New Year

16 years ago by Mato

Nothing much in this update, just wanted to let people know that yes, we’re still alive, and yeah, things are still progressing. I got sick and now have a ton of real life work to catch up on, Jeffman’s been out of the country until a few days ago, and I think everyone else has been enjoying the holidays.

What little I did do a week back was try to fiddle with the menu text some more to move it up a few pixels, but I didn’t get too far. Jeffman seems to have made some progress from that, but the game is weird blah blah, we all know the story by now ๐Ÿ˜‰

Also, like right after Jeffman got back, he fixed his VWF so that 8×8 text doesn’t get pulled up 3 pixels too. We still gotta do the really hard “font welding” work with this VWF, but even little steps like this are great.

Compare those with this, which you can read more about here.

When is it going to be done? What percentage is it at? People ask this a lot, but I don’t have a time machine, so I don’t know what to say, but it would REALLY be nice to have this thing done and released this year. I don’t think I can keep this up forever ๐Ÿ˜› Also, I’m hoping/trying to make it so that our hacks and tools are done well enough that it’d be easy for people to translate the game into other languages once the English version is done. That’d be nice, and I always liked how Dejap did that with many of their projects.

On a very side note, those who’ve played through the game (or those who don’t care about spoilers), we put the entire MOTHER 3 sound player soundtrack up for download here. Also, if you’ve already finished MOTHER 3 before, this video (major spoilers obviously) is neat. And I don’t think this has any story spoilers or anything, but it’s a neat preview/review video for MOTHER 3.

Posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 3:08 pm by Mato, filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are currently closed.

73 Responses to “New Year”

  1. DamienDiablos said 16 years ago:

    Tomato, you and the rest of the team are awesome and we appreciate the hard work you are putting into this translation!

  2. ZibaLaZiba said 16 years ago:

    Progress is progress, and it still helps in the end. Good work!

  3. spaniel53 said 16 years ago:

    You guys are great I really appreciate your hard work, no matter how long it takes! We all understand you have personal lives as well, so don’t push yourselves too hard! ๐Ÿ™‚

  4. "Ponce" said 16 years ago:

    lol if i was rich id give u money but alas im 14-.- nice jobs though, but i still miss Ness-.-

  5. fael said 16 years ago:

    yeah, progress is progress. it would be cool if you released the game before brawl, because of the spoilers but hell, we can’t have it all!

    so, what kind of spoilers are there in brawl? kinda “i’m your father, luke” in star wars or just some minor spoilers?

  6. butt said 16 years ago:

    oww well there are always slow points I am sure things will pick up soon

    Best wishes, Butt

  7. Black Death said 16 years ago:

    Sorry to hear about your illness. I was sick a few days ago too, but not amid a major translation project that thousands of people were looking forward to. D:

    Point is, I’m sure I can speak for all when I say thank you for keeping it up, even in the midst of such hindrances and setbacks. You guys are working so hard on this, I can’t stress that enough. Great work, and here’s hoping that the rest of the process is, well, not too tedious.

  8. Hay! said 16 years ago:

    Never give up! We’re all rooting for ya! King says hi (quick! say hi King!).

  9. Aasimov said 16 years ago:

    Even a small update is a good one!
    Looks like things are progressing slowly, but certainly not surely.

    Once you get your other guys back from holiday, I expect you should get a bunch more work done…

    Also, I had kind of a tiny idea with Lucas’ description text in the naming screen. Where it says “The younger twin brother. A gentle” I’m assuming it’s trying to print out “a gentle boy”…
    So if you needed extra space there, why not just remove the word “Brother”? The younger twin still implies that they’re related, and its not really that big a loss…
    Then again, I know very little of GBA hacking (All my minor hacking experience has been with PK Hack, LOL xD) and this may be completely impossible or improbable or may make other things die.
    But at least consider trying it? Things when hacked can always be unhacked. ;D

  10. Nixon said 16 years ago:

    That was awesome,
    thanks for the updates!

