Menus Improvements and De-Crashification
Kind of a small update this time around, no big news or anything. It’s nice to have things a bit nice and relaxed sometimes I think, though 8)
Shortly after the last update, I was like, “Here, I should just do those custom control codes now while I’m messing with this stuff and get it out of the way.” Within an hour or two Jeff and I had greatly improved and polished the menu text and menu hacks. Here are some random pictures of things as they are now.
(Yeah, I know there are little cosmetic things and alignment things that need tweaking still, will get to them some other time)
Lots of pics 😯 That’s only a small portion of all the menu stuff there is. The whole menu system is a real mess, and trying to find and test every obscure line of menu text is tough. But I went through and tested as much stuff as I could and fixed more bugs and weird things in the menu system than I can even remember now. The menu system’s coming along great now 🙂 I really dreaded working on menus a few weeks back because there were so many little bugs and issues everywhere, but thanks to xkas and coffee, most of them got fixed in an evening.
Been focusing on fixing the item/skill/etc. display glitch (quickly covered in this update a little while ago) It’s been hell trying to track down the problem, but I finally found out part of what happens now. It’s getting it NOT to happen that’ll be the hard part. But I think I gots me a plan. The whole menu system is really weirdly designed, so right now it looks like the best way around these insane limitations is to rewrite certain big chunks of the display code. Rather than use the menu programmer’s dumb buffer crap that’s pointless and only succeeds in causing limitations and memory overflows, I’m gonna try to manually print each letter on the screen as soon as the coordinates are determined, and then skip all the lame buffer crapola. It’s harder than it sounds, but the battle programmer wrote a nice function we may be able to hijack for this very purpose. Anyway blah blah blah, yeah 😛 It might turn out that a similar thing will be needed to fix the main script display problems too, when we get there. The main script display problem is like the final boss of this project’s hacking, can’t just walk up to it and try to take it on. Gotta level up and learn Meteo first.
Anyways, I don’t know how long this item/skill/etc. glitch fix will take though. It could wind up being a day’s worth of work, or maybe a week, or maybe more. As we get down to hacking these harder parts of the hardest stuff left, things might take longer or wind up taking crazy unexpected turns. I think my idea here should work though, and it should allow for as much text on screen as anyone will ever need. So close to finishing all this menu stuff. Can’t wait to say good riddance to it!
Keep up the excellent work guys!
I believe that Smash Brothers
Will bring more fans to us, and
I believe that Nintendo
Someday will stop being fools, and
I believe the light sometimes comes thru
Why shouldn’t I believe the same in you?
Wow, I can’t beleive I opened this webpage just 3 minutes after you posted it Mato.
Anyway, looks great, and yes I did read your whole post.
I consider the testing to be the most crucial part/boss battle of this translation.
Are you going to be opening a test/beta for us loyal translation fans?
Nice job. I hope that item glitch doesn’t take too long to fix.
thanks Clyde!
When you say “it’s harder than it sounds” it sounds petty hard in the first place.
I would just power level for a bit and learn PK Rockin’ Omega before tackling the harder stuff. Plenty of Multi Bottle Rockets will help too!
wow i cant think of how happy i am about all these post, i wonder how i will be when its done and the patch is out.
juan: mato has said that only people working on the project will test it, so no beta for you.
Teh Axesome
The menus are looking good :3
This is the most impressive fan translation I’ve ever seen!
“Throw away these gloves.”
I’ve never seen a fan translation that was so grammatically accurate. You guys are amazing.
Nice pictures, nice work! =)
I’m contemplating opening a “Mother 3 Fan Translators Fan Club” in Facebook. Who’s with me? 😀
In that screenshot where it says that his hands became sticky… he’s not using the dung, is he?? o_0
Oh, and the PK skills on the right side may be a bit too far left. They’re the only ones that appear right on the white line for some reason. My apologies if it’s supposed to be that way or you already noticed, but at least I ignored some other minor stuff that I know for certain you won’t worry about until later 🙂
At least the main script display problem won’t spam Big Bang, right? …Right?
Anyway, it’s insane how hard you and the others have worked on this thing. Every time I read an update, I can’t help but wonder at all the work you do. Seriously, I can’t imagine trying to learn all this hacking, while doing all this hacking, while doing a full-time job, while… Well, you get the idea.
