Bugs, Videos, Menu Patch Downloads, etc.
Yeah, it’s been a week since the last update. I was waiting for something for the next update, but decided to skip it and post this instead. Incidentally, I generally try for 2 updates a week, but don’t be surprised if it turns into one a week. After a while, there’s only so much you can say without repeating the same thing over and over. But I’ll try to post something once a week, even if it’s just “nothing much this week”. (But don’t freak out if it’s been 7.01 days please :P)
OK, anyway, I was gonna post this later in the week, but here it is now. People had asked for it a while back, and I thought now’d be a good time to show just why we decided to release a basic menu patch for now instead of what we currently got working. Check out the video and see how evil and ugly things can be!
Granted, some of the shots in those videos are from a slightly older build; for example, we now have PSI names inserted, so the PSI menu names work, though the descriptions still completely crash the game. Strangely enough, the item descriptions and PSI descriptions work just fine in battle. It’s just the outside menus that cause evil.
I bet some people will ask, “Wait, you said you played through the whole game translated last month!” I indeed did, it was pretty neat. But that required taking away the line-length extender (which causes most of the text issues), which means text looks even uglier, and it’s still somewhat buggy and not all the letters would show up. Also, we had to automatically cut off item and PSI descriptions if they got too long — that’s how I got around that issue for my test playthrough. But these are not pretty at all — they were just temporary measures. But that’s how we managed to play through the game once to test the script.
There are many other issues I didn’t touch on in the video. In the end, we decided we didn’t want to release something that ugly and screwed up, and there’s no way to guess when hacking breakthroughs will be made. So that’s the story behind why we went with the menu patch compromise. Hopefully the video helps clarify it a little, or at least I hope people like seeing this behind-the-scenes view of things *not* working and looking all pretty 😛
As always, thank your local ROM hackers if you get a chance. MOTHER 3’s programming is some heavy-duty insanity and I’m amazed this much has gotten done on it in the last 3 months :O
As for progress in the last week, there hasn’t been too much going on. Mostly just discussing how to merge hacks, what hacks to merge, etc. etc. And organization stuff. Yeah, not very exciting, sorry 😉 Here’s something unrelated but cool though.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the menu patch got over 1000 downloads in only a week’s time. I don’t know exact numbers or anything, but I’d be willing to bet that that’s pretty insane. I don’t think most translation patches get downloaded that much, much less incomplete ones. Goes to show how much love there is for this game. Come on, Nintendoooooooo, do the right thing already!
It’s worser than what I thought!
Sois unos “Maestros”. Gracias desde España.
Heh, interesting. Well, I’ll patiently wait until the patch is completed. Keep up the great work guys, all of you!
keep up the good work as usual
CHIRP-CHIRP
wow, keep up the good job, i’ll be waiting paitiently until the final patch!
Mato, you guys made a good call by NOT releasing that patch. You know there would be plenty of fools posting here saying, “Just wanted to let you know that the game crashes when I do x.”
With any luck, these bugs are related so that when you start fixing them, multiple problems are solved at once.
By the way, did you know that the bottom of g’s and y’s are getting cut off? 🙂
Wow. That’s… freaky.
Thanks for waiting to release the patch and not making people go through this XD
Whoa, you’re even further than I thought! Nice job – I can’t say I envy all the work you guys have ahead of you because it just seems like so much.
Yay, thanks for the update. =) May I ask if this happens for both emulators + GBA or just GBA? Just out of curiosity, could just be hardware issues if you’ve only done it on the GBA.
Even though those weird problems, This obviously shows how much effort you put it in this great project.
And I agree, Pleaaaase Nintendo bring us MOTHER 3!
And mato-san: Don’t overdue it, yor and the tranlation team are doing an incredible job, not everyone could do something like this.
Greetings from Chile! Because even at the end of the world we
I just wish I knew the proper assembly language to be able to help out. I wonder what the rationale behind the line length limit was?
When I try to think of what would make me design that, it’s a little hard to do. Does Japanese allow you to just cut off a line in the middle of a word or something? I’ve never seen them do that in the manga raws I’ve looked at…
I’d have to guess that they have some kind of formatting code that makes assumptions about how to draw text based on where it last printed or something, although I’m not quite sure why. Maybe the other parts of the text box are ‘off limits’ due to the way or the order in which they draw things?
