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tymmur

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  1. Like
    tymmur reacted to HoplessHiro in MAITETSU 18+ DEMOSAIC STEAM-FAKKU PATCH [COMPLETE]   
    MAITETSU 18+ 
    DEMOSAIC STEAM AND FAKKU PATCH

     


    Did you mistake the quote "100% DRM free and completely uncut with no scenes removed" as "TOTALLY UNCENSORED!"? Do you hate to see squares in beautiful art? Are you from the golden era (JAST USA, Peach Princess, G-Collections) and expected from an localized eroge to get an fully uncut, uncensored and without mosaics game? ... Then this patch is for you.
    You read it right, the patch does what it says.
    It removes the mosaic in hscenes from the beautiful artwork.
     

    Original MAITETSU 18+ Fakku edition -> you can buy it at the official page: https://www.fakku.net/games/maitetsu-english -> PLEASE SUPPORT english localization by buying the game ! OR BUY FROM STEAM
    Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch - FOR STEAM   OR    BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch - FOR FAKKU  

    1. [Q]: Is it legit?
    [A]: I can't believe it myself either. But YES! It is real and it does what it says. Try it before reporting or commenting. Thank you.
     
    2. [Q]: Where are the hscenes? I can't find them in the game?
    [A]: There are no hscenes in the common route, except  provoking pictures which the Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch restores and the actual hscenes won't trigger by default, but during a heroine route, a message will popup at bottom right side of the screen saying that you gain access to a hscene, then you have to manually open the hscene in the menu. It is a game design, not a bug or glitch, it is how LOSE company makes the games. Rarely you will gain access for hscenes during a route, most hscenes are unlocked AFTER finishing the game with that particular heroine.
     
    3. [Q]: When does the DLC hscenes show up?
    [A]: After you complete the previous hscenes, the DLC hscenes will eventually show up.
     
    4. [Q]: STEAM support?
    [A]: At the moment I don't own the STEAM version so I can't test it and I don't know if it works. If someone can help me I will make an steam support patch, but you would still need the FAKKU 18+ DLC patch.
     
    5. [Q]: Can we see some screenshot/examples of patch?
    [A]: Because of the nature of the game as being an loli game I can't post pictures because of the policy of the forum. But if someone wants to see the results before buying the actual game I can send you 2 example pictures. Just send a PM and I will reply with those 2 example pictures. Examples of non-loli characters are in the gallery section.
     
    6. [Q] : What was changed in the new Fakku edition? What's the difference between the OLD and NEW download?
    [A]: Jacob from fakku has a good description -> https://www.fakku.net/forums/games/maitetsu-fixes-and-updates .Everything written in the section "what has not changed" WAS already fixed already by heliosaurus by his patch and the same fix is present in the new "BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch"
     
    7. [Q] Why is there a difference in size between Heliosaurus Restoration patch and "BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch"
    Both patches work perfectly fine and shouldn't have any problems. You can use Heliosaurus on the OLD and NEW version but the BANDAID patch is only for new FAKKU download ONLY. But... the original restoration patch includes fixes which are already fixed in the new version of  FAKKU's edition and the BANDAID removal patch just removes this fixes from the PATCH to be less in size. The reason why you could still use the original restoration patch on the old and new version of fakku is that technically the patch is in original form a "patch.xp3" which contains mostly PICTURES! Yes, pictures. And it just replaces those pictures from the original data files which are located in "data.xp3" / "emotedx.xp3", and so on. The KiriKiri engine works like that. When FIRST run, it loads first files from, data.xp3, and all the main xp3, and then LOADS patch.xp3, patch2.xp3, patch3.xp3... and so on. That's why we don't need external programs to patch the original data files, and we can put everything in PATCH.XP3, or PATCH2.XP3, and so on. You can  literally replace the whole game with a single PATCH.xp3 file. The restoration patch was made by using resource files from the JAPANESE version and replaces the resource files from the ENGLISH version. So the original restoration patch just OVERWRITES fixes-pictures present in the MAIN game from the NEWEST fakku edition download....
     
    8.[Q]: That isn't the game we were promised / it is disappointing / don't want to buy the game ....
    [A]: Well, it isn't a question, I just want to express my opinion... I understand that the release a disappointment, and like everyone, even I would wanted a TOTALLY uncut and uncensored version. I hate the CUTS in western releases, but that was going on for decades not just in VN's look in the old days of SNES games with JRPGS. And in east they get the same results with some western games... Thanks to that, we have two types of ppl - one who are complaining and the the other one who are making uncut/undub/uncensored version of games, from snes to psp/psvita and so on. What I mean is that you shouldn't lose energy in complaining on fakku and denpasoft/sekai, yes even sekai. I understand that sekai don't take releases seriously but at least we got the translated version, whish is a huge WORK. And be thankful, we got "OMG!" Maitetsu! I can't expect newcomers and the ones on fakku to stop complaining ( and I am not saying that you have to start editing, and join the community of moders, but you are always welcome to join ), but at least you at fuwanovel you have no more reasons to complain. At the end you got the complete 1:1 japanese uncut release with english text, and even a little more, with the demosaic patch ( which in the japanese edition they don't have ).
     
