Various Hacking
Just a quick, short, nice little update for now.
I forget where we last left off, but the 8×8 font was looking nicer and thanks to some helpful reminding from people here, I got it looking even better. I also got the abbreviated names working for the battle memory menu, while everything else uses the full names. I tried the same trick with item names, but alas, no luck. Expanding the item names is going to be hellish.
Abbreviated name here 
Full name here
Shortly after messing around with this stuff, I noticed a strange bug that made the menu on the left mess up on occasion. Luckily, it wasn’t any of our code, and eventually I tracked down the problem. Enemy descriptions can only be 82-letters long, which is a surprisingly nice limitation. I was expecting the game to be evil and give us a 20-letter limitation, especially since this description text is sprite text, so this was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. As long as descriptions stay under this limit — which pretty much fills the entire description box anyway — then the left menu won’t bug out. I also updated my text tool to warn if a description is too long. Counting description stuff by hand is a pain 😛
Also, sometime before or after this, I started looking into some of the other problems on that hacking to-do list I posted a month back. I next looked into the task of making names in outside name boxes center correctly. I got far, but then I couldn’t find the current names on the stack, but then Jeffman was like, hey it’s in [r9] and then I slapped my forehead and then he wrote a hack too so I threw out my own hack and then it all worked. Kumatora’s 8-letter name caused some trouble at first because for some reason the string terminator for these names is F3 rather than FF, but eventually everything worked out. I also moved the names up 1 pixel to look better. So we got that problem out of the way, sweet.
I started looking into the in-battle nameboxes and managed to pull them up 1 pixel, but I still need to finish looking at how the x-coordinates get calculated. Slowly but surely, all the lesser stuff on the hacking list is getting crossed out.
Oh yeah, I also fixed a little tiny thing involving an 8/16-bit problem in the Status menu. I was surprised how straightforward fixing that actually was.
Speaking of menus, thought it’d be nice to take a look at how they look at the moment.
Equip menu 
Status menu 
Shop menu
Just remembered that the “Shop” in that top box needs to be slightly moved, shouldn’t take but a minute.
Yesterday, while working on the battle menu stuff, I was like, “Hey, if we ever get extra time at the end, we should add a thing to the game that lets you know when you’ve collected all the Battle Memory entries.” That’s a little extra sidequest that people playing MOTHER 3 have given themselves, but there’s no easy way to tell if you got everything (other than comparing a couple hundred things by hand), so I thought it’d be nice if the game told you by putting a star or something on the screen. Checking that wouldn’t be too hard, it’s pretty straightforward stuff. So Jeffman came back like 2 hours later and said, “Done.” 😯 Damn.
My idea was to have a silver star if you collect all the entries, and a gold star if you collect all the entries + all the alternate stuff that each entry has. Only the silver star is implemented right now though.
There are actually a few tiny little things like this that’d be cool to add to the game, but that other stuff can wait until the very end of the project. Got too much other stuff to deal with at the moment. But at the very least, this battle memory thing will encourage players to play through the game more and explore more. Added replay value! Actually, now that I think about it, adding extras into games like this isn’t that uncommon in ROM translating, even the Bahamut Lagoon translation I worked on had a music player built from scratch included. Anyway.
Now that we know the technical limits of the enemy descriptions, I’m gonna go translate all 200 or whatever enemy descriptions and get those working. It’ll be a nice break from hacking for me, translation is my real home 😉
Every day the project seems to look more and more complete. It’s getting pretty exciting 🙂
It’s turning out great, and it’s good to hear stuff is progressing at a rate you’re happy with.
The wait’s worth it guys, keep up the good work.
Every one of these updates makes me feel warm and tingly inside
SECOND! W00t!
I think that it’s really looking good and actually playable! But I hope you guys are backing this all up somewhere safe.
Keep up the awesome work guys, much appreciated!
Zip Code Ness: Yes, I make regular backups, and the people on the project all have access to regularly-archived builds and source code.
I love you guys
I must say, you guys have been doing alot of work and its finally paying off. Thanks a bunch for doing this, I can’t wait for the final product.
I give you all my kudos. And then some more. You guys are awesome.
Thank you
I’m impressed! It doesn’t seem like too long ago that the menus looked like a mess.
