Slow News Update
It’s been a few days so I figured I should make a real quick update. And here are a few screens to make up for such an otherwise bleh update.
The past week’s been a slower one; not too much has happened since the last update. Mostly just discussing bugs and stuff like that. Today I’ll probably start a big test playthrough – it’ll involve testing the hacks to try to find crashes and freezes and stuff, while updating and polishing the script as I go along. Sadly, a line-length-extending hack hasn’t been figured out yet, so that means there’ll be an automatic line in the middle of every 2 or 3 words. Makes it less fun but it’s for testing purposes so it’s a necessary unfunness 😛 Anyway I think the only really main thing that happened in the past couple days was that Jeffman updated his battle VWF thing a tiny bit, though it turns out that now the level-up text goes all screwy now for reasons unknown.
The other day I updated the project’s to-do list and it’s really scary — the hacking to-do list is like 2 or 3 pages long, while the translation to-do list is really simple and sounds like “Do script draft revision” and “Finalize script”. If only we could somehow get official permission to translate this (yeah I know how crazy impossible that sounds), we could have access to the source code and pretty much most of these hacking issues would never even BE an issue. Actually, if you read reid’s interviews that I posted in a previous update, you’ll see he mentions that we HAD been talking/planning/considering/investigating getting the project to be an official, 100% legal version. But sadly, everything’s fallen through so far 😐 Maybe sometime after the translation’s release (and after we wake up from our months of catch-up sleep) we’ll talk about all that in more detail.
But if there ARE any game companies out there who might be reading this, give us a holler! Doooooo ittttttt
(Incidentally, just as an aside, I really think hard about what screens to show and not to show. For the most part, everything I show is NOT directly related to the main story and thus not very spoilery. That’s why these pics are always from someone reading a sign or talking to an animal or talking to someone random. I have a huge list inside my head of what to show and not show. So if you’re concerned about that, don’t worry too much. I wouldn’t try to spoil the game we’re working so insanely hard on. Plus we’ve all been waiting for this game for like 12+ years :P)
Nintendo would never go for another company localizing one of their games. If anyone has an example of that ever happening before, let me know.
As much as I like Nintendo’s games, they are an immovable object on so many issues and they seem to have a reputation of not being 3rd-party developer friendly either. Sony lets other companies localize their games (Wild Arms 4 and 5 come to mind and there are others too).
you guys are great.
Thanks for the update. I can’t wait to play to the game. The screen shots look great. You guys are the best, and your hard work is much appreciated, keep it up!
Steve, you are a very boring man :S
Its good that Jeffman updated battle VWF a tiny bit because its very important and Mato I know you have a goal to release the patch by november and seeing 2 or 3 pages of hacks that have to be done can be a bit of a worry but dont worry too much my friend about the hacking to do list,I know you guys can overcome those problems because of the amount of experience this team has,keep up the great work guys.
emarts: I am a realist when it comes to Nintendo. I’d love to be proven wrong, though.
Yeah, I’m too tired right now to look into it (reid and others did tons of research months ago but I forget it all now), but even if that claim is true, there’s always a first for everything.
You guys are at my favourite part of the game!
I can’t wait to play this game. I just wish I could understand moonspeak. 😀
If I recall correctly, Katsuyuki Omuro did some work on the game too.
I am not sure if this suffers from the same problems you have, but its worth trying to get in contact with some one else familiar with the script.
That butterfly picture made me happy.
Chris: Actually, he gave all his hacks and stuff to Gideon back in November, but most of the stuff won’t work because of the 16-bit/8-bit issues. And possibly because of the nature of his VWF. (btw he’s listed in the About page as “harmony” :P)
What I do not get is why you guys metion “lists” but fail to ever show them?
I really appreciate the project and all, but don’t you think that is you showed people what you needed to do….. you would find solutions to those problems way faster???
I think that you should show us those lists… maybe we can help.
