Holiday Progress
Merry Thursday!
Hope everyone’s had a decent holiday-ish time lately. With New Years just around the corner, I guess it’s still holiday time, huh? Anyway, progress has of course been slower these past few days, so there’s not much new stuff.
Since I’m trying to relax and get some rest this week, I thought I’d try to tackle one of the easier hacks still needed to be done — pulling up the sound player text three pixels. It sounds easy, but since the game was programmed by so many different teams, it was a gamble. It could either be REALLY hard or somewhat hard. It turned out to be the latter, luckily. I think the battle programmers must’ve programmed the sound player.
Hacking it took maybe only an hour, but here are pics of me trying to figure it out. As you can see, they tied the y coordinates for the song counter with the title text, so it took a little more work than simply changing one value. I had to sort of “untie” them, though I suppose that’s a fancier term than what it really was. OK ok enough blabbing, time for pics!
Original version 
The counter moved up too? 
Hmm, that didn’t work 
Neither did that
And here’s a pic of how it was before, and how it is after the hack finally works.
I bet a lot of people are going, “Lame. Why’s he wasting his time with this crap?” Like I mentioned before somewhere, the sound player’s a lot easier to hack since it’s so simple, and a lot of the hacks that work on this can be applied to more complicated parts of the main game. In fact, I can probably use the knowledge from here to get more of the text in battle lined up properly. So I’ll probably try that next 😛
As for the more difficult hacks, I’m not sure yet, but I believe Gemini’s been looking at some of Jeff’s latest VWF stuff.
Actually, speaking of other hacks, I thought it’d be good to look at this hacking to-do list from 2 and a half weeks ago and see what stuff we’ve done since then. Here’s what we can check off of that huge list:
- Figure out how to get more space for the main script. Running very low as it is.
After looking into it, nothing really needs to be done hacking-wise here. We’re running REALLY tight on space, but luckily the programmers were inefficient when organizing the game’s text, so we can remove a lot of duplicate, unused text to open up probably a good 50-100 KB later on. - Update the previewer tool so that text won’t overlap the cursor arrow thing on screen.
Probably took Jeffman 2 minutes to do this 😛 - Fix some stuff with menus with 3+ options. Currently broken at the moment.
Fixed. Though I gotta do some weird stuff to my master version of the script still. Should take 1 minute. - Find a way to move the menu cursor down a couple pixels to match the new text positioning.
Done. As seen in the last update. - Figure out how menu cursor positions work, then find a way to edit them easily so that menus don’t look stupid.
Done. As seen in the last update. - Reinsert sblur’s hacks for the intro text and the scrolly text stuff.
Done. This was what led me to post that video of the prologue, actually. Also, it turns out that one of harmony’s old hacks
fixed like 3 things at once here, so only one of sblur’s old hacks was needed. harmony = super hacker 😯 - Make the [CENTER] code work correctly.
Turns out that one of harmony’s old hacks did this automatically 😯 When I first saw that the [CENTER] codes were suddenly working, I think my face exploded. - See if we can allow longer names, just one or two more letters would be nice.
I’ve decided it’s probably okay not to worry about this, there’s still a trick we can do to make names look longer than they really are. It’s an ugly hack, but I’d probably be OK with it. - Pull up all the text by 3 or 4 pixels. Possibly a pain.
Have started on this, as seen in the last update. Pulling the non-sprite-text may be a tad more difficult, though. But once we do it, the menus will look so kick-ass. - Get the game to center menu titles correctly, both inside and outside menus.
Done. I did find one thing that needs to be repositioned, but I’ll wait for Jeffman to fix that, since that’s his specialty. - Write a difficult VWF — this will VWFify pretty much everything else in the game though, so this will magically make so much of the game look better instantly.
This was the VWF that Jeffman hacked in his recent update. But since text that uses this routine is displayed using sprites, there are inherent limitations, so a more experienced hacker will need to rework things. So this is maybe half-done I guess. - Figure out why item descriptions over 42 characters crash the game.