Now I just wish that play-asia would ship the damn copy I ordered. :'(
You guys are awesome, truly truly awesome. I wish there was some way we could all repay you. I expect this translation to be even better than anything NOA could’ve put out. Dammit, you guys rock!
Also, I find it interesting that Brawl has been pushed back again. I’ve got this theory that there’s some guys over at Nintendo waiting for you all to finish this project before they release it.
Yes! soon the world will end! lol
any way we could get an updated menu patch with some of these fixes? 😀
Very impressive work. Thanks for the detailed updates – I’ve done a bit of this kind of stuff and it’s very interesting to see the day-to-day challenges and triumphs.
Excellent work, Mato & co.
I’m really excited to hear about all these updates.
WHOO! Every time that I come on and see a new entry it makes me happy. Just hoping one of these days i will log on and see “ITS DONE!”. Cant wait for that one… keep up the awesome work, thanks again.
Yeah, I liked the music player in your Bahamut Lagoon hack.
Everything is looking really good! I can actually imagine this being done before Brawl, especially with the pushed-back release date.
eye luv it!
Did I just get a shout-out from Mato for the “t” suggestion?? Oh happy day! (An even more relevant question, do people still use the term “shout-out”?)
Now, regarding this statement:
“My idea was to have a silver star if you collect all the entries, and a gold star if you collect all the entries + all the alternate stuff that each entry has. Only the silver star is implemented right now though.”
I have only played through Chapter 3 in full Japanese, no translation walkthroughs. What is this “alternate stuff” you mention? If it’s something spoilery, then don’t worry as I definitely don’t want you to divulge too much.
Finally, “Every day the project seems to look more and more complete. It’s getting pretty exciting :)”
My sentiments exactly! You guys are doing something amazing here and I when I think back to the beginning of this blog, it really feels like the team has gotten so far. There is a light at the end of the tunnel… 😀
By the way, about the alternate name for “chomp-snake”. How about “Sadistic Snake”? That implies a snake who loves to bite people, and, as such, would bite them very hard.
Just a fan who wants to give his support. You are heroes, all of you.
This blog is great, too. It makes waiting a much more enjoyable process, and it means that I’ll never look at the perfectly placed text without remembering how weird the programming was.
Nice bit of progress there, it’s good to see Kumatora’s name fitting in nicely 🙂 It looks like you’ve still got the old non-curly “t”s in the outside name boxes that someone pointed out last time though.
The Reconstructed Caribou battle pic has a superfluous space at the start of the second line of text, presumably the line break should replace it? The Cattlesnake pic on the right of this page has it as well, but the Ostrelephant one doesn’t.
Lookin’ real nice! 😀
Looks like you guys almost have the whole game translated now. I hope you guys can either fix those crashing bugs or find a alternate route like shortening some stuff where the crash happens?
Fudgehat: the t in that pic is old because the pic was taken before the t was fixed 😛
Also, battle text is 100% crazy, so don’t pay any attention to any of that stuff for the time being. If anything, it’s just a miracle that the game put the automatic line break where it did and not in the middle of a word like 90% of the time.
The FAQ actually talks about stuff like this, so 99.99% of the time, we’ll have noticed any weird formatting or stuff, so there’s no need to point it out. Ugh, I remember the old days when everyone would point out the missing text hooks 😯
Wow, i haven’t checked here in almost a month. Its nice to see so much progress being completed. At this rate i think you guys will finish it this year. So exciting!!!
also, i kind wish the font was a little more vertically condensed. typographically – it would be more readable with more space between the lines.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to… which font? What text where?
I’m just being nit-picky about all the text. mostly the menus, the names, and battle text. i don’t know if it’s possible to condense it without losing the integrity of the earthboundish feel.
THANK YOU!
The whole star idea for list compleation makes games like 1000x more fun for me!
Such a simple idea, but even the real creators didn’t think of it and add it.
You guys are doing all of us, and even Mother 3 herself an awesome service!
Thx!!
RupeeClock: I know! Remember these old pics from like a month and a half ago? 😯
Piney: I agree about the quality thing too. Even so, they would’ve done it much faster 😛
beep: Why, does the menu patch need anything fixed? As far as I know, there aren’t any issues with it and as it’s served its purpose, I don’t think there’s any need to do any more versions of it. Unless I’m missing something…
Jigga Brown: The most likely scenario is that at some point the really evil hacking problems will get resolved, and once that happens, everything turns into a “matter of time” thing, where everything else is just editing/polishing/testing. So there’ll probably be plenty of advance notice when the patch is nearing completion.
