Yeah this being good is basically mathematically impossible, rip. This is in line with the kind of speed that infamously sloppy translators that have maxed out their speed stat to meet shitty deadlines for console pubs do... at maximum speed.
Hey man. I actually worked on this game's translation for a while before real life fucked me.
Was actually curious because someone actually completing the game appeared, and I wanted to see what's up.
After looking into stuff for a bit though I'm left with no choice but to make a post.
You claim that you translated the entire base game and the fandisk "in a matter of weeks" working for 16 hours a day each day. Sorry, but this is impossible. No one, and I say no one, can work for 16 hours straight in translation for several days and not deliver a below par result. Also, honestly I can't believe that between the time you asked for the tools in another thread saying that "you were looking forward to translate this" exactly 2 months ago before releasing this https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/24092-help-working-with-a-bgi-game/ you were able to translate over 2 Million characters and over 100k lines of text.
So yeah, I'm sorry to whoever was excited for this, but this 100% completion is entirely either machine translated or god knows fucking what.
As a last word, before anyone claims that idk what I'm talking about, I tried to fan translate this some years ago, one year of approximately daily 1.5-2h of work ended up with me having done only 20k lines out of the 80k lines of the MAIN GAME. I'm slower than your average fan translator, but I just simply can't believe someone is able to translate just the main game in less than a year, let alone in 2 months. No matter the amount of time you sink in each day. Take my words however you want, since I assume you'll want to release your stuff anyway.
PS: The main game has roughly 80k lines, fandisk no clue but definitely more than 20k. No one, I repeat, NO ONE, is able to even remotely come close to do more than 100k lines equivalent to what this game has in 2 months. We're talking about more than 1.5 MILLION CHARACTERS for just the first game ALONE. The fastest guy I know can pull off 1 M charas in a year btw, and he no lifes it 6-8 hours a day because he has infinite time.
Parsers are overly maligned; it doesn't actually matter unless you consciously decide to never even try to parse from game window yourself and only look at hooker output. If you are afraid you will become a true hookcuck, they may be slightly suboptimal.
source: I used only JParser for years
of course the way clephas speaks about them as providing "furigana" is overly imprecise and dumb, they provide a list of dictionary definitions. The furigana is generally the least accurate and most useless part
furthermore, there is no need to """master""" (did u know words mean things???) grammar; just get ok tier at basic grammar and refer back to your reference / an actual grammar reference
you caught me in a very shitposty mood enjoy
I first started writing this in like 2018 and I finished half of it now but I didn't do it the way I was planning back then and it's a bit of a disjointed mess. I hope it's good enough anyway.
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There have been some arguments as to what the definition of a visual novel should be, and that's well and good. But let's look at it from the other direction: what works should our definition of visual novels include?
Let us begin our journey with a silly, myopic statement I will nevertheless repeat until @Palas finally calls a hit on me: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is not a visual novel.
Okay, bullets fired, I feel better already. But why am I trying to define the boundaries of the visual novel category to exclude the pretty good adventure game series Ace Attorney, and what kinds of criteria am I using? Furthermore, why would anyone disagree with me when I am obviously right?
...Okay, let's back up a bit. Why do I care so much about categories at all?
Categories
Categories are useful because they allow us to make predictions about something assigned to that category. In the visual novel community, there are there are several important predictions to make:
1. I am likely to enjoy this work if it executes its aesthetic well
2. I would consider a person who reads/plays/likes this more a part of the community than one that does not
3. I would probably enjoy talking to someone who reads this work {about visual novels}
We can see straight away that different parts of this would be important to different people. If you want to be part of a close-knit community, getting 2 and 3 right matters a lot. If you can find the visual novels you enjoy without community assistance, 1 matters little.
The VN category helps us determine what things are acceptable to discuss, and what things are not our (main) concern. Similarly, the category helps us determine what people will be in our community, and what people will not. It's generally more entertaining to discuss things you care about, and it's better when the people you discuss with are more in tune with you. As such, there are real stakes, and real reasons to want to avoid being maximally inclusive.
But what draws people to VNs, and what does that draw mean for their desired definition of the VN category? Let me attempt a list of categories:
Archetypes of attraction to VNs
Weebs
The Weeb likes some part of Japanese culture. The Weeb is very skeptical and/or dismissive of visual novels not made in Japan, though the Weeb might make an exception for things made in Korea or China (Indonesia is probably too Western, however). If we asked the Weeb, the main problem with the visual novel category right now would be that too many people see fit to include a flood of shitty EVNs. The Weeb might grudgingly accept Katawa Shoujo depending on the Weeb's other preferences.
Moefuck
The Moefuck reads visual novels because they really like cute girls or boys. Often personal aesthetics play a big part here and specific preferences are hard to predict, for example certain Moefucks may reject an entire artist or company due to the artstyle in their works being unacceptable. The Moefuck cluster is often seen as an amorphous, rainbow-vomiting blob ruining visual novels by the more seriously afflicted storycucks, but in truth there is more variation in it than they may expect. Moefucks are not necessarily hostile to works with serious stories, they just prefer those stories to also have cute girls.
Storycucks
The Storycuck wants to experience good stories, and finds VNs to be a source of such stories. In terminal cases, the Storycuck may not be able to deal with the large amount of filler in many visual novels and bounce right out into the community periphery after initially being hooked by some particularly well-paced VN. The perfectly horrible case is the Storycuck that is too distracted to watch shows, unable to get into books due to lack of visual stimulus, yet also unable to deal with SoL content. Is there any being more cursed? Anyway, I digress. The Storycuck doesn't really care that much about medium conventions like moe or superficial presentation style or whatever: they want a compelling narrative. If we ask a Storycuck, one problem with the visual novel category right now is that it doesn't admit other related genres like walking simulators, or things like Actual Sunlight and To The Moon. Their perspective on more extreme extensions like Phoenix Wright or even JRPGs will depend on their evaluation of gameplay.
