Sidequests Abound
Another daily update 😯 A lot done again today, and many pics follow.
These pics and lots of other stuff behind Mr. Cut.
Things are happening so fast that it’s probably pointless to try to do recaps, so see previous posts to see how things have progressed to where we are today.
Started off today by deciding to insert the map names in 16-bit format, so that we could get them working too. These names appear on the loading/saving screens, btw. There’s 1000 of them, and I went ahead and translated them while working on this stuff. Since we’re keeping this text in 16-bit too, space was probably going to be a big problem, and indeed it was. The converted file was a few thousand KB too big. I was gonna try to do a super-optimization thing, but went the really easy optimization route instead to see if that’d work. It worked much better than I thought, so now we’re actually a few thousand KB under the original size. Nice.
Anyway, here are pics of this text inserted and working. VWFs are needed of course 😛
With that done, I turned my attention back to the main menus. I forgot to mention yesterday that deciding to go with 16-bit text for this menu stuff meant that the stuff you get to name will stay the same size. In particular, this affects the character “Kumatora”; her name is 8 letters while the naming screen only allows for 6. I wanted to see how far I could push the limit though, so I did some tests real quick.
While you can’t name characters more than 6 letters at the moment, default names are allowed to be 8 letters (chalk it up to good luck), and if you do the Don’t Care thing, it’ll insert all 8 letters. At a later time, we’ll mess with the naming screen to allow for more text to be manually entered.
Anyway, I decided to see how the game handles characters right at the 8-character limit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked flawlessly.
In doing this stuff though, I noticed two things.
One: the name boxes can only fit 7 letters, and
Two: I broke something a while back that screws up name boxes in battle.
A VWF would definitely fix the first issue (though if you’re lame enough to name yourself WWWWWWWW and it looks ugly, it’s your own fault), and I knew what caused #2. So I went and spent an hour or two fixing that broken name issue.
What’s cool is that the names in-battle share a VWF routine with alllll the other battle text (see, the battle programmers were cool, let’s take ’em out for a drink someday 😛 ) But they’re using the wrong widths, those widths are for the main font. Oops.
But since we’re using the game’s original 8×8 font, I then had to go tinker with the font (thank you Tile Molestor!) and write a width table (which I semi-did by hand) and some other stuff. Eventually, I got everything fixed and everything working.
The positioning of the names is handled incorrectly, as it doesn’t take the VWF into account, so that’ll have to be messed with another day.
While I’m on the subject of battle name boxes, there’s a certain issue that is evil and I have no idea how to even START to fix it. It might’ve even shown up in many pics and videos I’ve posted before; people probably just didn’t notice 😛
Anyway, the problem is this. Sometimes, when a window overlaps the name boxes for a while and then eventually leaves, the names below are screwed up. Some testing with the current setup leads me to believe only the PSI description boxes cause this problem, which makes it even more confusing, but it may rear its head more when I put item descriptions back in. I do not look forward to this bug 🙁
Overlaying box 
Those poor names!
After this, I wanted to get back to my main focus again, the main menus. The biggest thing left to do for it right now is write a VWF routine for all the other stuff. Spent a few hours trying to figure stuff out. Eventually, I stumbled upon the line of code that determines the width of each letter. Well, not exactly determine, as it just assumes each letter is 10 pixels wide, and does this even before text is loaded. This presents a major problem – a VWF routine needs two things, a way to change the width, and knowledge of which character is being read, so you can apply the correct width. I can’t exactly make the program tell the future or anything, so right now I’m a little stumped on how to figure this out. I know harmony figured it out easy as pie looong ago last year, though that work was lost before he had time to document it. I’m sure I’ll figure an answer out to it somehow, though. This almost sounds like a homework assignment you might get in a programming class for some reason 😯
But I wanted to see how many things this VWF, when completed, would affect, so I made it draw a new letter every 5 pixels instead of 10. Turns out this is the magic font-displaying routine, it’s used by pretty much everything else in the game 😯 So once I get it to work, most of the rest of the menus and stuff in the game will have professional-looking variable width fonts too, This doesn’t apply to the 8×8 fonts though, but damn if that isn’t an awesome deal. Now to figure out a way to magically hack it.