Z. Mortimer: Nah, there’s no way we can do all these hacks + several script revisions + testing before March.
7ucky: It’s not exactly a spoiler, but as you’ll recall, enemies have front and back sprites. I was thinking the gold star would appear when you have all the forward + back sprites (excepting enemies that have no alternate sprites).
If you guys want it done quicker, have US test them 😛
(it was worth a shot!)
Those month-old pics seriously look 6 months old. You all have done SO much for this.
Looking godly.
Omg thats awesome! 8D
Pretty awesome. However, while the star thing is neat, I hope you guys don’t add too much stuff that wasn’t in the Japanese version.
Ah righty. I was assuming that there were separate fonts for separate text routines or something. The programmers certainly seem crazy enough to do something like that :p
Every time you post a progress update I get all excited again. It continues to look awesome and I can’t wait for it to be done.
Ignore what NecrosaroIII said; add as much extra stuff as you want!
More then anything I’m glad that this project hasn’t collapsed under its own massive weight. I haven’t wanted to play Mother 3 more then I do now – not even when it was hinted at in Earthbound oh so long ago.
Anyway, keep up the great work and I’m looking forward to playing it whenever you finalize the patch!
NecrosaroIII: Nah, the most we’re gonna do is this star thing and maybe include some enemies that were cut out of the game. And maybe add some code that will blow up whatever you point your GBA at.
cool! really??
A fantastic effort! I can’t wait for it to be finished!
Wow Tomato(or Mato, whatever you want) This is really coming together great. I’m not sure if you get Nintendo Power, but they had an article about games only in Japan, and they said that mother 3 ” Would take ages to translate into English” So I was wondering how long did it take to Translate the Game?
I do not care for the new Nintendo power I just subcribed for 2 more years when the annonced the switch also. like for exsample there tendancy to print things like that
Honestly I think you guys can get it done before super smash bros brawl is released, but then again i don’t really know anything
Thank you very much for your continued work! I’m beginning to think you guys will have this thing out before Brawl after all (not that I mind waiting as long as it take, this is an amazing example of community dedication)!
Hey Nico… Is your name from the codename phase of SotC? If so, great taste in games/developers 😀
I think you change the abbreviation of Reconstructed Caribou. People will mistake “recon” for “reconnaissance”.
I agree with Beck, the abbreviation may need to change to be more clear.
Or you could go with a synonym:
Altered Caribou
Modified Caribou
Modded Caribou
Excellent progress! And the screens are SO PRETTY!!!
This is going to be one fantastic translation!!!
Aww, so Kumatora is gonna fit? Darn, ’cause I was gonna suggest alternate names like “Lily” or “Attila” that’d fit her. Oh well.
The SSBB makers are on this team’s side: another delay. I get the feeling that once you guys finish this, BAM, Brawl will magically appear in stores. No pressure on either team, though. Just a hunch.
And that stuff in Nintendo Power is a total lie. If I were you, once my merry band finished the translation, I’d write down the time it took to do so, then rub it in Nintendo’s face. That might get me (or you) in trouble, though. Never mind.
Anyway, this whole thing is far more than I’ve ever hoped for. I’m-a gon’ play evary inch-a o’ this game!
Isn’t it impossible to get every battle entry?
Because of that situation on Tanenihiri island, and the fact that that enemy isn’t added to your collection unless you beat him with everybody at 1 HP/PP
Right?
Can you post an updated to-do list? Just to give us an idea of how things are going along? I’m getting STOKED!!! You guys rule.
🙂
The progress in the equip menu,status menu and shop menu has been great and I love your idea to add silver star and gold star if you collect all the entries.
8 letter names still in! Hooray!
Hey, Mato! It would be pretty cool if you could replace out-of-battle names with stylized pics of thier name, add a few side quests and/or some new items! I think after the translation is done you should try doing that!
What do you consider your progress to be left?
Can you give us any form of list to what needs to be done; and what needs to be fixed?
