Sneaky Bug Squished, Script Draft #2 Info
My fix yesterday to allow a bajillion letters per line with the main script wound up having a weird effect on the flyover text and other similar text in the game. Fixing it seemed tough, but yet again, after some sleep the fix was real simple. Hurray, sleep!
This doesn’t make me
feel very welcome 😐
Oh cool I love this world
Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, Draft 2 time! Like I mentioned before, this isn’t that exciting a process so updates may get boring and scarce, but that’s probably a good thing. I’ll still post regular progress reports and info and stuff though. Some details about script stuff below.
First, there’s a good amount of text in the game. In its raw, fully-squished down form, it’s about 700 KB. That might not seem like much, but try typing a story in a plain text file until you reach 700 KB. Your hands will be bloody stumps by then 😛 It’s more normal in the ROM translation community to give a script’s size from the filesize of the text dump. In that case, it’d be more in the 1 meg range, which is pretty freaking big for fan translations. Star Ocean was a 600 KB text file and it was considered a beast of a script. Bahamut Lagoon was like 300 KB. Usually, the only games with scripts this big that get fan translated are things like Playstation RPGs, if that means anything.
Also, like I mentioned before, it takes a lot more to say something in English than in Japanese, so the English script file is actually twice as big, so many months ago byuu helped us hack the main script routine to fit the English script back into the limited ROM space. Otherwise the entire game would’ve had to be butchered up like the menu patch text. Add in all the battle text, menu text, misc. text and it’s even more. Even so, it’s hardly unmanageable, so that Nintendo Power article about there just being oh-so-much text is pretty bogus. Especially when the people who work at the Treehouse get paid to do this kind of stuff, and have years and years of experience.
Anyway, getting sidetracked. The main script is divided into 1001 “blocks”, with 7658 lines total. Like most games, the script is in a nonsensical order, so if you don’t know anything about the game, things can turn out pretty bizarre. Actually, it’s not in a nonsensical order, the script follows the same order that the game’s maps are stored in. So, using the map viewer, a lot more context is available. It’s still not possible to tell who’s saying what yet, but hopefully our text editor will get that ability at some point.
Actually, for those who’ve played the game already, you can probably follow along the Draft 2 process by using the map viewer — you can see what stuff’s coming up, what stuff’s just been finished, etc. So even if updates are boring, you still got that. That might be neat to do I guess. Anyway, here’s a pic of how everything connects:
(The block # and the map # are off by like 1 because Block 0 is for text not connected to maps)
Professional translations are usually done in Excel spreadsheets and other mundane office documents, so this is all really nice to have. When reid and co. visited NOA last year, the people there were pretty amazed by the tools we’re using.
All that blah blah aside, Draft 2 starts now… well, maybe after the 3-day weekend here in the States.
In the meantime, Jeff’s been working on organizing all the remaining hacks and fixes. It really feels like the project’s taking a new turn now, it’s great 😀
woop woop
Alright Mato, generic praise is due as usual
Hooray for updates I cant Keep Up With!
It’s getting so close I can ~taste~ it. Keep up the great work, Mato!
I love how you seem to never want to settle for less, and then you always end up amazing us. Have a great weekend.
It’s pretty cool that you don’t have to worry about a certain ammount of letters anymore! This is pretty Sweet!
wow i’ve never been this close to the beginning of an update. I feels specials. Keep doing the things Nintendo thinks can’t be done.
Don’t worry about having a whole bunch of interesting stuff to talk about in your updates, Tomato. The fact that you do frequent updates at all is the important thing, it shows us all you’re still there and working on things. At least, I’ve seen too many sites where the people running things would fall off the face of the planet, and then finally a few forevers later go, “Oh, by the way, I haven’t done anything all this time and I’m quitting! Hahaha!”
Seriously, just posting to say that you haven’t gotten anything done is fine, if you got to! Just the fact you remember to upate is part of what has made this blog so successful. 🙂
hooray for text!
ps: nintendo power is a bunch of overexaggerators, so nobody listens to them anyway.
Heh, earliest I’ve seen an update.
Somehow I don’t think it will take months to do the script. you guys did this stuff all so fast, it seems like you’ll get like 10 percent of the script done a day or something.
Yay
I cant wait
Good thing to get the 2nd draft started. But let me tell you that article in Nintendo Power about MOTHER3 reminded me of EarthBound and how much fun I had playing it. It brought me to Starmen.net so in some cases that article was a rekindling of my love for EarthBound
Wow. Mato, every time you describe the scale of this translation project, I feel like up until that point I had no idea how large a task you are undertaking for Mother 3. Everything I learn about it just seems to reinforce the idea that Mother 3 is like the final boss of game translation. Thank you for doing it. 🙂
For some reason, “Welcome to th :|” really made me laugh out loud.
Anyway, uh… keep up the good work! >.>
Delicious updates! This is why I keep coming back here! Keep it up Mato!
13 years after the U.S. release of earthbound, we’d like to welcome you to th
“Welcome to th :|” is going to be my new favorite phrase ever… ^_^;;
Gotta love humorous coincidences…
yay, that means the actual hacking is almost completely 100% done!
Hey Mato why did Reid and Co. visit NOA? Was it something to do with this project or to talk about getting Mother 3 over here?
WOOO!!!! you guys really are doing good. You take nintendo power’s face and shove their nose in the dirt! bahah!
I’ve been watching the updates and comments and unfortunately haven’t been leaving any myself… until now. 😛
I’m amazed at the progress and dedication effort put towards this project. You guys will be done in no time, I think things are going a lot faster than you expected, too.
My fresh ROM of Mother 3 is just waiting to get patched, of course, I’ll actually buy a copy of the game and try to put the translation patch on a flash cart… or something if I know how to do it. 😀
Can’t wait for it, keep up the good work!
Welcome to th 😐 is my favorite picture now.
I too have visited NoA. It was pretty damn cool.
I even know the guy who works in the gift shop from a barbershop quartet of all things.
I went to Microsoft too. It wasn’t nearly as cool. Still cool, but not as much.
As MetroidMan said, why did Reid and Co. visit American Nintendoland?
Also, generic praise and thanks as usual, Mato. You’re doing great, and I’m more than sure you won’t spend years doing this draft…
Honestly, you’re going so much faster than any fan translation I’ve ever followed. It’s frightening how much you can get done in a couple of hours with a little help from your friends…
Note the cleverly hidden Beatles reference.
HEY MATO!
“A Beatles song…
XXXterday.”
YES………NO
Oh, and additionally…
I wonder what Mother 3 would look like played with the Power Glove?
Discuss.
TheMetroidMan: An NOA friend of ours invited reid and co. since the starmen.net convention was in Seattle last summer. So reid and a few people went over and visited with him and a few friends from Nintendo Power too. More info on it here.
reid was planning on saying absolutely nothing about the project, but then THEY started asking about it and saying how they couldn’t wait to play the patch and stuff. Very 😯
XD Welcome to th :[
Great job, mato. It’s getting closer and closer everyday…
haha at that
^^ It’s not gay…it’s happy sometimes- but mostly sad and emotional.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Keep up the great work, and enjoy the holiday weekend. Relax a little.