  11. Excitable Boy said 16 years ago:

    Thanks for the update. I can wait.

  12. Anonymous said 16 years ago:

    DamienDiablos said:
    “Tomato, you and the rest of the team are awesome and we appreciate the hard work you are putting into this translation!”

    Ditto. ๐Ÿ™‚

  13. Edrees said 16 years ago:

    Hope you guys all had a great time during the holidays!

  14. Derek Robbins said 16 years ago:

    Man, I’m so grateful to you guys! Keep up the good work. I hope you guys can complete it this year, but if not…it’s cool. I’m willing to wait as long as it takes to play Mother 3 in English. You guys rock!

    Also, do get better Mato~

  15. Marick D. Pauper said 16 years ago:

    I, on behalf of the entire community of friends who anxiously await your translation, applaud your work and we all wish you Godspeed in your translation project, as well as good karma for such an endeavor in your real lives.

  16. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    Glad to hear you’re recovering. Hopefully, you escape from under the pile of work soon. It’s pretty slow around here, but that only makes me want to do less work for some reason ๐Ÿ™‚

  17. Tsukimoon said 16 years ago:

    Tomato, your sickness brings me sadness. I hope that things go well for you from now on. Stay healthy! M3 is not worth killing yourself over. ^^ I wish you luck~โ™ช

    Tomato, I also have a question not relevant to M3. Do you know if machine translations are understandable from English to Japanese? I’ve made myself a friend and I just wanted to know if she understood properly what I wrote. Thanks if you can answer, I won’t hold it against you if you can’t.

    ~Happy New Year~

  18. Ben Hornsby said 16 years ago:

    I love you.

  19. Earthbound Mike said 16 years ago:

    You guyz rock!!!
    I hope you can finish the game this year but,you know, as long as it takes i can wait! ๐Ÿ™‚

  20. Kevin said 16 years ago:

    Wow! I’m so glad that someone is translating the game!! Hope you don’t give up, can’t wait for the release!

  21. PRODUCT said 16 years ago:

    “but it would REALLY be nice to have this thing done and released this year”

    You gotta be kidding. I hate to break the news, but this will NEVER be fully done. Almost every update is about a Menu… Holy hell, Wait until they get to the dialoge.

    All the programmers will get bored, give up (they probably already have). Fans are completely screwed.

  22. butt said 16 years ago:

    ^clearley you are not paying close enough attention

  23. butt said 16 years ago:

    read this
    http://mother3.fobby.net/2007/12/07/hacking-to-do-new-guy/

    then this
    http://mother3.fobby.net/2007/12/27/holiday-progress/

    and watch this
    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FkcUQzDDGJQ&eurl=http://mother3.fobby.net/2007/12/07/hacking-to-do-new-guy/

  24. bumblebuzzin said 16 years ago:

    kinda pessimistic, product!

  25. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    Tsuki: I’m not the expert here, but I’ve yet to see a translation program that produced very good results ๐Ÿ™ For languages as different as English and Japanese, well, I can’t imagine that it translates well.

    PRODUCT: You have no idea how code works. There’s probably only one section of dialog text box code in the game (okay, maybe a few more in special cases, but not that many). You make that one little bit of code work right and you’re golden. Yeah, yeah, you have to make sure that all the text is inserted in the right place (i.e. each person has the right lines) and it’s not misformatted / doesn’t overflow anywhere, but that’s more tedious than difficult and it’s been done in many, many other games.

    It’s the menus that are pains in the ass to translate, because each one uses its own screwball code, etc.

    I know it’s hard to wait, but the members of this team have produced MANY high-quality translation patches in the past. It won’t be easy, and it only seems to be taking so long because they usually don’t release status reports like this, but they WILL get it done and done well. Pretty much the only thing I can imagine stopping them would be Nintendo, and if they were going to do that, they’d have done it a very long time ago. You know, like back when they were mentioned in Nintendo Power…

  26. Mato said 16 years ago:

    fael: it differs for each person. The way the game is set up, you don’t find out/realize a bunch of things until about 90% of the way into the game, and SSBB reveals some of it. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter, as these are just games. I think I probably knew Vader was his father as a kid and it didn’t ruin anything for me I don’t think, but I think I might’ve enjoyed the twist a little more had I not known in advance.

