interesting) screenshots.


Too tired to write comments for them though 😛

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Second Draft, Part 4

15 years ago by Mato , 330 Comments »

Another late night update. As you can see, Draft 2 stands at 42.61% now. We’re in the 40s, hopefully we’ll be in the 50s in a few days. Unlike before, there wasn’t much duplicate text this time around, so it’s been very exhausting work. But slowly we’re moving away from the text used in the central areas and branching out to interesting new areas. Lots of cut scenes and text-heavy lines too, so the % change doesn’t reflect the amount of work done very well.

By the way, for those following along with the map viewer, this latest batch covered maps 36-65.

Some more random pics from the latest batch of Draft 2 progress.


  • He should use eyedrops then

  • This sound so very EarthBound-ish

  • Itoi’s masterful writing in action

  • Is this how people get Photoshop?

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Second Draft, Part 3

15 years ago by Mato , 357 Comments »

Ordinary status update. Been hard at work on Draft 2. Currently at 36.41%, as you can see. It’s crazy to think I’ve gotten a few thousand lines done already. Not sure how that happened. Between 30% and about 60% always feels kind of depressing though, it feels like, “Man, already a lot of progress, but so much more work left to do, ugh.” At least that’s how it felt last year with Draft 1.

Anyway, for those following with the map viewer, it’s been maps 15-35. A lot of tedious stuff, some of these blocks have text from 4 or 5 different chapters, it’d definitely have been insane to try translating this without knowing any context first. Anyway, aside from those tedious blocks, some really fun and some really memorable text in this latest batch.

Here are some random screens from the latest batch of Draft 2 text.


  • Reminds me of that guy in Fourside

  • He’s a connoisseur

  • If you choose not to save your game

  • I hate when random baldness attacks

Anyway, past the 1/3 mark with this draft now. Woot and all that.