sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 LewdGamer article [NSFW]SFW mirror (on my personal blog) The AGTH Code Database, a major Japanese text-hooking resource, has vanished from the Internet and no one even noticed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Down Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 That'd explain why I couldn't get anything when I was looking up H-codes some days/weeks ago. I thought this was on hongfire but had never actually visited the page. One weird thing is that the website is down but the robots.txt that prevents the Archive from crawling it is still there. Archive might have a backup of that website but will refuse to display it anyway. Well, RIP. It's true that most of those codes have been integrated into newer ITH/VNR engines nowadays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clephas Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 Are people only figuring this out now? I realized it was gone back in May. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 Are people only figuring this out now? I realized it was gone back in May. I'm sure people who used it regularly noticed. But they didn't care enough to even deem it worth mentioning. AGTHDB likely disappeared for the exact reason that no one cared. People used it, they might have been momentarily irritated that it went down, but they simply moved on with their lives. Typical Internet apathy at its ugliest. That's half the reason I wrote the article. I was appalled that no one even seemed to care. The most ignoble way to go is for one's death to go unnoticed, unmourned. Thousands of English speakers likely used the database in some shape or form, yet I couldn't find a single comment on the site going down in my web search. If that's not abject dismissal in the collective consciousness, I don't know what is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelebek1 Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 HongFire's thread still exists, and you could just stop playing old games cause they're terrible. If they're like 5+ years old and haven't been translated and not in the works or planned, then they're likely terrible and not worth it. For anything semi-recent that thread is still there, and has existed since 2005 anyway, so old games will be there. As someone who regularly makes H-codes and posts them there, why not just use that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clephas Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 Mmm... part of it is that there was never any real connection between a community and the database after the initial few months after it was created, from what I noticed. After the mess when Hongfire stopped hosting downloads, most of the supporters went to Anime-sharing and forgot about it entirely... Edit: Kelebek1... that's BS. What gets translated isn't the best... it is what the blindfolded rat throwing the dart back over his shoulder at the dartboard with VN names on it hits, thus influencing the rotten brains of the heads of localization companies. More seriously, it isn't as bad as that... but most of the good stuff out there doesn't even get a chance at localization... Narcosis, sanahtlig, Darklord Rooke and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelebek1 Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 Well, ok, but like I said the thread goes back to 05, so you must be able to find most games in there if they're old. You can (and people still regularly do) ask for new games. Otherwise you really need to go the other way and put the work onto the devs of ITH/VNR to keep their programs updated to support all games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 Well, ok, but like I said the thread goes back to 05, so you must be able to find most games in there if they're old. You can (and people still regularly do) ask for new games. Otherwise you really need to go the other way and put the work onto the devs of ITH/VNR to keep their programs updated to support all games. No one's maintaining ITH. It's dead. It doesn't even work in Windows 10. ITHVNR is simply a less up-to-date version of VNR's engine wrapped in the ITH interface. VNR itself is a free tool provided and maintained as-is by the generosity of the VNR team. They have no obligation to respond to any of our demands, really. Also, localization companies don't even consider games that are lower than 800x600 resolution these days. That's hardly the primary criterion I'd use to judge whether a game is worth playing or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clephas Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 I find it amazing that people can be so ungrateful... it isn't like the people who made ITH, ITHVNR, and VNR owe us anything... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deep Blue Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 I'm just starting to read untranslated vns and I always use ITH and so far it works perfect, even with very new vns(to be fair I haven't tried many vns so don't take my comment too seriously), maybe its because I'm new into all this but it doesn't hit me so hard that this program is gone but I'm sure I will regret this in the near future. Also there is always a way to run a vn in newer hardware(talking about ith is not compatible with win 10 anymore) like a virtual machine or even use an old laptop just to read vns, lets be honest you dont need a super rig to run a vn.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 I'm just starting to read untranslated vns and I always use ITH and so far it works perfect, even with very new vns(to be fair I haven't tried many vns so don't take my comment too seriously), maybe its because I'm new into all this but it doesn't hit me so hard that this program is gone but I'm sure I will regret this in the near future. Also there is always a way to run a vn in newer hardware(talking about ith is not compatible with win 10 anymore) like a virtual machine or even use an old laptop just to read vns, lets be honest you dont need a super rig to run a vn.... Have you ever tried text hooking in a virtual machine? It's not quite as simple as you make it out to be. As far as ITH working perfectly with newer VNs (2013 or later): you're lucky. Many of the ones I've tried I had to use VNR. VNR doesn't even hook the game I'm currently playing correctly (Venus Blood Hypno). I had to switch to ITHVNR to hook it. Playing musical chairs with hooking programs to get games to hook is somewhat less than ideal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deep Blue Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 I did try using a text hooking in a virtual machine and it worked but I didn't test it thoroughly (I even made a post about how to install a VM to run older games), VNR sucks because the way it parse the text is just reaaaaaaally really bad :/ if you want to just see the text in full screen or translate it (not using a parser) use nextosd or even Chiitrans lite the parse is actually pretty good and you can fullscreen (I recommend you to try this one) because to be honest that's the only use I can think vnr has, to play a vn in fullscreen which is something that you can't do with TA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clephas Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 