Second Draft, Part 7
A very busy week this week, but I work on the second draft every chance I get. Right now we’re a little past the 76% mark on Draft 2 of the main script. As usual, I should mention that the percentage for the entire overall project is higher, somewhere in the 80%-85% range.
For those following along with the map viewer, this latest batch goes from maps 256-342. Most of that stuff is stuff I don’t want to reveal here, so here are two pics from a batch or two ago.
Meanwhile, Jeff’s been working on little things here and there, and finding bugs every so often. It also looks like the script will wind up a little too big, but I was anticipating that and I’ll deal with it when Draft 2 is done.
In a few days, Draft 2’ll be in the 80%-90% range. We’re getting there.
“In a few days, Draft 2β²ll be in the 80%-90% range. Weβre getting there.”
wow Its going so fast.
Haha, sorry, I had to mention that I got first post. It was amazing, been wanting to do it since forever π
Hehe, I check this place like once every 3 days, and when I saw it today, I thought “hm… long time since no update”. Then I refresh just now wondering “wonder if It will be updated, maybe i get fist post”, AND I DID IT π
On the serious side, great job you guys are doing, I CANT WAIT to play Mother 3, I’ve passed Mother2 (EB) twice, and really wanna get into the next game. I tried Japanese version with translations, but it’s too big of a spoiler.
Sweet!
— why only in a few days will it jump to 80-90%? (not complaining, just curious)
and I really like that “sh-sh-shave your game shonny” π did the japanese text actually have a “sh” sound too?
anyways as always, thanks, and keep up the good work, please π
Those poor flowers!
keep it up man
You rock
Please bare my children. I love you. Keep it up! o_o
Nice. Glad to see another update. Second Draft seems to be going smoothly.
Mato – Will Draft 3 be smaller in size than Draft 2? Based on your estimates, it seems that it will have to be, but will that require the script to be butchered in order to fit?
damn you ironic keep off the grass sign! how many flowers will you murder before you’re satisfied?
yay
Great job. I have been thoroughly impressed with the professionalism of this project. Keep up the great work!
Loving the progress. Seems to be going by so fast. Then again, I’ve been watching this for over a year…
Triangle: Yeah, the original game had it too.
Roland: Don’t know yet. Not sure what’s going to happen with it yet.
Yoyoenix91: No I will not bare your children, that would get me in trouble.
Yeah, I meant to ask that a while back. What’s the procedure going to be if (and when) the script ends up too large? Try to clear out some more space in the ROM? Work up some fancy compression scheme? Try to trim it down? (Though I hope you don’t have to resort to that.)
Ahh, nevermind, you posted on me as I was reading and typing.
Baring children you’re not related to (or those you are for anything other than bed- and bath-time) is illegal in most places. For shame.
Dang it, it took me too long to type up a response to Karma. Now there’s a new update.
Um . . . well, despite awkward placement, I might as well post it. I mean, according to the timestamp for this update, it did take me at least half an hour to type it.
————–
Um, Karma, if the comments had nothing but praise for Mato, they wouldn’t be worth reading. Nothing interesting would happen. We’d all just do a Ctrl+F for “Mato” (and possibly also Mitch and jeffman) to check for mini-updates (or, in the case of Mitch, fan art).
A perfect community is as lame as it is impossible. People enjoy comparing themselves to others, looking for how they can relate and where they disagree; there is something appealing about learning why people would want to think this or that, and it probably has evolutionary origin (it helps us when we need to think of alternative solutions at critical times). We already know that every person here agrees on the fact that Mato is an l33t h4x0ring god. We already know that we are all eager for the translation to be finished. It’s still worthwhile for us to praise Mato and say how glad we are about how far the project as come. But it’s much more interesting when we discuss things we don’t already know about each other.
Almost done guys, good job, keep it up.
I promise I will shed a tear the moment my inbox reads “Released.”
Sweet, I was just showing my friend the progress earlier today, and lo and behold an update today.
I’m very excited to think that this thing could feasibly be finished by the end of the year, and quite possibly near the end of summer. It’s really awesome.
I’ve been watching this blog/site for a while now, and I’ve got to say, this project has been moving really fast. Take as long as you need, because the final product will undoubtedly be worth it.
Say, when did all that stuff in Misc. Hacking get crossed off the To-Do list?
Oh, actually, I do remember you or Jeffman explaining the into screen (how it will stay for a few seconds the first time, and can be skipped with the A button once there is a save file).
Oh yeah, and you have a topic on the spillover board where people are testing the silver and gold stars. But does this mean somebody managed to confirm the gold star for you? Woah . . . I’ll have to go check the board. I have to see it to believe it.
But what about the hardware-specific fixes? I don’t remember hearing that you did that already.
We should all bake a cake that says “Draft 2 Finished!” on it and mail it to Mato after second draft is completed.
Wow, this is really coming together. This is really going to happen. This year probably. Insanity. The entire translation team is amazing. Good jerb yalls.
When this thing is finished, I’m going to be so happy to play it, but also sad that I don’t get to read these updates every so often.
It’s strange, but I think I might breathe a sigh of relief when draft 2 is done. I’m not sure, but I think it might mean a bit of a break for you, mato, and I can almost feel how much work you’ve been putting into this.