Because item descriptions use sprite text, and too many sprites = dead game. The hack listed above should fix this. - Hack the positioning of map names in the file loading/saving menus.
Done. Jeffman worked hard on this, as seen here. - Figure out how to relocate text blocks so that some of these blocks don’t have to be so tiny and chopped up. Other blocks are full of room, so it’d be nice to use that free space.
While this is kind of vague, we did do this for what we call “menus1”. I don’t think we’ll need to do this anymore, but we at least have experience doing this with MOTHER 3’s programming now. - Pull all the non-8×8 font battle text up 3 or 4 pixels.
Have started on it, as seen in the last update. But there are still cases of other battle text, like battle menus, that needs this. The work I did on the sound player text might make this easier now, though. - Possibly figure out why items that aren’t equipped are pushed all over to the left in battle menus.
Used my intuition. - Fix the above.
Done. - Fix it so numbers appear correctly. Shouldn’t be too hard, just gotta trace stuff.
Done. - Hack a 1-second sound clip found halfway in the game into English. Hopefully someone good with GBA hardware will be around when we get to this.
Half done, I’d guess. Found the format and general location of the clip in question, will mess with this stuff later at some point.
Whew. Lots of stuff done. Of course, that leaves mostly really hard stuff left to do, plus some of the fixes above have made me/us realize other stuff that still needs fixing, but for now let’s just say yay and then have some hot cocoa.
On an unrelated note, here’s a funny/neat pic I got an hour ago when I was looking through old savestates.
OK, that’s all for now. Keep on PSI Rockin’!
weeeeeee Awesome!
You guys are doing some awesome work! Keep it up.
w00t! MOTHERR 3!!!!
totaly great that so much has been done, maby some of the hard stuff left will turn out to be magically easy. well it is the holidays it could happen 🙂
anyway keep up the good work!
This is really great, it reminds me of Santas list, Im glad to see such work and detication. I wish all of you LUCK +12, and if you need a Wet Towel, my shops allways open!
Great work everyone, thanks for all the time and effort you’ve put into this. Happy Holidays!
Is Gemini from Italy, Mato?
Yeah, I believe so.
This is going to be great! Keep it up!
Hack Tomato, for everlasting peace!
For the people who want to keep track of how much work is left to do in this project I suggest you copy the hacking to do list in notepad and then erased the work that was done so far in the list and that should give everyone a realistic view of how much still needs to be done.
this has to do with the holidays!!!!! hacha!!!!
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1839737242
A sound clip halfway into the game? I can’t think of anything but BLANK. Can someone refresh my memory..?
It was already brought up a few updates back, but it’s played near the very end of Chapter 4.
SPOILER, HIGHLIGHT THE TEXT BELOW
It’s the clip played when Lucas and the band leader do the rock paper scissors thing
As always its good to hear about any progress. Everything seems to be coming together nicely, it just goes to show what effort and know-how can do.
And a Canadian and an Italian hacker.
Merry Christmas btw,
Thanks for the update.
“Figure out why item descriptions over 42 characters crash the game.”
But that’s totally obvious.
Haven’t you read your Douglas Adams? XD
Damn #@$@#$@#$@#ing Tower of Love and Peace. Tell it to stop giving you crap and let you finish hacking it, already 🙂
Actually, I suddenly wonder if you could name a character [CENTER] and screw up the game’s text formatting? Wouldn’t expect you to fix that, but it’s one of those totally random things that pique my curiosity 🙂
machine code dose not understand words so nope
or do they?
Yeah, the [CENTER] isn’t stored in the ROM like that, it’s actually just a control code, I think it’s stored as 09FFh if I recall correctly.
hey mato and m3 team, i hope you had some very pleasent holidays.
thanks for so much awesome!
what if you name a character 09FFh then?
Good work as usual mato
I heard Gemini finished up his psx project, any chance he will be joining you guys soon? He seems to know his stuff and could help maybe
@Grant:
Just in case that wasn’t sarcastic…09FFh would be the control as 1 character represented by 09FFh in the character table. the h meaning a hex number 🙂
Wow!