     
     
    .... please ask questions and I will put most common questions and answers here ...
     

    STATUS : COMPLETE !
    ALL SCENES MOSAIC-FREE !
    Hachiroku's Route

     
    Hibiki's Route
     
     
    Paulette's Route

     
    Reina's Route

     
    Fukami's Route

     
    Nagi's Route

     
    Kisaki's Route

     
    Makura's Route

     

    FOR STEAM USE: HELIOSAURUS PATCH for STEAM
    FOR FAKKU USE: HELIOSAURUS PATCH for FAKKU or down below the BANDAID removal patch
     
    1. Just extract the file patch2.xp3 from the ZIP file in the main maitetsu folder!
    !! the patch2.xp3, should be in the same folder as the Restoration patch (patch.xp3)  and the Maitetsu.exe file. !!!
     
     

    07/23  - Released the patch with the 5th scene included, and fixes the bug in Hscene 2
    07/24 - Released the patch with the included 6th scene
    07/25 - Released the patch with the included 7th scene
    07/26  - Released the patch with the 8th scene included
    07/27  - Hachiroku's Route COMPLETED!!!!
    07/28  - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 01 without mosaic!
    07/29  - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 02 without mosaic!
    07/30  - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 03 without mosaic!
    07/31  - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 04 without mosaic!
    08/02  - Released the addon patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 05 without mosaic, you still need the OLD "Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch 7-31-2018" patch. In your folder you should have patch.xp3 (bandaid fix), patch2.xp3 (old 7-31 patch) and patch3.xp3 (this new addon patch)
    08/03  - HIBIKI's ROUTE COMPLETED !!!
    08/04 - Paulette's new hscene released!
    08/05 - Paulette's new hscene released! (Hint: This is the new release which includes HSCENE 03. Skipped Hscene 02 because here isn't any mosaic! Hence the name v0.3 - which represent the hscene completed )
    08/06 - Paulette's new hscene released!
    08/07 - Paulette's new hscene released!
    08/08 - Paulette's new hscene released!
    08/09 - Paulette's new hscene released!
    08/10  - PAULETTE's ROUTE COMPLETED !!!
    08/11 - Reina's new hscene released!
    08/12 - Reina's new hscene released!
    08/13 - Reina's new hscene released!
    08/14  - REINA's ROUTE COMPLETED !!!
    08/15 - Fukami's new hscene released!
    08/16 - Fukami's new hscene released!
    08/17 - Fukami's new hscene released!
    08/18 - Fukami's new hscene released!
    08/19  - FUKAMI's ROUTE COMPLETED !!!
    08/20 - Nagi's new hscene released!
    08/21 - Nagi's ROUTE COMPLETED !!!
    08/22 - Kisaki's new hscene released!
    08/23 - Kisaki's new hscene released!
    08/24 - Kisaki's ROUTE COMPLETED !!!
    08/25 - Makura's new hscene released!
    08/26 - Makura's new hscene released!
    08/27 - COMPLETE PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes!
    08/30 - COMPLETE STEAM PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes in STEAM FINALLY!!!!
     

     
    Complete FAKKU Patch
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    COMPLETE PATCH
    Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z
    Installation guide:
    - if you have downloaded the partial update - patch3.xp3 just manually delete it ( you don't need it anymore because its already inside the complete patch! )
     
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
     
    Complete STEAM Patch
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Steam Patch - v0.9a.7z
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    ThugShiro - mega big thanks to ThugShiro. He donated the Steam Version!
    BIG THANKS TO marcus-beta - with his tremendous help he found out the problem and fixed it, without him there wouldn't be a steam patch!
    Ulysses - big thanks to Ulysses, without his tools ( https://github.com/UlyssesWu/FreeMote/releases ) this wouldn't be possible.
    Tools used:
    PsbDecompile - for decompiling PSBs,
    PsBuild - for rebuilding back to PSBs
    FreeMoteViewer - to view rebuilded PSBs (after PsBuild)
    number201724 - of course, also big thanks to number201724 for the psbtools https://github.com/number201724/psbfile/releases
    Tools used:
    emote_conv - decode and encode psb file
     
    Heliosaurus - special thanks to the master of the Restoration patch and his helpful guiding
     
     
     
     
     


     
     
     
    SPECIAL extra patch:
    BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch integrated into a single patch ( patch.xp3 )
    For the newest FAKKU edition and STEAM!


    08/1  - Released the BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch integrated Restorationa Patch ( as PATCH.xp3 )
    09/20  - Released the BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch  for STEAM ( as PATCH.xp3 )
    Optional download
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    FAKKU edition
    Maitetsu 18+ Restoration & Bandaid Removal Patch.7z
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    STEAM edition
    Maitetsu 18+ Restoration & Bandaid Removal Steam Patch.7z
    |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    ANY COMMENTS, MEANINGFUL CRITICS, GRATITUDE, ADVICE, SUGGESTION RELATED TO THE PATCH ARE HELPFUL. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
     
     
     

    Want to support the project?

