Finishing Sprite Text
This is more of a mini-update than anything really.
Anyway, I’ve been working on the sprite text problem this week. Good news is that I figured out what the cause of the ugly flashing/morphing was and I’ve fixed it. But I still need to tinker with things, because in certain rare cases text at the end of a string or right before a newline will sometimes (not always, which is the kicker) not display and instead use old graphical data. The fix won’t be hard exactly, just very very annoying to figure out. I swear, this sprite text stuff = (insert swear word adjective) (insert noun) (insert body part)
Here are current pics to demonstrate what needs to be fixed before hacking is done.
Once I fix this, we *should* be able to cross this final hack off the to-do list and move to the final testing stage.
Cant wait for the release!!! π
It’s getting so close! You and the rest of the team are gods π
You’re making great progress with the last of the hacking. Thanks so much for this.
When was it that this project began? Around this time last year, right?
You made pretty good time.
The translation really began around July of last year, and the hacking got really started around October-ish, after the menu patch was out. We scrapped most everything then and I had to learn how to hack.
Finish faster! And don’t give me one of those lame junk patches in reply! Though I did like the one with the sumo’s…
Aww… not nearly as funny as bodlong. π
Anyway, keep up the great work! Almost there!
That sprite text hacking looks pretty evil.
You can do it!
It’s so close we can taste it!
Wow so awesome! Mato you truly deserve a PSI Caramel once this is over! lol
O…M…F….G.
So close! I’m honestly considering camping in my basement next to my computer….
Mato continues to get more and more awesome…it’s amazing!
Eager for release π
I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d throw another praise speech on the board.
Mato, you have dedicated a full year to this project, and we thank you for your perseverance. Your team is amazing. It’s a shame Nintendo didn’t program the game itself better, but you’ve confronted every challenge and overcome it.
Good luck in these final weeks – You’re almost there!
I remember the light at the end of the tunnel…..
Now, the outside wind is hitting our faces, we can see the entire sun… we’re just a few steps away from coming out of the tunnel!
Great job on a great translation hacking team, when this comes out there will be ice sculptures and cake and confetti and whatnot :3
Wow this is really great! I can’t say much other than thanks.
New Kirby says thanks too.
So exciting!
yay for commenting only halfway down the page.
I feel like the release is so close, there won’t even be any time left for making DropDrop a meme.
my god, this is so close. it only feels like a second that you started script draft 2 (I found this project at that time), and now the game’s almost completely done and only needs to be tested…
you’ve done an awesome job. kudos, I couldn’t imagine dedicating all my free time to hacking such a hard-to-hack game, even if I *could* hack…
well… It’s almost over, Mato.
Congrats, you’ve almost finshed.
Once you’re all done, go and sleep/ party for 2 weeks straight ^_^
I’m terribly excited OH MAAANN ;_____;
Oh man it’s almost finished, can’t wait any longer, congratulations on this fine piece of work.
I just made a fix that fixes almost all of the glitches I just posted. I think there’s one last thing and it could be done. Will mess with it in a bit, first need food and coffee.
That was a quick fix Mato. Nice one.
Oh man, I’m getting so PSYCHED for this. I’ve replayed Mother and Earthbound probably twice each so I can be ready for Mother 3. I think I’ll hit up Earthbound once more.
SOOO excited!
So itching to play this, I think of it at least once a day. Lots of love and thanks.
Wow that was fast. A month and some days to go!!! Wahoo!
If only your keyboard had a “sometimes, not always” key, you could’ve saved days worth of time on the blog.
I AM SO EXCITED! I could’nt wait, so I beat mother 3 back in december with a translation guide. I am SO READY to play it in ENGLISH though!!! Thank you mato, jeffman, and friends!
Mato, you’re unstoppable. Thousands of people thank you, myself included. Final testing phase, here we come!
ALL HAIL KING MATO!
nice work man, been following for a long time now, and it’s nice to see all this progress, i can’t believe you’re almost done…amazing.
Holy , nice one Mato.
Rofl, the word expletive was deleted.
I really just can’t wait to sit back, relax, dim the lights, turn on the emulator, and load the game up… Maybe have some snacks. I’ll prepare everything.