Gemini is Italian?
That means that there are other MOTHER Italian fans in the world!
YAY!
Anyway, thanks for all, merry Christmas, happy new year and good luck with the translation!
When I first saw that the [CENTER] codes were suddenly working, I think my face exploded.
QFTW!
Mato, you’re right, I’m looking into the “hard” Vwf issue. 😀 Hope it’s not too hard to fix.
@Lol&Xelchan: Yes, I’m Italian.
happy holidays. you guys are awesome.
Woo hoo! Go Mother 3 Hacking Team!
I’m kinda feeling sick so I don’t really know how to make this comment any more meaty so 😛
Dang you guys rule. I hope you guys got some awesome stuff this Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanza or whatever you celebrate.
Yay! I’m from Italy too. I know you well Gemini, and so do you 🙂
But I’m not using my real name 😛
Lol: Man… That’s SO creepy! XD
great to read your working Gemini I wish you the best of luck
nice, Mato’s got some more help on this 🙂
I also wish you great luck Gemini
Again, we’re all very thankful for the work this team is doing
keep up the good work, guys. 🙂
Yeah, I wondered if they might use an escape code, but Mato mentioned inefficient text, so it’s entirely possible they actually used [CENTER] in the code, but I guess not. Just as well not to allow your users to enter things like that, because if you could enter the centering code as part of your name, I’m certain it’d screw up tons of stuff 🙂
In the mean time, it’s nice to have the ToP translation to play while I wait for Mother 3. I like how the characters comment about how easy the enemies were when I beat them and it makes me glad that I know just enough Japanese to know what they’re saying in those short phrases 🙂
I can’t wait to play this on my Wii when its finished! I allready have been playing NES Earth Bound and SNES Earthbound on the Wii, and allthough I do have Mother 3 on the Wii itself Im waiting for the english version.
😯 How exactly are you going to play it on your Wii?
“Merry Thursday!”, eh?
That’s it, buddy. You’ve so done it. That line’s going in my huge text file of message-board-signature-worthy quotes. I hope you’re happy.
Anyway, pretty durn impressive. Like Brawl, this project just keeps getting more awesome by the update.
The translation process looks like it’s coming along extremely well, I’m looking forward to playing this game in English. 🙂
I figured I should go ahead and buy a copy of Mother 3, and I buy my stuff from play-asia anyhow.
You should probably get about $3.63 from the things I ordered, I hope you can use it well.
@ Tomato there are nes and snes homebrew emulators for the gamecube witch work on the Wii. I have mentioned this before
to run one you can ether install a modhchip or if you do not want to alter your console they can boot from a SD card useing a sdgekko gamecube adapter
VBA port
http://www.tehskeen.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5356
SNES9X-GX
http://www.tehskeen.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3918
how to run them from a SD card I would recamend spendding the $8 in the adapter rather than makeing a shitty one yourself
http://modyawii.psx-scene.com/index.php
fixed link
http://modyawii.psx-scene.com/index.php?url=pages/sdload.php&token=
Do you guys know what “Masked Boy” translates to from Japanese by Google?
“I like your noodles”
Go ahead, see for yourselves:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsoto.aikotoba.jp%2Fmother%2Fmb-03-0349.htm&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8
SD adapter for less $$
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&_trksid=m37&satitle=gamecube+sd&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=&sabfmts=1&saobfmts=insif&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=34%26fsoo%3D1
sence you can edit stuff it would be nice if you edited all that stuff into one post and eraced this one
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff you guys have done since posting the to-do-list. All things considered, you guys are actually going really fast.
