So Much Stuff
Yup, it’s been a long while since the last update. But never fear, a lot’s gotten done!
Jeffman did tons of work this past week, but he’s headed on a trip overseas for the next week or two, so he didn’t get the time to do an update. So I’ll try to do one in his place now, but so much stuff happened this last week I can’t even recall it all 😯
I don’t remember where Jeff started off from since the last update, so let’s just go through this stuff in an arbitrary order.
The first important thing we needed to do was find a way to repoint the text block for what we call “menus1”, which is pretty much the bulk of the menu text the player will see in the game. There’s a menus2 and menus3, but those are mostly unused blocks used by the developers for in-house debugging. Anyway, as you can see, we were way over the limit and even with lots of chopping up of text, there was just no way we were going to fit the menu text in the allotted space.
Sadly, there aren’t nice and friendly 32-bit pointers to each of these text blocks, so finding out how to repoint menus1 was something I kept putting off. But then Jeffman showed up out of nowhere and was like, “Done.”
This basically let us have 32 KB of space for menus1. Obviously, that’s way more than is needed, but this is the power of hacking at its finest 😀 OK, so then I re-retranslated menus1 so we would have longer text again. This also fixed the naming screen, so you could actually name people again. The lack of space for menus1 made naming all wonky. But now it works again, yay!
As with all things in MOTHER 3 though, what seems easy at first turns into a nightmare.
It turns out the latest VWF that Jeffman made in the last update applies to text that’s displayed using sprites. Yeah, sprites. All gaming systems have a set limitation of sprites, and the GBA’s limit is 128. It turns out this limitation is why the menus crash all evily when an item description is over a certain length. Not only that, but in other instances, stuff like this happens when there’s too much sprite-text at once:
Obviously, this is a big problem. There’s a solution to it, and harmony had managed to get it working before his stuff died last year, but it involves some really complicated stuff that I don’t think either Jeff or me can handle. Hopefully one of the more advanced hackers will be able to step in and do it. The basic idea is that instead of having one letter per sprite, each sprite can have multiple letters and fractions of letters. Kind of like “welding” letters into each sprite. Hard to explain, but anyway, that’s what needs to be done. Once it IS done though, most, if not all, of the menu-related freezing and crashing will be instantly gone 😀
Whew, okay, back on track. After repointing menus1, Jeff decided to mess around with the file loading/saving menus. They were affected by his VWF, so it was natural for him to mess with that stuff next. The problem was that the original game does some weird text formatting/alignment based on the # of letters in the chapter title and the locations. It’s really weird. It looks good with Japanese text, but it looks all unprofessional and ugly with English text. So Jeff spent the better part of a day following code and trying to figure out how to undo this dumb formatting. Eventually, we managed to get it looking pretty decent 🙂 Here are various pics taken during the process.
Meanwhile, I was looking for some possibly-easy stuff to work on myself, so I decided to try to fix the numbers in battle problem. It was handled just as I figured the programmers would handle it, so in maybe 15 minutes I finally got that stuff working nicely 🙂
During this time, Jeff was also busy hacking away. He eventually managed to make it so that all sprite-text using his recent VWF was pulled up 3 pixels to have their original alignment again. This made things look nicer, especially item descriptions.
An unfortunate side effect was that the 8×8 text got pulled up too, oops 🙁 We still haven’t figured out how to detect if this routine is using the 16×16 or the 8×8 font yet. Once we figure that out, it should be an easy enough task to make 8×8 stuff not move up, and use the correct width table, thus making it look nice.
Next thing Jeffman did was try to figure out how to format those dumb menu box titles once and for all. As expected, it wasn’t easy, and the inside menus and outside menus handled it completely differently. With a little bit of teamwork, we (mostly he) managed to succeed.
During this, we managed to find some sort of weird table containing coordinates for other sprites. I’m still not sure what all this data is used for, but I did manage to mess with the cursor for this 😛 Which is good, because the picky side of me didn’t like the spacing of the Yes and No there, so some point down the road I’m sure we’ll tweak that stuff too.
In the meantime, I decided to try to pull up the battle text 2 or 3 pixels. I had tried the day before, but it looked WAY too hard. The next day, I was looking through some of Exophase’s AWESOMELY detailed months-old notes about battle text and saw some stuff about coordinates, so I went into the game and hacked it easily enough. Exophase = smart dude!
