Script, Enemies, Music
A couple things of note today.
First is that we started looking into the main script problem, because it’s just a pain in the butt and we gotta do it someday. As you might recall from this video, the problem was that the game was for some reason ignoring [BREAK] control codes after 33 letters for some reason. Even the super hackers were like, “Huh?” after staring at megs upon megs of disassembly logs.
Anyway, after looking into it some more myself, I was left as puzzled as the others. Then, when I described the problem in more detail to the team, Jeffman was like, “Oh, that’s easy. I had that same problem with the map location name routine.” So he goes and fixes that in like half an hour 😯
Before fix 
After fix
What this means is that the game shouldn’t crash or freeze anymore due to script problems! (well, assuming the script is formatted correctly first, which it will be in the end)
Of course, fixing one thing always reveals many other problems behind it.
First, there’s only enough memory for about 50 letters per line. That’s not bad, since we used to be stuck at 32 per line. But it’ll still be a pain at some points.
Second, it turns out the program only has enough memory for 64 (or 60 or so, I forget the exact #) letter tiles. So right now, once we hit that limit, tiles start to look ugly and buggy (and possibly crashy) as seen here:
We need about 20KB of RAM to hold 100 letters’ tiles, so Jeff’s been working on trying to relocate it all to this (hopefully) empty block of RAM, but relocating RAM stuff with this game can be annoying, so it’s being smelly right now.
But at least we’ve figured out the cause of the evil crash problems. The cause was actually pretty simple, the programmers made some assumptions, and we, without any of the programmers’ documentation, didn’t know about them. So it’s a good thing Jeff already encountered a similar problem with previous hacking. Very cool 😀
In the meantime, I’ve been working away at the enemy descriptions some more. As always, it’s really slow-going because I have to cram everything into under 82 letters, while constantly checking the text in-game to see if it’s formatted correctly on-screen, editing the text to fix formatting, checking it in-game again, etc., all while trying to keep that weird Itoi-ish-ness in the text. Right now, I’m only about 25% done with all the enemy descriptions. I’ll keep chipping away at it and keep people updated.
He likes to size up situations 
Good thing these aren’t real
Also, I recently did some hacking with the game to see if there was any music that was missing/left out of the final version. There are some interesting findings here, for those who’ve already finished the game.
Lastly, for those who’re interested, here are MP3s of two MOTHER 3 tracks from Smash Bros. Brawl. Fear not, the titles are spoiler-free. If you’ve watched any of the work-in-progress videos on this site before, you’ve probably heard these songs already.
There are plenty more songs from MOTHER 3 in the game, but I like these two best 🙂
SNEAK EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that during my music hacking (as mentioned above), I came across another sound clip (“What’s that?!”) that we gotta record into English. So that’ll be neat to do.
keep up the good work!!!
/shucks, almost. Good work everyone! Keep it up! I LOVE YOUR SOULS!
First! Hurrah! Good work again, guys. 😀
Snap, lost the race to first, haha. Almost. Next time for sure!
Huzzah! More text fixage!
That’s some nice progress (all of the recent stuff) even if you seem to think it’s insignificant (much like that sign).
Those MP3s are amazing, and great choices for Brawl 😀
Good job, glad to see progress!
did you ever name that snake?
Nope, haven’t decided on one yet.
w00t, another update…
Good thing Jeffman has done several hacking projects, huh? Now that this problem is (mostly) out of the way, looks like you guys can finish the hack a bit faster. Keep up the awesome work guys
Hey Brian, you’re talking about the chomp snake, right?
…
Maybe you guys could come up with a few possible names and have a poll on what to name it?
Wow, this is great news! Glad to see the scary crashy problem finally start to become resolved.
I wish I knew what sound clip will need to be re-recorded. It’s starting to look more and more (especially with Brawl coming out soon) that I’m going to need to play through M3 with a walkthrough translation.
Either way, I eagerly await the finished product you guys are putting so much work into! Thanks!
Sweet.
How do you people respond to these forums so quickly? In less that 5 minutes after Mato updates, there are already 4 posts.
Looks good, I’m glad you fixed that scary main script problem. Way to go Jeffman!