    Aasimov: That’s still using the formatting from probably a few months ago. I think the whole thing can fit on screen now without editing.

    Tsukimoon: In general, not really. I’ve seen people post stuff translated from English to Japanese and I think it tends to be even more gibberishy than Japanese to English.

    PRODUCT: Thanks for your support.

  27. ArashiSai said 16 years ago:

    hi

  28. Coconut of Enlightenment said 16 years ago:

    I, too, would prefer that the final hack be released before brawl. But such is life.
    Anyway, from the way the menu translations have been going, I think eventually byuu or one of the others will find out that the dialogue code that makes everything buggy can be fixed by just a couple lines of code changed, and when that happens, the progress will skyrocket.
    By the way, I know I’ve said this before, but I don’t think that Ness will be left out of Brawl. Why? Because there are a ton of characters not yet revealed. Sakurai says he wants about 40 total. All the secret characters will not be revealed on the dojo website before the release. Think about it, even Luigi hasn’t been announced yet. And he’s a sure deal.

  29. edracon said 16 years ago:

    wow.. this seems to be getting along pretty well. If only i could play the glitchy menu version.. as it doesn’t look too unreadable/horrible. (besides using walkthroughs to translate is very time consuming to read).
    good luck ๐Ÿ˜€

  30. Tsukimoon said 16 years ago:

    A Fan & Tomato: Thanks for replying to my question. She pretty much seems to understand the idea of what I was talking about. I try to phrase my statements in the clearest way that I can, especially without using contractions. I also translate whatever I put to Japanese back to English, and while it goes through two translation processes, I can understand what it was originally about. If I could bother you a little more, here is something that I posted on her blog, both English and Japanese. Can you just look over it and tell me how much of the original is conveyed?

    Hi! Although I do not understand most of your posts, (which is mainly because online translation is not very good.) I am very happy to comment on your website. ^^ Also, why would you not buy a ps2? I have one, and it is quite fun, even though I do not use it much.

    Googleใฎ็ฟป่จณ๏ผš
    ใ“ใ‚“ใซใกใฏ๏ผ็งใ‚’็†่งฃใ—ใฆใ„ใชใ„ใซใ‚‚ใ‹ใ‹ใ‚ใ‚‰ใšใ€ๆŠ•็จฟใฎใปใจใ‚“ใฉใฏใ€ ๏ผˆใ“ใ‚Œใฏใ€ไธปใซใ‚ชใƒณใƒฉใ‚คใƒณ็ฟป่จณใงใฏใ‚ใ‚Šใพใ›ใ‚“ใฎใง้žๅธธใซ่‰ฏใ„ใงใ™ใ€‚ ๏ผ‰็งใฏใจใฆใ‚‚ๅนธใ›ใใ†ใซใ‚ณใƒกใƒณใƒˆใ—ใฆใŠๅฎขๆง˜ใฎใ‚ฆใ‚งใƒ–ใ‚ตใ‚คใƒˆใงใ™ใ€‚ ^ ^ใพใŸใ€ใƒ—ใƒฌใ‚นใƒ†2ใ‚’่ณผๅ…ฅใ™ใ‚‹ใฉใ†ใ—ใฆใใ‚“ใชใ“ใจใชใ„ใงใ™ใ‹๏ผŸใ‚‚ใ†ไธ€ใคใ€ใ“ใ‚Œใฏ้žๅธธใซ้ข็™ฝใ„ใจใฏใ€ใŸใจใˆใใ‚Œใใ‚‰ใ„็งใฏไฝฟ็”จใ—ใชใ„ใงใใ ใ•ใ„ใ€‚

    This will be the last post on this subject, I feel like I’ve already impeded too much.