I can’t tell if it’s from the hacked-in code or the original, but it looks like some of the text gets shifted clear over to the left and thereby comes out on the right hand side of the screen (sort of like how the screen would wrap around in Pac-Man)? Maybe they were just trying to use a too-clever text scrolling algorithm? I just hope that whatever weird code they’re using isn’t sprinkled all over the ROM, but is at least localized somewhere.
But still, judging by the screenshots alone, I have to feel like they’re taking an X by Y pixel portion of the screen and shifting away the pixels at the top instead of storing the actual text anywhere. The parts outside the central region don’t seem to get scrolled at all, and the improper location of the new script makes me feel like it’s calculating an offset from wherever it thinks the last character printed using a formula that is now very wrong.
I could be way off base here, but sometimes working backwards can help if you’re faced with an incomprehensible mess of spaghetti code. Best of luck to all the ROM hackers!
love MOTHER 3
(sorry, the message got cut
and also apologies for my english) :p
1,000 downloads? That’s awesome. Do you know if that’s individual downloads, or could crazy multiple download gnomes be playing tricks on our mind?
Nin10dude: Dunno, but I’m pretty sure they’re all unique dloads. That’s not including the # of people who got the patch from someone else via email or other sites.
A Fan: Basically, the programmers assumed that there would only ever be 42 letters in a text box at any one time. If you’ve watched the old videos of translated battles, you can sort of see what I’m talking about. Everything else you mentioned is mostly just luck and/or because of how memory and video memory is laid out.
Yokai: This stuff happens on any system or emulator. I tried to play the first chapter on my DS with that Antidote problem, my god was that a pain 😛
that…that…that was the most horrible thing I have ever seen
Wow, you guys keep up the great work!
Now if only I could find a Mother3 ROM…
I am incredibly impressed by the work the translation team has accomplished thus far. You are doing more than any of us could dream of. However, I must admit these updates, while appreciated, can also be a little depressing.
It truly fills me with blind rage when I think of how Nintendo treats its fans. I am a die-hard fan who has defended Nintendo on several fronts. I just think this is kind of ridiculous. One of the most popular games in Japan can’t even see translation here in the states. I can’t begin to comprehend how games like Magical Starsign and Chibi-Robo have been translated in to english before Mother 3. While fun and entertaining, neither of these franchises have the fanbase, quality, or general popularity of the Mother series.
Well, ranting isn’t going to help matters. Keep up the good work team! You represent a dying breed. You are people who seek to please others before desiring material gain.
First I have to say thanks to the team for the menu patch,I only fought the first battle and I was really impressed how much was done in the menu patch,It will help lots of people play mother 3 now and enjoy it more.But I will continue to wait for you guys to finish the patch 100% percent and after seeing the new video I knew all along that Mato and the rest of the team were 100% right for not releasing that patch.I’m really happy and amazed at how much has been done in only 3 months.
Whoa… You guys are friggin gods :O
The blast of static destroified my eardrums 🙁
*CA CHUNK WRRRRRR BAAANNNNKKK*
*CA CHUNK WRRRRRR BAAANNNNKKK*
*CA CHUNK WRRRRRR BAAANNNNKKK*
That was cool. The Tutorial Bird is pesky! He was the last line of text in the first draft, and now he’s making a mess.
Good lord that’s ugly! I’m sure you guys will figure it all out, though. I have faith in this amazing team!
I’m getting geeked up for this patch.
Heh, it looks like you’re really capturing the same sort of feel though. That guy that was giving Flint a cookie – that conversation sounds like it’d be right at home in Earthbound.
The waiting is almost too much to handle. But this is one game that it is totally worth it for.
Mato..
yes.. as you can tell by how fast we post comments… there are a lot of people who check this blog multiple times a day, waiting for an update…
even so, we all will still appreciate even just 1 update a week……… sure.. we like getting two, but we’re all happy just getting any updates at all — even if it’s just to say that not much has happened; though we would love to hear about a great breakthrough, we just like being kept up to date. So dont stress yourself if you only give us one small tiny update a week.
So… my lousey two cents input on this is:
“Strangely enough, the item descriptions and PSI descriptions work just fine in battle. It’s just the outside menus that cause evil.”