Mato (and team), seriously, thanks. Think of all the people you are making happy by doing this. If it weren’t for you, we’d never be able to experience this amazing game. It’s starting to sink in now. I’ll be playing it soon… the sequel to EarthBound, Shigesato Itoi’s unique masterpiece.
Thank you.
You probably put < and > around it or something.
I believe I did; my brackets shake their fists angrily at your amazing blog. Angry bracket fists.
Good stuff dude. Keep up the great work. Here’s hoping we got it coming before my birthday. Then again, testing may make it last more than that, but if we hit a release before October 16th (which is the day of my birth), I’m going to send you a cake in the mail in celebration.
Ok, maybe not a cake, but definitely some cake mix.
*Gasp!* Are you… Are you nearly done?! Alright, I guess I’ll have to find my GBA flash cart… haven’t used it since I got nes emulation running on DS.
Thank you, Mato!
And, if you lived anywhere near me I’d be shouting you coffees if you came into work (I’ll be needing some myself, what with the game coming out soon)
I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. You and your team are an inspiration Mato! God speed!
Mr. Mato: “I swear, this sprite text stuff = (insert swear word adjective) (insert noun) (insert body part)”
Photoing photo finger? (I refuse to use a real bad word in any circumstance.)
By the way, I KNEW that there are hidden links!
But… they are the same as last time.
WE LOVE YOU!
Oops @ those links. I just copy and pasted the html for the old update and changed the image links, forgot I had secret links. Took em out now.
——–
There are two problems left right now, they might be one problem, not sure.
First one is obvious, the second one is a result of the status icon being there, except it doesn’t happen in all instances, so barf @ having to figure this out. What a pain this sprite text crap is argh
I should find something else to do with my time, but I can’t help but keep checking the board – Your frequent updates make everything that much more exciting!
Again, amazing work!
*specific praises*
I have faith in you.
lol! get whacked with a paper fan to get rid of confusion, can you imagine that?
I LOVE THIS STYLE OF HUMOR
Thanks again, thanks so much for letting us experience this π
It’s gotta be annoying with the new problems coming up, but just take your time, you know you’ll solve it eventually
Outstanding… I’m very excited about this =)
I like the Paper Fan. It reminds me of Final Fantasy VI, where I’d have someone remove their weapon and punch a confused party member to cure them π
this sprite text stuff = s****y chair foot
Good luck, Mato! We know you can do it! Kick those sprites’ asses! (And if they don’t have any, code some and THEN kick them!)
Soooo close, and then the hacking will be done. I’m sure everyone is happy about that.
Can I have your babies?
this sprite text stuff = “wears salle pant”
at gai fo even
I need to do some more testing, but here are some newer pics:
Awesome final testing stage soon? This calls for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZkllM8znx4
Excellent news. I smell two updates in one day. It smells derrricious.
“Once I fix this, we *should* be able to cross this final hack off the to-do list and move to the final testing stage.”
I’m so excited i think i might just pee my pants.
Before you fixed that, it looked like Lucas was called ‘The’.
so effing close…So effing close…SO EFFING CLOSE TO THE REALESE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lol, chick bandana.
I can’t believe how close the haxing is to done :O
I LOVE YOU MATO!!
That’s all I can think to say!
Greetings from Grand Cayman. I joined the party late on this one. Have been following this blog for several months now and felt it about time to write something.
I can’t believe the sheer magnitude of the task this team has undertaken and how it’s progressed in to a near finished product.
I hope Nintendo takes a look at this acheivement and acknowledges that it is actually an excellent job done. Instead of a subpoena I hope they issue you with a cease and desist blogging and have a job with Nintendo letter!
In light of the finishing line being so close I have now ordered suitable hardware for my DS ready to pop this bad boy in to the GBA slot and enjoy my eagerly awaited ENGLISH Mother 3 experience!!
CONGRATS AND KEEP IT UP!!
Thank you very much Tomato and Jeff for your great work.
ItΒ΄s getting very close…dont rush it, thats all.
*generic phrases*
Mato dude, it looks like you did it
Wow…
Just checked out the list. Mostly horizontal lines. That’s the kinda stuff that keeps me sleeping peacefully at night.
=($hit) thats an (annoying)(dog)(leg)
mad lib anyone?
