MOTHER 1+2 Test Patch #2

I am going to try to help you out, I first have to get the translation patch to see what that does, and I cannot read Japanese, but I will try it with and without the patch, so see what kinds of things happen. I’ll message you after with my results. Furthermore, I do not accually have a EB central account, but was thnking of making one anyway.

woah, you even undid Ninten’s shirt change? Cool! 😀

Oh, and I’ll help out.

People say that the Mother 1+2 music is inferior to the originals, but I actually kinda like what the GBA brings to the Mother 1 portion of the game. Listen to those awesome drums in that video.

Well what I did was basically copy entire graphic chunks from the original Mother 1 ROM rather than doing individual changes. But I still think I might’ve missed stuff. I can’t remember, but Ninten’s mom might not have changed, for example.

That chomp box would make an awesome enemy.. maybe as like a “trick” item box, like other RPG’s have. (kinda like how in Pokemon, I believe some of the PokeBalls containing items in a factory area were actually voltorbs)

I love you Mato, so glad you’re still working on this. I am happily downloading and patching to try things out.

Thanks a ton; I think some people might have been joking when they said they will miss the bread in the basement. If it introduces bugs, I personally don’t care about the bread at all.
If there aren’t any bugs, great job!

I don’t know if this will give you a basic idea of how challenging this game is with the patch but…..
http://i491.photobucket.com/albums/rr280/Blair3232_2008/dragonmother.png
Yeah that’s right 🙂

Oh, Mato, sorry for the slew of comments but just wanted to say Ninten’s mom IS uncencored.

…

ok, I started at about 3:20 P.M. It is now 4:07.
I have recruited Lloyd and am on my way to Duncan’s Factory. So far it’s been an absolute cakewalk, too easy for me personally, but I think it’d be perfect for most fans, seeing as how I thought the original wasn’t that hard (i’m so odd :P). Everything that was changed in EB0 was changed back except for the old man in Magicant, but PLEASE leave him be; it’s much more useful to get money than to heal poisoning and being a stone. I didn’t check the Forgotten man yet though. (sorry.) but I’m trusting you left him as he was in EB0, since it’s no fun to get sent back just for a wrong answer. Also, even though I’ve blasted through the game, I’m still a tad low on money, so grinding for some money may still be necessary (I usually buy the Goddess Band/Gold Ring and Magic Coin in Magicant as soon as I get there the first time), but battles are so easy that it shouldn’t be an issue. I have yet to see any gift boxes already open, but has there always been a Knife item in Sweet’s Factory? I don’t remember one, but there was one. It may just be my faulty memory though. I’ll keep playing and see if anything pops up. Really nice job, Mato.

Count me in! So far, so good – especially considering that I’ve always played the game normally. The Easy Ring is making me think I’ve been skipping stuff just because I’m going so fast 😛

I’m especially loving the uncensored graphics. It took a while to get used to Ninten’s old/new sprite though, but that’s probably just me…

I’ll try! I can’t read much Japanese, so I’ll just apply it to a ROM with the RPGOne patch and hope no patching glitches occur.

Cool, glad to hear people are getting far in the game without many problems. I think if there are any bugs, they’ll probably be minor and less noticeable, so be sure to check every room and every house you can

Blair32: how’d you do that? I suck at the game so I still have a hard time with the dragon even with two or three people.

Well, I accually used Defence up Beta, then Offence Up, and used a rope on the dragon. Then, attacked for the rest of the fight, and beat him in around 10 turns, i’d say. The rope lasted for a really long time, he only attacked me, twice I think. It was very epic 🙂

^You could also use PK Freeze Gamma to reduce its HP to 1, then a single smack outta do it.

It’s no 5:26 and I’m now at Youngtown. This is the farthest I’ve ever gotten in a single setting. I’m playing my Repo cart and it took me 4 days to get to where I’m at now. I probably won’t finish it tonight, (I know i don’t have to finish it, but… this could be a new record for me!) but I should get to at LEAST Valentine City/Ellay.
Ninten’s at level 22, Ana at level 13 and Lloyd 20. I’m about to fight the dragon… Let’s see how this goes.

