Project To-Do List

Here is the current to-do list as of May 13, 2008. There could be some things missing here that we’ve forgotten to mention. But it should be most, if not all, of the work that’s left to do. The hacking is the main thing holding everything up. Once the major hacking is done, it should be pretty smooth sailing after that.

For more details on the rest of the hacking, check out this update.

Main Script Hacking:

  1. Hack the game to make it not ignore control codes after 33 characters. This may be very evil to hack, but it should fix most of the the main script overflows.
  2. Hack the game to allow lines to be as long as we need them to be. (now set to 50 letters per line, which is decently acceptable)
  3. Hack the tile struct layout (or relocate the structs) to allow for 100+ letter tiles per screen. Tough/annoying. This will fix some crashing/graphical garbage when there’s over 64 characters on the screen at once. (~25% done)
  4. Make scrolly text display fully. Related to the above problems.
  5. Try to make scrolly text not make sprites blink. Not essential, but would be very nice to have.
  6. Add in new control codes for things like a, an, the, some, he, she, it, they, them, etc. EarthBound had some of this reprogramming done to it too, and it made things sound nicer and more professional.

Gray Name Box Hacking:

  1. Do some “cheating” hacks to make names right at the name length limit look better.
  2. Add an 8-bit hack to a key part of the routine. This may also work on other parts of the game, so that’d be a bonus. But this is required to make names loaded from the enemy list work correctly.
  3. Fix the 8×8 font up a bit and tweak some width values.
  4. Make the gray box fit the name correctly. It currently assumes each letter is 8 pixels, so it extends too far out.
  5. Move the name text up 1 pixel.
  6. Hack it so the name box can print 8-letter player names correctly. It currently barfs and prints crazy stuff in such cases.

Menu Hacking:

  1. Get the sprite text VWF to do what we call “sprite welding”. (PS I’d rather give birth than do this hack again)
  2. Allow for item names that are at LEAST 18 letters long. We’re stuck at 8 or 9 letters right now and that’s absolutely unacceptable. This also affects PSI names and skill names, so this is pretty important overall anyway.
  3. Make the music player’s text-centering code work correctly. Right now it assumes 10 pixels for each letter.
  4. Write an 8-bit hack for some control codes used in menu text. Or revert various things back to 16-bit, which would be easier.
  5. Fix the naming screen, for now you have to hit B a few times before you can name things. It’s weird.
  6. Hack the naming screen menus to work and look and act nicely.
  7. Allow for 8-letter names.
  8. Figure out how to re-order some of the things used in what we call “menus1″, so that “Nut XX DP Sell?” can be changed to something like, “Sell this Nut for XX DP?” The game hard-codes this arrangement and it’s lame in English. This will be surprisingly difficult.

Battle Stuff Hacking:

  1. Allow for more than 42 letters on the screen at once, and change the auto-wrap thing. This will be VERY hard.
  2. Look more into the old ugly bug that cuts off hooks in item menus. It may be gone now. Not sure.
  3. Figure out why long description text erases player names, then fix this. It may be as easy as a call to an existing function, or it may be hell itself.
  4. Add control codes for he, she, it, a, an, the, they, cohort, cohorts, etc.
  5. Try to hack things so the intro text doesn’t sound so convoluted, as the Japanese version always assumes the enemy name comes first.
  6. Hack special text boxes and other important things that appear later in the game. This will be a real pain.

Misc. Hacking:

  1. Replace two Japanese sound clips (hear them here if you’re interested) that play for about half a second or so each with English sound clips. Already done some work related to this, and it will probably be pretty straightforward. (~70% done)
  2. Insert some sort of intro screen/disclaimer screen thing.
  3. Possibly add in whatever hacks are needed to make the game work properly on emulators and real systems. For some reason, some emus and flash cards have trouble with MOTHER 3, but I think sblur found a fix or something. I forget. (~50% done)
  4. Polish up other hacks at the end if it’s worth it / add in extra little stuff (like that silver star thing) if we feel up to it and if it doesn’t take much time. This has very low priority though and should be saved for last.

Translation & Editing:

  1. Do script draft #2 (Mato)
  2. Do script draft #3 (demi)
  3. Do final script checks/formatting (Mato)
  4. Edit and format all the non-script files.

Testing:

  1. Lots of tool-assisted testing
  2. Lots of in-game testing
  3. Testing on various platforms