Hey Mato
Mac or PC
After checking this blog like every day, thank god it’s getting so close.
So…close…
I can…practically…TASTE it…
# Some one other than Antho said 11 minutes ago:
“Hey Mato
Mac or PC”
You do know Mac is just a brand of PC. The real question is: “Windows or OSX?”
Yeah, I know, it could be Linux, BSD, Menuet…
kevinchai: I still run OS9 on one of my computers
So far everything looks good, I want to play around with menus a tiny bit more before I can say for sure it’s done. But we just found a bug that makes part of the ending freeze, so gotta look into that now. No idea what’s going on with it either.
*eye twitches*
Fudgehat said 1 hour, 50 minutes ago:
I like the Paper Fan. It reminds me of Final Fantasy VI, where Iβd have someone remove their weapon and punch a confused party member to cure them π
I’ll have to remember that whenever I face enemies that can confuse me.
About Mother 3 though, progress is awesome. When I recommend this to people who actually have feelings, I’ll advise them to play the game with a box of tissues nearby. Heartrending indeed.
That’s how it goes with stuff like this. You fix one bug, ten more take it’s place. Ah well, keep plugging away at it Mato, you’ll have it done soon.
Murphys Law triumphs again
This game has the best ending I’ve seen. I can’t wait! It’s spooky how close it’s getting.
Oooooh man so clooooooooose
sorry, but mato, if you can read this (I hope my english is good enough), how much will take the testing part? and which hardware will be tested?
SmashBass: Check the FAQ.
Also here’s a question for the team.
Do you have a good hosting plan (or equivalent solution) in place to cope with the absolute hammering the site is going to likely take when the full translation package is released?
I am having visions of the site being knocked offline due to an overwhelming number of dl requests etc.
Jak1437-san: “Can I have your babies?”
/evokerplz/
SmashBass-san: “sorry, but mato, if you can read this (I hope my english is good enough), how much will take the testing part? and which hardware will be tested?”
Did you not mean “Sorry, but Mato, if you can ead this (I hope my English is good enough), how long will the testing take, and which hardware will be tested?”?
I was just trying to be helpful…
I started playing M3 with the menu patch again, just to have something to do, but it looks like I’d rather wait, since it’s so close π
Good job, Mato, you rock!
Screw you, Sprite text, you suck!
So close…
Good luck with the remaining hacking left to do.
f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5…
I have absolutely on idea why the game is dying at the ending now. I tried some scientific method type stuff with this and the Japanese ROM and all I know is that my head is exploded.
The sprite text routine still hasn’t shown any problems though.
Hrm… Well, as long as the ending thing doesn’t freeze all progress we should be happy. Really happy. However, crossing this off and putting “Ending freezing – 0% done” would be extremely annoying.
Rofl, it’s a failsafe by NoA.
ENDING FREEZE: SORRY! YOU CANNOT FINISH THIS TRANSLATION.
(Or: Thanks for playing the demo! Mother 3 Coming soon!)
Hmm I wonder if it’s a new problem caused by recent changes, or one that has been around for a while but was simply never noticed before.
F, this sucks…
Ouch. I thought we fixed this? or did extra fixes un-fix the fix? All I know is that I used to want to learn to hack outside of stuff like Jhack. But now I’m afraid my head would explode.
kinda late to post this, but, yeah, that was what I was trying to say… exept for the “ead” part. yeah, not so good at this, but IΒ΄m mexican! please do not imagine me riding a donkey or eating chili next to a cactus with some odd dress…DX
So, Mato, you have absolutely on idea what is causing the problem. I’d love to help you, but I have on idea what to do either. We all wish we could help you, but onbody can do anything. So just keep no trucking and hopefully you find the solution.
(Sorry, temptation got me. Keep up the good work. At least Half-Life: Decay got released to hold me over. We all hope you can finish all your hacks and testing in a timely manner.)
Looks like it was something from between the 16th and the 21st right now. I’m looking into it, I hope to paula it isn’t block 0 related.
If its Block 0 again, my monitor will explode.