Even NoA employees are looking forward to this? Actually makes you kinda wonder what’ll happen after this project is completed….
That’s cool. I guess, rather than difficult boggling puzzles of hacking, it’s just lots of steady progress now. Very nice, and I’m glad you’re back at what you’re actually used to.
i aM hAppY.
It is cool that NoA is turning a blind eye to this project. It seems that all those claims about them not caring about their fans are unfounded; afterall they are a bussiness whose goal is to make money. And truthfuly Mother 3 probaly would not have sold well back in 2006 if it was officially translated. Just my two cents.
lol And why was there like a sad face on the “Welcome to the World of Mother 3” intro?
It probably wouldn’t have sold well enough. It didn’t even sell that well in Japan if I remember correctly (they thought that it would sell really well, printed a lot, which was to be expected, considering the Famitsu Rating and well, it didn’t work out)
That’s why the game was so cheap on Play-Asia before it went oop 😉
At least that’s what I read. That M3 was in all the SALE-Carts later on ): It was a bad time for a GBA game.
And that’s so sad, because the game is so awesome!
And you’re awesome, too, Mato! 😀 1meg… Ouch 😉
Congrats on defeating the evil sneaky bug,as prize you guys get the great gloves to protect your hands from the next boss script draft #2.
I’m really glad Mato. I’ve been wanting to play this since I played the American Earthbound game, (which was last year) but now I’m glad that I get to play the sequel soon too. I don’t know why NOA is not budging about a Mother 3 translation but thanks to you, I’ve no worry of that! 😀 I’m sure I can enjoy this game during the summer!
Mother 3 sold probably over 400,000 copies in Japan. That is by no means bad, considering it was released nearly two years after the Nintendo DS.
Welcome to th
😐
Is a great response picture.
great job!!
could we get a timetable or release date yet?
Tomato, how relieved/excited are you to actually get back to working on the text of the game instead of going all out on the programming?
Heya, Mato! Awesome work! I wanted to ask you something, though. Is that a custom built script insertion/extraction tool that you guys made? If so, is it modeled on any similar tools? Sorry to bug you about it, I’m just incredibly interested.
It might also give you a chuckle to know that you got me interested in FEoEZ, too. I just snagged a nice copy from eBay a little while ago. d(^_^ )d
Wonderful!!! But why don’t you release a demo of the patch for people to test? There still maybe some bugs, but…
700 kb of text?!? that’s like a word document 48000 pages long!
btw, thx for you awesome hacking tutorials on sm.net, I have successfully hacked the crap out of EB. (first thing I i did was give ness his SSBB bumblebee outfit, hehe)
AAAAAH!!! I need MOTHER 3… I NEED IT!!! °_°
Heuheuheueh… Great job, Mato! XD
MATO, I have a good question, what would happen if Nintendo decided to just take the hacked version of the rom and call it theirs and sold the translated version? What would happen? Although it would super sexy if the asked to buy it off you…….
Wait, so NOA wants to play Mother 3 in english… but won’t translate it themselves…
It sounds to me like they’re just lazy…
Simple. They can’t take and sell it as their own. They just can’t. A random person from internet may at least try, but not Nintendo.
MATO i dont get what u mean by WHO says what in the game
if u mean like in a convo cant u just like put their name each time its someone else?
Mato, how many years did it take for you to fully master Japanese?
Lol Nintendo can’t wait to play the patch. :l
Anyway, the Welcome to th :l rthing. Why did you have to redo it? Wasn’t it already ok? Or am I crazy? I swear that it was fine in the non patched game, didn’t it open with it in English?
Maybe I was just feeling :l when I played it.
50th comment
Hey! Now you can give us updates by saying you finished x/1001 blocks of text! Or just convert that to a % by knowing that each block is approximately 0.1% of the total! 🙂
Has anyone made a count yet of all the times people have asked “what if Nintendo steals your patch and tries to sell it”. I don’t get the fascination with this question.
Hehe, so many people asking the same questions over and over. Here’s a hint everyone: Read the FAQs located at the top of the page. 😉
From the to-do list:
> Find a better hash algorithm for sprite text routine stuff, or figure out an alternative method.
I thought that JeffMan had already found a way around that? Or did I misunderstand which part you were talking about in that old update?
Hopefully, you’ll bang out this script in no time and… okay, I know that will take a while. I actually had to transcribe something this morning, two newspaper articles worth about 10 KB of text. I know my fingers thought it was more, and that took quite a while, even though I can type at 70+ WPM when I’m just transcribing text that’s already in front of me…
100 more of those? It could be done in a weekend, but I would go crazy and I wouldn’t be translating anything.
Oh, one last thing. What’s the “// don’t like” in the Mother 3 Funland screenshot? Is that where you put comments about the lines of text for yourself?
It’s too bad that the rest of the translation can’t be done in a week. That would be exactly 13 years since Earthbound was released in the U.S. 🙁
Either way it’s great that the translation has made so much progress and that we’ll be seeing a release of the translation in upcoming months. 😀
I’ve neglected commenting for a few days now, so here’s the first in a batch of stuff.
Here are replies to questions from this update.
Jeffrey: This comes up every so often, but this is what I do.
Anna: Block 0 text tends to use different display routines, so the main script hack doesn’t apply to scrolling text.
LCount: Testing will be done internally, as mentioned on the FAQ page.
Sandman: While I’m hoping it will take a month, it will probably take longer as I try to get back on a good schedule and try not to stay up till 4 am 😛
hollow: demi is demi. If you’ve played any ROM translations at all, you’ve probably played something he had a hand in. He was also the one who managed to get the EB0 ROM dump made for everyone to enjoy. I’ve always been fond of his writing in the game’s he’s done, it flows much nicer than my “translationese”.
would people be able to patch this to a .gba file? if so, how cuz i cant apply the ppf patch to a .gba file with the tool i use. apparently since its a .gba file and not an iso will it not work or do you change it into an iso
Mato you said on the forums that it would take more than 3 months. Do you think that now that you can put 512 letters on the screen?
Here are the replies for questions in this thread.
starmand: I thought it would take about a month, but I wound up working super super hard for a week or so to get it done quicker. My hope was to get the major hacking done in May, I would’ve been disappointed with myself + exhausted if it dragged into June too.
V-King: No, I already said that lines could be like 1000+ letters and stuff would still work fine in RAM. 512 is no different from 256 or 711 or 666 in this regard.
OnionRingOfDoom: Yeah, as a freelance translator, I earn based on the amount of work I produce.
hasone: Yes. It’s not vital and I don’t want to do it right now, it’s boggling our minds.
Kamion: I’m a translator because I like translating, and I actually got into the field because I wanted to translate games for a living. Seems only natural to be happy to be translating a game I like so much. If anything, it’s the hacking I wish I could curse to death 😉
PSI Supernova: Draft 2, Draft 3, final text fixes, working on non script text, testing, fixing bugs found during testing, writing up documentation, etc. I’d say my rough estimate is more than reasonable.
Vagn: Yes, all the really major hacking is done now. Unless something crazy pops up (I doubt it, I’ve played through 5 chapters fine now) there shoudn’t be any more really major hacking left. There is still a bunch of little odds and ends and stuff though.