Your willingness to hack an entire game for the pleasure of its fans is most considerate and I am unspeakably grateful for your work. But your efforts to polish off and iron out the little quirks and make this translation something intricate, meticulously perfected and designed with us, your patrons, in mind–that is nothing short of a blessing. Thank you so much for this.
That sounded a little cheesy. But I mean it sincerely.
Just think of the millions of dollars Nintendo could’ve made if they hired you guys to translate this for them. Keep up the good work! This translation will no doubt be cherished for years to come.
wy to go keeping the hope alive for us to lazy to translate ourselves. its great and i checkthe updates almost everyday.
although the main pulic probably won’t know that you did this, it truely shows that your doing this whole thing and keeping the site intact all for the thousands of fans that follow and read what you post. like waiting for christmas.
-Beams
Great job guys. This is moving wayyyy too fast, and that’s a good thing! Just wondering though, is that feather supposed to be covering up the text like that? It’s kinda been bugging me, but if it’s there, it’s there. 😀
Yeah, all the various cosmetic things where the feather is on top of text too far to the left, etc. will be addressed at some point. Right now it’s not a good idea to mess with that stuff since it’s non-sprite text and is the very thing I’m trying to get fixed to allow more text per screen.
You guys are my heroes. I get giddier with each new post.
Progress is looking great, you rock!
Very nice. Just one thing:
HP stands for hit points (or health points, whatever), which is obviously plural. Therefore, when healing a person completely, it should say “[GUY]’s HP _are_ maxed out”, just like in Earthbound.
Fantastic stuff guys! Keep up the good work!
And good luck! Hope things go your way with the rest of the hack.
Cheers!
“Gotta level up and learn Meteo first” lol… I’m assuming you’re refering to Final Fantasy IV here, but that’s exactly the opposite of “helpful” against that game’s final boss. He/It casts any magic you use on it back at you, so using Meteo basically means getting hit by Meteo, ouch… I did that once and got creamed faster than you can say “Imp”… You can manage at lower levels using Summons instead of Black Magic. Bahamut FTW!
So… uuuh… summon a super hacker, maybe?
Well of course. I mean when I play an RPG I do side quests but if I know I’m about to hit that final boss, suddenly I gotta get it killed and see the ending at least once and THEN I’ll round out my adventure completing every side quest I missed and opening every chest and so on.
I’m not sure what Gau’s rage list represents in this metaphor…
Tell me the secrets of the heart.
Tyrannosaur has Meteo. 😀
I loooooove FFVI.
Whoa, get some sleep. you don’t need to pst updates at one in the morning!
Otherhand: song didn’t really work (I’m really pick about this stuff) but you win for even atempting. 😛
“YOU SPOONY BARD!” – Tellah
I always thought he looked like an old crazy Robin Williams. Who I hate.
And the greatest deus ex machina in all of video gaming history…
“I just remembered all of my spells!” – Tellah
“I just remembered all of my spells!” – Tellah
That has more meaning when you realize that Tellah’s amnesia was actually a key gameplay element until the localizing team decided Americans were too stupid to have so many commands in the battle menu. In the original japanese version, Tellah has a “Recall” or “Remember” command, which allows him to randomly cast one of the more powerful even though he doesn’t have them in his Magic menu, but most of the time he just goes “??” and shrugs. This was all taken out of the US SNES version, as were many other commands for other characters (such as “Darkness” or “Dark Wave” for Cecil… you know, that cool thing Mirror Dark Knight Cecil uses when Paladin-n00b Cecil confronts his past at Mount Ordeal?)…
The various re-releases of Final Fantasy IV re-incorporated a certain number of cut-outs, but maintained some of the censorship. You’ll find Mount Ordeal is significantly harder to climb when none of Dark Knight Cecil’s attacks have any effect on the various kinds of Undead, Scarmiglione (Milon) included… You’re kinda glad the Twins have more commands to compensate. Regarding censorship, there are some well-known examples of this, such as Cecil’s room in Baron having only a single bed instead of the double-bed in the original Japanese version, that is until they actually get MARRIED.
I could go on about this since it is really a game I appreciate and I have played several times through each version except the latest DS remake, but this forum is about Mother 3, so let’s just stick to that.
On a related note, however, the fact that this is a fan translation pretty much guarantees nothing will be removed for fear of it being “too complicated/explicit for the lower-intellect/prude americans”.
