Another legendary hacker + other stuff
Progress-wise, still not too much to show. MOTHER 3’s coding is really complex and not set up like most other games. The main issues are still trying to figure out how to allow for more text per line than is allowed currently. The Brownie Brown programmers took a really weird route to display text.
The other day demi, the main editor, started his playthrough of the current translation. The translation’s still rough around the edges, and the text still wraps every 21 characters (and oftentimes characters on an auto-newline won’t get displayed), but the editing process continues. Meanwhile, I’m trying to work on Draft #2, but I’m also extremely busy working on stuff that’s going to Itoi, Iwata, Miyamoto, etc. next month, and very very busy with real life work. It’s getting to the point where something’s gonna have to give soon.
Not sure if people are aware, but there were actually three separate projects at one point to translate MOTHER 3. We recently finally got in contact with harmony7 again, who had been doing the third project in mid-2006 but stopped for various reasons. He’s been helping Jeffman with stuff, and just recently came on board the team officially, so now it’s truly a complete merge π For those who aren’t in the know, harmony7’s one of the old old oldschool hackers, and was responsible for things like RPGe’s Final Fantasy 5 translation from way back in like 1998 or something. That was actually what got me into emulation and ROM translation. It’s so cool that now there’s like 3 generations of ROM hackers on the team now. Two of whom are authors of advanced emulators, even. This is definitely turning into an epic project. (also shows just how complex and crazy hacking this game is π )
The reason we wanted to contact harmony was because he had managed to figure out a bunch of stuff we’re still having trouble with. Here are some pics from his old site, for example.
Those pics are from harmony’s old project from 2006. He’s an incredible hacker/programmer/all around guy, and back in 2006 he managed to figure out and hack stuff that’s still taken us weeks and weeks. So rather than try to reinvent the wheel we sought out his help. It’s unclear whether our current hacks will be compatible with his stuff, also, he lost most of his hack work in an unfortunate hardware failure in 2006, so most of the work is gone. He’s a really busy guy just like all the rest of us (which is why we were hesitant to ask for his help at first), but with his help, we can hopefully overcome some of our big obstacles. Right now he’s trying to get up to speed with everything we’ve done.
Other than that, we’re still trying to reorganize things to be better. byuu’s still slowly coming along with his customized assembler and harmony’s trying to whip everything into shape since right now things are pretty unorganized hack-wise. Hopefully we’ll be able to finish most of everything within the next two months.
Oh, speaking of which, I should probably say now that although our goal is a patch release sometime in November, that does NOT mean that it’ll be on 12:01 am on November 1st. Most likely it’ll be in the latter half of November. Just wanted to make that clear so people don’t start throwing things at us come November 1st π
Random recommended links for no reason (I promise to stop posting these after this one)
I cant wait for this to get done. I have been waiting to play mother 3 for so long. It also seems you have an awsome team.
Any chance of you guys forming your own group for other translations? You said the programming for mother 3 was weird so i would think that other games would be less hard if you did more games after this one.
I’m pretty sure this team will only be together for M3. A few of us might stick around to work on other stuff (not sure if that’ll include me) but I think we’re all WAY too busy to keep this up for much longer.
Mato, I’d like to thank the ENTIRE team for the amazing work you guys have done thus far. Can’t wait to play the completed translation π
hey! what am i, chopped liver? i was around back in the rpge days. demiforce did final fantasy II for nes, remember? π
Wow. Just, wow. You guys are incredible. Really now. Dude, I’d be happy with just the script you guys have, so I can read through it. But you guys are really putting your all into it, and it shines through entirely.
What can I say? This is all so incredible. I’ve been an obsessive Mother fan for well over a decade, and this is the single greatest devotion i’ve EVER seen in the history of gaming.
You guys are pioneers. Translating, vocalizing to nintendo (I have called a few times myself) the public interest in the Mother series, being mentioned by just about every major outlet for nintendo, INCLUDING The Reggie himself. It’s incredible.
*applaudes the amazing team of starmen.net, as well as the highly devoted team of translators!*
demi: of course I remember π I think your old FF2 stuff was actually the first thing I ever played on any emulator ever. My crappy 16mhz 2 MB RAM piece of crap couldn’t handle it very well though π
Anyway yeah, you and harmony = really oldschool (and byuu too I guess now that I think about it), gid/me = next generation, and then there’s newer people like Jeffman. Can’t remember where exo and sblur fit in though.
im a noob
No talking in the tube!