GIANTSTEP: I have 95 projects, which one are you talking about? The one I most want to go and do (and have to fight myself to not continue on right now) is this. If you’re talking about the EB0 hack thing, I have no plans for it for a while, and I really don’t look forward to it right now, to be honest. And that’s not the kind of feeling you want to have when working on a project in your free time.
Vagn: No, don’t know how, and at the moment I don’t think it’s worth the time/trouble. It’s not uncommon for ROM translations to have little things like that though.
Rog: We can fit more letters on screen, but that doesn’t mean you can have more items. That’s completely different stuff and we’d have to change the game’s design for that. I don’t think that will ever happen.
Combo Baker: I don’t know this stuff, I’m not a flash cart knowing guy. We’ll hopefully have a detailed document of how to get emus/flash carts to work with the patch down the road, at least that’s the plan.
A Fan: Block 0 text is very messy and not organized, so who knows what’ll happen. The recent flyover text stuff was one example of weird Block 0 text being weird. There’s actually a really long line of text in Block 0, around 8 KB (translated) for one line of text, and I have no idea how it loads this text. It’s the most important text in the game, so I don’t want to have to chop it up, either. It’s even so big that it breaks our text editing tool.
Negi: Too many hacks to even go back and think about it right now. I try to make sure the hacks aren’t too duct-tape-y. Most of the hacks work together with the original code’s framework.
Landon: The topic keeps coming up, and like I said all the other times, whatever the team decides on down the road is what it’ll be. There *are* lots of technical issues too, not to mention thematical things relating to the title.
Effluvium: All of it is thanks to xkas. I’m pretty sure people were like “meh whatever” when I made that update about byuu making a GBA xkas and then freaking out about it, but now maybe people can look back and be like, “Oohhhhhh so that’s why it was such a big deal” 😛
A Fan: If something like that happens, it’s time to hit the dictionaries or other resources, Google is also great for finding phrases, and from there you can figure out where to go next.
Itoi: The real Itoi was riding in an airship the time you posted that. So unless he suddenly learned awesome English while in mid-air, yeah right 😉
Amon: I dunno, I’m not you. Do what your heart tells you.
NecrosaroIII: It’s a nice feeling, but it’s like we’ve just climbed a really steep mountain and found some more mountains at the top that are still waiting to be scaled. It’s nice though.
Ninja of Saturn Valley: See this.
Troy: Why would we need more than 512? 105 is the max that can even fit on one line, and there are only two lines.
WELCOME TO TH 😐
Uh, I think Troy’s question was if the script revision wouldn’t take as long now that you don’t need to worry about how long the lines would have to be.
Yeah thanks I noticed that later. Thanks guys this is quite a high quality patch. I hope this can get come in at least 4 months from now. Ya’ll have done quite a lot of work on this and unlike most patches this one is going to be made without to much crashing. Hope to see it soon!
Thank you so much Mato. I am a long time lurker and I wanted to thank you for the good deal (and thats an understatement) of work you have put into this.
Also, was that map viewer program done in Microsoft visual studio? It has the icon and all, just curious.
It’s Saturday night and I should be out with a girl.
http://i29.tinypic.com/24gizaa.png
I FUCKING LOVE YOU GUYS
I was just wondering, is it illegal to download the Mother 3 rom on to your computer? If not, does the law change if you put this english patch on it?
EarthboundRules: It is illegal to download the Mother 3 ROM, it is also illegal if the English patch is on it. The patch itself however, is not illegal because it is custom code.
Wow. This is amazing. You oughta approach NOA with the idea, and given the experience of working on One Piece: Unlimited Adventure, maybe Nintendo might pay you big money for having the game published in a compilation with the other two EarthBound games included in it.
lol,mitch, my bro liked that one, even if he’s a jerk and keeps saying Earthbound sti..:|
(surprized face after figuring out that downloading the Japanese-language game Mother 3 on your pc is illegal) I guess this is the last I will be seeing you Mato, Jeffman and the rest. Farewell….
JUST KIDDING! I’ll still watch the updates and post on here even though I won’t be using the fan translation.
EarthboundRules: Even though it is illegal, I don’t think there has ever been a legal case on ROMs, nor can they really track you down. It’s illegal, but companies only go after the distributers, not the downloaders.
Hope you’ve never played EB0 or a ROM of EB. If so, give yourself 50 lashes.
MATO: I *know* you said you were *really* getting forward to getting back to the translating part. Isn’t that what you have all that fun doing?
Mato, I don’t think I can fit 50 more lashes on my eyelids…
48… OW…. 49 Ouch!…50! *huff huff* That SUCKED 🙂
The ROM that I have was dumped by myself, so it should be good. It works fine in an emulator, but it doesn’t work on my flash cart… I hope the patched version will work, but since I know little about the flash cart’s internal workings, I have no clue… ~_~
It’s an older model, though. Flash2Advance, 256 Mbit.
Mato: In SSBB, Nintendo calls it Mother 3 instead of MOTHER 3.
WHerever feasible, it’d probably be best to follow their lead.
EarthboundRules: I’m not positive, so somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe ROMs are perfectly legal as long as you use them as a backup copy. So if you bought a Japanese copy of the game, you could legally download a ROM and play it in English. I believe the FAQs has a link to a site that sells Japanese copies of the game.
I believe it’s legal to make backup copies of your own — which downloading is not. It’s a fine line, but it’s there. Also, I think there’s still some dispute over whether this IS allowed or not. I know it was a huge problem back in the 80s and 90s. And now there’s that DMCA stuff too, so bleh. I’m not a lawyer though.
Wow, All this progress is making me dizzy! Thanks for the hard work and keeping us updated!
I’m pretty sure they don’t really give a crap anyway. They even support the downloading and translating of certain games such as Fire Emblem 6, because it lets them know that if they release a sequel in English, people will buy it
it’s illegal but nobody will ever know, soooo.. have fun!
My thoughts exactly
Legality of Roms: “Eh…not that legal even if you own the game due to various legalese lawyer speak reasons.”
Chance of getting busted: “0.000000000001% unless you’re like distributing the stuff in bulk or something.”
Um, glemmstengal? That sounded wrong when you said “But nobady will ever know, soooo..have fun!”.
I mean “nobody”.
Nice job. This was a great upda 😐
If I recall correctly, it is only illegal to have a game ROM/ISO/whatever on your hard-disk if you do not own a legal hard-copy (or license) of said game. Whether the hardcopy is damaged or not is of no consequence.
—
Side-note: while this doesn’t apply to anything recent, check out the second exemption.
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/
From what I understand, they’re illegal no matter what, thanks to the bit in the instruction manual that goes something like “Backups for archival purposes are not required and are not permitted” or something like that. I’d have to dig through my manuals to get the exact wording.
> A Fan: If something like that happens, it’s time to hit the dictionaries or other resources, Google is also great for finding phrases, and from there you can figure out where to go next.
So there’s no Japanese version of the Urban Dictionary? Hmmm. Maybe I just need better books. I mean, I even have a freaking dictionary just for particles, but it’s still not enough sometimes.