How much do you figure you’ve done? it looks like lately you’ve made absolute leaps and bounds
Oh, I thought the script revisions were finalized
my bad
Jackalope: It’s still not set in stone, we might have to drop down to 7 letters. There are still other problems in other places with 8-letter names, 2 that I can think of for sure, and one strange bug that I noticed yesterday, but I’m not sure if that’s related to her name or not yet. You can always name her whatever you want in the game anyway, though.
VGK: You actually CAN get that entry, you just have to do things in a roundabout way. To try to avoid spoilers, I’ll make it kind of vague sounding, but you gotta fight and lose to the thing before you do the thing you would normally do before you fight the thing.
kalbtrombone: I don’t have one at the moment, and there are always little things showing up. I’ll maybe make a newer list sometime soonish though.
Travasharctix: huh? I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.
ashes: Again, I’ll make a list sometime soon, but for the most part you can look at previous updates and see what stuff has been done since. I even made a post that crossed off lots of stuff. Progress-wise, I think we’ve come a good way, the only REAL things holding us back are those major issues that will require hacking + completely redesigning and rewriting code to fix said issues. Most everything else is just a “matter of time” thing.
Well, I wasn’t exactly being serious. It’s a good thing if you can make names eight letters long. I was psuedo-complaining because I thought if you couldn’t, I might manage to contribute meaningfully to this project, and because I think I’m clever. Neither of which is true.
But hey, I should shut up. It won’t really affect me, because I’m calling her Peach when I play the translation. But it would be great if you can manage seven ’cause I want to call Duster Hinopio.
great work…will there be translation in the debug room? if there will be then great. the code is: CA1D8DB3689FDAFA9CC263F268DE05371DCAC2C54FCA9184.
i did a weird glitch with it where Lucas appeared to be a truck thing…movement wise and the fact that he could run over things aswell. keep up the good work.
The discussion about backup earlier made me wonder, do you guys have any sort of source control set up? I thought it might be useful since there are several of you working on the project. Anyway, just a thought.
i’m dying to play this game…. it looks like you guys have made alot of progress
Amazing work you guys are doing here, and these regular updates show lots of cool little bits of the process that are great fun for someone like me even if it’s difficult or convoluted work on your part.
I actually just finished playing the game for the first time in Japanese last night. I missed a lot thanks to my rather tenuous grasp on the language, but it’s an amazing game on all counts and I absolutely cannot wait to play through it again in English. Best of luck in the hacking, and hopefully you’re all having as much fun with this project as the people who made the game did when making it. 🙂
You’re getting there, that’s very exciting!!! …and, I mean, extra bonuses in your patch??? Wow, that’s just… ;_; (tears of joy!) I love collecting as much stuff as I can in games, and believe me, as far as Mother 3 is concerned, I’m so looking forward to your final patch, I’m gonna spend HOURS on it, exploring, collecting… in short, having a blast!!!
Viva “The(Unified)MOTHER 3 Fan Translation”!!!!
Greetings from Spain. Thanks for everything.
Saludos desde España. Gracias por todo lo que haceis.
TROY said 7 hours ago: “i did a weird glitch with it where Lucas appeared to be a truck thing…movement wise and the fact that he could run over things aswell. keep up the good work.”
Um… You can press and hold B and then charge against a really weak enemy and automatically destroy them by ramming into them like that. That’s not a glitch, that’s a feature. 😛
Everyone on the translation team gets a beer on me when this thing is finished (Not joking). I have a variable off day pre-scheduled for when the final patch is dropped, so that I can enjoy this experience I’ve waited for since..well…before christmas of 1995.
You guys are truly my heros! I’ve been waiting for this game for so long! Oi!
YAY! EXTRA BONUSES!! I got neat ideas on extra bonuses if u want to make like something to unlock like beating the game without a star on battle dictionary unlocks to play as Other Party members:
Lucas: Claus
Kumatora: Hinawa(as a bonus party member with PSI since you name her in the beginning of the game).
Duster: Flint
Boney: Salsa
Getting a Bronze Star(Get at least one hidden enemy in the dictionary) unlocks: Form your party of your choice like: 1:Flint 2:Salsa 3:Lucas 4:Hinawa
Getting a Silver Star unlocks: Have ALL PSI powers for all Party members.