That turned out to be way easier than I ever expected 😯
Next, Jeff and I both turned our attention to trying to pull the non-sprite-text up three pixels. This… is painful. We spent way too much time on this and got nothing to show for it. We consulted Exophase and harmony real quick, and just as expected, it’s related to the GBA’s vcount handler. How exactly it’s doing this isn’t clear, either. Especially when you see the following pic:
The game clearly has all the text hooks and stuff in memory, as seen to the right. Also, the spacing between lines is different in memory, as seen on the right. So how the screen on the left is being outputted to the game screen is still a mystery to me and Jeff. That’s hardware specific stuff, and it seems pretty wacko. All we know is it’s got something to do with the vcount. I finally got a *tiny* bit of free time, so I’ll look more closely into it soon hopefully. If it’s anything like harmony’s text-moving hacks for the main script, it could be a simple case of changing 3 simple bytes. Problem is finding our way there 😛
Let’s see. Oh yeah, the past day or two, Jeff bit the bullet and tried to figure out how the stupid menu cursor in outside text menus got their X coordinates. After many, many hours of pain, he finally realized it didn’t matter how it was getting the data, he could just change the horizontal values later on in the code to whatever he wanted. And thus that problem on our list was solved 😀 He even managed to get things working nicely for 3-option menus!
One weird thing that took so much of his time is that he followed the game code backwards far enough to see where it was loading from some REALLY bizarre tables. But then it never used the data it loaded 😯 It was almost pointless, and resulted in a wild goose chase. Those evil programmers.
Next thing Jeff was looking at was why the game does this sometimes with place names. Seems to be related to new-line codes in the text, but it’s not clear. Maybe once we get the sprite-text VWF welding thing done, it might disappear. If not, it’ll probably just take a little detective work.
But for now, he’s out of the country for a week or two, so it’s just me again 😐 I’ll try to get some stuff done, but little by little we’re running out of the “easy” problems. Hopefully some of the super hacking guys will help out soon and save us from the major hacking woes. Please, Santa?
BTW, downloads of that crazy MP3 have surpassed downloads of Menu Patch 1.5. Not sure what to make of that, but it’s interesting info at least. Also, last I checked, around 10,000 people or so had signed up to be notified when the final patch is done. I think that’s more than the sales for some retail games 😯
Whew, okay, that’s all for now. I’ll try to get some more work done and some more regular updates goin’ on. I think I might’ve forgotten some stuff in this update too, so if I remember stuff, I’ll toss it in the next few ones.
First!
Finally an update
Yay
great to read more new stuff 😉
Big update. 😡
The menu screens are looking much better. 😉 Looking forward to the final release.
Ahah. Silly emoticon formatting. That first emote is supposed to be x:
Not some angry face. 😛
It’s okay, menus make us angry too 😛
A winner is me!
I know this is -the- irritating question, but bear with me:
Do you have any feel for when this might be done?
Not an exact date, more of a ‘we feel it could be done in 6 months or so’ or (Itoi forbid) ‘it could be done in, like, 4 years’.
Just a general idea if can.
Also, you guys are like my Jesus. Great job guys!
10,000 notification emails?! Holy Jebus! I bet Nintendo regrets not translating this to sell at least in their online store…
Assuming that half of the people on that list are serious enough about playing the game to pay full retail price through an online store, $30 x 10,000 x 1/2 = $150,000.
…I guess that might be a break-even venture considering the translation and production costs. Oh well.
Zero: when it’s done, homie
yeah i was wondering the same thing as Zero
🙂
I think it’s good to get the little issues out of the way first so you don’t trip over them while you work on the big stuff. That and it gives you some feeling of accomplishment, even if it’s small. ;] Looks like it’s coming along great, keep it up guys!
we need frog baseball
Holy cow…That was a good update! Its always good to see lots of progress being made. Its only a matter of time now…
Keep up the awesome work! I know that I appreciate it a lot. I have been waiting to play Mother 3 since it came out…And I refuse to try it until this patch is done…
someplace down the line I would Like to help people get the ROM running on different things
For expanple it is possiple to run GBA emulators on a Gamecube/Wii without modifying the console
So, when you’re actually playing the game, do you find you look at it differently now? If so, for better or worse?
MP3 downloads surpassed menu patch ones because there’s a ton of us who don’t want to play it until its ready. As good as dough is, we want fresh baked cookies.
Keep up the great work!
yaaay!! dont work to hard now… have a Merry Earthbound Christmas LOL
XO
Good luck.
It seems that you’re doing a good job. Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.
Lots of good reading, as usual. Indeed, I am one of those 10,000, and I hope that number doubles before the patch is out.