____
As for all the copyright stuff, just remember that IANAL 🙂
That exception posted by BloodEagle only applies to libraries & archives 🙂 Anyhow, erhm, we’ll just call it a ‘fair use’ that happens to neglect Itoi’s right to authorize translations or claim that the EB community paid him in advance with that huge gift bag Mato & co. made.
If you still feel guilty somehow, buy an actual M3 cartridge. Starmen.net will help you get your hands on one. You can’t do anything with it but hold it in your hand or dance around it, but you can get that warm feeling that you DID pay them back for all their hard work. Lots of us here have done that, just because we love the series.
But if you want to get technical, I’m pretty sure I know a legal theory about they could make a case against the patch itself (and translation patches in general). I just don’t think they will, given how many people know about it at NOA (and how many are eager to play this!). Downloaded ROMs are also infringing (even if you own it), but self-made backups of games you own are NOT (provided you don’t later sell that game, or you weren’t just renting it at the time, etc.). Emulators are NOT infringing (thanks to a case Sony lost). Translating things you’re not allowed to is (e.g. if I translated a Harry Potter book into, I dunno, Urdu, and put it up online, it’d still be infringing).
IANAL, but the only way to win a case like this is not to get sued. Mato is very wise to avoid donations like he has and to make it prominent that he’d fold up shop the minute they came a-suing (it actually makes a few legal defenses available).
But, always get proper legal advice from a lawyer if you get into legal trouble. God knows, I haven’t won any court cases, and I’ve only testified once. I _still_ have no idea why they asked me what model of phone we had, though.
> From what I understand, they’re illegal no matter what, thanks to the bit in the instruction manual that goes something like “Backups for archival purposes are not required and are not permitted” or something like that.
First sale doctrine pretty clearly trumps that. Though God knows, they’ve enforced other EULAs piecemeal, so it probably depends on whether or not the judge approves of what you were doing more than it depends on the law…
That said, a recent case against AutoDesk over someone who resold used copies would likely kill that provision, unless you had somehow availed yourself of the license. But other judges have also made absolutely stupid (IMHO) rulings countering that, so you’d have to ask an actual lawyer if you wanted to be sure. (And even they may not be able to predict the outcome of such a case…)
Right now, there’s a pretty clear circuit split, at least, according to the judge in that AutoDesk case, not to mention dissent within his own circuit. I *really* hope they follow his reasoning, though, because some of the other judges were totally out of whack…
It was eating at my mind, so I took a look at the Block 0 stuff I know is still left. I see what’s happening and it looks pretty easy to fix, mainly it only allows for 24 letters per line. Should be easy to move everything and expand that, but I want to get on with the second draft, so hopefully one of the other guys will handle that stuff. Or I’ll do it while demi’s doing Draft 3. Too headachey to hack, I think my brain cells are exhausted now.
wooo!
Hurray for sleep!
mato: any chance you have a page or list of your “other projects”?
I’ve been doing some thinking on this, Tomato and I realized that your quite special.
See, you’re a hacker AND a translator, which makes you a hackslator >_>
The first two images made me lol so hard. Thank you <3
Mato, do you still print out the script to work on it?
I love those pictures.
Colon and Vertical dash.
This: Welcome to th
been following this site for awhile but never posted… just wanted to give a big thanks to you guys for all the hard work you’ve done so far… can’t wait for this to be done, i’ve been dying for this to be in english forever. my super nintendo is the only old school system i have left and i had’em all, and it’s only still around cause earthbound is permanently implanted into the cartridge slot (it’s just been there for the past, oh, 5 to 10 years or so, whenever it was i sold off the rest of my SNES games). sadly i never played the first one on the NES, but yea, EB on SNES was what got me into RPGs, and it’s still my favorite of all time. One of the few games i’ve played through a million times that’s still fun every time around. uh yea long story short, thanks to everyone working on this project, it’s much appreciated by me and i’m sure by everyone else who loves the series, and uh, viva la mother 3!
Got 2 blocks done just now. These things take time, but the feeling from polishing and fixing stuff up is very palpable here. It’s very cool. Only wish I knew who was saying certain lines sometimes, hard to tell from memory, plus I haven’t spoken to every NPC in every minor event ever 😛 This process is gonna take a while though, at least a month for sure.
Anyway, already finding neat little hidden text here and there. Stuff like this for example — nobody nowhere would find this text normally I’m sure. Who’d think to check some random tree from behind like this? Heh, that crazy Itoi man. Looking through the script, I think this tree’s message might change over time too. Not 100% sure but I think so.
I like Demi’s work too. The game is pretty much all text, but if that’s your thing, check out Radical Dreamers for a good example of his work.
http://www.romhacking.net/trans/403/
I thoroughly enjoyed it, your mileage may vary.
Radical Dreamers: In which Proto Chrono Crosses are kinda awesome.
Also, Magil is badass of couse. …still haven’t checked out the other endings/whatever after you beat the game once. (It’s short though)
That’s cool, Mato! But, err, is that 3rd field in your text tool not a comment field, then? Or is it more like you haven’t had time to insert notes for every last bit of text? 🙂
Speaking of which, you should get JeffMan or whoever to fix the bug in your inserter tool with respect to that ridiculously long line in Block 0 🙂
You said 2 blocks done, right? You’re now approximately 0.2% of the way done! Yay!
Kamion: It sold pretty well, but I think like with EB, they did produce too many. I can’t blame them for that — M3 was always in the top 10 wanted games for a decade+. But again Itoi took a lot longer than he thought, so the game came out later than expected and when a new format was about to hit/had hit. He’s cursed, I tell ya. No doubt had it been a DS game, it would’ve sold a LOT more in Japan.
eddie: See past updates.
NecrosaroIII: I’m glad, though the fact there’s still hacking left to do will always be there, poking my brain all annoyingly 😐
shawnji_us: It’s custom. It’s common to write custom tools for ROM hacks/translations. There are more generic tools, but they’re also hard to use as a result. The tool is modeled off of the EB Text Editor I made years ago, modeled after the crappy text previewer I made for Bahamut Lagoon (god that was horrible), and a text editor/previewer byuu made for Bahamut Lagoon at some point too.
Red Chameleon: As explained in the FAQ, all testing will be done internally.
Nikon57: I have no idea why this question comes up all the time. I should add it to the FAQ, heh. Anyway, this will never happen, but even if it did, I wouldn’t care too much. But the game’s hacked at such a low level, and using strange methods that I’d feel uneasy having it sold as a professional product, and I really really doubt Nintendo would ever go for that, too. They’d want to redo all the code using the original source code, which means stealing the patch would be useless for them to do. Besides, I’m pretty sure they would never do anything that evil.
Durelle: Look at the text editor pic. See how it doesn’t list who’s saying the current line? That’s because we don’t know how to correlate a line of text with the speaker.
Arashi: I dunno, I don’t think you can fully master anything. I’m still learning new English all the time, after all.
A Fan: Jeffman’s fix for it didn’t work in all cases, so right now we’re using my original version with hash stuff again. Also, yes, the // stuff is comments to myself or other people. Most lines have notes like “don’t like this” or “not quite the exact nuance”, stuff like that. Notes I left for later, when I come back to do the next draft.
Troy: It’ll still be several months, it’ll be less work total, yes, but it’ll still take a good amount of time. It’s hard to make an estimate though.