Hey, I want to try out this patch but I’m not sure how to aply the patch to the Mother1+2 ROM, how do you go about doing that? thanks

@PSIWolf674 Don’t forget that I beat the dragon with ONLY Ninten, in the first visit to Magicant. That means no Lloyd, no Ana, and no Teddy.

I definitely want to help out with this. I may be new to this site, but I’m an EarthBounder for sure.

Mato, not being impatient here, but I’m looking forward to the patch, can you give an estimation as to when it will be done?

Linkzcap: it’s different for each emulator, but it basically usually works this way: http://www.romhacking.net/faq/?page=faq#question2

man: I don’t know, but I’d like to have it done within the next few months. It’s just a hobby project though, so I can’t say for sure.

Thank you Tomato for all your hard work, the new difficulty is perfect. But I’m curious, is the EarthBound Zero easy patch the same as this? I played the easy patch and still found it a little hard, actually.

I’ll do it! Why not?!? This should be fun!

Well, it works with my save at Mt. Itoi (or Holy Lolly Mtn.) so I’ll finish it tonight and restart tomorrow from the beginning.

Well, the play test is going okay, not running into any bugs and uncensored graphics in place, but Mato, I’ve got two questions:
1. Can’t you do something about when the hippies show up? Their positions feel fixed, as if they have no choice but to be there. It just gets annoying at times.
2. The ITEM55 is now one of my favorite goods in the game now, but I still ended up encountering Mr.Bats constantly in the cemetery. Is there any reason for this or am I thinking too much out of this?

I’ve gotten to… barely the beginning of the game. I’m not sure if pseudo-zombies doing only 1hp when you’re a level 6 is a normal thing. I’ve gotten to level 6 again on a non-patched rom and they did 6-8hp.

I really want to do this, but I can’t seem to find a ROM and I don’t think my cpu can handle it. Does anyone have advice for the cpu thing (I don’t think you can link to ROMs, but if Mato allows it, go ahead).

Just finished the game. The only issue I found was in the ending itself. Everything is unsencored during the ending scenes; Ninten’s shirt, Ninten’s Mom’s hair, the cross on the Snowman Church (I think, only got a glimpse of it.) and in the snowman church.. http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8919/crossq.png Back to its old tricks.

That’s all I found though, but you might not have gotten around to that stuff yet since that’s the ending, so it’s alright.
I’m going to go check all the giftbox locations now, since I didn’t earlier.

Oh, nevermind about the cross on the church, I viewed the ending again and you can’t even see it due to the GBA’s screen size. Whoops.

I tried it out, but i quickly gave up when i got to the first store and realized i had no idea what items were what. From what i’ve seen, things look nice, but i think i’ll let other people who are better at playing a game not in english handle the testing while i’ll just wait for the finished version.

BTW, it took me a while to realize the run button had been moved from B to R. I’m assuming that was from the Japanese version.

NekoKnight: No, this actually works differently than the EB0 Easy patch I made. This one reduces the # of random battles, and to compensate for that the amount of money and experience you get is more in this version too.

Mother Bound: I dunno, I think it’s just pure luck where they show up. If you’re using save states a lot, then the randomness will suddenly seem a lot less random too.

PK Mt. Fuji: I’m not sure, but it’s possible that the Easy Ring is causing that, it ups your defense by 1 point. I tried to put it at 0 but the game doesn’t like that, 1 is the minimum it seems.

PsiWolf674: I don’t understand, does that cross in the ending not need fixing after all? I don’t understand how you got a screenshot of it if it’s supposedly not there due to the GBA screen size.

Ninten’s Mom’s hair isn’t uncensored in the ending, but it appears that everything else is.

Also the XX stone that gives you the last melody is supposed to have a diamond (or whatever that thing is) appear on it when it is checked, but with this patch that doesn’t happen (it does have the diamond when the ROM is patched with the old easy ring patch, however).

Also, again, for those of you playing through the game, be sure to use the game’s built-in save function instead of emulator save states. Adding in an extra present means it requires an extra event flag to be saved, and I don’t know if that causes conflicts with other data in the save file or not.

