Note from myself:
Mother 4 has been through many, many changes throughout the years. This little document will help record and preserve pre-release content whether they be used or unused.

Youtube Channels:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ChaisuM4/ (ChaisuM4)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Mother4Team (The Official Channel)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Writtenbypatch (Dani’s personal youtube account)

http://leocamacho.deviantart.com/ (Leo’s based off of this guy)

“You guys and your Floyd. Your reactions to his role in the story will be interesting to see. Actually, I really want to see some first time LP’s. Lots of Woaahhhs to be had.”

Dani has two soundcloud accounts. He actually has some of those unused/portfolio music on the second link below.

https://soundcloud.com/dani-person

https://soundcloud.com/danielperson-1

From Shane’s LoL Stream on 6/12/15: There are 4 different victory themes, could be a spoiler.

Fun Facts:

• Kevvviiinnn (one of the composers for Mega Man Unlimited) actually submitted some fan music

• At one point in development, Grant Kirkhope, composer of Banjo Kazooie and other Rare titles, was said to compose at least one song in Mother 4. And it’s been confirmed by Shane that Grant will be offering a song! Source: https://twitter.com/shanemesa/status/406213917799501824
• Shane and Dani, at one point in development, had plans to team up with askiisoft and composer flashygoodness in making the music for askii’s games, plans did not fall through however.
• Chase, the former lead of Mother 4, made all of the promotional art for LISA: The Painful RPG, except for the art of Lisa herself.
• Meryl’s last name is “Hinton”.
• Meryl enjoys track and field.
• Floyd and Leo both enjoy bowling.
• Floyd wears a boater.
• Favorite colors: Travis-Green, Floyd-Green, Meryl-Red, and Leo-Yellow
• On Shane Mesa’s Discord server, it was stated that Austin Jorgensen, creator of the LISA series, might be submitting a track to Mother 4.
• It has been stated multiple times (on Shane Mesa’s discord server and on twitter) that the former writer of Mother 4, Zephys is working on a new game.
  

Known area names (Pleiades): Belring, Citrus Hills (Now known as La Folia)), Pennyburg, Union City, Flutune (Unknown), Echo Gulch, La Folia, Dolore, Dropple Forest

Train Station/other location names: Bell Station, Valentine Station, Union Station, Dst. Station, Mesa Station, DO Tunnel

Random notes by me (this is some pretty old stuff (2009), so it’s likely that everything here is cut)

-There was a major NPC that rode a wheelchair

-There was (and presumably is) a band similar to the Runaway 5 and DCMC

-Songs used to have lyrics… used to.

-Belring’s night theme used to be called “Lakeside Reflections” (or more commonly known as “Night”) by Dani Person, but later became “Hometown Laze” by Shane Mesa

-You used to leave the hotel with just one character and explore towns just with one character

-You could develop relationships with “friends” (unknown if NPC’s or party members)

-You could enter into businesses

-There were restaurants you and your party could go to

-There was a crowd system where you could figure out what was trending in a town

-Features from EB64 that didn’t make it into M3 were set to appear in the game

-Originally you could travel to space, but the feature was scrapped

-There’s an apparent secret boss theme that you’ll only be able to listen to until you’re Level 80

-Applegate only had 4 NPC’s and a dog (Ed and Betsy and Meryl?)

-Original logo had the earth filled in instead of engraved like so:

-The current earth logo is reverse of the original (i.e. Earth > Sea, Sea > Earth)

-In the original website, there’s an easter egg in the image viewer where, if you highlight the picture, you’ll see some hidden text!

-Playtesters are selected via friends of the major developers

Early Mother 4 Character Descriptions (April 2008)

Chase: Chase is a boy who lives in the busy Suburbs of Belring. As a young boy his father would go out regularly on Archeology expeditions, leaving him and his older brother, Zack, in care of his mother. He is carefree, fun, and can be very serious at times.

Zack: Zack is Chase’s older brother and fighting trainer. He is practicing to be a well trained fighter and also works at a local restaurant. He is always looking out for his younger brother, yet respects that Chase is old enough to take care of himself. Zack’s cool, brave, and somewhat of a goofball at times. He always enjoys a good laugh with his bro.

Rina: (Coming soon…)

Leo (Coming soon…)

Early Mother 4 Enemy Descriptions (2008)

CHRONIC PUNCHER:

Here’s a guy you don’t wanna cross paths with. He’s still angry about losing his title bout.

ANIMATED SPRINKLER:

Be careful walking around in Belring, or you’re likely to get hosed down by one of these buggers!

MAD CANDELA:

Gosh, this Candle Stick has one short fuse!

EYESCUBE:

These things sure do know how to give one cold stare!

LAKE GULL:

It all started when his bread crumbs were stolen… Now he’s a force to be reckoned with!

OLD SCHOOL HIPPIE:

Trained in the arts of toothpaste, this Hippie is back once again!

Early Mother 4 Battle Screen Descriptions

The start of a battle, Chase vs. an Animated Sprinkler and a Lake Gull!

Select an enemy to bash!

Defend yourself, Chase!

Running time!

Original Staff (2008)

Game Director:

-Chaisu

Scripters:

-Chaisu

-Leo the Professional

Game Designers:

-Chaisu

-The Dave

-Armada

Artists:

-Chaisu

-Leo the Professional

-Fobby

Spriters:

-Chaisu

-Leo the Professional

-jojora

-LittleMetalDrop

Musical Composers/Sequencers:

-Chaisu

-Pianoman547

-Michael Annist (Professional Guitar Player)

-breakman

Main story writers:

-Chaisu

-Zephys

-ZWarner

-Leo the Professional

Minor story writers:

-Chaisu

-Zephys

-Fobby

-ZWarner

Drafters:

-Chaisu

-Zephys

-Franz Kafka

Character/NPC Dialouge writers:

-Chaisu

-Zephys

-AKthawonder

-Leo the Professional

-Lighter

-Redlandsman87

-Fobby

Enemy/NPC creators:

-Chaisu

-ZWarner

-Leo the Professional

-barcode

Tile compilers:

-Chaisu

-Ranger

Beta Testers:

-barcode

-Derreku

-Aspectofbane

-Marioman11

-AsbestosBlatant

-Redlandsman87

NPC/Character design:

-Chaisu

-ZWarner

-Leo the Professional

-Mystic Pyro Freak

-Fobby

Early Mother 4 Character Descriptions (2009)

Chase: Chase is an emotionally durable, optimistic boy. Fueled by expectations to live up to his brother’s success, he is unafraid of a challenge, and faces life with a buoyant stride. His occasional stoicism is only due to misadventures in the depths of his own mind or the fear of not being able to display the amount of courage and merit that made his brother the respected person he is.

Early Mother 4 Character Descriptions (2010)

• Chase: The protagonist!
• Zack: Chase’s brother.
• Meryl: A studious and sheltered girl.
• Floyd: The narcissistic cool kid.
• Leo: The street-smart ruffian.

Early Mother 4 Character Descriptions (2011)

• Travis: The protagonist! With a bit of a temper…
• Zack: A strong, kind kid. Oh, and Travis’ brother.
• Meryl: A studious and sheltered girl.
• Floyd: The narcissistic cool kid.
• Leo: The ex-businessman with something to lose.

Early Mother 4 Character Descriptions (2014)

Current Mother 4 Website Descriptions (2015):

Text Only

Travis

Age: 13

Hometown: Belring

Favorite Thing: Daydreams

He's got his head in the clouds, and maybe that's why it's so easy for him to accept his telepathy and healing powers, but Travis is still just an ordinary kid who loves baseball.

Meryl

Age: 14

Hometown: Citrus Hills

Favorite Thing: Pond Skaters

Chipper and gentle at heart, Meryl's future sight and extreme psychic attacks make her confident that she can take anything that's thrown at her, but it also makes her a bit reckless. Just bear with it; she means well.

Floyd

Age: 14

Hometown: Pennyburg

Favorite Thing: Race cars

Quick witted and street smart, this blue collar school boy doesn't seem to need psychic powers to be an asset. Floyd's charm and confidence make him dependable even if he's a bit slow to adapt.

Leo

Age: Buzz off.

Hometown: What are you, a cop?

Favorite Thing: Dishwashers

Dangerous, quiet, wild... This leader of a motorcycle gang is probably wanted all over the world. It's no wonder - on top of swinging around everything from cinder blocks to stop signs, Leo's a potent psychic!

2010 Synopsis:

A normal day in the life of Chase, the younger brother of Belring’s promising and hard working Zack, goes haywire when something strange occurs in their neighboring town. Strange airborne crafts are reaching out and abducting the good citizens of Flutune, inanimate objects are coming to life and attacking everything they see, the people are becoming violently insane, and worst of all, Chase is thrown smack-dab into the middle of the mess! What is the cause of these strange occurrences? Before he knows it, Chase finds himself on a journey with four unlikely friends. Zack, the kind and energetic aspiring boxing champ; Floyd, the cool kid on the block, albeit a bit narcissistic; Meryl, the studious and sheltered, yet surprisingly capable heir to the Hinton family fortune; and Leo, the street-wise rough and tough street urchin. Throughout their adventure, this unlikely group of heroes climb greater heights than anyone before them, reach uncharted lands, meet friend and foe alike, and in the end, discover something astonishing… about themselves.