    Thank you in advance.

  31. butt said 16 years ago:

    oviousley Nintendo would not use this translation offically when finished but perhaps they might be willing to use it for some market reserch set up some focose groups and see that there is clearley a market for it

  32. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Tsukimoon: That’s… pretty crazy Japanese. I don’t think your original message comes across at all. My suggestion to you if you’re going to use machine translation is to try to keep your sentences 5 words or less. I know that sounds crazy and probably kind of difficult, but the simpler the sentences, the easier it will be for machines to parse.

  33. hunter said 16 years ago:

    hats off to you guys! seriously though, i won’t be too disappointed if the text is 3 pixels too high or too low

  34. edracon said 16 years ago:

    OMG!! i called nintendo customer service to tell them to try to get this game over to the Americas and other places…. but i got a representative that barely spoke english (he spoke french) but, he was an english representative xD

  35. Aeros said 16 years ago:

    Mato: I lol’d at your comment to Product.

    As always, Keep up the good work! Its always nice to see an update, no matter how small.

  36. Moulinoski said 16 years ago:

    edragon: Call up Tracfone. They provide both English and Spanish customer support… or so they say. In reality, the English support is more like “Spanish-fied English” along with machine-like speech. O_O

    … I am going to start automating this: “Go, Go, M3 Hacking Team! You are number one! Yes, you are!” *Puts on pom poms and starts doing those cheerleading routines*

    … but I’m a guy. O_o

  37. cant wait to play-_- said 16 years ago:

    Product:lol you got some built up anger menus are important(why dont you hack the game lol)

  38. butt said 16 years ago:

    You better bring it Moulinoski.

  39. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    So call that French guy back and say something like:

    Traduisez-vous le jeu vidรฉo ยซMother 3ยป ร  l’Anglais, s’il-vous-plaรฎt.

    [Approximate pronunciation: Trahd-we-say-voo luh jew vee-day-oh Mother Three ah lahn-glace, see-voo-play.]

    So I’m definitely no professional, but I did take French back in college ๐Ÿ™‚ I find it a lot easier to translate things from French to English than the other way around, though.

  40. kalbtrombone said 16 years ago:

    I stumbled across this while randomly searching for Earthbound sites. It’s cool to see the work you guys do. Love to see the translation finished!!!

  41. Tsukimoon said 16 years ago:

    Thanks for your help Tomato, I’ll try that.

    Continue with all your good work guys! I’ll pray for your success… nine times.

  42. PSI-THUNDER said 16 years ago:

    hey guys, great work. I’m happy to see that this is still in the mix.
    For those nay-sayers out there I would like to point out that i have checked back every now and then for a year or so now and although progress is slow, for the real die-hard fans of this series it is worth the wait. So be patient and these guys will pull through.
    Personally if I had invested a year+ of my life translating a game just to give up, I would be severely disapointed in myself.
    If you can’t wait to play an english version of the mother series just play Earthbound again and realise how cool it would be just to enjoy the next game in pure english.

    Thanks again to the fobby.net mother 3 translation team.

  43. Um Jammer Lammy said 16 years ago:

    This makes me want to live again. =D
    I LOVE YOU GUYS!

    I can’t wait for it to finish, this game is the most important thing in my life, me being 12 odoesn’t really matter what I think is the greatest thing in my life. Keep up the amazing work!

  44. Coconut of Enlightenment said 16 years ago:

    Hey, the Smash Dojo website shows that Onett is going to be a returning stage in SSBB (and that is NOT a spoiler, to all those picky people out there). I hate to say I was right prematurely, but I take this as a good sign that Ness will be reappearing as at least a secret character, if not one that you begin with. After all, Onett does not appear in Mother 3, only in Mother 2, right? Well, I suppose I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t made a playthrough of M3 yet.