There’s also a sense that once demi gets ahold of the script, it’s just a big mystery after that in terms of what comes next and when it’ll be done. For some reason, I look forward to that.
I also hope that while demi is working on draft 3, your work load on this project will drop for a while, maybe even longer. Maybe not, but one can hope.
Anyways, my random thoughts.
I’m making a guess that Draft 3 will take less time because there wouldn’t be much editing thanks to Mato’s great editing powers π
Thanks again Mato!
Okay, two things to ask.
1. Please tell me that there is loads of humor like that keep off the grass sign in the game, I love stuff like that. In fact, right now I feel like playing Earthbound/Mother 2 again just to search for more!
2. Okay, I also feel like playing a properly patched version of the Earthbound Zero/Mother ROM. Which version of the ROM is the type best suited for your patch?
Thanks for the update Mato! I’m really thankful that you post actual blog posts. It just gets somewhat lackluster searching in the comments for your insightful red embellished updates/comments.
And I always enjoy the photos of some quirky little sign or piece of dialogue.
So, thanks to you and Jeff (and everyone else!).
It’s getting so close to finishing! I can hardly wait π
-fangasms violently-
Fast progress is fast.
Good, the 2nd draft’s almost done.
I know it’s a tough job, but hang in there.
~Raido
I lol’d at both picks, and 80-90% in a few days! o_O
Just stopping by, as I do from time to time.
Great job to you all, including everyone who started up back in the “two site” days. M3 and Devotion, seems like yesterday…
Anyway, outside of downloading the finished product, buying the game, and doing all of the SM activities, is there anything that we as a community can do for you guys that is legal? Donations? Gifts? Anything?
Dominico:
The fact that this project itself is illegal I think Mato doesn’t want to benefit anyway from it as that could put him (and the whole team) in a worse situation if any legal action was ever taken. Not that I am talking for Mato, but this question has come up several times and that seemed to be the response he gave. He recommends that you purchase the official sound tracks off of itunes or obtain a Japanese copy of Mother 3.
This is awesome! π I’m very excited that it’s getting close to being done!
You should be ashamed for trampling on those flowers! Do you know how many caring citizens full of love and spirit it took to plant those!?
The whole purpose of the project is to get Mother 3 localized enough to where we can play it here in “Eagleland”.
So by purchasing Mother 3 itself, or the soundtrack you are donating to the project. You’re alerting Nintendo that there is an interest in it.
Even if they don’t finish -this- translation because Nintendo themselves opted to release a translation, they still win.
Just two questions:
1: What’s the difference beteen Draft 2 and Draft 3? (I mean, is it some different type of text or is it just that the text was divided in the memory?)
2: After the translation is complete, even if the “remaining hacking” (in the to do list) part is not, will you post the patch? Because I guess most of us would be happy with just that.
Oh, one more thing. Super Smash Bross Brawl hasn’t arraived Spain yet, and I hope it hasn’t still appeared in Europe. So you may still be able to finish this before some of us see it. I have already finished mother 3 but I guess many fans in Eurpe hasn’t.
This must be taxing, tedious work. π
In another news, I hate smilies.
Luis – Draft 2 is Mato cleaning things up, fixing typos, and making these flow better in context.
Draft 3 will be done by demi, which is further editing and proof-reading. The script needs to be looked at with fresh eyes to catch any mistakes that Mato might have missed.
And Mato has said a dozen times that he will not release the final patch until it’s 100% perfect. There could be bugs that kill a lot of things if it’s not thoroughly tested for bugs and that would just suck for everyone.
I also think the difference between each draft needs to go on the FAQ since it’s being asked so often. :/
Mato, you should tell JeffMan to post and tell us about all the things he’s been up to π I’m curious about how well polished the hacks are at this point.
I mean, if your future self traveled back in time to give you the perfected script (so that all this work didn’t drive you crazy), how far would we be from release with respect to any remaining hacking/bug testing?
It’s good to hear that it’s going on in parallel, though, so that it’ll get done faster π
Keep on truckin’, Mato.
RAIDERX:
There will still be updates after the translation patch is finished. There will still be other languages to manage, and possible backlash from Nintendo if they’ve been planning something under the table.
Oh, I found the problem with the favicon. It only works in Firefox. That seems to make sense, because the icons have different dimensions between the two browsers.
And @Luis:
1. Draft 2 and Draft 3 are of the same text, not different texts. Draft 2 is an updated version of Draft 1, and likewise Draft 3 is an updated version of Draft 2.
2. Absolutely not! Right now, the ROM does not work 100%. There are some things that cause it to crash, and the ending is all glitchy. Fixing the bugs is even more important than working on the drafts!
Imagine if it froze every time you unequipped an item. I would be willing to bet there is a problem that bad right now. I do it all the time when I program, leaving some severe bugs in while I work on other aspects. I’m fully aware of the bugs, and I’m unable to test the game because of them, but I just haven’t gotten to fixing yet.
Not only asking this question to Mato, but everybody who knows the answer to the question: Is M3 longer than M2? And if it is, how long? Twice long, 3/2x long? Thanks in advance.
WVI: At least it’s not sprite text
Regarding the work or the smilies? I know the sprite text sucked, but hey, at least it wasn’t mundane!
