recruiting Musumaker Translation Project (Mikan, Karin, Ichigo, Suika, Zakuro, Yuzu routes complete!)

[RaurosFalls 48]

Good day, and say hello to our team: we are Mooseworks! I've been working on translating this game for several years going on 11 years now. There was a previous translation effort that gave up, and I just took over and have been working on it since. But we'd like to move it here, since this forum fits better for a VN, and we want to get people to help out!

Update 2017-8-31- All current and future work has been moved to the 2016 HD remake of the game . The old 15% patch for the original 2008 version is still linked however.

Update 2019-6-2- The 56% English patch with interface translations for Musumaker HD is out. Download it here. Just extract or copy and paste to the game directory. Be sure to apply the official 1.18 update patch first, however! Get it here.

Please note - the patch breaks the saveload function for dialogues longer than 1 line. If you want to keep your save game, make sure to save on a non-split line, the schedule screen, or the "who will you train screen?" screen.

Game overview

VNDB: https://vndb.org/v1160

Official website: http://www.digitalcute.com/

Product link: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B00L5PAVLM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&keywords=むすめーかー&qid=1504205685&redirect=true&sr=8-1

(There is a non-horribly censored one on digital-cute's website page, here)

Brief description by sanahtlig from Mangagamer:

Quote

Subtitles for the first segment of the video (translated by me):
Kyou kara anata no musume desu
From today we'll be your daughters

Papa no nozomi doori ni watashi-tachi, ganbatte sodatsukara ne!
Work hard and raise us as you'd like!

Sitteru? Tadashii shoujo no sodatekata
What is the best way to raise a proper girl? Does Papa know?

Musumaker by Imagecraft Digital-Cute, a loli raising sim. Don't be fooled by the VNDB description. This is actually a fairly lighthearted game that gives the player a good deal of control over how the girls are raised and the sexual content that is encountered. The game is well regarded on VNDB (Avg: 7.9) and Erogamescape (74), has animated H-scenes, and the raising sim aspect is an integrated gameplay element that matters. It's a logical successor to Imouto Paradise, and this is actually NOT a nukige. The writing is surprisingly solid as well. Quite frankly, this is probably one of the best lolicon titles out there.

Current members

RaurosFalls - project leader / translator

tymmur - technical leader / programmer

Progress

Currently there is a 15% translation patch out, which translates from the beginning of the game to a certain date (April 1st).

Meanwhile, the actual current "patch" (for the 2008 version of the game) is available for download here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/i3levft6xv3cs7t/musu_translation_patch_v1.0.zip [released August 9, 2015]

Translation is ongoing and status updates will be posted.

Recruiting

So our decision to move here came about because we think no one knows about our game, and we want more translators to help out! We'll gladly take on anyone who wants to help. This is too much for one man to bear . If someone also wanted to lend a hand decensoring images, that would be amazing.

Edited June 9, 2019 by RaurosFalls

[tymmur 526]

Here is a short post to say hi. I'm doing all the technical stuff regarding this translation project. It's not the most translateable VN engine as it has encoding issues. I wrote a 2000 line perl script to control the script from what translators write into what the format the game requires. On top of re-encoding, it checks for syntax errors, which would crash the game when they are reached ingame and now we get a warning right away. Thanks to this script, we have won the battle against the game engine and has a stable and reliable English game running.

Moving to the HD remake, most of the work I have done have been scrapped and rewritten from scratch to do the same, but for a new game engine. This new 3rd (or 4th?) script is designed modular, easy to modify and should never require rewriting from scratch. It's based on experience from the previous scripts as well as workflow from Luna Translations, meaning it's not only technically way better, it also allows much better work conditions for translators, editors etc., which will hopefully result in both better quality and faster work from said people.

All in all I'm still support and not doing the translation itself and yes it's still a lot of work.

Edited August 31, 2017 by tymmur
Updated with info on the HD version

[sanahtlig 1,591]

Good to see this project being revived.  Hopefully the Thought Police don't show up and start making people disappear.

If you're looking for help, having this thread moved to the project section would be best.

Edited November 29, 2015 by sanahtlig

[RaurosFalls 48]

Thank you

By the way, I thought up of a good name for our translation group. How about "Aonori Translations"? What do you think, tymmur?

[tymmur 526]

I'm not sure about "Aonori Translations". It has a good reference to the script, which works well, but the reference to the script is also the problem. I fear that people not having tried the VN will consider it an odd name. It's not the language barrier either because "Seaweed Translations" would be equally weird without the script reference. I'm thinking of something boring like "Musumaker Translation Group". The lack of references to anything other than the title ensures that people can relate to the name even without having tried the VN itself.