Thank you for the update! I check this blog at least twice a day.
good jorb, to both Jeffman and Mato!
have fun overseas, jeffman.
Could someone tell me what a VWF is? Please?
supernova: VWF = variable width font. It took me a little while to figure that out too. 😀
As awesome as always, guys! This time, I want to ask a question.
What kind of code does Mother 3 use? I’m going to learn C++ next year, and then to software design, if I do well enough. I want to try hacking at least one game in my life.
Ya know, it’s funny. Once you guys are done with the translation, I’m going to miss reading updates! 😆
Animus,
I think it may be basic ASM, it isn’t like our conventional programming. They might have .Net tools though, I did notice the compiled icon in one of their screenshots.
Mato:
Great update mate, it’s good progress. Least we are moving on!
Ciao
Raj
I doubt 10,000 is the total number of people wanting this patch. As an example, I haven’t bothered subscribing for the e-mail notice as I check this page at least every day.. sometimes more than once. 😛
Zero: It’s really impossible to say. Personally, I absolutely want to finish it ASAP, so sometime in 2008 would be best. The project’s sucked too much of my life and energy and I want it overrrrrrr
Jeeves: I played the latest build on my GB Player on my TV a few hours ago, and it’s really looking awesome, and the game itself is fun. But when I think about how the game is working underneath, I shudder. I’m also amazed that the game doesn’t blow up and explode, given the amount of hacking we’ve done to it :O It’s incredible that it actually runs. I dunno how to explain it, but just thinking of all these 1s and 0s we changed makes it seem natural that the thing would blow up. But nope, it works 😯
Animus: it appears the game was programmed in C (maybe C++, not sure), but to actually hack the game, you need to know assembly programming. Also, assembly programming is different for each type of processor, so prepare for head explodiness 😛
Also, after this thing is FINALLY done, I’ll probably move back to my EB0 remake hack, and maybe I’ll do a blog thing of it. Except in that case I’ll probably have beta patches and stuff like I used to do with the EB0 project earlier this year. But that’s centuries away so oh well.
Ah, I was hoping I’d come home to an update… looks like a ton of work Jeff did! my thanks, as well as I’m sure everyone elses =P
you guys are doing a good thing, alla’ yalls. I wish there was something I could do, and I’m not just saying that… but in any case, wishing you the best and a safe and happy holiday season. =)
To all people involved in getting this great game translated:
THANK YOU.
Earthbound was a highlight back in my SNES memories, and I had no idea Mother 3 even existed until a friend told me about this project.
All of you are very selfless, generous people to work so hard on this translation and allow this game to be enjoyed by an entirely different audience someday. Godspeed with the translation, it’s looking great so far.
Happy Holidays!
Just wanted to thank you guys for all your hard work. I’m no hacker, but I’ve mucked around with this stuff enough to know how hellish of a job this must be. It really does mean a lot.
Happy holidays!
Maybe they aren’t bringing the game over because it’s IMPOSSIBLE TO PORT. I kid.
You guys are doing an awesome job, I look forward to each update! Happy Festivus!
Tomato,
I have no idea how the hacking process works but I figured I’d make a suggestion related to this problem of yours:
“…how the screen on the left is being outputted to the game screen is still a mystery to me and Jeff… [solving it] could be a simple case of changing 3 simple bytes. Problem is finding our way there.”
Once again, I have no idea how this all works but, especially since you’re kind of crunched for time right now, would it be easier/possible to write a small program which parses through the entire rom and systematically changes ‘3 simple bytes’, then produces and examines the output, and – if the output appears correct – documents the area for your inspection?
Haha, I know that must sound either off-the-wall or impossible… just trying to help.
Thanks for the updates its interesting to see what kind of tasks have to be done in order to make everything function properly
n00b: You mean the translations ready! woot!
Anyways, I think that more people downloaded the MP3 than the patch is because of three reasons:
1. There are people who played the game already in Japanese.
2. There are people who are waiting for the complete product.
3. Not everybody who keeps an eye on this site neccessarily is a die-hard Mother fan that has to play the game as soon as possible.
I am amazed selfless guys like you are around, toiling endlessly to bring enjoyment to the masses without cost to us. Thank you greatly from what I am sure is the whole of us earthbound friends. I have loved the game ever since i was big enough to walk down and rent it from the video store. Now that im getting older and have a young one on the way i cant wait to show my son the joys of eathbound, and judging from the progress, mother 3.
Zip Code Ness, he said the MP3 downloads passed version 1.5 of the menu patch. I don’t think that’s too surprising, I can see a lot of people who’ve already played through the game with the first menu patch, like me, not getting the newer version. Except I downloaded it anyway, for my second playthrough. But yeah.
