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Still recovering and still playing catch-up with real life work, but some ever-so-tiny progress.
First, Jeffman did a lot more looking into various menu stuff. There’s not too much to show at the moment, but it looks like he’s managed to figure out why hooks on letters in menus don’t show up even though they’re there in the bg layer. As a side note, I’d like to do things a “cheating” easy way to get all text moved up 3 pixels, it’d make some things look strange/ugly, but it could shave a good many weeks of tough hacking and make other stuff look better in the process. Just waiting to hear what the guys think.
Another thing Jeffman looked at was the enemy list screen. While we still need a VWF for the enemy names, the descriptions are now VWFed. The description text is made out of sprites though, so it falls victim to glitches when descriptions get too long, too. The font “welding” thing, whenever it’s done (and by whomever), should make that problem go away though. That’d just leave the issue of carefully using space on the screen and space in the ROM to try to get the most text into the descriptions.
Here are some early pics of the enemy descriptions, at least.
Yeah, I know the period is too high. I think we might wind up using a different 8×8 font, but I’m not sure yet.
I’ve been busy, so I haven’t had much time to hack. I forgot that I needed to hack the main script stuff so that numbers print properly now, similar to what I had to do with in-battle numbers. The same basic idea applied, but tracking down the base number was a huge pain, and it didn’t help that I’m an idiot and mess up A108 by typing 8108. Stupid 8 and A sound too similar :X The main script only uses the “print this number” control code in only one or two places, so it’s pretty rare. But still good to have out of the way.
Before 
After
Things are slow. Someone send me a time machine.
Keep up the great work guys, we love you
You guys freakin’ rock me so hard. YAHOO EARTHBOUND/MOTHER 3 YEEUH.
now more than ever, the team needs our support!!
go mato! go jeffman! you guys are an inspiration for all of us!
as for saving a few weeks on the hack, im against it if it means one part of the game looks sloppy. perfection is something you are quite capable of!!
I think it looks great. Don’t forget that little progress is still progress! 😀
Yay! So much progress! Now we really need to have patience… Just a little bit more!
Thank you so much to allow us to follow these little progress steps!
looking great
Hey, slow progress is better than none at all, I say! 😀
As for the cheating thing, how long would it take? If it’s a 5-minute hack or something, then I say to try it and show us what the messed up stuff looks like – it might turn out that noone really cares about it (like one period in the entire game is a pixel too high, or something stupid).
i love you, nuff said
Keep up good work! You guys are the best!
Why does the sprite font look different than the standard Earthbound font?
As for your question, I would personally like to see a really clean final product, but if the decision is between done, but a little rough or attempt at perfection and the project never gets done, that’s a no-brainer. Obviously the priority is on the quality of the localization and its presentation in the game is secondary. I think any fan of the game and this localization will be okay with it either way. You should make the call based on the team’s interest level in making the hacking perfect.
SEXY BEAM! I lol’d.
Anyway, any progress is better than no progress, IMO, so I’m glad that you posted it. I’m faithfully following this translation (Though this is my first time talking here, XD). And I, like everyone else is saying, is that we’re glad you’re working on this and thank you deeply for doing it, so thanks!
Magish: I did a quick test and here’s the results after like 5 minutes. I’d prefer to do things this way, as that’ll take weeks/months off the hacking time in exchange for some slight cosmetic things elsewhere.
Steve: There are 2 fonts in MOTHER 3, the main font, and the 8×8 “mini” font. Things like enemy descriptions, character name boxes, naming screens, etc. use the mini font.
Thanks for all your hard work and keeping us updated all this time. I was hoping for something before Smash Brothers, but I’ll just be glad to see it finished!
Mato: That seems really reasonable for “cheating”. I bet I wouldn’t even notice if it hadn’t been pointed out to me. You have wonderfully high standards and we love you for it!
Fantastic effort guys! Keep it up! the fans deeply appreciate your time and commitment.
Awesome job! You guys are saints!
Anyhow, I think you should do whichever is easiest. If it will save weeks/months, the yes, by all means do it =D
I’d say go with that if it doesn’t cause too many problems, and then if it really bothers you you can come back to it after the patch is done and released and do an update. 😛
I can’t tell how this “cheat” makes it look sloppy, and weeks/months would be a pretty big jump. Go for it
awesome!
I worship you.
After some more work, here’s what the apostrophe and quotes would look like. They’re not 100% exact with EB’s font now, but I personally think it looks very acceptable. I’m hoping we can go with this, it’ll save a lot of headache.
I think it looks fine Mato! It’s always something you guys could go back and take on later on in the project as well.
First post after Mato’s post! Win.
