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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/06/22 in Posts
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It's been exactly a month since the first post announcing the project, although you may have noticed I've been updating the translation counts weekly. And so I'm here to give the first major update: Hayami's arc is now fully translated! Her total arc has over 20,000 lines and is the longest by far in the entire game, so getting over that hurdle is very gratifying and makes the rest of the project seem slightly less daunting. But only slightly, since with just under 46,000 lines left to translate, that's almost exactly the entire length of my previous fan translation project, Imaimo. Not that the two are really comparable in any way beyond that coincidental statistic. The fact is that Imaimo was generally easier to translate. That's not to say H2O has a difficult writing style, because it really doesn't. Most of it is very straightforward, but it does tend to be very wordy. That might have something to do with how this is a NVL game and not an ADV game, so the lines can be longer without having to worry about a text box. Or maybe the writers of H2O were just generally more verbose than what I encountered in Imaimo. Either way, I've noticed that it generally takes longer to translate H2O on the whole, but I'm still going at a pretty decent pace. There's also the fact that starting the translation of any decently sized project feels slower at the start because there's so much more left to translate, but that picks up over time, especially after getting over the 50% milestone, which at least for this project is still a little bit ways away. Now for a few other things that I feel require clarification about the nature of the game. As it says in the first post, this version of H2O combines the content from the original game and the sequel that came later, Root after and another. But Root isn't just a fan disc. It essentially doubled the size of the available content from the original game. In fact, the two are virtually the same size in terms of their line counts: H2O content covers 36,901 lines, and the new content from Root covers 36,646 lines. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but it's an interesting coincidence either way. Additionally, if you remove the roughly 7,000 lines from the common route from the original game, that means Root actually has more content in the character routes than in the original game. The game's overall structure is also interesting in how it's laid out. There are 13 possible endings, which covers 5 normal routes (Hayami, Hinata, Otoha, Yui, Hamaji/Yukiji) and 8 after story routes (3 for Hayami, 2 for Hinata, and one each for Otoha, Yui and Hamaji/Yukiji (this last one is also Maki's route)). In the original game, you had to first play through Hayami's arc to get to Hinata, and then getting done with Hinata let you access Otoha's route. That's not exactly the case anymore in this version, although Otoha's route is still only unlocked after going through Hayami's, Hinata's, and Yui's normal routes. But you can do those in any order, or even do Hamaji's route first. As for the after stories, they're obviously only unlocked if you go through the normal routes first, in addition to 3 of the 8 after stories only being unlocked when you finish other after stories. That, in addition to the somewhat confusing choice progression, means that a full walkthrough will be provided for this game once the patch is released. But back to the translation. Completing Hayami's arc brings the total content translated up to 37.5%. Not bad for about 3 months of work considering how long this game is. By comparison, the Imaimo translation took me just under 3 months to complete from start to finish. So yeah, I have my work cut out for me. But I've enjoyed it immensely thus far. This is a really solid story with plenty of feels, comedy and...oh yeah, H scenes. There are 26 H scenes, 9 of which are in Hayami's arc. By line count, the 24 scenario files that contain the H scenes (because 2 files contain 2 H scenes) take up 14,479 lines, 19.7% of all content. That's not to say that every line in those 24 files is part of an H scene, but the vast majority of it is. As for the other girls, 6 H scenes are in Hinata's arc, 4 are in both Otoha's and Maki's arcs, and there are 3 in Yui's arc. Next up, I'll be translating Hinata's arc, the second longest after Hayami's, but considerably shorter at just over 14,000 lines. So for now, I'll get back to work.5 points
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Hi, I'm Adze
ThePenSword and one other reacted to Adze for a topic
As the title says, I'm Adze. Unlike most of you, I'm actually pretty new to weebery and I'd never actually watched any kind of anime (except for Pokemon because what 90s kid hasn't?) until I was in my 20s. In fact, it was visual novels that got me into Japanese media altogether, and I only got into VNs because someone convinced me to try out "the cripple dating sim made by 4Chan." So yeah, my entire involvement with this community is essentially a happy accident resulting from a misunderstanding. I'm also a small-time Youtuber who focuses on critical analysis of video games and VNs, though I don't want my presence on this site to be just shameless self-promotion. If you've seen anything of mine, it's probably either my Touhou video that went viral or my Muv-Luv video that made the rounds on VN Twitter. I feel like it'd be in poor taste to drop links here, but you can find a link to my work in my profile if you'd like. Aside from that, I like video games, reading actual books (most recently, I read through the Lightbringer series and aside from some weirdness towards the end, I absolutely loved it. Highly reccomended), and interacting with like-minded people online. Just today, I was involved in an impromptu group discussion on worldbuilding on Discord and it was absolutely incredible. Hopefully I can become friendly with some of you here and have some good fun with this niche interest of ours. Despite my staggering backlog, I'm always happy for more recommendations.2 points -