[XReaper 661]

seriously good luck with this one fellows!

[RaurosFalls 48]

^ Thank you ~

We should be Musumaker Translation Group Sons & Co. Ltd.!

[tymmur 526]

We should be Musumaker Translation Group Sons & Co. Ltd.!

That's the worst name yet. Who is Sons and who is Co?. Also Ltd. indicates something commercial, which is also bad.

 

I updated post 2. The link to the translation progress links to a human readable file. It's still autogenerated though and should update automatically.

[RaurosFalls 48]

Wow that human-readable file looks really nice. Nice job!

I agree Sons & Co. may not be such a good idea. Ok ok. I've a good one. Are you ready? Musuworks

[tymmur 526]

Wow that human-readable file looks really nice. Nice job!

It has one problem though. Being generated by translationfix.pl, the text around the numbers is hardcoded into the perl code. This mean changes aren't as simple as with a regular text file. However running translationfix and then committing will update the text in the link, meaning it truly is done automatically. Also all numbers are actually counted including the total count, meaning it should update if we enable some cut content or remove unreachable sections, like the "here ends the demo" section. I plan on adding comments to mark the unreachable parts to avoid wasting time translating those.

 

I agree Sons & Co. may not be such a good idea. Ok ok. I've a good one. Are you ready? Musuworks

Musuworks might actually work. At least it's the best one so far.

[XReaper 661]

the progress-chart looks somewhat okay as it is & should do its purpose just fine.

edit: name-wise i´m all for mesubuta corporation

[Decay 2,701]

Wow that human-readable file looks really nice. Nice job!

I agree Sons & Co. may not be such a good idea. Ok ok. I've a good one. Are you ready? Musuworks

I like this because it sounds like Mooseworks. As someone with no authority or right to vote, I vote for this.

[Alistoru 8]

Hey guys I actually created an account here just so I could say thanks for undertaking this, I know it's a dauntingly large translation, but it's a really fun game and I can't wait to

play the 100% translation. I wish I could help translate but my Japanese skills are even worse than google translate. -> "The girl person fondles the umbrella loudly" Isn't a translation that will make fans happy. Maybe check with Sat over at http://lah.li? They do translations from time to time.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Alistoru
missed a word!

[RaurosFalls 48]

Cool thanks, I will take a look!

[tymmur 526]

 "The girl person fondles the umbrella loudly"

And just when you think you have seen everything, a new fetish shows up

 

It's not like it's mandatory to know Japanese in order to help. I have spend an absurd amount of time on this translation considering that I don't actually translate. Instead I fix script bugs and to some degree adds new features (like the no flashing screen setting). We could use people to decensor the images. Also it turns out that training stats costs/gains is a horrible mess with no consideration for gameplay, balance or logics (some are just copy paste of completely unrelated tasks). I'm currently trying to make it more reasonable and consistent between the girls. Once the code to handle that is done, the next step is to find the right numbers to use. the only way to know if we end up with the right numbers is through gametesting. This mean at some point in a not too distant future, a useful contribution would be to download the newest script and then play over and over and tell if training becomes too easy/too hard. The same goes for earning money as charm is gained through training and is the main skill to determine money earned though service in the schedule. We talked about making the new numbers optional, but the old ones are just too broken for that to make any sense. There are H scenes, which are practically unreachable due to absurd stamina/willpower requirements.

 

This mean do say if you want to help out. Japanese skills would be good, but there are non-Japanese tasks as well. Please do tell if you have time and wants to help and we can figure out tasks matching your skills.

[Sexy_Kitsune 0]

Hello SK here,

Sorry for the long delay, RL intervened.

I now free to rejoin the project.

If there is anything for me to do please tell me.

Sexy Kitsune

[tymmur 526]

Welcome back SK, or is it welcome here

 

There is an issue regarding using your rewrite though. After you failed to show any activity for 3 months and didn't reply when I asked if you were still around, I carried on and now "our" training code has new features your code doesn't support. It may not be a pretty as your rewrite, but it is working as intended. This mean I'm not that interested in a rewrite anymore.

 

The only "coding" task I can think of right now is adding that if you clear a training activity, rather than just getting the last you should have the option to pick which one you want, allowing repeats of the previous ones as well. I will not spoil and say precisely why, but it has to do with being able to unlock otherwise nearly impossible to reach CGs.