You’s guys are heroes to me. I’m still grateful for the project.
Hey, looks fine to me. And besides, you have enough headaches to worry about already. “Good enough” is just that: good enough.
As long as Tomato dose not feel like he is compromising the project its fine with me as he has good judgement. I dont paticularley have an eye for these things so I cannot see why its supose to look bad. perhaps it would be more ovious with comparitive screens.
Well, it’s a team effort, so my opinion is only one part of the equation. I really prefer this way now, after seeing how it works so well in pretty much every menu in the game, even obscure ones like the advanced music sound player. But if we go the non-cheating way, it’ll take a LOT of work. The more I think about it, the more I want to hide 😉
Really, Tomato… I don’t see what the problem is. Most people can’t tell if something is off by 2 or 3 pixels anyway (unless you’re specifically looking for it). It looks perfect already. In any case, you can once again cheat and bring the little dot up some as well, unless that too was brought up by the hack. 🙂
All in all, I think you’re aiming a little bit more than beyond the star. Its perfect already how it is (not counting whatever problems might have occurred because of it, which I hope is none).
(And BTW, w00t! Little, slow progress is still progress and at least you’re keeping us up-to-date at least every week if not daily. 😀 What you said at Romhacking.net about the blog being interesting to non-hackers/translators is so true.)
Well, I’m hoping that Mother 3 decides to shape up and be nice to you from now on! 😀
Keep on doing the good work. I love the series and want to finish it up. ~^* Thanks
T*B*A & Friends
I’m completely fine with it, and like Triple10X said, you can always come back to it later if you change your mind. Personally, I find the wait to be as much fun as actually playing the game, so I will not mind waiting any longer.
Wow. 5 min. of work for a few months….AWESOME!
After this, what all is on the to-do list?
Could someone tell me what a VWF is and what does it stand for?
I think it stands for (V)ariable (W)idth (F)ont. It’s something used to hack text in a game, and is A LOT easier to apply than an IPS patch. I like the menu translation hack though, it’s helped out loads. Sure beats the time I played FF4*Hardtype*(J) (I found my way around the menus easily, but could barely understand the item descriptions or what was being said X_X)
It’s great to see progress continue, even if it’s slight. You have a great amount of dedication! Keep up the good work!
VWF stands for Variable Width Font. It’s hard to explain with words but pretty easy with pics.
The font on the left is a static width font — in other words, every letter in the font uses the same spacing/width.
The font on the right is a variable width font — in other words, each letter uses its own spacing/width. The letter “l” is a very thin letter, right? While the letter “o” or the letter “w” is a very wide letter. It looks ugly and unprofessional to make them use the same spacing (look at all that empty space to the left and right of thin letters), so a variable width makes it so that each letter only uses as much space as is needed. This makes text look more professional, more readable, and lets you fit more on the screen than a static width font.
Mato, you should throw that VWF response in the FAQ.
Keep on truckin’ Tomato, you hard-working fruit-man.
It seems like only yesterday you guys started as two separate translation projects, and now you’re all so far in the project. I applaud your efforts, and can’t wait to play the final! (Shame on us non-Japanese speaking people)
FWIW, the “cheating” way looks just fine to me. As for those periods, I didn’t even realize they WERE periods until you said that 🙂 I thought they were a control code to make something go down to the next line or something…
As for that number fixup, it’s too bad. I sorta wanted to earn ۩۞ۻڭ experience points 🙂
Hmm, no, maybe it was more like ﷺ experience points… 🙂
That, or I’m having too much fun examining all the strange glyphs in Arial Unicode MS using Character Map. I had no idea there were so many oddball scripts out there…
Amazing work! I agree that this cheating way looks perfect.. no need to change it whatsoever! This translation is really looking great. Thanks to everyone on the team.. such dedication is very rare. I’m very excited to play M3 for the first time 🙂
I don’t care if the text is weird looking, as long as I can read it! I need this game asap..! The wait has been too long…I don’t care if it’s perfect, EB is EB. T.T Good luck guys…!
Mato: Things are slow. Someone send me a time machine.
Don’t worry, when time machines are invented, I’ll go back in time and send you the finished patch in an e-mail. And I’ll be sure to send it so it arrives in 3,
2,
1…
Don’t worry, translation guys. “Gentle Rain” will always play for you.
Cheating way???
I couldn’t even notice what was wrong!
Go for it! 🙂
I would send you my time machine, but i accidently sent it back to the future. Oh well.
hey guys i just want to say that I LOVE the new way you guys do the site.
the last time I was here(subtracting teh 4 days ago that i posted) all you really had was:
“yeah, its a work in progress”
now i can check back everyday and in less than a week there is an update.