…or maybe it was.
Can0fMean: If you walk around and talk to people, it’s about the same length as EB. Except it’s got a very different feel from EB, so EB will probably seem longer.
Wait, is the walking around and talking to people the same length as EB if you did the same in EB, or is it the same length if you do it in M3, but not in EB?
>_>
If you play M3 normally in your native language for the first time, it will probably take just as long as EB would take normally in your native language for the first time.
Hell ya! This is turning out awesome, man! I’d tell y’all to hurry up, but I know that you all have lives of your own, and I don’t want it to end up rushed and messed up. So good luck, and do your best!
Okay, fine, so you won’t bear my children.
But will you kidnap and eat them?
π
oh wait that’s illegal too isn’t it
“It also looks like the script will wind up a little too big”
How so? I thought GBA ROMs were relatively trivial to expand for more space.
I just hope it isn’t going to require even more work from Mato + others to make it work on an expanded rom.
Toad King:
I thing its easy to expand GBA roms up to their maximum size of 256 MBits, which M3 already is. I would assume that if you increased the size past this you would have addressing issues (among other things), and not to mention the fact that lots of people are counting on that size to play it on their flash carts.
No space to expand to. Mother 3 is already as big as recognizable (and working) gba games can get.
Theyll get it to work. If anything, theyll simplify the script itself at this point. RPG makers have been trimming script since the snes days (tho im positive that if they have to do this, Mother 3 wont be NEAR as hack-jobby as scripts had to be back then).
On second thought, don’t bare my children. Just… like the President, kiss them, and hopefully they will grow up to be lil’ Cherry Tomatoes. =D
Cherry tomatoes are delicious.
Most likely I’ll just take out instances of needlessly-duplicated text and only keep the necessary instances.
ROMs have a lot of unused space in them. If you zip a ROM, you will get a [very very very rough] estimate of how much space of it is actually used.
But it can be a pain trying to use this empty space. Keeping data that pertains to a certain thing contiguous is good practice, and that often means that other data has to be relocated and pointers to it must be found and changed. That’s usually risky to do, though.
Of course, I’ve never actually hacked a ROM without using tools like Lunar Magic and the such. But I have a pretty good understanding of programs; I can learn any programming language to a good degree (as in, being able to make a program that behaves exactly as intended the first time I debug it) within one day after being introduced to it. So I tend to trust my instinct when it comes to stuff like this.
Boy, it sure takes me a long time to type. During that time, not only did evansucks, the person who that post was directed at, respond to himself, but cherry tomatoes popped up, and a Tom Ato, too.
π
All right! great job you two, keep up the great work
mato, I just had an idea… I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, but…
If you’re ~80% done with draft 2, demi could get started on draft 3…right now! assuming you’re not going back and making huge changes on the parts you’ve already done, for consistency or whatever.
also assuming that demi doesn’t have huge real life duties at the moment.
also, that’s a really good idea to remove the duped text! how do you make the game find the same text that you leave in, with some kind of pointer or something? hopefully you don’t have to reprogram every reference to the removed text to something else.
Not to sound impatient or anything, but I still need my question about the EB Zero ROM to be answered…
Well, all text is already accessed through pointers. He merely needs to change the existing pointers.
There’s quite a bit I learned about stuff like this just by looking at the various memory viewers in various ROMs in Visual Boy Advance. It’s quite surprising what can be inferred from a window with a bunch of hex values on the left and ASCII equivalents on the right.
sam-e-boi: Post it on the proper forum, don’t cut into Mato’s potential hacking time please.
sam-e-boi, you’re referring to Mato’s patch for EB that turns it into a remake of Mother (EB0), right?
Well, it’s for EarthBound. But from the looks of the YouTube comments, I don’t think it’s finished.
If you want to play Mother in English, try looking for RPGOne’s translation of the GBA game, Mother1+2.
@dr_mario
I think Mato said that demi is working on his iPhone game. I’m pretty sure he’s busy there.
Oh and Mato needs to make the Draft 100% because how is Demi going to play through it when it’s only 80%?
@Mato
Do you know what kind of programming language the game is in?
Keep it up guys this is awesome. If your lucky Nintendo will buy it off you too sell overseas though would mean we would have to wait longer.
All ROMs (and I believe all .exe files on the computer as well) are in Assembly language, the language by which the computer operates. Open the ROM in VBA and try the Assembly Viewer to see what it looks like.
Hm, answering something that specifically stated “@Mato”… I may be overstepping my boundaries.
The official gba primer file things provide for a C implementation for the GBA. So it’s very likely that Mother 3 was written in C, with some amounts of handwritten assembly at key perfomance points.
man..if you was a lady i would kiss you after all this stuff…even if you was “fat ronda”….^^^^^^^^^^^^^
gl ..have a good life
and end it…
i think you want it more than us ^_^
Gtz
well anyway..you doing the best work EVER
From the pictures you’ve revealed I’ve noticed Itoi included more of these humorous little in-game jokes which emphasize points most don’t seem to notice when playing a game. I.e., “in order to read this sign, you had to trample flowers”, “there’s writing carved into the tree, but it isn’t anything significant”, “I’m one of the sidest of side-characters”, “[do you] stock up on food and then walk around without ever eating it”, and so on. I really like the attention to detail, and considering my favorite thing to do in my first EarthBound run was to take intermittent breaks from my adventure to converse with NPCs, well, I can’t wait to see how this fares.