— so then just find out the key difference about how it’s displayed in battle, and apply it to outside of the battle ..? — i really dont know anything about ROM hacking…
Maybe someone here may give you guys an idea of how to fix the problem (much like what A Fan did)…and maybe that idea may lead you guys to another idea, which may lead to yet another idea.. which eventually leads to the fix for the problem
**shrugs shoulders**
i donno man..
But keep up the good work guys. Thanks to everyone on the team.
That item description bug looks nasty. Specially the wierd sound crash freeze thing it did.
Hmm… I have to admit, this video is slightly disheartening, at least to someone who knows nothing about programming a video game. If only you had the original Brownie Brown programmers on your team, they could probably identify exactly where the compatibility issues lie. But it’s not like that’s ever going to happen.
And for those who are having a hard time finding the Mother3 ROM, I can’t tell you anything, especially on this site. But you at least deserve a warning: BE VERY VERY CAREFUL. Be careful about any website that claims to offer ROMs of any kind. There are many scams out there. There are many bugs and many traps set by all sorts of lunatics meant to lure people seeking ROMs to their doom. Some are reliable, yes, but there are others filled with viruses and the most malignant of spyware. The biggest warning sign you should look for is popups and ads. Any website that has an unusual amount of these is no good. (This not only applies to looking for ROMs, but for all activities on the internet.) It is for this reason, among others, that dedicated gamers shun ROMs. Nintendo could do its fans a huge favor by not leading them to search elsewhere for their games.
Coconut: Well, to be fair, most hacks that are works in progress will always have broken stuff until the end result. That’s just how it works. You gotta break stuff to make new stuff. So I can understand why it seems disheartening, but it’s just how things are usually. Check out these old screenshots from Star Ocean when we were working on it like 303 years ago.
http://tomato.fobby.net/junk/oldsopics/
http://tomato.fobby.net/junk/oldsopics/so15.png looks a lot like this M3 stuff, for example 😛
http://tomato.fobby.net/junk/oldsopics/so3.png
http://tomato.fobby.net/junk/oldsopics/so25.png
etc. etc.
Heh, wow, I remember how many times I had to read the FAQ to figure out how to play Star Ocean. But that was *such* an awesome game, though I still hate the designers for making originality / customize such a pain in the rear.
As for this hack, you make it sound like you just have too small a text buffer. But that seems like far too simple an explanation. I hope you all put in some mention of just how the crazy thing works whenever it’s figured out, it has me curious.
Maybe we could “simplify” things by putting together a strike force to break into Brownie Brown to get the source code. First, we’ll need a catchy operation name.
I actually have no problem with a once a week update (if that). It’s just that the gap between the last update and this one was the greatest so far, so it was more noticeable.
This translation project has far and above exceeded any expectations most of us had, especially compared to the way the pre-merge translations were run. I know it’s been said to death, but you’re all doing a phenomenal job on such an insanely difficult and wacky project.
So when is that made for television movie about this whole thing coming out? Seriously, though, I am quite impressed/worried. I feel a lot better about this whole thing now that you showed those Star Ocean pictures. I am really surprised that game came out as well as it did, and I hope that Mother 3 will be the same. Also, Tomato, I saw some of your One Piece, and I am a little disappointed. What happend to the line about Jaya being an Island of Meat? Also the voices suck, but that’s not your problem.
Operation: Baked Brownie
Could this have something to do with using marijuana against the Brownie Brown staff members? Who knows…
Good luck 🙂
Whoa. The fact that you didn’t release the incomplete version seems so much more logical now.
Ma~~~~~n! I once thought hacking this game was difficult… now I see is ultra extremely hard and dificult! I admire you guys, and wish you luck! Thanks for everything! Fight! Right?
Those blasted sparrows are nothing but trouble. =P
Animonger: Good job, you provided both a name and a plan.
I have great confidence that you guys will be done before Brawl.
I hope you guys get a breakthrough soon, and thanks for making the basic menu patch.
I am looking forward to this – thank you for all your hard work 🙂
I thought I read that Mato’s episodes only started at like 149 or something, so he probably didn’t translate that bit. At least the original music is back, etc.