  2. Like
    tymmur reacted to HoplessHiro in Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch   
    Some are talking and some are working ;)... later today uploading hscene3!
    PS:
    Here is the third hscene without mosaics: https://ufile.io/m9vx4
  3. Like
    tymmur reacted to Nandemonai in How can we make visual novels more popular in the west?   
    It certainly is not.  Kickstarters are a pain in the ass to set up, requiring months of work to line up.  We know this because of how long elapses between when companies announce they're going to do a Kickstarter and/or when the Prefundia goes up, and when the Kick actually Starts.  Just because you don't see them doing that work in public doesn't mean they're not busy bees.  Don't be Mr. PHB.
    What are they doing?  They're figuring out what their budget is going to be.  That tells them how much money they need to ask for.  Who's going to translate the game and for how much money? What's it going to cost us to get rights to the voices?  How much trouble do we expect from the engine?  Are we likely to need 1 dev for 3 months tops for a few minor changes, or a major overhaul involving a whole team for the better part of a year?
    And they're trying to nail down stretch goals.  What can we offer as a stretch goal?
    If it's merchandise, you have to estimate how much it's going to cost for shipping or you end up losing money on every pledge.  Do you have piles of unsold merch laying around that you want to try to get rid of?  If you're going to offer new merch, do you make it before the KS and risk ending up with piles of unsold merch that you need to get rid of?  Or do you only produce what's actually demanded from the KS (plus some extra for lost or damaged merchandise)?  How long a lead time will that take, who are you going to order it from, how much is it going to cost, and what's the minimum print run?
    If it's extra content or added features for the game, there are similar problems scoping and sizing all of that.  Is this bonus content something that's easy enough for us to do?  How much do we think it will cost us to do the extra work versus how much extra money do we think we can ask for?  Can we even get the voice actors back into a studio?  Is the writer interested in writing that extra scenario, and are they available?
    In other words, to do a Kickstarter right involves a whole lot of pre-planning work up front to scope out exactly what you think you can do, and what it's going to cost you to do it.  That work is not free; it's money spent and time not available for other things.  All in the hope that your project might get funded.  Try to skimp on this, and you can easily end up with a successfully-funded project badly in the red because you're on the hook for a bunch of obligations the Kickstarter did not bring in enough money to cover.
    And that's not even including the giant pain in the ass that are Kickstarter projects that get delayed.  How long did it take Sekai Project to deliver on all their Grisaia promises? I believe the physical rewards shipped in April.  2 and a half years after the projected date.  The Kickstarter has 75 updates.  As someone who's had to prepare similar updates before, I guarantee many of those updates took hours to prepare, in terms of meetings and follow up to gather the info contained in them.
  4. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Ramaladni in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Here we go again. Whenever anybody mentions this topic, it will produce a lot of replies, but not consensus. The reason seems to be there is no single definitive answer. It depends on a number of factors:
    The VN itself: some VNs makes heavy use of honorifics to tell about interpersonal relationships or personalities. Others just add -san to everybody.
    Target audience: are you translating for a steam VN where it's the first VN people will read or is it a fan translation for people who read 30+ VNs already.
    Personal taste: we will never agree on acceptable loss of accuracy vs natural sounding English. Going to the extreme of either is bad, but where is the right balance?
     
    We spent a while considering this issue for Musumaker, or in broader terms: what to do about hard to translate contents. We ended up deciding to keep honorifics because they play a role and would result in a severe loss of insights in heroine personalities if they are cut. If honorifics are translated to English in a way to preserve the meaning, the result would be that most of the meaning would be lost anyway and it would sound much worse than keeping honorifics.
    It does come with a problem though, which is we can't except the reader to know all of them. The answer is a list where each honorific is written and explained. There is a twist to this though. Because the VN engine is fairly diverse, it allows displaying a png in the corner and if you move the mouse to it, it will pop up with another png. This allows adding the explanations ingame the first time a word is used and remove the need to jump in and out of the VN. This system can also be used for other hard to translate words like Tanabata.
     
    The goal of a translation is to give the same reading experience to the English speaking VN readers as Japanese get by reading the Japanese version. Diverting too much from the original contents in order to make "natural English" will lose the story while being too literal might keep all the story elements, but results in a written English, which isn't a pleasure to read. It's a question about finding the right balance between those two. Spamming words the reader needs to look up (even in the popup approach) will hurts reading pleasure, but never explaining anything hurts the understanding when some common knowledge about cultural references is needed to figure out what goes on.
     