Getting a Gold Star unlocks: Party members into Mother 2 characters:
Lucas: Ness
Kumatora: Paula
Duster: Jeff
Boney: King(Ness´s pet dog)
Claus: Picky
Hinawa(check above): Mom(Ness´s mom)
Flint: Poo
Salsa: Saturn(A Mr.Saturn)
Getting a shiny star(shining brown, silver and gold(Complete the game with all entries of the dictionary and all secret items such as riddle cards and doorknob) unlocks: a feature which enables you to have the items which you would like to start with.
To be honest I have many ideas about this game to be included.
These were just examples but if you have enough free time you maybe can include these things if you want to.
PS: Wow! that was a long comment I wrote…O_O
Alerek: This is a good idea. I bet there are a handful of Mother 3 translation fans near each of the team members so that everyone could have celebratory drinks bought for them. I’m up for a Seattle celebration if anyone is nearby!
Any of the translators or hackers near London? I want to buy you drinks as well! ^^
anyone here from Ontario,Canada GTA area
TROY: Yes, the debug room is translated. But at the moment, because of technical issues, many of the people in this room will crash/freeze the game if you talk to them.
Aaron: We got things decently organized, and there’s not a whole lot of code being written and edited. Many of the hacks are single byte hacks or just a few bytes here and there. But we got a system in place so people can always have the latest stuff whenever they want it.
RPG fan: Uhh, I think that’s a little bit much 😯
Others: It’s a cool thought, but probably not very practical, as everyone lives all over the world 😉 If anything, just save your drink for the day the patch comes out, then you can all drink simultaneously 😛
What sort of enemies were cut from that game that you would add back in as a bonus?
So have you guys thought of a new eta yet? Even a rough one would do…
From what I have in mind, I’m in the wait for an November-ish release..
i just have one question, and i’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, but do you have a rough estimate or anything when the patch will be done? i’m so eager to play it!!! thanks for taking the time to do this. we’re all grateful you’re translating this game!!! keep up the good work.
Like the FAQ page says, there is no ETA. There’s no way to anticipate how long it’ll take to hack the really hard stuff.
Awesome.
I can’t wait.
Keep it up, guys.
Mato, I would like to say one thing though. I smile everytime I see how much work is being done on this game. I think Nintendo knows you guys are working on it and they’re probably holding off Brawl until Mother 3 is done being fixed/translated. I’m guessing it probably didn’t take too long to translate either. What’s more amazing is that you and the team have managed to fix ALMOST every single big glitch in the game. At this rate, i’m sure it’ll be able to get finished in time. If it’s released AFTER Brawl, I’d still appreciate all the work that went into it 😀
You all deserve a Franklin Badge!
*The Bubble-Gum Monkey gave it to Team (To)Mato!*
Wow, it seems like you need to title the page:
MOTHER 3 Fan Translation | We can’t tell you what percentage is done, how much time is left, and we don’t take requests like short-order cooks!
Maybe that’s too long, but maybe a disclaimer at the top of the page? It seems like the majority of comments rabble on about “Could you please add…?” or “You should change the name of…” and other things. I mean, don’t you get sick of that Mato? 😀
Lookin’ better and better with each update. Glad I remembered to pop by and see what had changed…
That’s looking amazingly good, you guys are my heroes. Keep it up! I love the added stuff so far; it’s great to know you’re not only translating but actually making some new stuff, shows your dedication to the project and the community which makes me sure this is gonna be an absolute success.
The level of quality that seems to be going into this is stunning too. As good as a translation from NOA would provide, or even better. Can’t wait for the coming updates.
bubble-gum monkey: NOA didn’t hold Mother 3 in high enough regard to localize it. What makes you think they’d delay Brawl, the title that will likely be one of the Wii’s best sellers? Besides, I always get the impression that Nintendo HQ is the puppet master. I think Nintendo HQ told them, “We’re taking longer to finish up some stuff in Brawl” and NOA said, “Yes sir, thank you sir.”
A big thanks to NOA. My GBA was sooooo full of original traditional RPGs already I don’t know how I could’ve found the time for Mother 3. You know, with Pokemon, Golden Sun 1 & 2, and Mario & Luigi. Oh wait, I think that’s IT for Nintendo-published traditional RPGs on the GBA. Holy shit, do you know what would’ve filled in that genre nicely? MOTHER 3!!! The DS doesn’t seem to be faring any better. Oh well, it’s far more important that I be able to catch ’em all.
