More Media
For now, mostly just a bunch of new media. But some more details below.
Yesterday I finished a grueling all-nighter but couldn’t focus or sleep. So I used that time to make a really quick and ugly video, which is what you can see above. Sorry for the lame quality, making videos is definitely not my forte. But oh well. At least you get to see stuff in action.
Now that the super rush work for real life work is done, I can get to finishing the first draft of the script. I can probably do that in a day or two. I’ll post about more about that when I’m done.
I’ll be very honest and say that in my mind at least, this project didn’t start until like the first or second week of July 2007. I can explain more of that later in maybe a retrospective history of the project or something when it’s all over, but given that everything is being completely redone and reorganized, this project itself started last month in my eyes. So it’s pretty incredible to me to see how far it’s come in so little time.
I mention reorganization, and that includes redoing hacks too. I know that probably makes some people go “wtf why redo everything”, but we’re streamlining everything and using a new system byuu’s working on to not only make things more organized, but more automated, reliable, and most important of all — it’ll make it easier to find and squash bugs when they appear. Pretty important when you only got a few months to get so much done :O No worries though, the current hack code is going to be “ported” over, not tossed away or anything. Anyway, this is all good news. Organization = good!
Right now, the script routine DOES work, but it’s extremely buggy. For some reason, it doesn’t always seem to pay attention to the control codes that tell it to write to a new line or to wait for user input, it just keeps on going. This makes text write on top of itself, and in some cases there’s not enough RAM for lines upon line upon line, so memory starts to get corrupted and all kinds of crazy stuff happens. Sometimes map tiles screw up, which is neat to see. Sometimes the music cuts out or messes up. Sometimes (rarely) the game will absolutely crash. The worst one though is where it seems like everything is going OK, but because of RAM corruptness, getting into a battle can sometimes lock up the game.
These are the kinds of bugs to expect in development, but most people never get to see/hear about this stuff. BUt now you do! Lucky! So you can see that locating and fixing bugs is quite an important part of the project.
Also, throughout the game is scrolling text, used usually at the end of chapters. This uses its own script routine, but as it hasn’t been 8-bit-ified yet, the game will freeze when it tries to display this text. Making it impossible to finish chapters. In fact, the first one happens like only 3 to 5 minutes into the game. So this plus the text glitches I mentioned above means the game isn’t really in playably playable form yet. But it’s definitely a big leap forward compared to where we were ago just a week ago, that’s for sure.
Pretty sure I was going to talk about something else but I can’t remember what. Wish the ROM hackers luck, though!
Wow, it looks great so far.
Good idea on making things more organized and streamlined. As a web developer, I know how important it is to automate as many things as possible. 🙂
Looking forward to the future release! Good luck, guys, and thanks for your hard work!
Awesome! But I’m waiting for the patch to come out, I don’t want to spoil anything… can you please don’t put the new screens on the front page? Hide them in the PREVIEW section 🙂
Looks great!
Isn’t Isaku the romaji for the Hebrew name Isaac? He’s the dude in the flannel, right? I’m sure you guys have made all the decisions regarding name changes, but that one just seemed obvious.
bowser: the new screens are gonna wind up on the sidebar anyway… If you’re not that interested in following the development, you might want to just sign up for the e-mail notice thing and then stay away 😛
I’ve been trying to be VERY careful about what to show and not show, while trying to see things from your sort of perspective.
pauya: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it should be too. Names haven’t been finalized yet though (still only on draft #1 :P), I’m gonna do that down the road. So don’t worry.
It’s amazing how far you guys have come. It seems like you’ve done a lot more impressive work in 2 months than what they did at mother3.org in about a year and a half. Not that there’s anything bad about mother3.org, I just wanted to say I’m impressed. You guys have not disappointed.
Thanks for the dedication! I can’t wait! Now I can beat the game and read it too!
I think Isaku = = Isaac. Will this be changed during the script revision, or am i wrong?
abadd: see above.
I have to say, as much as I appreciate you guys working on this, I think I equally appreciate the constant updates 🙂 Makes the wait easier. Thanks Tomato!
(I updated that pic so that people will stop asking the same question about his name :P)
Playably Playable?
Is that a Chrono Cross reference?
Solt and Peppor anyone?
Hey it says, “You Won!”
Great Job!
Wow, this looks fantastic so far.