Mankind can never be the same, can Chase and his friends put a stop to this strange new threat to their world, or can this enemy be too much for anyone to take?

(Movie Trailer Version from The Dave):

In a world with darkness on the rise,

a few boys, some young men and a pretty girl stand alone.

It was all just fun and games until the strange crafts appeared in the skies.

Cars. People. Household appliances. Everything is alive and is out to get them.

What will become of the world?

Will this unlikely team of friends be able to stop the madness?

Only you can decide.

Mother 4.

Coming to your computer sometime before the end of the world.

2011 Synopsis:

When Travis, younger brother of Belring’s promising and hard working Zack, learns that not everything in his world is as it seems, he prepares for the adventure of his life. When a pulse of mysterious energy blasts the area during a visit to Flutune, Travis and Zack find themselves in the middle of something much bigger when they witness a dear family friend and many other citizens abducted by mysterious men in flying ships as local wildlife, plantlife, and inanimate objects are sent into a violent frenzy. What is the cause of these strange happenings? Who’s responsible? After a narrow escape, Travis and Zack resolve to get to the bottom of things, with the help of a few others who find themselves involved. Throughout their adventure, this unlikely group explores a vast world, and discovers something astonishing, both about the world around them, and themselves.

The world’s about to change forever. Can Travis and his friends put a stop to this strange threat to their world, or is this enemy too much for anyone to handle?

Logo Roll:

Staff:

Zephys

Writer and Coordinator (2: Concept Artist) (3: Concept Designer)

Zephys is an aspiring novelist who can craft a solid story. He’s the writer and general manager of the Mother 4 team. He’s responsible for dialogue, scenario direction, project assembly and wrote the bulk of the core story line. While not working on Mother 4, Zephys enjoys a range of activities from reading and writing to backpacking, fencing, and archery.

Gabe

Graphics Co-Lead (2: Artist Co-Lead) (3: Artist)

Gabe is 17 years old, and one of the lead spriters on this team. He’s been all over the world, from England to Hawaii to Turkey to Colorado and to Canada (to name a few) thanks to his status as an ‘Airforce Brat’. Ever since he was little, he’s always been interested in art, and began spriting when he was twelve. Captivated by the idea of using sprite-work to bring his imagination to life, Gabe decided to take the career path graphic artist, hoping one day to have all the resources necessary in making a video game of his own design.

Max (Retired but came back)

Sprite Artist (2: Artist)

Max is an aspiring pixel artist and longtime EarthBound fan that aims to blow expectations. He usually tries to give his best skill and opinon when working. Although sometimes tends not to finish what he starts. He is currently getting by in a suburban residence on the East coast. If not pixeling, Max enjoys catching up on sleep, traveling, drawing and painting, and having fun with friends.

Mushroomized (2: Matt)

Sprite Artist (2: Artist)

Mushroomized is an amateur pixel artist and environmental spriter for Mother 4 who’s been spriting for roughly 3 years. He is currently in his final year of high school, and enjoys finding new and exciting ways to not work on school. When not working on Mother 4 or school, he enjoys attempting to sprite in Fire Emblem style, playing video games, playing the violin, swimming, rowing, and not sleeping nearly enough.

Maru (2: Nate)

Sprite Artist (2: Artist)

Maru is a young, blooming pixel artist who has hopped along on the sprite crafting bandwagon. At the early stages of his childhood, Maru has always dreamed of becoming a bold, artistic lad in the future, and whilst working on Mother 4, it does him proud that he is working on something so big. He is a learning student attending high school, doing his absolute best in his final year, ready to move on to his later career. He enjoys most peoples company and loves to make it all the worthwhile, by having a laugh along the way. While he is not tinkering away with sprites for Mother 4, He loves to study, laze around, play video games, have a cup of tea and is not afraid to get out a pen and a paper or two, and start to doodle. In real life, Maru is actually an English boy, residing in Great Britain.

Jojora (UNKNOWN STATUS)

Sprite Artist

Jojora may be known to some Mother 4 fans as either a one-time team member during “The Back in the Day” or a rather solid spriter of Starmen.Net. In fact, Mother 4’s development is the sole reason why Jojora practiced pixel art in the first place! After learning from Chaisu himself (with the added 3+ years of self-teaching), Jojora currently gives tips to newer, up-and-coming spriters.

Ryan

Sprite Artist (2: Artist)

Ryan is a young and aspiring graphic designer and novice spriter who worked with pixel art as a hobby for many years. Seeing the Mother series as an important aspect of his life, he wants to see to it that other fans get the sequel that they deserve.

IMP

Sprite and Concept Artist (2: Artist and Concept)

Alec is a young amateur artist who has 6 years experience in pixel art. He doesn’t only pixel, he also enjoys designing characters and monsters in his spare time.

Pastel

Writer and Sprite Artist (2: Creative Director)

Pastel is a slacker from the North who spends too much time in his own head. Sometimes, when he gets too large, he crawls along the beach until he finds a head that fits better.

Zane

Community Manager

Zane is the community manager for Mother 4. Part researcher, part strategist, part content creator and part storyteller, his job is to ensure Mother 4 fans have a good experience. He’ll ensure that the project is indeed progressing and relaying feedback between the rest of the team and the public. When he’s not working, Zane loves to hunt, travel, drink tea and enjoy a great craft beer.

With a Hint of Lemon (2: Lemon)

Concept Artist

With a Hint of Lemon (or WaHoL for short) is a rising artist who one day wishes to craft her own fictional story. She is the new concept artist for the Mother 4 team and is currently drawing artwork of the main cast. When not working she is either busy designing new characters and environments, wasting time surfing the web, or playing with her two dogs and cat.

Phones (Retired)

Graphics and Concept

Phones is an artist for the Mother 4 team. His job is to draw pretty pictures.

Dreweyes (Retired)

Concept and Graphics

My name is Drew Wise, I am a pixel artist & animator, happily married, and have a little boy named Link. I love making pixel art, being a dad, retro gaming, vinyl records, the criterion collection, sci-fi films, minimal wave/post punk/chiptune music, and Be@rbricks!

Mr. Mars (Retired)

Concept and Design

Mr. Mars is currently attending a film college to major in animation, and hasn’t decided whether he wants to be a game designer, film director, or what. He’s an eclectic hybrid of a concept artist and sequence writer, and enjoys bugging the project leads about themes and symbolism. When he’s not making dungeons he’s drawing up storyboards and trying to watch films or play games he’s never heard of; along with traveling in the occasional bike-riding episode. The rest of Mars’ battery-life goes into producing personal comics, games, and predominantly hand-drawn animated shorts.

Kane

Web Developer

Favorite Thing: Cats

Doug Lemming (Retired)

Volunteer

Favorite Thing: Queen

Boris

Developer

Favorite Thing: Seashore

Chase

Artist

Favorite Thing: Funk

Roger Levy

Music

STATUS UNKNOWN

Description (M4Preserve): Roger Levy was not actually a composer for the game. Rather, the Mother 4 Team asked if they could use his music, which he agreed. Later on in development, they found that they’d be better off composing the music themselves, thus Roger Levy was cut.

Alex Mauer (Special Guest: Composed for Vs Modern Man)

Music

STATUS UNKNOWN

These pages includes stuff from Mother 4’s NCFC 2009 Booth which included new announcements throughout the week.

Monday: The Staff

NCFC: The Staff

Chaisu

Chaisu is the leader of this pack of MOTHER fans. He’s the brains of the operation; he does many things for the project, from writing the story, organizing the team, even designing the sprites. While he isn’t working on MOTHER 4, Chaisu enjoys playing guitar, writing music, The Beatles, singing, and the women-folk. He also enjoys drawing, making pixel art, and developing new and exciting video game elements.

The Dave

The Dave is a student at Case Western Reserve University, majoring in computer science. Dave enjoys a good bike ride, computer programming (go figure) and occasionally drawing things poorly. Dave is the lead (and only) programmer on the team, and has written the game’s engine from scratch in Game Maker. Dave is also the maintainer of this website which is hosted from his own website,dcmsoftware.net. (Shameless plug  )

Zephys

Zephys is a high-school student from Lincoln, Nebraska, who seeks to become a published novelist and video game designer. He’s the main storyline technician under lead designer Chaisu. However while he isn’t working on MOTHER 4, Zephys enjoys a variety of activities, from reading and writing, to video games, and even to backpacking, fencing and archery. He also enjoys working on his own novel which is currently in the early stages of the publication process.

SNOBODYS

The musical duo, “stitch” (on the left) and “patch” (to the right), were born on March 20, 2009 as the SNOBODYS opening with their Cannibal! – EP. It was a small, yet promising beginning for them but sometime after the release, they decided to take the band more seriously. Aside from the current production of the MOTHER 4 soundtrack and sound effects, they are also working on their first album (also secret). The SNOBODYS are a couple of fun-loving, interesting dudes who, when put in the same room, can really brighten up any party.