Looks great, guys.
Yay! Progress! In honor of this progress update, I vow to not eat any tomatoes today. Err, that is, if you don’t count the tomato I’ve already eaten prior to this post. OK, I won’t eat any MORE tomatoes today. =P
Looking NICE! Wonderful work as always!
yay!!!!!!! im so excited!
great work mato.
The main script bug error is fixed!!! Well, one of the two is fixed, anyway. Still gotta find a way to keep the game from crashing. Hopefully, Jeffman’s fix will make things all better :). Then, it’s mostly just translating and patching up the menus. Thanks JeffMan for this catalyst.
Great teamwork guys (yeah, I can’t stay away). I’m six hours into Mother 3 so far…
lol, “Itoi-ish-ness” ..
Seriously though.. we REALLY appreciate how you’re working so hard to keep that earthbound feel to the game through the script, so thank you.
I got all excited until i read coconuts post above this one… — previously i thought that all of the game’s crashing due to text had been solved.. 🙁 ..because then it would have been smooth sailing…. maybe not so smooth, but at least not rough… ..Still, its some reallyyyyyyy amazing progress! 😀
Yeah, there’s still crashing. Basically, we upped the limit of 32 chars per line to 50. But now we need to make sure all lines stay under that, or the same crashing stuff can and will occur. So we gotta format the script to fit within those guidelines. Also, the tile problem is there, so that may or may not cause crashes, I’m not sure yet.
But basically, the cause of the crashes is known, a hack designed to avoid the crashes has been made. There’s still more work left with the main script routine, but there you go.
Anyway, even after all this tough main script stuff is over, there’s still the battle text, and I don’t think there’s going to be any easy way around that. We know the problems in detail there thanks to Exophase, but because of hardware limitations we may have to rewrite most of the battle text routine from scratch, which is much harder than hacking 🙁
Yay. That’s all I can say.
First, good work on solving one of the big problems with the hacking!
But this:
“Anyway, even after all this tough main script stuff is over, there’s still the battle text, and I don’t think there’s going to be any easy way around that. We know the problems in detail there thanks to Exophase, but because of hardware limitations we may have to rewrite most of the battle text routine from scratch, which is much harder than hacking :(”
worries me a bit. That doesn’t sound like anything fun to do at all… I’m sure you’ll get it done fine and dandy someday. I just wish this wasn’t such a big problem both for your sanity and ours.
Great work so far, guys.
Still–as cool as those songs are, I am UNBELIEVABLY PSYCHED that they’re including both “Snowman” and “Humoresque of a Little Dog” in Brawl. SO PSYCHED!
Awesome stuff! We need to hold a contest or something in order to see who has the best voice for the “what’s that!” sound file. Eh? I’ll gladly record myself if it means being featured in the game Mother 3! I bet many other people too.
I am going to cry…GJ you guys….I love u all
…these are seriously from SSBB?…
…WAHOO!!!
Yeah anyway, back to seriousness, I got a 404 when I tried to go to the previews about 10 seconds ago
Wow, way to go Jeffman! Keep it up, dudes!
Incredible. JeffMan is better than the SuperHackers °_°
“I missed you.”
tomato, jeff, other unmentioned hackers. word up.
You Guys are the best! Those are some kickass songs
Thx Mato, you make me feel like crap about my translating skill ( compliment)
Thanks for another update and those awsome songs.
please keep working!!! i have been waiting so long!!! i will be so happy when this comes out =0)
Ah, nice! Thanks for uploading the mp3s ^_^
With each update of your progress on here, I grow more excited for Mother 3, and from what I’ve seen on here so far, you guys are doing a phenominal job.
I was tempted to do the menu-patch thing to play before Smash Bros., but it seems kinda like a step backward. Smash doesn’t look like its going to be that bad in the spoiler department, at least not enough to spoil playing through the game fully translated :3
“So he goes and fixes that in like half an hour”
$8^ |
indeed
Jeffman is now level what-he-was-before-plus-one!
Oh baby! Hacking went up by 5!
Sweet! The (Unified) Mother 3 Fan Translation went up by 23!
PP went up by 1!