@ Mother Wii
There isn’t any GBA emulator for (GameCube)Wii… how are you going to play it on the Wii? xD
as I just explained there is a VBA port for the gamecube witch runs on the Wii
OK something weird it seems the post with my links explaining how you would play mother3 on the Wii are not visable when using FireFox but display fine in Internet explorer
way too meny posts by me in a row but I now see it says
“Your comment is awaiting moderation”
Seriously, could you try to say everything in one post when possible 😯 I noticed you went post crazy a while back too 😛
yes I am more of the type to post my rough drafts and edit later I do not do well without edit buttons 🙁 sometime things like that happpen sorry feel free to edit it you would like
@Jackalope
HAHA! I like your noodles! That’s priceless.
I hate to keep posting but option B for booting GC homebrew on an unmodded wii. this and the outher say are the only ways I know of without performing hardware modifcations
http://modyawii.psx-scene.com/index.php?url=pages/sdml.php&token=
Tower of Peace and Love.
PEW PEW SEXYBEAM PSSSH BOOM!
Yeah, that made me laugh. : D
Nice going checking so much off that list! I’m not sure exactly how long it is anymore, and I wouldn’t be surprised it it’s not even an eighth, but this just shows that it’s not a totally impossible task like I was getting to think.
Merry three days after Christmas. I gotta get some more cocoa.
Hey, Mato, could you post a list of the rest of the things to do? Seeing the list in this update makes me believe that there are a little bit of things to do, but not that much. Even though they might be hard to fix XD
Anyhoo, Merry Thursday to ya!
I greatly look forward to this project finished! I’m obsessed with a Japenese game I can’t read, but I wish you luck. I wish I could help you but I don’t know how to hack. For now I just send you hard working programmers my gratitude, and may this finish quickly.
Have a wonderful Holiday
As a responce to above you do not need to mod your Wii to play NES, SNES, Gameboy, or any retro game. I haven’t opened my Wii’s case once and I got every single Nintendo RPG ever on it! Its really easy to do, think about it? Heck half of the sollution is all thanks to the Gamecube.
If you can’t figure out how to play the entire Mother series on your Wii email me at Opoona@live.ca
No offense, you guys, but it seems you’re having a lot of trouble with things that don’t seem that important. (IMO) Like, correct me if I’m wrong, but It’s pointless work to be trying to get the EB font to work with the space given it doesn’t matter to me as long as I can read it. I just want to be able to play it in English as soon as possible. Great job on all the work, and I’m glad that you looked into the music player, because that’s one of my favorite parts of the game. 😀
@yes man junior: Well it’s supposed to be a labor of love, so they would only wanna do it right, so the EB font would only be right. So when they get done, they get done.
thanks Tomato and company!
NICE WORK!
@ Yes Man Junior: I believe that Mato stated previously that they want this hack to look as professional as possible.
—
Right now, I’m kinda wondering where the hacking is at percentage-wise. Just to be able to gauge when to expect this to be finished. Or, something along those lines.
But, whatever the case, take your time to rest during the holidays. I’m sure all of us need time to relax.
I don’t think Mato and the team can stress enough that they don’t know when it will be done.
you can make a list of problems and give that as a gauge of how close to being done, but as everyone who has been following this hacking process that solution can spur up 3 more problems somewhere down the line. not to mention the difference in difficulty in certain problems. walking up a short hill is a bit more easy than climbing up a steep mountain.
YMJ: Almost *all* good ROM translation projects have these issues, it’s just that most projects aren’t this open to public scrutiny.
The menu patch is there if you’re sick of waiting, and people have really enjoyed playing the game with that + a good walkthrough.
I just finished crossing stuff off the list that Mato posted you want me to put up what’s left?
Aeros, I’m well aware of the fact that they have no idea when they’ll be done. I was more or less asking about an estimated percentage, like the one given at the anniversery update. But, that may even be too much to ask. Sorry about that.
I guess I should just let time work it’s magic.
@ butt & Mother Wii
Ah ok now, forgot about that port 🙂
God I love you guys
I just want to thank you for even updating us on the progress. I know a very little if no amount a hackers that would even give monthly updates, let alone weekly [if not more] with pictures and detailed information.