Keep up the good work.
that sign at the end mad me LOL
great work
… I couldn’t help but laugh at the Sign.
Such a brilliant sign.
ONCE AGAIN THE UPDATE HAS MADE MY DAY AND PUT A SMILE ON MY FACE !!!! THANK YOU FAN TRANSLATION TEAM I LOVE YOU!!!!
when I played Mother 3 on japanese, I was kinda ”meh” at times, and all bored for not being able to read the script (which, as we all know, it’s one of the very reasons we so wickedly love Mother)
but I was watching the video, and I was like omfg!
It does indeed very much recall the earthbound-y feeling back on me
the world will explode come this translation
I hat to be the only one to post a negative comment, but THIS IS THE AWESOMEST THING TO BE CODED INTO A VIDEO GAME. One thing, though, will you post instructions on how to properly apply the patch to the ROM? And will you be giving recommendations on which emulator/device to use it on. Not all of them work with patches as well as others, you know.
Yeah, I mentioned that we would in a comment in a previous post.
It looks great. You guys really are kicking ass on this.
Is the song in the video from Mother 3i?
Yeah, that’s Track 2 of Mother3i.
Awesome update… but I beat Mother 3 and I don’t remember fighting a zombie dog o_O;
Oh well, I’ll definately be giving this game a second playthrough in English! 😀
THIS IS TOO MUCH AWESOMENESS! OVERLOAD!!! 😀
It sure is looking awesome keep up the good work.
Nice update,Iam wondering if in the future you can make a video showing some of the few bugs you encounter through development of this patch.
Always nice to see some more translated media. You’re doing a fantastic job on this, and i wish you all luck.
Great, awesome stuff. I love seeing the screenshots (videos as well) and reading about the hacking stuff. To a guy like me who doesn’t have any real knowledge in that area it’s all really interesting.
Anyway, I have a question! I saw the description for the Peculiar Cheese item runs out of the help box by a fair margin. What’s the solution to that, if you don’t mind me asking?
oohhhh this is so awesome, it´s starting to get a real nice earthbound vibe!
Try to imagine a thing called a B button!
breaking the fourth wall baby….
Wow every thing looks so organized! The Media was good, and hopefully you can get everything done by the day SSBB comes or there might be spoilers.
Are any members of this project going to PAX? If so, I’d love to buy you drink, shake your hand, or just thank you in person!
Hmm…Tomato, how often do you look at these forums? It seems like every time anyone has a question, you’re the first person to post the next response, with a answer. By the way, thank you again for the project 🙂
TheReaper: Yeah, I might do that sometime. I just hope people don’t take it the wrong way and go “OMG these guys suck they’re never gonna finish it now”.
Dr. Meat: When the time comes to do detailed editing, we’ll just play around with the formatting and if stuff is still too long, then it’ll have to be shortened somehow. Most of the time it’s not too hard to shorten long translations.
Coconut: I get notified by email when a comment is made. But I often check the site anyway just cause sometimes I can’t believe we’re doing what we’re doing 😛
I’m interested how it goes but I don’t want to spoil myself with screenshots 🙂
If you’re on a Windows computer, edit your HOSTS file and put this in at the bottom:
127.0.0.1 http://mother3.fobby.net/wp-content/
Here is info on how to edit your hosts file.
This will make it so any screenshots we upload to this site won’t work on your browser.
It looks Better than ever.
But man, does it still need some major improvements.
I’m lovin’ these updates! Especially the fact that I have a video loading all the while I’m reading the progress! I can’t wait to see those glitch videos. They sound interesting. I don’t know why, but I’ve always thought glitches were awesome. Especially the Mario 64 and Zelda 64 Cartridge tilt trick.
But all of that aside, thanks guys. This is just awesome.
Awesome!
I do notice the font is a bit cut off at the bottom with the tailed letters eg. g, y. This is what you guys are gonna settle with? I don’t mind either way but I didn’t notice that before.
^I think they mentioned trying to fix that before… Had something to do with the way the text lines were constructed… or something…
tsimehC: Sadly, in the world of ROM hacking, things almost never go exactly as planned. So while we got 8-bit text working and a main text VWF working, we’re now presented with a new problem to tackle 😛 More like “many new problems” actually, but this is just one of them.
But trying to figure out why it’s doing that is much harder than any of us expected. So it’s yet another one of those big problems we gotta overcome with more work.