I must say this rocks!
Needless to say I will be visiting more often now.
Once again, thanks for all the hard work you guys put in to this. It can’t be easy to balance your life and a project such as this.
THANKS 🙂
Well, everything so far looks great if you’re asking me. Who knows, if Nintendo actually ports M3, maybe they’ll pay you guys to use your translation.
(Unrelated side note. Captain Olimar?! I used to think Ness would only be in as an Assist Trophy tops, but with that guy in the fray, *anything* is possible here!)
as far as cheating is concerned(forgot it in my last post)
i could care less as long as the translation fits.
but I will understand if you guys don’t want to cut corners.
(bows down to the pure awesomeness of Mato and crew)
!!يالا يا ميتو
!!!بروح بدم نفتيك يا ميتو
hmmmmm.. given how many people have said it already.. does it Really matter if I do? maybe not.. but here it is anyways: yep, please, go for the “cheat” way.. just because it’s slightly different in alignment than the original, does not necessarily mean that it looks bad… it just slightly different, but still good.
Please team.. agree with Mato on this 🙂
And about the “font welding” thing… is there a lot of work to be done on deciding exactly what to weld? — and would images need to be created for that? If so… you can always ask us fans.. you can already tell that we’re all dieing to help out in some way.
if it doesn’t require any programing skills, we can help out 🙂
Nah, the welding thing I’m talking about is some pretty tough programming stuff.
hey, the “cheat” looks great, i cant even tell the difference. if it saves you some sanity and some time, go for it!
As far as the cheating issue – aren’t hacks essentially that? I think it looks great, but I know how it can be when your name is on the finished product and work represents you. Whatever you guys decide is A-OK with me as you are the experts in the field.
This project is really start to take the form of a fully English game – Great jorb to all!
I think the cheating way is the way to go if it’ll save that much time, the difference is not even noticeable at all. It may be different then the original, but most of the people who play the english version wont have a clue what the original version looked like to compare anyways.
i luv u
keep rockin’ baby
I miss daily updates 🙁
but KEEP UP THE GOOD EVERYTHING
sence the “letter welding” thingy was mentioned last I read gemmini was saying he was going to have a look and see how hard it was. I realise he may not want to go into detail, but I am curious whats going on there
It doesn’t matter if you have to cheat a little to speed up the translation. When EarthBound was released over here they had glitches in that too. Still, I commend everything you and the rest of the team have been doing. And I hope it’s possible to get it finished before Nintendo releases Brawl. They do this all the time, even to Fire Emblem fans >_
>_
sorry about that. Im having problems with the comment poster. It isn’t letting me finish what I was trying to say =(
Ok, Mato? Do it. 😀 Seriously, if you can do a quick-and-painless hack that eliminates months of problems with a tradeoff of unnoticable (to the untrained eye) cosmetic issues, then go with it. That’s not cheating, that’s problem-solving. If all that changes are the issues in those screenshots, then it’s definitely acceptable.
Hopefully the others will agree with you. Progress is already slow as is (though what progress there is definitely is appreciated — seems you all are just in a dry period at the moment).
a second post to finish a emoteicon and then a seperate post explaining that. not even I am that bad
Im surprised no one mentioned the guy up above talking about some blood spirit…
يالا يا مي
Yala any dead(?)
بروح بدم نفتيك يا ميتو
Blood spirit Naftik any Mito(?)
Personally, I wouldn’t be suprised if the person who wrote about that blood spirit thingy wrote “I AM ERROR” next, lol.
you’re a god amongst translators/rom hackers
Nice update Mato with all the enemy descriptions pics,they look great.
I’ve never posted before, ever. I just wanted you all to know how deeply I appreciate your efforts. I check in every week, because seeing your updates, seeing your hard-won progress on this work of good, helps to ease the pain that I have endured as an Earthbound fan over the years.
I thank each and every one of you, from the bottom of my heart.
i’m going into withdrawl…. need mother 3 in english…. mouth frothing…why didn’t they release it in north america
only a complete honkin moron wouldn’t release a sequel to one of the biggest rpg games ever
First: that website is my sister’s, and not my own
second: I love you guys so much…
third: Let me know if you need help from a wandering mind
fourth: I… “I miss you…”, and I’m going to cry when I play this game. . . I just know it. That commercial… they couldn’t have done it better.
I hope that Mother 3 game in english will be called Earthbound 2
because I was thinking about this:
Game order:
JAP:Mother, Mother 2 and Mother 3(this game:D)
US:Earthbound Zero(not released in US and may play on a NES Emu)
Earthbound and Earthbound 2(I want in number order please)
EU:Not a single Earthbound/Mother game were released in EU and can only play through Rom Emulators(since Im a European:((If its not coming to Wii Virtual Console in EU of course).
