adamstan

Good point. After all work already spent on editing graphics and preparing music files, better to get something working Also, during porting inevitably some parts of the text will be discarded (like some redundant responses to "look" command, that would break the flow of the scene), so that means less to work on later

I wonder how should I proceed from now on. Is it better to first port the game to the playable state using current text, getting flags, choices, routes and other "logic" thingies right, and then work on text (retranslation/reedit), or the other way around?

I'm really looking forward to it - both to the game, and because I really want to see the results of that translation approach. Also, thanks for the above paragraph. Yeah, I experienced it firsthand - I was all for super-literal TLs. Those were my feelings as well, perfectly put , but as I slowly progressed in my JP knowledge, my stance softened and crumbled (even though I'm still a beginner). Now I just want something that isn't awkward However, as you say, doing excellent liberal translation is extremely difficult, and knowing the audience is important, so I think that finally convinces me to use honorifics in my reworking of Sakura no Kisetsu (which currently suffers from clunky translation that tried to be liberal, but failed)

I think that is almost always the case*, as unfortunate as it is. Especially with bigger non-VN games. The more extreme cases (and what was responsible for some pretty bad quality game localizations) were situations where not only translators were working on disjointed out-of-context lines, but also voice actors were given just list of separate lines to record, and haven't even seen the scene they were to "perform" * apart from fan-TLs, which can have a bit of advantage in that field Yeah, those "realistic" bits (*) were funny, and a nice change of pace, but overally unfortunately I didn't enjoy most of the scenes. * I agree that word choice was unfortunate. However I am genuinely curious - do you agree with translator's choice to translate it at all (but obviously with different wording), or would you rather leave it at "onii-chan"?

I just have finished preparing graphic files - including backgrounds, cgs and sprites with side images. BTW this classroom background was one of the hardest to edit. I had to manually redraw ceiling tiles, because the amount of ditheriing on them was too much for smoothing algorithms (original version below). (looks like I have to correct sprites positioning ) Now it's time for actual scripts porting...

Probably some spambot resurrected it, but its post got deleted by the time you got here?

Yeah, my bad, should have posted original too:

Nah, that was because there are two chances to reject her, and this dialogue happens at the second one. When I was aiming for her ending I obviously accepted her, and when going for others, I rejected her right away at the first choice, so I didn't get to this point. Yeah, it has its charm (you can almost hear it even though VN is unvoiced ) , but I think leaving it in would be going a bit over the top Also, it isn't just "BAKA" - notice that in the previous line there is also untranslated の left - "Shuu-kun no BAKA!". Also, it's the only instance in the whole game - all other cases of "baka" are translated.

It could be typo, but after seeing this I'll be extra cautious I also found one untranslated part - just romanised: Didn't remember that from my playthrough

What OS are you playing it on? Maybe I was just lucky, but playing on W7, I haven't encountered any of the bugs you guys describe.

They are on the street, with the school being 200-300m away from them - it's the scene from the prologue when Shuuji bumps into Reiko as he runs to school. So I think that "perspective switch" doesn't occur here - they are still far enough from the school, and probably both facing it, since they're both on their way there. That perspective difference is something which often happens for example with teachers or speakers on the stage, when they say about something "to the right", and there's always a question "my right or your right?", but I don't think it would apply to this conversation on the street. And, of course, in the VN it's almost impossible to determine their exact positions - the scene uses "generic street" background. The line in question actually follows the one from this screen: I think that she uses 向かう with the meaning "going/heading towards" (second meaning on jisho) - and then the line would translate "Going that way (towards there - そこの向かって ), it's the leftmost building". So there should be no confusion about POV. And it makes sense when giving directions to someone on the street. But of course, it's minor and totally irrelevant detail However I think I'll change it to the "left"

Spotted this today: Original: 鈴子: 講堂はそこの向かって一番左の建物よ。 Translation: Reiko: The lecture hall is over there, the building on the far right. Yeah, right... Of course, for the story it doesn't matter if it's left or right, but still...

Well, I haven't exactly abandoned it, but, outside of importing it all into spreadsheets and preaparing it for editing, I haven't done any serious work with it yet. TBH I feel a bit overwhelmed by it now.

We'll see how long will I be able to keep it up before burning out Meanwhile, I added side-images for the characters. They are not animated, but have same expressions as main sprites. Also I'm thinking of recycling some assets from other PC98 JAST games from the same era. Not only Meisou Toshi and San Shimai, which got translated, but also Majokko Paradise, Eden no Kaori or Tenshi-tachi no Gogo ~Tenkousei~ seem to be done by the same art team, and share many backgrounds and even some sprites. They almost look like they all have same setting For now, I want to give Rin (the girl we meet at the arcade) a sprite from Meisou Toshi, where she's one of the heroines, and add some locations outside girls' houses instead of that single street that you've seen in the screenshot above. I may also give sprites to some minor characters, like club-recruiters in the prologue etc.

