Battle Text Leveled Up!
Managed to get a little bit of time last night, so I messed with the battle text routine some more. Fixed a few bugs, then got newline stuff working sort of. But then I realized I could do things much better and more streamlined, thanks to how the original programmers decided to erase battle text. So now the hack is much better and easier to work with 😀
Defeat text works now 
Newlines work now
One of the bugs fixed was enemy defeated text, like “Mr. Batty was defeated!” and whatnot. This was messed up earlier. The fix was real easy. Also found out why text messes up when it reaches the edge of the box. I’m gonna disable that later and do all the auto text-scrolling-up stuff manually. Blah blah blah, whatever, huh? 😛
Scrolling-up text still needs hacking 
Not even sure what that’s
supposed to say 😛
Luckily, I think I know how to fix this. It won’t be easy or fun, but it’s a simple enough idea.
There’s some more good news, though! I was really worried that the programmers had used entirely different routines for each text speed, meaning we’d have to hack 3, maybe 4 different versions of this. To my surprise, the programmers were cool for once and used the same routine for all text speeds. What this means is less headache for us and probably a few weeks’ worth of work that we don’t have to do now 🙂
Also, to my surprise, holding down the A button to make text print faster DOESN’T mess up text. Maybe it’s my new hack that does it, I dunno. But that was another hack I wasn’t looking forward to. So in just a few hours, we’ve fixed a bunch of stuff and figured out that this battle hacking won’t take nearly as long as we had expected. I was expecting Hell itself. It’s really more like the Deep Darkness 😉
There are a couple things to note, though. When your inventory is full and you get an item at the end of battle, the game asks you if you want to throw something out and get the new item. Most EB fans will know what I’m talking about. But it turns out this text is displayed using an entirely different routine. So that’s another thing that will need to be hacked. And since we’re tricking the game into thinking we’re only using one letter, the menu option stuff will be another problem that we’ll have to hack. We might just have to hardcode coordinates for the cursor there.
Cool, we got an item 
So far, our VWF works perfectly 
Suddenly, there’s no VWF, gah 
This menu will be a pain later 
Still in fixed-width mode 🙁 
Back to the VWF. Weird.
Also, there are some special text boxes that pop up in battles near the end of the game. These boxes allow for 3 lines of text. This VWF hack doesn’t affect them, so that’s some extra work. Though I’ve already had that listed in the To-Do List for months now. I was hoping this VWF would fix it, but oh well. There’s a good chance fixing the above menu stuff to have a variable width font will fix these 3-lined text boxes too. I’d show pics of them, but they’re from battles near the end of the game 😉
OK, in summary, battle text is coming along way better than I had hoped. This stuff means less work for us and a slightly-sooner final version for all. It’s definitely lame that the item-getting battle thing has to be hacked separately, but it shouldn’t be too bad. I give this latest news an A- 🙂
And now, a pic.
Awesome! Keep up the good work!
Hooray! Slightly sooner final version for all!
Zzz…
woooo im so looking forward to seeing this totally completed! keep it up guys! 😀
Awesome mahn! I’m getting very excited about getting to play! Thank you so much again for all your hard work, you are one in a million!
Awesome work, guys!
Gettin’ better and better everyday! Great job!!!
well guys….its certainly come along now. Ive followed this project forever and quite frankly, yay. I’ve got my gameboy player accessory in the mail and I will have a flash cart next paycheck. Yes, I will play my absolute favorite game series on the “big screen” and thanks to you- in english. Y’all are definately gettin’ into gamer’s heaven. I hope “thank you” is enough for all you are doing.
wow that was fast XD keep it up!
Oh what a sweet update! Glad to hear this! Keep on truckin’, dudes, you’re almost there!
“Also, there are some special text boxes that pop up in battles near the end of the game. These boxes allow for 3 lines of text. This VWF hack doesn’t affect them, so that’s some extra work.”
Is that the text I was asking stuff about yesterday? 😀
Anyway, great progress.