I’ve had a couple of questions for a while, and this seems to be the most appropriate place to ask. On the to-do list, it mentions that you’re going to add a disclaimer of some sort. By this do you mean something similar to what tomato did with his Earthbound Zero hack? I personally thought it wasn’t the greatest idea to replace Itoi’s name as well as Nintendo’s.
Also on the to-do list it says that you are planning on changing the two Japanese audio clips from the game. Why would that be changed and not “Okay desu ka” on the naming screen? (although personally I’d like all the clips to stay the same)
Mother Translation,
A long and difficult path,
But a gift to all.
If you’re going to cast meteo, don’t pull a Tellah on us! The last thing I need you to be is the only dead character in FFIV.
Which reminds me of the entertaining LP video series I’m watching on youtube of FFIV 8) Where’d Meteo come from, Mato? :3
The “Chick Bandana”… is that supposed to be ‘chick’ as in a girl’s, or as in a newborn chicken, or is it supposed to be ‘chic’, as in stylish…?
Juan: No, that’s covered in the FAQ page.
A Fan: Actually he is 😛
Pizuz: Yeah, I know. I was waiting for someone to mention that actually 😛
Inzoum: You’re right, I forgot about that, oops. But even so, I used to use Meteo on him sometimes anyway just for fun.
Penguinguy: I agree, the EB0 patch’s intro was lame, and it’s one of the main things I wish I could go back and change. But that was made seven years ago. But this time the key word is “insert” a screen, not “replace” an existing screen with one of our own. And no, the “ok desuka” clip is not one of the clips to be changed. I included a link to the two original clips, did you not give them a listen?
SoreThumb: I was just a huge fan of FF2us way back in the day. It’s scary, because I think there are people at this site who weren’t even born then. I feel old and wrinkly.
gilligan156: As in a newborn chicken.
Hey Mato
I was just wondering, and this might be in line with the whole M3/EB2 argument, but will you be changing spell names from PK to PSI? It would be more in line with the localized versions of Mother 1 and 2, but it might cause hacking problems, etc. It wouldn’t be a game breaker or anything, but I’m just curious.
I see what you did there, Tomato. Very sneaky but I saw 😉
Just throwing it away?
“I was just a huge fan of FF2us way back in the day. It’s scary, because I think there are people at this site who weren’t even born then. I feel old and wrinkly.”
I was born before FF2us came out. Actually, I was born the year Zelda II came out. O_O I guess I shouldn’t feel as wrinkly and old as you, but when I see that my sister is already going to High School, I can’t help but feel the same way… (I was a bit too young to know what a good video game was, though. My SNES games consist of Mario and Disney… Only later did I get Zelda and Super Godzilla, which imo is a great game)
And I see the whole “a” “an” “the” things now (in the menu patch). :3 Just like in Earthbound!
Stevesesy: Actually, I dunno what you’re talking about.
Odd, I don’t remember the final boss returning Meteo… he did return Nuke…
Eventually, he will start casting Meteo (well, a weaksauce version of it) and it deals ~1000 damage, and it doesn’t even hit everyone in your party
_rtfg54: Wow, this has come up often recently for some reason. Weird how things come in waves like that. Anyway, maybe I should add this to the FAQ, but it’ll be a mixture of PK and PSI, just as the original games do it.
I’m sorry but I think you misunderstood, Tomato. I did listen to the sound clips although I was already aware of what you were talking about. What I mean is that It’s inconsistent to leave one part of Japanese audio and change two. Changing the audio to “TURN AROUND” and “ROCK PAPER SCISSORS” would be equally not fun as changing “Okay desu ka” to “Is that Okay?”. If that makes sense.
Do you see yourself playing through it once all the hacking is done, but prior to all the polishing?
Bah, young’uns! I was born before the NES came out. We first played on an Atari 2600 (Pitfall FTW!). I played the original Zelda (and later, Zelda 2). I wrote letters to the Nintendo Power game counselors, drew fan art on the letter (which sucked), gave out game advice to assorted rental store patrons, and even complained to Nintendo Power about inconsistencies in the preview screenshots of Earthbound (no Mato, it’s not just you that gets that treatment; they had Poo’s name different in different screenshots, and even showed the original octopus eraser!) … 🙂
Penguinguy: You’re saying it’s an inconsistency thing? Of course, changing “ok desu ka” would make the game inconsistent with EB. Those two clips are all that are gonna be changed, I guess if you don’t like it, you can uh do a voice over of your own each time you select a name or something 😛
Duffman: Yeah, to test the game thoroughly and to see if we missed hacking anything.
