All of a Sudden, Someone Rushed into the Room!
…It was byuu!
Another short, technical update. But this one is still pretty cool.
byuu, who you may know is the author of the awesome bsnes emulator, showed up out of nowhere with two new goodies for the project 😀
The first is a new version of xkas, which is his custom assembler. An assembler basically takes the programming code we use to make hacks with, and turns it into code the machine can read. We’ve been using something called Goldroad for the past many months, but it’s really unwieldy; each hack needs to be in its individual file, assembled separately, then copied-pasted into a .bin file, then we gotta link the original game code to the new code, which is an annoying little process, and then our custom insertor has to insert it. We have to do that for lots and lots of files… blegh 🙁
Anyway, byuu rewrote his assembler and added GBA THUMB support, pretty much just for us/this project, but it’ll surely benefit other GBA hackers in the future 🙂 byuu’s assembler means we can pretty much have ALL of the hack code in one file, and it’ll also make it a TON easier to organize our hacks and make optimal use of space in the ROM. We were already running low on good, usable blank space for our hack code, so this is great for us. I know none of this sounds very exciting to the end user, but man it sure is awesome for us. The only downside is we’ll need to combine all the source code together, which should only take a few hours though. But byuu is the man!
He was on a roll, so he finally implemented his new patch format, which he calls UPS. People who’ve played ROM hacks and translations in the past might be familiar with the IPS format. The problem with IPS though, is that it can only patch files that are 16 MB in size or less. The MOTHER 3 ROM is 32 MB, so IPS isn’t an option.
For the menu patch, we used the PPF format, but the programs that apply this format are all really big and clunky, and non-computer-knowing people were easily confused. For example, the Windows version we offer, PPF-o-matic, is 500 KB zipped up and full of lots of extra files. That might not seem like a big deal, but there’ve been 5283 downloads of it so far here, and that equals 2.5 GB of bandwidth. When the full patch comes out, there’s gonna be a LOT more downloads than that 😛 In comparison, the menu patches are only 50 KB zipped up, too, heh. The Mac PPF patcher, called “gumby”, wasn’t even available anywhere anymore, so I had to pull a version off of archive.org and put it up for download here. Crazy. I’m not even sure what Linux people did.
Anyway, byuu’d been working on a new format of his own, UPS. It’s very simple, and it’s future-proof, meaning it will be able to patch files of any size ever. The format is also locked in place, so the format differences that IPS had (think Lunar IPS) won’t be an issue. Best of all, the programs he created for applying the UPS patches are only a dozen or so KB zipped up, or about 2500% smaller.
So blah blah blah, what does this all mean? The final patch will be in this new UPS format. And it looks like the ROM translation community is already starting to get behind it after only a few hours. It’s good stuff 😀 The patch application program will be very simple to use, and there will be PC, Linux, and Mac versions available for download alongside the patch when the time comes.
If you’re interested in technical blah-blah talk, here’s the RHDN thread about it.
Also, while it’s at least semi-on-topic, I really recommend trying out byuu’s bsnes Super Nintendo emulator. It’s really awesome stuff. Also, for those just joining us, byuu was also the guy behind our 8-bit main script hack, which is what lets us fit the huge translated script in the ROM, since the ROM can’t be expanded any further. Is there anything he doesn’t do?
In other news, I’ve gotten an hour here and there to tinker with sprite text welding. Things are still progressing, but the game is lame and it does things like try to erase the current tile when it shouldn’t. I’m really, really busy with real life work for the next 10 days or so, but I’ll still keep chipping away at the game whenever I get the chance. I’ll post mini-updates in the comments as progress is made, as usual.
2nd person to comment^^
I’m expecting this game with so much anxiety!!!
I’m tingly all over xD
Thirded!! Wow I have to say that should defently make the job easier, I am quite excited about a new patching universal format.
Note for the future: People who claim first post will often get their posts deleted, meaning the first person to NOT claim first will usually be first. How’s that for justice? 😛
Technically I got second now. And I read it. Go byuu!
Sounds like this patch format will be MUCH easier to use and work with.
Wow, that is AWESOME news. ^___^ Hats off to Byuu! It seems that every time I visit here, there’s something else awesome going on.
Well, I guess I took too long to read. Third.
Woot, new tools! I hope this doesn’t introduce any new bugs that need fixing though, you know how it can be with new software tools that have limited testing… =P
Wow I’m sure this will make things a lot easier for u guy and that rockz!! Can’t wait for the final patch!!!
It still looks awsome and opens up new options.
I’m excited to try out this new SNES emulator when I get home. Thanks for the tip!
This is really cool… It’s really amazing to read about how well you all work together. =)
what can brown do for you?
hopefully it won’t take too long to reorganize your work to take advantage of these new tools, and you can get back to posting updates more frequently.
is there a chance you could dump all the in-game sprites into a .zip file, like they have for earthbound over at sm.net? how hard would that be?
I looked into doing a sprite dump a few months ago, but the sprites aren’t organized in a convenient way, sadly. Like you’ll have a character’s head, but then you’ll have a dozen different leg graphics after it. So trying to dump the sprites will take a good deal of technical work and figuring out graphics data tables and pointers and stuff. In comparison, with EB, everything was sitting right there in a nice format just waiting to be dumped.
It’ll happen someday though. I’m sure of it 😉
LOL had this all typed up then BAM! Closed. Moments like this make me still thankful for Firefox thanks to horrible memories of older browsers that tend erase your forms when you hit back…
To give a more detailed answer to Unsavory Maggot’s question on the last entry, which keeps coming up a lot:
The text is still stored in memory as plain ol’ ASCII or what have you, one 8 bit segment per letter. Tomato’s routine then takes that data to generate sprite graphics on the fly. The final version will look to you, the end user, no different than it does in Earthbound or the current WIP screenshots.
Video game hardware’s concept of a “letter” in the first place doesn’t even really exist. A sprite is a sprite, a background tile is a background tile, and whatever data is put into sprite or background memory is just a bucket of bits that it has instructions to do certain things with.
As Mato explained earlier, god no, the text is not being re-encoded into some format that accounts for every possible variable width font combination (of which there are roughly twelve hojillion) that’d be hideous. Text data exists as a normal ascii-format with 8 bits per letter in the ROM. Mato’s hack, when finished, merely processes this text data in a special way that makes it look pretty (read as “show up at all past a certain number of letters on screen”) by generating sprite graphics on the fly that represent that text data.
Really, it’s the exact same way your word processor or web browser or anything else works. fobby.net isn’t sending your web browser graphics telling it how to display text. It just sends the text. Your web browser (and/or the operating system it makes function calls to) deals with the nitty gritty of placing the variable-width text in the right place down to the pixel. (That this html-format text also has codes embedded to dictate how it should look and insert graphics and such is a slightly advanced topic, but it is also roughly analogous to control codes.) Mother 3 is something like a simplified version of that. With HTML, a web server sends you a text-only ASCII file, and it’s the job of your web browser to interpret it and make it look pretty. With Mother 3, one area of data is the text to be displayed, and in another area is a program that decides how to display it.
This is why everyone should claim to be the THIRD (strongest?) poster, right? 😉
Glad to see byuu is helping out. That makes me want to play Bahamut Lagoon for some reason, though… 🙂
Mato, at least answer me this:
was I the first “first” to be deleted???? ;P
what can I say, this friggen update was greek to me, I just couldn’t think of anything important to say…..and now my legacy has been erased, and to be treated so coldly by my heroes :(…sniff
the irony is I was trying to get a link to an older thread, and it just sent me to this new one…..how could I resist?
bah, now another 9h of work to stew on this
That was a great explanation. Thanks! I think I’m starting to get it. Would it be correct to say that the hacking being done now is the code that will parse incoming text and display it correctly (in a variable width font)?
So, I know no one wants to answer a question like this because it’s NEVER accurate (always takes longer), but if you guys had to give an ABSOLUTE EARLIEST DATE assuming stuff takes as long as you think it will right now (never the case) that you’d be comfortable releasing this patch, what would it be? Come ooon, tell us!