Though it’s strange that the game uses a bazillion different text displaying routines. Weird…
Ha! I was so busy posting on the other page, that I missed this entirely new update. 😀
The updates are continuing to flood this blog like there’s a leak of hacking work – I love it!
yay
Mato, dude! — No “Blah blah blah, whatever, huh?” !
lol, how could you say that in the middle of such exciting news! **shakes fist*
but yeah man, seriously… this is awesome 🙂
and thanks for that pic at the end… lol, he’s sleeping on the toilet! .. man i cant wait to experience that Itoi humour
and yeah i was busy posting on the other page that i missed this as well :S
Nice!
Hello – I’m interested in becoming a translator on this project. Check out my bio for info on… uh, me. And email me if you have any questions!
SWEET!
This is just getting better and better.
I wonder how much longer we must wait.
Every update makes me happy.
YAY! A couple less weeks! that’s awesome!
Come on… Keep up the Good Work!
I must be immature or something, because “peed increase” makes me giggle a little
Every time I check here I’m greeted by progress! Great work, and keep kicking butt like I know you all can!
Awesome post here, Tomato! You are getting closer, most definitely :O
Hey TonE is the GB player play full screen without strectching? Im using my psp slim to t.v. out option and it gives a good picture but it is alittle streched. I want to play this game in the best video quality possible(I know gba quality lol) on psp sceen its very good actualy and you have a key pad. Computer sceen is most adjustable but lacks larger sizes.Or i could just connect to my hdtv with a dvi so many choices whats the best????
This is really awesome. I’ve gone through most of the game thanks to your simple Menupatch v1.5, which paired up with spookychee’s translation on Gamefaq. You guys are awesome, but have you fixed the save problem? I can’t save via frogs 🙁
w00t!
whoa mato you helped with doukutsu monogatari kool
Cool!
[…] Sono stati sistemati diversi bug in questi giorni, principalmente quelli relativi alla riproduzione del testo scorrevole nei filmati e nelle battaglie: passi in avanti compiuti prima di quanto i traduttori si aspettassero, e non possiamo che essere contenti anche noi. Trovate l’ultimo aggiornamento qui. […]
It appears the above post might pertain to Nintendo’s stance on this whole thing, if I’m assuming right. Anyone fluent in.. well, I’m assuming that’s Italian. It’s very uplifting knowing there are so many fans of the Mother series all around the world. Keep it up, guys!
Tomato! Keep up the good work! I’m working on a hack of Earthbound Zero [putting the title screen back to Mother, changing names for consistency, etc.] and I’m having difficulty finding the offset that determines how much EXP an enemy gives [I want to increase it in one version… because a friend of mine doesn’t “have time.” to play RPGs any longer] Is it one byte, or is it individual for each enemy… and if so, do you know what control code precedes it?
Feel free to ignore me, also. I’ll figure it out eventually.
This really goes to show how complicated this kind of stuff is. Appreciate the job you guys are doing.
I *twitch* need to knoew what’s going on while playing Mother 3. And I also *twitch* need a Mother Collection on DS.
Karuvitomsk, that’s just a website posting about the work being done on this site, nothing by Nintendo is being said there, unfortunately…
I have a question for the development team. Is the To-Do list written in order of priority? Is the first unchecked thing at the top of the list what you guys are working on now?
Sweet. At this rate you’ll be done pretty. I’m Guessing Late April If you keep this up.
Awesome. Keep it up! Thanks for keeping us posted. Im waiting for the update titled “WERE DONE!!!”. I might go into cardiac arrest….
I… I love you. *sniff!* This is the most exciting news ever. Let’s make beautiful, beautiful babies together. I’m sure your significant other and/or my significant other will understand. It’s for a good cause.
Keep up the good work! Maybe you think that progress is slow, but I think it’s anything but! Good luck.
Wow… Its ME in the toilet!!! O_O Itoi is amazing, he even put ME in his game!!!
…or maybe not… could be some other guy… 😛
Anyhow, enough tidbits about me- I’m glad the battle programmers were cool for once (and hopefully, for a little while longer). Means less headaches for you, Mato, and a sooner release date for us! n_n
Peed increase? Yikers!
