The Meaning of The
Not a whole lot has been worked on since the last update, yet a lot HAS been done. It’s weird. Anyway, things are going to get busy for me the next few weeks, but rest assured I’ll be hacking away at this thing every spare moment I get.
Anyway, down to business, first the big-ish stuff. After fixing item descriptions, I needed to get back to work on the custom control code system for battle text. I was almost done, I just needed to do some codes for item names. Well, I sat down and did that today, it went surprisingly well. Item names can now start with vowels and not have a/an issues, and the game will use the/a/an/some as necessary, or sometimes it won’t put anything at all for special cases. Pretty nifty. You can see this in action in these screens here.
So, now that that’s basically done, we can cross another thing off the to-do list: “Add control codes for he, she, it, a, an, the, they, cohort, cohorts, etc.” Nice.
So the next logical step after this was to tackle the custom control codes we’re going to need in the main script. Luckily, byuu’s code is friendly AND documented AND easily expanded AND ready for things just like this. If only all of the game’s original code was so nice 😛 Anyway, because of all that, implementing the custom control codes we need for the main part of the main script took only maybe an hour.
The game wouldn’t go down without a fight though — there are probably hundreds of different “You got [ITEM]!” lines in the script, sometimes they use generic item codes, sometimes they use specific item codes. And those that are in text block 0 are treated differently than all other 999 text blocks. And different item codes act differently. So that was a pain to try to work through, but I think I got it all in the end.
And because the game likes to be such a jerk, it took me about two hours just to get this line to work right.
So when you go around picking up these nuts, just remember the sweat and more sweat that went into even these tiny crappy lines of text 😛
Anyway, this means we can cross another thing off the list: “Add in new control codes for things like a, an, the, some, he, she, it, they, them, etc. EarthBound had some of this reprogramming done to it too, and it made things sound nicer and more professional.” Two more things kick the bucket! I still need to actually go and insert these control codes into the entire script and all the battle text, but I can do that during the second draft of the script later on.
I’m not sure if we need to implement he/she/his/her pronouns for the main script. I don’t know if the need ever arises. We could probably go the extra extra mile with instances of “Lucas and company” — that sounds weird and “friends” doesn’t work if you only have one companion, so I could maybe do it how EarthBound does it, but it’s not really necessary right now. I’ll probably sneak it in while the editing guys are busy working on the third draft of the script though 😛
I wound up taking more pics than I thought I would during this latest hacking session, so let’s look at a few more just for fun 😉
Hurray and stuff! Or is it hooray? Languages are interesting.
Anyway, in other news, Jeffman looked further into the item name length expanding problem. He quickly figured out all the stuff I did back in November, but went on to look a little deeper. It turns out that the menu programmer created a weird buffer/a bunch of glyph bitmap structs instead of printing it right to the screen, as the battle programmer did. What this means is that the number of normal (meaning non-sprite) text letters printed to the screen in menus is limited. This is dumb. Keep in mind that we already have issues with sprite text limitations on menus. So now we’ve run into two different walls for the two different types of text. Why the menu programmer wanted to do things so roundabout is beyond us, but because it’s there and because it’s done so inefficiently, that means a lot of hard work we gotta do. Most likely we’ll wind up doing another version of text welding at a very low level. I realize this is all jargony talk, so if you don’t like that stuff, disregard this paragraph even though you’ve probably just read it. Short story: curse you menu programmerrrr
I’ve also gotten the game to do a weird freeze glitch on rare occasion in battles. I haven’t looked into it yet, but I have a good idea what it is and will check it out when I get some time.
This leaves me with the question of what to work on next. I might go back and finish the battle text stuff since it already needs some looking at, and the rest of that battle text hacking will probably be a lot like the main battle text hacking. Or I could go mess with the sprite text welding stuff. I’m not sure yet. For now it’s sit back and relax for a short bit 😛
Oh yeah, I just remembered that we got a quick mention in the latest issue of NGamer, a U.K. gaming magazine. The two-page article about the MOTHER series has some MOTHER 3 spoilers, but down at the bottom there’s a quick nod to us: hi Thanks to ishuta for letting us know 🙂
Also, I updated the FAQs page ever-so-slightly, because there’s been a bunch of repeat questions lately.
Anyway, that’s all for now, this turned out to be a much textier update than I expected. But the good news is we’re getting closer day by day 😀
Good work guys!!! I’m from Brazil and I always look for an update.. You’re doing a great job!
Awesome man! Great job!
Beautiful job. Looks like things are coming along wonderfully. It’s great to see how much progress you have all made.
Good work!
I use hooray.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a decent understanding of how much work this is, but lately with your news posts I think I can really see you getting excited about how much progress is being made and (dare I say it?) it seems like you might actually be having fun with the project.
At anyrate, It’s nice to see you in high spirits. Keep on chipping away at that code. I’m sure you’ll get there soon enough.
Also, if you don’t mind my saying, I thought the Lighter’s Lumber thing could’ve used a “the”.
Truckin’ right along, eh? Great progress. I don’t understand why the menu programmer decided that they had to do so much extra stuff to just put some text on the screen. Ah, well… the world may never know…
Every time I see an update I get excited at the thought of playing this game!
Haha, really. Mato’s complaints about the menu programmer always make me chuckle for some reason.