Here are a bunch of pics of the font routine drawing every 5 pixels instead of 10. They’re just for fun, obviously the final version won’t look like this. But it gives a better general representation at least.
Whew. Not as much done today as I had hoped, but progress is progress. I’ll probably slow down after today though. Gotta keep real life things progressing too 😛
i love to see this updates, seriously, makes my day happy. 😛
keep the great work, i like to see this progressing.
Daily updates, you’re workin hard! Don’t burn yourself out though.
I don’t know how much progress you expected to get done today, but it looks like quite a lot to me. From the progress I’ve seen through the posts so far, I don’t think there’s anything you guys won’t be able to figure out.
Keep up the good fight, guys!
You guys are something else!
So much progress in so little time!
Although could you tell us roughly how much progress has been made? 40%? 60? 90%(OMG Can’t be)!!?!?!?!?!?!?
Damn this is really picking up. We went a month or two with updates that were only about once a week and now we’re getting daily ones. Tomato is a madman O.O
Fantastic work, Tomato and co.! I really appreciate all of the hard work you all are doing. To qoute waitin’_for_mother3’s question…would it be possible to give a rough estimate of the progress on the patch? It would seriously make my entire day. 🙂
Haha, I have a C++ programming project due next week! They never really explain exactly what to do. Yet somehow in those classes you always manage to make something up out of nothing. These updates are great, it’s so interesting to look up some coding I’m interested in and it helps my learning experience too.
Whoa, to think you’ve been working alone on the project lately, Mato, as the others are busy, you’ve made a lot of progress by yourself; So when you work altogether again, it’s going to be ZOOOM!!! Can’t wait!
I’m a bit scared you did all that in one day.
I think ‘Mato is losing it.
Or did he really ever have it?
Seriously, though, awesome work! It looks like it’s coming along spectacularly! Can’t wait for the finished product. You get so much done even though you always say you aren’t “the greatest rom hacker”.
For a translator, you’ve got mad 1337 skills.
I am SO impressed by the daily updates. They make me feel warm and fuzzy inside and seeing this game in English is just a great feeling.
Man, Tomato, you’re one l33t hax0r 😉
I agree with Aasimov.
In related news, YOU ARE ON FIRE!!! Great job, just don’t neglect “Mato Time”.
One question, how can there be 1000 of those loading/saving names?! In most games, those names are based on the location last saved or a recent event in the game. How could there be 1000 of any combination of those?
Mato, every day I read this, it makes me feel happy. I know there are hundreds of others who read this and feel the same way about your daily updates. We love reading these and seeing the game progress.
Can’t wait until all the other guys come back for Christmas. It will be a hacking extravaganza!!
keep it up man, you’re rockin this shit
i love the dedication Mato
thanks for being AWESOME!
Is it wrong if reading these updates makes me giggle like a little girl? Just wondering… Anyway, I picked up a hex editor, just because this inspired me so much to try. Although, I guess it would help to have an objective so that I can edit it.
Anyway, we all are very thankful for what you’re doing. We’re all behind you. Keep it up!
-Hemlock
I dont know too much about rom hacking but wow mato it seems like stuff is going great. You hear it alot but i cant help myself… keep up the great work
Wow, you’ve really got things moving now. Awesome! This is definitely going to be the one ROM translation to rule them all.
But Mato, are you the only one working on it any more? All the updates seem to be about your hacking, and since you’re a translator by trade, it all seems a little harsh. Are you sure the other guys aren’t ditching you to go play stickball?
ガンバッテ
This is really impressive Tomato, you’re really putting your heart into this.
Thank you!
Wow, it looks like it’s done already!!
Wow Mato! I leave town for a bit and come back to several posts with TONS of progress and notes. I have to say, I think these latest series of posts are some of your best yet. I really dig reading about your experience with these specific, niche problems. Keep em coming!
Also, stop by Seattle sometime so I can buy you a drink – you’ve earned it!
Tomato, are you working on this by yourself now? It sure seems that way.
Love these updates!