I like the pic. It made me giggle. Is Mother 3 really chock full of jokes like this? Playing through the Japanese version and not speaking Japanese, I tended to simply ignore searching around for little dorky notes and things, and speed through text. From these pictures it sure seems like there’s a lot more little things to find in this game than there was in EB. I can’t wait.
AHHHH, I love you guys!
By they way, you all are cooler than most thorn bushes.
Good luck with the upcoming hacks to fix battle things.
haha “peed increase”
Looking fantastic so far. I’m really looking forward to playing this, then bugging all my friends to play it.
Mato its great that you keep working on fixing the battle text even with lots of real life work and finally the original programmers help you by erasing the battle text making the hack much better and easier for you to work with and making lots of progress in less time.Hopefully the original programmers work in other areas of the project can keep making things a bit easier for you to work on.
Oh no… XD peed increase! Wow… your history of hacking and bugs sure has its his fill of bloopers! 😮 Thank what be your trials and tribulations serve to humor the community, as well as yourself I’m sure. Even moreso when vanquished. 🙂 Although, peed increase will always be in our hearts. XD
Great job guys keep up all the hard work!
I guess that “peed increased” and the toilet pic is from the same situation 😛
Blargh. Well, I don’t wanna make a whole new update about this, so consider this reply a mini-update 😉
Did some more work on the battle text routine, my god this is an absolute mess. I’m amazed they even got code like this to even run, much less look flawless 😯 Anyway, the main thing I got done today was figuring out some more about how the code works and then trying to come up with ways to disable its auto-line-wraps and auto-line-scrolls. Once I can disable that, things should be smooth sailing, but it’s gonna be tough 😐
In the meantime, I got some neat things to happen while testing out stuff and prodding the original game code, so I put up two tiny videos that are neat.
warning: possible spoilers in “related videos”
video 1, video 2
Hacking this thing really sucks 🙁
—————–
V-King: I can’t remember, but near the end of the game there are two types of special text. And both cases will probably need lots of extra hacking 😐
Asok: I didn’t even notice it until you pointed it out. I don’t know what that means though 😛
Hell Hound: You can play it without stretching and it’ll take up about half the full screen, and you can play it at almost full screen with things slightly stretched. I play the almost full screen way and don’t mind it at all. It’s probably worth it, especially since emulators have timing issues and all that, and M3’s battle system is based on timing.
^_^: Yeah, but just barely. I don’t even remember what I did, it probably wasn’t much. In fact, I’ve only played maybe a few minutes into Cave Story.
Elrich: To be honest, I don’t know. My old EB0 hack upped enemy’s exp points, but that was based on a hack that sarsie wrote for me for the project. So I didn’t do that part myself. It’s probably not too hard to find. There’s also an EB0 Enemy Editor somewhere out there, might have to look on the PK Hack message board, but that might make things easier for you.
Kaljinyu: No, it’s more or less in arbitrary order.
elmo_lol: With the entire project? Definitely not gonna happen that soon.
G.Wicks: Which pic are you talking about? Cause the peed increase thing is just a bug thing 😉 If you mean the Zzz thing, then yeah, the game’s full of stuff. Most everything everyone says, except for maybe serious scenes, has that weird Itoiness to it.
verbal: We’re already OK in terms of translation stuff. Thanks for the offer, though. If you’re interested in helping out other ROM translations though, check out some of the help wanted ad things at romhacking.net. The good folks there are always looking for translatorial help 🙂
wow you guys are reallying giving it your all. I’m right now playing Earthbound and trying to complete it for the first time in my life and im loving it (im inside brick road right now). hopefully by the time i finish Earthbound you guys would be done with the translation and i could play Mother 3 right away keep up the good work.
Looks like you beat Giygas in that second video, good job.
gah! there were spoilers in them there related videos!
YEEEAAAHH great work!
Yeah folks, when Mato posts links to youtube videos of mother3… you gotta make Sure that you dont even glance at the related videos
those videos are scary… hacking this must be frustrating at times, eh?
but.. at least its not like you can’t take a day-or-two break of everything related to mother3 rom hacking, and just let your mind not have to be faced with it for a while 🙂
Yeah, I try to keep related videos from being spoilery by keeping the word MOTHER3 out of stuff and by giving videos weird unrelated tags 😉 But sometimes it takes a while to get it right. If you’re the guy who wrote something in the EB forum recently, then don’t worry, it doesn’t sound like you were too spoiled, to be honest.