Tuesday: Meryl and Floyed

Wednesday: Special Features

Town Life:

The world of Mother 4 allows for a more realistic feel when it comes to the travels of our heroes. There are many more businesses the player can enter, including restaurants in which you may eat without fussing with your inventory. Hotels actually act as hotels, being a place where the party takes time to relax. At this point, the characters all do their own thing, and Chase can go out on the town alone, or with any party configuration he chooses.

In this mode, you can’t leave the town and the rest of your friends behind, but there’s a lot to discover, as there are a lot of nice little items and special deals you can stumble across if you really take the time to hit all the shops looking for the best deals. It’s good to talk to your friends and see what’s on their minds, and who knows, maybe the relationships with your party members will grow!

Day and Night:

Now, before you jump up and say real time clock!, we should tell you that this is different. While you and your party is staying at a hotel, you have to choice to venture out in the daytime, or take a chance at the night life. Venturing out at night opens up a variety of new activities that just aren’t around during the sun lit hours. However, night time isn’t all fun and games, monsters and bad guys hang out in the shadows, so watch your back!

Crowds:

One feature new to the world of MOTHER is crowds! Remember taking a walk through the streets of Fourside and wondering where all the hustle and bustle of the big city is? In MOTHER 4, we’ve added a dynamic crowd system which breathes life into otherwise deserted locales.

Lighting:

What’s nighttime without the city’s lights? When you take a trip out on the town at night, your way will be guided by street lights, neon signs, traffic lights, and more! The lighting system is much more than a simple pallet swap, (a color change, for the non-techies) lights can affect areas, leaving some places bathed in light, and others obscured, and left dark.

We hope you will enjoy these features once the game is launched! We’ve certainly put some hard work into them.

Thursday: The Music

Video: ???

Take a listen to the musical stylings of SNOBODYS and Roger Levy. These two have composed an array of pleasant tunes for MOTHER 4 that we like to think are right on par with the rest of the MOTHER series. Enjoy!

Ace Finley, Ed and Betsy

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! (Wellokay, one of them might.)

Ace Finley always gets his man. Well, except for the ones that get away. However, as a world-famous detective and the pride of the City of Eldritch, that doesn’t happen too often. Finley’s high life of quiet investigations and eating well from paranoid politician’s money undergoes a rapid change of pace when an event like the world’s never seen shakes his city, stirring the dead and launching an investigation of a whole new breed. Finley’s keen senses, training, and intuition lead him to the retirement community of Flutune, where he learns of two young boys who have inexplicably escaped an assault by mysteriously dressed invaders...

Ed and his faithful companion Betsy know how to get around in the wilderness, and they know it. With his lasso and boomerang in hand, Ed knows he can handle anything, and when he can’t handle it, Betsy’s there to cover for him. Even though he’s the son of Applegate’s Sheriff, Ed can’t help but get himself into trouble, and he’s not afraid to go where he doesn’t belong. Despite their parents’ protests, Ed and Meryl have become the best of friends, and he’s promised to always be there for her. When one of Meryl’s closest childhood friends is torn away from her, Ed comes through on this promise, and vows to help Meryl and her friends in any way possible.

Look forward to seeing these three in the game!

Dialogue from Around the World of Mother 4

Do you feel enlightened? Certainly you do.

Talkin’ Battle Systems

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.

When it comes to programming, I like to look at the project as a problem. I then identify each part of the problem and divide it up into sub-problems. This gives me an overview of what all I have to do at a glance and allows me to see how each sub-problem relates to the others, and how I can make them interact or where I can re-use code.

A major part of any RPG is its battle system. One might argue that battle systems are what make RPGs games. With this being such an integral piece of the game, I needed to take great care while designing it. I keep things organized through flowcharts and diagrams. Boxes represent classes or structures that represent game elements, arrows show the relationship and flow of information between them. Using a method like this helps keep the project manageable and easy to work with.

So on to the main event. The problem? We need a battle system. The solution? Well, let’s make one.

But how?

What are the sub-problems?

• The player needs to interact with the battle using the player characters.
• The enemies need to attack the player.
• The battle must have a resolution. Win, or lose.
• We must handle what happens after the battle is over.

Before We Begin

We need something to tie all these components together. There needs to be some underlying driving force behind the system. To create this force, I use a priority queue. But “what’s a priority queue Dave?” you might ask. We know what a queue is, it’s a line; you enter is, wait your turn, and come out the other side. First in, first out. But a priority queue is a bit more complex. This isn’t your average amusement park queue, it’s more like an airline queue. Let’s say you’re flying coach. When your flight is boarding, people with higher class tickets will board before you. You could say that they have a higher priority than you in the line. This is how a priority queue works. Each item in the queue is assigned a priority, and the higher priority items will exit the queue first.

So how does this fit into the battle system? A fine question. We’ll use this priority queue to control the actions in the battle. Each turn, the players and enemies will enter their actions into the queue. The priority of these actions is the speed stat of the player or enemy that put it in the queue. This way, players or enemies with higher speed will perform their actions first.

Player Interaction

Player interaction is fairly simple. Accept input from whatever device (the keyboard or the gamepad) and use it to move cursors around menus. Designing the menus is fairly simple, they’re mostly arrays of strings. The player will select an action from the menu, and depending on what action they chose, an action will be entered into the priority queue. Actions differ between normal bash attacks, item usage, defending, etc. The actions will be executed in order of priority at the end of the turn.

Enemy Actions

Enemy actions are a bit different than player actions. We now need to make the enemies “think” a little. In this example, I’ll keep it simple and we’ll have them use a weighted random selection. Using this method, some attacks will be more common than others, so we can make enemies use their more deadly attacks more sparingly. (Further intelligence requires more advanced AI which is outside the scope of this article, but can be accomplished with scripts or AI algorithms.)

So let’s say each enemy has a list of attacks. Each attack also has a percentage attached to it. Summing all the percentages will yield 100%. This makes it easy to pick an attack, we just pick an uniform random integer, 1 to 100, and see where it lands. For example, we’ll say the enemy has four attacks, which are as follow:

• 0 – 5: PK Starstorm (5%)
• 5 – 25: PK Fire ? (20%)
• 25 – 75: Bash (50%)
• 75 – 100: Size up the situation (25%)

You can see that as long as the random variable is uniformly distributed, each attack will occur it’s given percentage of the time. This enemy will bash for the majority of its turns, and will rarely us PK Starstorm. When the attack has been chosen, it will be added to the priority queue. Enemy actions are computed and entered into the queue after the player’s turn.

Enemies can get more complex, but should always follow the same formula. Current battle state in, process, and queue entry. In the example above, the current battle state was replaced with a random variable. The process stage can do whatever it needs to so long as it adds an action to the queue in the end.

Resolution and After the Battle

After each turn, all the actions in the priority queue are performed, and then removed from the queue. When the queue is empty, the round is over and it goes back to the player interaction stage. But the battle isn’t over when the queue is empty! The outcome of the battle depends on these factors:

• All enemies defeated
• All players defeated
• Some other circumstance, eg. a flag was set

So in order to check if all the enemies are dead, we’ll run through them all and check if their HP is less than or equal to zero. If this is true for all of them, we know that all enemies have been defeated. In this case, we should then clear the priority queue of all old actions, and enter actions to show the “You Won” text, the experience gained message, handle the item drops and if need be, the level up text. We’ll also set a flag indicating the player has won the battle. When the queue is empty and this flag is set, we exit the battle.

If only one or a few of the enemies are defeated, we should remove them from the scene, and remove any actions associated with them from the queue. If the action is a player’s attack on them, we can move the target of that attack to an enemy that is still alive.

Likewise, we should perform the same checks for players. If a player character’s HP drops to zero or below, we need to remove their actions from the queue, and if an enemy was targeting them with an attack, move the attack to another live player, or have that attack miss, depending on how difficult you want to make the game. When all the players are defeated, we should set a flag that indicates the player has lost the battle, clear the queue, and enter actions to display the “you lost” message and go to the game over screen.

For special cases, you may want to end the battle early. For example, if the player ran from the battle. In these cases, you simply set a flag indicating what you want, clear the queue, display any messages, and when the queue is empty, end the battle and return to the overworld, or move to another screen. Just like in the above to cases.

Things to Think About

Damage calculation. This should be proportional to a few stats like offense or stat bonuses from equipables. A good place to start is to use Earthbound’s damage calculation formula, which has been dug up from the ROM and discussed here. A lot of the equations in the Mother 4 battle system are based around the equations found there. Of course, they’ve evolved into something of my own in order to fit the needs of Mother 4’s battle system.

Enemy difficulty. Enemies shouldn’t be too hard too soon. Balance in enemy design is important for an enjoyable game. enemies in the beginning of the game could be balanced to give the player a leg up. So they can get a handle on the battle system, but not die every other battle. Using an exponential curve for level up experience point requirements can help with this, as it makes it difficult for the player to stay in one area and grind away at enemies to boost their level indefinitely. It also helps drive the player onward into new areas which in turn advances the story.