Agreed... A lot of people in the GOG Forums are getting infuriated regarding the whole ordeal. Why not just release a uncensored one identical to the version found on JAST USA Storefront? They've released Dead End Aegis on GOG uncensored straight out of the box without any need to apply +18 Patches or DLC. Why not do the same? In addition to that, the GOG version of Kurokami-sama's Feast still uses the old v1.0.1 version instead of the newer v1.0.2 that the Steam version has which includes so many quality of life features such as adding a CG Gallery and Ending List. Why do they even bother prioritizing the Steam Version in contrast to the GOG Version anyways? Is JAST USA best buddies again with Steam despite the rejection of Muramasa to the Steam Store... Please also inform @Seryuu about that too aside from the Muramasa patch issue.1 point
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Well, essentially, the main thing I learned that marketing IS the most important part of development when it comes to actually getting people to interact with your game. Going forward with new projects, I do want to make it more of a priority from the start. I was really shy about exposing people to my work in an unfinished state, but now I realize I was only sheltering myself from the fear of things not working out. Even if marketing draws negative attention, that is better sales wise for your game than no attention at all. That being said, I am somewhat glad I was ignorant to marketing and its importance for Siren's Call. I can't even imagine how much of a hit the story would've taken if I was writing to cater more to the whims of other people rather than my own personal experiences. Even if it did better in terms of downloads, it wouldn't have been a product I'd be proud of a as a writer, and I think that's important to consider too when you're making a VN. What you prioritize during the development process ultimately shows in the final product, I feel. But I also don't think it's correct to prioritize some aspects over others 100% of the time. I think it's contextual. If you value writing, focus on the writing. If you want downloads, focus on marketing. And if you have the funds/time/manpower to do both, then do both. If you're putting your work out there in the first place, you're gonna have moments where you feel dirty or like a shill or whathave you. And that's okay and completely normal. You aren't bad for feeling those things or wrong for thinking about them (lord knows I have). But while I haven't exactly tasted mainstream success, I imagine that's only possible with VNs after learning to accept that feeling to some regard. That being said, living with the feeling or not, I'm probably just going to hire somebody to do the marketing for future projects. I'm already wearing enough hats. Social media is a big part of it and that takes way too much time for me. Cause I don't know if anything really happens organically with game visibility. I think it always takes somebody pushing it. I think that's normal. It doesn't have to be you pushing it though, if that's any comfort.1 point
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Hey, first of all congratulations on getting Siren's Call out. I haven't read it yet, but it looks quite interesting and I can tell a lot of heart went into it. You mentioned that marketing along with management were you're weakest skills. I can't comment on my management skills since my own VN (link in my sig) was small scale and aside from the editing, which was done by a long time acquaintance on this forum, the only other person I worked with was someone I'm very close to irl. But I definitely know that I also suck at marketing. Would you mind talking about that a bit? What have you learned about marketing, and what were the difficulties for you? Personally marketing makes me feel like a prostitute. Instead of letting people discover my work organically, I'm suppose to shill it and implicitly promise people that they'll love it. Like handing out fliers, we all know that 99% will end up stepped on and in the gutter. Something about putting my work in that situation seems like it's cheapening it. Also, I heard that social media is a big part of marketing, does your experience agree with that assessment? I'm toiling away at a much larger scale VN project now, so I appreciate you sharing your perspectives!1 point
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Aiyoku no Eustia Translation Project (Partial Patch is Out!)
Maya reacted to littleshogun for a topic
Another update, and it's in regard of what PyroCyan said on Reddit. I'll quote his statements fully below. So yeah our PyroCyan here has the full translation patch that also have the TLC change up to Chapter 3, and in case there's a heavy emergency such as the team decided to abandoned this then he'll drop the patch as the leak. As for whether we can see this on Spring or Autumn next year, we'll see. If anything else, at least we already have someone who will leak the patch later if things goes awry, although of course the leak should be treated as the last resort only and so we should wait to finally have the programming be done. PS - Oh yes in case anyone wonder on how much final TLC on Chapter 4 (Licia's chapter) ongoing, currently it's been at 92.24% done (By the way I mentioned this as 'in programming' in my VNTS Review because there's some earlier mention that the TLC is already done for all chapters).1 point