You guys are Awesome.
With a capital A.
Geez, I’ve learned one thing from following this site: Hard drives hate ROM hackers!!!
I wish I could mail you guys some “time”. I’m getting done with school/work by the end of next week and I’ll only be job searching and gaming. If I mailed you all around 2 weeks or so of “time”, you could sleep or just kick it now and again. Sorry!
Demi! Wow, I remember playing lots of your stuff. Thanks for all the fun times! I’ve played plenty of translations/hacks I remember you having had a hand in.
And, umm, if you’re ever looking for projects, though, there are some old games like Fire Emblem 4 Seisen no Keifu that could use some love (playable, but it’s easy to find untranslated gibberish), or even ironing out whatever it is that rarely (randomly?) gives a text overflow midway through the Bahamut Lagoon patch…
Err, but Mother 3 comes first, of course!
*cheers on the whole team*
Ah yes, Harmony7. I remember playing his Super Mario Bros. 4 graphics update way back in the day. Was one of my favorite SMB hacks, actually.
And of course, Demi. Making EB0 a possibility. Everyone should play Monster World 4. The end.
To harmony7 thanks for helping this great mother 3 translation team.
Why stop posting the random links, I like them. π Also, TheFreak, what is Monster World 4?
The final fantasy five hacker? Oh, man, this project really IS epic now. Seriously, this thing should go down into a world record book of some kind. This can’t be overstated…You guys rock. Heavy.
This is awesome… I’d say more, but it’s just… WOW. WOW!!! Keep up th good work, guys!
Hmm, if all the other Japanese game-makers knew exactly what was happening here, would they breathe a collective sighs of relief, or get really angry that they didn’t have dedicated fanbases too?
It’s almost as if the ghost of Buzz Buzz, or possibly Everdred, has reached out from beyond the grave, gathering the most brilliant hacking minds of our time into this one ultimate, colossal project. “Come forth,” he (or possibly she) beckons. “Finish the work, so that I might not have died in vain.” I’m only joking, of course, but sometimes I feel like I might die in vain if I never live to see the EarthBound sequel in English.
This is going to be the greatest Rom Translation ever.
Seriously.
Hmm. I really need a slot-2 flash cart, soon. My brother wants to buy me a DS lite for my birthday(beginning of December), so I want a DS lite one so it won’t stick out, but then I’ll have Super Smash Bros. Brawl the same time as Mother 3, and then School… I’m gonna be overwhelmed. D:
sad but still amazing update keep up the good work! hope you guys can iron out these details atleast you know its possible!
Keep up the hard work, I’ve been waiting for another Earthbound since the 64 one was announced when I was in 3rd/4th grade, and now im in College.
Sounds like you have quite a few talented people on board. I, too, have been waiting for a new EarthBound since elementary school (college freshman now). Good luck & godspeed on the translation.
I think the most important thing Demi ever did was allow us to play Earthbound Zero. Thanks a lot, Demi.
A Fan: What Bahamut Lagoon overflow do you mean? As far as I know, we fixed all overflow issues in the main script days after the original patch. I know sometimes the map will freak out temporarily though. No idea what causes that though.
SimonBob: The Front Mission SNES/SFC translation got praise from the series creator π http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q3-2007/071207a.html That’d be cool if we somehow got that from Itoi too instead of a boxing glove on a spring inside a gift box from Nintendo.
He has y’s and g’s!!! π And Magical Pendants instead of Magical P’s ;P
“He has yβs and gβs!!! ”
Oh man, that almost makes it sound like you’re talking about a Sesame Street character π
I used to have a save that would do it all the time, but yeah, I managed to hit some text overflow in Bahamut Lagoon. It was… ummm, about half way through the game, when you were on the ship and someone was giving a long speech. Of course, it’s possible I did something to help trigger that with a few applications of the speedup key, although it was repeatable at that point and I had to start the game over. The text would just keep going off the right of the screen, then everything would crash. I replayed it after that, though, and it worked fine, so go figure? You were also right about the map. That does freak out sometimes, but you can usually just reload your save and get it to work out.
But those were minor glitches in a very playable and enjoyable translation. It’s FE4 where half the things are untranslated, the bottom of the screen likes to get corrupted, etc. π Still very fun, mind you, and I greatly appreciate the work put into all of them, but I sorta wish those things could’ve been fixed to give it the love it deserves.
