Turkey Hacking
Lots of hacking work done over the past few days, but as usual, there aren’t any good screens to show of it, since lots of stuff is still broken and would scare most people 😛
One of the main things I finished the other day was a handy program that converts the non-main-script files into data files that can all then be easily inserted by our ROM translation builder. This offers a couple advantages over what we were using before, most notably that we can tell the size of the resultant text blocks compared to the original block size. It turned out we had overwritten some important stuff before, but didn’t realize it. But now we’ll realize it. Also, before, we had to insert each file sort of by hand, hard to explain, but it was a pain 😛 Now it’s all done in one go.
After that, I did tons and tons of hacking in my off-time. Most of it is just display-routine related or internal data processing-related. Stuff is still buggy, and I still need to figure out a few more things, but progress on the main outside menus is continuing steadily. Before too long they should be looking mighty nice. They look horrible right now though, since some more 16-bit->8-bit hacks are necessary. And some more VWFs.
They’re obviously not pretty, and they’re only pics of hacking in-progress, but here’s some stuff to see.
String length hack WIP
Needed to show full item names
Don’t mind the description,
just trying to avoid crashes
Totally forgot about this menu 
Super sound player menu
People might be curious why so much attention on the sound player when it’s not even a major part of the game. It turns out that a lot of other parts of the game share routines with the sound player, and it’s much easier to debug the sound player, since there’s not tons of other stuff going on at the same time to make things more confusing. Also, all the text is shifted down a couple pixels because of harmony’s 10×10->16×16 hack, which is what gave us the text hooks back in the main script. At some point we’ll go and scoot everything back up those 3 pixels or so.
So that’s the progress in the last few days. I do take plenty of pics and videos of funny/cool/weird stuff that happens as the game is being hacked, so maybe sometime after this is all done I’ll make a little page showing off this really really bizarre stuff 😛
Happy Demon Turkey Day
happy thanksgiving
i know im thankful for the work youre doing =]
BACK,OH FOUL TURKEY!BACK I TELLS YE!*Clears throat*
Anyhoo, good to know the project is moving on. Also good to know why you guys so often posts pics of the Sound player. I would say something here about how awesome you guys devotion is, but i cant really think of anything that hasn’t been said yet. So, Great work, and enjoy the turkey…thingie day!
Agreed. Things seem to be going better, and like everyone else I wish you the best luck. Awesome work, and Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving Americans! Enjoy turkey time!! Progress looks nice. Good luck with all the hacking!
Progress is still being made – I always worry that one day the reports will drop off and the project will silently become canned.
Keep up the great work!
I love you guys so much.
This project seems so complicated and time consuming, I admire your dedication to it and it goes smoothly. The frequent updates and your hard work are very appreciated.
Excellent progress report, as usual. I’m always amazed, and this update is no exception.
I agree with what Nico said. Every note of progress seems to be plagued with yet another unforseen obstacle.
Not that I don’t appreciate the work you’ve done or the rate at which you inform us, but any other hacking team would have thrown their hands up and ran out of the room screaming by now.
Happy Thanksgiving! And good luck with the hacking!
Maybe I haven’t been keeping track too well, but it seems like you’re making a ton of progress all of a sudden. Did you suddenly overcome a huge hurdle without my noticing it, or did you just find other stuff to do?
I’ve been keeping track of this site for quite some time now. Ever since I found this site, it’s given me hopes of playing Mother 3 in a way that would be much more enjoyable. I would be able to talk to everyone, signs, etc. I guess I can say that this project is something I’m thankful for. The fact that your team is spending so much time to give many people the chance to play this game in a more enjoyable way is something that all of us should be thankful for. I, among many, respect that you’re putting so much time and effort into this.
Due to recent circumstances, I will not be one of the people who will play this version once it’s done. That doesn’t mean that I can’t thank you all for this. So I’ll say this:
“Thank you for this project.” There are many people who appreciate the work that your team does, myself included.
Good luck to you all. I’ll continue to look for more updates in the future.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and its good to hear that you in the past few days have done lots of hacking work which is good news to hear.
I would love to see all the stuff thats considered “bizarre”. That would be fun to see ^_^
Hello to you too, Lumber! =D
Such happy hackings. We’re thankful for you on this day of thanks, happy hacks.
Frinky: I have some meager programming/hacking skills, so I recently decided to throw my hat into the hacking ring. Since I’m a space robot, I can find time to do stuff, often at the expense of sleep or sanity 😛
MigueL_D: Thanks… but your post has me scared now. It makes it sound like you’re about to die. That, or join the army, or move to Antarctica :O
Pfft. In Canada, all our turkeys are long dead by now. Silly backwards Americadians.