Enelysios: The map viewer was made by Goplat, a forum user at starmen.net. It wasn’t made for this project, it just turned out that maps and text follow the same order, so it’s become real handy to have. I don’t know what he programmed it in, but he’s a kickass hacker and programmer, he’s done a lot of EB and EB0 hacking-ish programs similar to this map viewer.
dmang: I don’t have a list or anything, though my personal site (tomato.fobby.net) has some of the stuff I’ve done/am doing. I haven’t updated the site in forever though 🙁
Psychomax: No, this time around I wanted to try working directly on the file, luckily Jeff wrote the text editor really quickly. Doing it that way probably shaved a month of work off.
Will you include documentation about the progressive script changes? I’m interested in what changes will be made from the first draft. Spoilers omitted obviously.
As far as the whole “downloading roms is illegal” thing, I don’t think the actual DOWNLOADING is illegal. With music anyways, its not illegal to download music, just allowing others to download it from you. At my college, the campus police actually go around and turn of the file sharing in limewire and stuff, and couldn’t give 2 cents less about what you’re downloading/have on your computer 🙂
There’s also a seminar about it that all the students have go to, so there has to be some truth to it 🙂
It’s a very fine line. I do think downloading things you don’t legally own is wrong myself.
When it comes to something you DO legally own though, aside from distributing it to the masses or using it as a weapon, I don’t think there’s any reason I should be restricted in what I do with my own property. So, if there is a law against making a backup of a game you own, there shouldn’t be. I see no way it hurts the original makers, and more importantly, who are they to say what I can or can’t do with my stuff? They can declare if I can buy it, but after it’s mine by mutual agreement of sale, they have no more claim to it than my neighbor does.
If I can freely sell my old games for my own profit to other people, why can’t I copy my games? (For example, selling used games on eBay, there’s no moral question on that though that actually hurts game company’s interests far more than my own personal backups as it really does actively infringe on a sale they could have made, yet no reasonable person would say I should be prevented from selling my own property just because it denines the original creator’s chance to sell yet another copy to that same person).
Clearly there’s a marked difference between me selling the original copy I bought and copying something and selling those copies while keeping the original, but the point still stands. Clearly we consider individual rights of property more important than the ability of someone to profit off their own work.
So, if there’s a law that says I can’t make a copy of my own stuff, it’s a bad law. This is different of course from any program (mostly PC programs) that force you to sign an agreement to contract before you install it, thereby giving up your rights to that copy and merely settling for rights to use that copy. That’s another issue entirely, and while I disagree with companies forcing these stricter policies on me, I accept them. However, this does not apply at all to console games I buy in a store. I’ve never seen a single agreement contract on a gameboy game, so it’s no different than any other piece of property. That copy is entirely owned by me, and the only thing I’m limited to, or should be limited to, is selling copies to others or mass producing and freely distributing said copies, like on the internet.
If I want to sell the copy itself, I shouldn’t be limited. If I want to make 50 backups, and then just keep them to myself, I should be free to do so. If I want to destroy it, or modify it in some way, I should be free to do so. These rights are things most people take for granted and there needs to be one hell of a good reason for someone to take them away. I shouldn’t have to justify why I should be allowed to do something, the one saying I shouldn’t be allowed to do it needs to justify why I should be restricted. The only good reason I can think of to restrict anything is to keep people from hurting someone else. While I respect the rights of the original creator of a work, which is the right to proper recognition that they made it and the right to be the sole profiters of their own work, this is the limit of their rights. They do NOT, I am convinced, actually have a right to say how their work should be used except as terms of a purchasing contract. They can ask kindly that I should, say, read these books they wrote in a particular order, but they can’t require it by law and I would say they would be idiots for attempting to enforce that. By the same token, if I buy a game they have no right to say I can’t, say, modify their code and play it on my own terms, against their wishes. Their wishes mean jack to me, in terms of rights at least (in practice of course I’ll tend to adhere to the reasonable requests of authors I like out of my own personal nod to respect, but that’s a choice I make for myself and not an obligation any more than any other manners one might take on themselves).
The only other issue is when, instead of making the direct copy of one’s own copy, they instead use someone’s copy they made of their game as the backup copy. This is murky in terms of origin, but in terms of the end result, I see no real difference. The end result is I have a copy of a game I legally own. I think the law does actually take issue with this round-about way of doing it, but really I can’t possibly find a reason to complain. What’s their argument? In effect I do have a copy. They do have an argument if I downloaded the Japanese version and all I own is the original English version (as in, those who download Japanese versions of already translated games to apply a fan retranslation). That I can and will give them as copyright theft. However, if I have the exact same data on my cart as what I’m downloading, I can’t see any reasonable complaint that I shouldn’t be allowed to have it due to someone else more or less making the copy for me.
Thus, I don’t see any problem with someone downloading a copy of a game they already own. A bad law is no law at all, and really I’d like to see someone try to make the case for that in court by trying such a downloader. First of all, could they establish that the person did in fact download it rather than make their own copy? If so, how? Would it be by some inherant difference in the ROM, or would they have to resort to IP tracking and showing the owner lacked the equipment to make such a copy themselves, and if they DID have to resort to the latter methods of evidence, doesn’t that say something right there about how silly it is to make such a case?
Indeed, there’s a very obvious reality that sometimes games are stolen, and in terms of property law, stolen goods still legally belong to the person they were stolen from. If you walk into someone’s house and (after doing due diligence to establish that yes, that is your thing, and you better have that evidence of course) decide to take it back while the other person isn’t looking, you haven’t stolen it back, because you can’t steal things you already own. There’s no case so long as you can establish both that it IS your’s and that you had good evidence at the time you took it back to conclude it was your’s. Further, if a 3rd party buys your thing from a thief, and you find it later, it can be reclaimed in your name and you don’t owe the person who “bought” it anything because it wasn’t the thief’s to sell to begin with. The thief certainly owes that person their money back though. The point of this is that if you have an old game stolen from you, of course downloading a backup is no real crime because it’s still legally your’s, just in someone else’s house, where you can’t reasonably be expected to MAKE a backup copy, and this is exactly the reason why someone would make a backup copy to begin with. What’s the difference between getting that copy and then having the original stolen, and getting it stolen and then getting the copy? Aside from the order of events, nothing effectively changes for you. The only real issues is this does open the door for someone to claim their huge list of ROMs are ALL games they used to own and they were ALL stolen, in other words a con artist. However, I do not believe in laws telling me what I can and can’t do because of someone else having the opportunity to do something illegal except in clear cases where doing it opens up a direct action from someone else to do harm (this isn’t one of those because it’s not like me doing this leads to another being able to do it, the law itself would be the “allower” of it, and not really because their action is still illegal). I don’t believe in being punished for someone else’s hypothetical crimes at all. That said, the problem comes in how a court would be able to tell the difference. I would argue that’s not my problem at least in terms of them blanket declaring such downloads illegal. It WOULD be my problem in terms of establishing evidence, because this is the sort of case where reasonably just having the ROMs and no cart in site WOULD be sufficient grounds just due to odds of me having previously owned it. It’s one of those “guilty the moment you are acccused” situations I suppose… Well, that’s why innocence is presumed unless there’s some clear evidence, but I do not agree that to make it “easier on prosecutors” that “suspicious” things should be out and out outlawed. That said, I DO in fact have ROMs of games that were stolen from me to replace them. I do own them, but at the very least I can do something to establish in terms of evidence that I legally own the game, in terms of some instruction booklets for a few of them (not all). I also have ROMs for almost all the games I own, including ones I still have the carts for, and I do unapologetically.