Old West: Dunno if it makes any difference in your case, but Lighter is the name of a character.
Actually, that’s a different story then.
You’re up this late too, tomato? And these guys too? So I’m not the only one.. 😮
Curse you Menu Programmer!!!! 😮
Cool, this is coming along real nice, gotta save by time it’s done.
It’s nice to know it’s coming along! Thank you!
*faints*
I think we’re running out of praises to say. Does a simple Kudos sit well with you guys? 😆
Yo, long-time reader, first time commenter.
I know you’ve addressed this question before, but I gave some earlier entries a quick skim and couldn’t find it. Anyway, I seem to remember you stating at one point that you’d be using the “official” names as used in Brawl. Does that stand? Will the village be called “Tazumili” in the final version? Also, will “that one name” (you know what I mean) have an explanation on it (a possibility I remember you kicking around) or will it just be a straight retcon, with no mention of the previous name? I mean, even the Mother 2/EarthBound sticker in Brawl has the new name. Or is that still undecided, like the title? This might be FAQ material, if you don’t mind my saying.
Eh, didn’t mean to get so wordy there. Sorry. Keep up the awesome work, and keep it real.
Pretty much everything’ll be what’s in Brawl, luckily they didn’t mangle anything or make up anything out of the blue. It’ll be Tazmily though, as that was the official spelling for over a decade according to a few sources, including NCL itself. And it’s my guess, given that the translators originally had his name as Klaus in early drafts of Brawl’s translation, that they didn’t have access to or knowledge about these spellings and had to make-do with what little they had. We know they definitely didn’t have access to Itoi and that NCL didn’t provide too much info; I don’t want to give out details but part of the reason we knew about some Brawl stuff in advance was because the NOA translators didn’t know details about EB stuff and had to ask around the company. Also, I hear there are name misspellings with several non-MOTHER-series trophies too.
Things like the other stuff you’re asking about will probably be retconned but we’ll have a page up or a section in the readme that will explain the whole process and explain details about all the characters and all their name stuff, so it won’t be out of sight out of mind or anything. That’s one extra good thing about fan translations — you can include all kinds of extra notes and such 🙂 I miss having that ability when I do professional translations sometimes.
that menu programmer guy sounds like a jerk… though he may or may not have meant to be one O_o
Flint is a Nut! Sorry, couldn’t help myself…
I say we find out who this “Menu Programmer” is and see how fast he can run. Maybe that will make him think twice on putting limits on sprites AND normal text. I wonder if he actually had any experience.
The best thing about an unofficial game/patch/translation, I think, is the fact that you guys can tell us what problems are occurring, take suggestions from us and even ask questions. It’s not like you guys will say, “I’m sorry. That information hasn’t been released yet.” The only non-released information is things you aren’t sure how to fix yet and where to obtain the ROMs of anything. This is a rather long message wouldn’t you say. I think it would be awesome if real game producers released all this info. You guys RoCkS!!!!!!!2
Again, thank you for your hard work, Mato. You guys rock!
Also, I wanted to point out that there are only 8 items left in the Project To-Do List pertaining the game itself- and that doesn’t count the progress that has been made in solving those problems!
It’s amazing how far this project has come, and it only adds to the awe-inspiring drive behind the Earthbound fanbase. I just can’t thank you people enough for being such hard-working and devoted individuals. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Yay! Sweet Job! =D
I love you. Many many times over.
These regular updates are a joy to read ^_^ Keep at it guys!
“For now it’s sit back and relax for a short bit”
No.
You work harder and faster until it’s done!
>:O
Sensei Jinx: If it’s any consolation, I moved straight to the sprite text welding stuff right after the update 😛
Sometimes you feel like a Nut…
Sorry, it had to be said. Great job with the translation so far (long time lurker).
I am consoled, for now.
>:|
I like how much emphasis you put on the words, even if it’s just a simple a/an/the/[null]. As a writer that makes me respect you much more (and I already respected you immensely!).
I’m begin to be worried. With all this updating and all are you guys getting any sleep or able to eat and or drink?!!??!?!???!!???!?!?
KKH3049: Don’t worry, they are robots.
AHH!! I see. I wanna be a robot! this is sooooo not fair!
>:{
I wonder how many comments there are here saying they love you and will have your babies. 😛
It doesn’t matter much; robots can’t have babies 😛
I just have one thing to say.
“Chirp chirp chirp.”
=P
“It doesn’t matter much; robots can’t have babies”
But they can abort them!
HAW HAW HAW!
(Giygas joke)
*puts up flame shield*
<_<
Oh I said you should drink more and stuff, but you definitely should not. for it might cause you to asplode and we would not have no more Mother 3. :.{
i would like to read this article. where could i find it?
I’m really glad to hear that things are going so well. I have trouble remembering that there was actually a time when you were an inexperienced ROM hacker, because you seem to have learned a hell of a lot lately and you’ve been doing great 🙂
Keep up the good work!
cruznik: here, though there are some spoilers in there. So watch out, you people who are trying to avoid that stuff.
…and friend(s).
woot woot! The anticipation is maddening. and lol @ the menu programmer, hope you guys don’t have TOO much trouble dealing with his mediocre programming!
