Just a small status update. Still going through the game, fixing context issues, polishing things up to fit context/direction better, etc. etc. It’s coming along great, it’s getting pretty exciting seeing things finally coming together with so much polish.
Right now, I’m about 15 hours in, I’d say maybe I’m 3/5 of the way through the game. I think for most people, the game will last in the 20-30 hour range the first time around. I think I clocked in around 32-35 hours the very first time I played it in Japanese. It’s about as long as EarthBound I’d wager, only it doesn’t feel like it when you look back. Anyway, I hope people will take their time when the patch is finally out, it’d be no fun to rush through it 😛
Anyway, almost no issues encountered in the last few days, nothing that kills the game either. Only two things really. The line that’s shown when an item is stolen is messed up and won’t be easy to fix (this is because it’s actually 2 separate lines and one hard-coded thing), and the other bug I’ve only gotten to happen once and can’t reproduce it however hard I try. I know what caused it, just very very very bad luck/timing. It instantly fixed itself perfectly when the text refreshed during a scroll though.
I’ll try to finish this initial playthrough this weekend, after which I’ll move on to finalizing all the non-script stuff, like items, enemies, battle text, etc. Then I go back to hacking, bleh.
I didn’t realize it until now, but updates from now on won’t be as clockwork as previous ones. Before, there was a specific # of stuff to do (lines), but now it’s back to the vague-ish stuff. So the old progress meter pics are no more.
Anyway, like I mentioned before, I still need to play through Draft 2 to fix context issues and other stuff. I’ve been doing that the past few days, and it’s coming along incredibly well. I usually can’t stand my own writing, but actually playing through the game from the start, I find myself amazed at how so much of the text is turning out. I’m usually Mr. Ultra Pickyguy too. So far, I’m about 7.5 hours into the game, been having to try to talk to everyone in every possible situation, so I’m gonna guess the clock’ll be at 30+ hours by the time I’m done. It’s coming along great, and being able to actually see everything in context is awesome, and I’m able to fix and polish things easily this way.
I’ve also come across a number of bugs and issues so far. Only one has been game-killing, and, as to be expected, it’s from a line in “Block 0”, which is one of the most annoying things left to hack. The programmers programmed this ONE, single line separately from allllllll the other lines apparently. One line. WTF. Anyway, it shouldn’t be hard to fix when I’m done with this context fixing stuff. I’m busy this weekend (that’s what happens when you work freelance 😛 ) so I’ll try to get through the playthrough next week or next weekend.
Here are some pics of bugs found, and they’ve all been fixed since. Well, except for the super garbly one, that’s the one I just mentioned that I’ll fix later.
Jeff managed to fix that last one real quickly, the others were mostly formatting/typo things. Stomping bugs and cleaning things up is always a good feeling.
Oh, almost forgot. If anyone would like to help think up names for a few enemies, see here.
NOTE! The pic to the right represents Draft 2 only. The actual entire project itself is more like 90%
It’s been 8 or so weeks, and finally, finally, Draft 2 of the main script is done. Actually, it’s not *exactly* done, but I’ll explain that in a second. The real work of Draft 2 is done, and all lines have been copied, revised, formatted, checked, etc. etc. It’s been a real killer getting this done, glad to have it over with. Jeff’s been real cool about updating the text editor program every time I need something new, which has been a real life-saver and helped speed this stuff up a good deal. Give him donuts if you see him.
Anyway, the last batch was from pretty much the last two hours of the game, so here are some random pics from elsewhere instead. Enjoy them like celebratory candy. Yum.
Alright, so I’ll jump right into the important stuff. It’s crazy early in the morning so I’ll save the detailed details for future updates, for now, here’s a basic outline of stuff.
A small status update. I squeezed in a few hours the last few days to get a couple more % done on the second draft of the script. It’s now at 93%.
I really, REALLY need to emphasize that the picture to the right does NOT indicate the progress of the entire project. Only the progress of the second draft. Once Draft 2 is done, there are a few more things left to do. These can be seen in the to-do list, but basically, there are three main things left:
Finish Draft 2, do draft 3
Finish misc. hacking. All the major hacking is done, but a few things are still left.
Test, test, test. And fix any bugs we find.
I’ll go into more detail on Draft 3 in a few days, after I finish Draft 2. I’m very busy the next 3 days, so I’ll try to finish Draft 2 this weekend. I’d say that there’s at least three months left until the final patch is out.
Oh, and here are random pics from the latest tiny batch. Pics good.
blaiourglkj I finally finished the really big and exceptionally wordy part of the game, and after that, I sped through another 5%+ today to get Draft 2 to 91% now. Very tired. I won’t have much free time the next several days though, so Draft 2 probably won’t hit 100% until at *least* next week.