Battle backgrounds. There are many ways your could go about achieving these. All will involve trigonometric functions however. You could manipulate individual pixels on a surface, or use a textured polygon that deforms itself based on an equation. A good reference to Earthbound styled background manipulation using individual pixel manipulation can be foundhere on the Starmen.net forum.

tl;dr

Use a priority queue to handle the battle actions. And do the rest your way since you didn’t read it.

So there you have it. Using this, you should be well on your way to creating a battle system.

Location, Location, Location

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.

Before getting started on anything even resembling a map, I talk with the rest of the team to get an idea of what the area is going to look like. How is the spacing between the buildings? The elevation? Road structure? Architectural style? Even music alone can be an excellent indicator of an area’s style. The more that we decide on at this early stage, the less that needs to be figured out when working on the final product. I like to make a rough sketch of the place so I can make sure that I fully understand the general idea of the area, as well as sort out any potentially troublesome perspective issues. If there’s something I wasn’t quite sure of, now’s the best time to clear it up.

Once we know where we’re going, our writer (or another lead of the area) tells me exactly what they need in the layout. This can be anything from a list of all the buildings and set-pieces in town to a fully labeled diagram suggesting size and space relation of each individual element. Don’t let the simplicity fool you- these little masterpieces are an incredible help in speeding up the final layout’s creation.

With all of my reference laid out before me, I work on a large final map in layers of color pencil and ink. I block out the shape of the land, buildings, trees and water in various hues before diving in with a pen, carving out the details as I go along. After finally filling the map from one end to the other with line work, I take a picture of it into photoshop and get rid of the color. The result is the crisp renditioning of the entire land you see below, which will be passed on to the sprite artists to be brought to life in full-color pixelated glory.

You’re right, that IS a small map. I can hardly see anything in it myself. Well, that’s why we’re giving you an extra present today- right here.

Musical Friday

(Insert Music of Mother 4 - Episode 3 here)

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

Take heart, this lovely update isn’t the last you’ll be seeing of us for awhile. We all had a big ol’ argument about what to showcase in this year‘s NCFC, and we’ve decided not to keep you folks waiting forever to hear from us after the whole event ends. So here’s episode three of our music showcase, and you can expect further updates from us in the very near future! Stay tuned, fans. Things are moving right along.

What you should know about the project thus far.

March 24, 2012 by Zephys

Hello, readers. This is Zephys of the Mother 4 team. I’ve decided to make a different sort of update this time around. If you’re a super-expert on everything we’ve ever said, done, or shown, this post is of little interest to you and you should just scroll to the bottom. I bet there’s a few things you’ve forgotten, though.

To everyone else, specifically newcomers to our site, this post is to serve as a giant “What the public should know about Mother 4 so far” reference. (Hence the title.) There’s a little concept art treat for you at the bottom of the post, but other than that, you won’t hear too much that’s “new”, per se, though a few concepts being reworded/reintroduced might make something click in your head in a way that it hasn’t before. Grab a drink and sit back, this is going to be a big post.

To fully get re-acquainted with the project, we recommend dropping by the

about, FAQ, and staff pages, and then reading this post.

Now for the fun stuff.

History

Mother 4 was started by Chaisu back in 2008, essentially on a whim with a couple of friends at his side. In time, the project became something a bit more serious, and Chaisu brought it to attention by starting a thread in the fangame section of starmen.net. At this point, it was being made in RPG maker XP, and had a largely undeveloped story, though the core idea was both present and solid. Looking back on it, that core message and idea really hasn’t changed much. Despite the huge changes we’ve seen over the years, the spirit of the game is entirely intact.

When Mother 4 began, no one truly knew what it was going to become. The ambition was always to create something that could be considered a worthy sequel to the series, despite its origins, but we never expected it to evolve like it has. It was at this point in time that we revealed some basic information about the game to the public. Most things we’ve confirmed in the past are still in effect, but I’m sure a few things that we’ve said have changed. (Not very much at all, though!) Anyway, we’ll address that in the next section.

As time progressed, more people got on board to help with the project, some close friends of Chaisu, such as Leo the Professional, and who still has a namesake in one of our characters for designing the rockin’ Azure Studios logo, Flintofmother3 for providing our super-convincing clay models, and others that have honorable mentions on our staff page. Around this time, Chaisu switched the development engine over to Game Maker, and It wasn’t long before Dave joined the project, and then myself while I was studying at USC over a couple of summers (The courses in question being Writing and Videogame Design, who’d have imagined?).

It took awhile, but it was during this phase that a lot of concept work got finished up, and there was a lot of progress made in our GML engine. Before long, though, we realized our limitations, and switched over to a custom SDL based engine written in C++. At this time, too, Chase moved on to greater things with his music, and the story got finished up. It was at that point that the public really started to see a lot of changes from us, and we released a bunch of updates in fairly quick succession. At this point we also felt we were ready for more laborers, so we hired a few more guys onto the team and got them settled. Sometime around this phase is also when Chaisu moved on to his music career, which is actually a very exciting story to see unfold.

Features/The Game Itself

When the project was still young we boasted larger, more interesting towns, and that still holds true. Our Fourside/New Pork equivalent is really going to be something amazing, especially when you step into it and hear that song for the very first time.

This would also be a good time to mention the Town Life system in a bit more detail.

Town Life

In Mother 4, you can spend a lot of time in towns, practically living there until you are ready to move on. This is heavily inspired by Shigesato Itoi’s wish to make his games “more than a road trip”, in the sense that the towns feel less like stops on a path and more like destinations themselves. Our towns are larger than the previous games, with considerably more enterable buildings.

To keep this idea fresh, you’ll also see many more businesses and business types in Mother 4 than in previous games. At this point, you can expect dine-in restaurants, movie theaters, and other such things, all of which serve their own purposes for your characters’ well beings.

You can also expect to do some thrifty shopping, if you’re so inclined. A town may have a department store where you can get everyone’s gear updated for a fair enough price, but if you really take the time to engage, you can really scour the town you’re in for the best gear for the best price, sometimes you can even outdo the department store deals in quality AND price! You never know what you’ll find in the nameless local thrift stores and curiosity shops, after all. Stopping by as many places as possible is also a good way to get a few side-quests started, leading to even cooler acquisitions.

Some towns will have multiple businesses of the same type; namely hospitals, hotels, and restaurants of varying qualities. While a lower quality business is cheaper, their services are as well, and sometimes it’s worth the money to stay in a nice hotel. It’s good to take the time to utilize the town life system, but it’s not a must. Talk to your friends and see what’s on their minds, and who knows, maybe the relationships with your party members will grow!

Saving and the Postal Service

While Mother 4 doesn’t necessarily take place in a certain time period, it is a world where the course of technology is a bit different from our own. While there are telephones, ATMs, and other modern conveniences, there’s a strong respect in its communities for the dedicated service of the postal system.

The mail system serves a lot of purposes during your stay in Mother 4. First and foremost, this is how you’ll be saving. Does the postal service’s logo ring a bell at all? You save your game by sending a letter home to someone important to the character presently leading the party. Nothing makes a memory like a stack of postcards to go over once the journey’s done!

In addition to saving, there’s a lot you’ll find yourself coming to a mailbox for. First and foremost for an adventure of this scale, you’re going to need money. In Mother 4, you make an impression wherever you go, and instead of having family fund the whole adventure, or thriving off the generosity of local amphibian life, Your party relies on donations from the communities its helped in the past. Whenever you check a mailbox, you’ll receive your letters before being able to save, or conduct other business.

Level-up Jingles

One of the most notable things about the Mother series has always been its music, and having the SNOBODYS on board has really been a blessing, making sure one of the most delicate features of the project is right where it needs to be. Stitch and I were having a conversation about how each character in Mother 3 had their own “instrument” for when they attacked, and how it really put some more soul into the game. After toying with this idea a little bit, I came up with the brilliant idea to expand on this, and this is one of the results.

Rather than having a single level-up jingle, each character has their own. When multiple characters level up at the same time, their jingles play simultaneously, creating a more complete song. It really makes those experience cash-cow boss battles all the more satisfying to level off of, since you’re hearing the complete level-up symphony. Here it is in action, complete with a few combinations of jingles.

(Insert ‘Music of Mother 4 - Level Up Jingles’ here)

In execution, it’s a really minor improvement that makes a world of difference when it comes to experiencing the game.

