The Flowers demo is a hot mess

[kingdomcome]

41 minutes ago, Scorp said:

Steam do not send me email on any accounts I tried (Google, Hotmail) year ago. So yes, that's why I ask.

Anyway, if you cannot upload, that's fine, I just do not understand  your offensive behavior. If you can upload and this will take a couple of mins - why not do it? People here do not want to help others or what? And calling me troll and asking others to ignore me... I do not like this.

Not sure if serious? You tried years ago and you can't be bothered trying again? In less than 5 minutes you could be downloading this. You can't play a Steam backup without the Steam platform to boot it up from. It would take much longer to upload a backup of this VN than it would take you to create an account and download it.

Anyway.. back on topic. This is a terrible job by JAST, like really bad. My expectations were much higher for translations from them. When did it all go so bad?

[sanahtlig]

This is all part of a pattern of poor quality control in JAST's recent releases.

1. Starless: Riddled with typos (also lingering mosaics, but that was sort of the developer's fault)
2. Lightning Warrior Raidy: Had some technical issues (I forget what)
3. Shiny Days: Riddled with bugs including save corruption, some translation inaccuracies also
4. Flowers: Demo is filled with technical issues, inaccurate translations, typos, and poor writing

I don't buy the argument that this is simply the inconsistent work of contractors.  That doesn't explain four releases in a row each with their own unique problems.  Clearly QC at JAST is lacking or nonexistent.  They mentioned that one of their goals was releasing games faster.  These issues are probably related to that.  Not to mention 2/4 of these (Starless, Shiny Days) were major releases of high-profile games, and they STILL didn't bother to QC them properly.

 

[Scorp]

27 minutes ago, kingdomcome said:

Not sure if serious? You tried years ago and you can't be bothered trying again? In less than 5 minutes you could be downloading this.

I tried, same results. Registration email just does not come.

Ah, whatever. Forget it. If anyone could go in <SteamInstallDir>/SteamApps/common, zip the game folder and push on some share service and PM me a link - I would be grateful. If not - well, then not. I would not bother anyone in this topic with this request again.

[Marcus]

This is so sad. I hope that either this demo is fairly old at this point or that the game gets delayed until some of the larger issues are resolved... :(. 

29 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

This is all part of a pattern of poor quality control in JAST's recent releases.

1. Starless: Riddled with typos (also lingering mosaics, but that was sort of the developer's fault)

OH GOD don't remind me about Starless. The amount of typos in that game was absolutely RIDICULOUS. Did that fix patch ever come out? 

[sanahtlig]

5 minutes ago, Marcus said:

This is so sad. I hope that either this demo is fairly old at this point or that the game gets delayed until some of the larger issues are resolved... :(. 

OH GOD don't remind me about Starless. The amount of typos in that game was absolutely RIDICULOUS. Did that fix patch ever come out? 

I don't think it did, actually.  JAST was busy with fixing Shiny Days after that.

[solidbatman]

This is a shame. The art looks gorgeous, but if the final product is going to be anywhere nearly as unpolished... well damn. 

[kingdomcome]

53 minutes ago, Scorp said:

I tried, same results. Registration email just does not come.

Ah, whatever. Forget it. If anyone could go in <SteamInstallDir>/SteamApps/common, zip the game folder and push on some share service and PM me a link - I would be grateful. If not - well, then not. I would not bother anyone in this topic with this request again.

Do you have Steam to play it though?

[Scorp]

I do not have Steam. Who told it will require Steam to play? All games without DRM work without Steam as usual.

Btw, lets stop with this discussion, as really too big offtopic here. If you want to help - just send me a PM with link to zip 

[Kanbe]

What in the holy

Even google translate can do a better job :v

[Maxel]

Can't wait for JAST to hire google translate to TL visual novels. 

[Scorp]

2 minutes ago, Maxel said:

Can't wait for JAST to hire google translate to TL visual novels. 

I am still wondering what happened with Makoto. Means he is still with Jast and I understand he is busy with Sumaga and Sonicomi, but does it really takes years for that?.. That's a pity Jast is so closed company and we never have anyone who would anser our questions...

[VirginSmasher]

4 minutes ago, Maxel said:

Can't wait for JAST to hire google translate to TL visual novels. 

Can't wait for that Muramasa TL with Atlas translation 

[Fred the Barber]

Well, this is pretty disappointing to hear. @Getsuya used to rave about Flowers and seemed to have a good head on his shoulders, so I was rather looking forward to this. If they're willing to release a demo in this bad a shape, I'm probably not even going to look at the official release, unless I hear people specifically talking about how much they turned it around after the demo.

[MercyZombie]

48 minutes ago, Maxel said:

Can't wait for JAST to hire google translate to TL visual novels. 

 

44 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

Can't wait for that Muramasa TL with Atlas translation 

Don't give them ideas...

[kingdomcome]

The weird thing is that Avast anti-virus stopped the Steam download thinking it was a virus

Probably a false positive.

Edit: Seems like it's a common thing for Avast and Steam.