    My conclusion is the same as every thread about a topic like this one: there is no single right answer, which universally applies to every single VN ever released. It is a topic to consider for every single translation project and even for a specific translation we will likely never get everybody to agree on honorifics.
  5. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Stormwolf in What are the things that you hate the most in VNs?   
    What I hate most is text. Not all text, but rather text, which can be removed or rewritten to be less than 1/4 of the length without losing any contents or storyline. This is particularly true for H scenes, but all age scenes often does this as well. I don't mind long VNs if they have contents to justify the length. Getting the feeling somebody missed a line quota in a scene and then quickly fixed with no contents is not a nice reading experience.
  6. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Akshay in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Here we go again. Whenever anybody mentions this topic, it will produce a lot of replies, but not consensus. The reason seems to be there is no single definitive answer. It depends on a number of factors:
    The VN itself: some VNs makes heavy use of honorifics to tell about interpersonal relationships or personalities. Others just add -san to everybody.
    Target audience: are you translating for a steam VN where it's the first VN people will read or is it a fan translation for people who read 30+ VNs already.
    Personal taste: we will never agree on acceptable loss of accuracy vs natural sounding English. Going to the extreme of either is bad, but where is the right balance?
     
    We spent a while considering this issue for Musumaker, or in broader terms: what to do about hard to translate contents. We ended up deciding to keep honorifics because they play a role and would result in a severe loss of insights in heroine personalities if they are cut. If honorifics are translated to English in a way to preserve the meaning, the result would be that most of the meaning would be lost anyway and it would sound much worse than keeping honorifics.
    It does come with a problem though, which is we can't except the reader to know all of them. The answer is a list where each honorific is written and explained. There is a twist to this though. Because the VN engine is fairly diverse, it allows displaying a png in the corner and if you move the mouse to it, it will pop up with another png. This allows adding the explanations ingame the first time a word is used and remove the need to jump in and out of the VN. This system can also be used for other hard to translate words like Tanabata.
     
    The goal of a translation is to give the same reading experience to the English speaking VN readers as Japanese get by reading the Japanese version. Diverting too much from the original contents in order to make "natural English" will lose the story while being too literal might keep all the story elements, but results in a written English, which isn't a pleasure to read. It's a question about finding the right balance between those two. Spamming words the reader needs to look up (even in the popup approach) will hurts reading pleasure, but never explaining anything hurts the understanding when some common knowledge about cultural references is needed to figure out what goes on.
     
    My conclusion is the same as every thread about a topic like this one: there is no single right answer, which universally applies to every single VN ever released. It is a topic to consider for every single translation project and even for a specific translation we will likely never get everybody to agree on honorifics.
  7. Like
    tymmur reacted to ittaku in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    What needs to be accepted is that translation is a lossy process and will never be a 100% faithful reproduction since it's impossible to convey all nuances, cultural references etc in another language. On that I'm sure most of us agree. What isn't understood well enough, unless you've been a translator yourself, is something that Clephas has said - the honorifics themselves may serve a purpose in the story and often do. To that end, what matters more - to weigh in with my opinion - is how much localisation the original text can "tolerate". Given translation's "lossy" nature, if honorifics are a huge part of the story - and they often are in charage where characters alter their speech according to familiarity and over time - then there will be far more loss in the story should the honorifics not have an English equivalent (and they usually don't.) That still doesn't make it wrong to remove honorifics if that's the style one wishes to go with; it's just much harder to convey the nuance in the original text without them. I've done it both ways now, and leaving honorifics in makes it extremely easy while removing them when they're a big part of the story itself is many many times trickier to get right without losing a significant part of the story. So in my case, I'd say it depends entirely on how important they are to the story as to whether I'd prefer to leave them in. I'm currently working on a translation without them and most of the team discussion is spent trying to nut out what would otherwise be a simple part of the translation as they actually play a big part in this charage. This one doesn't "tolerate" the loss as well as other ones might, so we have to work much harder to try and fill that loss.
  8. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Nandemonai in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Here we go again. Whenever anybody mentions this topic, it will produce a lot of replies, but not consensus. The reason seems to be there is no single definitive answer. It depends on a number of factors:
    The VN itself: some VNs makes heavy use of honorifics to tell about interpersonal relationships or personalities. Others just add -san to everybody.
    Target audience: are you translating for a steam VN where it's the first VN people will read or is it a fan translation for people who read 30+ VNs already.
    Personal taste: we will never agree on acceptable loss of accuracy vs natural sounding English. Going to the extreme of either is bad, but where is the right balance?
     
    We spent a while considering this issue for Musumaker, or in broader terms: what to do about hard to translate contents. We ended up deciding to keep honorifics because they play a role and would result in a severe loss of insights in heroine personalities if they are cut. If honorifics are translated to English in a way to preserve the meaning, the result would be that most of the meaning would be lost anyway and it would sound much worse than keeping honorifics.
    It does come with a problem though, which is we can't except the reader to know all of them. The answer is a list where each honorific is written and explained. There is a twist to this though. Because the VN engine is fairly diverse, it allows displaying a png in the corner and if you move the mouse to it, it will pop up with another png. This allows adding the explanations ingame the first time a word is used and remove the need to jump in and out of the VN. This system can also be used for other hard to translate words like Tanabata.
     
    The goal of a translation is to give the same reading experience to the English speaking VN readers as Japanese get by reading the Japanese version. Diverting too much from the original contents in order to make "natural English" will lose the story while being too literal might keep all the story elements, but results in a written English, which isn't a pleasure to read. It's a question about finding the right balance between those two. Spamming words the reader needs to look up (even in the popup approach) will hurts reading pleasure, but never explaining anything hurts the understanding when some common knowledge about cultural references is needed to figure out what goes on.
     