Fail to ever show them? Huh?
http://mother3.fobby.net/2007/08/10/38/
Granted that’s from like 3 weeks ago and only mostly some bugs got added, but stuff like what’s on that list isn’t stuff ordinary people can handle.
EDIT: Not to mention that this ENTIRE POST is about stuff that still needs to get done: http://mother3.fobby.net/2007/09/02/some-progress-a-look-at-menus/
Ha… I meant like the 2 – 3 pages that you bragged about not the miscelanious items mentioned in old posts….. I am just simply Curious to REALLY see the depth of what needs to be done
It’s mostly that stuff + more detailed info on each individual issue. And bugs that have popped up since then. Some of it includes spoilers.
Oh.. well thanks any ways I think that hearing about all the problems in the project just reminds me of how hard you guys are working…
You people are doing the jobs of paid professionals
Ha… if only nintendo would buy the translation from you guys…. my would that be a day!
/ Actual Question Alert! \
After this project you obvoiusly aren’t retiring Mato…. Do you have any other planned projects?
You being a famous translator… are you willing to take on a 1 + 2 project?
I think this time around I will hop in… hell, maybe I will even lead it and start today!
…. The only thing is that I can’t really hack all too well, I am going to need someone else to do that for me… IE kinda like you and Jeffman, Mato…. Any advice?
We’ve slightly discussed 1+2, but the real work required will be assembly hacking, much like the hacking we’re doing now. Add in the extreme complexity of the EarthBound script, and it’s definitely not gonna be an easy task.
I really don’t know yet though. My skills aren’t 100% required for a 1+2 project. And I’d like to focus on other things that I already have on hold anyway, so I dunno yet 😐
Yeah, that would be great. MORE waiting for Mother 3. Then we could REALLY see how possessive Nintendo is of their property. I could totally see them buying this translation out JUST IN CASE they decide to release their own version but never actually making plans to release it themselves (gotta save the possible intellectual cash they MIGHT make, fans be damned). Maybe veering on the side of pessimism here but we have all been burnt by Nintendo in the past (and in ways almost as criminal)
Quite honestly, even if this game came out officially, i STILL wouldnt be playing it on the gba/ds (maybe on the gba player). Sorry, but i played the first two earthbound games full screen. RPG’s suck on the go, in my opinion. I always feel like im gonna lose all my hard work…
Actually, I see them shutting the project down before ever considering buying the translation 😛
and we’re not very pleased.
Whatever you say, do0rkn0b!
My biggest hacking accomplishment with Mother 1+2 was changing the size of the text boxes in Mother. Judging by what crazy stuff would need to be done to Mother 2, that’s nothing! However, some of the VWF hacks might be transferable or at least their basic idea could be adapted to Mother 2? Thinking way too far in advance though, you guys already have a project 😛
I really like the sign in the first picture
Thats a pretty cool update, and hacking these files must be a huge pain so thumbs up to the hackers! It is a shame nintendo won’t give you the source code… OR WILL THEY?! =)
JK, chances are low. Maybe if you found a way of talking to a high up in the nintendo of america offices, you could try to negotiate. Chances are though that you guys will need to hack them.
I would love to help, but since I only really have a history in 3dsMax and other 3d design projects and basic C++, I don’t think I can help you guys much.
Cheers,
Yokai
Well, if all else fails and the project is shut down by Nintendo, I’ll just finish learning Japanese and play the original 🙂
Of course, I just spent half an hour trying to find the kanji I memorized from a sign much earlier today that said “日本実食” only to discover that all it said was “authentic Japanese food” so this is going to take a while, even if I’m getting the hang of remembering what kanji look like.
ok, so…say mid november comes around and the patch isn’t quite done, ut done or not, smash bros brawl is still being released on dec. 3rd. will you release a version of the patch that isn’t 100% done but still pretty much playable? i would hope so, i am stoked for brawl but i don’t want it spoiling mother3 for me. i’d rather play an incomplete translation than the japanese version. by the way…i gotta know…will ness be in brawl?