-Mato
No no, not the cross IN the church, the cross OUTSIDE the church is the one that doesn’t appear. Sorry, should have worded that better.

^If i’m still not clear enough, the cross that doesn’t even appear on the screen in the ending is the cross on the roof of Ana’s house/Snowman church. The cross inside the church that is visible in that screenshot (which is the cross inside the church) is the one that reverted to its old color palette.

Easy Rings are for sissy’s.

the diamond doesn’t appear for me either… hmm…
Things that don’t appear uncensored to me:
Ninten’s Mom’s Hair
Cross on the Church(not sure, can’t tell even on my DSiXL!)
Cross in the Church (green with the extra square)
Also, one thing I noticed- in the ending, Ana thinks of Ninten and he has his new belly shirt again in his thought bubble… Is this fixable? It always bothered me…

Confirming the messed up cross inside Anna’s house/church, although I guess I’m being a bit redundant now that most other people have noticed it.

I’m planning to play through it again to make sure I checked absolutely everywhere in the game to see if anything’s weird. I’ve been snowed in the past three days, so I’ve had literally nothing else to do anyway 🙂

Well, I’ve finished the game as well. There are a few bugs in the game, but they’ve been covered. I think that the credits are most glitchy though, here are some pics:
http://i491.photobucket.com/albums/rr280/Blair3232_2008/creditsmother.png
Top Right Pic: The text in that shot is not for tha6t part in the credits, but the part with Ninten’s Dad.
Top Left: Is that what Ninten’s mom’s hair is supposed to look like? People have been mentioning it and I don’t know which is the uncensored and what is regular, so that might be fine.
Bottom right: Yeah, cross in the church, we’ve been over this.
Bottom Left: Ninten’s shirt.
Anyway though, pretty easy over all, Excpet for Giegue, but maybe that’s just me. Would reccomend for beginners, but serious RPGers and Mother fans should maybe stick to the original. The thing I like about this is the less encounter rates. But, then again, there is always the Repel ring. Still, the game’s playble and works good, yeah 🙂

It would make a great enemy, and a great Dragon Quest reference.

I’m starting to work on the naming screens, but I’ve run into the problem that there’s not enough text space for the “name this character” text for each character, which is why the text in the screens above is weirdly phrased. I’d like to let the text go all the way to the end of the screen, but then I don’t know where to put the name that’s being typed in.

Anybody have suggestions on how to rearrange the naming screen to look good and give extra room for that text? It’s especially important because translations into other languages will have a even harder time fitting words into that space.

I checked how EarthBound Zero’s naming screen looks, and it looks ugly. I really like how it’s arranged here, it just doesn’t have enough room for non-Japanese text 😐

What about this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v680/Morgil/Errors/test_58copy.png

Thank goodness this isn’t Mother 2 battle style.
The present stopped moving!
YOU WON!
The present dropped a present.
Inside the present is a present.
Inside the present is a present.
Inside the present is a present.

The Great Morgil: I’m liking the idea, I’m not sure about the extra-long box for the name though. Then again, if it’s short, it might look weird there. Man, I suck at layout design, whether it’s HTML or just ROM hacking 😯

I was going to suggest the same thing The Great Morgil did. I guess the size of the name box would depend on the maximum character limit for the name; I would personally prefer a shorter and possibly isolated-looking box than the long one in the example.

I agree, the old naming screen looks better than the EB0 version, so I hope you’re able to work something out.

I’m a graphic design major so it only took me like two seconds to figure that out, and like five minutes to photoshop the screenshot. I gotta go to work in a few minutes, but later tonight or tomorrow i could try another mock-up with a shorter name box.

The Great Morgil’s was probably better–and likely more possible–than what I’m about to suggest, but here goes.

Tomato, to me your main issue seems to be the fact that you haven’t fixed up the actual letters to input yet. If you eliminated the Japanese characters, for example, and only put in Roman letters, you’d instantly have a ton of more room for reorginization.