That's good idea indeed. I'd just like to avoid MC speaking directly to the player. (Again, that's okay and pretty typical for adventure games, but wrong for a VN, IMO). I may also look into the possibility of coding clickable TL-notes, like the abovementioned PE. I think engine would allow to do this. Yep. There were also numerous discussions on this forum - I even engaged in some of them Frankly, I'm not sure which side I'm on now... It's really difficult. I think I currently tend to prefer well done honorific-less translations - when there's too much honorifics, it starts to look awkward and annoy me. OTOH I acknowledge, that doing such version is pretty hard, and requires some serious writing skills. And actually I think I'm not skilled enough to pull it off, so I'll probably go the safe-and-tried weeby way I'm also thinking about "keep them only where they matter" approach. That would mean keeping them in dialogues, especially where character is addressed directly, but delete them from narration/MC inner monologue. After all, it's ancient game, so maybe it's okay to give it a bit of that "otaku feeling"

I'm just browsing the script right now, having original and translated version side to side, and the more I look at it, the less I like the translation I guess it was kind-of-okay for ancient "adventure game", where bits of text were responses to interactions, but when trying to make it into "proper" VN, it won't do. As we noticed earlier, it's very stiff, and at the same time manages to lose many things - it's neither literal nor good flowing Also, there are various instances of "TL-notes" put into narration, where it looks like MC is speaking directly to the player, explaining things. Look at this example below: Bolded lines in parentheses were added by TL-team. It sounds weird to me. I think I should cut them out. What do you think? I guess they'd be okay, if they were in kind of clickable pop-up windows, like in Princess Evangile, but right in the middle of narration they're wrong. Also, I'm thinking what to do with honorifics etc... Current translation is all over the place with them - they are preserved in some lines, but most of the time just characters' first names are used. OTOH Kyouko-sensei is always addressed as such (or just "sensei"), but "senpai" when MC talks with Reiko has been removed. Total mess. So I have to decide what style I want to follow, but that's difficult decision... I see pros and cons of each, but it's hard to choose.

Dunno really... I get most of my VNs on Steam, cause I like playtime-counter and general "library" functionality, but if there's something that isn't there, I buy either from MG or JAST. I find JAST to be really nice, the payment process at MG is a bit convoluted. Didn't use the others - ah, bought JP version of "One" from getchu, but that's all.

Today I finished editing backgrounds - upscaling and smoothing. For each image I created one or more smoothed versions, layered them with original, and then mixed them in various proportions by hand (using eraser tool with different settings). The goal was to make them look at least decently in 600p resolution - some were more forgiving, and some thougher. I didn't smooth them completely - after all, there's "pixel" in pixel-art However I think the effect is nice. Here's one image for comparison (it was used in previous screenshots, but I feel this version looks better): Original (480x296, 16 colors - game ran at 640x400 but interface took much space): Edited (1066x600): Now, graphics-wise, there are sprites and CGs left.

Of course, I wouldn't want to do overly literal TL. I just looked for a way to possibly convey that little joke, and sound less stiff than original TL. Like, maybe then make him say something along "WTF I'm even doing? Hosting a TV show?" instead of that untranslatable "dead language" ( 死語 ) reference? Don't know yet, but let's write down the idea just in case

Yeah, that's right. I guess it was kind of subconscious - for some reasons, even knowing all above, I wanted to have "today" at the beginning, but then shifting verb to the end sounded awkward, while the solution you presented was very simple - shift both verb and "today" to the end, and it sounds good So I got the basic meaning, but the fact that ピカピカ isn't really archaic/old fashioned flew over my head Hmm... maybe I should make use of that ピカピカ somehow - "I am a shiny, brand new, fresh, first year high school student." That would sound pretty funny, a little like an advert

No, unvoiced. Only music. (Maybe I'll add some sound effects if I find some decent samples) After all, it's ancient - 1996 - and was released on five floppies Yep, that sounds good, thanks. I think that I got too fixed on japanese sentence structure with "today" ( 今日 ) at the beginning. Haha, yes, I was surprised when I saw it - but have no idea how to convey it in a neat way. If I understand correctly, he uses old-fashioned word for "new" - ピカピカ - and then notes to himself that nobody speaks that way anymore, right? BTW - original translation from 1996 is like this (the second line containing aforementioned adult disclaimer added by translation team): Quite awkward if you ask me It seems that I'll have to check with original text pretty often, in search for possible nuances that could be added. In the meantime I'm trying to find a way to implement that music mode switch. It isn't as easy as I thought. Surely, adding menu item to switch the variable "musicmode" is trivial, but then it should reload whole table with references to audio files, and restart currently played song with a new one. Hmm... maybe I should leave this for later, and for now concentrate on porting the game itself... The way it is now, it works, but requires game restart for music change to take effect, as music table is generated only at the initialization phase.