Oooh! BTW, Mato, I just saw your mention of a New Game+ trick on the dead thread.
If you ever add extras to the M3 ROM, see if you can’t find some way to stick an actual New Game+ option in there as a real option, not just a crazy bug 🙂
Seems like the entire internet is fallowing this project. Whatever site I go to, I always see the infamous Mother 3 translation project mentioned. You guys are making history here! Keep it up!
Follow*****
cale: Yes. Also, I’ve been deleting first posts for a few weeks now unless I’m too busy and forget, so you’re not the first to be unfirsted 😛 I don’t know why people want to claim first, it’s lame and for some reason it’s been more common lately. Whatever.
Damn Impressed: The code being done now hacks the way text is stored in memory before it gets copied to tile data which is then used by sprites. We don’t need to hack how the text comes in.
As for your other question, I really can’t say anything. If I do say anything, people will quote it and misquote it and twist it and stuff. I will say that it won’t be in the first half of this year though, but I think we all know that 😉 When most of the hacking is done, THEN we’ll be able to give an actual ballpark estimate.
And wow, this is pretty cool. byuu’s emulator looks rad for debugging and tinkering, too, although I’ll probably stick with snes9x for just playing since it will probably melt my poor laptop’s processor. 🙂 More importantly, it’s nice to see the rom hackers uniting behind his new patch format, PPF really is a huge pain from an end-user standpoint it’s rather obnoxious. This is great news for us here, as now it’d be super easy to whip up an easy to use application that could do everything for you once you tell it where the ROM is or some such. It’d totally reduce angry and frustrated posts by non-techies here and on forums once patch time came around 🙂
Oh and speaking of emulators I have a bit of a tangent but a fun observation: on my Earthbound playthrough I have remapped the button configuration to use wasd for the arrows and then used something like jkui for abyx, and h and l for l and r. I’ve found this to be extremely comfortable, especially on a cramped laptop keyboard. J is A because it has that little knobby on it which makes it far more accurate than the default zxas setup wherein I would sometimes put my hand in the wrong position inadvertently. The only downside is if you have a crummy keyboard that can only handle so many buttons from a certain region at once you might have issues–on mine I can’t really hold tab to speed up emulation and walk diagonally but I just switched to toggle mode (hit tab to turn it on and off) instead. But other than that–thank you, Team Fortress 2, for opening my console gamer small brain to the idea of using keyboard controls in creative ways. 🙂
Heh, okay, I can respect that. Keep up the good work. And you SHOULD totally implement a new game +. Really. And during the new game, some of the bit characters should talk about the different coders and translators. Oh boy, everyone loves random ideas that add hours of work.
Mato and Damn Impressed, I think Impressed was responding to my comment, and might have meant the text “coming in” from the text data in the context of variable width fonts, in which case he was correct enough and one of the better short layman’s explanations so far imo. I don’t think he meant anything like the 16 to 8 bit text hack.
Haha Impressed, don’t get ahead of yourself. 🙂 Mother 3 will have enough flavor itself, Mato doesn’t need to add to it. Adding new features like a non-hidden New Game + would be the realm of later rom hackers. Plus exactly like you said, as patient as we are I don’t know about you but I’d rather have it earlier than wait for silly little easter eggs to get finished!
it’s just ppl excited about the project I’m sure, I really wouldn’t call that lame, just…pointless. and it doesn’t matter anyways, because I’m the most excited, and I like Mother more than you guys anyways Muwahahahahaha!
lately I’ve been thinking of this old snes controller that I heard about in nintendo power as a kid, it was designed to be used with one hand, like for rpgs…..anybody know if it was even produced? god I want one
It was actually produced, as I had one at one point. It was so long ago, I don’t remember much other than it looked and acted similar to the wii nunchuck, and wasn’t TOO bad to use. A lot of it depended on the control scheme of the particular game you would play it with. Funny enough, I do remember trading it into Gamestop many years ago, with all the employees looking at me with a WTFBBQ? type look as they had never seen such a thing ever. I believe they couldn’t even find a trade-in value for it, so I gave it to some chick who worked there. I got nothing in return.
I can’t wait for this to be done. GJ Mato and all your hard work. I look forward to every day checking this blog for the past, well, however long it’s been up pretty much.
Now wait just a hot second! I actually knew that Mato wasn’t combining every last Aa, Ab, Ac, etc. like some crazy goon! My question had absolutely nothing to do with that idea!
My question was actually if the split parts, such as the o’s in his prior Boobs example, would be printed at two different times or at the same time; kind of like how the game handles fast text with two letters.
NOW do you follow my drift? Anyway, I’m guessing the game will print both halves of the o anyway, without incidentally printing any half of the following or previous letter at uneven time spans.
that’s good to know…..I don’t use my snes for too much other than EB, which I figure would be perfect……
damn that worked so well I think I’ll try another: anybody even see one of those mkII nes consoles made after the snes? they were real slick looking, and I’m curious if one today would work better than most of the older nes models……I don’t even think I’ve seen one on ebay.
GO BYUU!!!! and another great explaination as usual from Mato I hope your work goes well and that you can continue to bring us these amazing updates and eventually an amazing patch
Unsavory, some people still might not get that part so don’t feel too bad that I overexplained. 🙂 Adderall makes me write far more than I should haha. I think I get what you’re saying, though. You’re concerned about how it will actually handle the display of the letters, right?
You seem to already kind of have the answer, but yeah. A sprite is not set in stone after it is added, and can be further edited (though I think v-blank cycles are involved in this and when or whether or not the changes show up might be more complicated but for this here, not worth worrying about). As such in the boobs example, the code would put the B into memory, then update the display, then weld the left half of the o and create a second sprite for the right half of the o and then update the display, then add the second o to that second sprite (and add a third if necessary with the right half) then update the display, then keep going in that manner for each letter.
Of course actually implementing this is kinda tricky and a lot of the code as it stands assumes one sprite per letter which makes things funky (I’d love to see a WIP video chunking out one sprite at a time leaving half-letters in its wake, hehe) and as such needs hacking.
I always sorta loved the IPS format, since it introduced me to my first translation patch (that of Final Fantasy III), so seeing its death saddens me a little. That said, it’s less of a death and more of a rebirth–from the caterpillar to the butterfly, so to speak.
Whoa just how many people are working on this project now? Is there a list somewhere? Not like real names but at least…nicknames. lol. xD The project is going pretty fast. For being a volunteer project that is.
Did I just see a post that used the words “boob example”? Best. Site. Ever.
Cool. This means we might get the final patch a little earlier. XD
I tried using the menu patch with PPF-O-Matic, but Virtual Boy keeps giving me an error that it’s an invalid filetype as soon as I put the patch on it. I hope the final patch won’t do this to me.
Every update makes me more and more excited about Mother 3.
Kudos to everyone that’s working on what Nintendo won’t sully themselves with for whatever reason.
Overload: See this. Also make sure you’re not applying the patch to a .zip file, but to the actual ROM file itself.
It’s like x-mas everyday here!
Yay! smaller is better! Way to go, byuu!
Also, I think Mato must have a huge amount of willpower to even care about doing something like this when he’s so busy with his actual job. Thank you, Mato, your work is much appreciated.
And finally, can someone recommend a good NES emulator? I can’t get the EBZero ROM to work on Loopyness (which has served me well for everything else).
Damn Impressed: Earliest date “possible”? Why, tomorrow! I mean if there were some magical person of magic that would magically finish the patch! 😛
Anyway, like always, sounds GREAT.
I’m glad Mother 3 is getting all this well-deserved attention. I mean, a new patch file type, made originally for Mother 3? That’s awesome.
Hey Mato I got another question for yah. I have been searching around online for a “clean” rom of Mother 3 as I have one with the menu patch already. Didn’t you say you guys figured a way out to reapply the final patch on the rom with the menu patch and everything would work great? Also on a side note, is the music composer (forgot his name) from Mother 2, the same guy for Mother 3? How do you compare the music for both games? On ANOTHER note, is there any links or episodes of that awesome japanese show, unsubbed, somewhere. Just watching Bob Sapp grunt and yell would be good enough haha. Thanks so much for all the work you are doing! WE LOVE YOUUUUUU!!!!
