Names and Naming
A very busy week / weekend, so nothing too major has happened. Jeffman did some work on the naming screen graphics and managed to figure out how to make non-standard naming screens look better. He also got the text speed/window flavor screen graphics at the beginning of the game edited. Strangely enough, that stuff was stored as graphics and not normal text. And the layout of those graphics was pretty annoying to figure out. So he kicks butt for putting up with that annoying stuff.
Oh yeah, he also edited the YOU WIN! into YOU WON!. Maybe I’m just too used to how the YOU WIN! looked, but this YOU WON! seems a little malnourished somehow. So maybe we’ll edit it later to look thicker. But it’s taken straight from the EarthBound ROM right now.
People’ve been asking lately when we’d get to the character names. We sorta had them working before, but just barely, so I did a bunch of stuff last night to get them working correctly. Lots of boring technical stuff. But my hope now is to make these names 8-bit, which will allow for longer names, and then also to possibly get a VWF for them. We sorta had one working before, but I think it was more of a side effect of VWF-ifying the character names in battle. Anyway, for now, these are up and running with our new system. Not a difficult feat by any means, but it’s something.
A bunch of people have asked what the song in this video is. It’s Track #5 from MOTHER3+. You can download MOTHER3+ and MOTHER3i music off of iTunes. MOTHER3i seems to be the fan favorite by far.
Great job. For “Dung Beetle”, did you have to manually extend the gray box that contains the name or does the engine already automatically extend it based on the number of letters?
Ha! I had the same question as Steve. Every thing’s coming together and looking great, though.
It changes the size automatically, but it’s weird and it doesn’t always look right. Sometimes it’ll give more room than is necessary, sometimes it’ll give just the right amount of room.
If we do VWF-ify the names, getting the boxes to expand automatically correctly might be a pain :/
Thank you for all of your hard work.
Is there a glossary you recommend for your terms? It took me a while to realize that you meant “Variable Width Font” when you said “VWF,” since the last time you mentioned it on the blog was over two months ago.
Thanks again,
reneviht
Yah, here’s a pretty good starter list here (hi Nightcrawler!)
Everything gets better, little by little. Every time I see a new screenshot that doesn’t have any (obvious, at least) bugs, I get a little more excited.
I think Stone Cold Steve Austin should be a default name.
I’m so looking forward to play this game fully translated… and even better if the patched rom works with my flash card so i could play on my DS in perfect conditions, anywhere! ^^
I never had the chance to say this so: A BIG THANK YOU to all of you who put so much effort into this for us!
Glad to see the names have been translated. The rest is also coming along beautifully.
I’m still wondering this, what’s with the old man in the game?
you guys have my utmost respect! i finally broke down and started playing mother3 with the new menu patch and a translation guide, it actually isn’t as annoying as i thought it would be. it is VERY emotional. i’m already at chapter 5. i have something planned for you and the team (similar to pksiege). don’t try to say no or anything, i’m gonna do it, it’ll be cool. if you could email me about how to send you guys this stuff, that would be great. i’m going to put together some REALLY cool stuff…
I’m still loving this. Great job, everyone!
Well its good that Jeffman managed to figure out how to make non standard naming screens look better and that he was able to fixed the text speed/window flavor screen graphics at the beginning of the game,also I really like that you guys edited the YOU WIN! into YOU WON! like how it was in earthbound.
You guys are doing an amazing job, and I really appreciate the regular updates! Thanks for supplying us with information throughout the entire process!
hooray an update 😀
it looks so wonderful…
you know…. I really dont know why you (Mato) always say that nothing major has happened….. because any and every little thing seems like a big accomplishment to me. Just seeing the actual names there in the name boxes makes me feel all giddy.
heh heh heh… “Wan Sum Dung”.. Brilliant! Very Earthbound-like..
Was there anything as funny as that for the Japanese version? Or did you wittily come up with that by yourself?
Everything’s looking rightly EarthBoundy right now. The text looks great. Is it still giving you trouble/overwriting other memory locations/making the screen look all graphically challenged? As soon as you clear that part up, tell all the world about it, because then we’ll know that the hack is almost complete.
Pics are nice, videos are better, and new versions of the hack are the best. Hit me, Mato!
Hmmm looks good, have been following these updated for a while. Still amazed the by the effort you guys are giving this project. Looks great keep up the good work!