I just make use of the copy to clipboard function with VNR and shove that text box into the corner, using the old Translation Aggregator one... whenever possible, I prefer not to use VNR though. It uses up way too much ram in comparison to the other text hookers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 VNR can be used as a text hooker with the parser functionality disabled. I pair it with Translation Aggregator. Although honestly, there's little reason to use VNR when ITHVNR is almost the same thing, minus the bloat and automatic engine updates. Text-hooking in VMs is problematic. I tried it with V.G. Neo (released 2003), which doesn't work in OS's newer than XP. With the VM Windows Virtual PC (the Microsoft official implementation), performance takes a severe hit, and as a result the animated videos wouldn't play without terrible stutter (the game had fully-animated H-scenes). With the VM VMware, text didn't transfer correctly across the VM to the clipboard in the host OS. One workaround was to run the translation software inside the VM also, but this caused slowdown due to the extra computational burden on the VM. Another workaround used devOSD to tunnel text between the guest OS and the host OS, but was troublesome to setup. Tyr recommended a different workaround on VNDB, but I forgot what it was. tldr; Text hooking inside VMs is a pain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deep Blue Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/8239-how-to-install-and-run-untranslated-visual-novel-text-hooking-tools/page-2#entry322977 check that post of the user binaryfail Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorp Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 Btw, if you're mourning about it so much, what prevents to create some other DB for that? That's quite easy thing to do, no? As there is just a list of games and hcode. Btw, why did you used that? I checked sources some weeks ago, and it actually makes most of these hcodes obsolete, as it have internal support for lot of engines. Not better to create a new DB, which contains only useful hcodes, for the cases whe VNR does not solve the problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 Btw, if you're mourning about it so much, what prevents to create some other DB for that? That's quite easy thing to do, no? As there is just a list of games and hcode. Some H-codes were undoubtedly lost, and others are scattered across the net where they'll be more difficult to locate. AGTHDB was also a convenient location to add and find H-codes. If there's no good place to store them, people might not bother sharing their codes at all. On a lesser scale, that's sort of like saying, "If VNDB went down, someone could just create another one, right?" Well yes, but good luck recreating it and all of the information that used to be stored there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelebek1 Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 It would actually be pretty cool if they could be implemented in VNDB in some way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 VNDB explicitly stated they weren't interested in hosting H-codes, saying that was what AGTHDB was for. Perhaps with AGTHDB's demise, they'd have a change of heart if someone brought up the issue again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuuko Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 I noticed that the site wasn't working umm maybe weeks ago idk but I never thought it was dead for real since I didn't visit it after that. Quite sad but luckily I have saved H-codes for VNs that I'm going to play next so I'll need H-codes for new VNs maybe in 5 years xD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorp Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 Some H-codes were undoubtedly lost, and others are scattered across the net where they'll be more difficult to locate. AGTHDB was also a convenient location to add and find H-codes. If there's no good place to store them, people might not bother sharing their codes at all. On a lesser scale, that's sort of like saying, "If VNDB went down, someone could just create another one, right?" Well yes, but good luck recreating it and all of the information that used to be stored there. Actually issue in that AGTHDB no one knows who hosted and no one cared. For VNDB I know whom I can contact for data. I am actually telling not about recreating, but that lot of data was obsolete on AGTHDB, and would be better to take only things, which were actual. Well, I anyway never used that, and in any case I would rather hack the resources and replace text inside the script, without use of all these hooks But, if anyone interested, I can build a website similar to AGTHDB, if you think this is of any use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share Posted August 22, 2015 Actually issue in that AGTHDB no one knows who hosted and no one cared. For VNDB I know whom I can contact for data. I am actually telling not about recreating, but that lot of data was obsolete on AGTHDB, and would be better to take only things, which were actual. Well, I anyway never used that, and in any case I would rather hack the resources and replace text inside the script, without use of all these hooks But, if anyone interested, I can build a website similar to AGTHDB, if you think this is of any use. That's a generous offer, but unfortunately the problem isn't as simple as just building a new site. AGTHDB was born in a different time, where its services were indispensable. Even if someone cloned it (minus the data contained within), there's no guarantee users would actually start contributing, especially since the demise of AGTHDB showed that their efforts could very well end up wasted again. H-codes just aren't in the same demand they used to be with the rise of VNR, so recruiting contributors would be a big obstacle. I'd honestly recommend just using the AGTH Wikia. It already exists, and presumably data is safe there. It's a better place for data than a 100-page thread on HongFire that isn't properly indexed by Google. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narcosis Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 HongFire's thread still exists, and you could just stop playing old games cause they're terrible. If they're like 5+ years old and haven't been translated and not in the works or planned, then they're likely terrible and not worth it. >If they're like 5+ years old and haven't been translated Yeah, fuck logic. Fuck everything. Darklord Rooke, Vokoca and LinovaA 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eclipsed Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 RIP, though I'm a pleb that never and will never use tools like that sooo ~~ I selected the LewdGamer for poll simply because I like the black/red color scheme over the bluish purplish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zalor Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 I've only been getting involved in untranslated relatively recently, and with the exception of the VN I am currently reading I haven't needed to scout for H-codes much. But this site seems to have a lot of them: Link. It at least satisfied my need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.