Here’s a shout out from Minneapolis, rock on Team!
just a sec,lucas is leading the team in those two pics……yet kumatora gets the goods?wait?(i just KNOW this somehow some where makes sense,but i cant find out how! dang it tired brain of mine ,WAKE UP!
… If Lucas’ inventory is full, it’ll give you a choice to give the item to somebody else.
I’m sure once this is finished, Mato will never want to hear anything about Mother 3 ever again 😀
well i just drank 5x the 24h dose of cough syrup, but i don’t think i’m hallucinating
HOLY Crap MATO you are THE MAN… such quick progress… what an effort. wasn’t expecting the main text CCs to go by so easily… and WOOOHOO jeffman is back on the scene
And Exo posted recently i think
exciting times in motherland! (woah I can’t believe that’s the only ! in this post.. it reads as many more…..)
h00ray! Awesome job as always!!
Don’t worry Mato, we’ll think about all your hard work not only when picking up nuts, opening presents or fighting Mole Crickets, but every time we read the tiniest line of text!
I gotta tell you, I just beat Earthbound for the first time not even 10 minutes ago. I would always get to Winters for the first time and get bored, but that’s not my point. The ending left me wanting more, and I’ve been watching your progress for awhile (since mother3.org actually). I checked out the To-Do List and it seems like a finished patch might be done sometime this year. I’m not getting my hopes up, but with how much has been done since this time last year, how much is left to do, and how optimistic you’re sounding, I think I can allow myself to look forward to it.
tl;dr – Earthbound fan eagerly awaiting the patch. Keep up the good work guys!
Mato, if you or any of the other members of the team are ever around Wilmington Ohio, I’ll buy you guys a steak dinner (or whatever if you’re not into steak)
Sensei Jinx:oh……well……i feel stupid.thanks.
It’s the extra effort going into stuff like this that makes me glad I’m the type of person who enjoys wandering around rpgs and talking to/examining everything/everyone. Speeding through a game always felt like a waste of an experience to me, and I’d think stuff like “man, how would I feel if I threw all these neat bits into a game and someone just sped by and ignored them?”. Knowing how much work is being put into this makes me anticipate spending an absurd amount of time picking through it all that much more.
Everyone’s already said it, but it can’t be said enough. You guys rock.
So when are we going to start calling the game Earthbound 2? Are we going to change the title screen and how it looks?
“Zip Code Ness said 8 minutes ago:
So when are we going to start calling the game Earthbound 2? Are we going to change the title screen and how it looks?”
>>> http://mother3.fobby.net/faqs/
I love you guys so much. ;__; *tears up at these frequent updates* You don’t know HOW much we appreciate this. When you guys are ready, I am going to pimp it out SO bad (at the risk of sounding like a cultist–blue, blue).
Awesome!!
Can’t wait to play M3!!
Me and a friend can’t wait to get our hands on the English version, and guess where we are! In India!
That’s halfway around the world.
People all over the world wish to play M3, and you guys are the only ones who can grant that wish!
Keep up the great work!!!
Don’t let us down!!!
How exactly DOES Salsa use the Dung? 😮 I never tried that in battle, or out of it. I mean I know what it does; but I don’t know what it does when you use it. 😮
good grief how long did it take you to level Flint that high??
About 2 seconds using the debug room 😛
The to-do list is dwindling more and more – great job, guys!
I will remember how hard it was to hack this whenever I pick up a nut now.. Keep up the great work!!
Ha @ Mato. I never thought about the fact that you guys can pretty much instantly do whatever you want in the game, given the fact that you have it all there…
Hey, I have a question about credit. Are you guys going to translate all of the Japanese names of the people who originally worked on it for the credits? And where are you going to give yourselves credit? I’ve seen fan translations that insert their name in the opening, whenever you start the game, but you could also just be discreet and add your names to the end of the normal credits. And, out of curiousity, will you have “Mato and Jeffman” or your real names in the credits?
This whole thing is just so awesome…
All the end credits are in English already. Dunno what we’ll do about us, if anything. I know Jeffman long ago wrote a program to edit the credits, but I’m not sure there’s space/time/room to add anything. Plus that’s something to be worried about at the very end and not now 😛 I wouldn’t put my real name in the credits, though. Not sure I even care about being in the credits.
If you use your real name, I’ll trace down where you live.
And I’ll send you a basket full of money, and love :3
Mato, you’re so humble. What a hero.
btw, I don’t say hurray/hooray, I say “huzzah!” or “bully!” or “righty ho, old bean!” But I’m old school.
Robots rule.
aaaawessome :DD Does anybody know what issue of NGamer it is, it’s not in the copy I have. Is the May or April copy?
ps I will never look at nuts on the ground the same way again!
Wouldn’t it be better if it was “There was some Nut Bread inside the present!” instead of “Inside the present, there was some Nut Bread!”?
INB4NITPICKERS
Oh, seems I’m too late haha 😉 But great work Mato.
And also, I found the line “Flint got a nut” pretty funny, since it’s another way of saying uhh…haha, think about that.
I’m not saying EarthBound is infallible. But sometimes it seems like people want to nitpick a little too much it feels like 🙁
Wow. Every bit of Attention To Detail requires extra work, hard work, and often extrahard work. I know this first hand. And now here you are able to expound to the masses what goes into this kind of thing.