It’s always good to see stuff coming together. You guys totally deserve all those delicious leftover turkey sandwiches you’ll have. You can have some of mine, too. You’ll have to wait until Canadian thanksgiving next year, and they might get dinged up in the mail, but those sandwiches are so good you won’t even care.
Mato, you don’t like Turkey Sandwiches? T-O-O-B-A-D!
Good luck with the rest 😀 BTW, Lucas’ Final smash was revealed today at the Dojo, but I was dissapointed 🙁
Im so full of pie that thinking of turkey sandwhichs makes me sick to my stomach!
but anyways thanks for hacking
and doing it for good causes
We don’t have leftover turkey sandwiches in our house. All the leftovers go into a big cassarole. The turkey, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes. Pour a bunch of gravy (with some extra gravy put aside just for this purpose) all over the top of everything, wrap the sucker up real good, and gets stuck in the freezer. In a few days, stick it in the oven to cook for a while, instant meal for everyone. Better than some measly turkey sandwiches. =P
Oh, and I also want to say Yay! for Lucas’ final smash. =D
As always, I’m grateful for all the work you do and the regular updates!
Mato, I have a question that might have been asked already but I couldn’t find it, so sorry if it has been answered already:
Do you plan to keep/translate the warning screen at the beginning of the game? (the one that’s in all games now, about health and safety).
Because I was thinking you guys could do something out of it:
First, you could do a “fake” warning screen, EB style, like “Warning, this game will give you hours of fun and may cause addiction…”, something like that.
Also, it would be a really cool screen for you hacking guys working on the project to put down your names (or nicknames rather) and stuff about the project, as it will be the first screen players will see…
Just ideas, I don’t even know if they’re feasible, and I’m aware that you have bigger fish to fry with the game itself, but… :p
Good luck with the rest and thanks again!
I just want to let you guys know you have my utmost respect, for taking the time to blog your current progress. This is really refreshing compared to most other translation projects. Mother 3 is a very important game for Mother fans and I believe you guys will definitely feel a great sense of accomplishment when this is all over.
You know I like the fact that you’re showing everyone what obstacles you’re facing. On the one hand one is informed how complex translating a ROM can be, on the other hand you show, that this project is still alive. Thanks for that 🙂
Mato: Nah. It’s not like that. It was Thanksgiving yesterday and I felt it would be a good time to start posting. I’ve been staying off of the internet recently, and before I started that, I was a bit of a lurker.
There’s a couple of reasons for why I haven’t been on. One reason is school. Another involves having the Mother 3 ROM/VBA on my computer (I think you may understand what I mean here. If not, then I got in trouble for having it. So, I had to remove the ROM and the emulator, which means I won’t be one of the many people who will download the patch once this project is over.)
Honestly, I’d rather join the Air Force than the Army, but I don’t see myself doing so anymore. Antarctica sounds like a delightful place to go. Those Emperor Penguins are up to something and I wanna find out what it is. 😛
Nah, you can still download the patch and save it for the someday when hopefully you get your own computer or whoever made you remove it relents 🙂
As for someone else who mentioned the warning screen… isn’t that part of the BIOS? I think you can just select “skip BIOS” in VisualBoyAdvance, I’m less sure about other emulators. On real hardware, you can’t skip it at all. But if I’m correct that it’s not part of the actual ROM, then no, they can’t change it. It’s simply not there for them to change.
OTOH, I’ll defer to the experts, because I could be wrong.
Actually, Jeff replaced it with the English screen a few days back. So it’s part of the ROM for sure.
As for some sort of other screen, I figure we’ll have some sort of extra quick disclaimer screen added in there, saying it’s not for sale, it’s not an official translation, etc. Something like that. Despite how the title screen on the Bahamut Lagoon translation looks, I prefer things like that to be minimalist-ish and semi-professional-looking. Kind of like the intro screen to Famicom Det. Club 2:
A Fan: No, the warning screen isn’t part of the GBA BIOS. If you look at earlier GBA games, you won’t see the warning screen that some of the more recent ones have (namely, Mother 3).
The DS does have the warning screen as part of its BIOS.
Crud, Tomato! You posted as I posted! XD Heh, I really liked the Bahamut Lagoon translation. 😀 I wouldn’t have thought it had been a fan-translation if it weren’t because I found the patch on RomHacking.net. 😛
Whoah, Mato’s got stubby little baby arms. How do you type? :0
As for the Smash… I always find it funny how in the games they don’t have any of the character’s actual PSI. With the moveset they got right now, they shoulda just popped Kumatora in instead.
Danng! Good job guys.. keep it all up.. all this hardwork will payoff! One day hopefully in the near future, we shall have the completed final product of the Mother 3 Translation! I give you thanks guys!