Hey, Ive been watching the progress over the past few months and im very impressed. I really hope that Nintendo will wise up and bring Mother 1+2 over as well as Mother 3. Id even settle for a “no because EB failed” reason over their lame “its got too much text” excuse. This is the ultimate sign that Mother has a fan base in the US and around the world. Keep up the good work!
There’s a prototype English ROM of MOTHER 1, known as Earthbound Zero. PROTOTYPE, not fan translation. It was almost released but it got canned at the last time.
You guys are full of epic win.
I…..I….love you guys…I wrote a song for you guys, it goes like this:
BABY!! OHHHH BABY BABY BABEEEHHHH!!!! YOU MAKE ME WANNA, OHHHH!! BABEHHHHH!!! BABY BABY BABY OH YEAH!!!! KEEP IT UP NOW!!! KEEP IT UP NOW!!! KEEP IT UP NOWW!!!!!! B-A-B-Y, LOOK INTO MY EYES AND– WOAH!!!!! BABEHHHH!!!! BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY (x7)
(chorus)
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AI YAI YAI YAI YAI YAI!!!!!!!
(bridge)
BABY BABY BABY BABY BBBBBBAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBYYYYYYYYYY
(repeat x3)
What I’m trying to say is, keep up the good work.
love,
The awesome mother 3-lovin musician.
“I should mention that the percentage for the entire overall project is higher, somewhere in the 80%-85% range.”
Oh my. Wow, probably by August, this thing will be all over and done with!
Yay, Mato! And Jeffman!
By the way… Mato, are you a guy or a girl? Or are tomatoes genderless?
I know a way it can be finished in twelve hours. Just put a copy of the game in Jeffman’s inventory, stay at a hotel in Eagleland, and viola! You’ll get a nice little narrative statement floating above your head reading: “Working through the night, Jeffman fixed the Untranslated Gameboy Game. It became the MOTHER3 English Translation!!”
not to be mean or anything, but Bralw comes out in Europe in about 3 days, I highly doubt that mato will just finish the rest of the translation THAT quickly, he’s only human
Mato = Hardcore Pk h4x0r male
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…
Mato > Chuck Norris
Maybe you can make the frog sound like it’s whistling by adding an extra “s”.
Like “Ss-ss-ssonny boy”. Old people whistle while they talk. :/
Wow, I sure like seeing this progress above the 50% mark. I know it’s still some time before the game is finally out in English (unofficially), but I can wait.
I’ll like spending some time with this one on my flashcart inside my DS.
I can almost taste the hotdog sushi now. keep it up guys!
I had no idea a translation was so far into the making. I loved Earthbound as a child and just recently stumbled upon your translation blog for Mother 3. It looks like it’s going to be awesome, I can’t wait!
Wait, the frog can talk!? Β°oΒ°
I thought that the animals always spoke in parentheses or something.
As a sidenote, I love all the flavour that the dev team put into things as simple as save points. They’re frogs! And each one is different from the last!
It’s just a really, really funky game. I’ve always liked how Itoi plays around with small details like that.
Can’t wait. I’m pissed that I go spoiled by japanese speakers, but it’ss still be awesome.
Not sure how Mother 3 is handled, but the frogs might be an exception, being that they’re your save points this time.
It’s funny that I get so excited for these updates I feel a need to post a thank you (because I am very thankful) every time I visit this page; even after having posted such a thank you.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on the point of view, I check this darn blog every 15 minutes while at work.
Anyways, thank you. Keep up the great work.
Again, is it too much to request a little box thingy with the current progress?
Mato you really are amazing. Thank you for taking on such a huge amount of work for us and sticking with it. You’re my work ethics hero.
Nice! You have done nothing since the update!
Of course this is in jest, I appreciate all the hard work you’re doing.
It stinks that the scripts too big; I hope nothing has to get cut out. If anything does, might I ask just how much would need to be removed?
I’m not gonna compromise and cut the text down, there’d be too much to cut out anyway. I’ll either do what I mentioned in a reply up above, or I’ll get my hands dirty and write some stuff to compress the script. I absolutely don’t want to/refuse to cut or shorten text at all.
YES!!!! .000000000001% HIGHER!!!!!!
Sounds good with me. Appreciate that you won’t cut anything down.
So you’d just move the pointers to repeated text? I’ve done that once for an equipment list (sword, iron sword, steel sword etc.), but what kind of stuff is duplicated here? Stuff like the frogs speeches and things?
I’ve written compression for the NES, but in my experience it’s a hassle because it sometimes interferes with control codes and stuff. I worked it out eventually, and it a few times it worked with no problems; hope there are none like that.
Don’t take anything I say as credible though; in my opinion I barely know what I’m doing.
Mato what about the unused songs you could make room by deleting them, or what about the sprite text that is connected to anyone.
Combo Baker:
Yes. My sister toldme that about 12 hours after had written that. So no, it would be comletly impossible now that the patch was finished before Brawl came out. I just didn’t know.