[CeruleanGamer]

1 hour ago, VirginSmasher said:

Can't wait for that Muramasa TL with Atlas translation 

I'd rather read Dustmania Grotesque 100 times than that abomination to be released.

[Scorp]

So, I finally could give you my direct opinion about the demo  Well, it's bad. Everyone told about translation matter, so I will speak about tech things.

In brief - bad news. I doubt they would be fixable, unless Jast have source code for the game. As that annoying bug with music clipping happen in all original coded IG games. I do not know, if they have it working on their japanese windows, but on all other windows it got that. Every version have it, starting from Cartagra and goes on till last Flowers instance. I do not know if remedy exists.

Jast most likely do not have source code for the game and so would not be able to fix that. Why I think that they do not have sources? Because they used tricks to have it formatted +- ok. Tricks means this (that's from decrypted and decompiled script straight from the demo):

[charset num=25600 left=420 top=0]
[charset num=25602 left=860 top=0]
[effect type=0 time=500]

Suoh
[v file="suo0561"]
   Ah, oh... I....

[bgset]
[effect type=0 time=500]
   She asks if I was trying to frame her...    I look down as her suspicions dip me in     shame.

   No way, this can't be.

   Hearing everyone in class whisper about     it, I become too ashamed to even be         there, and just stare forward, red-faced.

Notice the huge amount of spaces. You know why they are here? Because japanese glyphs all have same width, so they needed strings to be same width for english release. I believe even the line break limit is same (it was always 44 bytes/symbols (or 22 glyphs - they are 2byte each) in all IG games... lets count? seems match!). That's also why it got cramped in backlog - there is different limit for symbols. Backlog could be actually patched without sources, if they have someone to hack.

 

[VirginSmasher]

5 minutes ago, CeruleanGamer said:

I'd rather read Dustmania Grotesque 100 times than that abomination to be released.

I was under the impression you already had 

[Scorp]

Small tech rant once again. There is a vertical text in chapter 6, so I decided to put the files from the full version into this demo to see, if it was implemented... Results are quite obvious.

So far I am under impression that no one ever edited the original engine exe, and if we compare it with IG trial it would be identical.

Yep, confirmed, only thing they did is translated window title and error messages: <FLOWERS DEMO>, <Warning>,<Your display resolution is lower than recommended!>,<Game resolution will be reduced.>,<*May not work on all systems.>,<Failed to render window.>.

Code is 100% identical to untouched japanese trial. All dll files - identical as well.

 

So I really dunno what they ported and where.

[KuroganeHomura]

https://storify.com/KurosakaRyuuko/flowers-demo-translation

For anyone who can't read Japanese, there's commentary explaining the translation mistakes now.

[Chuee]

Well, uh, here's what Peter has to say.

 https://twitter.com/jlist2/with_replies

"Um, that is an alpha and all problems will be correct. Sure wish fans could dial down the hate just a god damn bit"

[Decay]

Peter Payne is in full damage control mode and seems pretty annoyed at the response. But uh, that's a demo you released, dude. Demos are meant to be representative samples of the final product you're releasing. If you wanted people to forgive mistakes, you should have called it a pre-release alpha instead of a demo. 

There's still the question of how it's going to be ready in time for release when it's still listed as being at 60% editing and moving at 5% a week. There's usually all those other polishing steps after editing, too...

[Darklord Rooke]

23 minutes ago, Decay said:

Demos are meant to be representative samples of the final product you're releasing. If you wanted people to forgive mistakes, you should have called it a pre-release alpha instead of a demo. 

There's still the question of how it's going to be ready in time for release when it's still listed as being at 60% editing and moving at 5% a week. There's usually all those other polishing steps after editing, too...

Agree completely here. My main concern is this - releasing a demo in sub-standard condition is a tad unprofessional, but releasing a demo in this bad a condition a month before release date is worrying. I'm not really concerned about the unprofessional bit, I'm concerned about whether they'll get it into an acceptable condition.

Furthermore, if there are translation problems in the script you shouldn't be editing. And especially if there are this many problems with the script. Making sure the script is accurate comes first, or you end up editing more times than is needed. Which wastes time and also means the editing percentage provided isn't representative of the actual state of progress. Because of course, once a line has been made accurate from a translation viewpoint, you have to edit it again. So there's no point editing until the script is acceptable from an accuracy viewpoint.

[KuroganeHomura]

Best-case scenario: He hadn't taken a single look at the script at any point before this thing blew up and is now actually taking measures to get it fixed. By which I mean delay the release until the quality is at least decent.

Doesn't even seem that unlikely, considering that while he might still sell enough copies of this release to turn a profit, I can't see this not putting a noticeable dent into sales of future Flower releases. Plus, I'd be worried about the impact there may be on the willingness of JP companies to release VNs through JAST in general.

[Darklord Rooke]

Also, and this is probably going to be nit-picking, an 'alpha' status in game development ends when the software is 'feature complete.' I'm not sure how this applies to the localisation of VNs, but I don't believe this is in any way, shape, or form an 'alpha' version of the game.