Still Alive, Dagnabbit
Still alive, never fear! Last week turned out to be a hectic one, with broken AC, storms, power outages, and lots of real life work that was also affected by such things. I did manage to get a few hours of hacking time in, though. I’ve been working on a bug related to control codes in battle, and have made some decent progress. But, as expected, the game doesn’t want to give up without a fight. I forgot that today was a holiday here in the States though, so I’m gladly taking it off to get lots of hacking time in. I’ll continue to make mini-updates in the comments.
I’m too tired to go into detail about the bugs, but if you’ve watched any of the latest preview videos, you’ve likely seen one of them in action. An example being the thing at about 6:40 into this video here (“The Flint”). This is more of a final polish fix, but the other remaining hacks are more complicated and I haven’t hacked in 2+ months, so I want to do this easier stuff first to get back into the groove.
Jeff’s been busy moving, but I asked if he could turn the script into something that can be checked by a spell/grammar-checker. That might help shave off a tiny bit of testing time later on.
Anyway, Happy September!
Starting to wonder what was going on!
Take it easy mato.
Hey, you’re doing a great job Mato. Keep it up!
(Oh yeah, first)
oooh, broker AC… i’d die without my AC!
Great to hear you’re still alive:) Keep up the good work, and at least spend some of the US holiday taking a break!
He who claims first smells the worst
Baz: Yeah, though I did say updates would be less regular lately. Every 3 or 4 days was my old goal, but I’d say once very 7-10 would be normal now. Unless anyone can donate free time and energy, heh π
I can never hear (err, well, see, I guess), the phrase ‘Still Alive’ anymore and NOT hear the song. It’s even somewhat fitting, at least the first few lines, for when the project is done.
I always wanted to play Portal since I first heard about it long ago, but then I bought it and it crashes right after the first portal opens so bleh. My crappy computer.
Anyway, that aside, I know it’s arbitrary, but I’ll stick this current thing at 20% done for now.
thank you for doing this can’t wait :S
Mato: That exact same thing happened to me. No idea why ;-;
Regardless, keep up the good work. Always rootin’ for ya.
You don’t think it’d be cooler to leave in “The Flint”? I think it’s hilarious. I mean, at least it could be thrown back in a script edit later on. “You know why? ‘CAUSE I’M THE FLINT, BABY!”
Okay, so maybe it shouldn’t be done. Never mind, then. Great work as always, Mat-o.
Mato, I haven’t even played Portal at all. I really want to though, just you know how the money situation can get at times. =/ That song is just about everywhere though.
That video has to be the best thing I’ve seen on youtube in weeks.
Thank you for working so hard on this!
I tried playing in Japanese, but decided to stop because my Japanese is very “limited”, I really wanted to understand fully. I’m glad that you guys are still working on this!
γγγ°γ£γ¦οΌ
-γγ§γ
hey mato, whats your steam id? ill gift ya portal, you should seriously try it out man, very deep mysterious game…the cake is a lie!
I can’t wait for this to be done.
I’m gonna take like a week off of school just to play this game. ^_^
I know a lot of people want this thing done, but you should still take this day off from even the hacking. It’s called Labor day for a reason. You deserve a rest.
YAY Updates! Now im not so impatinent! Wait… I am. Oh well. Its good to know you are still alive.
Dangit, everyones talking about portal. I wanna play portal. *Doesn’t have portal.* Phooey. Guess I’ll play Portal the flash version.
Thanks for the birthday present. ^_^
@Brian: If he dosen’t have one, I’ll take that Portal gift. My Steam ID is hollow_ichigo .
Mato I know I have said this like 50 times but you are the MAN because nothing can stop you hell having a crappy computer,being tired of many months of crazy amount of hacking and translating,without a ac and being very busy person with lots of real life work and you still are working hard to finish this project.
Wow, I’m actually here for one of mato’s posts and not halfway down the page.
So anyways you are awesome, blah blah, *Generic Praises*
Oh wait, I have a question, mato. What exactly is the point of fobby.net? I know you’re hosted there from the url, but what is the point of a bunch of borange stuff dancing? Please tell.
A long long time ago starmen.net was running out of server space, so we got a new server account (this was before we had a dedicated server). But to get the new account we needed a new URL, so we got foppy.net I believe, and it had an animated rotating foppy as its front page. The server was meant only for storage really, you see. Anyway, at some point we ditched it for some reason, then, again, for some reason we needed another URL for something so I guess they got fobby.net. Fobby.net is now kind of like the misc storage area of starmen.net. The sites are on the same server and all owned by reid, it’s just easier to have all starmen.net stuff on the starmen.net account and all other stuff on fobby.net, for organizational/technical reasons.
Awesome Awesome then. I hope it gets finished before my birthday (Which is during September, haha.)