I would say that, based on the consistency between the videos/screenshots, yes, frogs do speak out loud. They don’t go like “Ribbit, ribbit. (Save your game?)”. The most generic frogs just say:
*hop*
Save your game?
Check the April 20, 2008 video in Previews.
The only frog that I know of that doesn’t speak is the stuffed frog in the museum, who does talk in parenthesis. Because, well, you know, dead frogs don’t talk.
I guess I’m late to post, again.
Or maybe not. This time, I refreshed to make sure there were no new posts. And there weren’t any. They just all appeared when I posted, so the problem here is that the page is not being updated for me! Argh, I’m having every problem you could possibly have on a WordPress blog.
Great, now I have to clear my cache every time I refresh.
—-
Number of times I posted without double posting: 0
I anticipate this game more as it approaches its completion. I am also very VERY surprised how dedicated this community. I’m glad Mother 3 received this much dedication.
hahahah.. even the original Earthbound had a typo. After you beat mani mani nightmare in magicant, they spell universe as “unverse”.
Great freakin job guys.
Thats not a typo it was a play on words.
bbird:
Really, I caught that. REAL random… and if it were a play on words, it’d be un-verse. It depends what the guy was talking about… Never mind.
What Exp HP said a few posts up:
Strange, usually animals talk with parenthesis. Does this mean the frogs in this game speak human?
Again, you’re still awsome
Here, Mato. Have some Babies.
Pokey, you don’t like Babies, do you?
T-O-O-B-A-D!!!
Say, how long should the 3rd draft take? That draft’s all about polishing and editing the heck out of the text, right? Should it take longer than the 1st or 2nd?
One more thing… When the game boots, it says “Game Boy Player.” Does this mean this game recieves enhancements when booted on the Game Boy Player?
The 3rd draft will take as long as it will take, it’s not being done by Mato; Demi is doing it instead. Being that Demi is busy and not as crazy as Mato I would expect that it will take a couple of months to complete.
Nah,I wouldn’t worry about it master of Ramen, alot of late generation gameboy advance games have that screen when loading up, I think its just free advertisment. But who knows
Mato my girlfriend says she want to give birth to you clone. Just to let you know if you want one.
a clone that is.
Do I smell a Les Enfant Terribles esque conspiracy?
I guess Mato was right in saying it’d be done sometime in July
I cant freaking wait!! thanks agian.
Will you guys quit asking how long every little step is going to take? This is the reason projects like this typically maintain marginal communication with their respective communities. How would you like to field the same inane questions over and over again with every blog post?
Ditto
@Master of Ramen:
I don’t think it will take that long to make Draft 3, personally. I’m assuming that Demi will not be making a lot of changes.
Draft 1 was only for function. It was written so that they could test thier script hacks with English text. It didn’t have to sound good. Any funny references to Japanese pop culture didn’t have to be localized (like when Mato asked us about movies). It didn’t even have to be complete, and as far as I’m concerned, it probably wasn’t. All it had to do was get the game to use English so that it could be tested when they’re hacking.
But it did take a while, most likely. After all, it was the first translation; the only thing Mato could refer to was the original Japanese text.
Draft 2 needs to be much more asthetic. It’s taking long because Draft 1 had a long way to go. Draft 1 probably doesn’t sound Earthboundy; it probably sounds more like an RPG for the NES. All those jokes that don’t work well in English now have to be adapted, and that takes a lot of brainstorming. Some places need just the right word or else they sound corny, stereotypical, out-of-place, or Engrish-y.
But Draft 3 will go fast. Has anybody asked you to look over something they’ve been typing? My mom asks me all the time to look over her e-mails before she sends them. Usually, they’re fine. I might have a suggestion or two, but I’m not rewriting the whole e-mail; I’m just giving her suggestions on how it can sound nicer.
That’s what I’m thinking will happen with Draft 3. Demi will look it over. Occasionally, he’ll see something that could be written better, and he’ll bring it to Mato’s attention. They’ll think together about how it can be rewritten more nicely, and when they agree on what to write, it will be changed accordingly.
Just my 2/100 of a dollar. But knowing how long it takes me to post, Mato probably already put it in the FAQ! (I’m surprised it hasn’t been put there yet)
And that, my friends, is how you kill a discussion. Experience has shown that the only way people respond to a wall of text is by flaming, and so if you accidentally make a wall of text when you’re talking about a topic that there is no reason to flame you about, the posts just stop.
Either that, or people are posting, and this page isn’t refreshing for me even after clearing my cache.
Master of Ramen: Usually when that screen shows up it means the game supports rumble for the GameCube controller when played on the GameBoy Player.
Well, the weekend is coming up, so hopefully Mato will have more time. Or doesn’t it work that way, being self-employed? I wonder if he’ll have to catch up on RL work, instead, and be unable to take any of the weekend off?
Oh well, hopefully Mato at least gets a much-deserved break over the 4th next week π
Oh noez, a question not about the little window:
So, if the patch will be applied only to the right rom, will the “right rom” have to be picture perfect? For Instance, Lunar Magic, the super mario world modder, told me my rom had didn’t have a “0x20 byte header” so I’m worried if this patch system will freak out if we don’t have THE absolute original dump of the rom… Would it do that?