Anyway, last night I had a dream I was sitting here hacking this battle text stuff. That’s never a good sign 😉
Ugh… I just watched the videos and saw a huh-YUGE M3 spoiler in the related videos.
That really *&^3ing sucks – Just a warning to everyone.
If you guys saw what I think you saw, it doesn’t really matter, as that was a video of stuff that was removed from the game. But I put a red bold spoiler warning on my post above anyway.
hey you guys should check out this earthbound/mother mmorpg, still in the works, but the main creator asked me to spread the word around. Seems like it has some potential :D.
http://www.skyon.be/index.php
Does anyone know if it’s possible to hack/emulate ds games? I’m kind of worried the 3D version of of final fantasy IV won’t get translated to english.
Yeah, there are DS emulators and DS patches out there.
http://ff4.wikidot.com/translation-patch
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=69248
The FF4 one is equivalent to our MOTHER 3 Menu Patch, though for some reason they don’t want to call it a menu patch, thus confusing many people who immediately think it’s a full patch 😐
Brian: Final Fantasy IV will come out here on DS. Why? Because “Final Fantasy” is in the title. 🙂
It’s also a good game, although maybe we don’t need 18 versions of it!
As I see this project shaping up, it gives me more and more hope. To go from bug-ridden and broken to something resembling a final release, makes me eternally grateful for all the hard work that you and your cohorts are putting into the project. All this dedicated hard work, for the fans. No glory or reprimand in it for you, just sharing a great game with the people who want it so badly. I admire that. Thank you, Mato. Thank you, Jeffman. Thank you to every single person working on this project. I truely hope everyone realizes the shere amount of dedication going into this project and appreciates it as much as I do.
(removed question)
Another mini-update, since this isn’t really worthy of a normal update.
After much hair-pulling out, I finally managed to trick the game into thinking what I wanted it to, thereby disabling its auto-line wraps and auto-line-scrolls. That’s very good news, because now I can do my own auto-line-scrolling 🙂
Of course, something always has to be a pain in the butt. For some reason the total string length that the game gives me is no longer valid most of the time. So I gotta figure out a good way to get the correct string length. It’s made even tougher by the fact that the string has no terminating markers. If you’re a programmer, you know that makes it a good deal more complicated. And the routines the game uses to copy and append strings are pretty crazy too 🙁 Bah.
Anyway pics.
Left pic is showing that the game doesn’t do its automatic newlines every 22 characters and its automatic text scroll-ups every 2 lines 🙂
Right pic shows the results of the current incorrect string length problem. Why does everything gotta be such a pain all the time, gah.
——————
J: Probably your questions are best suited for the MOTHER 3 forums on starmen.net. There’s even a thread full of WIP pics and info that’ll probably answer your questions already 😛
Speaking of leveling up, do you guys have any intention of adding those little things that pop up in Earthbound when a stat rises particularly high? You know, like:
“Oh baby! Jeff’s IQ went up by 100!
Probably something that would have to be added later, or disregarded because of space, but it would be awesome if it was in there.
Great question, pauyasfyla. I like that suggestion a lot
Wow, keep up the amazing work guys! I really appreciate all you are all doing, because I am very interested in playing this game, and I dont know any Japanese. Can’t freaking wait to play this.
pauyasfyla: Probably won’t, as it’d be a good deal of extra, difficult work. Plus, I figure Itoi knowingly didn’t include that stuff in this game, for whatever reason.
Hm. Perhaps it was because Earthbound was a lighter game? Who knows.
I have a question Mato. I don’t mean this to interfere with the project in any way.. but how much of this project is known by Nintendo? I figure Itoi only wants his project to reach the furthest parts of the world, but.. Considering you are so close to completion and the such, do you believe that Nintendo would try to stop you at one point or another? I know that most companies turn a blind eye to translation projects, but considering how popular this project is, I am just curious. I love you and Jeffman for everything you have done, and I cannot wait for the day this patch is released. Thanks 🙂
Just beat EB for the seventh time today and thought “WTF? The game is over already? I want more!!”