Is it going to be painful?
And how do you plan on playing it?
Flash cart or Emulator.
Lastly, will you show it off to friends at work?
And will they be impressed?
This Looks amazing. Hey Tomtato, do you think Nintendo might buy your hack from you? That would be pretty cool! Maybe there just waiting for you to get done, then buy it from you. Just a thought though
Throw away the White Collar!? I take that as a personal insult!
“Tyrannosaur has Meteo. 😀
I loooooove FFVI.”
And the Intangir, that invisible guy on the Triangle Island that gives you 10 Magic Points, he uses it when he dies!
/Mid-Nineties Squaregasm
RANDOM SQUARE QUOTE
Tellah: YOU SPOONY BARD! *Attacks Edward*
as opposed to…
RANDOM EARTHBOUND QUOTE
Mr. Saturn: Peanut Cheese Bar, Doing?
Jenova said 12 hours ago:
I’m contemplating opening a “Mother 3 Fan Translators Fan Club” in Facebook. Who’s with me?
I AM TOTALLY DOWN! maybe make a fan page!
A Fan: Thanks for reminding me of all the envelope art I sent to Nintendo Power. Man it was bad!
> A Fan: Thanks for reminding me of all the envelope art I sent to Nintendo Power. Man it was bad!
As bad as a power glove? Enough to make you a bad enough dude to rescue the president from ninjas? How bad?? 🙂
Speaking of memories, am I the only one who just HAD to play Crystalis on the “END DAY” of October 1, 1997? Because I know I fired it up that day, just because of that.
One of the best NES games ever 🙂
I like how the menu patch is working out, you guys have had that pain in the fanny for quite some time now, and I’m glad you just need to finish off alittle bit more before it’s finally done
…and seriously you don’t need Meteo in order to beat this thing, just PK Boob Wizards Omega and you’re pretty much set
I can’t stop saying that, whenever I’m playing with my friend in Brawl and I use Lucas’ or Ness’ final smash I just scream ” PK BOOB WIZARDS!!!”
It sounds like the programmers made this game in a way only the worthy can hack it… >_>
MATO AND JEFFMAN ARE WORTHY
Inzoum, no don’t use summons on Zeromus! He counters them with Nuke =o
For a LLG, you would need to use Kain’s Jump to avoid damage from Big Bang until he stops using it. Here, see this on Youtube:
watch?v=N-R9FEXiOCw
The fight starts around 6:00 and continues on to the other two vids.
But yeah, I remember playing Chrono Trigger in 1999, and Earthbound back in 199X. =p
Hey Mato, I think playing too much EB has made me psychic. I swear, i woke up this morning and I was like, “There’s a new update” I’d never been more sure of something in my life, except for maybe the fact that my name is *e***
OK, think I’ve hit upon something good that eventually results in an avalanche of different bugs which creates the item display glitch. Need to follow stuff backwards a bit, but it’s looking like I *won’t* need to do the really crazy workaround I was planning, in fact there’s a chance this bug would’ve still happened anyway. I’m hoping for a miracle, which would be a one-byte fix, but maybe I’m feeling too optimistic right now 😛
Mato: I am praying for ya! Best of luck!
So today, Drü tried PSI Patch . . .
. . . meaning I tried using Mato’s menu patch on my M3 game and GUESS WHAT!?! It worked!! You should all be very proud of me since I had no idea how any of this worked. Now I know I won’t have to get my friend to patch the official translation for me! I can just do it myself! I’m astonished how easy it turned out to be.
I hope that didn’t make me sound unintelligent.
You know Mato, one of the most amazing things is how you both do killer translation(well, hacking) work AND manage to read all of the comments. Do you have, like, any time for sleep?
When you guys think that the menus are completely done, you should have an update that shows the various adjustments you made to the menus, showing different pictures of the same menu for each stage (if possible). I think that the translation fans will really appreciate that and you get to show off how much you all did 🙂
NEW AGE RETRO HIPPIE DANCES FOR YOUR PLEASURE
Nice work and i readed the entire post 0_o.
I hope that fixing that glitch wont take that long.
I am sorry if I caused frustration. I guess I need to work on my wording. I was not meaning to say that I would like to have all sounds in english. I mean that if Okeska was left in Earthbound, why change these two sounds in MOTHER 3?