Oh Nos! π
I’m still giggling about “T-t-the Sunshine Fire… It’s on forest!!”, and boy. You have one hell of a fanbase, mato, and I strongly admire your work ethic. I just barely started really hacking, and it’s pretty… confusing, to say the least. NES/Famicom stuff, trying to plan a translation, get a team together, and more importantly, the changes that will take place. I’m basically searching for variable changes or specific commands upon variable change, so figuring out what any chunk of data actually means is kindof tricky. So yes, I admire your work, and work ethic. You are by all means awesome and worthy of our — the community’s — respect!
OK, I think I’ve isolated the problem, though I don’t know what the problem is since it doesn’t even seem like this certain code is ever even being called. It’s from some new code from last night. I’m looking into why it’s going stupid now. I think it might be related to incorrect code assembly, probably because of out of bounds branches being converted to who knows what.
Well, good to know those small bugs are being taken care of.
Oh, uh, that makes since Mato, yeah, I totally get it <_<
I know all of our enthusiasm is a bit dampened by the new ending glitch, but great job on the sprite text! I am crossing my fingers that all works well!
ZerouEx: lol your “oh noes!” crack me up…. it’s like something that i could see being on family guy… kinda like how that foreign guy always repeats jokes and explains why it’s funny
Good luck Mato. This is the REAL final hack!
Alright, I think we fixed the ending bug, turned out to be evil evil typos of death. I’m gonna test it a little bit before I go back to doing my final testing of the sprite text.
WHOAAAAAAAAAAH! There is a Brain Food Lunch inside!
woooo
*fingers crossed*
As the saying goes.
Mato = Pure Win
Wow, congrats on making it this far. I’m uber excited for it to come out. =D
It’s so close…
Honestly, I think a part of me is going to miss the wait. I have been watching this translation (and the interestingnessity of M3.org) for over 2 years now…
For the first time, it seems truly close. Mato and team, thank you.
Alright, got that bug ironed out, back to testing the sprite text a bit more. While I’m working on menus, I think I’ll fix that one weird non-sprite text display bug real quick, it should be as easy as throwing thousands of 0s at one of the screen layers when text is changing.
boner
how long can the character names be? i really want to name Flint “The Flint” but that’s nine letters
This is way more exciting than it should be.
what a great halloween present
This is amazing progess in one night, Mato is a Starman with a ton of Magic Cake!
It will be awesome if tonight is the last night of hacking.
Keep up the great work!
AWESOME MATO!!
Last bug EVER!! (hopefully)
Love ya Mato π Glad to see things are wrapping up. Now I need to get my psp ready to play this game. Soooo very excited.
Thanks a million for your dedication.
reeeach for it! almost there =B
*cheers for Mato*
Sometimes I wonder if he listens to some kind of epic music when he hacks and such.
I like to think he does.
Great work Mato, pretty soon you will get your free time back… until you decide too do a fan translation again… *Generic Praises* and such.
Bodlong…teehee
Wait, I’m confused now. Can names be nine letters, or is it only eight? Because if its nine, “The Flint” would fit fine.
*releases some of month or two of stored up praises*
I’m waiting until the actual release to say more, but yea.
Isn’t the sprite morphing item on the to-do-list supposed to have a growing percent next to it? Just looks like it’s dead. Maybe a ballpark percent will work, just anything that mirrors the hard work you’ve done.
PS: Have a win tile!
Out side of Mato’s this was the best post ever:
# Daniel said 5 hours ago:
Awesome final testing stage soon? This calls for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZkllM8znx4
Wow, guys, check it out:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fan+translation&btnG=Search
This is the number one hit for “Fan Translation” on google. π
Hey Mitch! Draw some more pictures already! π
I believe this event actually calls for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSvpqRPu3OU
So… you’re almost done with the testing you have to do before you can begin the testing now, right? π
Good luck!
Anyone else feel like they’re a part of history in the making right now? π
ure awesome Mato You don’t take crap from Mother 3, but you do take it from everywhere else
holy shizzle nizzle! this website has 29k hits! O.O
you can do it mato! after this you deserve 3 wishes…and a prize
Every time I think Mato has hit a big problem, he just does something amazing and fixes it entirely. He was making it sound like the sprite text issues would need some band-aid fix that would mostly solve the problem, and now he’s worked it out entirely? It feels so amazingly close now…
MATO FOR POPE!!