Soooo, what does this do? does it speed things up a bit? or what?
You guys heard Alato. The game is coming out tomorrow! If we don’t have it by 12:00 am tomorrow then it’s fair game to send an e-mail every hour saying “hey I can’t find the game on your site, where is it?” Then we should immediatly go to every other forum on the internet and talk about how the translation team doesn’t keep promises.
Oooo neat!
I’m confused by byuu’s snes emulator… I don’t really use mine (zsnes, actually) anymore, but if I got the itch to (illegally) play more snes games (my Earthbound rom is laying dormant, calling to me; I’d need to restart though, as I fastforwarded/quicksave cheated this whole playthrough), is byuu’s better for just like, playing? Is there one that is better than zsnes? I know zsnes’ UI kinda sucks, but I mean aside from that.
Also: Anna: I use the xzsa for abxy with d and c for l/r with the numpad for directions. It’s nice and spaced out, but I guess laptops don’t have numpads. =P
Yay!
I LOVE YOU TOMATO HAVE MY BABIES
Well, I’m a guy, so nevermind.
HAVE MY GIRLFRIENDS BABIES
Snes9X>all else.
ALL DAMN WELL ELSE
THE AMOUNT OF AWESOME IN THIS UPDATE CAN ONLY BE EXPRESSED VIA THE MAGIC OF CAPSLOCK. <3
DID SOMEONE SAY CAPSLOCK? HECK YES! THANKS FOR THE NEW TOOLS BYUU!
Kamon: Try mednafen, made by starmen.net’s own web admin/mad scientist sarsie 😀
TheMetroidMan: I never said that, and I never will. The final patch will NEED to be applied to the original Japanese ROM.
I don’t think there are any more clips online, but check d-addicts.com for “pussuma” and there might be some torrents. Sadly, the new episodes the last few years are suckier. I have tapes upon tapes of many good older episodes though. Someday I’ll sub some of my favorites.
Jeffrey: xkas update means it’ll be a little easier for us to do our hacking work. UPS stuff means we now know what our final patch format will be, this is something people have been asking about since day 1.
Damn Impressed: I’ve actually seen people claim that on various boards, particularly Brawl boards. You’d think my many disclaimers in bold, underlined, all caps text would register in people’s brains :/
rc5: byuu’s is accurate. VERY accurate. The whole point of his project was to make an emulator as close to the original hardware as possible. Sound is more accurate, little things everywhere are more accurate, compatibility is extremely high (except for games with weird add-on chips), etc. etc. Accuracy means it needs more computing power though, so you might need a decent computer. Otherwise the other emus are probably better. Check out his site and message board and stuff for more info.
I wonder if I’m weird for reading all of the article and everyone’s comments…
Also I want to add, while I see why zsnes has appeal, I’ve always liked snes9x quite a bit more. The interface is easier to deal with, no manually setting video modes (just resize the screen!) and although it’s supposedly a tad slower it just doesn’t matter with modern equipment. I also like how alt+tabbing out is easy and by default pauses the emulator, which is great for playing while looking at guides or chatting on AIM or IRC or something.
And yeah the numpad thing would be more comfortable sometimes but on a full size keyboard the arrow keys seem a bit more nimble since they’re close together and there’s not other stuff to accidentally hit. Also I think deep down inside I’m used to directions with my left hand and buttons with my right, and I already am more accurate with my new setup than I was after being kind of used to the old one. Since I often play with my laptop sitting on my lap, it is far more comfortable for me to have my hands in the middle of the keyboard than kind of on the edge.
I don’t think my setup is the One True Setup, I just thought it was kind of neat for my situation and I’m curious if anyone else has come up with anything cool like that. Also I should try playing Super Mario World or something and see if it’s easier to control. The best is still using an adapter with a playstation controller or something, but that can be really unwieldy and for playing earthbound (or any RPG really) while doing other things it’s nice to not have to deal with that.
Im just glad that I found this place. One day this past week I was bored and found an earthbound rom. As soon as I fell in love with it (a total of .563824 seconds) I went looking for a Mother 3 translation and stumbled upon this. So I’m actually an accidental fan.
(oh, and by the way, im grounded so im typing this thing secretly on my wii… my thumb hurts)
Oh and P.S. I bought the Big Box Earthbound for full retail back during the THIS GAME STINKS campaign, and evangelized the game to friends some of whom bought it when they wouldn’t have otherwise, who had only read things like a crummy review I still remember to this day–the guy had obviously not played the game and just went on and on about how the graphics are simple and it’s a great RPG “for the kiddies.” I’m eagerly awaiting the Wii VC release and will be hounding friends to buy it and probably gifting it a couple of times as far as I can afford it. (I can smell the PK’Giftin’ campaign already! Buy Earthbound for a friend you know would never buy it but would play it because it’s a free game–we all have a friend like that!) So if you’re watching, Nintendo, don’t hate for the emulator stuff 😉
Welcome, patman. One of us! One of us! Now get off before you’re grounded and you can’t play Earthbound even! Also make sure you buy it on the VC when it comes out!
these posts are facinating to read. I also have great respect for how you guys continually keep the community informed. Thanks again!
speaking of the earthbound on vc, is there an actual release date, or is japan so bent on keeping the mother series from us that they wont release it?
A note to Mato: …great ^.^! …
Hm… Well than that sounds cool, it being super-like an actual snes. I shall download it after all. =)
Incidentally, if earthbound doesn’t come out on the virtual console, I will cry.
TOMATO DRAWING, BYUU EDITION!!!
http://i28.tinypic.com/518ugk.png
(i wonder if people reading the comments see these. :-P)
Wow, I just signed up a few minutes ago just tell you that this is going great and am excited to see more. 😀
byuu’s emulator seems a bit, extreme. I mean, considering that it requires at least 2 ghz. (I have a laptop so it’s not as fast) I would love to try it out. Does it necessarily need that much performance?
All hail the legendary byuu.
zLeed, byuu’s emulator is an attempt to have the most accurate emulation of the SNES as possible. That’s why it needs so much power. If all one care about is just playing a game, other emulators are more appropriate to use.
WHOOOOO!!!! NEW UPDATE!!!!
I love doing that. Seriously though, great job Mato, and does byuu’s emulator have a psp version by any chance?
Oh, and cale, I nelieve that controller was the Power Glove. My friend ordered one off of ebay, but he hasn’t gotten it yet.
mitch, I like them <3
You rock, mitch!
First POST!!! JK
NICE WORK MEN!
Awesome, NEW UPDATE! AND THIS ONE ROCKS!
Mitch, I’ve been glancin’ at them whenever I notice the links. I really enjoy them =)
I usually lurk here, but I feel like posting today.
Keep up the good work, your efforts in this project while doing real work shows your LOVE for the series!
I can only praise you guys for what you’re doing. Good luck!
I wonder how bsnes deals with Super Mario RPG? That game is one of the few that doesn’t emulate that well 🙁 (Talk to someone, anyone, to see what I mean). Heck, I even had it crash zsnes when moving some items.
As for key configurations, wow, people use the default? I map the arrows to the number pad, and put start and select over there, too (as keypad + and keypad enter). Then ASDF are the ABXY buttons, with E & R as L & R, respectively. The space bar makes a nice speedup key, too. You could use keypad 0 as the slowdown if you want, I guess. I then unmap the regular 0-9 because I have no interest in toggling any kind of switch 🙂 I find that setup quite comfy, especially when you can have diagonals mapped on the number pad, too.
Oh, and I do have an actual USB controller, too. It IS easier for a few things, but I honestly use the keyboard more often these days.
Anyhow, glad to see that progress is being made. Hopefully Mato will get all his translation work done in time to do taxes. God knows, mine were expensive enough 🙁
Wish they’d decide to give him a paid ‘vacation’ for a couple months or so, though, so he could finish this… (why do you think I put vacation in quotes? 😉 )
There’s only one problem with that picture, Mitch. It means that in a few minutes Mato will get smashed by an ugly old hag. 🙁
woo-hoo! is also possible to have it realesed as ips? i use ninja ips patcher its relly easy to use.
