Tyr

If you come across this problem in the future again, the easiest way (meaning you don't need to search for a new code) is simply to delete every instance of garbage characters via regular expressions. In this case, you have some patterns you can use to filter the hooked strings. For example, all the garbage characters are ASCII characters, so you could search for all strings which consist of only ASCII characters. Thanks to Unicode using the same range for ASCII as SJIS, you can always use this expression for this purpose: [\x20-\x7F]* This would work fine if you never have ASCII in your game text. If this is too broad, you could also try to use underscores as a border marker since nearly every garbage line uses underscores in the beginning and the end of the string: _.*_ This would delete everything except a "bu" before every important line in Thread 4, which is probably fine enough since these would be hooked anyway and don't interfere with your other threads. And you can be sure to never delete anything important because a VN script most certainly won't use the underscore character. These are just some very simple examples to give you some pointers where to begin finding solutions the next you time have this problem. Never do this. Use regular expressions instead. The only exception to this rule would be if there is only a small number of not common but very persistent characters. Never overwrite ITHVNR releases. Every newer release might break something an older version was capable of. It has something to do with the way how VNR works from which ITHVNR steals its hooking algorithms. It's different from the original ITH where every new release completely superseded the last.

@Infernoplex Thank you for providing these screenshots. With this, we can say with certainty that the Refine release has a new translation which is far inferior to the old one. At this point I see no reason in buying the Steam release. Well, aside from financing the potential release of other entries in the series of course. Oh boy, I feel I have seen this many times before: >releasing an inferior version of something that is already available >number of sales will decide whether other (actual new) games will also be released >"Sales fell short of expectations. Apparently nobody wants this."

The last three questions in this thread, all asked by an account registered solely for the purpose of asking these questions: [Lamputa]: ITH Updater doesn't work! [Tyr]: Don't use the ITH Updater. Download the newest ITH release instead. [Razur]: ITH Updater doesn't work! [sanatlig]: Don't use the ITH Updater. Download the newest ITH release instead. [The man with no name]: ITH Updater doesn't work! I'm out.

... but we actually got Princess Maker 2... That said, I'm wondering if this version is using the old translation (which I don't remember anymore aside from being perfectly fine for the time it was released) or if they are using a new one. But as it certainly can't be better than the original, I don't see any benefit in buying this version. I can't find any information on what makes the "Refine"d edition better than the original. They should have released another game in the series English speaker haven't already played instead. 19 years! End of Evangelion was released in 1997! (And it better had been the End...)

Why is Inochi no Spare associated with good story? Why is it called a depressing game? What's up with "talking about serious issues"? Have you even read the game?

>reading something that is named Enkou Shoujo >not thinking it's a nukige not sure if serious

Which endings do you consider "bad"? It's not that clear since there is a lot moral ambiguity. To be honest, the good ending and the true ending had the biggest impact on me. I already wrote a 2000 words wall of text to @Deep Blue discussing the novel ^^, so I will make it short this time: Natsu no Kusari is by far the best eroge I've read in recent years. Usually, I like short novels far better than the longer ones, simply because I can't stand filler material. I started reading Inochi no Spare and it really offends me. The story in that game doesn't make any sense. It's not just stupid, it's offendingly stupid. It's offending because it uses a real problem and uses it for cheap drama. It's offending because it assumes that the reader wants cheap drama without any substance. You need to be intellectual retarded to actually care for the characters or the story. And that's offending because the theme of the game is far too serious to make light use of it. The core theme of Inochi no Spare is that parents force their childs to give their lives for the older sibling. And that is just offending. It doesn't make any sense. No parent would do this. This is not a real existing problem in our society. To compare it with the movie My Sister's Keeper which has a similar story: The mother would NEVER expect her child to die for her sister. NEVER. She expects her to help her sister, but not to die for her. That's a real existing moral dilemma. That makes sense. But the writer of Inochi no Spare tried to make the DRAMA more extreme and instead of just "helping" the sister she now needs to "die" for her. And that is just nonsense. It's offending. It's ridiculous that the writer and Akabei Soft 3 even thought that this would be a good idea. And that the reader would fall for this nonsense. How socially retarded must one be to be emotionally involved in such a forced melodrama with no logic or real world resemblance? You really need to live in a 2D world to accept BS like this. Well, I hate Akabei Soft 3 and all their games anyway, so this wasn't really a surprise for me. If there is one eroge company which stands for anything that is wrong with modern eroge, it's probably Akabei Soft 3. (And Silky's Plus close behind lol).