FE4 even had two projects, one of which was to revive a dead project. Mind you, that ‘revived’ project died a long while ago, but yeah π
But if you want me to, and if I ever get a save with that overflow again, I’d be more than happy to send it to someone. I’ve only ever found it to happen at that one point in the entire game, so it’s not a big deal or anything.
Oh well, I’m mostly looking forward Mother3 now! The project is starting to look like a collection of all the people who translated all my favorite games, so you KNOW we have top tier talent working on this.
As opposed to someone like me, who can barely translate simple things like “authentic Japanese cuisine” and who only knows one assembly language: that of the Motorola 86HC11 π
I think what must’ve happened was you were using an old patch (1.3 is the latest one and takes care of that issue). What happened with the first BL patch was if you named a character a really long name, some lines in the game would wind up too long when displayed and that’d crash the game. It was an easy fix, but people who use prepatched ROMs using the first patch got screwed over. That’ll learn em π I wonder if that’s what happened to you though. That bug’s been squashed for like 5 and a half years now π
Hmm, now that IS possible. I remember downloading a 2nd patch after I hit that issue, come to think of it, which may very well have been the newer one and I totally forgot that I had ever even gotten the IPS to do it myself. I probably had Yoyo’s name set as one 1 char longer when I played through the older patch, too. And the map issue was never that bad… IIRC, you can just clear it up by going into a menu or something.
As for poor old FE4… π There, all the scenes like getting married turn into gibberish, it’s hard to read your stats, and they had terrible troubles with length restrictions everywhere according to the notes I saw, and the most recent project (which DID polish up quite a few issues in an even older patch and which makes the game playable but rough around the edges) has been dead for over a year:
http://darktwilkitri.thegreatbeyond.net/dtntd_fireemblem4.php
Great game, that one. It’s a classic RTS and definitely a worthwhile diversion for anyone who can’t wait for Mother 3 π
And a reminder to be grateful for all the hard work our favorite game translators put into hacking these things so that we can properly enjoy them.
I just bought my copy last week with the 14.90 sale, and while I wait for it to arrive, I must say, WOW, you guys are amazing. Seriously, this team is epic, andyou’re making incredible progress. I’m really glad that you’re so devoted to this project; I admit that if I were translating something, it’d… never get done. >.
Heh, I read Tomato’s page a little more and I never realized all the stuff that went into translating Bahamut Lagoon. Drawer things, heh… well, I *can* imagine what I might translate it as, but I think that Yoyo’s ??? might already have that covered (as for Gunso’s ??? — I don’t even WANT to know) … I guess Japanese has a one-word equivalent of that Monty Python “nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more” skit or something.
And a French translation of Earthbound? Makes me wish my French was good enough to help them. I understand it far better than I can speak it…
Damn, you did Star Ocean, too? The stuff you’ve done reads like a list of all my favorite games…
Umm…is this a site dedicated to Bahamut Lagoon? Or are we here to talk about Mother 3? Sorry, but I’ve never played any of those hack translations. I like reading how excited people are to get the game, because it’s like I’m reading the words of my own subconscious mind. And yes, I have also been waiting for an Earthbound sequel since I was in sixth grade, and I am now a junior in college. Sheesh! If Nintendo is so concerned about people not buying their games, they should really rethink some of their titles. They’ve beat plenty of dead horses in the past, and they publish hundreds of games each year with less consumer potential than Earthbound. And even make SEQUELS to those crumby games.
I’ve been a fan of the MOTHER series for a few years now, and found Starmen.net a bit before that. And this just.. blows my mind. To think a bunch of the greatest ROM hackers on the web came together for this one sole purpose. If you guys manage to get your names in M3’s credits, I’d probably get goosebumps. Keep on working as hard as you’re able. The fans are behind you all the way!
Er.. also. Not to change the subject or anything, but I’ve wanted to join Starmen.net’s forums for a while now, but.. I guess there was a problem with spammers or something. Can’t get in. =__=
It might be that you have an AOL address — the confirmation email probably got caught by your spam filter or something.
What’s this stuff thatβs going to Itoi, Iwata, Miyamoto, etc.” ?
I’m very happy with the fact that you guys are so good at what you do. From what I can tell, regardless of how hard the coding is, you folks seem pretty dedicated in what you’re doing. I’m willing to wait several more years, but here’s hoping that I don’t have to. Keep up the good work guys. I really appreciate it.