Tomato, when I’m playing the final patch, besides the game being in English, I’ll be sure to think of you guys when I look at the yes/no cursor being positioned correctly, the text having hooks that aren’t cut off, and all the other little details you’ve troubled yourselves with. So…pretty much the entire time.
Woo hoo… Evil stuff indeed. O_O But you’re getting there, Mato! LIVE!! HACK!! BELIEVE!!
…That hack there seems more of a cough than anything else. O_o
Anyhow… Merry Christmas, Mato and the rest of the Mother 3 Hacking Team! (And I’m actually waiting for the EB0 remake so my sister can play it- She can barely stand the NES version… BUT M3 takes priorityyyyyyyyyyy! XD)
rainwalker: That’s not a completely dumb thought about changing three bytes at a time, but it’s not practical. Consider the number of bytes in the Mother 3 ROM (32MB = 33,554,432 bytes), figure out how many ways there are to pick 3 of those bytes, and then consider that there are 256 ^ 3 = 16,777,216 different values that could be assigned to *each* combination of 3 bytes. Computers are fast, but they aren’t that fast. 🙂
you guys rulezzzzz
play in japanese is funny but su.cks ^^ 9 idont understand anything :p
Rainwalker: The problem is that you have to understand the ROM to modify the game. They didn’t even know that they’d be modifying 3 bytes when they started that hack, after all, nor did they have any idea how to find those 3 bytes. It’s not the sort of thing you can write down an exact algorithm for, which is why it’s pretty much impossible to write a program to do it for you. Now, if there were some simple task they were constantly doing, they could program that (and they have several tools to do such things, like inserting their patches to an unedited ROM) but it wouldn’t help for most things that you do only once 🙂
As for the person asking what language to learn to hack the GBA, learning C/C++ won’t help you at all, though knowledge of programming (and GBA hardware) in general would. But unless you’ve been exposed to assembly languages and how CPUs work at a low level already, it probably won’t make much sense to you.
That said, feel free to read the following useful resources for how to hack GBA games:
VBA http://vba.ngemu.com/downloads.shtml
VBA-SDLH http://www.romhacking.net/utils/297/
GBA tech doc http://www.work.de/nocash/gbatek.htm
GoldRoad ARM/THUMB assembler http://www.gbadev.org/tools.php?showinfo=192
THUMB reference http://www.gbadev.org/docs.php?showinfo=19
ARM/THUMB tech reference (very good) http://www.gbadev.org/docs.php?showinfo=16
I’m surprised Mato hasn’t dumped them into a FAQ yet 🙂
If you guys get this much done when we’re abandoned, feel free to stop updates for… the next few months or so. 😛
Seriously though, awesome work, but don’t forget to break for the holidays. >.>
A Fan: I think the owner of the site where that gba tech doc was hosted didn’t like us linking to it, so it’s been a 404 for a while. Here’s a version that probably won’t ever move.
http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm
src=”http://walkthrough.starmen.net/earthbound/image/ending/ending17.png
I think the words should be changed to… “Earthbound fans of America ask…”
BTW… Great update can’t wait for the final patch to be finished!
It might be laymens terms but, I must say, are all GBA games this ridiculous in their coding, or did Nintendo have like 5 different teams working on this and throwing the pieces together as they went. To me it just seems like that could have coded the game alot simpler then they did. Makes you wonder why they choose a complex route.
the game may be poorley stuctured but I am sure the orginal C++ would not be nearley as bad to work with where the decompiled and no dout terribley structured assembley (decompiled assembley is always harder to work with than an orginal even if the orginal language is assembley because it is not put together in a readable way like I human would)
it is common for developers to leave in stuff they decided not use or was there for testing purposes witch can cause addinional difficulity
to sum it up hacking stuff is hard
btw is Gemini still expressing interest in helping out?
Didn’t Gemini just finish his PSX TOP patch?
On a side note I’ve seen some really crummy codded C hehe, and it can as bad or worse then the assembly. (I used to play with coding ;p)
keep it up
mato-i tried to lease that space but 555-meow was a fake number merry christmas (your getting viral)(i dont know if i spelled viral right oh well)
Keep up the awesome work!!!
What happened to the other hackers? Are they still alive?
I’ve only dealt with a little assembly code before, and I feel your pain. Even when it is the original assembly code written by the original programmers, it is not fun. It is NOT FUN AT ALL!!! Hats off to you and your crew.