    My conclusion is the same as every thread about a topic like this one: there is no single right answer, which universally applies to every single VN ever released. It is a topic to consider for every single translation project and even for a specific translation we will likely never get everybody to agree on honorifics.
  9. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Linthalo in What are the things that you hate the most in VNs?   
    What I hate most is text. Not all text, but rather text, which can be removed or rewritten to be less than 1/4 of the length without losing any contents or storyline. This is particularly true for H scenes, but all age scenes often does this as well. I don't mind long VNs if they have contents to justify the length. Getting the feeling somebody missed a line quota in a scene and then quickly fixed with no contents is not a nice reading experience.
  10. Like
    tymmur reacted to HoplessHiro in Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch   
    I'm working on a uncensoring patch for the game. For now just one scene. 
    The scene in question is 
    (* the actual ingame picture is uncensored *)
    Please leave comments/critics/ how do you like it or don't.
     
    Download: https://ufile.io/ntngt
     
  11. Like
    tymmur reacted to HoplessHiro in Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch   
    Time consuming it is, but not actually how someone would think... i mean.. it is for me, because i'm not a great artist, and don't have the  necessary tools ( like a drawing tablet and so on), but i try to use as much reference materials as possible.
    Don't know how much you know about emote engine (didn't know myself till a couple of days), but the emote uses a big resolution PNG file, which is divided into parts ( example, body parts, like head, legs, body, hair, eyes...), similar to textures, and every scene has  only 1 PNG file.
    So when you open a PNG file, the second layer of mosaics you have to cut it out from the image and thats done. But the first layer has to be redrawn, but it helps because it has less mosaics than the second layer. In other words, the second layer is only mosaics, and the first layer is half mosaic half body part.
    Because of that it is easier to uncensor an emote animation file, than a normal still CG image
     
    Just for now i'm trying to make for one 1 girl the whole story + dlc mosaicsless.
    And if the feedback is great, i could try another girl
     
    Sometimes the positions are off, but the next scene (which i'm working on as we speak* (write) ) looks great
  12. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Kenshin_sama in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Here we go again. Whenever anybody mentions this topic, it will produce a lot of replies, but not consensus. The reason seems to be there is no single definitive answer. It depends on a number of factors:
    The VN itself: some VNs makes heavy use of honorifics to tell about interpersonal relationships or personalities. Others just add -san to everybody.
    Target audience: are you translating for a steam VN where it's the first VN people will read or is it a fan translation for people who read 30+ VNs already.
    Personal taste: we will never agree on acceptable loss of accuracy vs natural sounding English. Going to the extreme of either is bad, but where is the right balance?
     
    We spent a while considering this issue for Musumaker, or in broader terms: what to do about hard to translate contents. We ended up deciding to keep honorifics because they play a role and would result in a severe loss of insights in heroine personalities if they are cut. If honorifics are translated to English in a way to preserve the meaning, the result would be that most of the meaning would be lost anyway and it would sound much worse than keeping honorifics.
    It does come with a problem though, which is we can't except the reader to know all of them. The answer is a list where each honorific is written and explained. There is a twist to this though. Because the VN engine is fairly diverse, it allows displaying a png in the corner and if you move the mouse to it, it will pop up with another png. This allows adding the explanations ingame the first time a word is used and remove the need to jump in and out of the VN. This system can also be used for other hard to translate words like Tanabata.
     
    The goal of a translation is to give the same reading experience to the English speaking VN readers as Japanese get by reading the Japanese version. Diverting too much from the original contents in order to make "natural English" will lose the story while being too literal might keep all the story elements, but results in a written English, which isn't a pleasure to read. It's a question about finding the right balance between those two. Spamming words the reader needs to look up (even in the popup approach) will hurts reading pleasure, but never explaining anything hurts the understanding when some common knowledge about cultural references is needed to figure out what goes on.
     
    My conclusion is the same as every thread about a topic like this one: there is no single right answer, which universally applies to every single VN ever released. It is a topic to consider for every single translation project and even for a specific translation we will likely never get everybody to agree on honorifics.
  13. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from LadyIsak in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Here we go again. Whenever anybody mentions this topic, it will produce a lot of replies, but not consensus. The reason seems to be there is no single definitive answer. It depends on a number of factors:
    The VN itself: some VNs makes heavy use of honorifics to tell about interpersonal relationships or personalities. Others just add -san to everybody.
    Target audience: are you translating for a steam VN where it's the first VN people will read or is it a fan translation for people who read 30+ VNs already.
    Personal taste: we will never agree on acceptable loss of accuracy vs natural sounding English. Going to the extreme of either is bad, but where is the right balance?
     