That’s why I want Mother3 so much! 😉
Great work! Keep it up! Can’t wait or M3!!
Bologna?: Nintendo’s full of people on the inside who want to see this project done. 😉 I wouldn’t be surprised if they *applauded* Tomato’s work, and infact encourage it to some extent. They can’t lose money from something they have clearly no interest in. Refer to some older blogs for more information regarding those on the inside. 🙂 By all means, Nintendo’s giving this to us as a gift; their blessing. The higher ups and marketing dept. gave them, what REALLY makes Nintendo, a thumbs down on anything official. So in spite of it all, I’m almost certain they support Tomato. A semi-supported hunch. Then they can just show the marketing dept. the statistics of Mother 3 + english patch downloads, as a way to say “thanks a lot…” and I leave the rest to your imagination. 😉 Of course I’m kidding, I know they wouldn’t do that, but god wouldn’t it be cool if someone actually rubbed it in like that? Marketing has FAIL written all over their ugly mugs, haha.
There are tons of games coming out that I want to play. High tech, great graphics, smash brothery games… but there is one game that I cannot wait to play! That is Mother 3. The fact that you and your team are selflessly translating this game is awe inspiring. I could not thank you enough for doing this.
Bologna: Many high-up people are already aware of the project. Reggie even said he knew of it about a year ago.
What’s strange though is that many people on the inside DO look forward to the final translation. So although Nintendo still won’t release an official English version, letting this translation go on is the next best thing it can do. I also think that if they wanted us to stop, they could have already.
There’s a whole lot more to the story and a ton of extra reading material here.
Mato,when the final patch will be finished will it be a problem if i apply it to a rom that i already applied the menu patch on?
You will need to apply it to the original Japanese ROM. Applying it to a menu patch ROM will most likely cause crashes and may cause house fires.
Thanks!I knew that the game will crash
Wow so amazing to know that high people from Nintendo know about your project and how well it’s going. Anyway, I’ve been checking this(blog) for 2-3 months and it’s very easy to see how fast you guys are. I’m also very happy to hear that the English version is also going to include some jokes, like in Earthbound.
So, just want to to say good luck on future difficulties.
I’m going to make about ten backup copies of the patch when I get it so it stays safe… put one in my car, one at work, one at home, one at my parents’ house, one in a safe deposit box… etc.
To quote the A1 Steak Sauce commercial:
“Yeah – it’s that important.”
Is it possible for Mato or somebody to put up the ending scene (not the credits) translated on Youtube? I really didn’t get some of that. Or would it be too glichy and such?
I dunno, I guess I can try it out.
I tried out the ending just now, but things are still too glitcho and all the text is still very bleh first draft stuff. So oh well.
You’re so rad, Tomato. You’re bad and rad. You’re brad. I’m sure you’ll fix Flint’s increased pee soon. Try operating on his bladder.
In case anyone was still confused by the salmon thing, here’s something resembling a useful link.
Thanks for trying Mato!
That looks like some pretty nasty garbled junk. It’s interesting to see that the text isn’t bound to the text box – does that mean the text box is just a background image?
Yeah, I’d say that pretty much most every game out there that uses windows like that only has the graphic for it on the background, then writes text over it in such a way that makes it look like the text is bound to the window. What I’ve been doing the last few days is undoing the way the original game does that so I can do it my own way. The garbled gunk is just because the game thinks it should print more text than it should, so I gotta hack in a more accurate text counter thing next. Then, if all goes well, I can move on to making the text scroll up with each new line after it prints on Line 2.
And then I might have to do this all over again for that dumb “throw away this item?” stuff, blargh. If we’re REALLY lucky, it might be as easy as making the game use the same hack. But this is MOTHER 3.
Wow – I’ll be crossing my fingers for you. Is that what’s left of this particalur task?
Yeah, it’s one of those really big things we’ll be able to cross off the to-do list. I was hoping hacking this would also hack other special battle text, but oh well. I’m gonna have to test this hack a LOT too, since it’s such an insanely complicated one. I hope there aren’t any major bugs I run into 🙁
Wish i could hlp but im 14 and know nothing bout computers
Also im playin the game for the 3rd time agn
Thnks for the menu patch
LOL, peed increase.