Tidbits

• The “don’t care” option is returning, and has multiple predefined names, rather than just one for each character as Mother 3 did. (5 or 6 sets.) Our first and second don’t care options are as follows:

• Travis
• Chase

• Zack
• Felix

• Meryl
• Suzy

• Floyd
• Blake

• Leo
• Vinny

• 4 party members at a time. There is no “switch out” option, meaning the party changes as the story progresses.
• Our story features a band, like the Runaway five and DCMC.
• Just like Mother 1’s Dragon, Mother 2’s Kraken, and Mother 3’s Ultimate Chimera, Mother 4 features a mythical beast of sorts as a storyline boss. Hint: If we told you its name, you’d recognize it, but you still wouldn’t know what to picture in your head.
• No Chimeras in Mother 4. Sorry.
• No Pokey/Porky, No Giygas, No PokeGiygas, No Giygas MK II, No “Ghost of Pokey”, No Lucas teaming up with Ness to FIGHT Giygas MK II, No Sonic the Hedgehog. We’re a fangame by definition, not by following the norm of fangames.
• The meter you saw in our early screenshots isn’t gone in our new screenshots. Observant fans already know this.
• Like in Mothers 2 and 3, rolling HP/PP meters are back, giving you a chance to recover from a fatal blow. We added a couple of things to this feature, the most notable being what we’re calling the “last stand” feature, which greatly increases a character’s stats when they’ve been hit for more HP than they’re currently worth, or, in simpler terms, when their HP meter is on its way to 0. Similarly, if your PP meter is rolling down, but you have enough PP to use a PSI move when that character’s turn comes, the move has a chance of going through, even if the meter’s going to end up below the initial PP cost. This is effective for advanced players who are trying to get the most bang for their PP buck.
• Enemy spawning will be similar to that of Earthbound. They appear in the overworld, and spawn somewhat randomly. You will not always encounter the same exact enemies in the exact same spot as you would in Mother 3.
• Rogg is still in the enemy roster. Rejoice! Other early enemies are still present, such as the Lake Gull, Chronic Puncher, and a few others. Also expect series staples to return, such as the Ramblin’ Evil Mushroom. It should also be noted that the Unassuming Local Guy and Ego Orb will be in-game somewhere, as they are mine and Dave’s favorite enemies, respectively. One of the commonly overlooked enemies from a past game is back in Mother 4, with plot relevance as well. (No, it’s not Negative Man. Good guess, though. It’s an enemy there were several of.) (Rogg was sprited by Pik.)
• When an enemy drops an item and your inventory is full, you can choose to use either the item left by the enemy or an item in your bag to free up room, rather than being forced to throw one away.
• It’s a strong possibility we’ll have condiments in this game, a la Mother 2, but you have to select them, rather than it being automatic, and the condiment has multiple uses, making it actually worth carrying around.
• Mother 4 will have a sound test option. Much in the same style as the one found in Mother 3.
• PSI Beam is returning, as well as a couple new PSI moves. They’re tasteful. No PSI Super-death-wave or Manilovepeanutbutter. But you could name your favorite thing one of those, if you really wanted. We’ve also done something creative with 4th D-slip
• We considered crafting for all of 15 seconds before we decided it wouldn’t fit well in a Mother game. We do have something sort of like it, but it’s a lot simpler. Sort of like having your Courage Badge become a Franklin Badge, and there’s only a couple of weapons you can improve like that.
• There are three PSI users that you play as: Travis, Meryl, and Leo. Zack holds his own just fine without PSI.
• We’re officially looking at tons of sidequests and optional content. It’s like you paid for a bunch of DLC, but we’re giving you a whole game like a good developer would.
• I’m warning you, anyone who thinks they’re going to do/see/experience everything in the game is in for a hilarious amount of play time, primarily because you’re not going to do it in one playthrough. We have some random dialogue, and there are a few things in-game that change based on what decisions you make.
• Hilariously enough to players who know about the development of Mother 2, there was originally a portion planned for space exploration, but limitations and story development eliminated it. We changed the ending of the story (Definitely waaaaay better), and with this new ending, we had to cut our space environment. We’re down a cool dungeon concept, but that’s it.
• I will say that we have a huge chain of optional “challenge” fights you can take on, and they do somehow reference past games. I won’t explain more than that. The cool thing about it is the way we’ve implemented it. It doesn’t clutter the game, but it doesn’t feel set aside. There aren’t 30,000 little Zelda style “secret caves” filled with optional bosses, but there’s not a “Challenge mode” on the main menu, either. You’ll have to wait to see that.
• Finally, a couple technical points, the project supports gamepads (with configurable controls), fullscreen, and even has multiple menu colors.

The Process

Story:

We started out with a very basic story arc, probably under 1,000 words long, just to nail down what we wanted. This took me all of 20 minutes or so, since it’s a hybrid of two story ideas we had going earlier in development. After that, the team read over it, voiced their yeas and nays (unanimous yeas, I’m proud to report), and off I went, starting my second draft of our final story (my 10th draft total since I joined the project). In this draft, I actually brought up an old MSpaint world map I drew (our overworld hadn’t changed from the original story draft), and I drew lines from town to town, plotting out the flow of our characters as I wrote a more in-depth story. To preserve my own sanity, I skipped out on some of the “Faster” means of getting a detailed story down, as I knew I had time to spare while the art and engine departments got caught up, and really made sure I was comfortable with what I was writing. That Mother-y feel’s an interesting one to catch, but I daresay we’ve done so quite well. I essentially kept writing the story over and over again, getting just a bit more into detail with each draft, making each draft ~25-50% longer than the previous one. Our most recent complete draft’s about 20,000 words long, and this “final” draft that I’m working on now is already that long and I’m not halfway done.

It’s kind of like painting a picture, really. Base colors, color blending, shading, details, more shading, fine details. While each Mother game has a standalone story, they do reference each other, and weave into one larger story. Mother 4’s story fits this continuum, so events that took place in past games are a factor in the basis for this installment, though they are not directly referenced.

We haven’t revealed much about the story itself, and I recommend you review some of our other updates to gather the bits and pieces we have revealed. The basis is fairly generic in the regard that it’s a mother game, and the little blurb on the about page covers that much.

Programming and the Game Itself:

Making an RPG is tedious, difficult, and requires a sharp, dedicated mind. Our engine is coming along at INSANE speeds considering Dave’s the only guy on the project. Dave’s toiling away, and getting us an engine bit by bit, but each bit we get is flawless and well polished. Beta testing’s not going to consist of fixing a bunch of things that could have been avoided ahead of time. It’s being written in C++, which means he started with a blank text entry field. We don’t have anything holding our hands or limiting us. If it helps you wrap your head around what Dave’s taking on, he needs to make the RPG maker before we can actually begin making the RPG, and that statement’s eerily accurate, since he’s making brick road so user friendly.

In that regard, our engine is code written from scratch, making it perfectly flexible. When you consider the way Mother 3 played, it wouldn’t take much to give Lucas a sword, change the story, characters, and setting, eliminate the RPG battle system, make a few more changes, and make a completely new top-down Beyond Oasis/Zelda-esque game.

Art:

The art department is important for any game for obvious enough reasons; It’s the very surface. It’s the first thing you usually notice when experiencing a game. We employ a pretty standard method. We use concept art to inspire some of the more intricate or daunting tasks for the pixel artists that actually make what will appear in-game. Here we’re providing a sketch of Belring’s schoolhouse and toy store, followed by a draft of how they will look in-game. This is actually a pretty specific piece of work, courtesy of Mars, and then tiled by Phones. A lot of Mars’ pieces are largely impressionistic, and only meant to inspire, rather than serve as a solid blueprint. We’re seeing more and more of these rigid pieces as development progresses, though. It’s a magical thing to see the world form.

Click the concept art to view a larger version.

The Big Question

Q: You guys are lunatics! Aren’t you worried about being cease and desisted?

A: As an opening statement, the reason this project’s working out so well (almost 4 years in the making) is because of how hilariously unlikely Nintendo is to give it a C&D order, for reasons you’ve largely covered. From the developer’s side, I can say that there’s very little “stolen” from Nintendo’s series in this game, minus the title, a few character names, Mr. Saturns, (possibly Tendas, we’re still kind of fighting about that), enemies, and things of the like that are staples to the Mother series. These are all minor things that could be considered hails alone, but mixed together, becomes a bit more obvious. The big stuff is ours, however. Our characters are original, our villain is original (And I’m gonna hate to see him go when we’re finished with the game. He’s really cool.), and our world map is original.

From a logical, business perspective, Nintendo certainly will have no interest in seeing the project shot down, since it doesn’t seek profit, and is so unobtrusive compared to other high scale projects. We have nothing to gain, and neither do they. May as well keep the fans off of THEIR backs about the series, right? Heh, in that regard, Reggie may think we’re doing him a favor. You wouldn’t believe how much fanmail we get.

In the event we DO get a cease and desist order, don’t expect Mother 4 to die. We’ve given the game a makeover before, and we can do it again. Just like any good Mother game, this one doesn’t rely on content from past installments to shine. It wouldn’t take much work to yank or alter some of the elements taken from past games, such as a few enemies, songs, and items, and of course, mr. saturns. In that regard, we’d go from “Mother 4” to “That really awesome RPG Azure Studios made”. Actually, we’d be able to cross some lines that would be jumping the shark in the context of a Mother game. It could get pretty interesting.

I could go on about this project forever, which makes sense considering how long we’ve been at it. While we’re not expecting a cease and desist order, we are going to go ahead and end this update before it gets too long-winded. If you feel like there’s something that should have been touched on here that hasn’t been, feel free to address it in the comments. Maybe we’ll edit this thing and add it to the FAQs page or something of the like.

Image Gallery (Help us organize!):

This place contains every screenshot we can find of MOTHER 4. (Please no video screencaps)

Phase 1:

Phase 2:

Phase 3:

Phase 4:

Phase 5 (Current):

OTHER:

Image Description (For above image): I don’t know if any of you guys noticed in the trailer, but each playable character will have their own unique running animation. It helps to give them some individuality as well as reflect their personalities.