θ»ε‘: Japanese translated versions of the anthology, the Thank Itoi books, tons of subtitled fan videos (this is insanely time consuming), special CDs just for them, and much much more stuff. And we gotta finish it all in the next two to three weeks. So that’s more stress π
I am one of a long time fan of the Mother series and I would like to express my appreciation for your teams’ effort to develop a translation patch for the community.
It is a real shame that Nintendo, being awash in cash from the success Wii, would abandon a dedicated fan base like this…
So, I will be one of the people who patiently waiting for the release π
Thank you again for doing this for all of us.
> Japanese translated versions of the anthology, the Thank Itoi books, tons of subtitled fan videos (this is insanely time consuming), special CDs just for them, and much much more stuff. And we gotta finish it all in the next two to three weeks. So thatβs more stress
Little did Itoi know at the time, but it was his game which first sowed the seeds of what would later become the Happy Happy cult dedicated to the Mother series. This then gave rise to insane cultists all over the internet chanting in unison, hoping to summon sequels to their beloved game…
Off-topic intro:
What up it’s zach03304 from starmen.net. I decided to register here to reminense my starmen.net account.
On-topic:
This patch is looking good so far.
Keep up the good work, guys. *wink*
I’m so excited! Thank you guys so much for doing such admirable work. It’s all looking really wonderful. But you guys have to give exophase a break so he can update gpSP to get Mother 3 working on it! Haha.
Wow, I didn’t realize it before (mostly because I only recently finished my katakana lessons…), but don’t a lot of people in these screen shots have western names?
I see what looks like an Alec, Thomas, Nana, and Eric in there, all written in katakana.
>The Brownie Brown programmers took a really weird route to display text.
Hmm… I just got the feeling they may have done that on purpose to hinder devoted, well-meaning fans such as you guys… Nah.
Now, my throat is getting hoarse from all that singing, so with the last of my voice ’til the laryngitis clears up: take it easy. I don’t know about other fans, but I can wait as long as it takes for you guys to get everything working right. Pat yourselves on the back, and relax a bit.
Hey, do you think instead of Earthbound two being called…Earthbound 2, can we(as in you guys) translate it into Earthbound Advance? :p
Actually I think Mato’s already said that they’re leaving it as Mother 3.. Which for some reason just sound’s better being as Nintendo is not localizing it.
Ummmm….i was just wondering if anyone knew where to get the earthbound demiforce earthbound zero patch. The demiforce site just goes to the starmen.net page and the link THERE goes to starmen gibble-de-nothing (like some weird backlog of the site). I just hate downloading roms with the patch already on em (their usually out of date patch jobs).
http://starmen.net/mother1/miscinfo/ “EarthBound Zero Update Hack” by Tomato. Takes the original demiforce improvements and adds cool extras, like double experience points and a funky starry background for certain battles.
Got my Mother 3 today and i gotta say, it looks so clean on a ds screen. The animation’s so fluid sometimes…real nice. With a good translation walkhrough, its not even that bad playing, either. This thing came in the mail like, 5 minutes before i beat halo 3, too. Good timing.
Tomato,
Everything looks absolutely amazing. You used the word “epic” in your post … i think that may be the only word to truly describe this project.
Theres nothing i can really do to help you guys directly … i’m no good at rom hacking, and i’m no japanese expert. If you need some kind of odd server thing, let me know, i’ve got bandwidth to spare. If you need unix / linux sysadmin stuff, thats me too.
Keep up the good work, guys.
Hi i just found about this site about 2 weeks ago…my brother showed it to me but ive known about various “attempts” of creating a translation but most turn out to be a bunch of 12 year olds with short attention spans or people just get too busy and have to drop it or go bankrupt π but ever since i finished Earthbound back in grade school and it ended with a obvious setup for a sequel ive been praying for a this or for nintendo top get off their collective buts and actually do something…btw the way a few questions…off topic….(1)wat is the RPGe era? (2)wat nexgen system do you think will be #1 this time (3) does anyone know a site for arious tranlated games cause i juist won on auction on ebay that failed tp mention they were japanese games……..anyways woot Mato & Company…and thx for keeping spoilers outta the screenshot…and for the link to that sale i got mine yesterday….why when i order something from hongkong/japan it egts here in a week and i order something from the states it takes 4-6 weeks…yes im canadain…oh sorry im rambling…good luck guys hopefully harmony7’s stuff will help you guys
oh my email is Vampmaster86@hotmail.com i know its corny but i made it when i was 7…and its a hassle to change it
Nintendo sent you a spring-loaded boxing glove? That’s pretty awesome.