    We spent a while considering this issue for Musumaker, or in broader terms: what to do about hard to translate contents. We ended up deciding to keep honorifics because they play a role and would result in a severe loss of insights in heroine personalities if they are cut. If honorifics are translated to English in a way to preserve the meaning, the result would be that most of the meaning would be lost anyway and it would sound much worse than keeping honorifics.
    It does come with a problem though, which is we can't except the reader to know all of them. The answer is a list where each honorific is written and explained. There is a twist to this though. Because the VN engine is fairly diverse, it allows displaying a png in the corner and if you move the mouse to it, it will pop up with another png. This allows adding the explanations ingame the first time a word is used and remove the need to jump in and out of the VN. This system can also be used for other hard to translate words like Tanabata.
     
    The goal of a translation is to give the same reading experience to the English speaking VN readers as Japanese get by reading the Japanese version. Diverting too much from the original contents in order to make "natural English" will lose the story while being too literal might keep all the story elements, but results in a written English, which isn't a pleasure to read. It's a question about finding the right balance between those two. Spamming words the reader needs to look up (even in the popup approach) will hurts reading pleasure, but never explaining anything hurts the understanding when some common knowledge about cultural references is needed to figure out what goes on.
     
    My conclusion is the same as every thread about a topic like this one: there is no single right answer, which universally applies to every single VN ever released. It is a topic to consider for every single translation project and even for a specific translation we will likely never get everybody to agree on honorifics.
  14. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from adamstan in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Here we go again. Whenever anybody mentions this topic, it will produce a lot of replies, but not consensus. The reason seems to be there is no single definitive answer. It depends on a number of factors:
    The VN itself: some VNs makes heavy use of honorifics to tell about interpersonal relationships or personalities. Others just add -san to everybody.
    Target audience: are you translating for a steam VN where it's the first VN people will read or is it a fan translation for people who read 30+ VNs already.
    Personal taste: we will never agree on acceptable loss of accuracy vs natural sounding English. Going to the extreme of either is bad, but where is the right balance?
     
    We spent a while considering this issue for Musumaker, or in broader terms: what to do about hard to translate contents. We ended up deciding to keep honorifics because they play a role and would result in a severe loss of insights in heroine personalities if they are cut. If honorifics are translated to English in a way to preserve the meaning, the result would be that most of the meaning would be lost anyway and it would sound much worse than keeping honorifics.
    It does come with a problem though, which is we can't except the reader to know all of them. The answer is a list where each honorific is written and explained. There is a twist to this though. Because the VN engine is fairly diverse, it allows displaying a png in the corner and if you move the mouse to it, it will pop up with another png. This allows adding the explanations ingame the first time a word is used and remove the need to jump in and out of the VN. This system can also be used for other hard to translate words like Tanabata.
     
    The goal of a translation is to give the same reading experience to the English speaking VN readers as Japanese get by reading the Japanese version. Diverting too much from the original contents in order to make "natural English" will lose the story while being too literal might keep all the story elements, but results in a written English, which isn't a pleasure to read. It's a question about finding the right balance between those two. Spamming words the reader needs to look up (even in the popup approach) will hurts reading pleasure, but never explaining anything hurts the understanding when some common knowledge about cultural references is needed to figure out what goes on.
     