  45. Kousuke said 16 years ago:

    As I read in SM.net forums…
    but even though onett is in brawl, that’s not a reason for ness being in there. example: pictochat stage or smashville.
    and also, is just a returning stage it doesn’t mean anything

  46. some-random-fellow said 16 years ago:

    well, up until a few weeks ago, I was not even aware of the existence of mother 3.
    I had played through earthbound(as you know, mother 2), at the time, and mentioned to a friend of mine that I would love to see a sequel to it.

    “dude,” he said. “They have!”
    “what?!” said I.
    “yeah! its called mother 3.”
    “theres a mother 2?!”
    “yeah dude, its called earthbound.”
    “then whats… mother one?”
    “Earthbound zero.”
    “Oh. Awsome!!”
    “One problem though…”
    “don’t tell me.”
    “they only released it in japan”
    “crap…I knew you were about to say that…is there a translation?”
    “not yet, but they’re getting very close.”
    “wickedcool.”

    anyway, thats my story of discovery, and I just wanted to say that and this:
    May the fair winds speed your boat of progress.
    We await the divine arrival of your work.

  47. Alato said 16 years ago:

    Relax… Ness will be in brawl, surely.
    First off, Smashville and Pictochat are special exceptions. I mean, it’s pretty much impossible to have a character from those “games”. Second, as many have said, Ness was in both Smash games to date. I don’t think they’d remove him. “But they were going to replace him with Lucas in Melee, originally!”, well, they didn’t. Also, I’ve heard(but then again I’ve heard lots of things…) that Sakurai mentioned he’d keep the 12 original characters. If so, he’s in automatically.
    Finally, there have been hints(Onett) to Ness reappearing aswell, he has plenty fans, so why would Sakurai just ‘disappoint’ everyone like that? It doesn’t make sense. Bottom line, Nes in Brawl, I think Onett today was conclusive evidence.

  48. Moulinoski said 16 years ago:

    Err… When Melee was released, Mother 3 hadn’t been released yet (Mother64 had already been cancelled). Still, I too believe that Ness is in Brawl. So many want to hate to not have him in there (kinda a funny thing, eh?).

  49. bumblebuzzin said 16 years ago:

    after looking at the to do list, it seems like a possibility that the translation will be finished before brawl is released.

  50. Kousuke said 16 years ago:

    the problem is that most of earthbound fans are still mad because lucas as for now is replacing ness. I like lucas more than ness (because in melee it’s was a bit ackward to control, at least for me) And I think most of us know that lucas was the one who was going to appear in melee before M3 was canceled for the n64.
    And alato: I can’t remember Sakurai-san saying there will be the original 12 in brawl, I heard that was a rumor, just like the rumor that heavy armored pokey was an AT.
    but this is not a smash bros forum, this is a mother 3 project xD
    and I apologize for my grammar, I’m from Chile and my english it’s not perfect xD

  51. Mato said 16 years ago:

    What? SSBB comes out in like 30 days or something. With the hacking + the 2 or 3 script drafts + the testing, I really wouldn’t hold my breath.

  52. Rifter said 16 years ago:

    Don’t kill yourself over this. Desperate as I am to play this game, I think I can wait a bit longer if it means fewer stress induced heart attacks on the team’s part.

  53. edracon said 16 years ago:

    actually the french guy was apperantly a huge fan of the mother series.. (see my earlier posts, and replies to my posts)

  54. butt said 16 years ago:

    I am dissaponted Moulinoski did not respond “Oh, it’s already been brung!”

  55. Moulinoski said 16 years ago:

    There was a bit of a delay, you see… The bringing had a bit of a problem during development, y’see… and uh… yeah. ๐Ÿ˜›

  56. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Oh man, it’s already been 4 days since this update. I’m still up to my neck trying to catch up with work I should’ve done last week while I was sick, and school’s starting for people again, so things are pretty slow right now. I figured I’d mention it here in a comment rather than an update which would be pointless ๐Ÿ˜›

    There’s still so much to do, yet people think it’ll be done before Brawl? That’s crazy talk ๐Ÿ˜ฏ

  57. danc said 16 years ago:

    Manager: That’s Crazy Talk.
    Bart: No, it’s true.
    Manager: No, I know, that’s my brother, Crazy Talk. We’re all a little worried about him.