Somehow, I knew you were going to update today! You seem to update every four to five days. 😀 *Is going to feel very, very silly if the four day updating thing has already been established and said*
Anyhoooow… *bows down to your supreme hackliness*
Very nice work guys. Will you all release a demo patch 1.5 with this included? This will really help for people using translation guides. (Though I already hae completed the game)
Oh and the YOU WON ! thing looks fine to me, I don’t think you need to fatten it or anything. Well, one man’s opinion anyway.
Just curious: Since the series has so much wordplay, is translation hard? I mean with the Wan Sum Dung thing, was there some equivalent to that in Japanese that you could easily miss since Japanese is your second language?
This game is amazing. ive started playing through ive got to chapter 3 and i love the more lively nature of the characters =]
Shield915: He’s just a random old guy. There’s a girl who appears even more rarely.
Hunter: talk to reid, he’s always been my middleman when people want to send me stuff. But I don’t like stuff, so don’t send me stuff 😛
danc & Intercept: His original Japanese name is a play on words with “dung beetle” and “I want to roll dung”. Wan Sum Dung is like a silly placeholder name I thought up in 10 seconds, so I don’t know if it’ll stay that way. But it’s possible it will. Translation’s not too hard, I’ve been doing it for years and years now. If anything it’s just trying to remember what line is said in what part of the game, and also just the sheer amount of all the text.
Coconut: No, that’s still the main hacking problem and it’s not going to go away easily. Once it does get defeated, you can bet there’ll be a post here about it, since that would mean the patch is much closer to being finished. I think I might have an idea how to handle it (or at least an idea for an experiment) but I’m waiting for the no$gba guy to mail me my registration stuff so I can try it out, been waiting a few days now 🙁
Gamecubespect: I’m not sure what you mean by demo patch 1.5 There’s already a menu patch 1.5. We don’t plan to release any early versions of the real patch.
It occurs to me that if you’re looking for input on naming, that the “Cattlesnake” might sound better as a “Cattler” (cattle + rattler). Apparently, I missed the pun inherent in the original name until I figured it out just now 🙂
You guys should hold a contest in which the winner gets to pick one of the default names (ie: have their own name as a default)
Regardless, great work! I highly anticipate the final release of this patch. Take your time and perfect it!
May i do a suggestion mato???
for the dung beetle, don’t put the am, just leave as I’m
the pun would be more easy to catch, or it may it be for those who aren’t english native (like me D: ).
Anyway, The You Won update just make us feel the translation more closer to its completion for us. Great work!
(and sorry for my awful grammar)
As per the last update, I actually think Lucas is a cataclysm for Mother 3, or as I want its english name to be, EarthBound Revolution. NOA can only be stirring the hornets’ nest, unless they’re gonna bring it over.
Haha! I love the old man spa.
Why do you need to register with no$gba? You can download it without registering. You just need to do a google search. Are you going to create a .nds format version of the translated game too because that is what most people use no$gba for nowadays.
I need the debugger version, and I appreciate and respect the guy’s hard work enough not to be a jerk and steal his stuff. Wish he’d email me my info already though 🙁
How about Ivan Zallotta Dung? (I want a lotta dung)
I had been thinking Ivan Urdung, personally.
And given that you’ve already paid for it, I’m not sure how bad it would be to crack it 🙂
A long, long time ago I remember doing something like that for a game I had bought where I was too impatient to wait for the code to arrive. I wrote my own keygen, though. It was just some guy who made the game and was trying to make a few bucks, so I never distributed my keygen and I even told him exactly how I’d done it when he sent me my code a bit later (Java makes it easy, thanks to Java decompilers).
I was kinda liking YOU WIN , but still, I’m all for whatever when it comes to a translated Mother 3
You win or won both sound fine
Urdung does seem better. My suggestion kinda kills the play on words, with Dung being an actual seperate name instead of part of one.
Looking awesome Mato, I can’t wait! 😀
Is this going to be made compatible with NDS flashcards…?
Also, here’s an enemy name idea. Not sure if you already have a name for him, but the Mecha Deer Thing would sound rely cool as “MeCaribou” or “MeCharibou”.
Mato, You guys are completely amazing!! I just want you to know that we’re all behind you 100% and if you ever need anything from the community, we’ll be here for you.
Ex.: A street team for EB on the Virtual Console. Posters, signs, crazy fan stuff spread all over the US by the huge fan base!