It’s too bad the companies always seem to insist on complete translations, rather than letting them add translation notes to the episode to explain the bits that just can’t be translated. But that’s nothing the translators can help; you have to watch fansubs if you want that 🙂
Funny thing that, from reading Mato’s page, I just realized that we graduated from the same university, just a year apart (and in very different majors). I wonder if we passed each other and never knew it?
Haha, i liked that video. I know the fist song but is it performed or just slowed down. And Ive never heard the second one, is it in the game.
Any update is a good update.
Im counting on you! Good luck for the hacking!
Hurry before it releases in US, but for Europe you have plenty more time. On gamespot it said: “2008 TBA”.
It means SSBB will be released in Europe somewhere in 2008.
I also got a hint for those who cant wait for Mother 3 translation patch to be released:Play Earthbound Zero and Earthbound in order to learn the story better(play also japanese versions Mother and Mother 2(you may need a guide for these) because they have lots of changes between english and japanese versions). not released yet? then download Mother 1+2 to GBA then(its not much but its still fun).
Zero7: We’re not shooting for a pre-Brawl release anymore. That’s what the menu patch thing was for.
Coach Z: I’m naturally a subtitle watcher myself, but I still find the dub enjoyable. I think it comes down to personal preference though. As for the island of meat thing, I dunno what happened to that. I actually didn’t translate that particular episode so I don’t remember it too well. The uncut DVDs will have our subs and the Japanese audio and all that good stuff too.
A Fan: Sometimes I’ll add notes in parentheses if there’s enough time and space. Also, what year did you graduate, and what major? I used to walk all over the place so it’s likely we crossed paths.
wesman: the first song is #213, and the second song is #196. They’re both played in the game. No speeding up or slowing down took place. Your memory’s probably just fuzzy 😛
Marx: Again, we’re not shooting for a pre-Brawl final release. If you want to play it before Brawl, see the earlier updates about the menu patch.
The game is very playable with the Menu patch and a printed copy of the script. I pretty much played for many hours straight and completed the game =D. With that said….
When this is done, it’s going to ROCK. The translation guide method gave me the gist of the story, but it was clumsy, typo ridden, and talking to random NPCs sucked about 1/2 the time cause you couldn’t figure out who’s saying what. (Example: The game lists “Man” as the name of a male character. At one point, there were about 10 NPCs with the name “Man” so even going by the guide, you couldn’t tell who said what!!)
I can tell by the screen shots of the translated game that the dialogs will be more polished and localized. There were many things in the normal dialogs that didn’t get translated too well in the translation guide I had.
My advice if you can’t wait: Print out a guide and play, but you will still salivate for the release of the actual translation patch. This thing is gonna rock =D This is defiantly one of my new favorite RPGs, though I cannot say until the patch is released whether I like it more then Mother 2…it’s going to be close!
I read the update
glitches and problems abound
it brings me much pain
Excellent work. I had no idea anyone had gotten so far with translating Mother 3.
Hey Durelle here umm Mato have u ever heard of RPGOne maybe you could get them to help you i noticed they also have a incomplete Mother 1+2 IPS patch which actually works on my M3 but like i said incomplete maybe if you can contact them they can help since they also know Hacking and such (ps if you ever talk to them ask them to finish it :P)
Some people may be downloading the patch so SSBB won’t spoil M3. Personally, I’m not playing SSBB until the patch comes out/ M3 comes out in the US. Period. 🙂
MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO MATO
(you cannot grasp the true form of Hunter’s attack)
Mato: I graduated in 2003 with a BS in Computational Mathematical Sciences (formerly Electrical Engineering). I started there in 1998 and lived in Cholla Hall most of the time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we walked past each other sometime. I mean, you can’t go anywhere on campus without walking your ass off. I bought a damn bike just to bike on to class, and I lived right next to the university.
Actually, for that matter, I still live nearby. I just don’t go on campus much.
Durelle: How can an IPS from Mother 1+2 work on Mother 3? I mean, of course you can apply the IPS, but the resulting ROM should be horribly broken because you’ve replaced various parts of it with unrelated code…
A Fan: Heh, that’s pretty cool. I was actually majoring in Comp. Science between 1997 and 2000, so it’s very likely we even took some classes together. I also lived in Tempe, about a mile from campus (right by that Safeway) until recently. Might move back somecentury, not sure. But that’s cool though, I didn’t think there were any other EB fans at ASU back then.
