Welcome in 2012 with a good ol’ mailbag post.

For those unfamiliar, the mailbag is where we take questions you all have asked and answer them here for all to see. Group learning! You can ask your own questions through the Contact Us page.

Hello, I am very interested in how this is coming along and must ask how much of it overall have you completed percentage-wise? Any general release date? Thanks, and keep up the good work.

We generally don’t answer these types of questions since the answers can be found on the Questions and Answers page. But I will answer it here nonetheless. Coming up with a completion percentage is a difficult thing. We’d have to get really involved to give you an accurate one, and that’s something that we don’t think is necessary. If we give out an incorrect estimate, we run the risk of giving a number that represents less work that we’ve done, or represents something too high which people will take as meaning we’ll finish sooner. For this reason we are not going to give a completion percentage estimate.

As for a release date, we do not have one set, or an estimate of one. We want this game to be a polished, well constructed piece of work, so it will be done when it is done. That’s not to say we’ll be working on it indefinitely though. We’d like to finish the game just as much as you’d like to play it. We have plans for things after Mother 4 is done, so some of us are getting a little antsy.

In your post of ‘Special Features of Mother 4′ you talked about hotels and how they affect the towns. As I read this I immediately was reminded of private actions from the Star Ocean series. Now I wonder, is it at all similar to that system? Do a certain group of characters trigger different events and outcomes? And does it affect their endings or relationships in the long run? If so then I must congratulate you. If not then no trashcan burger topped with fuzzy pickles for you. So either way, win-win, ‘ey?

(For those who missed it, this message is referring to this post from 2009.) I’m not familiar with the Star Ocean series, but what you’ve described is sort of similar to what we’re doing. It’s nothing as drastic as multiple endings, but it does change little things in the long run. That’s all I’ll say.

Is there a specific page, Youtube channel etc. where I can see screenshots and watch videos?

Indeed there are! Over on the right bar you’ll find a button that takes you to our screenshots page. There you’ll find all the screenshots we’ve posted here. On the bottom of the right bar is a YouTube button. That’ll take you to our YouTube channel where you can watch (or listen) to the videos we’ve posted. Take a look!

Hey you guys are great! You deserve a cookie!(Mother 4 development staff got a cookie!) Ok, my question is will there be any hidden bosses in the game harder then the final boss? I ask this because I was playing SMRPG and battling Culex and he is tougher then the final boss.

Thanks for the cookies~ Yes we’ll have some hidden boss battles that could be harder than the final boss. We’ve come up with some hidden bonuses we think you’ll all enjoy.

Is the game windowed or fullscreen?

The game will have both windowed and fullscreen options. You’ll be able to choose what scale factor the game will be displayed in as well. So you can magnify the game by 2x, 3x, etc. all pixel-perfect; no blurriness here.

Will the game tell us unknown secrets of the series? Like, how did Porky escape and went to the past(Mother 3). I remember in the ending of Mother 3 that Lucas’ village burned down so he went to Onett. But why is Lucas important to the series? What does porky want with Lucas? Why didn’t Porky go to the time period where Ninten was? There were a lot of things Itoi didn’t tell us.

I don’t think Lucas went to Onett at the end of Mother 3, but it’s very vague as to where everyone went so who knows! One of the great things about the series (I think anyway) is that a lot of the dots are left to be connected by the player and the fans. I think if these questions were answered, it would take a lot away from the charm of the game. We’ve approached Mother 4 with that in mind. So perhaps the game will “answer” some questions, but it will also make you ask a few more. We certainly hope it’ll get your brain stirring.

I tried to see if this was answered yet or not and couldn’t find it. Are you guys taking donations and would that help speed things along? For equipment/materials, motivation, or otherwise? I’d really like to play this game and see it reach “legit” status as soon as possible.

We are not taking donations for much of the same reason the Mother 3 Translation team did not take donations. The best thing you can do is continue to follow us and comment on things. Essentially, we work for your comments and feedback. Thank you all for keeping us going for these three plus years.

Any cool gimmicks that will come into play later in the game? What I mean by “gimmicks” is like, in the begging of the game will you be able to type in stuff to answer questions? Such as:  What is your favorite food? What is your favorite thing? What is your favorite item? etc.

You will be able to name your characters, as well as enter your favorite food and thing. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves, but we’ll save those for later.

Throughout the MOTHER series there has been many different types of weapons used like bats, guns, swords and some others. My question is can we expect to see new types of weapons for our heroes?

Yes you can. For example, Travis’ weapon type isn’t necessarily bats. You might find him wielding a toy light sabre, or something equally as deadly. I think you might end up liking Floyd’s choice of weaponry the most though.

Will there be any references or quotes from other video games besides MOTHER? Will any characters resemble other video game characters? Like how the runaway five had the two band members that looked like Mario and Luigi.

As well as pop culture references, we’ve worked in a few video game references. You won’t be seeing a companion cube or anything blatant like that though. We reference other games in much the same way that Mother 1, 2 and 3 did. Subtly.

You know how how Mother 3 has that quick *dorok* sound when you move through options, while in earthbound it has a little click sound? My question is if the options in Mother 4 will have their own tone. I just hate it when fan games don’t give an effort on little things like that, they just paste the same type of sound tone from the last game.