I have played several VNs with boring or otherwise tiresome beginnings, that finally turned out to be great, so give it a try

Yeah, that's clearly madness Now I have important decision to make before proceeding further - which version of character's names to use? I've already restored long vowels, so we have Shuuji, Shouko and Kyouko. But besides that, two heroines' family names use different readings in original and translated versions. First, there's Kiyomi: Her name in kanji is 新藤 清美. Translated version reads her family name as Shinfuji. And indeed, ふじ is most common reading for 藤. However in original version her family name is read as しんどう (Shindou), using on'yomi readings for both kanji. And then we have Ruri: 白水 瑠璃. Most obvious reading would be しろみず - Shiromizu, and that's what translated version uses. However, according to original, her family name is read しろず - Shirozu, dropping the み from 水. Now - which one to use? With Ruri I'm fine either way, but I'm torn about Kiyomi, as I like the sound of "Shinfuji" more Also, it then carries direct reference to those pretty flowers: But then, original says "Shindou"... As for other changes to the translation, that I've already made - I restored the setting to high school instead of some weird "Junior College", so principal Saitou is no longer called "Dean" (But I'll avoid directly mentioning characters' ages, just to be safe ) While we're at it - DOS translated version had funny contradiction right at the beginning. JAST USA tried to put that "all characters are 18+" disclaimer directly into the story - they actually added whole line saying how the school - "Kotobuki Prep School" in this version - is something that goes between high school and university, and that all students are over eighteen years old, but the previous line, where Shuuji proudly states "I'm Shuuji Yamagami, 16 years old" slipped past the radar They corrected that in the "Memorial Collection" Windows version, making him 19 (as high school graduate should be). What I did was removing that added line, but also removing the direct age reference from the previous line, so in my version it is something like BTW - is that second sentence gramatically correct? Shouldn't "begins" be at the end? For some reasons, when I put it there it seems awkward... But as it is, I feel like something is wrong too... I guess, maybe we can treat "Today" as a subject that does the beginning? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ BTW, original line is 俺は山神修司。１６才。今日からピカピカ（死語）の高校一年生だ。 Also, I have all music from the PC98 set ready - yesterday I finished cutting wave files and setting up loop points.

So, here are screenshots from current state: I wanted to post a video too, but MSI Afterburner has problems with framerate... I found original censored version too - had to look for FDD images instead of HD images with preinstaled game.

For me, Sakura no Kisetsu is a classic. However, it's a bit unapproachable now, with old engine and awkward adventure-gameplay system - which is much more annoying than, say, YU-NO. As I wrote recently in recommendations thread: Well, sometimes I do things on a whim, and shortly after writing the above, I decided to give it a try Actually it's quite fun for now - writing things in Ren'py is almost like directing your own puppet-show . The goal is to rewrite Sakura no Kisetsu into standard VN structure with branching choices system - getting rid of the "look/think/talk with everything to trigger next scene" system. I do this by arranging texts from various "think" "look" and "talk" sections into the order that gives the best flow (and inserting small connecting bits in between where absolutely neccessary). I also plan to re-edit it or partially retranslate the lines that annoy me too much As I see, Brazilian Portugese translation uses similar approach, but they used assets (graphics and music) from the remake, which I'm not too fond of - they are very blurry, while the pixels from dithering are still very visible, so it's like the worst of both worlds . I'm working with assets from PC98 and DOS versions. I also plan to have switchable soundtrack, with all three versions available: PC98 - original FM soundtrack, GS - PC98 MIDI music replayed with SoundCanvas soundfont and AdLib - PC DOS version FM soundtrack. While browsing graphic files extracted from both versions I was surprised. I expected Japanese PC98 version to have mosaics (and if such were the case, planned to have mosaics on/off switch in the options), however, the version that is floating around the net is uncensored. Probably somebody hacked files with HCGs from English PC version into it? Graphics and scripts formats are identical between two versions, only music files are different because of different sound hardware. I looked at files more closely and yes, it seems that some CG files were replaced - while all graphic files from PC98 have 1996-04 dates, HCGs have 1999-10. For now I have ported first two scenes - talk with parents in Shuuji's home and first meeting with Reiko on the way to school - complete with music and sprites with facial animations, just like in the original Some preliminary screenshots coming in ~12 hours. Of course for now it is all pretty basic - just full-screen background and standard ren'py textbox. I'm still not sure whether to go with that approach, or try something more like in the original, with borders etc, and the actual scenes taking just small portion of the screen? Also, I'm still not sure how much smoothing (if any) should I use while converting backgrounds and sprites. But we can discuss that when there are screenshots. *I'm not sure in which subforum should I place it. It's clearly not "Original Visual Novel", it's also not exactly "Translation Project" (although probably some translating will be involved). Well, I hope our mods will help me by moving it into most suited section.