Because they have meaning and people will go “wtf was that just now”. They’re sound effects with meaning, not just weird throwaway things like “ok desuka”. Probably if there hadn’t been the precedent of “ok desuka” in EB and if there wasn’t an entry in the M3 sound player attributing the voice to Itoi, we’d probably be changing it too.
Alright, I see the problem now. The easy way to fix it would be to go along with the original code but somehow provide twice as much memory as the original routine needs. It needs 17 KB to not glitch up. Finding a chunk of RAM that big that’s unused isn’t easy :X Or I could try to write a tricky hack to make it use the original 8.5 KB and then jump to custom 8.5 KB after that.
This item/skill/etc. name text stuff is so crazy. I think I’ve said it enough now. But every step of the way it’s like “why did you do that???” I think even with the source code this stuff would’ve been a nightmare.
On the topic of returning trends from EarthBound, how much is going to be retained? I understand things like “X’s HP is maxed out”, but I think to put things that are a little less noticed like “Oh, Baby! Offense went up by 6” would be awesome.
Those things were in MOTHER 2, so they were in EarthBound. But they weren’t in MOTHER 3, so I’m not planning to add them to this project, which is now codenamed Boob Wizards II.
In other news, we might need need more RAM after all. If I can find just one or two things more, this could all be solved perfectly.
is it supposed to be lighter’s lumber or just lighter lumber? that would make more sense
*gets out a bloodhound to start searching for more RAM.
Good luck Mato!
Aw yeah I’m’a’likin’ this!
What exactly is a 123456789?
lumberjack: Lighter is a character’s name.
It’s actually supposed to be Lighter’s lumber. Yes, that’s someone’s name. It’s that way in the original. IIRC, someone said there were people named after each part of a gun…
Now for Mato to use PK Hackin’ Omega and get that critical 1-byte hack that solves everything 🙂
You guys are awesome. Really. Good luck!!
To lumberjack: IIRC, Lighter is a character’s name.
Beaten twice.
On other things, I’d join the Facebook thing.
*sitting on the edge of my seat.*
Can Mato get the RAM? How will he pull it off?
*tries to realize that coming back tommorow morning would be easier for me, but fails*
Hooray! Hope it all works out.
Some guys ran into the ROM.
It was the Runaway Five!
Lucky ducked behind the code.
“I just added some more RAM, and it worked. What an easy hack!”
Actually, I might not need RAM, I might be able to pull this off with just a few single-byte changes. Basically the game divides the # of total letters on the screen by four, then does work on each batch. There’s only enough RAM for 40-42 letters at a time, which is why 160 letters is the max, and if we go over that, that garbage shows up. My idea is going to be to make it divide the total # of letters by 8 or 16 and then have it do things in smaller chunks, It won’t allow for unlimited letters, but it’ll be more than we’ll ever need. We need 336 letters max at the moment, if we do the divide-by-16 route, that’ll allow us to do 640 letters.
The only problem is it does some weird stuff so it’s not a simple loop and it does weird things with fractions and remainders and blah blah. But we’re very very close to finishing this item display stuff now.
Not gonna have much time (if any) tonight to work on it though. Gonna spend some rancho relaxo time with the ladyfriend.
ancientdragon: It’s what I named my favorite food as a test. It used to be that 9-letter fav food names didn’t work right in menus for some reason, fixed all those bugs though.
lol thats funny mrpopo
Mato, WHY do you say, ” This’ll probably take a week or more, etc, etc” if you always end up done within 3-5 days? An exception may be the sprite text. Don’t you think you underestimate yourself a little bit? Also, a found a new way to keep myself optimistic about this. To me, whenever I think about a month’s time, it seems a rather lot, but when I think of it week by week, it seems shorter! Don’t know why, weeks seem to pass REAL fast for me, possibly cuz school year’s ending and I usually have some huge-ass project coming up and I always leave it for the last minute so my time off seems to go by faster than it should.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, and keep it up!
Arashi, Mato tends to overestimate the time required for a hack because he is still realizing his true power. =P
Mato, why is it dividing the letters on screen into smaller chunks? To save RAM?
Well, that, plus nobody will be disappointed if he overshoots it.