(Anyone who ever tried to open the dresser drawers in the Wild West level of TimeSplitters_2 knows what Attention To Detail means. Or jumped down the well with Marin in The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Link’s_Awakening. A/a/An/an/The/the/Etc./etc. is crazy work.)
Thanks Mato and Jeffman (or is it Mato and his friends? or Mato and company?! ahhhhhh!) for all this extrahard work. *whew!*
lol, If you were to publicly give out your adress, Mato, do you realize you’d probably drown in fan mail? XD
Well, I promise you right now, when I get into a career of game’s design and programming, I promise my code will be easy and expandable (even though I have to take out the extra time to do so, but it helps me anyways :-)), just in case you guys ever futz around with any code I ever end up putting into an future games. But, I can understand your pain, and I wonder why some programmers don’t just code as they ought to make it easier for others!
123 Fake Street
But to be honest, that kind of talk is creepy so let’s steer clear from it.
keep kicking ass! not a day goes by that i don’t check for updates, i can’t wait!
Mato, I’ve just recently caught up with the progress of this translation, and all I can think about is the amazing dedication that goes into something like this… I’m sure that you’ve heard all kinds of praise like this, but it really stands out against the general trend in fan translations. I am a long time Fire Emblem fan, and I find it extremely annoying that I can’t find a decent translation of any of the SNES FEs… I thank you for your leadership and your faithfulness to the EB community.
Lt. Dan: Not sure, you probably already know this, but a pretty sweet-looking complete FE translation was done very recently, see here.
Is the weird struct text thing a way the menu programmer got around the sprite limit on the menus, or is it just a weird arbitrary thing?
Is the text limit (number of sprites) + (amount of room in weird struct thing), or some bizzare function of or a “whichever is smaller” of those?
Good to hear you’re going for the spirte welding, I’ll be very excited to see you have that working 🙂
Dammit. SPRITE welding. Yay for noticing typos JUST after hitting submit…
Mike, I don’t think that it’s so much that other programmers code poorly, but more that there are several programmers, each with their own styles and preferences, and everyone is under a deadline. Everyone has to get their part done, and then it all has to work together, and, to be fair, they never expect anyone to look at it later, so long as it works. So, different people do different parts, and they do it quickly so that, most importantly, it works. The only bad part is that it comes out looking… well, you’ve heard Mato’s complaints…
Anna: The normal sprite struct/buffer thing is unrelated to the sprite text stuff. In fact, there’s almost no point in displaying text with sprites on the main menus. What’s even dumber is that the menu programmer mixes both sprite text and non-sprite text in many of the menus.
See the text on the right that says Weapon, Body, Head, etc.? That text is displayed with sprites. The text that says Offense, Defense, etc. is printed with normal text. And the character’s name right above that is printed using sprites. The whole thing is a mess, and I’m assuming the reason for implementing a buffer/struct system for non-sprite-text is because from a very high level design standpoint, you want to know where everything is at all times. Possibly to make erasing the text easier, but it’s so pointless in this case it’s insane.
*waves a cane at wacko programmer*
But we already know your real name Mato, since you posted your resume thing online…. no?
Yeah, but people talking about hunting me down is a little freaky.
I got so excited about mother last night that I started playing the Japanese version. I don’t know a lick of Japanese characters but I just wanted to see the start of the game. I quickly realized what I was doing was wrong, and I should wait until the translation is finished. Thus showing gratitude for all the hard work Mato, and Jeffman are doing. So I /salute you Mato and Jeffman
Look at the bright side, Mato. No one’s out to kill you! 😛
Hey, I’ve been following this for a while now (kind of fanatically, haha) and I just have a question or two…
I noticed that with the menu patch, Archat and…I forget the other one, but they were named after famous comedians in Japan, and in the patch they were changed to Bud and Lou, which I thought was pretty inspired myself! I was wondering if any other names are going to get changed from Japanese puns or references to things that’d make more sense to an english speaker… like, I dunno, Saru-ko to Sally for example, or Lighter to Bic or Zippo or something along those lines. Are you going to kind of localize some of the other characters or locations, or leave them as is to stay more true to the original game? I don’t really mind either way, I’m just curious.
Yeah, some names of people and places are being localized, like Bud and Lou as you saw there. I was actually planning to use them or some other old timey comedians before the merge, but Dr. Fedora had also had the same idea. And Chewy had done the same too recently, but used different names. Interesting how different translators can come to the same general conclusion like that.
Saruko will be Samba, another Dr. Fedora idea. I like it a lot. I don’t wanna go through a whole list of every name in the game, but each individual name’s been given a lot of thought, and will probably get more thought between now and the final patch.
As for your other question (which I removed for reasons you can probably assume), I’m still up in the air about how to handle it. I still need time to think about it and how to handle it if we do go through with it.
I’ve really gotta hand it to you Mato. You’ve gotten a lot done in the past few weeks. Each time you cross something off the to do list I’m like hell yeah!!! Unless I counted wrong, 18 out of 38 things have been crossed off the list … meaning you’re halfway there. You’ve come a long way in such a short time. Good work man!!!!!
all the work you do is amazing. i wish i could help cause i wanna see this translation done so badly. seriously, do you take donations or something? or can you teach me the code and i’ll help? haha that’d probably take even longer than you doing it. well, keep up the good work! but take my money! really!