Durelle: We already have lots of really really smart hackers on our team, so we’re fine for now.
I have an excellent idea for someone with a lot of time on their hands. Create a visual walkthrough. Kinda like a play guide, but mabye make it in flash. That way, you can highlight the NPC and see what he’s saying. Know what I mean? A Graphical guide…
Mato: I wonder if you took Lance’s evil Motorola 86HC11 assembler class? I remember that guy for being a total masochist and forcing us to do pages of hex arithmetic on timed tests and for forbidding calculators, not to mention having us use really ancient VAX/VMS computers…
Too bad I never knew. Wish I could’ve met the guy who translated all my favorite SNES RPGs 🙂
SSBB delayed in Japan until 1/24/08. Hopefully that’ll take a little pressure off of you!
And right after I wrote that I read that Christmas in Japan isnt like it is here and it’s likely they’ll still put it out here for Christmas and not push back the release date! Heh heh…
A Fan: Yep, I took his class sometime in 1998-ish I think. I didn’t mind the class so much (well, besides the fact it was practically at night and I lived 2 hours from campus). That just brought back tons of memories though, I forgot the no calculators and VAX stuff. It’s actually that class that taught me a ton about hacking though, so that’s cool 😛
Anyway, that’s so weird that it got delayed to January, but oh well, good thing I live in America 😉
Apparently Wii Fit comes out 12/1, and they don’t want to have them compete against each other.
Mato: Yeah, true, I learned a lot, but I didn’t have that class until probably 2000ish. Oh, and some idiot decided to find a way to run Mudbug on his calculator, so they were banned for the *entire* class (and not just during the early hex math tests).
It’s just too weird to find out all this now, heh. I wish I had known you back then; I might have had someone to study with 🙂
I dunno, with todays update they took the release date off the US site as well, and just replaced it with TBD. Most people are still going crazy over today’s announcement though, what with all the arguing back and forth, the reasons for Why it should happen, and why it shouldn’t happen. Now it’s currently about half the people saying SHUT UP ALREADY, and the other half going NAH NAH TOLD YOU SO. I really have to say though, the Brawl board on GameFAQs is a horrible horrible place. Don’t go if you value your IQ. It’ll go down just for looking. =P
Mato,
I am completely serious when I write this.
Listen… This will be one of the MOST important things you’ll ever do in your life. Completing this translation.
Reason, It’s epic in a sense. You guys are thoughtlessly helping all gamers in the world.
hey just found this page today and just read through from the beginning till now and let me say i’m absolutely shocked at the sheer speed of the progress ._. this is reminding me of one of those project gideon zhi pops out of his closet somewhere and finishes in a few weeks/days 😛
also since i never actually got a chance to talk to any of the romhackers which translated many games i still play on and off today, let me say thank you ^_^ you’ve made my gaming experience much more enjoyable(though offhand i’ll have to say the last one i remember is demi’s work on radical dreamers >>;)
anyways keep up the good work! And thank you to all involved ^^ be it hackers or translators(err… and anyone else i missed :P)!
Looks like you won’t have to rush for smashbrothers. It got delayed till 2008 january 24th. Source is from the japanese site.
http://www.smashbros.com/jp/index.html
No news on the english site yet, But they took down the dec 3 date on it. So it can be expected that got delayed too.
Hey guys, I beat Mother 3 yesterday start to finish via use of the partial translation patch and SpookyChee’s translation guide. It was well put together for what it was, and I’m eagerly anticipating the actual english patch (I may have beaten it, but I greatly missed the humor that was in Earthbound ..and there are tons of things Chee neglected to translate / incorrect names and whatnot)
Keep up the good work.
I don’t understand, what exactly did you, Mato, and the others alter which resulted in this mess? Don’t take me wrong, I’m not complaining about the problem…I program minor web projects for enjoyment, and I know what it’s like to have project completely screw up (perhaps not this large a project, but I get you)…so why this after translation images have existed for a while now, displaying functional pictures of the game? In most of the screens the text is fine, some incomplete, but without any serious glitches. What was changed, is my question.