Here’s my suggestion.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/51793Moeman/mother12_m1naming.png

^It looks kinda weird with all that text for “name this character” being on several different lines. I think It’d look really nice if you took Morgil’s idea and shortened and centered the box where the name goes, like so:http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5417/newname.png But maybe even a tad smaller than that, I did a bit of a sloppy job.
Also, this is just a personal opinion, but I always preferred a cursor used on the naming screen rather than that white block, but that’d probably be more programming that what it’s worth.

^Whoops, bad link. I meant this one:
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5417/newname.png

Yeah, I should mention that it’s okay to reduce the amount of stuff in the letters box, I was going to put a lot of the European, etc. language letters in there but it’d be perfectly okay to take a whole lot of the Japanese characters out.

Both of the two latest images look good so far, much better than anything I could come up with, for sure 😛

By the way Mato, could you please update the M1+2 to-do-list?

@PsiWolf674 Yeah, there has always been a Knife in the factory, if I recall correctly. I too was confused about that the first time I saw it. Then again, the game also gives you the sword before you have Teddy in your party, so I guess logic is not this game’s logic (which pretty much makes it the more fun).

Also, I think I was able to defeat the Dragon by just super shielding everyone in my party and kept attacking away. Is Super Shield the name? I don’t remember…

^ I think you mean PowerShield.

Also, I have encountered a patching glitch. If you apply Mato’s patch to a M1+2 rom that has been patched with the RPGOne patch, the place names in the teleport window are screwed up. Here’s what I mean:
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1531/m12patchingglitch.png

Also, here’s another patching glitch. The names for the stations are screwed up to. In Snowman terminal, there’s an extra line of text. 😮 You can’t select it, but it’s just weird.

oops, wrong smilie. And I forgot the screenie. Here it is:
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/1531/m12patchingglitch.png

It also messes with one guy’s speech.
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/1531/m12patchingglitch.png

Mato, I’m just noting these so you will know that the patch messes with some text in the game.

Wow, I’ve posted a lot of comments today. But anyway Mato, I just wanted to inform you that I copied my save file over from where I’m at in my Let’s Play (On Mt. Itoi), and I backtracked to previous places (such as Podunk and Merrysville), and explored just about every single house, and I have not seen a graphical/text glitch yet (except for the ones mentioned above). Though I will continue to look out for them until I beat the game. Once I beat the game, I can really tell you if there are any glitches.

Zunar, did you patch over a translated Mother 1+2 ROM? Because if you did, some of those bugs may have come from that, since I played it and didn’t have some of the errors you mentioned. (Unless I overlooked them, I WAS kinda rushing to see how fast I could finish it).

I just checked and my Teleportation Menu and the Town Select menu at Snowman Station weren’t glitched. Just wanted to add that in.

Yeah, those glitches sound more like just a weird incompatibility with the two patches which isn’t of much consequence. It also sounds like some of the text in the original patch might not have been translated.

EDIT: I actually started to write a to-do list from scratch today by playing the game from the very start with all the random enemy encounters turned off. Only to the little factory right now though.

@PsiWolf674:
Yes, I patched over a translated ROM. Read my first comment today, I explain it there. And are you sure the ROM had both patches? And did you apply Mato’s patch first and then RPGOne?

@Mato:
Wait, let me get this straight. You turned random enemy encounters OFF? Meaning… you had no enemy encounters?

oops, I mean the comment when I first talking about the glitches, not the first today.

If you’re going to play with multiple patches, it’s important that my patch be applied last, or else bad things(TM) might happen.

Yeah, I turned off random encounters so I could fly through the game to see what non-battle stuff needs to be done. Had to increase the exp enemies give me to survive the required battles though, even then it’s still tough 😯

I already had a ROM with the RPGOne patch, so I just copied it and patched it with your patch, and those text glitches occured. And yep, I totally understand about the enemy encounters. That must’ve taken a little while to figure out how to do that.

I got to Halloween and think I might’ve finally noticed a glitch resulting from the gift box. The hotel in Halloween – there are stairs that lead upstairs, but they don’t seem to work for me, at least not after I beat the Starman. Is anyone else getting that to happen?