I'm sorry for putting it so bluntly but how do you expect me to help you if you can't answer my questions properly? ^^'' The reason that nobody made a H-Code yet is probably because the game isn't pirated yet. I guess you bought a copy on DMM? Well, I would try to make a H-code for you but you will understand that I won't buy this game for that reason alone. And I really have no interest in the game itself. So if you want me to guide you to make a H-code yourself, I need more information: Which tool are you using? I need the name. I guess it's not Cheat Engine. Is it ollydbg? Well, whatever. Cheat Engine is really the only good choice nowadays and if you don't use it already, please start using it now. It also helps me to guide you better, because that's the one I'm most familiar with. Are you sure you properly converted your Japanese text string into UTF-16 (and SJIS, we can't be sure it's UTF-16 yet). Please post your Japanese text string and the hex array you converted it into. Maybe something is wrong with the string. Or maybe we have to split the string because of script commands or whatever. Please try to explain in detail what you tried to do already to find the H-code for the game. Maybe with screen shots. I'm pretty sure that the game can be hooked with the correct H-code. It would be very strange for a low budget nukige to use a non-hookable text output method.

Judging from your screen shots, you are not hooking the text. Every hooked line of yours has the same length which is not the length of the text shown ingame, so I guess it's just some kind of engine routine using automatically hooked Windows functions unrelated to the actual text output. By the way, the function clearly states it's used for UTF-16 characters, so your character encoding would have been wrong anyway. If I'm right, the only solution is to find a H-code for the game. And speaking of that: What tool are you using? Probably Cheat Engine, right? If you are using Cheat Engine and your game uses something different than SJIS (probably UTF-16 in this case), it won't show a result if you search for the Japanese character string. You have to convert your character string into hex first, then search for the byte array. You said you searched for hex. Did you convert the text into UTF16 hex code?

Nazi symbols are fine in art, sadly video games are still not recognized as art in Germany. However, Nazi symbols are not illegal per se, you're just not allowed to sell products with swastikas in public. That means for example: A German shop isn't allowed to sell Dies Irae in public. But I'm allowed to buy it. The shop is also allowed to sell me the product as long as the game itself is not showcased in the shop. Violence is historically the only thing that is censored in Germany. You guys might have heard of the Criminal Girls 2 and Valkyrie Drive debacle that happened recently and even we Germans are dumbfounded by it because it's so out of the ordinary. Most fanservice games got a 12+ rating in recent years even though they usually get a PEGI16 or M rating in EU and USA. Time will tell what happened there, I speculate some personal or political agenda is at work here. It's important to notice though, that "Germany" does not censor games. Publisher censor games so they can sell them to teens in Germany. Because Germany takes youth protection very seriously, which is not a bad thing. It goes like this: - Rating boards would rate a violent game with an 18+ label - Publisher wants more copies sold so he targets the 12+/16+ audience - Publisher censors the game to get the desired lower rating There are essentially no video games in Germany that are illegal. If you hear about a game being "banned" it essentially means it's 18+. Every adult in Germany can buy every game he wants. Even uncensored versions from other countries. It's just that some games aren't allowed to be publicly sold, like I mentioned above. But that doesn't mean they are illegal. No work of art is illegal in Germany as long as it's fiction. Censored games are the result of greedy publishers, not of German laws. No, I think it's important that someone tells the truth so that other people don't believe half-truths. We were speaking of importing stuff. "Distributing" is something entirely else. The term "wirklichkeitsnah" (realistic looking) is something which often spawns arguments between Germans who discuss this topic. There is always someone who argues "If a Manga looks too realistic, it's child porn". This however is NOT true. The meaning of "wirklichkeitsnah" is not a matter of interpretation. It's used for cases where a real abuse is filtered through a form of art. For example, an artist who uses a real child as a model. And it's safe for the customer to assume, that everything that is legally sold in Japan was produced without abusing a child. The BKA (German law enforcement agency) explicitly stated in an interview in regards to hentai, lolicon and such that these forms of entertainment never satisfy the condition of "wirklichkeitsnah". To use another example, even the most disgusting toddlercon eroguro doujinshi is legal in Germany. Because it's fiction. Being on the index doesn't mean that it's illegal. It only means it's liable to corrupt the young. Like I said many times in this post, not being allowed to be distributed does not mean that the product is illegal or that it's illegal to buy or own it. If you are/know German, try to look at this: Liste verbotener Medien in der BRD You will see that only a very small percentage of this list is actually illegal, and always for a good reason. Good reasons are for example (child/animal) abuse, glorification of violence (which is not justified as an element of art) or simple legal issues like not being authorized. There are no illegal video games and only three illegal movies (two of them show real animal abuse, the third is actually due to a mistake in evaluating the content and wouldn't even stand a chance in court... @XReaper knows what I'm talking about, but that is another matter altogether)

You think the "not raping them thus getting them all killed"-alternative is a better way to get the romance flag? Not to mention that it's actually not rape if it's consensual.