 

There is also the task to playtest the new numbers for losses and gains regarding training. I made sort of an engine (a primitive one) to handle this and filled in some numbers, but I'm not sure the numbers are correct. While they are sort of well balanced between activities, the gain for investing in an item is too little (hey, you pay for it after all) and it seems that I gain charm twice as fast as without my modification, making it significantly easier to earn money. I'm thinking of adding a multiplier to charm gains and then set that multiplier in TL forewords. Adjusting the service income that way seems like an easy, yet highly efficient way to add a game difficulty to a game, which didn't come with one. I think the game easily becomes too hard for new players or too easy for experienced ones.

 

Not really a coding task, but there is the task of making new screenshots for the schedule tutorial. It's so not urgent that nobody looked into it yet and we can actually do without it just fine.

[Forgetful Frank 155]

Best of luck in finding more translators and help in your project! Thank you for dedicating some of your personal time and effort into this project.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on your project!

[Kogashuko 0]

Glad to see this project was picked up again, I was sad when I saw it was dropped a long time ago, and being a lolicon this game is just my thing ^^.
Good luck and I hope things continue smoothly, I'll be keeping and eye on this one as well.

[Eintagsfliege 1]

I'm by no means fluent in Japanese, but I've got a little knowledge and a lot of time right now if you want help translating.

[tymmur 526]

Sounds great. I think the best start would be to follow the setup guide for proofreaders: https://github.com/tymmur/musu-translation/wiki/Guide-for-Proof-readers

The translation operates with two sets of files, one easy to write for translators and one specially encoded for the game. To run this perl script, you just need to double click on the bat file, but it requires perl to be installed. I recommend Ichigo Perl, err Strawberry Perl http://strawberryperl.com/

One nice thing about this script is that it will not allow changes to the "action". That is if somebody deletes a sprite change by mistake, the script will detect this. The result is that it is hard to mess up undetected in any other way than to translate poorly.

 

By the time you have come this far, I would hopefully have written the next guide on how to actually translate the files once you have them. It's not tricky, but it would benefit to know which lines are displayed in the game and which aren't. Translation will have to be coordinated with RaurosFalls to prevent multiple people working on the same file, but for now he translates the story line, which mean clashes shouldn't happen if you pick sidestories or training.

[Eintagsfliege 1]

Alright. I've set up everything.

[RaurosFalls 48]

Hey, welcome aboard! After 5 years of working on this by myself, this is amazing!

[Devka 0]

Seems that I came across a bug. On 10-7 after the H-scene with Suika the game transitions to your room then the game stops progressing. You get the text string "Suika thanks me happily. I suppose that those values that have been ingrained in her over the many years wouldn't change instantly." then nothing happens. You have the blinking wing showing that it is the end of the text but nothing happens when you click to advance. The game is not frozen you can still navigate the menus. It seems like the text chain is broken preventing the game from advancing.

 

PS: I have already given Suika the laptop and played the first game that she made.

[tymmur 526]

First of all you are so far into the game that you are ahead of the translation. The reason why the file is translated is because it was translated by a retired translator back in the days when quality and order was somewhat random.

 

Having located the event to be suika_07 (took a bit of searching), I tried to play through it for the first time and yes, it does stall. Looking closely, it turns out the translator changed "text" into “text”. A minor change, but because the computer is looking for " characters, it stalls when they are missing. I better update the translationfix script to catch this issue as well. I will leave it as it is for now to have something the script is supposed to catch.

 

Meanwhile I have made a fixed version of the buggy file. Decompress it and move it into musume/scripts/day and overwrite the existing file. I have not even tried to correct typos or anything in the text. It's is purely to avoid getting stuck and to allow the game to move on.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=56495982457051227479

 

EDIT: I fixed the script. It turned out to be fairly simple after all. I just count the number of " in both Japanese and the translation and it throws an error if they mismatch. It's a bit primitive, but it gets the job done. It revealed it happened in two files. The second would trigger in December and naturally I fixed both cases.

 

Thanks for the bugreport. Reports like that really helps fixing and improving the game. I do what I can to make the game run stable, but the exe file appears to be designed to reject English as well as it can, which makes it a bit tricky, or should I say impossible if I didn't write a script to check for errors. It checks for all the kind of errors we have encountered so far as well as issues I realized could be a problem, but we never encountered. The problem is the bugs I didn't consider and never encountered. Those can't be fixed without bugreports. You are also welcome to report glitches like failing to hide the text window in a place where it would make sense to hide.

Edited February 17, 2016 by tymmur
Update on the bug being fixed