The UPS format is very good in this regard, and it will tell you plainly that your file is wrong if it’s not 100% exactly what it should be. This might sound like a pain, but for us on the hacking end of things, it’s a godsend. There *are* a few corrupt ROMs out there, but you’d notice they’re messed up anyway before long. I wouldn’t worry, though. It seems incorrect dumps are extremely rare.
Thank god for strawberry-highlighted messages. The only point to this page. π
That comment from Doc reminds me of something: Once I was playing a pokemon RoM (don’t ask) and the manual save function didn’t work (menu-> save) and every time I restarted it, it wouldn’t let me load my saved progress and would make me start all over. Is that a corrupted-ROM-type of problem?
Possibly, but if it was a GBA Pokemon game the save battery type thing might have been wrong. Usualy, just having it set to auto works.
Mato and Jeffman=yay.
Wow when draft 2 is done, whose gonna make these awesome updates for us?
Love the work you’ve been doing. Wish there was some way to pay you for all those cocaine laced coffees you had to drink to keep workin on this.
Take a good long vacation when you finish this. you deserve it.
I know I’m kind off dumb, but I heard this going around and I’m asking some piracy experts. Are ROMs legal if you do own the actual game made by the company for a console?
γγγ you should clone yourself
sunzo132: In literal, by the book terms, no they’re not legal, even if you own a legal copy of the game.
Roms are legal if you ripped them yourself, I believe.
Then we are all breaking the piracy rules regardless of we buy a real copy of Mother 3?
Clone should be legal
Ps there is another forum meant for this stuff
Even if you own a copy of the game, they are illegal to download. But I think that hasone is right. That’s think. Don’t quote me.
Anyways, that’s pretty off topic, and I’m going to make my real post now. It might be kind of off topic too, but eh.
I just wanted to say Mato, the flash card I ordered arrived today, and after I figured it all out, I literally shouted once I started up mother 3. Thanks again. I only wish I could help, but I don’t know anything about GBA, just older, simpler consoles, sorry. π
While it’s not good to point out, It’s not like the nintendo stormtroopers are absolutely going to come over to your house armed with guns if you don’t give them 30 dollars because you took mother 3 over the internet… I’m not encouraging it… However…
Sunzo:
That is correct, unless you dump the rom yourself it is illegal. It’s not illegal to have the rom, but the process of downloading it off the internet is illegal. Also this project itself is also illegal, owners of intellectual property have the sole right to translate it into other languages. But since there is no commercial interest from this project it’s fair to assume that Nintendo is turning a blind eye (and plus NoA employees are looking forward to the patch π ).
Of course I am not a lawyer but merely a guy who spends too much time on this website, so take every I say with a grain of salt (is that the saying?).
Edit:
It’s actually illegal in America to dump roms. But my post above applies to Canada (at least until we have those crappy new copyright laws passed).
http://starmen.net/forum/?t=thread&frm_id=99
FWOOMP! Spillover board!
BananaPickles beat me to it. π
I want to say that I hate nintendo for releasing nothing but Sega Games on the virtual console for the last few months.
Dear Mato,
Thank you for reading every post on this page (apparently). I gave up doing that back in, like, April. I love what everyone’s writing, but there’s just too much of it.
I don’t think it will be too hard for you to find a way around the space problem. There are always ways to make programs shorter/more efficient.
I congratulate you on your work and, as always, am coveting the finished product.
Vagn: You’re quite correct about it being illegal to have ROMs unless you dump them yourself. But what American law makes it illegal to dump them yourself? As far as I know, it’s fair use, no matter what the manual page says (they can’t take your rights away, the games are bought, not sold and the First Sale doctrine should trump that).
Of course, IANAL either, but I spend way too much time reading about copyright nonsense online π
Kind of random, but I just noticed that Snopes.com is using an Earthbound sprite as one of their icons. Check it out here:
http://www.snopes.com/fraud/fraud.asp
I actually bevieve the warning on the nintendo packages about dumping only apply to the warning.
Lol at Snopes using the ATM sprite
And my god this is really coming together…80-90% the entire project?? Remarkable to say the least.
“In order to red this sign, you had to trample on the flowers at your feet” I love this games humor.
That sign, the flower one, is one of those evil ones you want to beat up.
=)
Where is mitch…… I miss his awesome translation related comic humor…..
γ―γγγ©
Don’t want to say this too early, but it sounds like the translation may finish by Christmas with the rate you guys are getting the job done. Its incredibly impressive, and I look forward to re-experiencing this game in English.
That sign about trampling the flowers, I can just imagine that with ” ….Brickroad” at the end. I love it!
A Fan:
Check out the ROM image page on wikipedia. Some interesting stuff on there, not that I am saying Wikipedia is the best source for legal advice π
There hasn’t been a mini-update for a while… where are we at now?
Hey, just an interesting thing I found, I was reading the graphic novel Bone, and in the fifth book, towards the end of the book, they used the word Earthbound. AMAZING I KNOW! π
I just tried Live-Live (looking at its Wikipedia entry greatly sparked my interest). It has reminded me of the difference between this patch and other fan translations.