Nice Work i am from Chile !!!
Congrats ! for yours Hard Work
Have some Mr. Saturn coffee… BOING!
I see people from all over the world are waiting for this patch, and with good reason, too… The original EB is one of my all-time favorite RPGs, and I want to play M3 sooo bad… D: But I can wait, after all, you’re all working really hard.
But I’m wondering if the programmers couldn’t make the code nice and shiny…
Dear translator(just let you know am not very good in english am a french canadians but i try :P) i follow your project since 2006 and i want to say that :this is a PROFESSIONNAL work you do and am sure you will be ”approched”by some buisness man for that awesome work!! Yeah that project take time , yes it is but the only thing i said to me is when you tell us the project done, it will be the most powerfull complete game translation you ever done (i thinck, i dont know what project you do in past)
thanck you very much to do that for gamer communitie and the most beautiful thing in all that…..
you make all that for offer this free ! For those making comment about the time you wait for that ,always remember that 😛
Wow, I just smashed an easter egg in roughly ONE THOUSAND SEVENTY-FOUR pieces, all over the place… I was only trying to break it in two or three O_o … This is certainly a sign of all this progress empowering me!
On a different note, once you manage getting your text-welding hack done, that would basically mean the game would only need to generate enough sprites to cover the “surface” needed by the text to fully appear, and not generate one full sprite per letter, right?
If i was in Nintendo’s shoes, I would wait until the translation is finished, pay a small sum to Mato, then release it as a proper cart to the NA populace. Just saying… 😛
Wahooo!!! More updates= the sooner we get the patch!!
Awesome work Mato.
I’ve done some professional trans. work for a few games that were for Nintendo consoles, like that crappy Nightmare before Xmas GBA game and the new One Pice game for the Wii, and there are actually a couple things I’ve been doing with this translation that would’ve been required in those translations by Nintendo. Nintendo has this huge list of rules and terms that all developers have to use, for instance, you can’t just say, “Press B to punch”, you specifically have to call it the “B Button”. There’s a huge list and if you screw up any of it slightly, Nintendo will reject your game and you’ll have wasted a bunch of time and money to get stuff fixed and do the review process all over again. So it’s pretty serious business to Nintendo. Actually, I think all console games have rules like this you have to follow, and I’ve been trying to follow those same rules in MOTHER 3 when possible. (The message on the status screen that says Press A for Skills is abbreviated right now due to sprite text limitations though)
Not only that, there are other things that professional game companies need to do before they can release a game, most specifically something called “lot checking”, which is a big detailed/technical process which basically requires the game to be error free and up to specific set standards. Although it’s not important that we even worry about this, it’d be cool if we were able to pass most of this stuff (we’d have to check on our own of course) with the final patch.
I always have things like this in mind when working on the project, even though I don’t usually bother mentioning it except in rare cases like now 😉
Mato-san,
I know you’ve mentioned making things more accessible to those who might want to translate M3 into other languages, a la..
http://mother3.fobby.net/2008/03/19/localization-and-customization/
not to sound lame, but how much coding knowledge would one need to begin work on such a thing? I’m probably vastly underestimating the amount of time that would be req’d to actually translate the text of a game like M3, but.. I have been fascinated and enthralled with the idea of working on/designing/developing video games since I was 5, however real life situations and my own lack of ability have made it such that I have little to no real programming skillz to speak of.. other than broad familiarity with terms and concepts. However, I do know a lot about other languages. Getting to help spread a masterpiece like M3 to an even wider global audience sounds to me like a lifelong dream come true. Would doing that have to remain a pipe dream for someone with my lack of skills? Again, sorry if it makes me sound lame, I really am fascinated with all the technical things that you talk about in these updates, even though most of it goes over my head.
Also sorry this post is ridiculously long.
Nutsjesmoar: I’m not sure you understood that post right; the idea is that once the English patch is done (and after we’ve rested enough 😛 ) that we’d/I’d work with other translators to produce translations into other languages, using all our same hacks and tools and such.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: You guys are awesome! And I gotta say it’s good to see how into the project everyone is. I hate to say it, but so many hacking projects seem to die just as the works gets tough…glad to see you can rise to the occasion!
I see. Well, if you have any need, I’d love to contribute in any way possible. If not, I’ll remain cheering from the sidelines 😀
Nutsjesmoar: Actually, if you can book us a flight to Japan and schedule us a meeting with the Brownie Brown programmers, that would help immensely. Oh, and if you could pay for it all, too 😀
Anyway, for those who are interested in the more mundane stuff like the lot check stuff I mentioned above, this is a good read and shows how strict Nintendo can be with its standards and checking and all that. I wonder if we could secretly have someone on the inside at NOA do a lot check for the final patch eventually, that’d be neat 😛
Ooooo… Money… chhahh… my achille’s heel! 😛
Cheering it is! Yaayy!
maybe i could find someone to rough up the menu programmer for you though, if that’d make you feel better..
I see you have a screen of my favorite sign ever, the “Thank you for taking the time to read this sign. I love you.” one.
PLEASE don’t omit the last sentence Mato-san!