1) Midna, stop with the pee thing
2) forgot to ask this last update, but right now, how many letters are allowed for Lucas’ spcial PK attack?
srry, didnt mean to direct that 2 midna, but to all of you
I believe it’s at 8 now. We almost had to cut it down to 7 or 6 to get the PK thing to work right, but used some dual-tile trickiness to keep it at 8 I think.
Kumataro: Took your comment out, not because it’s a bad question, but story-related questions really don’t belong on a development blog, you know? And I don’t want to answer stuff about the story here in front of everyone, I want people to experience the story for themselves when the patch is done.
If you wanna talk about the story, the starmen.net forums are a good place to do it 🙂
Ok…..
So. Is more than half the translation done?
Man only 10 out of 35 things crossed off the list. Guessing we shouldn’t hold our breath.
Those glitches must be an annoyance to fix up I would assume. Either way, you guys are progressing on pretty well, I seriously can’t wait for the final patch. Take your time though, you guys are going to need the time. I send no pressure toward you to rush.
By the way I have a question to ask, is hacking any different than creating a game? (Coding-wise)
Completely different. To compare it to something, if a game programmer is like a guy who designs and builds a house, a ROM hacker is like an electrician who has to come and rewire the entire house because the designer guy didn’t do things how the people living in the house want.
And sometimes the electrician will find giant bugs in the walls that refuse to die 😉
Another mini-update. Managed to get the game to always print the correct # of letters now. If you’ll see above, the game wasn’t doing that quite right. Along the way, I noticed the game also loading text that is used by another hidden debug menu, but we don’t know how to unlock it yet. But that was a neat surprise. Maybe some time after the translation is out, people can try to hack the game to unlock this other menu 🙂
But anyway, then I hit another snag — I need to make the [WAIT] control code work again. Otherwise it’ll print line after line without waiting for the user, until the very last line. I already have the fix for this planned out, but now I really need sleep.
I know it doesn’t sound like much, but this battle stuff is really getting there, and way faster than I expected 🙂
I’m glad to see things are going well. Don’t work yourself too hard now. =)
Brian don’t be an ass
Yeah Brian. Shut your face. Mato’s busting his ass on this.
BRIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m so happy to hear that from you and Unsavory Maggot. I was wondering about that for a while, but was too afraid to ask since some people might take that question offensively… Great readings Mato, thanks for all of the links. Best of luck, you have my support until the end of the world itself. I
mato smokes meth
Hey, what Tomato does in his free time is his business, buddy. Leave the man alone and let him do what he does best. That is, translating and hacking, and translating some more. 😀
He’s overcome alot of things. Glitches, bugs, colds, homesickness, but we all have to remember one thing. It’s not what he can do, it’s what we can’t do that he’s fighting for. 🙂 Don’t push the hand that feeds… or something like that.
When you get most of these battle text hacks done, it’d be great to see a full battle video from start to finish, even a short one, that incorporates a lot of different hacks (such as the level-up text, the item drop text, some menus, special-name PK ability, etc…), so that we can get a feel of all of this coming together. So far, we frequently have screenshots or videos depicting one problem or one solution at a time.
I’m always very excited when new posts come up, or mini-updates in the comments section. keep up the good work!
I know its very glitchy, but even with the youtube videos, it seems semi-playable. Are you guys thinking of releasing a glitchy beta so people can see more in depth of how your progress is going?
Brian: That’s true, but many of the things we’re already working on and are half done. And as we’ve seen in the past, it’s possible for a handful of things to be crossed off on a good day. It will still be a while though, yeah.
Inzoum: Of course, I wouldn’t work this hard not to show the battle text hack finally working 😉 Though the “get the item/throw the item away” thing will be extra work so I might just take a video before I get to that part.
