Tutorial: Trying Your Translation

Trying Out Your Translation

Compiling Your ROM

Now that you have edited a line that you can easily find in the game, save your changes and go into CoilSnake once more. Before getting started, you'll need to copy your EarthBound ROM:

1. Copy your EarthBound ROM and rename it to something like EarthBoundExpanded.smc or EarthBoundExpanded.sfc
2. Click on the Compile tab in CoilSnake
3. Click on the "Browse..." button next to the Base ROM field
4. Find the ROM you renamed to EarthBoundExpanded.smc
5. Click on "Browse..." next to the Project: field and navigate to your project folder
6. Click on "Browse..." next to the Output ROM: field and create a new file with whatever name you want
7. Click on the big "Compile" button
8. CoilSnake will ask you if you want to expand your ROM. Say yes and it will expand your ROM for you
9. Now sit back and let the compilation process complete

Watch a video of these steps: http://youtu.be/cjVKUQSSkhQ

Now open up the newly created file with an emulator, and you'll be testing out your translation!

A Note on Testing

Verify your translation often by compiling and then running it periodically. This will allow you to catch any errors you may have caused or see if you made any mistakes while translating. If you have any problems, ask a question at the help topic on the PK Hack boards.

A NOTE ON LETTERS

If your language uses characters outside of the 26 letters that English uses you will need to modify the font to support your language's character set. I will go over this in the section "Modifying game fonts". For now, you should do two things: First, test that a simple change that only involves the Roman alphabet works when you compile. Then, go ahead and start translating and using your full language's character set in the ccs files when you translate them. Once you use any character outside of the Roman alphabet (such as ã in Portuguese), your game text will no longer compile, but that's okay. We'll go over how to fix this in the Font section.