January 30th, 2013 | EarthBound, Hacking, MOTHER 1

The folks working on the MOTHER remake hack have finished all the map work for the outdoors areas! Here’s a look at the map of maps:

All of the locations and rooms in EarthBound are actually stored as one giant map, which is why you see all of these MOTHER 1/EarthBound Zero maps arranged this way. Later, a lot of the blank areas will be filled with indoor maps, like the insides of houses, buildings, dungeons, and the like.

This is actually a huge step in the project – maps were like THE biggest hurdle when I attempted an EarthBound Zero remake hack years ago. I wound up shelving the project when the buggy map editors kept corrupting everything:

There’s still a ton of work left to be done, so I wouldn’t expect this remake hack to get done for another year or two at least (that’s just my prediction, I’m not involved with the project). But man, oh, man, I can’t wait to see all the pieces coming together quicker and quicker now 😀

If you want to keep up with more detailed progress of the project, keep an eye on this forum thread!