It’s coming along nicely. Keep up the good work.
I am loving the updates and watching you guys being so nice makes me feel REALLY bad so i really want to help in any way possible… seeing that you guys are set with this i think that i could only help externaly. After percent discussion with some big time pokémon hackzors I loony know how to manually patch an official GBA cart. With this in mind starmen can create huge revanue By patching official carts for a fee all the while still having a free patch out
This is a way i could help with my crazy gba hacking skillz
please respond
yeah that’s not hugely illegal or anything
you should feel even worse now.
Nintendo has a big problem with piracy, and if starmen or anyone from M3 translation were to ever advertise what you mention is a HUGE blow to everything we are doing. EB Seige Would be a big waste of time.
The Goal here is to bring a game to fans legally, by providing a translation. Not by selling illegal game carts. I think it would hurt the chances that any mother game would ever make it to North America ever!
providing roms and selling patched GBA carts is ILLEGAL! so DONT DO IT!
Ok…. well sorry…. it was just an idea sorry I am such a retard
Well, now you’re being to hard on yourself.
Take as much time as you guys need. After waiting this long I can bare to wait a while longer so that we can really get a quality translation. Best of, we’re all counting on you.
I meant to say “Best of luck, we’re all counting on you”
Mato, I get what you mean lol. The reason why I mentioned this was because I wanted to use Orange Kid in a game I’m making. The problem was that the tails were getting cut off from this font and there were uneven spacing.
Anyway, it’s not a big issue because it’s still legible and the player can read the text.
Thanks for doing this once again.
“Tower of peace and love
STAY AWAY!”
Hilarious! Oh, I am gonna PK LOVE the smaaash outta this!
…What names did you pick for the characters?
Wanna know what is weird?
People always want the sequel to the previous game to be the same as the old. Which is actually rather gay considering if the game is the same as the last one… just “updated” then it really is not a new game at all
I think that only two series can break this mold the “Resident Evil” series and the “MOTHER” series… MOTHER has just recently provided a true sequel that strafs far from the last game, providing little nonstagia…. and basically no REAL connections (except a few charecters in a way “CAMEOING” if you know what I mean) Making this game much better than its predisesor (sp major)
This game is MOTHER 3…. easily one of the new age classics that will never be surpased in gaming history by anything in its genra
Now…. saying that you aren’t fluent in Japeanease you are SERIOUSLY missing out, when I first heard MOTHER 3 wasn’t coming to america…. I literly cried
Until one day I was browsing Wikipedia and saw “Mother3.org Fan translation” As a link on the bottom of the page on the MOTHER 3 wikipedia page
I followed that translation for 9 months….. I could have made a women pregnent and now have a 1 year old child in that time
Then here I am today still following that translation, it’s almost done….. and I am STOKED, there are little ways to tell you how much I appreciate you guys….. so I will try to state it in the way I can most…… in Poem
‘ Men from the Stars ‘
‘ They come to us ‘
‘ They are kind and wise and give us great gifts ‘
‘ All they ask for is our help ‘
‘ To help rescue there great queen ‘
‘ We agree and begin the seige ‘
‘ Yet it doesn’t work ‘
‘ The Reggie’s say no ‘
‘ So they take matters into there own hands ‘
‘ And they suceed ‘
‘ Just intime, right before the great brawl ‘
Thanks you guys so much!!!!
P.S. You have great gifts to come from me!
person1014: You’re freakin’ creepy.
eh….. I love you too?
And I just now realized: HOLY LOLY LUCAS SPOKE! THE UNIVERSE-A GON’ IMPLODEY!
In response to Jackalope:
Lucas speaks quite a bit, for a main protagonist.
I especially liked Duster’s comment near the end: “One of them’s gotta be the right one. Let’s jump down them at random.” Ok, this is why Duster is NOT leading the party.
Anyways, I can’t really think of an adjective grand enough to express my feelings over this, but I’ll try:
This is absolutely phenominal! You can just tell it’s brimming with the soul of the Mother series. Ironically, I feel bad posting here because I know there’s nothing I can do to help; it just tears me up inside…
One minor nit you may have already fixed:
Antidotes are always ready ->
Antidotes are always available
Good luck on finishing this! Things are looking good and I expect this to be a very high quality release! 🙂
@Michael:
Yeah, I realized that after I said it. Whoops.
haha “the tower of love and peace,Stay away” haha