Same here, I couldn’t get up those stairs. I’m not sure if that happens in the original game, but I can check real quick. Lemme just lead up M1+2 and VBA…

*load, not lead.

Yep, it’s a glitch. You can go up those stairs in the original game.

Okay, I’ll take a look at it over the next few days. In the meantime keep checking all the rooms and boxes, there might be more instances like that.

Alright. Like I said, I haven’t found anything yet, but when I do, I’ll tell you.

I just found another patching glitch.
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1531/m12patchingglitch.png

It messes up the last part of the intro text. I didn’t notice this earlier because when I started, I loaded up a save file that was at the very beginning of the game.

It also messes up the next line, the “80 years have passed since then”. It’s just a small line in japanese, so I’m not going to bother to show it.

By the way, Mato, aren’t you going to change the Easy Ring’s name to “Easy Ring”, instead of it being “ITEM55”? You also need to add a description, since there’s no description for ITEM55.

Also, I think I may have found a gfx glitch.
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/5576/m12gfxglitch.png

Is that character supposed to have those little black dots?

Here’s another suggestion mock-up. It moves the chracter sprite image down but otherwise looks a lot like PsiWolf674’s.

http://imageupload.org/?di=15129697299512

^ Interesting. A bit weird-looking, but interesting.

Zunae: Yeah, that character’s supposed to have those little black dots; it’s how it was in the original Famicom version. ((S)he looks like a mix between pigpen and PepermintPatty from the Peanuts).

Kuwanger: That design would be good for allowing a little more text in the description area if needed. It does look a little off with the character being there though. Maybe it can be like this?:
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/200/2lines2.png
The idea here is to have TWO lines for the description.
…..I think 1 line may be enough though.

I think Kuwanger’s design could be good if it were rearanged a little.

Or maybe, make both the blanks where the letters go and the description in the same box, like so:

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/3334/namescrn.png

(Maybe seperating the description and name by a line?)

And just an idea, but I started messing around with the letter layout. I completed the Capital, Lowercase and Numbers sections. Under the Numbers and after that row would be european letters and anything else to kind of fill it up. Just an idea.
I have NO Idea how hard it’d be to move the “OK” and “Back” options, so I just placed them in the bottom left, though they’d probably look nicer elsewhere. (maybe had I scooted it a little more to the right it may not have looked so bad…)

I’ll play through this for yeah. I’ll comment here again if I find any bugs. 🙂

*ya not yeah. xD

Looks cool, I think I’ll try it out. I read the whole post and just to clarify, it doesn’t translate the game right?

Correct. It doesn’t translate the game. It only includes some of the features that will be in the final patch.

Well if it hasn’t already been said, I believe a lot of ending graphics need fixing. Very minor, but still there. Also, as stated above, the Hotel in Halloween stairs. I noticed that too and it bugged me. Oh, also, I remember reading somewhere that they made a special sprite for the rock in from of the cave at the end, and that was glitched when I got there.

Has anyone else encountered any other inaccessible room/stairs?

Also, I’m curious to know if the stairs in Halloween will work if you don’t open the Easy Ring box in Ninten’s room. I’ll have to check that out sometime.

I think putting the Easy Ring is fine. After all, this game is hard, no matter what.

I figured out a way to make the game easy to run through. Apply the Easy Ring patch to a M1+2 ROM, and then this patch. You’ll have two Easy Rings! You can equip one of them to Lloyd, and you’ll have 8x experience and 4x money! …I think.

I love how Mother ROMs produce the most entertaining glitches when hacked. I can’t wait to see the inevitable battle sprite of the Chomp Box!

Mato, just curious, will there be a beta patch of the translation? Or will there just be the full patch? And since it’s a GBA, do you want to use a GBA font or an NES font?

I don’t think there’ll be a public beta, just the full final one. I don’t know what you mean by GBA font or NES font.