There are no problems with importing eroge in Germany. German laws clearly state that every work of fiction, regardless how deviant it might be, is legal ... simply because it's fiction.

That pretty much nails it though

Why doing it in the first place if it's only mindless grinding to you? I finished La Dea with 100%, maximizing the challenge in every additional playthrough of course.

I rather think it's pointless to play a game without a challenge.

The elitist circlejerk who likes to say this can't even read German. And we all know that you can only appreciate a work of literature when you read it in its original language. Don't trust people who read English translations!

euphoria made me what I am today.

It's an analogy. The point is, you only know one part of something bigger, but assume that everything else must also be exactly like the part you know. I think it's exactly because Japan is not progressive and open-minded, that they produce so elaborated fiction. My taste or that I think Japanese porn is of a higher quality has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Instead of "quality porn" we can simply call it "Japanese porn" and the arguments are still valid. If we are talking about eroge, it's probably true. If we are talking about JAVs, I still see innovation and new things every month. Like I said, I don't see this. The difference in attitudes towards pornographic content is not much different in some Western countries than in Japan. We also have a history full of sexuality and pornography. But we still don't have this level of sophisticated porn output today like the Japanese have. At this point I think it's not because of culture, but because the Japanese were conditioned to this kind of porn by only having censored porn available. What you are seeing nowadays as Japanese "culture" is heavily shaped by years of producing censored pornography and trying to circumvent or enhance it. And embracing it. Censorship is part of the reason for this culture's existence, part of its origin. It's the fundamental difference between pron in Japan and in the West. What will happen to the Japanese culture when we remove the censorship? Well, just look at uncensored JAVs. They are like Western porn, uninspired and with no innovation. No effort, because it will be bought thanks to uncensored genitals and not because of the quality of the product. Japanese people are no different than Western people in that regard. Japaneses culture doesn't protect the genre from going the cheap, low effort way if it's possible. With the difference that in Western porn it's the exception while in Japanese porn it's the norm.

I live in a Western country and yet I can see nipples at lunchtime on TV every day and we still produce bad pornography. Your argument is flawed because most Western countries actually are pretty progressive and open-minded. So I don't see a correlation here. I'm not sure I understand your argument. Tropes are not bad. Of course porn relies on tropes. These tropes are called fetishes and they're the reason we watch this. The difference in quality between Western and Japanese pron is simply how much these fetishes are explored and appreciated. Let's use the Maid fetish as an example: Western porn: 3 minutes of a bad acting maid in a stupid pseudo-setting, she undresses, 27 minutes of generic sex, no trace of a maid left. Every single time. Japanese porn: Variable length, high quality costumes, elaborated setting and uses its time for build-up, actress is in-character the whole time, whole sex act is focused on master-maid relationship. Implying the West has no sex culture. Which is obviously not true. The culture is there, but it doesn't get reflected in pornography. Because humans are simple. They think the only thing they need to fap is a naked body. They think the most interesting things are the things they normally don't see (genitals). And that's what they will buy. Japanese makers of pornography can't take this shortcut. They can't satisfy the simply need of showing uncensored genitals, so they need to do something else to make their videos interesting. Elaborated stories to flesh out fetishes or the actresses' personality for example. If a Western studio did that, it would cost more than a "normal" video and would probably not sell very well. Because the normalfag would rather buy the cheap vid with naked bodies having sex instead of a more expensive video which is wasting its time on non-explicit stuff like roleplaying or the non-explicit parts of a fetish. Well, how about stop watching the JAVs you don't like and start watching the vids more to your liking? Saying that every JAV features scared women is like saying every eroge is a nukige. Don't be a pleb and only watch what JList has in stock or what's popular on xhamster when you search for "asian". What you are describing are Debut JAVs and they are probably the most cheap and boring genre of the medium. And sadly the only thing that is actively advertised to gaijins. Don't let that fool you. The world of JAVs is much, much more than this.

Censoring is the only reason that Japanese porn is leagues above the porn from every other country. I don't understand why any sane ero connoisseur would want the laws and the market to change. If you rather look at ugly genitals in full glory instead of enjoying good settings, dialogues, characters, fetishes and so on, just watch bad Western porn. Please Japan, never change.

