First, Play Asia has MOTHER 3 on sale for $14.90 for this week only. Seriously, getting an import game for THAT cheap is almost insane. Especially when you consider the game was released just last year, and that it’s a brand new copy you’ll be getting. So if you got some spare change in the couch, go and buy it. You’ll be supporting the MOTHER series legally, you’ll have a genuine copy of your own (which might even quell any moral issues one might have with playing a fan translated version), and you’ll be helping out the EarthBound community a tiny, tiny bit if you use the link below:
Jeffman (and I assume Exophase?) worked through the night and got battle text variable width font working well 🙂
There are still difficult issues to work out with the battle text, mainly right now we can only have 44 characters per box (which isn’t enough) and I guess the level up text is crazy now. Very cool nonetheless!
The hacking side of things is still looking to be pretty tough, but possibly not for too much longer. More info in a bit.
First though is this. sblur 8-bit-ified the [ITEM] control code that’s used in the main script, meaning that item names now appear properly when you open gift boxes and in other situations where item names are displayed in the main script. That might not sound like much, but it definitely helps a lot when going around trying to test/play the game 😛 Here’s a before and after!
Uh, what?
Ah, much better!
Sometimes the littlest of things can have such a big impact.
Nothing too much to report at the moment. I went through a little more of the first draft script, it’s now standing between 92 and 93%. I’m pretty busy this weekend and early next week though, so that last bit will probably have to wait to be done at the end of the week. Most of the text left is Chapter 2 stuff and stuff at the very end of the game.
Hacking-wise, I can’t remember if I mentioned it earlier or not, but we’ve enlisted the help of a really awesome guy to help with stuff. For now he wishes to remain unnamed. But anyway, his hacking powers are formidable. Also, Dr. Fedora is busy with school and work and has decided to step away from the project, but I expect we’ll still see him around often. Stuff like this is hard to actually “quit” from 😛 At the very least, much of his hard work and suggestions will be used in the final translation.
Things are still coming along well. I’ve been a little distracted these past few days but will be coming up to the 90%s of the first draft soon. My sleep schedule’s suddenly gone even more berserk lately too. Need to get that in proper order. It’s already 5:30 in the morning, yikes.
Anyway, I usually strive for 2 updates or so a week. Nothing too particularly new to show this time, though some hacking breakthroughs have been made already, and it looks like some of the hardest stuff is in the process of being hacked up excellently.
A lot of people have asked about what this project’s goal is — for some reason some people think it’s to create a text file translation. It’s not, it’s going to be a patch you can apply to a Japanese MOTHER 3 ROM to turn everything into English. You can then play this on your emulator… or if you have the right equipment, you can even play it on a real system! That includes the original Game Boy Advance, the GBA SP, a Nintendo DS, a DS Light, a GBA Micro, and even the Game Boy Player accessory you can attach to a GameCube, which lets you play GBA games on your TV. Lots of options there!
To sort of demonstrate this, I made a short video of a very early version of our translation running on a GB Player. The main script routine still hasn’t been 8-bit-ified yet, so all the main text in this video is still in Japanese. But as before, lots of battle / menu / items / music player stuff has been hacked somewhat. Again, it’s all very early. But anyway, this video shows stuff working on a real system.
(NOTE: This video is stuff from the very beginning of the first chapter of the game. There are no real big story spoilers, but view at your own discretion of course.)
MOTHER 3 is the sequel to MOTHER 2 (also called EarthBound). It is a GBA RPG that was released in Japan in April 2006. Nintendo has made it clear that they do not intend to translate the game, so we, the fans, have begun our own translation.