Wow! Incredible!
Ah! New tools for even more streamlined work. Great.
About everyone’s configuration: I use a Xbox360 controller… so nyah.
Mato, does Byuu’s emulator support Dual Cores?
Whoa, too many kind words! Thank you humbly, but you’re way too kind for the small amount of work I’ve done thus far.
Mato: “Also, while it’s at least semi-on-topic, I really recommend trying out byuu’s bsnes Super Nintendo emulator. It’s really awesome stuff.”
While I always love compliments, I should warn everyone that it is *not* a replacement for ZSNES or Snes9X. bsnes is not in competition with them. In fact, it’s not even designed with gaming in mind — it’s a research project. The idea is to properly emulate the system, no matter how slow. And then backport the improvements to ZSNES and Snes9x. I submit code and validation tools to both projects to improve their emulation.
Some people like to use it because they have really, really high end computers that can run it at full speed, and they like the accuracy that comes with it (better sound, less bugs, bragga bragga bragga ego+12). I say, to each their own. Use what works best for you! No hard feelings either way.
Apterous: “Woot, new tools! I hope this doesn’t introduce any new bugs that need fixing though, you know how it can be with new software tools that have limited testing…”
This is true, unfortunately. But I’ll be around all the time to fix any bugs that are discovered. I hope that changing things up — even this late in the game — will turn into a net positive after a little initial pain.
(last thing taken out in case people can’t detect jokes 😛 )
Waluigi: IPS can’t handle ROMs as big as Mother 3’s, so no. That is the whole reason for the new patch format–IPS just can’t handle newer stuff.
A Fan: “I wonder how bsnes deals with Super Mario RPG?”
Sadly, it doesn’t support the SuperFX or SA-1 coprocessors that games like Star Fox, Super Mario 2, Kirby 3 and Super Mario RPG use. I added in the other special chips because they were easy. These last two are very complex (roughly four times more powerful than the SNES itself), I don’t have the appropriate hardware to run tests on them with, and it’s also outside my goal. I’m just trying to get the base system right, and we have a long way to go there, believe it or not.
8BitWalugi: “woo-hoo! is also possible to have it realesed as ips?”
No, IPS is limited to 16MB images. Mother 3 is 32MB. Ergo, it’s not possible. Ergo, I got to use the word “ergo” three times in one paragraph 🙂
Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the UPS patcher is even easier to use than NINJA’s before this translation is released.
PureRok: “Mato, does Byuu’s emulator support Dual Cores?”
Nope, just one. The video filters might use another in the future, but it’s not appropriate for a system as old as the SNES which requires such a high degree of synchronization (parallelism) between components. Multi-core is great for later era systems (N64 and beyond,) though.
Matooo! I have a question: so we know Mother 3 will be played by emulators in many cases (or almost every case). Emulators like VBA and no$GBA will understand this new patch format? Will VBA be able to apply Mother translation on the fly? Or there will be some Mother 3 patch applier?
Ah, now let’s stop hijacking this thread with some boring old emulator and focus on Mother 3 🙂
Sprite welding stuff is looking great so far, Mato! Good luck with that, I’m sure you can do it!
akotan: mother 3 will be able to play translated just like any other rom once you patch it with the ups patcher
> Sadly, it doesn’t support the SuperFX or SA-1 coprocessors that games like Star Fox, Super Mario 2, Kirby 3 and Super Mario RPG use. I added in the other special chips because they were easy. These last two are very complex (roughly four times more powerful than the SNES itself), I don’t have the appropriate hardware to run tests on them with, and it’s also outside my goal. I’m just trying to get the base system right, and we have a long way to go there, believe it or not.
Does ANYTHING support those chips well? 🙁 I love Super Mario RPG, but it can go from funky (bouncy windows when you talk to someone) to crashed in no time (this is on 1.51 … mmmm, is there a newer version? I need to check when I’m not at work).
If somehow that is the latest, I wonder if I shouldn’t send the zsnes folks a savestate, I can’t wear my trueform pin 🙁 It freezes if I try even to move it.
—–
This is the info for the last game you ran.
File: Super Mario Rpg – Legend Of The Seven Stars (U).swc Header: Yes
SUPER MARIO RPG TYPE:SA-1
INTERLEAVED:No CHKSUM:OK
VIDEO:NTSC BANK:Lo CRC32:1B8A0625
—–
I’m glad for your work, BTW. It’s always good to know that people are polishing the emulators that help us play these fun games 🙂
Well, I gave in and started Mother 3 with a text translation… I wish I knew what everyone was saying to me. >>
It’s my favorite of the series so far (I’m just starting chapter 4) though… at least, it’s the most fun to play, and the story is going in a lot of directions I really like. Itoi wasn’t kidding about the story. x_x
I agree, I started Mother 3 just now after finally giving in. It’s so unexpected and fresh compared to the other games released recently, and there have been more than a few moments that have made me smile.
I still enjoy Earthbound a bit more right now, but that’s just because I haven’t got the hang of the rhythm battles yet. I’ll do it someday!!!
god damn, I… THANK YOU for doing this. really.
When will this UPS patcher be release ?
Whoa so many comments already 😯
TheReaper: You can already download byuu’s patcher if you want, though there’s not much use to it yet as only one UPS patch exists to my knowledge 😉 Check that RHDN link I put in my post, from there you can find more info about the UPS stuff and also a links to PC and Linux versions of the patcher. A Mac version’ll be made soon I’m told, so don’t fret Mac folks 😉
——-
I’m glad people are enjoying the game even with mr. crappy menu patch. One thing I really like is reading people’s reactions to the game, especially just as they first start and right after they finish. Also helps keep me motivated so others will get to experience it all too 😛
I was actually thinking of *maybe* making a new menu patch and using the new UPS format, but 1. I don’t think it’s that necessary at this point and 2. that’d of course mean a little bit more work and 3. I wouldn’t know what else to add in there besides a few tiny name fixes. So oh well.
Thanks for the info Mato and I will try the new UPS patcher out.
hmm. Byuu always seems to do unexpected things.
Is there a specific emulator you reccomend, Tomato? I use visual boy advance. Its decent, but a bit unstable.
god, I don’t have a computer so I can’t even use the menu patch, I’m stuck going online with my wii to translate everything. and it’s not too bad aside from using items in-battle…btw can anybody recommend a good flash cart that will play the rom on a DS????? I researched the hell out of playing it on a gba, but gawd it looks/sounds like crap compared to a ds.
FIRST
I swear LIPS supports >32MB. I have used IPS patches on DS roms that are well over 32MB o___0
Mato I just downloaded the ups patcher version 03 from byuu’s website and when I try opening UPS patcher a error occurs saying the UPS.EXE file is linked to a missing export USER32.DLL:SetLayeredWindowAttributes and the computer Iam using is windows me 2000 is something wrong with my computer or is it the patcher and if something is wrong can someone explain how I can fix the problem.
You’d want to ask byuu about that, but it sounds like your OS is pretty outdated 😯
I think someone else is making other patcher programs that’ll be portable to all sorts of different platforms, so maybe you’ll have better luck with that one when it’s done.
I’m trying not to spoil anything, but my favorite part………there’s a certain spot with Duster and his Dad wandering through the caves, and there’s a certain sound effect, I’m sure those who’ve played know what I mean. That part was complete bliss for me…it’s like, the characters were developped so well, and the mood was so perfect(you know the part, he keeps stopping you to give directions)….I’m still not finished the game, but it’s just so damn honest and funny and touching… it even does toilet humour tastefully(not that I care anyways)
Whats the name of that patcher that will be portable to all sorts of different platforms ?
TheReaper: the windows UPS patcher can also be run from command line, so you can still use it on that system. As for that error, make sure you’re on the last service pack for Window 2000…SP4 if i recall correctly. SetLayeredWindow was added in Windows 2000, so that should be working.
– Josh
He said Windows ME 2000 though so which is it, Reaper? ME or 2000? They’re different versions!