Yep. We’ve got our own sounds for the menus. We’re going all out- most everything is original. We’ve had pseudo-arguments about them. Whole chunks of meetings talking about how the menu sounds should sound. Hopefully you all will find them pleasant to the ear.

I was just wondering if one of you guys on the team have made a game before. It would be cool to be able to play it and see what kind of style Mother 4 would be like! Other than having that Mother series style, of course.

A fair number of us have worked on games before, but most have fallen through. I have some particularly old games available on my website if you’d like to check them out. They aren’t representative of Mother 4′s quality though, so keep that in mind. All of us have been working with or around game projects for quite some time.

That wraps up this mailbag! As always, feel free to send in your questions and comments through our contact page. We enjoy reading and answering your mail! Have a good New Year’s, and be sure to have fun and be safe. Dave out.

Fun stuff!

In other news, we have a couple posts in the works.

• Zephys has been putting together a “everything we’ve told you” post where he goes over just about everything we’ve told you about the game. It’ll be a handy catch-up guide for newcomers and a good ol’ review for folks that have been following us for a while.
• I’m going to be putting together another mailbag post here shortly. We’ve got a backlog of mail and it needs clearin’ out. We’ve responded to the mail we recieved that wasn’t marked as for the mailbag. But we do miss some occasionally. If we didn’t answer yours, and it wasn’t marked as for the mailbag, please ask us again or mention it in the comments here.
• I’d like to do another technical post some time. Any requests? (Something general would be good.)

So that’s that! Hope your holidays were excellent, and I hope you all have a wonderful New Year. Put your feet up and spend some good time with your family.

And here we are with NCFC Friday. You guys like music, right? Yeah, you like music.

Continue to the NCFC Booth…

Every once in a while, we all have to step back and look at the big picture; to see what lies beyond us, where we truly belong, what we really are….and, sometimes, we just need to know where to slap down a city. Today’s update is going to look at how we do one of those things, and it’s not the first three. That’s right, today, Mars is talking about map-making.

Waltz on over to the NCFC booth!

Dave here once again to bring you Wednesday’s NCFC update. In the spirit of an NCFC Workshop, I’ll be discussing the basics of the implementation of the battle system. All you game developers lend an ear. You might learn something, or you maybe you’ll think I’m crazy! In either case, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

Continue to the NCFC Booth…

Today’s update focuses on some less important characters, some non-player characters. Come have a listen to what they have to say. You might learn something! Or not, some of them are a little silly.

Continue to the NCFC Booth…

Our NCFC 2011 Booth is now underway! Our first update introduces you to several characters. Please take a seat and say hello. They won’t bite! (Well okay, one of them might.)

Continue to the NCFC Booth…

It’s a delicate process to compile a concept art update, mainly because 99 percent of everything I do is strictly confidential. The concepts are meant for games, not for hype. It’s kind of frustrating in that manner, as all the really cool stuff that I’d love to show off has to be kept under wraps until the game’s release. Still, I think concept art is an interesting subject, and I’m sure none of you would object to more goodies- even if it’s just a taste of what’s to come.

In trying to come up with a way to spoil you all without spoiling you all, I have decided on 4 images to show off just three of the many types of concept art it’s my job to produce.

First up (and probably why I was hired) are character/animal sketches. I employ a number of methods to bring them to life, sometimes digitally or traditionally (as you see here). With the number of NPCs in this game, most are born from either graphite or ink to quickly produce a number of variations, while major characters receive more of a special treatment. There are pages of attempts at some of these guys in my sketchbooks that the rest of the team doesn’t even see, as I work out the best options for myself. The more I’m happy with a design, the more time I will spend envisioning the environment and even other characters that would surround them. In the end, I try and narrow it down to a couple of choices to inspire the pixel artists to do an even better job.

This one is a bit of an extension of character design, but it works on a more practical level in terms of concept to sprite. In the case of enemy art, I suggest the pose said baddie would take when we enter battle, trying to be as direct as possible for what will appear on the screen. By working with flat colors, I can create a clear palette for our sprite guys to work with. That saves them one step so they can focus on other time consuming things, such as quality craftsmanship and animation.

World concepts are just that- rough ideas that illustrate how the land might look. They are largely impressionistic, made more to inspire than to define. While they certainly escape the top-down aesthetic of the final product, a large number of these for a single area can do wonders in tying everything together. If you can imagine how a town looks from all dimensions, then illustrating it from a constant perspective should be a cinch.

Basically, my job as a concept artist is to be able to draw anything that someone imagines, whether they have a full picture of what they want in their mind or not. I’ve done and will do many more maps, storyboards, events, items, bosses, vehicles, character studies, mock-ups you name it. Every piece calls for something different than the last, and I’m constantly learning and raising my own standards. Add that to the fact that I’m working for crazy people making the sequel to my favorite game and you can say I have a pretty sweet gig.

Even if they don’t pay me.

-Mars

Hello, wonderful people!