PLEEEAAASE!
Ok, I love coming and seeing all this work being done. Thank you Mato for keeping us all up to date and you too Jeffman for doing hard work even though you are busy with Real Life.
For all of us that want to play the Mother 3 on your DS, I got the Mother 3 rom copied onto the EZ Flash 3-in-1 and I am currently watching Lucas run around the naming screen on my DS. I will post a link to a site that will go through the process and tell you how I did it. The only thing that worries me now is that the rom size has to go beyond 256 megabits (32 megabytes) because then I can’t load it up on the 3-in-1. One other real important thing, This only works for a DS lite not a classic (Phat) DS.
I’m glad you guys finally got an icon to go along with your site!! I was thinking of making one for you guys of Lucas but it’s been done for me! Excellent!
Man, this really has a grudge on GameFAQs when it comes to adding a link to my name. I tried putting a link to my GameFAQs profile, then I tried linking it to my [empty] contributor status, then just the GameFAQs home page. It won’t work at all. I might try another forum, but once I do that, I leave a connection between Exp HP and my real name, and Exp HP is the name I plan to use if I ever, ever become famous on the internet.
Eddward: The patch won’t increase the size of the ROM. The rom is already as big as a GBA ROM is allowed to be.
Oh, and guess what? It just said I couldn’t post it because it was a “repeat post”. Do you see my other post right above mine? Neither do I.
Well then don’t post that GameFAQs link 😛 The spam filter on this is based on what other blogs have learned to filter out too, so that’s probably why it filters it out here too.
Mato, do you have to lvl up new characters up from lvl 1? I always hated that in M1 and M2 or any game for that matter.
Redfromun: I’m the exact opposite. I feel like the game is cheating me out of some levels when they start me off at 5 or some other number.
I think it’s like EB where some characters start at Level 1, but not all, like as is the case with Poo when he joins your party in EB.
Redformun – i don’t want to give too much away, but there’s several times in the game that the main characters switch around, but yes I believe every time you get a new main character they start from level 1. I haven’t played through the whole game yet though, cos I want to get the full experience in english. 🙂 don’t feel bad though – would it really make sense to have your character ‘start’ at any other level than 1?
Also, I have created a simulation of what a meeting between Tomato-san and the programming team at Brownie Brown might go like…
http://pics.livejournal.com/nutsjesmoar/pic/0008221q/s640x480
For as cohesive as the game seems on the outside, it’s pretty whack that the internals are so different. Good luck on the rest of the project.
Just out of curiosity, Mato, about how much do you think that trip to japan would cost?
Great work guys! Thanks for the update!
YES! Awsome work it will seriously be christmas for me once this patch is completed! Oh and THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!
I made a real simple webpage that explains how to get Mother 3 on the DS. You can see it by either clicking on my name or by going to http://www.geocities.com/hegyak/
If you run into problems with the guide, don’t ask Mato, Jeffman or anyone else on the translation team as they didn’t make that guide. I did. I can’t offer 1 on 1 help as I am only one person. Hopefully it’s not too hard to understand. If there is something that just needs to be answered, please Email me at hegyak@hotmail.com and make sure the subject line has “Mother 3” in
“See the text on the right that says Weapon, Body, Head, etc.? That text is displayed with sprites. The text that says Offense, Defense, etc. is printed with normal text. And the character’s name right above that is printed using sprites.”
Sounds more like the programmer just didn’t want to deal with traditional text formatting, so he did what he could with a row of text then printed out the rest with sprites so everything would align correctly. Since it all looked the same in the end, no one would have noticed. It’s a big bummer for you though :\
Mato, do you ever wish you were a forgotten man too?
I’ve been following this project since the beginning, and I’m extremely impressed. The amount of work that goes into a project like this is just mind-boggling. Keep of the great work!
“# KKH3049 said 16 hours ago:
Oh I said you should drink more and stuff, but you definitely should not. for it might cause you to asplode and we would not have no more Mother 3. :.{”
Believe me, KKH3049, I am doing enough drinking for the ENTIRE Mother 3 fan translation team.
“tibbs said 13 hours ago:
Don’t worry Mato, we’ll think about all your hard work not only when picking up nuts, opening presents or fighting Mole Crickets, but every time we read the tiniest line of text!”
I’ll go a step farther than that. I’ll think of your hard work whenever I pick up a nut in real life as well.
*holding up a walnut at a fancy event*
“Just remember the sweat and more sweat that went into even these tiny crappy lines of text!”
“… What the crap are you talking about, [Aphrodine]?”
It’s good to see that everything is coming along so well. We appreciate all your hard work, Mato!
Hopefully, you can convert some of that text on the menus to normal non-sprite text to ease your restrictions. And if anyone else wants to read up on weird NOA rules, Google for the changes made to the Maniac Mansion game.
I’m glad we’ll have a professionally translated M3 in the end, even if it isn’t from Nintendo 🙂
This is so awesome that you guys are doing this.
It’s looking more and more complete with every update! I feel like it’s getting seriously closer.
Or am I completely off? That would upset me.
If all you want is to play the Mother 3 patch on your DS a simple GBA flash cart would probably be a better bet. Of course, you won’t be able to do DS… uh, “homebrew”, but you’ll also be able to play it on a Gamecube’s Gameboy Player. I’ve got an EZ-Flash IV which works very well and I’d be surprised if it didn’t work with the M3 patch, since it’s played everything I’ve tried so far (*cough*) without any problems.