If it IS Windows ME, that’s your problem. Even Microsoft admitted that ME was a terrible failure and especially bad, even for them. The only solution to any problem with Windows ME is to upgrade to anything else, such as XP. Even Windows 98 SE is better. Seriously, there is no other solution. Just don’t use ME.
Wow, thank you Anna. That’s a pretty decent explanation. 🙂
Now as far as UPS goes, sounds like the dawn of a new era for hackers and translators alike. 🙂 I’m impressed, Byuu. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see the GBA Goemon games in English someday too. 😀
Ahh, my eyes skipped over that ME part…even they refuse to believe it exists.
Yea, if its ME thats a Pre 2000 OS, and is a horrible hybrid of Windows 9x and NT tech that is nothing more than an abortion of code…
Windows ME is a fetus
Anna the windows I am using is windows me and all other patchers like IPSWin,Lunar IPS and PPF-O-MATIC work great on my outdated computer so I guess I will end up using PPF-O-MATIC to patch the mother 3 game.
Naw Mato, fetuses at least have some redeeming value sometimes.
Oh hey. Um yeah get rid of ME, how the hell are you still using it and not running into other horrible problems? Seriously. XP. Go get it.
Or Ubuntu I guess but one step at a time XD
Anna you are correct windows me is a nightmare at times,xp is way better,I must update soon.
PPF-O-MATIC won’t work for mother3 patch, as they’re gonna go UPS…assuming you don’t get off ME by that time….and no one else has done it…it’ll be trivial to whip up a simple gui interface for the patcher that’ll work all the way back to windows 95 😉 But for the love of Mr. Saturn…get XP.
OK, I tracked down where the game was erasing entire glyph data when moving to the next glyph, which was no good because we were making the game stay on the same one, which would make the game erase the current data there, which basically blanked out the current tile every time a new letter was loaded. I only have the very very very basic bare bones of it working right now, so even the the above pic is very ugly, it’s what I expected and then some 😀
First, you can see a few letters that are semi-combined with other letters. That shows that things can be combined now, I just need to do the scary bit shifting and address manipulations. Next, and maybe coolest of all, you can see that the item name has been messed up too. This means that the same buffer and buffer routines used by sprite text are used by the item name text, so fixing the sprite text may fix the other menu text, which means long item names may finally get fixed in the middle of all this. Which is pretty awesome if that’s what happens. We’ll have to wait and see 🙂
I swear, if I had just one day of free time, maybe two, i could get this done. I only get maybe an hour a day right now though, so it’s argh-ifying 😛 Sorry if things are slow for the next week or so.
You know what rhymes with Byuu?
COMING THROUGH.
As in coming through for surprise, super help 8) The UPS format sounds great, too! Any size, any patch– crazy!! 😀 <3
In any case, an hour a two a day is impressive in my perspective– I could never even try to work that briefly. I suppose thats’ why I never get anything done, and your team’s almost done with the game.. 8)
> Windows ME is a fetus
Nah, absolutely nobody believes that ME should be permitted to live 🙂
As for the sprite text, I’m glad to see it’s coming along! Good luck with all those shifting addresses. I’m guessing all that hex arithmetic Lance made us do isn’t going to waste 🙂
I have to admit — I’m surprised anyone is still using ME. 2k is ~8 years old now (see? I can subtract. In my head!), XP ~7.
I figured it’d be better to add support for newer OS features than to focus on an antiquated one that even Microsoft abandoned.
But please don’t think we’re going to ignore you because of that. Someone already posted an OS X patcher to RHDN, and Nach is working on a Qt-based one that will run on Windows 9x+, Linux, OS X, etc etc.
You won’t be stuck without a patcher, I’m positive of that.
Giygas-eque menu text woo!
Hey byuu, what’s up with that NINJA patching thing, doesn’t that have something to do with this UPS patching format?
hold up, i better not be seeing things, but did byuu say that the *official* release date was in 3 MONTHS, or was he just joking?! *mouth drops*
you all deserve more than a pat on the back, you deserve pie
He was joking. It’s going to be much longer than three months, unless time travel and black holes are added to the equation.
ds n n n n n n n di di di di di ry ry ry ry De De De De n n n – – – . . . T…O…M…A…T…O…
IT HURTS T…O….M….
Woo! lookin great Mato 🙂
Wish I can help somehow 🙁 I be a coder…but you don’t need anymore *sniffles*
And heres that patcher byuu was talking about
Bin:
http://opennestopia.staulkor.com/UPS.zip
Src (Including XCode project):
http://opennestopia.staulkor.com/UPS_Src.zip
Least I can contribute in some way.
Mato just wanted to let you know that those screenshots excite me since I program and know that despite being uglier there’s a lot of hard work and promise being depicted 😀
The little combination blocks with half-letters in them. Oh my! 😀
The latest picture got a Lunar song (Go! Go! Go!) stuck in my head. 😮 On the plus side, it looks like you got extra EXTRA long item names working! 😉 (Kidding, of course!)
Wow… I’ve never seen game dialogue stutter so bad before.
Glad to see it coming along! Keep up the good work, Mato!
Is it weird to imagine you hacking on this while a cheering section in the back is oooh-ing and aawwwwww-ing over every little thing?
Announcer: “Oooh, that code is thorny, but he traces it! He found the sprite blanking routine! He’s attacking! Ooohhh, that byte change did it! He fixed the sprites!”
*wild cheers*
Right, it means I’m crazy. Must be why I loved Earthbound 🙂
Alright, had to add my own tile-clearing code for when we move to new tiles, since I had to disable the original code. Wasn’t too hard but I had to spend some time looking up GBA BIOS call info and then testing stuff to make sure it worked right. But now it’s late and I gotta get up early and argh. At least a tiny little bit of progress though. It’s really cool that the item names and main script may fix itself once this is done though.
@Mato: Wait, this may fix the main script too??
Woo!
Mato: Well I’m happy then, So will we need a curtain type of Emulator? GBA? SNES?
btw, sorry for all the questions.
After reading a LOT of posts, I have this to say; I can make a patch that will change the Menu patched Mother 3 rom into the nice full english one. However it’s not an official thing, so no complaints to the translation team. Also, since I don’t have the english patch (it’s not done yet) I can’t tell anyone if your save from the menu patch will work with the full english version. It will not be a UPS or PPF patch but instead an exe file that changes the ones and zeros from the menu patch to become a perfect match for the full english version. Think of it like an IPS patch just self contained. I did test the Japanese Rom and applied the Menu patch then compared the two and the patcher worked just fine so no size issues here.
Jeffrey: you would need a GBA emulator. No$gba is a good choice since the team is using it to translate and test on so it’s probally a good idea to use that one.
Eddward: I wouldn’t worry about it. Byuu has done enough for the team, not to mention making his patch form accessible for all future GBA hacks. Tomato and co. know what they’re doing. 😀
OK, I downloaded and installed Mednafen. Now can someone tell me how to use it? I try to start it, my PC thinks really hard for a minute, then it acts like I never tried to open it. 🙁 Little help anyone?
Jeffrey: From how it sounds, are you talking about a translation only using the space initially given, without any VWF’s or 8-bitifiing?
That’s neat, but I myself would rather wait for the incredible quality MOTHER3 patch. I greatly dislike RPGOne’s translation of MOTHER in MOTHER 1+2. That translation was done without VWFs and without increasing available space, mostly due to the limitations of the NES, I suppose.
Exp HP: Sadly, short of Nintendo intervention, Mother 1+2 may never really see translation.
From what I’ve heard, it’s what a ROM would look like if it were ejected from the bowels of Hell
\m/
I love it when things come together.
Hurry up with the “soree u guise nitnedo shut us down & u r sued 4 reeding dis” post, we’re waiting.
That’s so last year.
So, all this time, byuu was working in the shadows to help completing the project!
Way to go!
Brilliant work!