Mato: Interesting, thanks for the info. Is the reason the g’s and the y’s in the main dialog script function get cut off, but not in the battle, due to the 8 bit conversion? Since you guys went ahead and announced it, I haven’t tried my hand at the game much, but I do have an interesting idea for you to try back on the 16 bit script routine.
Instead of actually hacking the script to be 8 bits, can’t you trick it? For example, modify the routine to pad in the extra 00, or whatever it uses, before getting processed by the dialog function (kind of like implied compression). You can still store the script as 8 bit and it should save you the trouble of rewriting the entire thing. I am not sure what to tell you about the line breaks though.
If it comes to it, I will start reading up on the specifics of arm7 :).
-Chris
Hunter: it’s not out of the question, but it would depend on a lot of things that are too early to tell right now.
Also, dunno about Ness, your guess is as good as mine.
Chris: the 8-bit thing isn’t an issue anymore really. We got 8-bit working. The main problem now is the automatic line-break the game does. It seems this was added in there to make sure memory didn’t overflow. So the memory-handling stuff is what needs to be redone.
the gs and ys have absolutely nothing to do with the 8-bit conversion. I dunno why people keep getting that mixed up. But if you check that really really old picture before we had 8-bit working, you’ll see the y and g hooks got cut off there too. The issue behind that is something else altogether too.
lol chris, i think the reason that the text is getting cut off is because everything is stored in 8×8 tiled mode, and their characters are more than 8 pixels high. it just requires a more complex text drawing routine that they probably don’t need to bother with quite yet.
They’re stored in 11-pixel format I believe. But for unknown reasons (if we knew we could fix it :P) only 8 pixels are being drawn now. It’s a mystery.
*nods* I was just under the impression the re-written main dialog function was crashing because you weren’t tending to something the original code did, especially since you noted that the game did crash when talking to certain people. When I worked on my projects, I was not as daring and couldn’t fathom rewriting entire functions, so I just worked around what I could.
For example, like I said having a script pre-processor that padded the text to 16 bits dynamically. Then to handle the line breaks, I probably would have intercepted the call, had it save and draw the tile (remembering the latest location, forgetting everything else) and have it pick up where it left off. I’ve not had a look at any of your code, nor have I done much of any of my own work on it so I don’t know how reasonable what I’m saying is, but it never hurts to throw out another idea :).
As for the y and g hooks, I did notice they were in your 16 bit script too, but I figured that it had something to do with the function rewrite (maybe the vwf post processing?, I wouldn’t know), since Harmony7’s hack didn’t seem to exhibit that issue.
Still, best of luck :).
-Chris
Yeah we’ve been talking with harmony, he had a few things working that we’re having trouble with now, except he lost most of his hack work last year in hard drive problems. We hackers sure have evil hard drives 😉
Most of M3’s coding is in really overcomplicated and bloated C++ apparently, and looking at the assembly of that does not sound fun or easy 🙁
I’m pretty sure you guys know who Bill Trinen is. Give him a holler. He’s Miyamoto’s main man.
Alright, it would be crazy that he would even respond to any letter from any of us. Let’s just say I’m throwing out his name and only that.
I’ve talked to him before, when applying for a job at Nintendo a while back. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think too highly of our project here, though 😛
Isn’t it supposed to be “Lucas'”?
I was waiting for someone to say that 😛
What if someone decided to rename Lucas to something else, though? Besides, it’s technically correct even with the extra ‘s there. Pretty sure EarthBound does it that way too.
In response to the first comment made by “Steve”:
Nintendo is extremely friendly with third party companies. The two Zelda Games for GBC (ages and seasons) and the Zelda GBA game were done by Capcom, the two Mario Strikers games were done by a Canadian company, Mario 3 on 3 for DS was done by square enix, etc. There are many examples of Nintendo allowing third party companies publish/produce games with Nintendo name characters. I wouldn’t rule out Nintendo allowing a third party company to publish Mother 3.