Thank you again for everything and I wish you all LUCK +12!
Fantastic job guys, thanks for all the hard work Mato!
I was just wondering if you can answer this question:
Do you know of any more Mother 3 spoilers that are going to be in Brawl? If so, can you reveal what form they will take – character, level, etc? I am a huge fan, thanks so much for this project.
Mato, are you aware there’s a leak (prestarmen work) floating around the net?
No, unless you’re referring to the menu patches. If there is an early version, I wouldn’t expect much from it, the old work was incredibly horribly translated.
It seems to be the mother3.org translation files before the split to the unifed team.
If you mean just the old data files, then yeah, I’ve known for months now. Like I mentioned before though, they were all absolutely horribly translated. To the point that I’d actually be EMBARRASSED to openly show off that work. Dr. Fedora had actually thrown out all that work and restarted from scratch shortly before the merge, that’s how bad it was 😯 I’d give examples, but some are spoilers.
Pretty much most of that stuff is correctly translated in our menu patches, too.
Qinopio: Nope, sorry. We only heard three things – Lucas, the Franklin Badge, and some stuff relating to the stage. I don’t think we’ll get any more info, we were pretty lucky to get just that tiny bit as it was.
Others: Not even *I* have an idea what percentage the hacking is at. Any answer I gave would be pulled out of the blue and mean nothing. Plus, like we’ve all seen, fixing one thing will break others, making any percentage I give right now meaningless as soon as an hour from now. In fact, just the other day I found a rare bug that freezes the game in battle. I don’t know what causes it, so as you can see, the pile of work left to do can go up or down without any sort of warning.
(I get the feeling that rare freeze is caused by the current battle VWF btw, but we gotta redo it completely anyway so I’m not too worried)
This is closer and closer to get done!
hope its done before i deploy
Mato and crew, you guys are awesome! Keep up the good work!
Happy Festivus You guys rock
Anyone, how do you say VFW? When articulating, the sound is formed all by the lips and only a stridency sound is hear. VFW doesn’t even have a noun! Is this because VFW a jaipuneis word? Maybe VFW an English acronym…and VFW stand for what?
Pining Tor: 1) Japanese.
2) VWF, not VFW. It means “Variable Width Font” and it is an English acronym.
thank you and happy new years moulinoski! watch out for pig people!
I’m so annoyed. I just stupidly ran right into a bunch of spoilers! No more browsing Japanese websites for me. Oh well. I still can’t wait to play this game. I don’t think I’ve ever been so eager for a translation project until this one. Hopefully there will be more face exploding and successful hacking soon. 😛 Good luck and thank you guys so much for deciding to translate this.
Happy New Years Everyone, from Canada
(well… we’ve still got like 25 mins…. but c’mon, you dont expect me to post on here just as the year begins do you?)
Happy New Years, M3 Hacking team!
dont forget you eat your black eyed peas
This is great! I received a copy of Mother 3 for Christmas. 8D
I’M BACK
I HAVE CHOCOLATE
Woot!
neat
Will the Mother 3 patch come with a chocolate add-on?
JEFFMAN IS BACK! QUICK! BRING HIM AND GEMINI TO THE SAME ROOM SO THEY CAN GET M3 HACKED FASTER! XD
Mato’s done enough already. He deserves a break. XD
(PS: Milk Chocolate? I heart the milk chocolate.)
BTW, I just noticed, Gemini isn’t in the “About” page yet. 😛
keep rockin’ baby
Hurray, Jeffman is back!
And sorry to the regular visitors here, I was planning to do an update on the 1st, but to be honest, not a whole lot’s gotten done, as I’ve been stricken with some sort of lame winter illness. I hope things will get jumping again soon here, though 🙂
Hey! I also have some winter illness! 😛
It stinks being sick. ;_;
Keep goin and no one will have to worry about SSBB spoiler!