Sorry, I gotta get it out sometimes!
hey mato!! whens this thing gonna be done????
just kidding.
keep up the good work. you dont know how happy I (and tons of other people) are when we see these updates.
im drooling at the possibility of the other hackers coming back for a glorious reunion.
Wow, startin’ to look nice, and i don’t have to worry because i finally got my hands on a M3 ROM. Now, to twiddle my thumbs until the patch comes out…
you guys are the best in the world =]
Awesome o/ looking sexy
Y’know, I came back from school yester-night and commented to this post (but at someone else) without realizing it was an update! O_O I thought it was the same post as the one before this one. XD
Jeffman is amazing btw. Two hours and then: Done! O_O
You probably heard this only several thousand times before, but nice job! The menus and what-not look MUCH more polished. When do you think you’ll be done? When people ask me that (I make computer games as a hobby; nothing special), I usually make an approximation, then add 3 months to it. Feel free to use that technique if you decide to respond 🙂
Enough with the requests for an estimated finish time. It’ll be done when it’s done. And since there are so many variables involved in determining such a date, I don’t blame the hackers for insisting that an estimate cannot be given. But I’m sure we’re all grateful that it IS getting done, and I think its to the point where we can be sure that nothing can stop it.
But I agree with Steve when he says that Nintendo is not delaying brawl for Mother 3’s sake. Brawl is coveted by fans of every series ever produced by Nintendo. To make the other genres of fans wait just to please us would not be a smart idea. Hopefully, though, the delays are caused by the last minute adding of all those characters who ever starred in the Smash series before. And maybe some more stages and features would be nice.
Oi, Mato…
I dunno if this is the best place for this, but you seem to be a hard person to contact 1-on-1.
I asked Ian Kelley about translation as a career, and he said video game weren’t the greatest, but that you’d had experience in anime (and possibly manga?) but he didn’t have any way to contact you.
If it’s not too much trouble, could you email me? lavkian at yahoo dot com.
The conversation’s going a little off-topic with the Brawl discussion, but really, the delay is most likely due to a shortage of discs or problems with the online servers (who are pretty likely to go down hours after the release). You can hardly add full characters or content to a game in 1 week (in Japan’s case) or even a month, specially considering how these games need a production phase before going into production.
I even doubt Sakurai had anything to do with the latest delay; most likely he finished the game a while ago, and now the only thing left was intensive testing and game production. As I said, most rumors about the delay center around Nintendo not being able to estimate the crazy amount of pre-orders they were gonna have or even trouble with the servers during the last phase of online testing.
don’t get too hung up on the extra stuff, what if adding stuff creates more bugs down the line? you guys are doing great, just don’t neglect the gameplay bugs and whatnot, i couldn’t care less if the text is off by 1 pixel
Apterous: There was a LOT of stuff cut out of the game, but there are at least 2 enemies that should be fully put-back-able. Nothing fancy, just a “Tiny Li’l Forest” enemy that looks like an evil Christmas tree and an enemy called Alkaline Man that look like a battery (and actually looks a lot like the prince from the Katamari games).
Everyone: There is no ETA.
bubble-gum: It WILL be after Brawl, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. Also, I believe 0% that Brawl’s delays are related to this project.
lavkian: It’d be best to e-mail me at tomato@starmen.net. But I’m always a busy guy so I have a bad habit of not responding right away, but I’ll try to break that habit 😛 I’ve translated games, anime, manga, and plenty of other stuff I can’t remember.
Hunter: Which is why I said, “…other stuff can wait until the very end of the project. Got too much other stuff to deal with at the moment.” 😉
the delay is due to a localization issue
compared a one week delay in japan to a one month delay in the US, especially considering there was 3 weeks left before the US release
Good Job Guys, It seems that since Jeffman entered that things are going real good real fast. You guys make a GREAT Team!!!
I really don’t give a crap if Brawl comes out before the patch.
You guys rule, and anyway, I doubt Brawl would give away any huge spoilers, even on a trophy description.
Take as long as you need to make it as awesome as possible.
(Anyway,I don’t even have a Wii yet, so its np for me)