(I will end by saying while I can’t fault the person downloading the backup copy from another site, I certainly can’t say the same for the one providing the download, because they aren’t making any effort to establish that the person downloading actually owns their own copy and while the downloads to those already owning a game, and they full well know the majority are going to be thieves. That said, the few transactions between them and the people just downloading backups can’t be faulted, just the rest.)
I’ll only end by saying a bad law is no law at all, and should someone attempt to bring me to court for something like this, I’d certainly do everything my power to defend my innocence in terms of getting the laws themselves overturned. Yes, I know that many laugh at such notions of justice against the law, but seriously is courage just something we admire in movies or is anyone actually going to try and live it? Why bother considering such people standing up against injustice as heroic at all if we are too afraid to do that ourselves? And yes, the little issues are never really as little as they seem if you ask me. Little things add up over time.
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii80/Megalosaro/Tomato.jpg
An idea I had from a post I made earlier
You must have a lot of time on your hands to write all that on a Mother 3 message board.
lol
“Welcome to Tokio Hotel :I”
Gosh, I hope next updates are just as epic
I registered just to tell you guys what a noble thing you’re doing.
You’re all my collective hero.
Also I’m an amateur programmer with no knowledge of Japanese and minimal knowledge of ROM hacking, but if there’s ANYTHING AT ALL I CAN DO TO HELP, I’m sure you can find my e-mail address. 🙂
Thanks for all your dedication and hard work and I hope this project reaches completion in my lifetime 😛
Get Mato a Caribou Lou on me, bartender!
Oh cool I love this world
So awesome!
If you guys start selling mugs or shirts with “Welcome to th :|” on it, I will buy one!
Welcome to th 😐
I love the atmosphere in these comment threads. Between the general mood of elation and the various discussions and those pictures that Mitch draws, it’s like a big carnival. 🙂
While waiting for the hacking to be done, I found this awesome Giygas video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TRpVvvsazc
That tree message find is really awesome. I love stuff like that. That makes me reeeally curious!
If ever you want another awesome GBA game to translate, check out Rhythm Tengoku!
BTW awesome work!
But seeing as I’m an idiot who doesn’t read before posting, you should know that, seeing you posted that article. 😛
Anony, your post,
It just goes on forever.
tl;dr
Yea for second script draft!!!!!!!!
There are tons of bad copyright laws. If you try to reason through them logically, things will never make sense 🙂
Most of us commit technical acts of infringement that don’t get prosecuted every single day. One person estimated that, if we were to pay the full cost, we’d all get sued for billions.
That said, both downloading and uploading are infringement, but it’s harder to stop people from downloading (unless you make honeypots with bad files, and even then). With LimeWire and uploading, they can see all the files your computer is sharing.
So it’s not a matter of what’s legal (almost nothing), but more a matter of “what will someone sue me for?” which is a little harder to predict 🙂
Like I said, if copyright laws were strictly enforced, we’d all be liable for billions of dollars in damages. And the only way to enforce them is for the feds to have control of everyone’s computer and the internet itself.
Hopefully that won’t happen, but crazy lawmakers are proposing something like that all the time. I believe they’re working on making a national firewall for the US right now as a start, not to mention creating copyright cops.
I just discovered this site, and I’m so happy you all are translating this great game!
YAY: I LOVE THIS WORLD!!! lol
It took you 6 years to get your B.A. Mato? Is that normal for that type of degree?
Wow… I don’t check this place out for a few days and bang! More updates! And a video too! The game looks awesomely Earthbound now, too! XD I’m so giving that dung beetle some dung now too. XD
“Itoi: The real Itoi was riding in an airship the time you posted that. So unless he suddenly learned awesome English while in mid-air, yeah right”
He proboly did
Intercept: Started majoring in Comp. Science for 2 or 3 years, dropped out, spent a year in Japan just cause, then came back, switched majors, finished in like a year and a half.
Oh, hey, I like that world, too!
I’m really excited! So close!
😀
700kb of text. I know the Mother series is dialogue-heavy, but daaaaaayumn! My jaw dropped even before the book-writing analogy.
…And you’re telling us this much translation has to be redone TWICE? As if I didn’t have the utmost respect just reading about the hacking parts. Personally I will consider you guys to be absolute heroes if this gets done in under 3 months from now.
dude, spiral is one of my favorite animes. nice.
Have gotten a few more blocks done. In general, it’s not exactly *tough* work, but every once in a while there’ll be a tough spot, like I hate the Bud and Lou comedy guys, I don’t really “get” manzai, it’s just not funny to me. Ah well. Progress is moving, currently on a block of fun text.
700 KB OF TEXT OMG GET SOME REST AND TAKE IT EASY MAN BECAUSE I KNOW THATS INSANE AMOUNT OF WORK.
Maybe a “n00bish” question…but how many blocks are there, and how many have you gotten done?
Mato said 12 hours ago:
Arashi: I dunno, I don’t think you can fully master anything. I’m still learning new English all the time, after all.
>> heh, shoulda known you’d answer like that 😀
I meant to ask, how many years did it take for you to learn enough Japanese to be able to live in Japan without TOO many problems?
Rewrite the crappy comedy and stuff it full of puns!! 😀
“I hate the Bud and Lou comedy guys, I don’t really “get” manzai, it’s just not funny to me. Ah well. Progress is moving, currently on a block of fun text.”
Is manzai something like burlesque/vaudeville slapstick comedy and repartee? I’m positive those two are named after Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. I that case, their comedy routine may not be meant to be funny, but rather goofy and dated.
Even if Mato doesn’t tell you, you could probably find out how many there are by using the map viewer. Since he’s stated that each block of text corresponds with a map, there’s likely one block for every map + block 0.
pauyasfyla: Mato named them Bud and Lou as an effort to localize their names to a comedy duo a western audience would recognize. I forget what they were called in Japanese, though.
pauya: Actually, their original names are that of an old Japanese manzai duo. We changed their names to Bud and Lou for the translation. But Abbot and Costello kick ass, manzai does not. Maybe I’ve only ever seen bad manzai or something, but it’s usually pretty bad.
1001 blocks, as he already said. It sounds like he has about 4-6 of them done 🙂
As for manzai, the humor seems to be in hitting the stupid guy over the head for saying bad puns. It wouldn’t seem like there’s a lot of material there, but who knows? 🙂
Maybe it’s because they have a stronger “don’t hit stupid people” feeling to repress… ?
Ah. I do remember that they didn’t have Western names before. “Achato” and something else. Never mind, then.
Here’s an example of manzai, with subs: boo
I just can’t find the humor in it. If there is humor, it’s usually a guy hitting the other guy, but we’ve passed that level of humor here decades ago so it’s pretty bleh to me.