Can’twaitcan’twaitcan’twait! ^_^
Eddward: I’d really prefer it if you didn’t do such a thing. There’s actually a decent chance that the final version will still work with a ROM that originally had the menu patch applied, I’m not sure. But the last thing I (and probably we) want is someone messing around with stuff, making an alternate patch version and patch program. There are various reasons, but above all, it’s common courtesy to not mess with people’s stuff like that, especially without asking first 😉
Those sound like two REALLY awesome things to happen all of a sudden. And what’s best about it all is that this project has just affected the future of the entire internet! Think about that… 🙂
Also, I’m really glad this post was made before it became April 1st. I’d think this might just be a joke otherwise… 😛
I’m back, what’d I miss?
OOOOooooooh!
Mato: No problem. Just trying to help out however I can. If you actually can make the patch that works on either rom that that’s great. I thought most rom patches only work if the file being changed matches the CRC checks (Exact match). It would ROCK if the UPS format works with diffrent versions of the same thing (non-patched and Menu patched Roms) in one file. Gotta love learning.
As for future distribution, maybe you should go the easy/sleazy route and upload one copy to a popular bittorrent and one copy to rapidshare,megaupload,sendit,etc,etc,etc. Loads less traffic for this site. Then maybe throw a direct to this server link somewhere in the comments nobody’s going to read anyways ;p.
That’ll happen anyway on its own, but I don’t want to do that here, as I’d like to try to get a good base count for the # of patch downloads. Obviously it’ll be impossible to know the exact # of times the translation’s been downloaded here + elsewhere, but it’ll be nice to have a definitive lower bound to reference, if that makes sense.
ONE HUNDRED AND FORTIETH
Awesome. Continuing on the spree of wonderful progression.
Thanks for finding time in your schedule to devote to this. It’s really awesome.
This also may not be the place for it, but…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6P_BvrtuxAI
you cannot grasp the true form of ronald’s attack
For the file sizes and traffic we’re talking about here, while it’s not going to be free by any means, the bandwidth and hardware required to serve up patch downloads is within the price range of mere mortals nowadays. 🙂
If there was a small drive to chip in for server bills a bit before the patch was released to be able to handle a little extra bandwidth or beefier hardware (unless you guys got some unmetered hookup or something :O) I’d totally chip in a couple of bucks.
But really like, I know one of my favorite hosting companies has an “extreme” plan that offers 500GB of bandwidth a month on a special plan that doesn’t have scripting or email or anything that could be used for something like a popular download for $60/mo. If the patch was like, 5 MB (which I doubt it will even be that big) that plan could serve over 100,000 downloads per month. That’s without haggling over not needing the ridiculous disk space as well and trying to get extra bandwidth credit out of it or anything. ;D That’s less than I paid in the 90s for my brand new Earthbound game!
And really bandwidth is like anything you can get at costco or something, it’s cheaper in bulk. So considering this and Mato’s desire to keep stats, it sounds like messing around with rapidshare and torrents just isn’t worth the hassle. 🙂
There is zillions of free uploading sites like megaupload and rapidshare, this really isnt an issue imo, especially for a file under a megabyte.
Yes, file size stuff is no longer an issue anyway, so there’s no need to talk about it pointlessly.
hey one request though.
since you guys most likely aren’t gonna be done before the last possible chance of NoA announcing a release date (at E3) and if he they by some miracle they do end up giving it to us, would you be able to just finish your patch too instead of abandoning it? because NoA would probably censor the game and take out the good stuff.
No, in the very first post on this blog we made it clear we would stop work immediately if an official version got announced. It’s also in the FAQ or About page, too. The goal is to get MOTHER 3 in English one way or another.
ehhh, then i just hope NoA doesn’t decide to release it, you guys’d be done right around the same time or a little bit before i’d think that it would be released anyway.
april fools day…remember when mother3.org said their project got shutdown by nintendo? it was funny.
Eddward wrote: “It would ROCK if the UPS format works with diffrent versions of the same thing (non-patched and Menu patched Roms) in one file.”
No, not really. Think about it … there are lots of already hacked-up versions of Mother 3 floating around. Some with cheats applied, some with intros, some with trainers, etc. And a patch that does not check the file integrity could very well result in a working game that hits bugs later on in the game.
I believe people saw this with Bahamut Lagoon and the “instant level 99” hacked ROM that was very popular. It may be even less obvious for Mother 3’s various hacked ROMs.
Which do you think sounds better, both from your perspective and from the perspective of the M3 team getting less e-mails about bugs and patching issues?
1) You apply the patch, and it says “Well, I applied the patch to *something* — not sure what, hopefully it works for you!”
2) You apply the patch, and it says “You definitely had the *original, unmodified* game, and now you absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, have the bit-perfect English patch!”
Sure, it may be a bit of an inconvenience to obtain the M3 (J) image again, but it’s peace of mind for everyone involved, right? 🙂
Mato after all the time and hard work you have put in this project I want your version more than a NOA version,I also fear that NOA will censor mother 3 to hell but I respect your decision about not releasing a patch if NOA decides to release the game.If NOA decides to release mother 3 will you release your translation text of mother 3 because I would love to play mother 3 with your translation.
Yeah like at this point I’d almost be disappointed if an official version was announced because it will likely take even longer and include lots of censorship.
I would hope that in that unlikely event, Mato would consider finishing if he was close enough to where it wouldn’t be a gigantic waste of time, and after the game had been out for a year or so, releasing a “director’s cut” patch that hasn’t been censored or at the very least, had what will likely be a very different translation.
If not, at least maybe he’d consider a comprehensive “differences” site like he did for Earthbound/Mother 2, if that’d be easier than finishing the translation 🙂 That thing’s rad and I’d totally be buggin’ Mato to finish it if he didn’t have like 5 other huge and interesting projects ahead of it 😀
Yeah, there’d definitely be a differences site, and I assume I or someone else would go about fixing anything left out. But I don’t think we have to worry, because I don’t think it’ll get an official release in the forseeable future, by which I mean probably at *least* the next 5 years.
Hmmm… let’s say you release it and a few months later NOA announces Mother 3. Will you remove this patch from here, or will it stay?
Good question ThatsNoGood whats the answer Mato ?
155th!!!!
Wow this is getting really hypothetical :O
I’d guess the answer is “we’ll burn that bridge when we get there” 🙂
isn’t it “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”?
O___o
I’d take the patch down of course. Though it’d still be out there in cyberspace for all eternity, naturally 😛
They will obviously take it off from THIS site to avoid any legal issues….. BUT!…. it will obviously still be floating around the internet on websites and torrents and stuff….. so it doesn’t reallyyyyyyyyy matter if they remove the patch from here if that particular case even arises.
Anywhoo.. Mato.. just a quick question…
why do we need to put our email here when posting?
D’oh.. he posted while i was still reading
**feels like an idiot**
**sinks back into the darkness*
**hopes previous post will be removed***
There has been a lot of talk that maybe NOA will announce a Mother 3 localization at E3 this year, or maybe even a Mother 1+2+3 game. People have speculated that this is the reason that EarthBound was left out of the Masterpieces section in the American version of Brawl, along with Fire Emblem and Kirby Super Star (Both of which games are being considered for GBA ports). Thus the rumor is that the same thing may happen with Mother 3.
But who are we kidding, this is NOA we are talking about!!!
By the way, check out the video posted on Starmen.net, today. It mirrors the sentiments I have expressed here.
Well, IF NOA does do the unthinkable and announces Mother 3… 😉 I’d still keep the patch + progress handy just incase they pull the plug on their project! 😀
Rod: it’s a feature of WordPress, and many other blogging systems. It’s a way of identification and allows for some semblance of ability to tell if someone is who they say they are without making them sign up for an account (which is disabled on many WordPress setups anyway). If someone else claimed to be me, for instance, but didn’t use my email address it could be disproven easily. Or like, say Mato wanted to take me up on my offer of helping him without letting the whole blog know, he could just email me.
You could just use something fake or something (and if you’re concerned about the site you’re commenting on, this is recommended) but for something like this you’re fine with your real email.
tl;dr version is that it’s just the default setup for WordPress (possibly the blog platform with the largest base) and many other popular blog software packages as well.