I also noticed in the video it said “The bug even got this part [‘Something insignificant is written here…’]” THE bug? This is what confused me.
Sorry for making such a damn long reply.
I’ve mentioned many of the issues throughout all the other entries in this blog. The main problem is that in various parts of the programming, the programmers assumed there would only ever be 21 characters per line. By increasing that #, other parts of memory get overwritten and it causes trouble, as you can see.
Not all lines in the game screw up, because sometimes we’re lucky, and sometimes some lines ARE under 21 characters, etc. So that’s why screenshots on this site have stuff working. If you take a closer look at some of the screens on the preview page, you’ll actually see some of the bugs in action, but ever-so-slightly.
“The” bug you’re referring to is the bug in which if a line, when fully parsed, is over like 32 characters long, all newlines and pause control codes are ignored by the game.
The stuff in the video look crazy! O_O Anyhow, I hope you guys can figure how to fix all the bugs soon! I’m playing Mother 2 now to kinda catch up with everything pertaining to Mother (in general). (I started playing Mother 2 like… a few years ago but stopped in the middle of it! X_x)
Very interesting, actually. Thank you.
“the programmers assumed there would only ever be 21 characters per line”
Ah, yes, you mean in Japanese.
I still think a “visit” to Brownie Brown to pilfer the source code would be a nifty thing to do 😀
As for the name of the operation… “Baked Brownie” is good and all but in the spirit of Earthbound I’m thinking we would need something oddly specific and unnecessarily long.
What about “Operation: Broken Tutorial Birds”
Perhaps “Operation: Item Descriptions Make Babies Cry”
OR “Operation: Pretty Please” where you just go in and ask them nicely 😀
Hey Mato, I have a question about the patch. With the release of Smash Bros Brawl pushed back to Feb 10th (in the US) are you going to think about working on getting the patch out before that time?
Either way, I think I’ll be happy with the answer. I mean, a few years ago, I thought the game was lost forever to the void where cancelled games go.
No, at this point we’re going with the standard “we’ll finish when we’re finish” thing that almost all ROM translations go by.
Awesome, thanks. I look forward to it 🙂
I would like to say that you guys are probably quite excited over the delay on Brawl. While it’s saddening to Smash Bros. fans, it’s also an opportunity for the translation team – Now the patch will be out before the anticipated Wii fighter is released! Now people will understand Lucas’ character before going into Brawl! (Of course, this is assuming the patch is out before next February.)
Look, I never suggested that we break into Brownie Brown and steal their source code (though that IS tempting, now that you mention it Steve). I only said that it would be easier with their cooperation.
On the other hand, Phil L. has a point: if we could just get them to help us out a little, things would go much smoother. Of course, they could never do that on an official basis: that would be endorsing ROMs. But if we could just get someone on the inside to sympathize with us, with a little “under the table” deal, we’d be set. And no one would ever have to know. Mato and the others wouldn’t even have to tell us how they miraculously finished the hack before anyone expected it. We could all be blissfully ignorant, playing the best fan translation in history.
Where can I send donations to you guys after you’re done?
Keep trying and I’m sure it will be done sometime in the not to distant future. Great progress so far however.
Just wanted to say that I finished the game with the menu patch, and it was one of the best experiences I have ever had with a videogame. Thanks, Mato.
you have to re-set the text to max. 21 characters per line. there seems to be no way around that limitation… the memory buffer doesn’t seem to allocate enough for the text you want to use, causing the video corruption and other various bugs.
abbreviate like crazy in the item description menu screens.
for gameplay script, reset to 21 chars. per line and add page breaks to allow for longer text.
you are all amazing for doing this.
thank you.
Did you guys ever consider that maybe the reason Nintendo didn’t translate this game is BECAUSE it’s this hard to translate into english and hack, and not because they think no one would buy it?
The text itself isn’t really any harder to translate than anything else I’ve encountered as a professional. It’s not mystically hard or anything.
If an official version were made, NOA or Brownie Brown would be using documented source code to make the programming changes. The changes we need could probably be done in a few hours. Meanwhile, we have to sit and stare at 1s and 0s and try to figure out code that was compiled illogically by a poor automated compiler.
In other words, the reasons you list are simple, everyday hurdles (if even that) for real companies.