Redlandsman87: It’s already mentioned in this update.
hmm…sort of like “whose line is it anyway lite”
Seems somewhat like they talk about normal things and one guy gets WAY TOO EXCITED about things and is embarassing the first guy.
Welcome to th 😐
You’re right, that doesn’t feel welcoming. 🙁
Habiib: Lol. The music made it funnier. ALL HAIL GIYGAS THE COOKIE!
A super ponzu chillin’ badass?
That goes right up there with “you spoony bard!”
Seems like it’s something that just doesn’t translate well. At the least, Wiki says it revolves around mutual misunderstandings, double-talk, puns, etc…
Sounds somewhat similar in concept to the Abbott and Costello bit, “Who’s On First?” But that clip you posted, the only thing I found amusing is how absurd it was.
Or maybe something a bit more on the line of some stuff done on Whose Line Is It Anyway? with the ‘Know what I mean’ segments. The double entendres that they use. Of course, which revolves around a lot of slang and sort of cultural type things. “I heard you were having problems with your hard drive, if you know what I mean.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bp0Dq184hA
Something like that perhaps?
Or, it’s just meant to be absurd. *shrug* Kind of like that “Hole in the Wall” gameshow. Whatever. =P
10 blocks done total now. Things will seem slower at first — there are some instances of re-used text, so as we go further and further we’ll encounter some of this text that’s already been done.
The smoothing process is an interesting one. Almost kind of soothing, but still lots of hard work involved, so dunno what to call it 😛
w00t! at this rate, you’ll finish the draft in 100 days! or 50 days, if this is a half-day
with 700 kb of text, I think it’ll take him at least a month, assuming real life work doesn’t drop on him like a b****
Anony, my Wii on maximum zoom-out can’t contain your post!
10 out of 1001 blocks done! We’re almost 1% done with the 2nd draft, update the To-do list :p
Mato, do you still enjoy PLAYING EarthBound? or have you played it so many times it’s kinda dull?
Yay! We’re at 1% for draft 2! I hope Mato took lots of good notes for the weirder NPCs (or trees, for that matter…)
Hopefully, the blocks fall down smoothly, then he can pass this on to demi while smoothing out the remaining hacks 🙂
And if all else fails with puns, you could always crowdsource them. Just post articles asking if someone can figure out a way, for example, to say “This is a duck.” and “This is a banana.” at the same time 🙂
(And no, I’m not sure that example is even possible, though they’re both yellow, so you might be able to induce a misunderstanding by…)
@Arashi
EarthBound will NEVER get old!! How dare you speak those words! **smack**
Are you going to throw in a “Who’s on first?” reference?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M
Mato, is it possible we could get Mother 3 on Christmas?
That’d be the best Christmas ever!
Welcome to th 😐
But just what kind of world
is it? I won’t say much. This
is Mother 3’s world map. I’m
just repeating myself, but
please have fun using your
imagination.
awesome! Draft 2! Keep up the good work!
it seems like Mato’s progress (and general mood) is directly related to the amount if sleep he gets, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
winkwinknudgenudgesaynomore
Yeah, it winds up feeling like if Mato just slept his life away, this project would be done in no time.
Oh, another perspective on that Manzai thing: Watching a few more videos of it, it strongly reminds me of annoying my older brother. He’s very uptight about things and by asking a lot of questions/making nonsensical statements you can really get under his skin. That was always really funny when I was a kid.
> someone can figure out a way, for example, to say “This is a duck.” and “This is a banana.” at the same time 🙂
Maybe, “why is that peel in your pocket quacking?” but that’s not a pun, exactly…
Hmmm…
If it looks like a duck, and it’s shaped like a duck, and it’s colored like a duck…
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/29/52765824_b3d67b60f2.jpg?v=0
Mato and JeffMan deserve a big rainbow made of chocolate. I’m sure they’ll find it one day, too.
Just think of all the insanity that will be lost once this is finished and we’re all busy playing M3? 🙂
That adding lines stuff actually looks kinda fun.
Well…a lot more fun if you knew who was saying what, anyway.
I’m really impressed at how fast you guys are working! Here’s crossing my fingers for a July release.
If not: I’ve waited a while. I can wait a bit more :p
Definitely not gonna happen by July. I really wish it could happen, but I don’t think it’s humanly possible.
Mato wrote>
>Here’s an example of manzai, with subs: boo
I personally found that hilarious hahaha.
BOOSH
blah blah blah cuz progress is progress, no matter how small. Cheezy, yet appropriate!
oh, and I second the BOOSH
This makes me so happy!
You’ve all made so much progress! This thing is really coming together!! More and more of my friends are asking about this series and Mother 3, and soon I’ll be able to actually show them Mother 3 without saying “… but you have to have a translation guide with you as you play.” I don’t know how to thank you for all of your hard work!!
this is how it really went.
“WELCOME TO TH… wait… 😐
Doesnt this say WELCOME TO MOTHER 3 WORLD?”
you rock so hard, i cant wait for this game
So… many… updates…
You really ought to give yourself a break. You deserve it. And in any case we’ve all been plenty spoiled enough by the last week’s updates. Can’t be too regular, or you’ll end up with an angry mob at your front door the day you miss an update.
Crap. I misspelled Long Pants that last time.
@Snuffy:
More like”
“Welcome to th 😐
Screw you”
Nonsense, there’s no such thing as being too regular.
Have some more bran flakes, Mato
>Mato and JeffMan deserve a big rainbow made of chocolate. I’m sure
>they’ll find it one day, too.
Someday they’ll find it: the rainbow confection?
Hey Mato, do you think the game’ll be done by September or October? They seem like likely release dates.
Mato, after reading your resume, I realized my life would suck without you. Well they probably would’ve found some other freelance/aspiring translator to do your job, but to know that you had a hand in soooooooooooooooooooo many things I enjoy on nearly a daily basis is mind boggling O.O
BTW, your name kicks ass. I wish I was named Clyde, that’s like the coolest real name ever.
i think that everyone should realize that, although the hacking is done, the text in that red box still applies.
I’ll wait for this patch.
While I wait, I’ll “write haiku,”
you know what I mean?
This is way more convenient now that Mato’s text is highlighted.
Awesome work Mato!!! Definably take a break you so deserve it!! Ive been looking over your work during the past year and havnt said anything until now. I referred to you guys on my blog to get as much possible people to see this gem finished!!! Anyways great work, and in the words of Ness Dad “You work hard like your mom but you shouldnt work too hard” Hehe anyways take care mate!!
Ohh i just realized Mato!!!!…You can make an epic release for this translation by doing what the Japanese did weeks before the release of Mother 3 in Japan. Instead you open the gift box to random things in mother3 now translated!! That would be sooo awesome. Well anyways just me rambling about stuff hehe. Ok ill leave you alone now.
Henry: wut? please explain
Brrrap!
Mato, you refer to how much of the script you’ve completed as Blocks, approx. how many blocks make up the game?
Nevermind, I found my answer in your main post, 1001. Good Luck!
OH MY FREAKIN GOD IM GONE FOR A WEEK AND ALL THESE DAMN THINGS HAPPEN. THIS IS SO FREAKIN AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome to th- 😐
On a side note, I’ve almost beaten Star Ocean! It is probably the most awesome game ever made for the SNES, hands down. I don’t know what exactly you had to do with the translation, but it’s awesome.