You know what’s interesting and semi-related to this? If the game had been released five days earlier, or if I’d been born five days later, we’d have the same birthday, and I could say something like “I’m my Mother’s child” or summat. Alas…
And I think those Brownie Brown guys predicted there’d be a project like this and they made the game screwed up like this on purpose. THEY SHALL NOT SUCCEED IN THEIR INSIDIOUS PLOT TO KEEP US FROM MOTHER 3. Not while we believe in you.
It sounds like you guys are getting lots of work done all the time 😀 Good job! Do you guys have any idea when it will be out at this point?
Mato: Thanks, I’ll update my bookmarks 🙂
As for whoever asked about Gemini, I think he was going to help out once his patch is finished, but I think it wasn’t supposed to be done until after the holidays? I don’t recall. I thought the patch was going into beta testing, but I may very well be confused with an entirely different patch.
butt: actually, it sounds like he just finished up everything on his ToP hack, cause today he was like, “Hey guys let’s hack this game” and sounds like he’s already started looking into stuff 😯
Jackalope: In many ways, they made it nice and easy for hacking into other languages, except I don’t think they were smart enough to realize that other languages take more space to say the same thing than Japanese. In fact, it’d probably be REALLY easy to do a Chinese translation. Even a really really horribly cut-up English version akin to the menu patch wouldn’t be too hard (though it’d take all semblance of charm out of the game), but oh well. Slowly things are coming together now at least.
The Tales of Phantasia translation Gemini was helping out on was just released an hour or so ago, so yeah, I think its finished. 😛
I’m looking at the Tales of Phantasia translation site and I can’t find the patch. Could anyone clue me in as where to find it?
nevermind, i found it
I just wanted to say that I find this blog incredibly interesting and illuminating. Having played some of the high-profile ROM translations like FFV, it’s a huge shock to realize what a truly difficult job this must be. I’m a programmer myself, and I can only imagine how hard it would be to reverse engineer something like this. This is something that might have been a thankless job if it weren’t for the window you’re providing on the process. So let me just say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, and THANK YOU for all the hard work put in by you and the rest of the team. My wife and I anxiously await the day the patch is final and released. You guys are amazing!!
Hey, anyone notice that the sound text-scrolling makes is higher pitched for kids and women, and lower pitched for men? It’s not obvious at first. But I realized it once when I was playing, and if you pay attention to it in the preview up there, you can tell.
Nice touch.
love.
Dunno what timezone everyone is in, but it’s got to be close enough now for most 🙂
Merry Christmas!
Merry christmas and blessings to the few, the proud, the ROM hackers!
Great update and have a merry christmas and have a very happy new year to everyone.
Great work thus far on the game! I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the translation so I can understand what’s going on rather than just running around aimlessly hoping I don’t screw up and go somewhere I’m not suppost to go. So, keep up the good work, and merry Christmas!
“Or perhaps transfer DP?”
Oh wow, that’s going to bother me. I always read that line as, “Or would you like to exchange DP?” >_>
Is it just me, or does anybody else see the soldier holding a machine gun in the “Flint earned (symbols…=soldier) experience points!” box? 😡
YEAH !
You guys really rock! Wherever you go, be it EB0 or EB1, I’m sure lot of people will be rooting for you!
Meanwhile, good luck on Mother 3! So sorry I cannot help you more than rooting for you! XD
Can’t wait for Mother3 to be finised translated!!!
We,the fans,will always suport you guyz!
Good Luck!!!
That Tales of Phantasia translation is looking superb so far. Glad we have him working on Mother 3 now! I hope things start picking up, because it feels like you could have this done in no time with all those great ROM hackers working on this!
Looks like mad scramble towards light at the end of the tunnel to me =)
Good job guys. Keep it up…I’ll be playing Mother 3 by March. =p
Glad the two teams merged and doing wonders. I started my 100 day saturn pic marathon in the old mother 3 translation site but since that is inactive, I have it on my DA site here. http://kingdork.deviantart.com/
drew these for the crazy guys that are doing all this, kudos!
Hi Guys,
Just want to say thank you soooo much for translating this game, I have played the orginal earthbound over and over again, it is my favorite RPG, I’m so happy that there is going to be a sequel availible in english! thank you soooo much!! really appreciate all the hard work!
Great work guys. I know nothing about hacking or computer language, but I can piece together what the problems are with the screenshots. Most of the time. I eagerly await the hack.
Oh, and I’m one of the 10,000. SHOOP DA WOOP!
Awesome!
Keep up the good work!