Not that I can, I don’t have a wii yet…:(
YOU GUYS ROCK
Butt’s cure for what ales you. Take a PowerAde drink half of it then mix the rest with OJ. Do this a whole bunch of times and you’ll be good in a day or 2
Cold FX Mato… that thing can cure cancer, i swear… its kind of expensive though,
welcome back Jeffman 🙂 mmmmmmm. chocolate… did you bring back any ..drinks? 🙂
Keep up the great work crew. We appreciate it greatly!
Mato: No worries! Just get better soon. Besides, if Jeffman really feels like it he can always update like he did last time.
Also, keep up the good work everyone!
I love Mother 3! Can’t wait for you to finish it, I’ll gladly spend my time on that game. How can a girl write a strategy guide if she can’t understand it? I wish you guys luck, and hope you finish soon. =D
You PSI Hackers are amazing. Makes me want to learn how to hack. * Searches it up on Google.* Looks hard. 🙂
Mother has got to be the best game, ( or one of the best), how long would it take for Nintendo to translate it I wonder? With their massive company of people? A couple of months? Instead they’ll find this on the internet, take it, and then apply it to the game, jacking all of you guys hard work. Or maybe not, but some companies can be real scum.
I have a general question for eveyboady. I already have quite a few good flash carts but I was wondering what would the cheapest one witch would work on mother3? A flash cart would need to be needs to be at least 256 Mbit (32 Mega bytes but flash carts are measured in bits so 256 is what you are looking for)
The cheapest one I could find witch would work is $21.35 total price (remember to inculde shipping costs) witch is a 512Mbit EFA-Linker. Anyboady find any above 256Mbit for a lower price?
If you want a cart to just play mother 3 then an EFA-Linker may work. I haven’t used it. You need to think about more then just cost though. Some games use diffrent save types. By that I mean diffrent save file sizes. Does the flash cart support this or more particualry the save type of mother 3? The cart will need to support FLASH_V131 (512Kbit) save type. If not then you may not be able to save, or the game may not work. I know an X-Rom 512 Mbit would more then likly work as it does do auto save type patching (via Little writer) and it also supports games that need the real time clock (RTC) like pokemon. Not sure if mother 3 needs a real time clock but it’s nice to know if ya need it ya got it.
Also, I feel the same as Um Jammer Lammy, Nintendo would come in a take this work and say “We translated it” after it’s all done.
UJL and Eddward – I wouldn’t worry about Nintendo trying to plagiarize the translation. If they did, I people would notice pretty quickly, and that’s not the kind of thing Nintendo PR wants to deal with. Plus, I don’t think that company is “scum” anyway. 🙂
Great work, guys. Keep it up!
All I ask is that you assure me it will be done by 2012, December 13th so I can play it before the world ends.
Is that a safe assumption to make?
P.S.
After watching the video of the introduction, when you edit the script, can you please change “ram” to “tackle” like spookychee’s guide? Ram is a very unattractive word to use at that point I think. It makes the whole text seem… ugly.
RAM is cool
@ edward yes it dose fave the corrent save type but even it it did not you can patch it
here are the specks
these specs are for the 256 version but remain the same for the 256 & 512 versions.
Main features:
Small: Using mini USB connect to PC, Internal USB control chip, no need additional writer and not infract the Nintendo Multiboot patent. (The long USB line for you PC, another short one for you notebook)
Fast: Ultra fast writing speed. Erase and write full 128Mbit ROM needs 126 seconds. Write full 256Mbit ROM only needs 211 seconds.
Long time using: Using the newest power saving Flashrom, Saving 60% battery energy than other first generation flashcard. You can play your GBA/SP with EFA at least 9,30 hours.
Perfect compatibility: Support save type include FLASH 1M _V103 £¬ EEPROM_V124 £¬ FLASH512_V130 £¬ SRAM_V113.
Easy: Internal realtime clock, support all RTC titles. Hardware saver support and we are the first flashcard which hardware support 1Mbit Flash save type.
so it looks like its pretty much compatable with every gba rom (except motion / rumble).
anyway I am still curious about cheaper ones