Heh, I was the translator for SO 😛 I forget if there’s a detailed readme with the patch, if so, probably i wrote a bunch of stuff in there.
I haven’t beaten a SO game. I got close to beating 2. Then I ran into the wall known as Ultimate Indalecio and didn’t feel like going for that secret dungeon place.
Aside from the day-to-day hacking, doesn’t it feel good to look at the [current] to-do list and say: “GOSH, look at all that! That’s a lot of hacking DONE!” Oh, and don’t forget to 🙂 . Actually, a study says that by just taking the effort to 🙂 , it already makes you that much happier 🙂
Yeah, there was a detailed readme that told you how to deal with graphics packs and whatnot. As I recall, that game was quite a pain for the emulators, too, because it pulled so many tricks 🙂
But SO was certainly an awesome game. Still, just think if you had to be the one to do all the hacking for it!
But now you can just be all like “Block 47/1001” on your updates, then rant about the damn sparrow or tell us about more weird tree graffiti that you find 🙂
Heh, I should make a T-shirt line of stuff from the blog, like “welcome to th :|” or that death sparrow. Or using mitch’s pics. Maybe someday after this is all over or something. Or not. Just it’s weird how the project’s created its own culture of sorts.
Indeed, this is home.
I would like a mitch tee-shirt,
and wear it a lot.
Speaking of star ocean, I thought I applied the patch right and there was stuff in English, but a lot of stuff was still in Japanese too, is it supposed to be like that??
No, it should be all English now, except for the Yes/No graphic bubbles.
I made a trailer for this upcoming Fan Translation! Comments and thoughts would be appreciated.
The mention of Lucas being in Brawl is a little bit out of place, but I included it for those people that have played brawl that have not played the Mother series, so that they would be interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7QfsduX5Kk
@Mato’s Manzai post
I rarely find anything funny anymore. But when I do it’s usually really funny. I don’t see the humor most scts, because being funny and trying to be funny are two different things.
I have a good feeling it’s gonna be done before the beginning of Fall. 🙂
@ t-shirt stuff:
Something like this? http://www.zazzle.com/cr/design/pt-shirt?dz=3c5ab09c-b63e-4451-a2f7-4d52265e1552&clone=true&pending=true&context=rothelle&view=front&CMPN=EmailDesign
Don’t buy it, though. Zazzle is way too expensive.
Yeah, though the pic here would look cool somewhere I think:
http://i29.tinypic.com/24gizaa.png
Maybe on a thong.
I for one, would buy a Mato T shirt lol
MATO, so how many blocks did you end up with yesterday? have you done any today? if you have, I say BAD BOY!
Haven’t done anything today yet. The next block is kind of big and boring so I stopped there last night.
*Mato, you like to work hard, just like your mother.
*But I don’t think it’s good to work too hard.
*(Click! Beep-beep-beep…)
I want that T-shirt!!!
Anywho,I know what ill be playing this summer.
Awesome! This is coming along fantastic!
Mato do what I do when Iam bored just put on your favorite music cd on and Mitch I like the idea of the shirt.
Rog: “Even NoA employees are looking forward to this? Actually makes you kinda wonder what’ll happen after this project is completed….”
Mato’s probably going to be payed handsomely by NoA employees’ donations 😀
I could imagine NOA workers in their offices playing mother 3 using the English patch the day it gets release.
Geez, I go on vacation for half a week and all this cool stuff gets posted.
Ah I was going to say something else, but I forget.
TheReaper08: It’s actually my hope that it WILL get played inside NOA the day it comes out. That would be awesome.
Was that sad face really in the original picture? or was it added in? That’s even more awesome if it just happened to appear with that underneath “Welcome to th”
I want a Mato shirt D:
And I would definitely buy that shirt, especially if it had the http://i29.tinypic.com/24gizaa.png on the back or something.
As someone who has written two and a half novels, I can safely say that 700kb of text is HUGE!!! All my works combined probably equal that. Although it takes less time to translate text than to invent it, I fully realize it’s still going to be a long and hard process. I only wish you had a whole team of translators working on each draft, instead of just one at a time. Then we really could have this done by July. 🙁
Anyway, I appreciate the sheer bulk of work you’re going to do, Mato. And at least it’s translating, which is your forte. Leave the hacking to the hackers, and just go at that script like it’s World War 3!
lol got bored and coded up something that helps find mato’s comments. It’s not real-tome tho 🙁
http://scarymonster.info/files/Mato.html
THAT SHIRT MUST BECOME A REALITY!! pleeeeease?!
Also death sparrow shirt, yes!!! I can’t remember if I suggested that but I DO know that I loved the idea.
Wow. After months on months of reprogramming the game, you have finally reached the actual text-typing part [well, for a second time], the step that the complaining n00bs on GameFAQs stereotypically assume is the only thing you actually have to do to the game.
By the way, I’m wondering…
Is the first draft (the one you were using as you reprogrammed the game) a full translation of the game? Or have you only translated text that you needed for testing purposes, when you needed it?
I think you guys rock. I’ve never posted before, and I just wanted to say keep up the good work!!!
Darn, I hate when I have multiple things to say. Usually, they won’t all get answered.
Anyways…
I don’t know a whole lot about how games like this are written, but I think you can find out the speaker by using a standalone program that searches for and gives you the address of any pointers that point to the text you’re wondering about. You could manually check around this pointer for the pointer to the speaker’s name.
I’d buy a shirt. it’d show devotion to the translation…and through that, the game itself :3
Mato: hope you got something done today. or tonight. or tommorow. or next year.
<3
OMG I just got a M3 real for my DS in anticipation for this patch. I downloaded the menu patch Mother 3 rom onto it and it has made me even more excited! My most anticpated game of 2008 is an unofficial translation of a two year old japanese GBA game, that is so messed up!
BTW I think the whole t-shirt idea is great, I personaly liked Mitch’s design with the simple text on the red shirt.
I’m not quite sure why I lol so much at “Welcome to th :|” but I do
😐
So Mato, after Script Draft #2 is done, what will Script #3 involve? Or is the draft work split between you and the other person who is supposed to work on the the draft after yours?
This is great! You guys are achieving so much progress, I won’t be surprised if NoA recognizes you somehow and commends you with something, and/or begins/undergoes a process to translate it too.
Well, actually, I’ll be surprised. NoA is pretty ignorant of the Mother Series as of late, I reckon. Well, maybe. I haven’t done any research.
Petition for the shirt anyone?
NOA employees playing the mother 3 patch. Man, that would be a huge slap in the face to the people who claimed “it wasn’t worth it.”
*Chants “Shirt! Shirt! Shirt! Shirt!”*
A petition, huh?
I’d sign it, definitely.
The shirts are bad-ass.
I like the idea of shirts too (or else I wouldn’t have suggested it), but personally, I don’t want to get stuff like this involved with the project until after the patch is out. First, it seems kind of tacky and not very classy to do it at this stage. Second, I don’t want to get monetary stuff like this involved with the project, at least not until afterwards. Don’t wanna risk anything yet, you know?