This is stitch, and I am ready to give you some of the goods you’ve requested.  I will apologize for the wait.  We wanted to keep the updates diverse and the music updates were outnumbering the others.  This is still cutting it close but I’ve wanted to show you a couple of tunes for a while now so here they are, along with the original pieces (which I encourage you to listen alongside to).

The first one was one I promised you a long time ago.  This one, I wrote during that October Fanfest a few years back.  I hope you find my version of MOTHER’s “A Ghastly Site” to be uncomfortably pleasant to listen to.

Here is the original A Ghastly Site:

And here is the remix:

I also want to say thank you for all of your email requests, although I have some good and bad news about that to be mentioned later on.  Here is one of the tunes I randomly selected to revamp!

The original Get on the Bus from MOTHER 2 (Earthbound):

When I remix or revamp something, I always think it is necessary to add a creative touch of my own so that it is not just a repeat of another song with a different sound. I hope you will have an open mind for this one!  Here is the revamp of Get on the Bus:

There we have it!  Now, for a few things I would like to say;

About the emails, I started to get so much mail from many things not only concerning MOTHER 4 that I lost all of these requests and questions…but the good news is – if you still want to know something or hear a revamp/remix in the future – I advise you to tell it to me via Twitter!  I recently made a Twitter account mostly for this purpose and it will be a fun way for us to stay in touch.  So, please fly by and I’ll be here to talk and I will be taking your music requests and questions via Twitter now.

Here is the link to my profile; Follow @shanemesa
I am using my real name here, instead of my alias “stitch.”

On another note, every time I make one of these updates, you will get to hear 2 (two) revamps/remixes. That’s 2 per update!  If your tune did not get picked then I encourage you to restate your request.  If it comes up enough I will be forced to tackle that request instead of drawing a number out of the hat.  But please refrain from spamming.  =]

Thank you, all!

So much!

Where we answer your questions in song!

Ports

Well, I was wondering if this game will have a GBA version. If so, it would be great!

Will you port the game to Nintendo 3DS eShop by a 3 party company when the game is finished?

I was sorta hoping it would be in a ROM format until I read the FAQ but if this could be played on Android or iOS it would be awesome.

The game is not designed in a way that would be conducive to porting it to a platform other than Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. More details, such as system requirements, will be available at launch.

People, Places and Things

Will there be any references to the real world? (places, people, events)

Yes. We’ve referenced things from the real world in places, enemies, characters. We’ve remained pretty loyal to the sorts of thing referenced in the past installments of the games, so people brushed up on the pop culture of the 70s-90s should be pretty entertained. We have a few current era references mixed in as well, however.

Soundtrack

Will the soundtrack be available for download once the game is released?

We’re sure to do something with the soundtrack after release. We’re just not sure yet. We may remix our original music and put it out for download or something of the like.

Main character’s name

Why did you change Chase’s name to Travis? Is it because Chaisu left?

The main character was only named “Chase” as a placeholder while we developed the game. After a while, the team settled down and decided Travis would be a worthy “canon” name for our main character. Given the fact that you can name your characters anything you want, we never really made it clear to the public that we were considering changing some names. Chaisu’s departure had nothing to do with the name change.

Species

So I was playing earthbound and I saw the tenda (blue shy creatures) which made me think, there has never been a mother game with the tendas but earthbound, which brings me to the question, will the tenda be in Mother 4?

We’ve mentioned tendas on the starmen.net thread before, but at this point I won’t be confirming their existence or nonexistence in the game.

Party Size

For the 5 characters shown in the level up sequence, will there be a character switch out option, or will they all be in the fight at once?

The party in Mother 4 will never exceed four playable characters, and you won’t be able to rotate members freely. That’s all we will say.

Timeline

What spot in the Mother timeline will this be?

We won’t ever come out and say when we’ve set this game. There will be evidence enough in-game for players to come up with their own theories.

Recurring themes/leitmotifs

In each of the games in the Mother series there is a recurring song or series of notes that show up in different forms throughout the game. It was fairly subtle in Earthbound, but much more noticeable in Mother 3 with the Pork Army theme.

Will there be any sort of recurring song or diddy that shows up in multiple variations in Mother 4?

Why yes, yes there will.

Difficulty

I was just wondering if the games difficulty would be like mother 1, earthbound,mother 3 or some new kind of difficulty

We’re not setting anything in stone yet, but we’re looking at a new sort of difficulty. While the combat isn’t necessarily “harder” than Mother 3, it’s likely to require more strategy. You’ll find yourself thinking more and bashing less. Rest assured, Mother 4 will be easier than Mother 1.

Updates/DLC

When the game releases, will you update it every so often? Somewhat like map packs where you add new areas to the game for those who’ve beaten the game already. Also, will you allow modding on your game? Similar to Minecraft, they add mechanics that enhance the gaming experience.

Mother 4 will be a complete game upon release, including anything that would be released as “secret” or “extra” content. Any actual “updates” done with Mother 4 would be patches to correct bugs and glitches, but we’re going to avoid doing this as well. In a perfect world, Mother 4 will be heavily beta tested and entirely bug-free upon release, so we won’t need to be doing any patching.

Again, we’d like to apologize for the delay on this mailbag update. Some of these questions came in a long time ago!