For those following with the map editor (which is downloadable here), this latest batch went from maps 402 to 623. A lot of this stuff was later game stuff, so here are some meh-er pics for now.
Good news is that there isn’t any real tough text until 99%, and there’s some repeated text coming up, so when I *do* have time to work on Draft 2, it should go fast, much like today. Once this Draft 2 stuff is done, I plan to do a playthrough of the game to fix context issues. Will also need to work some tech-ish magic to fit the full script in, it’ll probably be about 50 KB too big. After that I’ll probably revise and finish all the misc text, like battle text, descriptions etc. As for the third draft of the main script, I’m not sure about the details of that yet, but we’ll figure it out when the time comes, which will be soon.
It’s getting very close though, as is probably obvious from those recent videos. Even I’m getting excited, and I’ve played the game to death 😛
The way MOTHER 3 was originally programmed, it’s very obvious they never planned to release the game in other languages. That’s the main reason the project has needed so much hacking 🙁
In contrast, we’ve organized and planned our hacks carefully, so once the English translation is complete, it will be EXTREMELY easy to translate the game into other languages. The text files will need to be translated, and that’s about it. So once the English translation is done, we’ll work with people to get the game into other languages.
(The pictures above are sample translations; the non-English translations haven’t really begun yet)
So far, it looks like there’ll be Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German translations for sure. As long as a language has these letters, translating the game will be extremely easy.
More details when the time comes, but I wanted to get this info posted for now.
EDIT: We’ve been getting a much bigger response from this than I ever expected, so if you’re interested in translating the game into your language, please go here and try to organize yourself with others. I’m amazed how many people from around the world are wanting to work on this 😯
This’ll be a short update, busy like crazy with work, but it’s not a bad busy. In any case, Draft 2 is still moving along. It’s in the 85%-ish area at the moment. I really want to get into the 90%s sometime this week, starting to really feel burnt out.
Jeff’s been doing tons of work with the remaining hacking tasks, he’s even finished a thing or two on the to-do list in the last couple days, but I think he still wants to test them a bit before crossing them off. I’ll let him do the talking about that later on when he’s done with it.
Meanwhile, the other day I was exhausted after a ton of real life work, so I started playing around with the current build, and it was neat seeing all these different things coming together, so I was like why not take some video of it. So I recorded the very first part of Chapter 1, it’s like 20 minutes long or so. There are no real spoilers, but the related videos might have spoilers, so be careful of them I guess. I actually wasn’t planning on showing this on a blog update originally, but I won’t have an update about Draft 2 until later in the week, so this is like a stand-in.
Naturally, I should add the disclaimer that this is an early version and text/bugs/etc. will be fixed and smoothed out and changed by the final patch. And yeah, I know about “The Flint” 😉
It’s looking good now, but the game does have crashing/freezing/moonside-creating/etc. bugs, most of which is related to Block 0 text (which is the last really big thing to hack) so the final version’s still a couple months off. When things start to wind down we’ll have a more accurate guess for a release date.
Since Mato started on Draft 2, the hacking progress sort of slowed down because everyone was instantly busy with real-life stuff. However, things are still being fixed and bugs are still being found here and there.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been powering through the following hacking issue:
Fix some ending sequence text stuff — this involves sprite text, let’s hope and pray we don’t need to do sprite text welding again. Currently has some pretty crazy graphical glitchiness.
This was one of the few remaining major hacks that everybody’s been dreading forever, mainly because we all knew in the backs of our heads that some kind of text welding would be necessary, because Mato’s whole sprite welding ordeal surprisingly didn’t affect the credits.
Screenshots of the cast credits follow, so if you’re saving that as a surprise for when you beat the patch, you don’t have to click onward. Otherwise, well, check it out!
MOTHER 3 is the sequel to MOTHER 2 (also called EarthBound). It is a GBA RPG that was released in Japan in April 2006. Nintendo has made it clear that they do not intend to translate the game, so we, the fans, have begun our own translation.
NOTE! The pic to the right represents Draft 2 only. The actual entire project itself is more like 90%
A small status update. I squeezed in a few hours the last few days to get a couple more % done on the second draft of the script. It’s now at 93%.
blaiourglkj I finally finished the really big and exceptionally wordy part of the game, and after that, I sped through another 5%+ today to get Draft 2 to 91% now. Very tired. I won’t have much free time the next several days though, so Draft 2 probably won’t hit 100% until at *least* next week.