And eww, sorry about the whole real life problems ):
Mato you made my day π
That video is of my friend’s brother!! She helped film the burger scene and the bike scene. Funny stuff, I can’t believe it was mentioned on here!!
I give you all my bacon.
You don’t mind if it’s Turkey bacon, do you?
good good
schweet
Zomg! You guys rock. I cant wait for you guys to finish. Ty for your hard work, but yes today IS labor day for a reason. You work later. LATER!
I’m happy to hear you haven’t died in a ditch or something, Mato. Take it easy dude.
First Post
just copy/paste the whole script, macros and all, into microsoft word. yeah it’s a pain to “spell check” the macros, but eventually you may find some anomalies with those, too, and pick out the bugs that way. at least that’s how i used to do it…
dr.mario – I recall the script being 800+ pages..
Thanks for the update tomato!
Thanks for the update – Keep up the good work!
Yeah Mato, if you wanna play Portal just run it in DX8. (Unfortunately, I too have a crappy computer). Or you can take the easy way out and buy a PS3 or an Xbox, but nobody has the money or time for that anyway.
Just keep up the good work.
…and when you’re hacking I’ll be STILL ALIVE. π
o no u di’ent
And, hooray, update!
I LOVE YOU GUYS.
π
I just got back from a trip to Arkansas, and the absolute first thing I did when I got back was check this website.
With every update, I get more excited! Keep up the “awesome” work (Good is not a good enough word) π
Followed code some more and figured out more stuff, it looks like the game’s structure might not allow for the easist possible fix, so I might have to resort to things like string comparing, which will be annoying to do.
The cake may be a lie, but our gratitude sure isn’t. Keep on hacking!
Thanks mato. I was just confused about what was up with the awesome borange stuff.
…And how hard is string comparing?
“dr.mario – I recall the script being 800+ pages..”
word can handle it, just depends on how much ram you have. wait for it all to paste, press f7, and become one with the machine.
String Comparing must be fairly hard, I’d imagine. All the strings I know look pretty much alike – once you get past color and length I’m pretty much useless comparing two pieces of string.
We should get them some nice nut bread for the celebration party…am I the only one pushing for a party?
It’s not hard, just annoying in the case of this game, where strings sometimes and sometimes don’t have an end-of-string marker. Then there’s always the 8-letter name thing to take into account, blah blah blah. The hard part isn’t the string stuff. The hard part is making sure the game works the way I think it does 100%. It’s weird and I don’t feel like explaining.
-and I don’t feel like learning anything (on a holiday), so that works out great!
Really though, thanks as always for all the hard work you’re doing, and especially so today for spending your holiday doing this for us. ’tis most superbly awesome.
Writing code sucks, so I’m guessing it’s more annoying annoying to find errors in code that you initially didn’t write.
wow, you are so close to making me lose weeks of my life.
You’re all lucky. No Labor Day where I live
Mato-san: I prayed for you… sort of. (I was not sure of what to pray for, yet I managed a “well-being” prayer…)
Arashi-san: I have Labor Day, yet school starts in August in Puerto Rico. (not that it was not fun…)
My school started 2 weeks ago
Give it a few more days, the insane hacking nightmares will recommence. Blargh! The city is being destroyed by a renegade line of code! Only the sentient Tomato hacking genius and translator extraordinaire and his sidekicks, the faithful Boob Wizards can save us! Someone quick! Fry up some bacon to call him out from his hacking den! Err, yeah, or something like that. That… yeah… I blame my migraine for that.
I’m in the process of moving, so I can’t play my Earthbound because it’s in a box, but I’ve got a craving for it like you wouldn’t believe.
Hey, Mato, (or anyone else that knows), how rare is an EB cart, and how much do they typically sell for? (Just the cart, not the whole bundle.)
I’m afraid it might be like Gunstar Heroes. There’s a decent number of copies, but nobody wants to give theirs up.
Is it alright to ask how much longer to expect until project will be finished?
Also don’t hurt me.
You’re an inspiration to all coder/nintendo geeks in the US and potentially the world. Keep up the amazing work! God speed!
–xp HP said:
Iβm afraid it might be like Gunstar Heroes. Thereβs a decent number of copies, but nobody wants to give theirs up.
Especially the ones who still have working SNES systems! Well, can ya blame us?
^^ I don’t blame us.
I just heard a rumour that Nintendo is suing mato….
Nintendo? Suing Mato? I don’t think so.
Mato, when this translation is finished, the cake will no longer be a lie.
It will be real.
Alive.
Forever real, forever alive.
(But…it doesn’t mean you will get to savor it….?)
@ shade
Gunstar Heroes definitely isn’t on the Super Nintendo
you crazy
OH GOTTSCHALKS IT’S SO CLOSE
I gotta say, I’m getting hyped for this. I played EarthBound in the 6th grade and wanted a sequel badly, and when I heard of Mother 3, I decided to play it… for some reason, though, the japanese makes it less EarthBoundy due to me not knowing the japanese language. And now, I’m about to finally get that sequel I’ve wanted so long… π
@Crass
He was referring to Earthbound, I believe.