I’m a fan of Tomato’s work since I discovered DeJap’s Bahamut Lagoon translation project (still in development at the time). I followed the project’s progress for a while, and then forgot about it. When I came back to the site a few months later, the project was finished and I got to see a true work of art. The Bahamut Lagoon project page says something along the lines of “Everything was stalling and we were about ready to give up, and then Tomato showed up and everything rocked again”. When I saw Tomato was involved in the Mother 3 project, I immediately felt this project was in good hands. I have to congratulate every one else on the project for their work up to now as well! There are a lot of big names around this project that each deserve a great deal of praise, I just wanted to point out that Mato’s the one who really pulled up my faith regarding Mother 3.
Keep up the good work all of you! and honestly, no one will ever know how the text’s supposed to be aligned. So long as it looks good, even if it’s not “what it should be”, it’s fine. I work in a localization office and trust me, the German versions are never aligned the same ways as the English versions because of the sheer amount of text to fit (between 150%-200% longer text in German). Seeing both versions side-by-side makes you think “it’s really not the same anymore…” but the truth is the German customers are not likely to ever see both versions side-by-side and will never know so much had to be changed layout-wise. If it doesn’t break advancement on other hacks, go with the cheat, no one but you will ever know and the world will rejoice (and then there will be cake)
Cheers!
Just wanted to give my opinion, and I too agree with a majority here that the “Cheating Method” is perfectly fine. I think your line of work is what gives you that perfectionist mentality Tomato. Were a bunch of average lazy joes, who could care less over 2 pixels 😛
I agree. Tomato, Gemini, all of you who’re working on this right now… thanks to your efforts, we’ll finally be able to play an english version of the long awaited sequel to EarthBound. You’re helping an entire community, and we all appreciate this project. I can’t say “Thank You” enough, but I guess one more couldn’t hurt. Thanks a bunch 🙂
You ROCK… I just can’t express my gratitude in any other way.
I just love you guys.
Keep on going! XD
The cheating looked fine to me!
Also Mato, you might want to edit brandon’s post. No one like someone who drops the F-bomb on a previously clean site 🙁
Keep up the great work guys! You should be proud of yourselves.
What is this “real life work” you speak of?
I never said anything
i used to contribute to the comics section of this website years and years and years ago (i won’t say which ones because they stink now !) but i have been a fan ever since earthbound magically appeared underneath my christmas tree and i can’t even express how how how 100 percent purely excited i am that you guys are doing this. it is such a wonderful gift.
TO HUMANITY !
keep it up guys we all appreciate your dedication to the project!
Just want to say that all the work you’re doing is extremely generous, and we who want to play this game in English offer our thanks x1000! A firm handshake.
I rarely take the time to comment, but THANK YOU to everyone working on this translation. I eagerly await the day I can experience Mother 3 in my native language, Esperanto.
Oops, I mean English.
To Mato (oh, get it?), and everyone else slaving on this translation…you make life more exciting with every update. Keep working!
Oh, and you should think about putting a Pay Pal thingie on here, so those of us who appreciate all the hard work can send donations to help pay for your lunches or something.
Thanks, but I don’t want any money involved with this project. Money makes things ugly. Check the FAQ page, there’s more about this topic there 😛
This is brilliant really of which they are esten worrying to make a patch of this brilliant game that nintendo does not understand that in America something good in future has fans lives earthbound I am going to follow this patch kindly hoping thanks
Everyone’s rooting for you guys. Every little step you take is one step closer to having this done. Keep at it!
Way to go! All the little updates are sure adding up and you guys’ epic goal will be reached before you know it!
Everyone’s cheering you on!
Sorry to ali or whoever it was that wrote in Arabic, but I don’t understand more than a word of it (and that word is “el urus” which means “the bride” as I learned from someone’s wedding video when I correctly guessed its pronunciation).
I was actually just looking through a unicode font for whatever looked the most like that random splotch of experience points that got earned in the screenshot 🙂
There are a lot more things in unicode that I suspect I will ever be able to read, and I’m the kind of guy who recognizes Elder Futhark runes when he sees them…
In an even more offtopic note, man, left-to-right and right-to-left characters don’t mix very well at all when you’re trying to copy and paste.
Hey guys, keep up the great work! I can’t wait until it’s finished. You’re doing the biggest service imaginable to us Earthbound fans!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, No Mother 3 yet driving me crazy…..can’t sleep, must fight dirty hippes……..and signposts……………