This is amazing! I cant wait for this to finish! I’m so excited for this that I’m going to scream! Thanks for puting this hard work in for us. =D
:< I’d sort of rather have the patch come out than an official translation. I know it’s awful, but for some reason I feel that Mato has put a lot more effort and love into this than Nintendo would. Unless they contacted Mato and used his translation–then it would be like heaven. <3
Honestly Lena after thinking about it long and hard, at this point Nintendo releasing Mato’s patch (after some internal review and brushups and likely a bit of extra “localization” [censorship]) as a Wii downloadable is the most likely scenario for an official release. And you know what the chance of THAT happening is. So yeah :3
Thanks a lot, Mato! That was exactly the problem!
I think the chances of NOA translating Mother 3 are less than 1%. Games aresn’t made for the GBA anymore, and I really doubt they’d go throught the trouble to remake it for the DS.
I really think that NOA will release mother 3 just when the time is right for them to make a huge profit,remember all NOA cares about is $ and thats reality but the biggest question by mother fans is when and NOA of course does nothing to answer its fans.
TheReaper: You have the idea, but “when the time is right to make a huge profit” is pretty much never 😉
I’ve outlined before why it’s not just greedy hatred or anything just smart business that has us in this position: Mother 3 would be [far] more expensive to localize and [far] less popular than stuff that’d be easier and turn a faster and larger buck. Since the number of people Nintendo has on staff that can do this kind of insane hacking (it wouldn’t be a whole lot easier to hack this game with the sources) and are good at translating is limited, and this project would tie them up longer than other projects, it makes sense that they wouldn’t translate it.
Nintendo is, however, as litigious as Pokey is fat. They may ignore us Mother fans in a cold and cruel manner but the fact that even Reggie knows this translation is happening and they haven’t called in the hounds is a pretty big bone for them to throw us.
Of course I REALLY wish they’d sue PETA over Super Chick Sisters but that’s also kind of what PETA wants and I think Nintendo is just smart enough to not step on that landmine, so…oh never mind that’s a whole other rant. XD
Well, as far as localisation is concerned, Nintendo do pretty weird choices sometimes…
If you look at Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, NOE decided to release it for us Europeans, but NOA decided the character was not appealing enough to the Northern Amercian market, so for once, we Europeans were the lucky ones.
And yet, Tingle is an amazing game!
But, as far as Mother 3 is concerned, I don’t think either of us would get the game anyway: remember it’s a GBA game. A port to the DS? Nah, the general audience would just ditch it because of the graphics (which is a stupid argument, but…)
A remake? No! Too expensive!
Virtual console? Who’s ever said GBA would ever come to the virtual console? And who said that newly localised GBA games would come to the virtual console? Too expensive, once again IMO… I don’t think they’d waste their time and money on this to be honest.
And I do think that the only faithful translation to Itoi’s work we’ll ever have is Mato’s, so let’s not wait for NOA (or NOE for that matter).
NOA intersted in just money? Aren’t we all? Look at it this way, Nintendo is a company. Companies need money or they die. Look at the recent colapse of Bear Stearns in New York. They ran out of money and they died. What would happen if Nintendo ran out of money? They would close also. Then we can’t get new Nintendo games. No more Super Smash Bros, No new Mother games, No Mario, No Zelda, Nothing. Horrible huh?
Now about E3. If Nintendo wanted to totally suck they could announce that Mother 3 is coming to the US/EU then wait several years (2-3) then cancel the release. Thus the work done here would be negated (possibly) and Nintendo doesn’t really suffer per-say. I mean honestly, Final Fantasy and/or Dragon Quest’s fans are more plentiful then Mother’s fan base is. Would Nintendo seeing what they have to compete against, actually do something that might fail? I know I would buy a translation, or even a compilation cart but there are only so many Mother/Earthbound fans in the world. I think nintendo only truly failed once. That was the Virtual boy. Too bad Mother/Earthbound wasn’t a Sega game. Sega is known for taking risks and failing.
I patched an ips file for star ocean that was 48 mb. much more than 16 and it worked so i dont know what you are talking about less than 16mb
hey, a friend of mine asked this, so will there be a beta period or a period where you release a “trial version”, maybe the first chapter or something. i really doubt it, so go ahead and prove him wrong. i’ll win 5 bucks.
lumberjack: Star Ocean is 48 megaBITS, not megabytes, mr. smartypants. That’s 6 megabytes btw 😉 MOTHER 3 is more than five times bigger than that.
shadowdeku: Nah, there won’t be a trial version or beta version or anything. There’ll only be the menu patch and then the very final real patch, no in-betweens.
I wish I could help you do this; it’s a great project. Glad to watch the progress!
I’m glad you didn’t do an april fool’s joke along the lines of “oh guys we just needed to change two values in the data, the game is fully hacked and the patch will be out shortly.” >>
it would have been too obvious.
tibbs remember a rpg game called Terranigma for the snes which many around the world thought was a good rpg game that was release by NOE but it was not release by NOA because when Terranigma was release it was pretty much at the end of the snes system life just like mother 3 the gba system was pretty much dead.NOA tends not to focus on great games for systems that are near death.
NOA I think is far more into advertising mindshare and schedules in the smoke filled rooms than we know. Remember that Earthbound Zero was fully done and they scrapped it because they were afraid of it competing with other big releases (and SNES stuff? I forget, exactly.) To their credit they have this down good an they’re damn good at timing their releases, but it’s almost to a fault. It’s also kind of why (among other things) Nintendo has a hard time getting 3rd party support because companies turn their pants brown over the idea of competing with Nintendo.
Earthbound’s Great Sin was that Nintendo put it in one of those slots and intended to manufacture a hit and it tanked. As such the whole franchise was taken behind the shed to see the rabbits.
ooo, Terranigma yeah! great game..
@Anna and everybody else: and yeah, it sucks that the whole Mother franchise has had to suffer so much because of some bad business choices on NOA’s part.
EB/M2 was over-marketed in the states, and after the American audience didn’t respond the way NOA wanted, I think the whole franchise was tainted in their executive mindsets.
Even knowing about the large fanbase, they’re too worried about reliving the past mistakes of Earthbound. Under these circumstances I really can’t forsee M3 ever, ever, *ever* making it to our shores. Which is sad of course.
As someone who’s familiar with the business world, though, I know how past mistakes become stigmatized. It’s not always pretty, but Nintendo’s financial success as a company also allows them to continue making great games and gaming systems.
Gee, I should be writing their PR! 😛 but yeah. They suck.
Oh wow, I skimmed over the UPS update at RHDN and thought “Meh, whatever this is probably doesn’t apply to me”. Little did I know… IT DID CONCERN ME!
w00t for byuu helping you out!
a torrent would tell you exactly how many downloads, in realtime, and one of those file uploading sites also tells you how many downloads there were. food for thought.
The patch will only be a few kb, right? Why bother with a torrent for such a small file? A direct download is much easier and simpler in this case.
But I’d host the torrent if you go that way 😀
i thought the patch would be like a few megs? because they were talking gigs for just the menu patch…
I think you missed something, jadenguy. The game itself is only 32megs, and the patch will be a small fraction of that.
Like I mentioned before, the file size stuff is taken care of now, so there’s no real point in bringing it up. The final patch will be farily small (a couple hundred KB) zipped up. The only thing that was semi-noteworthy was the original PPF patcher’s size, but we’re not using that anymore so it doesn’t matter. Bandwidth should be fine, we have a good deal and a dedicated server here.
ok, i guess i did miss something.
ok, and thanks
SHADOWDEKU found 5 DP!
(sorry i just had to)
I’m very super tired after a ton of work today, but an idea sprang in my head on how to do the bit shifting easily, and it only took like 5 minutes after the idea to make it. Such a simple idea too.
Anyway, here’s a pic of it in action.
This is looking pretty good now 🙂 It looks like the messy bit-shifting stuff is done now, now it’s a matter of making the game know where to snip text off and start new text. And also how to know how many sprites to use and what part of OBJ memory to use.