They did little to help the final project look good other than have different fonts (but don’t get me wrong, those fonts are above and beyond what they had to do). For instance, the description for all the weapons in the prehistoric chapter is “A rough weapon.” Checking the original Japanese game, I see no evidence of similar descriptions (and mother of fudge, that’s a lot of Kanji!).
Mato, I thank you for making this Mother 3 translation be all it can be. Part of what made EarthBound so great was that NoA worked so hard on the English text. They tried to catch every bit of humor in the original game (although what was up with that “Just play it!” sign?). Control codes are everywhere. Item usage text even factored in whether or not the holder was alive!
I’m so glad that you try to make the translation be as official as possible. Anything less would do the series no justice.
Mato, I’ll kill you if you change the flower sign. IT’S PERFECT LIKE THAT!
Did he say he was? What’s with the sudden psychopathy, Arashi? You normally seem so level-headed..
Hey Mato if nintendo say they are going to release the game you should continue to translate in case they change their mind
http://mother3.fobby.net/faqs/
What if Nintendo announces an official English release of MOTHER 3?
As weβve mentioned throughout the history of the project, our team has agreed that this translation project will come to a full stop if/when we hear that Nintendo has chosen to pursue an official translation of the game. Our only goal is to get MOTHER 3 in the hands of the fans.
I mean officiallt for it to but for mato jst to continue it behind the scenes
I’d think “full stop” sort of encompasses there not being any behind the scene work.
The Do-It-Yourself Devotion is to get Mother 3 into the hands of American/European players. If Nintendo decides to translate Mother 3, the project will come to a full stop, because we supposedly succeeded in our goal to get Mother 3 over here.
If by some cruel change of heart Nintendo decides not to translate it, the translation here will start back up right where it left off.
Vagn: Given things like battery saves, I’m not sure that precedent would hold up. Then again, any case would probably hinge on whether the court thought you were a pirate or truly making backups, so it’s probably moot π It also was against the people making (and selling) the backup device.
Anyhow, I guess it doesn’t really matter. The proper thing to do is to support the people who make the games we enjoy, anyhow, and Nintendo was smart enough to roll out VC, putting them light-years ahead of other makers.
If possible, Mato, could you put up another percentage box-thing?
I wish people would stop asking about that box thing, it gets annoying. Maybe I shouldn’t have posted any those other times.
sorry
It’s just that people are rather impatient. Really, you shouldn’t worry about it too much. You’re spoiling us enough, and people want more. Kinda like those daily Brawl updates back before Brawl was released.
Oh Yeah, those smash updates made my morning… at 12:00 am.
Nice work Mato, beautiful even.
Oh well. Blame me. It’s just that we miss the daily updates from about a month ago… It got us too excited.
Dunno if it’s been posted here, but the UK version of Brawl has corrected Tazmily Village’s name in Lucas’ trophy. I only read half of the description and I’m glad I played through chapter 1 a while ago now π
Can you take a pic? It’s probably not good to post it here, but you can send it to tomato@starmen.net or post it somewhere on the spillover board. That would be very appreciated if possible.
Mato,
wut do u rly look like…?
I weigh 500 pounds, I’m 14, and I have green hair.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, and it’s off-topic.
Actually, When I first found this blog, i DID think you were just a teenager, Mato
Good job Mato and team!
Mato Quote: “I wish people would stop asking about that box thing, it gets annoying. Maybe I shouldnβt have posted any those other times.”
Mato Quote: “I weigh 500 pounds, Iβm 14, and I have green hair. Anyway, it doesnβt really matter, and itβs off-topic.”
No Offense but it seems like your in a “not too happy” kinda mood.
There are always days that you are not in a mood, he might be having a bad day too.
Mato: Check your email for a link to the UK Brawl pic. I agree, posting it here wouldn’t be a good idea π
Yep, awesome! Thanks for the pic. I didn’t think they would change stuff like that for the European release. But it’s interesting, and that’ll help put to rest people’s questions when it comes to that.
yeah Mato, it really has seemed for the past few weeks that you’re becoming increasingly annoyed..
probably rightly so.. you’re like the only guy regulating this blog
still though, please dont let us bastards, and this project, get to you man
spend some time with the lady friend, or your boys…
like seriously, if you just said ” fawkk this im taking a week off and doing Nothing!!”.. then we would still all support you π
Mato’s just getting burnt out.
It’s the summer, he should be out getting slightly burnt instead (yay florida sun…hrm. I wonder if Mato even lives anywhere near the ocean at all *shrugs*)
mato: when you hit 76.09%, we all jaw-dropped.
I, for one, want you to finish up draft 2 so you can take a break, since you seem to have this habit of doing lots of work and making huge strides whenever you say you’re going to take a break or we ask you to, maybe the only solution is to make sure you have less things to work on. π
<3
I think it goes beyond him being “burnt out”. He’s constantly getting bombarded by the same questions, and even creepier personal questions. I would get annoyed too.
