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Sol Press announces 'Newton and the Apple Tree'


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15 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

I skipped to a random point early on in the (impressively long) youtube link, and I have to admit I'm a little disappointed, though unsurprised. The script reads fairly poorly, both in terms of line editing and copy editing. The latter is mostly an issue of punctuation: seriously, who actually thinks it's okay to leave three exclamation points on a single sentence, let alone an ellipsis followed by three exclamation points, or to end a line with "!?!"? Moreover, those aren't one-offs for particularly emotional moments; standard, somewhat angry lines seem to merit a steaming pile of punctuation. I shudder to think of how many exclamation points they're going to toss on actually emotionally impactful lines. This script badly needs to be depunctuated (except for the lines where they just plain forgot the punctuation, like "It happened there, when I walked towards the ticket gate of an almost deserted station square"). Aside from that, just looking at a hundred lines or so showed off multiple errors, like "for goodness's [sic] sake", or "Am [sic] unexpectedly cool and intellectual voice came from behind the Groucho glasses.", or the lovely comma splice plus incorrectly-hyphenated compound noun, "There wasn't the slightest smile on Groucho-glasses girl's face, it wasn't even a straight face."

That said, the clunky line editing is a much bigger problem for me than the missed copy editing issues, and is sadly an even less surprising problem. I guess quality writing will continue to be the province of MangaGamer, and occasionally (but definitely not predictably) JAST and Sekai Project. I have this gut feeling it ought to be a lot easier and cheaper to find people who actually know how to write solid English prose than people who can accurately (if stiltedly) translate Japanese, but the level of work I see everywhere in VN translations is starting to convince me otherwise, and unfortunately, from what I see in the youtube demo for this game, this is looking to be a cut below what I've come to expect even from JAST or SP on their bad days. Line to line flow is nearly nonexistent, and awkward phrasing is the rule, not the exception.

Bottom line: dropping my pledge, since I can't see myself actually sticking with reading it if this is the level of quality I can expect from the script. Shame, since I heard good things about the game.

I'm sorry to hear that Fred. With the Kickstarter meeting its goal so quickly, we wanted to demonstrate that we're actively working on the product even before the Kickstarter was finished. The demo is not currently available due to needing another QA pass as well as an engine issue which we are currently fixing. 

You may be surprised who the actual staff working on the project are, and we'll be announcing that in the coming days along with the demo. I hope the final demo changes your mind because we'd hate to lose your support!

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Just now, Xeviax said:

I'm sorry to hear that Fred. With the Kickstarter meeting its goal so quickly, we wanted to demonstrate that we're actively working on the product even before the Kickstarter was finished. The demo is not currently available due to needing another QA pass as well as an engine issue which we are currently fixing. 

You may be surprised who the actual staff working on the project are, and we'll be announcing that in the coming days along with the demo. I hope the final demo changes your mind because we'd hate to lose your support!

You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. Product talks and bullshit walks, and the product you've demonstrated so far in that video isn't up to my standards. I'll give the demo a spin when it's out, but I don't have high hopes, so for the time being I've dropped my Kickstarter pledge down to $1.

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Even at its early stages the translation lookes a cut above the most official localizations to me but I guess even at this level it's not safe from angry tantrums, huh. Though I'll laugh when it turns out that some of the usual MG staffers work on it :wahaha:

At the same time I, with my third grade English, am definitely not worthy of any serious translation debacle so I'll just meekly hope that the final translation will see further improvement.

Edited by novurdim
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Took a brief look. Most of it is translated good, but there are a few mistakes in the difficult parts. But I don't think it would hurt anyone's enjoyment of the game. I'm glad they listened to feedback and improved the translation quality.

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/crCJ63b9EvA?t= 3924 一通り here means "go measure the room a bit" not "measure every last inch"

and https://youtu.be/crCJ63b9EvA?t=7664 (two lines with mistakes, but it is of little consequence)

 

Edited by Chronopolis
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Well I think the translation was pretty much good enough to understand for me, so no problem. Quite interesting that this VN have same atmosphere like Steins Gate, only it was more light even though the result of time travel was changing human history and there's many consequences for that action. As for the genre, I guess it could be categorized as charage from the first glace, but since we had Alice aka Newton as the main heroine, perhaps it would have some focus on Alice.

Look forward to full version there, and good luck for the stretch goals.

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On 16/11/2017 at 2:28 AM, iamnoob said:

WAIT NEWRIN IS GETTING TRANSLATED?!

 

WOOOOOO

Newrin has very unique eye art as well.

Also.... for those who have played it... I am still traumatised by the chemist's H scene xD

Could you elaborate it for me? I am... wary of Lavi after the morning encounter with her during the demo. Also, is there any other stuff I should watch out for?

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I haven't played it myself, but

Spoiler

I saw someone commenting on twitter that she uses alchemy to change her vegina for Shuuji's dick and then has sex with him. Don't know for certain though.

 

Edit: Sorry I didn't put spoiler on

Edited by bakauchuujin
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19 hours ago, bakauchuujin said:

I haven't played it myself, but I saw someone commenting on twitter that she uses alchemy to change her vegina for Shuuji's dick and then has sex with him. Don't know for certain though.

DON'T SPOIL YOU IDIOT

I WANT PEOPLE TO BE TRAUMATIZED LIKE ME

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
19 hours ago, kyrt said:

Out of curiosity what did you think of the demo if you've gotten around to reading it. 

I read one complete H scene (Lavi's, chosen on a lark), and then read a bunch of the intro again on the same day the demo released. A handful of issues I saw in the youtube video were indeed fixed (there was some really terrible line about "dropping knives", IIRC, clearly literally translated idiom, that was made into something rational), but most of the issues I had still remained in the demo. I actually wrote up a lot of detailed feedback and forwarded it on to some people loosely involved with the project (turns out I have a few acquaintances there...), which was received positively, but even if the immediately-involved team benefits some from that, I still have to admit that I don't have high hopes for the end result: it seems like both the primary translator and editor are not all that experienced at English writing, and it shows in the text. People who are less critical readers should be fine with it, of course; it's about on par with at least one recent Sekai Project release...

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