It’s like Scotty in Star Trek; he always overestimated on his repair estimates so he’d seem like a miracle worker =)
Anyway, go Mato! I hope you’re able to clobber this rotten boss of a piece of game code…
(and yes, first time poster, and I check this thing every once in a while)
@ MasterInsan0: I’m not Mato, but it’s because of the sprite text welding, which exists to save sprite space.
….
God damn this game’s code continues to amaze me.
Good luck with getting this next thing to work Mato.
If Mato said it would take 4 days, and it took seven, some people (whom shall not be named) might bite his head off.
If on the other hand the Great Tomato says it’ll take seven days, and it only takes five, well, then we’re all just full of smiles.
Imagine Mato’s brain as a series of tubes…
Like LordNecros said…
Big, massive tubes filled with genius fluid.
You’ve worked hard, Mato. Take some time and rest that huge brain on your wee pillow.
Mato I hope you’re getting mad play for this
ArashiSai: Showers are sources of inspiration sometimes. And just like Starmen.Net’s slogan says, “Don’t underestimate us.” It’s saying to *overestimate* instead 😛
MasterInsan0: Yes, there’s only enough RAM space for about 40 or so letters to be drawn before being drawing to the screen. So it looks like the game tries to partition the text into four different groups and works on them one group at a time. Fixing this to do 8 or 16 smaller groups should be easy in theory, but this stupid code is stupid, so it’s not just some simple loop that I can change from 4 to 8 or 16. It’s some other weird crap possibly tied in with screen fading in/out and possibly some sprite-text set up stuff too. Never get a break with this code :/
It’s obvious that he’s pulling a Scotty.
Though I’m not sure he’s using a factor of 4…
Man, so close. I wrote all the code necessary to fix this, I just need to make it loop 16 times instead of four. But it’s not a normal loop by any means, plus the way it does its counting would technically only allow up to 7 loops. And each loop, it goes through different paths and each path sets the counter # for the next path to be taken. It’s really weird and dumb ARGH. Why not just do a simple for-loop lame programmer 🙁 🙁
I’ll have my drawing up tomorrow. Sorry, four guys that look at them!
Hey Mato, Buzz-Buzz believes in you. I talked to him once. He’s a very creepy man. 🙁
I leave and not post for a while and some random FF character clobers me? Oh well. I like the message that says, “that’s not something you would want to eat” What if I really wanted to eat it. Technically you can eat just about anything. The only catch is you might die afterwards but you ate it! Messing about aside, I am so glad to see that actual english is being used for the translation. It’s nice to see proper english being used instead of what I hear all day.
It feels closer by the day!
Soon, I won’t have to look at some text page while playing, all that sexy goodness will be right in the game!
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like everytime someone on the team like Mato, Jeff, or Reid decides to dedicate themselves to something, they manage to kind of surprise themselves and get something significant done within a few hours.
I am -not- saying this in anyway to just try and move things along, I mean it as a compliment. I have no doubt that you guys can get through all the things you have left to do – you’ve overcome so much and things seem to be shaping up nicely. (I’m starting to sound like that coffee scene in Earthbound)
With that said, carry on!
*does another cheerleader high-kick for the team*
Inspirational showers, huh? That’s it! You get in that bath, right now, Mato
Just don’t use that one shower…”A shower so strong it actually hurts.”:)
You could also correlate the discrepancies in Mato’s timeframe estimates with the number of showers expected, versus the actual yield. By taking more, or fewer, showers Mato inadvertently affects the amount of time needed to finish his project.
mato: it is possible, though unlikely, that the original code *was* a simple for loop, and that the compiler decided to get all fancy and do the 7-loop thing.
No, there’s no question this wasn’t a for loop originally. It’s an ugly death loop. This and everything else is part of a really big outside loop that preps everything before switching screens. The counter that deals with what I want gets reset every four loops or so, and only sometimes does one of those mini-loops have everything i want. It’s weird. Also, the mini-loop counter is in the middle of a variable that’s used mainly as a bitmask for other stuff, so technically the highest the counter can go is 7, but we need 16. Also, there are big scary if statements for 1-4. Ugly ugly.
Anyway, I had an idea just as I got into bed last night. It should be only a few lines of code, and if it works, the item stuff should instantly work. But I need coffee first.
Mato’s coding was
absorbed by the death loop
Just kidding. Reading over your mini-update comments, this menu programmer guy should be shot. Multiple times. But, I’m glad that you might be able to get past that. 🙂
*gets an IV of coffee ready for Mato 🙂
Alright, tried out my idea. Good news and bad news. Good news is that I’ve increased the # of possible letters per screen from 160 to 640. Here’s a pic with 252 letter on the screen. Normally, the game would probably barf itself inside out if we tried to put that much text on screen.