Image Description (For above image): I wonder if, once Mother 4 is released, fans will do seasonal pieces for it like what is currently going on with the twins.

Only time will tell.

Note to self: Compress the Train Gif

Image Description (For above image): Mother 4: Recent Sketches our lovely concept artist With a Hint of Lemon and I did so Flint can work on upcoming Clay models!

Jojora’s Concept Enemies

https://forum.starmen.net/forum/Fan/Games/Mother-4-1000/page/56#post1887967

To pass the time until the much-awaited update, allow me to present the fans with what I call

jojora’s TIDBITS FROM “The Back in The Day”

As a former member of the Mother 4 staff, I have seen a lot and made a lot. What I’ll be sharing with you is a good number of sprites and ideas I’ve created during my term.

As a note: The Dave is okay with this.

Disclaimer: Unless I’ve stated otherwise, all information/material [present] was at one point accepted by Chaisu. I am not at liberty to confirm what is currently in the game and what isn’t.

THE FOLLOWING IS NOT INDICATIVE OF THE FINAL PRODUCT

All [outdated] sprites were created by me. Unfortunately, I was unable to save a good number of them.

All [outdated] concept art was created by Phones before he was an actual member IIRC.

Let us begin.

Proposed Items:

A damage dealing item similar to the “New Year’s Eve”, labeled “Happy Holidays”

A non-story-driven Sound Stone used aesthetically as a decoration

Proposed Returning Enemies:

Proposed Original Enemies:

Proposed Bosses:

        Titanic Ant + Antoids

The Positive Man

Killer Thriller and the Smooth Criminals

The Restless Spirit

Dragones

Bosses Immediately Scrapped by Chaisu

        Project NTN

The Porky Statue

Botched Weaponized ASC (By far my first and corniest attempt at applying for the                 Mother4 Staff

Scrapped Cameos

This one actually impressed him a lot.

Not Pictured:

[NPC] A man from the past who will sell you steaks and a bat

[BOSS] ZomB.I.G.

[BOSS] Regginator

[BOSS] Killer Thriller Battle Sprite

[BOSS] The Chosen Statues (NALT, NPJP, LDKB)

Videos:

Mother 4 - The Music (ChaisuM4): https://youtu.be/8bKE80ZszpI

Mirror (M4Preserve): https://youtu.be/N8SgMcdarZ4

More Music from Mother 4 (ChaisuM4): https://youtu.be/M8-Rqm-JxlM

Mirror (M4Preserve): https://youtu.be/QYujcO76aW0

Music of Mother 4 - Episode 3 (Mother4Team)(Deleted): https://youtu.be/PcbfxGFyk5A

Recreation (M4Preserve with DoshesToDoshes): https://youtu.be/dLNzmJchOI0

People known to have the original video:

                ???

Music of Mother 4 - Level Up Jingles (Mother4Team) (Deleted): https://youtu.be/W9Y4cmZ_3Yk

Recreation (M4Preserve with DoshesToDoshes): https://youtu.be/Vy5BxRJY9Xc

People known to have the original video:

                Kiirobomber

Mother 4 Teaser (Mother4Team): https://youtu.be/-fNbJIl_Mkg

Mirror (M4Preserve): https://youtu.be/S8vz-TfU9Iw

Mother 4 Gameplay Trailer (Mother4Team): https://youtu.be/-qtQWUF6-Co

Mirror (M4Preserve): https://youtu.be/bAMAm2gk3Os

Mother 4 Attract Mode (Mother4Team): https://youtu.be/rwPS5sqJpqg

Mirror (M4Preserve): https://youtu.be/518VjSa_U14

Mother 4 - The Lost tracks (M4Preserve): https://youtu.be/AIvroO1X1N8

Shane Mesa Streams:

6/11/15 (Groovy! Sound Effect, Zack’s role in Mother 4, Level up theme (4 different ones)): https://youtu.be/sFqgZqf0bYI

6/12/15 (Super victory song, thoughts on 4chan leak, and Mother 4 inspired track):

https://youtu.be/7lC4iF_BB2M

6/13/15-6/22/15 (Renee info, VST’s, Progress Bar coming?, types of music):

https://youtu.be/obJ6iOO1SN8

Music Titles (reddit user Mswordx23)

“Some music track titles have changed over the course of development. The old track titles give details about where/when the tracks will play. Here are all the relevant old track titles (circa 2012), going by memory:

• Hometown Strut (MOTHER 4 - Belring [Day])
• Hometown Laze (MOTHER 4 - Belring [Night])
• The Green Run (MOTHER 4 - Applegate [Day])
• Dog Humor (MOTHER 4 - Convenient Store)
• Super Fresh Sheets (MOTHER 4 - Hotel Theme [Day])
• Useful Vacation (MOTHER 4 - Hint House)
• Mom and Cooking and Stuff (MOTHER 4 - Travis’ House)

The Great 4Chan Leaks

WARNING: POSSIBLE MAJOR SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT

Link to full, archived threads (now broken):

https://archive.moe/v/thread/278562519/#278610225

https://archive.moe/v/thread/281952980/#281970564

This post is not spoilers, just someone trolling on 4chan

First Link: Fine, you faggots. You want spoilers? Fine. I'm sick of this shit.

No it shouldn't be called Mother 4, because it's barely a fucking video game. There. This is the final boss, this is the Super UFO that Giygas is in.

Details:

>The slime pillars are "Godstones" used to curse the planet

>Travis is being tricked by Floyd into touching them and gathering hate to revive Giygas

>The final party is Travis, Zack, Meryl, Leo

>Leo fights the final boss alone

>You beat it by using a music box item eight times

>You don't even collect melodies, you just play them

>It's a prequel to Mother

>The Giygas that appears in Mother is the revived Giygas from Earthbound

>There is a line after beating the Super UFO: "Whoa... Time travel is really trippy... How does that even work?" to which Meryl replies "How do magnets work?" and then they all stand there with question mark bubbles.

>The Mr. Saturns build Travis a UFO bat. It's designed to hit UFOs out into space before they can land.

>Floyd is the boss of the Modern Men

More coming.

Problems with this particular leak:

The leak uses the exact same Leo tile and background as the first image and the UFO’s topped on each other look too similar to the image with Travis running away from a UFO in the desert, Pastel later clarifies that this entire thing was fake in the second big 4chan leak (and I’ve got more confirmation from Zane that this entire thing was just a load of baloney)

Second link:

?: Info from the leddit AMA that one of the devs did:

>tone is most similar to Mother 1

>about as long as Earthbound

>no grinding, but don't expect to spam boosting moves and be able to steamroll bosses

>map is open, similar to Earthbound's

>Pastel wrote almost all of the game

>rhythm combos are back

>past Mother enemies are back too

>there's supposed to be an iconic tune like Earthbound's 8 Melodies

>the reason why the trailer was delayed was because one of the guys pushed for a redesign of the battle UI

>each character has 8 upgrade weapons plus unique items that can cause different effects

>the game takes place in an area called Pleiades, has 5 or 6 towns "depending on how you count certain places"

>when that meter on the character's card gets filled completely, that character gets a "Groovy!" bonus which gives them an immediate free turn even when enemies are in the middle of attacking

>team will disband once the game is released

>trailer will come out soon, they need to finish 3 more scenes apparently

?: It’s taking forevver sorry, but i’m gonna dump the cool stuff i saw

?: This too

Pastel: I'm not sure who distributed links to the dropbox or anything, but I thought I'd clarify what's being posted. Two dropbox folders containing work from much of the first year of recent development and some of our assets from the second year. You can walk around buggy old beta maps with nothing in them or look at enemy sprites and character designs, many of which are no longer in use.

It probably makes more sense to get it from the source.

Usually I make sure our team doesn't post here. It's in poor taste to talk about our own work, but this deserves some exceptional treatment. Anyway - the dropbox folders (in particular, mother-4-game) were being used as a development environment for the trailer we're working on. Having to relocate was a little inconvenient, but there you go.

For example, this is Pleiades' capital early on in its development, featured briefly.

If you have any questions, shoot em my way.

?: Which dev are you?

Pastel: I'm Pastel, good to meetcha.

?: What relevance does Pleiades have in the story?

?: Is Pleiades the continent MOTHER 4 takes place on? That’s not very clear to me.

Pastel: Pleiades is basically the Eagleland of the game. It had seven capital cities at one point. However, you visit other lands now and then.

?: Is the game *fun*?

Pastel: I like to think it is! If you get multiple smash hits in a row, you can juggle enemies Devil May Cry style. It doesn't do anything, but it looks cool.

?: How many of you are in this thread? How many threads have you viralled here? Who the fuck are you?

Pastel: I'm the only one posting, though we've been watching it from the start. Alec was the one that noticed it first. We don't viral, because there's nothing to viral and like I said it's in extremely poor taste. The only other time I've posted was to tell people there's no memes in the writing.

?: Thanks for stopping by. What do you folks think about people who bash the game sorely on the name? Also, I’m glad you posted but it’s going to suck talking the game now since you’re going to have people like (last person) saying discussion is because of viraling.