Its great to see Mato that progress in this project is happening so fast and man I’am so happy reading all the daily updates and seeing pics of my favorite game series translated,which its like a video game dream for me coming true.
What a fun week for updates!
BTW, 8 letter names would be awesome. It’d be just like EB Zero. That, if you guys actually do it, is definitely going above and beyond in my opinion, since naming characters is one of the reasons I started playing RPG’s in the first place 🙂
one word … awesome.
I love to see you do progress, even when it’s the smallest, or no progress at all, it’s these updates. Thanks very much for doing this translation.
Cool
“One question, how can there be 1000 of those loading/saving names?! In most games, those names are based on the location last saved or a recent event in the game. How could there be 1000 of any combination of those?”
I’m not Mato, but trust me, there can be that many. Try opening up Mother 3 in the map editor in the downloads section of this site. Then go through the maps. There are many, many, many with many, many frogs. (Unless you don’t like spoilers, in which case, don’t.)
perhaps I just don’t have an eye for these things but the screens he says needs additinal hacks to look good look pretty nice to me
Although this been said like a million times but its never enough, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and MATO IS THE COOLEST!!!!!!
Wow. If you guys manage to make so that I’ll be able to enjoy Mother 3 in it’s full glory I’m seriously going to be eternaly thankful. I can’t read japanese, don’t have resources to import and don’t want to translate the whole game using a FAQ so this is like a dream come true.
Keep up the excellent work!
I was so happy with these past few updates, I forgot to ask – are there a substantial amount of side quests in Mother 3?
waitin’_for_mother3: Sorry, it’s pretty impossible to give a percentage. Say you got a project 99% finished in a month, but then that last 1% took 3 years. Was the project REALLY 99% done then? Trying to give percentages is messy, and that’s why I’m refraining from giving any out.
Steve: Download the map viewer, you’ll see that there are 1000 different maps. Many share the same names (and many have no names), so I was able to use the fact so many names were shared to save space. But that’s still a lot of map names 😯
Hemlock: That’s how I got started, actually. Just opened up the EB ROM in a hex editor and looked around. This actually eventually led to the creation of Starmen.Net too 😯 So just take a ROM and open it up and look inside. Also, hex editors that allow “relative searching” will make it much easier for you to find English text in a game.
Anthraxx & Mario: I’ve answered that a lot these past few updates, but people are busy with real life (especially with it being the holidays/end of the school/work year, etc.), not to mention MOTHER 3 is an evil ROM that can burn people out 🙁
G.Wicks: 8 letters might not be possible after all, but 7 should work fine. But I’m gonna try to see if 8 might still be possible anyway. But that’ll have to wait for another time. So much work to do 🙁
7ucky: Not a whole lot. There are a couple tiny ones that net you some good items, but nothing that’s really on the level of say a Final Fantasy side quest or anything.
Reading this update just made my day alot better!
Mato is awesome!
I’ve been reading from start to finish every update that comes along, and I can’t help but reply, this time. I am really fascinated by how much effort you guys put into making an English-translated Mother 3. This update was a whole lot of “WOW”. I’d like to learn a bit about coding and such while I’m at college. I’m really looking forward to reading future updates.
Tomato,
About the PSI menu messing up the names, wouldn’t it be possible to display those descriptions at a different location? Perhaps putting the description directly under the PSI selection menu, where it would overlap the monsters instead of the character stats. It’s not a perfect solution, but it might work. Of course I have no idea if that would be easier or ridiculously harder having never looked at the rom.
Great work on what you’ve accomplished so far. I’m glad that you are making so much progress and that the progress seems to be reinforcing your positive demeanor about the work. I admire your incessant motivation.
Lotsa update there mate.
But then, replacing every text with text isn’t easy. I concur, you need one good break and a cup of warm cocoa.
Hence, if you need help of some sort, you could ask! More into Windows programming and Graphics.
Raj
Wow Mato you sure are talented. I cannot believe people can do stuff like this. Just amazing!
Nice work you guys. These updates are like the Dojo’s updates, but, these updates never disappoint.
Keep it up! But don’t overexert yourself. Leave some time for yourself.