Honestly, doesn’t the extreme suck up from most of these comment annoy you? I mean, gee, I’m sure you don’t need anyone telling you to take a break every time you post, or anyone to remind you that this is hard work every 5 seconds, or anyone going all like WOAH!!!! THAT’S SOME EXTREME EFFORT YOU PUT INTO THAT .000001% OF WORK DONE! WE ARE ALMOST THERE!!!!!!!1111 TAKE A BREAK!!!!!!! When it’s obvious it’s not a lot and nothing to be too excited about, but will surely pick up, eventually.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. :/
And guess what? Those same questions/comments or whatever will keep coming up in the coming blogs. Even questions that could even be answered in the faqs, or even questions/comments that are off topic. It’s to be expected anyways. At least it isn’t as crazy as the GameFAQs Brawl boards… several suicide accounts per day, random posting, fake rumors, blaming the moderators for being too harsh… Yay, now I’m off topic. >_<
Welcome to the Internet. Stupid comments will always exist.
Whatever dude, I’ll be waiting for when this is done, keep it up!
Yeah, just ignore the stupid questions from uninformed people.
BTW, whats the plot for this game? XD
hey guys lets all leave mato alone. sometimes i tell even my good friends “hey shut the f*ck up” because they need to hear it. so everyone let shut up for a little and let the mean do what he has to do. sh*t.
I AM ROOTING FOR YOU!
WHOOP!
http://gonintendo.com/?p=47751 lols
Thats not really good news…
It’s Little King Story.
Wow, it’s starting to get a little crazy here. Maybe we ALL should simmer down a bit, no?
Simma daw nao, simma daw!
I’ll melt your icy hearts with a cool island song!
“Oooohhh…
In the tropical isle with the coconut tree,
The air is fresh and the people are free..”
(gets pelted by many thrown objects)
wow. comments are at an all time high! but thats is great news and i think i detected a small trace of optimism in this update. we must be getting close!
Shave your game. Lol.
you… are… AWESOME!!!
seriously though i love that you people are doing this
Anyone else gonna miss these blog updates once the patch is out?
Its like,i want the patch,but don’t want the blog to stop…
I want the blog to stop, actually. That way, all discussion would be on GameFAQs or starmen.net.
I don’t know about things past the N64 days, but backing-up NES/SNES/and N64 carts is an illegal act, even if you own the game. It has to do with special laws concerning the carts themselves. Check game instruction manuals, they all mention it.
Guys, backing up the games is NOT illegal. Nintendo frowns upon it, but they have no legal authority on the issue. Nintendo =/= the law.
it’s mother 3!!
JUST KIDDING
Please stop talking about irrelevant things in here. π That Nintendo Power stunt does not belong on the translation blog. There’s a huge topic in the Newsroom of Starmen.Net if you want to talk about it.
Poe,
I wouldn’t say it’s entirely irrelevant, but I think you’re right that it belongs on the starmen.net forum.
Here’s the link everybody: http://starmen.net/forum/?t=msg&th=48657
OMG,80%!?!
That’s crazy.
Yay! 80%! π
Not much further, Mato! You’re almost there!
Very impressive Mato with getting to the 80% mark so soon,also I know Jeff has been looking for bugs but what do you mean by he’s also working on little things here and there ?
Past 80%! Excellent!
Awesome job.
Hurrah. 80% AND a Diablo 3 announcement.
Awesome, 80%!
Great job Mato!
TheReaper08: It means I’m working on little things here and there
You’re a hard-worker.
80%!!!!! (creates shrine in honor of Mato and begins praying to it)
Jeebus, Mato, you’re awesome.
There are no words to describe my admiration.
Damn, you must have been working all day Mato. Thanks for the update, I’m so excited!
rock on mato!
we all really appreciate the work youre doing!
80% already? Wow, that’s nearly 90%! And 90% easily rounds up to 100%, so you’re practically done by now. Awesome news. So the patch will be done within the week, right? π
This patch really spread over a long time,…
kinda makes me feel glad following it through the times…..
gonna be weird when it’s done, not waiting for updates….
By the way,
RLY MATO i’ve NEVER seen a picture of you,
………………………and dont send me no picture of a Tomato,
wut do u rly..luk like….
KoolKojo:
Mato said 1 day, 4 hours ago:
I weigh 500 pounds, Iβm 14, and I have green hair.
Anyway, it doesnβt really matter, and itβs off-topic.
KoolKojo, and everyone else who’s ever asked these type of questions:
Here is what you need to know:
http://nutsjesmoar.googlepages.com/tomato
Now stop asking.
Blargh, the last 4% has been some of the most tedious, long text so far. Feels like walking through the Deep Darkness. Still got a ways more to go. It’s not bad text, just exhausting and from parts of the game I didn’t like as much as the rest.
Holy crap, you’re already at the last 4%? Tapdancing religious figures, you need a break or something. And all the other stuff everyone’s said already.
I think he means the last 4% he’s been working on..
yea i would think that so from 76% to 80%, and as you can see it does say he has posted it six hours ago. Not to rag on you or anything just to straighten things out, so your not to excited with your hopes really high..
Mato:
Itβs not bad text, just exhausting and from parts of the game I didnβt like as much as the rest.
?!?!?!?! what? Every bit of it is amazing!
C’mon BananaPickles…….. the Mato-man has been on this shit CONSTANTLY for sooo fawkin long now….
Amazing as it may be (which is VERY Amazing, by the fact that he’s doing this for NOTHING IN RETURN)… every man has his limits
so forgive him if he gets fed up with it from time to time