Would anyone mind if i posted a topic on gbatemp.net seeing if anyone has any ideas as to why your having these hacking issues
P.S. good work guys
No, you’re very welcome to post about that, I even put out a call for help like a week or two ago, if you remember/check back somewhere 🙂
Got a reply from fast6191 on GBATemp:
I have way way too much going on to commit fully to this but from the little that is posted it looks like some fairly serious hacking is needed (which would require someone fairly dedicated).
I would like to see the complete list (or just a bit more than what is detailed there) of stuff that needs doing if possible (a VFW + text/OAM stuff does not really help me: OAM could be fairly simple (especially if it is just a string in the ROM) whereas a VFW may be harder: you will have to figure out display i/o routines).
If they have a paragraph or two on the hacking that has been done (known positions of various text, pointers, graphics, binaries (especially whether the subroutines I will care about use ARM or THUMB) and compression used would be a nice start) I would not mind seeing that either.
I do not need a copy of the beta/script although I would appreciate a heads up concerning what areas of “junk” have been used for the font/text overflow etc. (granted I may need to see the new font at some point if one was made to help with one method of VFW implementation).
As vocal as the EB community is (and its the most vocal of any community I know of, relative to the consumer base) I can’t imagine that Nintendo isn’t already aware of the project.
As such I think that says good things for the continued lawsuit-free/cease-and-desist status of the project.
For goodness sake, who the heck else runs a PK Call’in campaign.?
G.Wicks: It seemed to me from the Minish Cap credits that Nintendo was still very much involved in the game…almost as if they just contracted out the labor, but came up with much of the design themselves. Also, you’ll notice that Nintendo localized and published the Zelda games (and maybe the others, I’m not sure).
I think it’s one thing for Nintendo to contract out a game and quite another for a Nintendo-developed game (yeah, with Brownie Brown :P) to be localized by another company. And if it ever happened, it would need to be a company, not “some dudes on the Internet”. I think Nintendo would be far more concerned with how that looked to the gaming industry even if the quality of the localization was outstanding.
Anyway, I didn’t want to go this far into this debate here, I’d like to apologize to Mato and his team. I think they’re all doing an outstanding job and I have a feeling that even if Nintendo does localize this title themselves, it will be the fan translation that is the definitive one, provided Nintendo allows it to be completed.
Yeah there’s no way they’re just gonna consider a business proposal from some random dudes off the Internet. That was the basis for our initial research/plan back early this year.
Incidentally, Reggie has gone on the record that he’s aware of the fan translation project.
If he ever reads this… BOO
earthbounder: Thanks. I let the hackers know, and I’ll let them decide what to do, since I’m not super directly involved with the hacking myself. I think he might’ve contacted Jeffman a while back about something actually. Everything about this project makes me realize how small a world it is.
i’m not worried about the y’s and g’s, if people can read it anyway, what does it matter? maybe there can be upgrades to the patch after the main release. don’t let this be a distraction from fixing serious gameplay bugs. also, a fan translation of mother 1-2 seems quite silly seeing how each individual game is already available in english. very impressed so far.
Hang in there guys and keep on keepin’ on!
Hey Mato,
I’m glad you took relatively long to post an update. We all love the frequent updates, especially us coming from mother3.org … but im glad you took long on this update because it shows me that you dont feel obligated to write updates even if you have a busy schedule, which we know you do….. so now i’ll feel less bad IF we get updates 2 days after a previous one
^ Ditto. I was hoping you didn’t feel pressured to update us every few days.
The magic butterflies are back?? Huzzah! I’m playing through M3 and I haven’t seen any yet, but that’s probably because I’m only on chapter 2.
to the first poster
Cubivore a game by Nintendo, was published in the US by Atlus.
Great game btw if you ever happen to see it, you should pick it up =]
I’m glad nintendo won’t be localizing this because of the censorship they applied onto earthbound.
That bugged me.