    My conclusion is the same as every thread about a topic like this one: there is no single right answer, which universally applies to every single VN ever released. It is a topic to consider for every single translation project and even for a specific translation we will likely never get everybody to agree on honorifics.
  15. Like
    tymmur reacted to Nandemonai in (8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey   
    Incredibly nitty nitpick: honorifics are not completely alien in English.  We actually have an almost identical concept.  It's just that it's such a small part of the language that it's almost died out, because the situations that spawned it relate to social structures that basically haven't existed for hundreds of years; whereas in Japan it's still highly relevant to daily life.
    When you're in court, what do you call the judge?  Your honor.  The judge is introduced as The honorable so-and-so.  And it is always only for other people.  Consider this classic Three Stooges bit.  Why is it funny?  Because everyone knows that you call a judge your honor to show proper respect, and you certainly never call them "Mister Court".  And because the very idea of anyone using this form of address as My honor is inherently ridiculous.  No judge ever refers to him or her self as my honor.  It simply is not done.  They always refer to themselves in an impersonal way as the court.
    Likewise, when was the last time any Pope ever referred to himself as My Holiness?  Does the Queen of England refer to herself as My Majesty?  Certainly not.  That's what the royal we is for; it is a humbling form of address, implying it isn't even really a person talking but a mouthpiece on behalf of the nation itself.
    Now, honorifics in Japanese indicate precise levels of respect and/or familiarity between the speaker and whoever they're referring to.  Not adding one when you need to, or using an overly informal one, is insulting.  When you get right down to it, forms of address like Your Grace are almost exactly the same in English in this respect as honorifics in Japanese, and they're even often combined with the individual's name in a very similar way.  Someone who is entitled to be called Your Grace will be very put out if you don't do it.  And while today, very few people could tell you the precise difference between Your Grace and Your Excellency, that did not used to be the case.
    They're not exactly the same: It is more common in English to use the honorific alone, because usually when you need one, it's unambiguous who it refers to.  But if there happens to be more than one judge in the room, you fall back to Judge So-and-so which is even more like an honorific.
    So yes, English actually has honorifics.  They're like the appendix of English; basically useless, but still technically there.  So unimportant that most people wouldn't even recognize that that's what it is.  (Hell, for years I would have said we didn't have honorifics.)
  16. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Mr Poltroon in Fuwanovel Confessions   
    You should really treat your mother better
  17. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Fuwanovel Confessions   
    You should really treat your mother better
  18. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Zalor in Does anybody know how to write a point-and-click adventure game?   
    Point and click adventure is not really VNs, but whatever. The question is interesting nonetheless and could be interesting for VN creators as well in case they want to make a heavily branching plot.
    Sadly I'm not sure I can come up with a simple solution. The best thing I can think for getting an overview of something this complex would be a database. Think something like VNDB. You can enter a VN and in that VN you can get a list of characters. You can then enter a character and get a list of VNs where that character is mentioned. You should build up something similar with quests and characters. Perhaps add a third entity for items, allowing specific items to be used in multiple quests. Build the game, have notes for each quest and character and once quests are well defined, you will have the ability to look up a quest and see all the interesting points in that quest, possibly with notes about order. You can also look up a character and get a list of quests that characters should take part in, which is the first step in planning a dialogue tree.
    Another interesting point is that you should plan dialogue trees rather than dialogues. It seems you have different text depending on event flags. You should know the branching layout, possibly make notes about what topics to touch in each branch and then the last step is to fill out the details of each branch.
    The most important issue with designing is to only try to accomplish one thing at a time. Do not try to design quest, dialogue tree and dialogue in the same step because you will end up focusing on one of those and sacrifice the other two and you will end up with two or three of those three parts being messed up.
    I can't really answer the question of which software to use. I wrote that it is supposed to do, but I can't think of anything, which delivers such a functionality and telling you to code something from scratch is likely not a useful approach either.
  19. Like
    tymmur reacted to Heliosaurus in Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch   
    To those seeking to get their JD degrees in Japanese law, reading things like titles can get you pretty far. Titles like this thread for example. Bring it elsewhere. 
  20. Thanks
    tymmur got a reaction from Nandemonai in Do you think Evenicle will be as famous as Rance?   
    There will never be another Rance. The reason is history. Rance is old, much older than most old games. To put this into perspective, you can be born 11 years after the first Rance release and still be old enough to buy adult VNs. When Rance 3 was released, the Soviet Union still existed. This means unless you are a Japanese in your 50s (or older), your first contact with Rance was not contact with a game. It was a series of games with a world building legacy. Rance kept getting new releases, which were updated for the modern era of the time, meaning Rance will most likely represent the era of when you started playing computer games regardless of how old you are. That is without being retro because it was new at the time.
    You can make new VNs/games now and they can be well made. However regardless of how perfect they are made, they can't be made with the legacy from day one and with the high amount of releases today, odds are that any good releases now will not last multiple decades without being killed by competition. In other words Rance is big not just because what it has done, but also because of when it has done so.
    Just think about it. Releasing unvoiced VNs today indicates low budget productions, possibly of questionable quality. Rance started before anything had voices and just didn't add them (remake of Rance 3 excepted), meaning Rance is likely the only VN today, which can make a AAA VN without voices. That's what legacy can do to a series. Also the size of the new Rance releases indicates a gigantic production budget, something which is only realistic due to a legacy, which will sell a lot on the name alone.
     