Also last night was horrible sleep, I kept dreaming I was hacking the game but couldn’t escape because ghosts were in the room forcing me to keep hacking. I wonder whose ghosts they were 😯
Edracon: The game’s not ready to be playable. Things look good, but only because I haven’t taken videos of the bad stuff 😉 The game’s still not stable enough for a real playthrough. There won’t be any patches until the final release, sorry.
tomato you are so nice you diserve a mister saturn plush doll
at least there weren’t any nightmare goblins. maybe some ghosts though..yea that would be cool
Tomato: Your dream almost reminds me of what was going on during early progress with your EB0 redux hack, what a comical coincedence! 😮
You do great job all the time, but let me tell you about something else:
You really should place your Play-Asia afillate link somewhere else besides the bottom of FAQ page.
(myself, I track this translation project from some time, but I found it recently)
You can also add a line about the fact that ANY shopping (not only Mother 3) made through the link supports you.
I already bought a Gameboy Micro via your afillate link and will be happy to support you more by doing my frequent shopping at Play-Asia through it every time.
You should really make this opportunity to support you more available!
Again, thank you for all the efforts on the translation.
Well, to be honest, this isn’t about money anyway. And PlayAsia has been out of MOTHER 3 for weeks/months now, so it’s not too important anymore. Plus, the tiny commission from each one (just a few cents for each thing) goes to starmen.net’s server bills, not to anyone on this project, so it’s not vital that it be advertised here. I don’t want to give people the impression that the people on this project are trying to make money or get money. Money makes things ugly and people crazy very fast.
You’re right, but it costs nothing to buy anything through the affilate link, so I’m happy to support you that way (the only I can, besides the comments).
Hey Mato! Great mini-updates. Don’t wear yourself out, though! Have you heard from Jeffman lately?
Hey Mato are you going to do a real update sometime soon instead of the mini updates? I always love seeing new pics and stuff from progress that has been made! Keep up the great work and looking forward to more of your updates!
Oh by the way are there any games that you are playing at any OTHER free time you get? Just curious to see what, if anything, you would be playing.
Very, very cool.
I cant believe how fast you’re hacking at this battle stuff… I just read through the posts and its like.. ” *flash* hey guys i figured this out but this other problem comes up” — ” *flash-flash* hey guys look i just figured this thing out as well ”
very cool 🙂 this is awesome,
and ghosts forcing you to hack the game? lol… this is how you know you need to take a break
Cool down you guys. I was just saying it’s going to take a long time. If you guys want to hold your breath anyway, i guess you can. I’d just recomend being ready to wait a while though.
> I wonder whose ghosts they were 😯
I bet they were working with the Threed zombies. Better get some zombie paper and blast some Runaway 5 tunes to get rid of them.
Reminds me of my dream last night, where I was running away from something in a futuristic maze with carnivorous plants hanging over the walls that had sticky tentacles. I don’t think I ever found the exit, either…
MetroidMan: Yeah, when I get enough done that it’s big enough to put on the front page. I’m fighting with the code to make [WAIT] codes work correctly, but it’s a big pain. Way bigger than I expected, and following the code will drive me crazy eventually 😛 But I wanna get these [WAIT] codes working before I do the automatic text scroll, which is already half-implemented now actually.
I also don’t have time to play games, sadly. I’ve barely even played Twilight Princess, and I got it the day it came out on Wii. Before I even had a Wii, even. My games backlog goes years back now. I’m thinking maybe I should give up on gaming, but then I realize that I’m webmaster of a gaming site, I translate games for a living, and even my blog is nothing but games and EarthBound. 95% EarthBound. So guess my backlog’ll just be there for whenever I retire or something 😉
7ucky: Yeah, Jeffman’s still around. He’s been looking into all the other things on the to-do list.
a thought occurs to me…perhaps the reason for so many different routines for text and whatnot is that ol’ Itoi was being a queen and nintendo twisted their panties so tight that they intentionally made Mother 3 insanely annoying to hack. this would prevent us from getting a translated version. This has been a point ridden so hard that it’s beyond dead but nintendo is seriously gonna piss me off and make me quit buying their stuff. I mean eventually a company is gonna end up having to answer to their customers. maybe not anytime soon, but give it a few years and let sony or microsoft come out with something bigger or better that EVERYONE CAN ENJOY. ugh…sorry guys im really sick lol….guess im just griping
You guys rock!!!! Keep it up!!!
colbuendia, I can’t recall asking anyone to activly post on every forum/page with a comments section about Saturn Valley Online. It’s cool you want to tell people about SVO, but don’t do it on my behalf, thank you 🙂
Did that info I posted about SRAM save patching in the last posts comments help at all Mato?
