Finds (All Others)

[Flash1087]

im waitin for them to finish the translation patch at mother3.org

Yeah, how's that coming along? I hadn't heard anything in a while.

[manuel]

Why does it take them so long? I just wonder, because anime fansubbers have translations of a complete 23 minute episode of animes in 1 or 2 days.

[keiffer01]

Well, translating and programing the text in the game is no easy task. You can't really compare fan subs of anime movies to a game translation, because the game has lots more writing and all the writing needs to be programed to fit in the game. And not only that, but sometimes while programing text in cetain parts of the game glitches might appear that cause the game to be unplayable, so they need to fix these also. It's better of them to take more time on the project and have a near perfect translation than rather rush it all and make it ugly and bugy.

[manuel]

Hmm... that has me convinced.
Maybe I should look into this scene more. Sounds interesting, although I don't know ANYTHING about programming.

[UglyJoe]

You can check out romhacking.net (and their Getting Started page) if you want some info.

The basic hurdles while translating a game from Japanese to English are:
1) You only have as much room (that is, number of bytes on the cart/rom) to store the translated text as was used by the Japanese text.  As I'm sure you know, Japanese is a far more succinct language than English (although I'm pretty sure the Mother series uses only kana), so your translation ends up being too long.  There are solutions to this problem, such as rom expansion; numerous forms of text compression; and clever script editing, but it's nearly always a hurdle you have to overcome.

2) The text boxes are only a certain size, and may not be suited to English text.  This is another issue of size, though it's dealing with physical space on a screen rather than space on a chip.  Imagine how much you could say in Japanese versus English in a 10 row x 3 line text box.  This kind of thing can get *really* messy if you're dealing with menu systems (which, being an RPG, I'm sure Mother 3 has plenty of).  Again, solutions abound.  There's variable width font hacks (VWF hacks) to make the English text only take up as much room as needed (think of it as typing in Arial instead of Courier New).  And there's menu hacks for resizing the game's menus (this can be really tedious, depending on the game).

3) Game script format.  Some games are very internally organized and have the game's script all in one place in the rom.  Other games have the script strewn about all over the place.  The latter makes tracking down the complete script and inserting in the new script very difficult.  I'm pretty sure Mother 3 (the whole Mother series, actually) falls into that category.  There's also the issue of "control codes" in the script.  These are used to demarcate various actions in the script.  Stuff like new lines, pauses, bold text, spacing, etc.  Again, I'm pretty sure Mother 3's script is full of these as well.  And then there's script compression and, possibly, encryption.  I don't know if Mother 3 uses either of these, but these are really more of a annoyance to a talented rom hacker than a problem.

The reason for the hold up, I'm pretty sure, is my third point.  The game's code is simply messy (from a rom hacker's perspective).  A translation hack of Mother 3 will take time, talent, and persistence.  There's plenty of that floating around the Mother/Earthbound fan community, so, for the rest of us, it's just a game of patience.

(PS - never ask a rom hacker "when is the translation going to be complete".  They really hate that question and the answer is always "it'll be done when it's done" (or something far more vulgar  ).

[FamicomFreak]

You can check out romhacking.net (and their Getting Started page) if you want some info.

The basic hurdles while translating a game from Japanese to English are:
1) You only have as much room (that is, number of bytes on the cart/rom) to store the translated text as was used by the Japanese text.  As I'm sure you know, Japanese is a far more succinct language than English (although I'm pretty sure the Mother series uses only kana), so your translation ends up being too long.  There are solutions to this problem, such as rom expansion; numerous forms of text compression; and clever script editing, but it's nearly always a hurdle you have to overcome.

2) The text boxes are only a certain size, and may not be suited to English text.  This is another issue of size, though it's dealing with physical space on a screen rather than space on a chip.  Imagine how much you could say in Japanese versus English in a 10 row x 3 line text box.  This kind of thing can get *really* messy if you're dealing with menu systems (which, being an RPG, I'm sure Mother 3 has plenty of).  Again, solutions abound.  There's variable width font hacks (VWF hacks) to make the English text only take up as much room as needed (think of it as typing in Arial instead of Courier New).  And there's menu hacks for resizing the game's menus (this can be really tedious, depending on the game).

3) Game script format.  Some games are very internally organized and have the game's script all in one place in the rom.  Other games have the script strewn about all over the place.  The latter makes tracking down the complete script and inserting in the new script very difficult.  I'm pretty sure Mother 3 (the whole Mother series, actually) falls into that category.  There's also the issue of "control codes" in the script.  These are used to demarcate various actions in the script.  Stuff like new lines, pauses, bold text, spacing, etc.  Again, I'm pretty sure Mother 3's script is full of these as well.  And then there's script compression and, possibly, encryption.  I don't know if Mother 3 uses either of these, but these are really more of a annoyance to a talented rom hacker than a problem.

The reason for the hold up, I'm pretty sure, is my third point.  The game's code is simply messy (from a rom hacker's perspective).  A translation hack of Mother 3 will take time, talent, and persistence.  There's plenty of that floating around the Mother/Earthbound fan community, so, for the rest of us, it's just a game of patience.

(PS - never ask a rom hacker "when is the translation going to be complete".  They really hate that question and the answer is always "it'll be done when it's done" (or something far more vulgar  ).

I hope the mother 3 translation is not left out like many other translation projects. I always wanted Captain Tsubasa 2 in English although I heard of an Spanish patch which will work just as well.

[FamicomFreak]

I got Mortal Kombat 2 for the SNES -a true classic-

[Jollie]

Pocket Monsters Red

[keiffer01]

Pocket monsters green!

[Jollie]

got that too both CIB

[UglyJoe]

Woo.  Just played and beat Metal Storm.  Totally awesome game.  It gave me a password for "expert mode", so now I get to do it all over again.

[FamicomFreak]

Blah I was too lazy to take separate photos so here are my latest finds altogether

[FamicomFreak]

Made a trip to a thrift store and found some neat stuff

[UglyJoe]

Ooooh, Mad Maestro.  Have fun getting frustrated with those analog buttons.  You'll quickly see why games hardly ever make use of them 

[FamicomFreak]

Ooooh, Mad Maestro.  Have fun getting frustrated with those analog buttons.  You'll quickly see why games hardly ever make use of them 

HAHA I know! The concept is interesting though. You don't see many games like this.