Mato, I can’t believe you are this close. You do realize that you’ll be a god to these people after this right?
Anyway, I can’t wait until the patch is finished, and I really appreciate you doing all this for us.
Moooo!! Mooooooootttheer 3!
Amazing. Let’s hope it gets finished this week, or next week!
OMFG BOOOM
YoshiAngemon: You’re thinking to early. I’ll say 5 more weeks (rough estimate based out of NOTHING).
Yeah, 5 weeks is a better estimate.
Personally, I think “when it’s done” is the perfect estimate.
There’s no chance of a disappointing delay, and there’s no rush on those involved! π
Please don’t say it that way Nin10dude. You do know what other game will be done “when it’s done” right. Those fans have been waiting forever. I would hate for Mother3 to get delayed that long.
Otherwise great work Mato and the rest of the team. I have confidence that this will be one of if not ‘the’ best fan translation ever.
Well, I think I have a fix in mind now, the problem is it’s probably not as air-tight a fix as I would like, but given the complexity of the game’s code (there are probably dozens if not hundreds of different tiny routines that would need hacking, for different battle actions), it’s a lot better than nothing, and if it does mess up, it’ll only be in very rare battle text and will probably just mean a missing “the” or something before an enemy’s name one time. But I can probably write things in such a way as to minimize that too.
The battle system’s really complex and I’ve been following it back many levels and bleh. Wish I had source code.
Anyway, I’m tired for tonight so I’ll mess with stuff tomorrow. My current idea should be quite easy to implement and should fix the problem maybe 99% of the time. We’ll see though, maybe sleep will make new brain cells appear.
Am I crazy or can’t you know where the player’s name is and compare against that (assuming that all non-players get ‘The _’?
Or is the code even more evil than that? π
The best part is my residence in uni is winters and that makes me want to play this game even more lol. Rawk on mother 3 translation team
Its still going to take a month atleast,but hey,its worth it!
I REALLY REALLY HOPE YOU GUYS HAVE IT BE CALLED EARTHBOUND 2 RATHER THAN MOTHER 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!
has this already been decided?? if so, hope they decided on earthbound 2, since it IS the US version.. and the first US version WAS named earthbound… am i right? yes.
haha.
I would prefer leaving it as MOTHER 3. Part of the problem with naming it EarthBound 2 is that it makes it sound like a direct sequel to EarthBound; whenever I hear somebody say “EarthBound 2”, I think of a whole new game with Ness.
At any rate, this it’s already in the FAQ that the name will be kept as MOTHER 3 (possibly subtitled as EarthBound 2), and people have been asking it more and more lately (with the amount of hardware seekers dropping down to zero, oddly).
He’s not just flint, he’s THE FLINT.
*glances at Eric*
Welcome To th π
Nope sorry, it won’t work. It’s gotta be Mother 3.
TheMetroidMan: I just hope that in the scene where he’s at the stove and falls down, tipping the pot and spilling the water, that the stove was off… ^_^;;
Typhin: Yea it was haha. I called him and told him he made this page of fame and he was like OMG NO WAY! He’s a wicked cool kid and he’s a hardcore Mother fan, he has the EarthBound planet and meteor symbol tatooed on his arm.
@Exp Hp “Part of the problem with naming it EarthBound 2 is that it makes it sound like a direct sequel to EarthBound”
MOTHER 3 is the sequel to MOTHER 2 (also called EarthBound).
A Fan: Come on, you know by now that if it were that easy I’d already have done it. And that the game wouldn’t make it that easy π
—–
Anyway, I implemented my idea for a fix last night, the fix that should fix like 99% of these weird “The Flint” type errors. It only took 3 lines of new code, which is nice and interfaces with our other hacks perfectly. Problems may arise if two or more enemy names appear in one line, though. Or if an enemy or party member gets confused and does something unexpected, like trying to feed an enemy some food. I’m not sure if that’s even possible though.
Anyway, I’m gonna test this a little more, and if it seems good, I’ll cross it off the list.
Mato: Invest in some computer upgrades, or upgrade your video drivers or something. Portal is awesome and you must play it.
Team Fortress 2 is awesome as well. I hope you got the entire Orange Box bundle. Incredible value, even if you already own the HL2 and HL2EP1 (both included in it).
Great! Good luck with your testing kind sir.
It figures. Is there any way to check the confusion code to see if it can even make you choose that command? Usually, confusion just makes you fight someone chosen at random… π
Two enemies on a single line is harder. Are there any spells/abilities that one enemy will use on another? Hmm…
Stupid, evil code.
@dan
no mato is not allowed to have fun until his dream project is complete >:C