What the hey is this?

This is a small package for the MOTHER 3 Translation Tools, specifically made
to allow for editing the script in UTF-8 encoding.

What does that even mean?

Essentially, if you wanted to translate MOTHER 3 to a language using non-Latin characters (e.g. Greek, Russian, Georgian, etc.), originally, you'd have to find a way to convert your text to a format the tools supported, that is, Windows-1252, an archaic encoding scheme that only includes characters from Western European languages. But with these tools, this process is now simplified, and you can write using any language supported by Unicode!

Why is there a .py file?

It's a remake of the original textconv.exe program, but allowing for more versatility, as well as using UTF-8 encoding. If you're into tinkering, feel free to look at the code, and edit it to your liking!


My translation only uses Latin characters? How do I benefit from this?

Also included is mainscript_convert.exe, a version of the Mother Funland program, which instantly dumps the script to a binfile. You can have this run when executing i.bat, which is the only step you need to follow when wanting to patch and test your translation! Ain't that convenient? Just a heads-up, you'll still need to follow the whole guide below, to make sure nothing breaks.

Okay, I'm sold. How do I set this up?

For this, I'm going to assume you're starting from a fresh copy of the translation tools. If you're following these steps on an in-progress translation, ensure you've made a backup of your project, so you don't mess anything up during setup!

First things first, ensure every .txt file in your translation folder is encoded in UTF-8. If, for example, you make an edit, reopen the file, then see some characters replaced with question marks or anything similar, this is what you have to do:

- Open Notepad++. (Install it if you haven't yet. It's really useful!)
- Open your file with Notepad++.
- On the top bar, go to Encoding > Western European > Windows-1252.
- Go back to Encoding, and this time select "Convert to UTF-8".
- Save your file.


Afterwards, copy the contents of this zip file to your translation folder. Then, open i.bat in Notepad++, and do the following:

- Find this line:
@textconv

- And replace it with the following:
@python textconv
@mainscript_convert

And that's it! You're all set!

If you want to now test your translation, all you have to do is run i.bat. No more opening the text editor, loading the script, disabling encoding, then dumping to binfile. It's all done automagically now!

If you have any questions, you can find me on the PK Hack Discord server (https://discord.gg/qa2BW5bFKn) as @yoshimanix.