I took about 2 years worth of Japanese in high school, and I am now at a roadblock. I know Hiragana and Katakana and simple form, etc….but I don’t know very much Kanji at all. I also want to learn more Japanese! I want to be able to at least be at the level where I could fully play a game such as Mother 3. How did you get so awesome at Japanese? Any tips? God Speed my friends! You guys inspire me… (Helps that I don’t have any friends that enjoy EB….)
yeah, I actually do think the You Won could use some altering, but maybe Im just used to seeing You Win! Wherever I play Mother 3. Oh well… Just another guys opinion
lol… i feel like an idiot. I’ve been reading and a lot of people have already finished the game… lol. I’m fiding it diffucult to keep playin a game ina diff language. I tried playing the original Animal Crossings, but i don’t understand a word. I kind of lose interest. So… in anticipation I’ve been trying to finish Earthbound, which is a hard game, for me (i don’t know about the rest of you) But i really appreciate your efforts in trying to translate this game. It is just amazing how much is involved in this. I didn’t think it would take this much effort, but after seeing what is involved it has changed my mind. So again I thank you for all of your efforts and look forward to seeing the full translation. (sorry for the long message)
I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on Japanese (like you, I know hiragana + katakana, a few simple kanji and a bunch of common words and phrases) but http://www.nihongoresources.com/ has helped me a lot. Also, I forget where you download it but there’s a program called Kanji Gold or something that’s essentially a flashcard program. I think you could find it by going to http://www.mangahelpers.com/ then browsing the General Questions forum and looking for the sticky thread at the top on learning kanji.
On the other hand, I’ve also heard many people advising you to learn WORDS with kanji in them rather than isolated kanji, the problem being that you’ll never learn to use kanji correctly if you don’t and you won’t know which reading is the correct one when they’re used in compounds. Reminds me of that ‘silly exam answers’ site I saw a while back where a Japanese test asked for antonyms and the guy just drew all the characters upside down (hey, at least the kanji for up/above and its opposite, down/below are ALMOST upside down versions of each other).
Sorry if it’s too offtopic, but this IS relevant to learning enough to play Mother 3 in Japanese, which is certainly a worthwhile goal for anyone obsessively reading this site, if only because it will help us appreciate Mato’s hard work … 🙂
all evidence points to this never being finished.
Wow…pessimism in THIS team of hackers just makes you look like an uneducated retard. Seriously, if you’ve ever played a translated rom before, you can ALMOST guarantee that at least ONE guy (or girl?) on this team played a part in it. Not only that, but they’re probably motivated like 100x’s more than most other projects they’ve done, just because of their love for Earthbound/Mother. This game WILL be translated and you WILL eat those words.
I agree with evan,
dont come on here just to post your crap… — not that anyone takes you seriously or anything… but ..just because… you really look like a loser… seriously dude… for you to come on here just to say that..? im willing to bet you dont have many friends in real life,
Anywhooo….
i really like the “You Won”, it has a more Earthbound feeling to it… many emotions tied to that “You Won” sign,
its taken directly from the Earthbound rom you say? thats just great
and as for VWF on the namebox thing… it seems to be just find the way it is,.. it looks pretty cool without VWF
but thats just my opinion
find = fine*
Any chance of hacking in a flavor identical to the Plain in Earthbound?
GBoyMakoto: I started writing this a few months ago but haven’t gotten around to finishing it. But it might still be of use to you in your case: here
BTW we’ve already got tons of stuff ready to promote EB on VC, you’ll see 🙂
LordNecros: Not likely, but that’d be a neat hack for someone to do after the patch is out. Unless Jeff or someone is up to trying a palette hack to replace one of the current flavors, but I don’t know if it’s worth it.
Doseisan: I don’t know much about flash carts and cards, but I’m going to assume the answer to your question is “no” for now.
I tried changing Melon to be a bit more blue a while ago, but honestly, the game has dozens of sets of palettes for every flavour that would need to be changed, and I decided that it’s probably more work than its worth.
DoseiSan: There are zero NDS slot 1-based flash carts that can run GBA ROMs right now. You would need a slot 2-based card to run it. All such modern flash carts should be able to run it, you just need more than 32MB (256Mbit) of memory to store it.
With slot-2 cards though, you have to wait for it to transfer the ROM into temporary flash memory, and the size of MOTHER 3 could introduce problems with some carts; either it takes a long time or it might not load at all, depending on how much flash memory your flash cart has. I know that my EZ4 has a nifty feature that lets me pre-store 48MB worth of GBA ROMs in a dedicated NOR flash chip, and it eliminates any and all loading times. 😛
you da man, jeffman