Degenerate Fappers
These gender-neutral guys just wanna have fun, in a way that generally requires at least one hand to be free for use. You're unlikely to actually see pure Fappers in the community as they don't really have stories to discuss. I'd try the f95zone or whatever if I were looking. In mixes with other types, this manifests as disinterest in anything that does not have porn. In their eyes, if it's got no ero, it has no place calling itself a VN — after all, if it can't be fapped to, there's no point in reading it!
Ero-JRPG fanboys
So now you're thinking to yourself - these guys (still gender-neutral) have got to have a lot of overlap with the Degenerate Fappers. I agree, but I think it's worth separating out the two. The Degenerate Fappers don't really have a need for the visual novel category because of their DF association — they'll be arguing mostly from another type's perspective, with a modifier of Horny — but the Ero-JRPG fanboys have a lot to lose if their objects of passion are cut out of the VN category. Why? Because the wider JRPG community often has a serious intolerance of porn in their games. There _are_ places that specify in just Ero-JRPGs [nekohen], but there aren't that many games in the category, and focus for some may be less on the story contents (often machine translated!) and more on the gameplay (ui only patches!) and porn. This leads to wishing to classify Ero-JRPGs like Toushin Toshi II, Evenicle, etc. as VNs despite them being basically equivalent to your average JRPG if one ignores the sex scenes. The pure Ero-JRPG fanboy doesn't really like to read for long stretches without interaction, and if it could remove something from the definition, it would probably pick first choice-free visual novels, then extensionally VNs with few enough choices to be bothersome.
Autists
The motivation of the Autist when it comes to the visual novel category is that it be clear and defined by a definition that is as Not Bullshit as possible. This is a meta-motivation that may cause people to go against the naive interests of their other types. For example, observe the Storycuck Zaka's high Autism interaction as he proclaims walking simulators should not be considered VNs, despite him having liked Gone Home quite a bit and being interested in more of the genre. The Autist's greatest gripe is when people goddamn try to shove things in the FUCKING category that obviously don't fit PLEASE STOP IT DAMN YOU.
VN Evangelists
The VN Evangelist wants to spread the word of visual novels by any means possible, and is not afraid to butt heads with some stuffy Autist if they have to. They can and will use imprecise language like "it's like playing an anime, man", wide definitions (expect Phoenix Wright to be on their list of 'VNs' to play for beginners), and such villainy to attempt to get more people into visual novels. A community member in favor of more exclusion may cringe at their methods and predict that they will overwhelmingly attract annoying orbitals who will finish DDLC or whatever and then fuck up discussion with their terrible, uninformed opinions. The Evangelist will tell said member to loosen the fuck up and not be so elitist, and who knows maybe DDLC-kun will be a productive member of the community one day NOT THAT THEY AREN'T ALREADY BUT ANYWAY. And so on. The VN Evangelist wishes more things were on vndb in general so it could have more arguments to get people to try other 'VNs' out.
Artistes
The Artiste is probably making a VN. Or two. It's got culture up to here. VNs are a medium, but it's so boring if you just take the conventions for granted, right? They want to break and remake in a Shivan storm of creation, never settling for the mediocrity of the established form. They resent criteria that restrict their medium-busting ambitions, and would like for you to abandon your silly notions of traditional presentation methods. The Artiste wants you to fucking chill out on insisting on any definition, but okay can we have like, The Walking Dead in the category please? (Zaka: No.) Oh and Actual Sunlight should definitely be in the category. (Zaka: Sure)
Incredibly half-arsed conclusion
Speaking as a person who is a Storycuck and Autist, but has low amounts of Weeb, Moefuck, and Horny, I think we should have a somewhat restrictive definition of visual novels, but we should welcome diverse artstyles and embrace EVNs. As I don't value gameplay highly, I consider the _choiceless visual novel_ the best way to ground the category, even though this is arguably ahistorical. Choices are fine, intrusive gameplay only good if it serves the narrative, and things that are OBVIOUSLY JRPGs FOR CHRIST'S SAKE should frankly just be taken out of VNDB right this minute. That said if something is very close to a VN and also story heavy and honestly it kind of reads like a VN? fuck it IS a VN fuck you include Actual Sunlight actually... then uhh yeah... Maybe we can compromise my ideals.
—But your reasons for being into VNs may be very different. And this is why we must fight. I can only hope I will one day prevail, or at least see Actual Sunlight (kino) included on VNDB. Until then, I will attempt to appeal to the Autism in both of us to at least get a sensible — if fragile — boundary established.
DeepL is by far the best. I might now have told anyone this, but all my doujins are translated this way. I even fooled (((professional))) translators and they think I know Japanese. LMAO what a bunch of morons.
The newest Japanese version works on win10. I thus recommend you learn Japanese, avoid the probably bad Ixrec tl (literally his first), and read it in Japanese w
LMFAOOOOOO holy shit HAHAHA TOTAL bruh MOMENT om g lol haha my sides bro im experiencing heart palpitations this joke man dude this is EVERYTHING im lol my brain is deteriorating HAHAHA LOL
HMN got a reaction from Yuuko in Summer 2022 Anime Discussion
HMN reacted to Yuuko in Snow by Studio Mebius
HMN got a reaction from Dreamysyu in BIG NEWS. Guess what infamous antagonist is officially returning to visual novels for the first time in over a decade?