Pastel: I think they have a point. A lot of people hold Mother super near and dear to their hearts, so a kneejerk reaction to seeing us use the title being a negative one is definitely something I understand.

?: What’s your backup plan if nintendo files a C&D?

Pastel: Remove Mr. Saturns and past enemies and release a freeware RPG. We don't want to do that though - part of what makes working on this game fun is being able to explore possibilities in the context of the existing three games.

?: Spoil an enemy for us. Just one.

(quotes stickcat post with pic)

Pastel: It’s called a Stickat. They have a nervous disposition and around 86 HP.

?: fuck you you fucking faggot quit modding good games literally worse than pm

Pastel: I promise this is the last time.

?: What’s your favourite Mother enemy?

Pastel: Personally I'm fond of the Starmen, but I think my favorite might be the Parental Kangashark cuz that's always the one that comes to mind.

?: Hey Pastel. I remember hearing about Life+ ages ago, any chance you’re going to work on that after M4?

Pastel: I probably will, though on a smaller scale than it was. It suffered from feature creep, though I took a lot of what I learned there and applied it to Mother 4. I poke at the engine now and then.

?: Did y’all keep the mechanic where you could use PP that was indicated on the hud even though it was scrolling down to a lower point.

Pastel: Yep, that's a mechanic that stayed. If you remember in Earthbound, sometimes a slug or something would try to use hypnosis and not have enough PP - if you roll below the PP threshold needed to use a skill before you use it, the attempt will result in a similar message.

?: Is the crowd system still a thing? As in having NPCs walk around instead of staying in one little area the whole game.

Pastel: I'm really iffy on it - Dave still has the code to make it happen, but our NPC layouts are pretty solid. The way it works is either an NPC blocks your movement which would get annoying fast, or they walk through you which looks bizarre, especially when sprite depths get involved.

?: There was a mail system described on the old website, I think. Is that still in, or was it too tricky to program or what?

Pastel: You save by mailing postcards. I haven't decided if you get money by people mailing it to you or not yet. If so, it'd be something like opening the mailbox to save and getting a message along the lines of

@ Oh! The people of Christmas Street sent you $125. Would you like to send a postcard and save?

?: Where the leaks at?

Pastel: I'm not sure! But considering their dubious origin, I'm considering just uploading the two folders myself so you know it's safe. I'd have to go over it with Dave because I know he worked hard on the tools we use to develop and I don't think he wants those public yet or at all.

While I'd really rather not have anything posted, I'd rather make sure people get their stuff from somewhere safe instead of interested parties getting punished by who knows who on the internet.

Incidentally, we were for a while considering making an AM/FM radio fixture our battle menu.

?: Why did Shane put up Hometown Laze but not Hometown Strut? Speaking of which, is the day and night cycle still a thing?

Pastel: Hometown Strut is still being reworked. Initially, the sound was a little too high fidelity for the rest of the soundscape being put forward. We still have some quality dissonance in regards to the instrument selection, but it's not as dramatic now. The day and night thing is still in - but in a limited quantity. Originally you could leave people at a hotel and go off as individual characters to explore a town at night. Now the group doesn't split up, but you can still go around at night time.

?: Is there a dog like Earthbound and Mother 3? What’s Travis’ default favorite food?

Pastel: He has a dog, but the dog stays home. He likes rotini.

?: Why does one of your enemies look like a grieving starman?

Pastel: It's an aesthetic nod. Do you mean Ghost of Robot, the guy with the red eye and plasma dagger thingy? Initially I was going to make him bulkier and spikier and more obviously robotic - shaped kind of like the Dreadnoughts from Warhammer 40k, but over revisions it turned out the way it did.

?: Fair enough. I think the stuff you’ve posted up to now has been enough to respect that. On a different note is the game open-world in the sense of Earthbound, or MOTHER? Or perhaps strictly linear like MOTHER 3? Also, does Zack not have a clay model yet or liiiiiike....?

Pastel: It's open in the same sense Earthbound is and then some. I don't want to post the full map or anything, but the way it's laid out there is a town right in the middle of everything, and once you get to it you can go whichever way. That's not to say going south won't get you clobbered by scorpions, but you're free to roam.

Zack isn't a main party character - he's not the Jeff or Paula or Poo - and when we were relaunching the website we only had time to get our main guys done.

?: From an older thread I heard that this game takes place on Earth Lucas made in the future. Is that true? And if you can’t answer that is still true that in their time period they have 60’s-70’s-ish technology? Is Zack Teddy tier strong?

Pastel: The game takes place in 197X. Run with that wherever you want! Zack is kind of Flint-like, or maybe Boney-ish.

?: PASTEL! Are you ever going to work on Life+ again? I used to follow you in game dev threads on /v/ years ago. *After all this time, I still want to play it so badly ;_;*

Pastel: Yeah, probably. See (3 posts above) for stuff like that.

?: I specifically came into this thread to tell you how much I dislike this UI.

Pastel: The UI went through so many iterations, eventually we had to settle on something. Using Mother 3's with no updates felt disingenuous as we'd just be making the sprites slightly larger and it wouldn't fit the tone of the other menus what with its feather cursor and single color panel layout.

Eventually we just had to pick something and went with something that's responsive and not intrusive.

?: The games free and are we getting a demo of any kind?

Pastel: Free yes, demo no. That's why I think the stuff being posted would be a waste of time since it's a testing environment.

?: Oh fuck you’re the Life+ dev? I remember following your blog years ago after seeing your work on here but then you suddenly stopped updating. ;_;

Pastel: Yeah. Life interfered hardcore on that, and I got really bogged down by not being able to settle on a visual style. It strayed really far away from the original Kirby's Dreamland 3 style art, and went elsewhere. Aside from the technological regions, it was hard to stay consistent and I decided to come back to it when I had more discipline and time to dedicate to it.

?: Enemies are in the overworld like M2&3 right?

Pastel: Yes. The UFO seen here is an enemy.

?: lets hear some dirt on the team. Is Shane really a huge douche?

Pastel: No, he's a really nice guy. Normally I don't like working with people, but I really lucked out because everybody on this team is really great. Regarding the tweets he made that upset people, he was just trying to keep people calm and not disappoint them when we missed our video deadline.

?: Oh, I thought that was a cutscene. So are those sweatdrops like in Mother 3 with the PSI development?

Pastel: Those sweatdrops are indicative of impending sunstroke.

?: Will it be more upbeat kind of like Mother ½ were or have some really depressing stuff like 3. Also Giygas?

Pastel: It's closer to Mother 1, but I'm really not trying to hit any tone set by the three canon games. I'd like it to stand on its own with its own tone. No Giygas, his story's resolved.

?: That looks like proto-Meryl, is that her Mother.

Pastel: It's just an NPC based on the original Meryl design, since we still liked the dress.

?: Can you dump super old stuff that won’t be used and wont spoil the game?

Pastel: Maybe! Most of the files are .bmp so it's a lot of saving as .png.

?: Tell us the first draft of the story. I know the story now is completely different so it won’t be consequential right?

Pastel: There are a few ideas still hanging around, but I feel like it'd be disrespectful to do that without asking Zephys or Chase since they wrote it. One of the first things I changed when I came onboard though was reduce our amount of cutscenes/time the player isn't in control. It used to be a lot more character driven, but now it's more event driven.

?: that faggot from the old thread that tried to act like an ex-dev top kek (referring to the super ufo leak earlier)

Pastel: There very briefly was an enemy called Super Ufo... but it certainly wasn't that.

?: Any other battle changes from 3? Why’d you take out their hands popping out of their HP/PP boxes?

Pastel: I wanted the boxes to be more expressive without having to make Pik and Max animate a lot more things for the characters... that and the way the characters looked at you with their back to the enemy as they attacked took me out of the game. It was cute, but it felt odd to me. So, instead the boxes behave as the characters. For example, when hit they jiggle, when asleep they kinda drift down and toss a bit, and as seen in one of the leaked images when frozen or diamondized the box itself freezes and diamondizes. Other changes, like Zane mentioned in the AMA, is the Groove Meter. When it fills up, you get a bonus turn even if it fills during the enemy's turn. Attacking and healing and eating good food like pizza and stuff fills it, getting hit reduces it.

?: >Renee

The leaked villian?

Pastel: Incidentally, I don't think the person who leaked Renee's name knew his role in the game and didn't think it was as big of a spoiler as it is. Of course, we could just change his name, or leave it, since he basically got everything wrong.

?: oh (this is the guy who asked about the first draft of the story)

Pastel: Alright.

There was a concept of an enemy called "The Plant," which was essentially the anger of the Earth. That plot line has been cut, but I briefly reworked it into something along the lines of the anger of technology? The whole thing really didn't feel fun or interesting so it was gutted pretty quick all together. Pic related, it was a concept that never got realized.

?: Posting just to say I’m super hyped for this game, and thanks to the whole team for their hard work and efforts!

?: Like what an anon above me said earlier, I’m super excited for this game (one of my most hyped games of 2014-now 2015). It looks great. Thanks for the hard work, dudes. I’ve been watching the project since 2010ish and it’s awesome to see it come to life beautifully. Cheers.