Well, you know that each system’s font is a little different, right? Do you want to use a font from a GBA game or an NES game? If you want one from GBA, my recommendation is Megaman Battle Network 6 or TLoZ: The Minish Cap. Here’s some links to fonts:
MBN6:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/mmbn6/sheet/10773
TLoZ: MC:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/lozminish/sheet/6455

Well, GBA fonts and NES fonts are different, right? Well, you could use a font from a GBA game or an NES game. My suggestion for GBA is Megaman Battle Network 6.

I don’t really know what you mean, I think you’re misunderstanding how game fonts work. I’m stuck with a fixed-sized font (8×8) and can’t switch to a proportional/variable-width font without basically reprogramming most of the game.

Oh, ok. Sorry for the double post above, but the first didn’t appear at first, so I posted the next one, and then the first appeared.

“Well, GBA fonts and NES fonts are different, right?” No. He can use any font from any game, provided it’s the same size as the font in Mother (which is 8×8 pixels for each letter).

whoops. he beat me to it

One other thing, you can stop reporting glitches that arise from you using two different patches. Mato is not responsible for glitches that another patch causes.

Yeah, I should. I hope Mato finishes soon, I would love to play all the way through with his trans.! 😀

Any new progress, Mato?

I’ll make posts or mini-updates in the comments whenever I have progress to update about.

Alright. If you need some help, I’ll be glad to assist you! 🙂

Actually. the best thing people can do right now is try the test patch out and try to enter every building and every room to see if any other rooms have been affected.

The only place I haven’t checked is Mt. Itoi. So far, the only glitch I encountered was the staircase in Spookane/Halloween. Speaking of Halloween, are you going to use the original holiday names or the EB0 names?

The original names.

Original holiday names, huh? Ok.

Also, are you going to add a “Don’t Care” names option? And will Lloyd’s name be Loid or Lloyd?

Japanese M1+2 has default names for everyone except for Ninten, so I’ll be going with that. I’ll also be going with Lloyd since it’s the closest we have to an official name from Nintendo, that and Loid is really just a poor spelling choice that got perpetuated because of me back 10+ years ago.

About the Chomp Box, I actually made mock-up text for it if you try to open it:

*Ninten opened the present.
*Inside, there was…
*Teeth!
{ENTER BATTLE}

Pretty good, huh? Don’t have much to say about the patch itself, though.

Cool, I’m glad to see you’ve finally came to a decision on Town names, but have you made a decision on Giegue/Giygas/Gyiyg, yet? Personally, i prefer Gyiyg.

Right now I’m leaning toward Gyiyg since that was Itoi’s intended spelling. Whatever I do, if I’m crazy enough to do the M2 part sometime then I’ll take the Giygas/Gyiyg spelling I used from the M1 part too to keep it consistent.

@Mato: I say Gyiyg, since you’re already using the original holiday town names.

And hey, anybody else notice that Gyiyg is a palindrome?

Sorry for multiple comments, but I keep coming up with stuff. Also, sticking with Gyiyg means you won’t have to change the “Gyiyg Strikes Back!” screen in M2.

True. It means less work for Tomato, so that’s a good thing. Plus I prefer to stick to what the creator wanted where possible. The fanbase is already split between Gyiyg, Giegue, and Giygas, so regardless of what you choose, someone’s unhappy. Might as well make the creator happy, right? ^^

^ I agree totally, linkdude! Less work = less time = trans. finished sooner! 😀

Just finished it, I can confirm (for like the 5th time) the crosses along with Ninten’s mom & the diamond. The crosses on the gravestones don’t exactly look great but that’s how they were in the original. On top of that, the Easy Ring made the game somewhat enjoyable. As for the font, use the Commodore 64 font or a modified version of it, it’s much easier to read.

http://img573.imageshack.us/img573/1684/mountaingbug.png

Here’s a bug I haven’t seen mentioned before…

This translation isn’t really going with EBO’s stuff, is it?
The final boss, town names, and censorship were in EBO, but removed. I don’t know about the dungeon in Magicant though, and we seem to be keeping the names for the characters from EBO.

Sorry for double post!
In the above note, I meant removed from this translation’s script, not from the whole game.

Sorry if I’m late, but I finally finished my playthrough of the patch. I didn’t notice any glitches other then the ones reported. Again, sorry if this is late. 🙁