I read it. It's pretty much the prototype to Sayonara wo Oshiete. It's hard to recommend the game because it feels very unfinished. Literally 30 minutes after stuff begins to get interesting the game ends. The ending itself is a huge letdown. But to be honest, that doesn't matter much. Everything before the last few minutes is simply perfect even though it seems like only a big prologue building up to something (which in the end will disappoint). The depiction of the life of the protagonist, his rise to madness, his interaction with other people and the other people themselves are all written brilliantly. There are so many scenes which I can now, 3 years after I played the game, still remember clearly because they had such a big impact on me and are still haunting my subconscious. (I think it's even better than Sayonara wo Oshiete in that regard, but Sayonara is clearly the better, more refined game overall and features much more themes than just being socially retarded.) A special mention deserves the fantastic soundtrack which nearly only consists of creepy arrangements of Beethoven's "für elise". To sum it up; I recommend it to every fan of Sayonara wo Oshiete. You won't find a better, more realistic depiction of madness and social anxiety in any other eroge (the closest would probably be Sayonara). Just don't expect a "full game" or a satisfying conclusion.

Sanahtlig's article has been posted and discussed in several communities, but I feel many people don't understand the actual point Sanah wanted to make. The main point isn't that Nutaku has censored their games (this is old news); it's the cover-up. They don't want people to know that they've EVER censored their games. Actually, I believe Nutaku when they say they won't censor anymore. But only time will tell, we can't make assumptions yet. No, the point of Sanah's article is this: Nutaku wants to clear its name, tarnished by their own hands. They don't want to be associated with censorship. And to do that, they use every option at their disposal, ethical or not: Never announcing when games are censored or what was censored Making up payment processor issues that don't seem to impact other Western eroge companies, or that they've even mentioned, ever Complaining to Sanah when they stealth-reverted the censorship and he dared to still feature the game in his censorship list DMCA takedown for Sanah's perfectly legit comparison gallery on imgur Not fessing up to the takedown and ignoring Sanah's inquiries about it They don't want to talk about this. They simply don't want "Nutaku" and "Censorship" to be mentioned in the same sentence. But now Sanah exposed this behavior. And what are they doing? Being Nutaku of course: Implying Sanahtlig tampered with evidence Making up weak excuses Sanah had already proven wrong in his article Telling Reddit and Operation Rainfall that they took down the gallery .. because it wasn't linked to a review!? That doesn't even make any sense! To summarize the issues that Sanah tried to expose in his article, Nutaku: has not been transparent about changes in their games Silences people who associate Nutaku with censorship Lies and selfishly cover-up evidence to hide that I hope I could clear up some of these misunderstandings. I feel people are taking away very superficial impressions, on both sides of the debate. But the actual message is probably best condensed in the title of Sanahtlig's article: "Nutaku caught abusing DMCA takedowns to censor evidence of censorship". And that's what people should be aware of.

lol, sold. Installing right now.

I am a fan of Banya and actually I really like the "writing" in this game too. Right from the start, the description in the beginning how mankind was doomed was pretty good, just as I expected from Banya. Also, Mia's inner monologues, the description of pain and suffering, all the good stuff Banya is known for, is here too. So that is not the problem. The problem is the concept Banya was given by Bug System and has to work with. He makes the best out of it, but personally I just can't find it very interesting. The problem is easily summarized: Killing has no consequences. I like gore in eroge. Mainly because gore means in most cases "story". Like in Kara no Shoujo. When you see a scene with a normal hentai CG, it's probably filler, but when you have a scene with a gore CG, it's probably a thrilling and interesting story scene. In Nikuniku ... it's not. It's essentially a gore nukige, because every killing scene is essentially a filler hentai scenes .. just with gore instead of sex. That's a legit concept, if you have a gore fetish. Sadly, I have not. I like seeing innocent girls die horribly, of course, ... but not because I like to see the act of dying, but instead because I like to experience the tragedy. With Mia's gore scenes, we have no tragedy, because there are no consequences. I'm not necessarily saying the game is bad ... it's just that it does not cater to my fetishes. What a pleb reason, I know. I hope you guys can tell me that there is some actual story in the later half of the game. Would be a waste of potential if it really was "only" a guro nukige. Good point. Normally, screams are the worst parts of a seiyuu's performance because she doesn't want to ruin her voice. In this case, it's actually reversed; the screams are the best part of the performance! What I miss instead in Mia's voice acting are the feelings of despair and anxiety. She acts way too cool in most cases!

I played both trials. Wasn't too impressed with the voice acting and the story. Kinda seemed very predictable. However, the level of gore is astonishing. I will probably play it soon too, but I'm currently busy with the newest Mink game.