MetroidMan got me thinking… Tomato, have you ever looked into the Super Robot Wars games? I’m playing MX on the PSP and it is godly. O_O
Err… I saw a weird video about battle-backgrounds on Mother3… … (Had to write SOMETHING related to M3, y’know?)
the suspense is all ways gonna be killing for this patch…until it comes out, then i can rest…in…PEEAACCEE!
Nice like these mini updates, thanks and keep up the good work
Sorry Skye, just wanted to spread the word, those voter things really dont do much.
Bah, just spent the past 13 hours on hacking the battle text, but it keeps throwing problems my way. I’ve had to write and rewrite and rewrite code. I’m so close, yet for some reason after a [WAIT] code the game does weird things that make no sense. I reaaaaaaaaaaally don’t want to have to try to map out the entire battle text routine, it’d take days/weeks and even then might not be helpful. I can’t ignore the [WAIT] code thing, as the design of the entire hack might have to change to accomodate it and some other control codes.
In summary, I like the outside of this game, but the inside is nothing but hell and death. These programmers designed their text systems so stupidly.
Progress will be slow the next few days as I work on real life work some more 😐
That hole love and peace thing makes me think of Trigun for some reason. Vash is a total oddball, haha. Well, don’t worry about the [WAIT] code too much, it’ll come to you eventually. You’re like MacGuyver with this stuff… you could probably translate, hack and patch Mother 3 with a paperclip if you really had to. 😀
Wow, I must be tired. That’s whole, not hole. 😮 Funny, I remember hitting the w key… *glares at the keyboard*
Wow! 13 hours straight!
Sorry it yielded nothing but anger and disappointment.
I always have my fingers crossed that these problems find speedy resolutions, but it appears the original programmers have done everything possible to ensure that this is not the case.
I know I don’t want to peer into the innards of mother 3. It might turn me into stone, medusa-style.
See kids, this is why good programing is important. It keeps nice people from becoming angry and spitful people. Of course, bad source can be a good protection against reverse engineering as we are currently seeing.
13 hours… Man. Its like the programming is held together with rubber bands and band aids. …virtual ones, of course.
Following the salmon named Flint, I looked into the author’s other writings and found this one fairly amusing:
I think a good novel would be where a bunch of men on a ship are looking for a whale. They look and look, but you know what? They never find him. And you know why they never find him? It doesn’t say. The book leaves it up to you, the reader to decide. Then, at the very end, there’s a page that you can lick and it tastes like Kool-Aid.
Don’t overdo it, Mato. We don’t want you working so hard you end up in hospital!
Flash card discussion’s allowed here isn’t it? Delete away if it’s not, I don’t want to get (you) in trouble.
If there’s people wondering what flash card setup to get, the EZ Flash V 3-in-1 works flawlessly. There’s no slowdown and even save data on both the unpatched and menupatched ROMs works fine running from either a DS or a GBA SP – GBATA not required. I used GBA_ExpLoader to load the ROM to the cart from a CycloDS Evo. I’ll try it on my GC if I can be bothered to dig it out (I’m sure it’ll work).
as always great job, I know this is hard work so it pisses me off to see assholes making snide comments such as “we shouldn’t hold our breath”
honestly, if these guys weren’t translating it you would probably never play this game, so be thankful and patient
so mato, are some of these issues with the games programming and other stuff so hard to fix that it’s gonna take, maybe…until september to fix? i’m guessing the patch will probably be done though, or i could be wrong…
I found a glitch in the patch for item/character/naming text.
Kefense +7 below (spoilers)
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/3849/kefense7ad7.png
That’s actually related to sprite limitation issues, it’s getting that K from one of the Ks elsewhere on the screen. I bet if you moved the cursor around it might change sometimes.