    But yeah, as always, we totally understand that you have a personal life too ๐Ÿ™‚

    Thanks for even updating us about the slowness of progress these days.. Yep, a full out update wasn’t necessary, especially considering that the people who check this site on a regular, also read all of your posts

    Relax, take your time.. get your life together ๐Ÿ™‚

  58. Aeros said 16 years ago:

    Mato: We believe in you! Even if its not done for brawl, we’ll keep believing in you!

  59. Kousuke said 16 years ago:

    also, what if it happens a miracle and you actually finish it before brawl? A man can dream, can I?

  60. butt said 16 years ago:

    Could happen after all the chances of brawl being delayed again is not too bad.

  61. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    Mato: What? You mean you guys can’t work miracles? Well, get us someone who can! ๐Ÿ™‚

    Really, though, we’re just hoping they decide to pay you more for doing less work, give you a paid vacation, and that harmony drops in and does all the remaining hacks in his yearly 5 minutes of free time. That’s not so unrealistic… right? ๐Ÿ™‚

  62. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Santa’s off now that the holidays are over, I wonder if he knows how to hack ๐Ÿ˜‰

  63. butt said 16 years ago:

    He must how else would be be able to have his elves make perfect counterfits of protected devices.

  64. Moulinoski said 16 years ago:

    H4x0rZ 54N74!!!

    (I know… my l337 is terrible. ._.)

  65. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    But I thought the Japanese Santa lived on the moon, visiting us only once a year on Annual Gift Day? How will you contact him? ๐Ÿ™‚

    [If you don’t get the joke, you haven’t watched the Simpsons enough.]

  66. Moulinoski said 16 years ago:

    Contact NASA. ๐Ÿ™‚

  67. Allan said 16 years ago:

    Any time I get worried about this project, and any time I feel like helping out with the script’s translation (I’m an english major with a personal emphasis on proper translation of intent above and beyond literal transcription), I come back to this site, and I poke around, and I see that there’s no real need for a man so limited as I… No, I’m just selfish! I want to enjoy this, not create it!

    You guys are so awesome, and I can’t wait for this child of yours to pass through my brain-canal. Contact me, or not! I’m willing, and able, but a bit afraid of my possible inadequacies.

  68. crayongod said 16 years ago:

    Keep it up, can’t wait to play!

  69. Coconut of Enlightenment said 16 years ago:

    Mato, I would think that you, of all people, would know that miracles can happen. Look at all the problems you’ve encountered in the hacking where you thought “this is absolutely impossible” and then you play around for a bit, and it turns out that all you had to do was change one syllable of code and the whole thing ended up working. It’s not a long shot to say that the biggest bugs of the whole translation could be fixed quickly (you know the specific bugs I’m talking about). And when that happens, the script should work enough to where you can release a full translation.

    By the way, of course Ness is going to be in Brawl. All those who doubt it should be forced to march around the Lost Underworld, fighting dinosaurs and eating Tendakraut for the rest of their miserable little lives.

  70. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    Wait… did I say Simpsons? I meant Futurama. I plead not guilty by reason of brain slug ๐Ÿ™‚

    Coconut: Umm, don’t we all do that already, when trying to get the damned Magic Fry Pan? Or just me? I hate those nasty 1 in 128 weapons and pendants at the end ๐Ÿ™

  71. bumblebuzzin said 16 years ago:

    there must be something wrong with me. i check this website at least 5 times a day…….

  72. butt said 16 years ago:

    I dont really want to continue this but in Futurama Santa is a robot who kills most people on christmas because of a programming error causeing everyone to be judged as nauty

  73. Biiaru said 16 years ago:

    THANK YOU! Thank you SO MUCH for the soundtrack. I have been looking for something like it for MONTHS.