    It's not uncommon for people to complain about Rance and how he isn't treating women nice. However remember that this style is decided back in the 80s. According to the ingame "behind the VN" in Rance 1, protagonists back then were all heroes. They wanted Rance to stand out and made him a jerk, somebody with an attitude and behavior you don't want to copy. This means people are right. Rance isn't a gentleman and it's completely intentional. However Rance is a hero and he is more comedy than dark themed. It's quite possible this hero and anti-hero in the same person, which have made Rance stand the test of time.
  21. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Dreamysyu in Valve blocks the Steam release of Shining Song Starnova until the implementation of new filtering tools, gives no timeline   
    You are basically arguing that Steam is the defacto platform for selling games, giving them a monopoly. If this is the case, they could be hit with an antitrust lawsuit for abusing their monopoly to prevent publishers from getting a fair chance to reach customers. The inconsistency just makes it worse because it gives the impression that they will indeed keep certain title/people out for no objective reasons. The problem is I find it very unrealistic that they will be met with an antitrust. It doesn't come trough as a high profile "we stand with the people" kind of case.
    I can find a lot of other reasons, which are more likely to cause an antitrust case against Valve, like you don't own the games you buy. You rent them for a one time fee. This allows them to force changes to you against your will, like 64 bit only updates on 32 bit computers or windows 10 only updates on earlier versions of windows. They kill XP support in half a year or so, yet they have games, which are too old to run on win7. Still no refund. It's also horrible at breaking savegames and mods, not to mention horrible for mod creators. The only good thing about it is the fact that everybody is on it. It sucks in all other aspects. They can also disable accounts, making people lose access to all their rented stuff. There is also the issue of updates breaking savegames/mods, which you can't prevent from being installed. More or less all competitors have better technical solutions and more user friendly. The only reason to use Steam is because they are the biggest. Sure sounds like a monopoly to me.
    The worst part: we can't do anything about it. Antitrust laws are designed to prevent this from happening, but even perfect laws are worthless if they aren't enforced.
    Yes and no. Yes in the sense that Valve is a private company and can sell what they want. No because Valve controls the customers. I wouldn't be surprised if VNs on Steam VNs sells 20+ times more than non-Steam VNs even with the same contents. In other words for a publisher, it's entirely possible that getting on Steam is a question of profit or bankruptcy. Moving a VN from Steam to say FAKKU will leave the customers on Steam, which will then buy a non-VN instead. The vast majority will not seek out FAKKU. This is the core issue: Steam is hording most of the customers.
  22. Like
    tymmur reacted to Plk_Lesiak in Valve blocks the Steam release of Shining Song Starnova until the implementation of new filtering tools, gives no timeline   
    This is something I've posted on Reddit earlier, but I thought I might as well spread the awareness of Valve's BS here too. After a month of keeping the release build in review (SSS was made by Sunrider's developers, Love in Space and is published by Sekai), Valve said that it will not let the game on the platform (even though it seems to have a proper all-ages version and an adult patch, just like Maitetsu, released at the same time by the same publisher) until their new filtering tool, basically the way to make the waifu games invisible for those that are scared of them, are implemented. The problem is, they don't give even an approximate of when that might be. The tools might arrive next week, or next year and devs that put the work and marketing towards their releases this summer might get stuck in limbo for who-knows-how-long. I guess long, because the tools will most likely go live as beta feature and stay like that for a while before they're fully implemented. It seems that SolPress' Newrin is in the same situation, although that company didn't invest their last two year into this one project and can probably live with an indefinite delay.
    All in all, Valve is a f***** shitty company as always, I at least hope they won't wait another year to implement those filtering tools and that they'll actually make them useful. Then they can go back to not caring what people what people upload on their storefront - that way they'll at least not actively screw over decent developers.
  23. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Silvz in MILF But who doesnt have massive ta-ta's   
    Quoting out of context makes it easier to make good joke replies. Besides while they aren't state of the art in visual technology, I expected much worse when people referred to those titles as looking old. They are perfectly fine by my standards for story driven VNs. Vanilla nukige not so much, but then again that's not a genre I'm particularly interested in in the first place.
  24. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from adamstan in MILF But who doesnt have massive ta-ta's   
    Quoting out of context makes it easier to make good joke replies. Besides while they aren't state of the art in visual technology, I expected much worse when people referred to those titles as looking old. They are perfectly fine by my standards for story driven VNs. Vanilla nukige not so much, but then again that's not a genre I'm particularly interested in in the first place.
  25. Like
    tymmur got a reaction from Tamaki Sakura in How can we make visual novels more popular in the west?   
    I agree with this statement and it's something I have been wondering about every single time this topic is asked. Why would I personally want VNs to be popular? I still don't have an answer, meaning most likely I'm not really that interested in VN popularity.
    A worst case scenario is activists resulting in a ban. It's not like activists haven't got a history of resorting to lying to reach their goal. Take for instance the activists attacking Lego. They proclaimed how bad it is for animals with oil spills and their solution to the problem is to get rid of oil companies. The way to do that would be to attack companies with contracts with oil companies because if people stop buying oil, the problem is solved. They went into Legoland and poured oil on some Lego houses, which then went into water and ground etc, but remember it was for a good cause. Lego stated that they have the contract to get non-toxic plastic and the world market can't deliver the amount they need, which is why they have a long term contract with an oil company (remember plastic is made out of oil). The activists didn't care and had a victory when the contract was canceled. Delivering toxic toys to children. It must be a dream come true for activists. They really made a difference. Lego however made a new contract with a different oil company, but that was apparently ok for the activists. They were fighting to get the contract canceled and they won. So what if nothing changed regarding oil.
    I dare not to think about what people with a mindset like that would say about VNs. There are quite a lot of activists where facts and goals doesn't really matter. It's mainly about a crusade against some great evil and it doesn't matter if their claim is right or not. Remember when Go Go Nippon went on Steam Greenlight, one of the very first comments was "this must be one of those Japanese rape games" and then a bunch of comments followed about people flaming Steam for allowing something, which promotes rape. All age rape title... go figure. As I said: facts doesn't matter.
     
    Another reason why I'm not to keen on getting VNs too big in the west is that once a market becomes big, big companies moves in and change everything. It will end up as TV: bland, the end user should be entertained with mindless stuff and don't think and it has to be political correct. In other words VNs could very well end up being what I try to avoid by picking VNs.
     
    What would happen for me if VNs make it big? More titles? Perhaps, but to be completely honest my backlog of unread VNs grow as it is. I wouldn't benefit from more titles. Better titles? I just wrote releases would likely drop in quality, not increase. More popular might be good for publishers, but I'm not sure it's good for me personally.
     
    And let's not forget VNs aren't big in Japan. Bigger than in the west, but it's still a niche, which never was and likely never will be big.
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