Bad news is that right now, the redrawing is pretty slow, you can actually see it redraw, which is pretty strange looking. Also, if you happen to leave a menu or close a window during re-draw, there’ll still be a piece of the current tile still displayed on-screen. It’s weird, but maybe not too noticeable, probably not noticeable at all when text is black and not blue (it’s only blue here for testing purposes).
Worst though is that it looks like the game uses only one byte to store the total # of letters, so 256 is the current max, go any higher and the # starts back at 0 and things get really weird. I’ll try changing that. But the speed thing really worries me.
I’ve increased the # of possible letters per screen from 160 to 640
By the way, I’ve been curious about this for a while. Is that process as “simple” as allocating more memory for letters/letter sprites? Or do you have to rework the whole system just to do that?
so 256 is the current max, go any higher and the # starts back at 0
If you’re referring to hexadecimal, I thought that was 255?
Whoo Level 255 + Rare Candy = Level 0
Hey Mato,
Probably a bit off topic, but I really enjoyed your Mother 2/Earthbound comparison site. Hopefully, you will have the opportunity to update it sometime in the future. I know you are busy with this hacking, but I just wanted you to know that your multiple efforts are appreciated.
Old West: 0-255 is 256 numbers. Increasing the # of letters in this case involved insanity, had nothing to do with RAM. Just changed the # of loops the code does and the # of letters it deals with each time.
——–
Anyway, to maybe combat the slowness problem, rather than divide the # of letters into 16 parts, I’m gonna divide by 40, the maximum # of letters each part can have. It should speed things up, though if there are 336 letters on screen it might still be a little slow/weird. The only way to have 336 letters on screen at once would be to have your inventory full of 21-letter items (the bag of fries) though. In many more real-world cases, the text might show up/change with even less lag than the original game.
Man, if I knew hacking this game would be so insane, I’d probably have not started on this project at all.
wooooo mato!!!
you are bringing this wonderful game to thousands, and we appreciate the effort!
mato we truly appreciate everything you do so please dont stop think about the people who played as lucas in ssbb and want to find the game he’s in. if you had never started this to tell the truth i would wonder about mother 3 and would have just said who cares its not gonna be in english anyway and now i love it and want to play it in english more than i wanted to play ssbb before it came out. so thanks for everything you do mato and jeff. just remember we are all behind you and we really appreciate you.
Anybody want some fries? 😀 😀
Awesome keep it up! We are all rooting for you.
Hmm, that pic makes me wonder. Why do the Fry Guys want to eat French Fries? Wouldn’t that be like cannibalism or something? And WTF is Grimace. This random thought courtesy of freedom fries.
does that mean you fixed the speed problem?
Mr. Mato, the combined effort of you, Jeff, and the rest of your summoning party has been excellent so far; it seems in sum that the harder this thing gets, the harder you (especially you and now Jeff) work at it, and the harder you work, the harder it gets. I hate to say some kind of pressure-mounting-thing like “we’re counting on you” but as you well know, we’ve counted on the N for years to much sad dismay concerning this one, cherished, sole little series. At any rate, know and remember that your efforts will grant you in the end magnificent satisfaction at your own final fruit, and will grant many, many others great satisfaction in being able to enjoy the sequel to the extrajapanese classic and consequential end of this trilogy (legally — BUY THE GAME, PEOPLES!), plus added satisfaction to yourselves in seeing the great number of people (consumers and the media, let’s face it) enjoying the fruits of your labors — and even more importantly, really, Itoi’s labors. Thank you guys. I do hope my purchased Mother 3 copy gives me good use before I die. heheheh
otherhand
Nice song! Ha ha! Weird how I like playing as Lucas (or Claus) in Brawl more than Ness — mainly because of just the way the characters control differently. (But if I do use Ness, his black-shirt “palette” is my utter fave!)
Oh, Mato? I hope this isn’t seen as nitpicking. This is more like a “food for thought” to throw on the back burner. When you guys refer to the game and the series, you keep the title in all-caps, but Nintendo’s American (rest of world?) translations make it normal-case, like in Iwata Asks and ingame for SSBB. The title graphic is obviously all-caps, but if/when the title is refered to in plain ol’ text, do ya figure it’d be better written as just “Mother”? (I used to spell it “MOTHER” until I noticed Nintendo’s “Mother” everywhere.) No hurry.