Unless there’s some advantage to paying a lot more for a DS flashcart and accessories that I’m unaware of.
Sweeeet,
Thank You!
Dr. Meat: I tried using my X-Rom 512 megabit GBA flashcard on my DS Lite to no avail, if you know of a simpler and cheaper way, let us all know. I got the 3-in-1 because I got a ram expansion pack for Genesis emulation on DS. The GBA part is a real nice extra that goes along with it since I have some GBA games that I love to play.
I am seriously impressed with all the progress that has been made since I started following the process 2 months ago. I am also impressed that not one of the translation robots went BOOM! after drinking so much.
In akk seriousness I did not mean to post the last sentence, but still, it is impressive that none of you have just stopped functioning as humans.
Hahah, honestly I don’t know much about flashcards other than I bought mine just for this patch.
For most people here, if all you want is to play M3 patched on real hardware, a GBA flashcart would probably be both simpler and cheaper. For example, you get the EZFlash IV ($35 or so for the fatty DS/GBA, probably similar for the Lite) and a miniSD card (microSD for the Lite), download the client software and you’re good to go.
Mother3 runs fine, both original and with the menu patch. I played the Fire Emblem 6 translation with it and that worked great so I’m hoping the Mother3 patch will too. Of course it may not, what with all the gut work Mato and crew are putting into it. Every game I’ve played so far works, although some don’t run if you simply play them off the RAM, rather than loading them to the flash ROM, or whatever. Since Mother3 is a big game you have to do this to run it at all.
Last thing I picked up on while poking around today, if anyone decides to get one for their DS Lite, make sure you either get the original fat version or the “Lite Deluxe”. The “Lite Compact” doesn’t support the GBA, apparently. I got mine from a joint called gameyeeeah.com. I’ve only ordered the one thing from them, and it showed up on time so that’s good I guess.
Oh and the things come with an SD card reader, which means if you buy a miniSD/microSD to use make sure it has an SD adapter. I got a cheap kingston 256MB card that has one.
I think the X-Rom you mentioned is kind of old, maybe that was why you couldn’t get it to run? I don’t know anything about it other than it uses a USB linker, and most cards use removable media now.
Man that’s a lot of words. No idea how much info you wanted but there you go. Yeah I know I sound like an EZFlash salesman, but trust that I’m not because I don’t think any of them speak English.
LAST THING, don’t buy a Supercard. They suuuuuuuuuuuuuck
welp there’s my essay on flashcards by doctor meat
So today I decided to see what plain old “fobby.net” was… WTF?
@ Mato, Nutsjesmoar
Thanks, now that I remember it seemed like leveling the other party members in M1 was a lot harder than in M2. Plus i just beat M1 so the disdain of HIGH random battle rates is fresh on my mind. But Mato your patch made that pill easier to swallow! Thanks!!!
So many responses in 21 hours… So fast. O_O
*Shakes fist at menu programmer* Why couldn’t you give Tomato a breaaaaak?!
Dr. Meat:
I am glad that you got that mess cleared out for me. Since I got the 3-in-1 already so I don’t really mind but hearing about a cheaper solution is great for everyone, especially the DS Phat owners. I mentioned the X-rom because I used that one way back when. Ah, good times. I also agree that the supercard sucks.
Thank you Dr. Meat for telling us all about your solution. Your post tells everyone everything they would need to know to play Mother 3 on a DS including watching out for the “Lite Compact.” Great stuff!
Dearest Mato,
If by some crazy twist of fate you get this done before May comes around, could you release the patch on Mother’s Day? It’d just seem more classy that way.
Mini-update: So far I’ve taken a closer look into how the sprite text is loaded, copied, converted, and turned into a sprite. It’s all pretty straightforward stuff so far, and it does one thing I was hoping it would do (so I wouldn’t have to do it myself), so so far the early stages of sprite welding is going okay. It’s a pretty involved process though, so it’ll take a while to get it working and then working properly. I expect I’ll see hardships when needing to take newlines into account and when needing to take those status icons into account though. But first I gotta get it doing the very basics of course 😛
Slash: rofl it’d take twenty miracles in a row for that to happen 😛 The thought HAD passed my mind long ago, but it’s definitely not gonna happen 😐
Keep it up. You guys are doing a great job!
I am glad it’s not coming out too soon. I still gotta see the Ed, Edd n Eddy Movie and there is Disgaea, Space Ace, Dragon’s Lair, Trackmania and Sonic and the dark brotherhood all coming for the DS sometime this year. Man, I have a lot to play that’s not out yet. And I gotta add the Mother 3 translation to that?! I already am busy with all that.
That Mother’s day idea sounds great.
Do it.
>:|
hey, love the new website icon, just thought i’d point out although it looks fine in the address bar in the bookmark list it cuts the picture off and only shows the top left part of lucas’s head.
PS> Keep up the great work!
Big ups again Mato. Keep doin it. Once your done, we’re bringin it in for the real thing. /hug /hug /hug /hug
I’m sorry, but…150 get.