Pastel: Thank you very much!

?: Is the game sad/emotionally heavy and disturbing like the previous games? Or is it more like a light-headed best of of everything happy and fun in the series? The atmosphere seems to be more relaxed.

Pastel: It has its ups and downs.

?: What the concept for the 4th D-Slip coming back and being used for something else/having a new feature?

Pastel: It will have a use outside of battle.

?: I JUST WANNA SAY I LIKE YOU AND YOUR GAME MY FAVOURITE FREEWARE JRPG IS JOJO’S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: THE 7TH STAND USER BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING HARDCORE LIKE THE OLD JRPGS (I.E. IT WILL FUCK YOU AT RANDOM INTERVALS) WILL THIS GAME BE HARDCORE LIKE MOTHER 1/EARTHBOUND OR WILL IT BE A CHILDREN’S GAME LIKE MOTHER 3? I’LL LIKE IT EITHER WAY, I JUST WANT A HANDLE ON THE DIFFICULTY.

Pastel: Thank you! In terms of difficulty, it's closer to Earthbound. One thing I didn't like about Mother 3 is how you could basically use Offense/Defense Up constantly and win the fight by default. In Mother 4 there are debuff skills like in Shin Megami Tensei where half the bosses have Dekunda and Dekaja.

?: My dick is more of an update.

Pastel: If it lasts longer than four hours call a doctor.

Anyway, my intention isn't getting attention - like I've stated previously I'd rather the leaks not be posted at all. However, if there's interest I'd rather be the one to post it. Looking at the thread, there's more than enough people saying not to. There's that and a general feeling of it being disrespectful to the artists and mostly to Dave, since we haven't come to a conclusion on publishing the development tools. As I've said, the leak isn't much but posting it rubs me the wrong way anyway. Most of the folders are empty, there's a testing environment and some old maps, a couple newer maps, and bitmaps of NPCs that account for most of the filesize. There's also a folder called "kid retard" that has a gif of some game on PS2 that I think is Jak and Daxter, but I've never actually clicked it so I dunno. It's a lot of duplicate files and redundancies.

Pastel: While I’m here, Pik wanted feedback on palette choice of the Blue Raspberry flavor.

?: Will my shitty 2gb ram laptop be able to run it?

Pastel: Yeah, my old .9GB RAM netbook from the Windows XP days can run it with only minor shader blinks on the battle backgrounds every now and then.

?: These battle background are better than Mother 3’s, I think. Mother 3 is my favorite video game too.

?: I really like you dev (with pic of Sakurai *laughs*)

Pastel: Thank you very much!

?: >taking inspiration from smt

dude i can only fucking CUM so many times in one day keep up the GOOD WORK and don’t release the game until it’s READY

Pastel: Incidentally, the "Plain" flavor is almost directly inspired by SMT 4. It highlights yellowish green. We'll be taking our time, don't worry.

?: Can I just ask something slightly unrelated to Mother 4? If someone wanted to create an indie game (fan game or not), where would they start? Furthermore, where did you start?

Pastel: That's a really tough question, but I think the best thing to do is just start practicing and hanging around the people you want to work with. Go to game dev forums and start playing around with whatever thing appeals to you. For me, I started by throwing programmer art into Game Maker, then I did sprite edits, and everything just kind of moved on from there.

You might want to check out /agdg/ on /vg/ sometime, they tend to have really good resources for just getting started. No matter what though, just make whatever game you wanna make.

?: nice *i drew this for you*

Pastel: That’s adorable. You’re awesome!

?: are you allowed to tell us the name of Travis’ offensive PSI attack?

Pastel: It’s PK Daydream.

?: Hey Pastel, someone asked this in the reddit thread linked here but it went unanswered: will you guys now be doing somewhat regular updated on the blog or twitter? Even something small would be appreciated. Thanks for stopping by /v/, the assets you’ve been posting are awesome.

Pastel: We're going to try - it's our serious intent to be more transparent to avoid a lot of the confusion that follows us around (with good reason, I think).

?: Is the dynamic city system still in from way back when?

Pastel: Town life was basically a system where different characters developed different relationships, and it was a lot of extra scripting. Certain side quests will change things like clearing trash from alleys or removing scorpions from tunnels, so they're dynamic in that sense.

?: Pastel. What color panties does ____ wear? Do any of the other devs aspire to make independent, original games?

Pastel: Underscores don't wear panties, they're too spoiled.

?: Would you have any objections to posting the game’s color palette? The stuff you’ve posted is gorgeous and I’d like to mess with some art of my own in similar colors.

Pastel: Here you go. It isn't full, as our palette changes a lot. Most of our blues for instance are in the PSI image posted earlier.

?: Travis dies.

Pastel: Everybody dies when they get old except robots.

?: Why did Travis ditch his shorts? Him wearing shorts made him stand out a little bit from the other M4 guys.

Pastel: Animation was party of it, but he lives on top of a mountain next to a lake. The game is kind of autumn-y in general, so it didn't make too much sense to have him running around in shorts. If you'll notice, most people are dressed a little warmly. Meryl spends most of her time indoors, so she's cool wearing shorter stuff. Leo lives way up north so he's bundled up with a scarf and leathers.

?: Does any character die in this game?

?: (in response to someone saying if they could romance Meryl) is a very important question

Pastel: Story questions are things I won’t answer.

?: Hey Pastel, can you let us design an enemy, right here, right now?

Pastel: Give it a shot! I can't guarantee we'll use it because as I've said earlier I really really really want to keep the internet away from the game's world or writing.

?: Do you think you could post a screenshot of an area we haven’t seen?

Pastel: Sure, this is a development shot of an area pretty early on.

?: That UI looks horrible.

Pastel: If you get more specific I can see what we can do about it.

?: can we see some unused enemy artwork? or any enemy artwork?

Pastel: See (links to creepy pic)

?: If Floyd’s from a blue collar family, why does he toss around money?

Pastel: His ability is talking. He doesn't throw HIS money around, he throws your money - the group's money. They trust him with it.

?: who’s your favorite character of the main 4?

Pastel: It used to be Leo, but lately it's Floyd. Designwise I'm proudest of Meryl's, since she changed the most.

?: isn’t someone on the team also on PMDT? based

Pastel: Yes, but I don't know how that project handles teammate identities so I don't wanna divulge who.

SIDE NOTE: Apparently it’s Pik since he posts on the PM subreddit.

Random 4chan users’ enemy ideas:

Pastel: (in response to all except the yogurt enemy) I just want you to know that even if we don't use them - and I really might - the team loves you guys for these. Q-Tip dude has the exact pose of one of our enemies.

(in response to the yogurt enemy): Incidentally, we already have a spilled yogurt enemy... But you're still awesome. I love the fruit bits.

?: You seem like a really great and nice guy. Keep up the good work!

Pastel: Thank you very much!

?: >shitposter insults devs game

>he offers to fix it instead of getting mad or defensive

Based Pastel.

Pastel: Making a good game is more important than my feelings, in my opinion.

?: >no character sprites

backwards ass nostalgia garbage i’ll stick with mother 3 thank you very much

?: Thinking about it I’d have to agree that character sprites on the battle boxes would be better.

Pastel: I think once some of the effects are seen on the character boxes I'll have a better idea of how it affects the feel of the game, but it was a contentious issue that's still a bit up in the air. Like (random user defending Pastel’s opinion) said, the motion lets you infer emotion and movement feels more expressive to me.

?: What engine is this based off of, could it run on android?

Pastel: It's programmed in C#. I don't think there's any way that would happen, I'm sorry.

Also I really want to say thank you all for the kind words and interest, and criticisms. All of these things help us out a lot but I really, really on behalf of the team want to thank you for your patience and understanding. You're all cool people.

?: What does it look like when you get a 16-hit combo? Did you raise/lower the combo limit?

Pastel: The combo limit is still 16, because (and I think my terminology might be wrong) there are 16 notes in a measure, four four note chords. It makes it easier to pick out a place that's comfortable to combo from.

?: I’ve been following the game forever and this thread has been a huge treat. You have no idea how appreciative we are (or I am, at least) that you cam here, and would be thrilled for the possibility of future threads. I’m gonna hold you to that promise for trying to make regular updates via the official channels, though.

Pastel: I'm glad to hear that. Accountability is important.

?:

Pastel: Reminds me of number muncher!

?: The hitting animation sounds so weak. Is it supposed to be like that?

Pastel: It's more intense on other enemies. It's relative to their center, and they jiggle more for smashes. Admittedly for the mouse I kept it like that because it looks like he's bobbing his head to the music.

?: Hey Pastel, How was it like writing for the game?

Pastel: It's tricky. For games with lots of player feedback, you have to keep things super concise. If this were like a MUD or a traditional RPG, more textboxes would be okay, but it's a game based more around exploring and finding the next "thing" to experience, so I didn't want to constantly bog players down with scenes that took six minutes or NPCs with four text boxes that you wind up looping over and over trying to spam through.

It's a really good exercise for pacing, that's for sure.

Snow+Nobodys=Snobodys

(Not really Mother 4 related, but this is Dani and Shane before they got into the game)