You can actually see the text in OBJ here. I made it bigger so it’s easier to see, but you can see how it acts just like how my boobs example in that last update works. Those blank boxes between the parts of text are actually the bottom halves of the letter graphics, it’s just that not many letters go that low. You can see a y hook in one of them I think, though. Anyway, as you can see, the game starts the item description right after the s in “Goods”, so gotta figure out how to make it know when to start in a fresh tile.
Anyway, that worked a lot easier than I thought. I’m not sure why the item name is suddenly missing, but I have an idea. I’ll check it out once sprite land is working though.
it’s the case of the disappearing Ordinary Hat!
DefDefDefDefensensense +3 +3 +3
I don’t know why, but this makes me chuckle.
GooGooGood job!
Is it possible to ‘row-based’ text welding as opposed to the ‘column-based’ welding your example? I realize that there are much fewer rows, but I am curious nonetheless.
Sweeeeeeet Mato, you rock. Have you considered having the sprite area be constant rather than dynamically display them? Like just putting the whole grid up in the item description area (or wherever) and then just clearing the whole shebang and replacing it instead of haxing around with showing and hiding all the time? Or would that be harder?
Also if I was more creative I’d make a version of that Umbrella song about hat DefDefDefDef Defense, eh eh, under my hat defense~
Ok rereading it what I suggested doesn’t make sense how I put it. Like right now you are placing each sprite down as you make them. I’m curious if it’d be best to leave all the sprites up constantly, and use them as something of a canvas. I hope it makes sense this time…
Blah this is annoying. It’s late, so I’ll mess with the sprite allocation junk another time. I expect it to be a pain to mess with, I hope I’m wrong though.
Actually before bed, here’s the latest OBJ pic. It wasn’t too hard to snip text apart, though I still need to make it do it for newlines.
boo
The issue now is getting the game to allocate the sprites correctly. Looks like that’s gonna need a lot of tracing/manual documentation ie patience and time.
get a good night’s sleep!
So, is it still printing one sprite for each letter and just pulling them from memory progressively? That’s funny, but not unexpected. But it looks like you’ve got it printing to memory they way it’s supposed to, so that’s a good sign. When it works it looks great XD
first
the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Get some sleep Mato! lol
You work too hard. 😛
Wow, I just realized… this has no real importance to you, but the way the game stutters reminds me of how I got Project XX to stutter when implementing the dialogue engine. (Which also, was designed to be simialar to Zelda’s and Mother 3’s as an example.)
Deja vu! Just for curiousity’s sake, and just because I want to know how simialar my project and Mother 3 (your progress as of late) are, what was Mother 3 “thinking” (in layman’s terms) when it stuttered all of that text?
“Project XX” (as I have been and will always call it until it finally sees a true release) had a “left/right variable XX” setting, which would read a piece of dialogue stored in its own “file space” (sure, we’ll call it that for now) based off of the variable. Incidentally, this also scrolled the text horizontally (during times when text must scroll). Of course, I was a dolt and I forgot to remove my prior “print this, move on, print that” code, so it copied, and printed the next letter along with all prior letters in the “file space” — so I’d have “BBoBooBoobBoobs” instead of “Boobs”. Boy, looking back now, amateur mistakes like that are always worth a good laugh. 😉
Anything that gets this game in my hands faster. Hell, I’d bake you guys cookies if it’d help. Hmm, cookies …
BRAVO!
Mato,
This is probably the stupidest question EVAR, but…
Is it possible for a person with minimal assembly experience, lots of C experience, some time and no desire to be spoiled to help with the hacking?
–hasone
At this point, only tough complicated stuff is left, so by the time you’d be caught up, we’d probably already be done.
Doing some more code exploring with awake eyes, I think I found a way to simplify this hack a little bit, and also found where the game does its check for control codes, so it should be easy to make it snip text off at newlines and possibly status icons. Won’t have much time today to work on it though.
So about the size…
I kid! Great job and keep it up!
THis sounds great. Looks like the completion of the MOther 1+2 patch isnt too far out of the question. I read about the tragedy over at RPGone.net. It would be great to have the complete mother saga in english to play on the gba.
very impressed Mato. Keep up the good work.
yay! ohmygod I can’t WAIT! ^^
Last year I played the mother 1+2 translation of RPGone.net and since I never have played earthbound zero for nes game I decided to play mother the gba version translated and I liked the story but there are a couple of parts of the game that are very annoying for me the most annoying place is the factory part.But at the end I enjoyed the game more than I thought I would.
Some weird work-related things means I could use an hour or two for stuff. Implemented part of my idea from this morning.
Need to make it cut off at the end of a string though, which I thought I did yesterday and in the latest hack, but apparently not. It might be easy to fix, just subtract one at one point in the hack. You can see stuff in OBJ memory here.
There’s still the issue of sprite allocation though, which is the other big part of this whole thing. Need to make it only allocate sprites when necessary, as you can see here, it still allocates the # of sprites based on the # of letters in a string, and causes extra, pointless copies to be made.
But it’s looking much better already at least 🙂
Heh, only a minute after posting that I tried my idea I mentioned and voila.
Still much work to do but not bad so far 🙂
*moist*
Mato!…… Dude….. are you as closed to being finished with this “text welding” thing as i think you are?
Lynn: …… lol, didn’t expect a girl to say something like that….usually its only guys who mention that they’re about to .. you know,
Dude Mato, you’re such a rock star. You’ve got the ability to make girls moist just thru the sheer awesomeness of your hax0r skillz. That’s a gift my friend. I’m reminded of something Peter Parker’s uncle said, though – “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Currently mapping out the sprite allocating code, so far it’s surprisingly straightforward, that part might wind up being a simple hack of 5 lines or so in the end.
Wow, that’s starting to look kind of sexy!
Keep rockin’, Mato! ^^
very close now 😀 😀
Now I just need to make it take newlines and status icons into account, which should be fairly easy. Running out of free time today though aaaaa
Mato you sexy, sexy beast. ;-*
I was gonna suggest my “sprite canvas” approach again but apparently this is working so who cares? It’s probably a more elaborate hack, anyway.
And yes, Rod, girls get special feelings too! Even those of us with, erm, alternative orientations just might find this sort of thing sexy! ;D
AWESOME!
Gah it’s been so long! I get the general idea behind this but I want to make sure I have the specifics right since it’s been so long: OBJ tiles are pieces used to make sprites, and OAM is assembled sprites, right? Which I’m guessing can be welded together up to 2×2 grid of 8×8 tiles from OBJ memory which can be flipped and pallated and all that good stuff? Bah don’t waste time giving me a detailed answer, Tomato, I’ll probably go look it up later. 🙂
Man I want to play with No$GBA now, I miss doing this stuff. Fun fact: I was actually part of a team to do a port of Earthbound to the GBA (as a portfolio item or some such, we were trying to break into the pros and had a really good game entirely designed down to every detail and a working prototype of the very beginning of the game, but getting publisher support to finish programming the thing and actually publish it was a nightmare… iirc we were looking for other ways to establish a reputation and secure funding) but I had to move out of the country and abstain from internet for a long while so I never got far in it. 🙁 We had a cool map viewer working on the emulator, though.
Oh the memories~
And oh how I wish I could be of more help on this! Add “didn’t get back into GBA programming when moving back to the US and start hanging out on starmen.net a few years earlier” to that long list o’ life’s regrets 🙂
OBJ is just like a tile palette, you can draw whatever you want on there, then you tell OAM you want to create a new sprite and you give it the OBJ tile #, the width and height in pixels, x and y positions on the screen, and other data like scaling, rotation, etc. OAM is really just a table of this basic data.
Added in a thing for newlines real quick, except now I realize need to take a piece out of one of the hacks and make it its own function so I can call it from other places like this, too. The hack consists of 6 different parts right now though, and I should call it quits for today so I can do other stuff now. I also noticed I need to add in better glyph-clearing code and I need to make it so the game has an accurate sprite total count. None of this is hard, just needs time. I’ve tried out the hack on other screens, for the most part it all looks good but it’s clear I’ll need to do some fine-tuning at some point.
Keep up the good work! Glad to hear that you feel that you accomplished a ton with little time today!