151 is mine
Anyway, got some basic code up and running now. Right now it’s mostly just a more efficient rewrite of the original code but at less than half the size. Also got some early hooks in there for my custom code to come. So far, this is progressing easier than I had expected. We’ll see what happens though 😉
Mato, you’re wrong. It’s not that getting it out on Mother’s Day is definitely not gonna happen, like you said, you just need 20 miracles in a row!
Is a shipment of 400+ programming monkeys to help out a miracle? I may actually be able to arrange for this one.
Glad to hear the sprite welding is going well so far! I’m not surprised at the areas you expect to have trouble, they’re exactly what I would expect the thorny bits to be 🙂
Is there any way to turn the status icons into a pseudo-letter so they can be handled normally? Or are they the wrong size / in a different format?
I just wonder if you’ll end up having to do annoying things like printing that fixed sprite text in the menus onto the background layer to avoid running out of sprites 🙁 *mutters something about evil menu programmers*
Hmm, now there’s a thought for if you suddenly win the lottery and have nothing but free time. Add an enemy called the ‘Evil Menu Programmer’ as an optional mini-boss 🙂
How about adding in a little nod to “the evilest menu programmer ever” when someone talks about a boss or something? >>
“Anyway, got some basic code up and running now.”
pix plz
“Right now it’s mostly just a more efficient rewrite of the original code”
I’ll post pics when the time is right, there’s no point otherwise.
You sure seem to handle all of this attention really well.
I don’t know if I would have the patience, especially when people become tangential.
I love hearing about any progress, even when it’s not visual 🙂
wow.
just a request, guys; is there a way you can make a post about SSBB spoilers? Because I’ve been skirting around the edges of trophies and etc. wondering about them and I just had the lack of common sense to watch Lucas’ codec conversation and …. yeah. Can you guys make a post about what to avoid like the plague regarding spoilers? I’d hate to have what just happened to me happen to others too.
Pickles and milk
I’m not too worried about spoilers. I don’t really realize them until I play the game. What do you mean by codec conversation?
Snake has codec conversations you can see if you use a certain taunt on his home level. He’s got one for every character. I looked at Ness’ and it was spoiler free, so then I went to Lucas to see his, but… not the same. It’s chalk full of spoilers.
And I haven’t read ANY of the trophy descriptions, but this one caught me off guard
/bangs head against desk repeatedly
I am now manually realizing that JeffMan is doubles partners in melee with one of my good friends and has been organizing SSB tournaments in my area for a few years. The fact that I’ve met him is more fucked up than anything.
What the FUCK
MIND STATUS: BLOWN
oh! There were spoilers in there? I guess it kinda describes him, but there wasn’t that many story spoilers was there?
Thanks so much for the hardwork.
to KKH3049 there story spoilers but to me they werent terrible i mean i dnt want to flat out say them but with some common knowledge of earthbound you can kinda understand that the one spoiler is not that big and the snake codec and trophy are more of the bigger ones describing how things happened but then again i kinda saw the end of mother 3 before brawl came out so and i did not become a mother fan until about late Feb. so i was already spoiled so any spoiler i saw i was o well i sorta know how it ends but if you really do not want any hints on plot or anything i would not get the lucas trophy or do the snake codec but you may live through subspace it depends on how u look at it but great work on the project guys
Jozhear: Other than the trophy descriptions and Snake’s codecs (definite do-not-reads), only the final boss is spoiled in Brawl. Even then there’s no how or why, you just fight it as a boss and move on. Also, Lucas’s stage is of a location that only appears later in the game (I think, I’m not about to go look it up) and also spoils the main antagonist.
To me they aren’t very big spoilers. All you’ll know is what the final boss looks like, the main antagonist, and (plot-significant) place. Nothing is explained at all, unless you go look up Lucas’s trophies and codec.
I suppose you could always get someone else to play the Ruined Zoo stage (where the boss is). Except you’d have to avoid looking directly at the Boss Battle icon in Stadium.
Anyway, that’s my opinion. There aren’t any earth-shattering revelations that would ruin the game for you. It certainly didn’t for me.
I wish I could’ve played Brawl without being spoiled who the main antagonist in M3 was… but oh well. No use crying over spilt milk!
Just out of curiosity, when you finish up the hacking and the game’s playable and (relatively) bug-free, will you release a beta patch with the first draft of the translation included, Mato?
He has no plans to release a Alpha/Beta/Delta/Gamma/Omega/Whatever patch. He wants to make sure there’s only one legitimate patch which becomes widespread, to avoid any confusion. (and to avoid a legion of possibly harrassing e-mails regarding any unfinished versions)
well Mato Smoking Meth does very Good Thing Again!
Good Work Mato my Boy..
Keep Lookign forward to YOu Wonderful Updats very Interest to Me
Ok everyone, I updated my site again. It how has information on how to get Mother 3 working for ‘Phat’ DS users and also an alternate method for Lite DS users. Yea!
Same rules as before, don’t Email, wine, complain, to Mato, Jeffman or anyone else on the translation team.
There goes my plans for this evening. How about beer instead? I’d gladly offer them a few rounds of Guinness.
Sweet Lucas favicon!
You guys are doing great, i predict this should be done within a few months, i just beat the menu patch version but i wanna fully enjoy it so keep on going.