The speed problem and the 256 letters problem. It all works now, even the scrolling menus. There’s just one little thing I need to check and then we can call this item hack done.
I made a thing:
http://i30.tinypic.com/deo4zl.png
Mato I’m having your child! I’ve decided on a name:
Prefix- PK.
Given- Boob
Surname- Wizards
Got any middle name ideas??
Jeez Mato you must be at least like a level 60 ROM hacker by now
You guys are awesome. I am sorry the insane programming is causing such frustration. Good luck and thank you once again for all you are doing for the fans!
Phew… I just have to say; all of this hacking seems like a very big task. I know nothing of coding Mato, but I have to compliment you for dealing with all of this. Without dedicated people like you, we wouldn’t have any of the Japan-only games translated. Or maybe we would, but have them done badly. Either way, it doesn’t seem to nearly stack up to the work and attention that this game is requiring. So… Congrats, good sir.
Just need to figure out why the placement there got changed and then we can probably call this hack complete FINALLY. This bug’s been around for about a week. It shouldn’t be hard to fix, it seems to be related to my address-swapping hack I explained last update or so. I’ll be doing real life stuff for most of this evening though.
Wow. Go take a break and check out GTA4 or something Mato.
Or…I guess wait for Live a Live’s translation V2.0 to come out or something.
Either way, damn man you work fast.
lol Mitch, that is one of your best ones yet
Out of the 4 people who look at Mitch’s pictures, I am truly the 3rd strongest. I seriously lulz’d at that picture.
I highly doubt Mato enjoys hacking this game, let alone dating it
Couldn’t you just call them big city fries?
That would make so you wouldn’t need as many letters.
No, cuz in singular it’d say ” Lucas has a big city fries”
You seriously figured it out this quick?
Mato, you’re now verging onto entering the “incredible” realm of hacking skills. I mean, the way that the menu programmer just barfed all over the code and called it a day, you managed to not only reverse engineer it, but change it so that it allowed a ton more characters on-screen, and THEN somehow managed to change it so that it wasn’t slow despite the tiny RAM that GBA carts have. All in less than a month (it appears).
The accomplishments that you keep on doing, and the rate at which you are doing them is just unbelievable. With the efforts you’ve been making, you probably could’ve recoded the entire menu system and more from scratch.
Actually, I also got it to load more text faster than the original too 😛 But I wish I could’ve made this fix via source code, I’d feel better about it. Oh well.
Will look at the last glitch there now, it seems to be a straightforward glitch. Can’t wait to finish this and then menu stuff will be pretty much done.
Alright, got it 😀 It was a silly little thing, the programmer apparently didn’t like his own grid system (heh) so he had implemented a special bit in a variable to tell the game to do a half-grid-tile for certain occasions, possibly only for this one menu. Seems like it was an ugly fix on his part. Anyway, got it, and all is well it looks like. Gonna do some more testing and then toss up a real update sometime tonight.
Yay menu stuff is basically done!! The wicked witch is dead!
Holy crap, Mato. That’s awesome!
I can’t wait to see that line through the item in the to-do list.
The light! I can feel its warmth. :0
what’d I tell you all? He underestimate himself! He’s done already!
Drü: Obviously, the middle name should be Edward, which would make the entire name PK Boob E. Wizards. =P
Yay for the (near) completion of the menu stuff! If you hadn’t fixed it so fast, I was gonna say you should post a video of the text slowly printing on the screen. I like weird glitches like that. (Sigh), guess I’ll just have to wait for the glitch-free game.
Amazing Mato! The pace of this hacking project is staggering! You are awesome and deserve cupcakes!
Does this speed fix for the redraw also affect the naming screen?
Thanks and keep up the hard work.
Main script display problem used funny programming.
It didn’t phase Mato!
Mato used PK Hack’n.
Main script display started to cooperate!
What you said about that “loop” reminds me of thedailywtf.com … I think they call it the for/case paradigm, i.e.
for (int i=0;i 5 && i < 12) { /* etc. */ }
}
But yeah, glad you’ve figured it out. This guy obviously wrote some very wrong things 🙁
Ahh, interesting. The board must’ve known how ugly that was and ate the code. It’s probably for the best… 🙂