Tooko

The English patch for Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete is out! Download via either Google drive or Mediafire. There really isn't much else to say beyond what I said in my previous post last week, but I appreciate all the support for not only this project, but also the previous projects, which thankfully have all seen completion, even if this one took longer than I had originally anticipated when I picked it up a year and a half ago. But as a long-time fan of visual novels, it's always nice to give something back to the community. So please enjoy the game released on the luckiest day of the year, Friday the 13th!

There is no other way to purchase it digitally. Physical copies would have to be purchased from second-hand sellers like Suruga-ya, and those would also probably require an additional shipping company like Tenso to act as a middleman to ship it outside Japan. It's unfortunate for such an old game like this, but DMM really is the most convenient way to legitimately acquire a copy.

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates since April, but it's all good because the patch is just about ready for release. At long last, the full patch will be released on Friday, June 13 at 22:00 UTC. Considering all the delays the project has had over the last year and a half, it's somehow fitting that it would end up getting released on Friday the 13th...not that I'm superstitious or anything, but it's still very funny. An absolutely insane amount of work by nReus went into this, including almost all of the image edits, subtitling and rendering of the videos, and even editing an animation sequence the game uses for the right-click menu to make it look as professional as possible, not to mention drawing up the Studio Frisay website, where you can see all of our projects to date. So I know you'll appreciate all the extra work that went into the project beyond the translation. As previously mentioned, the patch will work for either the original disc version released in 2010 or the version purchased from DMM; only the patch files will be different, as specified in the patch upon release. Any troubleshooting will be offered through the patch's readme, as well as on the website, and on the Discord. We've tested the patch on Windows 10 and 11, so any fixes are provided based on those systems. Sorry for the late reply to this, but I was planning on writing up something like this anyway, so this works out just as fine. First, why I picked it. I was trying to find a game that used the Kirikiri engine at the time since I wanted to try working with that engine for the first time, since it's pretty popular and knowing its ins and outs would be useful for any later projects that use that engine. But as to why Waremete specifically, I had watched the anime adaptation years ago, and I had wanted to read the game for a long time since, but just never got around to it. So it was a title that was kind of in the back of my mind, and I had wanted to revisit it to see if working on a patch for the game would be worth it, or even possible. Early work on the game's engine was a massive headache in terms of trial and error, since although the game uses Kirikiri, the developers had some really unconventional choices when they were using the engine, so I had to work through that, in addition to my own inexperience with the engine at the time. But once that was done and I started translating the beginning of the script, it wasn't soon after that I fully committed to the translation and to see it through to its end. My main impression of the game is that it was a good first (and ultimately only) title for Trumple to produce back in 2010. Remember that this was 15 years ago, and even back then, there were plenty of other bigger studios producing longer and more fleshed out visual novels that they had to compete with. So is this a AAA game? No, but it never really needed to be. I find the story interesting and engaging, the characters are endearing and I quickly became attached to their personalities and idiosyncrasies, and to a large degree I feel like the main appeal of the game are the characters themselves. I did enjoy the story. I wouldn't have worked on the game if I hadn't. But the characters really make this what it is in the end, in my opinion. Nagisa was my favorite character, but Airi is the true star of the story. No character in the game is more complex than her, and I feel the story shows that Saitou Kenji really took his time to develop her character. And it should come as no surprise that he also wrote Nagisa's route. Some of my favorite scenes were in Nagisa's and Airi's routes. The main thing I disliked about the game was that it felt kind of underdeveloped in places. All the routes seem kind of short, and the game itself is "only" 35,000 lines long, so pretty short as far as visual novels go. I do wish there had been more romantic scenes between Sou and each heroine, and in general just more interaction between the characters. The game's structure is also a little unusual since it doesn't have a separate common route, so maybe it could have been better had they done something like that instead. If nothing else, it would have provided more of those character interactions I already mentioned, if not also further developing the overall mystery of the story before getting into the heroine routes, but it's a relatively minor grievance I have with the game. There also aren't all that many supporting characters, and the few that exist are almost entirely underdeveloped except for one, and even that is not very much. Other than that, no real glaring disappointment. Stylistically, the art in the game is very nice, and the animated sprites are a really nice touch that adds to the game's overall esthetic, and makes interacting with the characters all the more enjoyable. The music is also very well done and I never found any of the tracks annoying to listen to over and over again. In the end, the game was a joy to work on and experience, and I hope others enjoy it as much as I did, if not more, once the patch is released next week.

The main thing is that the script is 100% done. Unfortunately, some real world things have taken some time away from the project, but progress on the user interface is still ongoing. There were some additional unforeseen issues with it that made it more complex and time consuming than we would have originally hoped. A lot of the coding and rendering in this game was kind of unusual, in addition to some issues with running the game on modern systems (specifically the most recent version of Windows 11). Hopefully, we can get this all done and release the full patch in May.

Yes, just move the patched scenario archives out of the game folder, and reinsert the original archives. Then just load whatever save you have. The scenario archives are the 12 files from data01000.arc to data01011.arc.

Just a quick update since I haven't done one in a month. The QC of the script is currently at 63% with Kaori's and Airi's routes already complete, and Nagisa's route nearly done, too. The QC should be done by the very end of March, so we're currently aiming to release the full patch sometime in early April. There's still a lot of testing that needs to be done, but it shouldn't be too long now.

Finally at long-last, the script is now fully edited! Thank you to everyone who has been looking forward to seeing this patch get completed, which looks to be very close on the horizon now. For the time being, editing of the game's UI, in-game images and video editing led by nReus is still ongoing, but will hopefully be concluded soon (as in, before the end of February). Then the QC process will start where I play through the whole game and test the patch for bugs, along with any fixes to the script I may have missed during the editing process (which usually amounts to 2-3% of the script getting altered, if the last two projects are any indication). And as coincidence would have it, the game is currently 50% off on DMM until March 10, so please consider buying the game if you can and haven't already. The patch will still work with whatever version you have available though, only the encryption for the patch will be different (which will be as easy as copy/pasting the correct files in the patch, which will be specified on release). So I'll be back on the next update.

I'm now done with editing the first Yui arc at 89% complete with the whole script, and less than 4,000 lines left to check in the final arc, which shouldn't take that long hopefully. Finishing up the editing of the images will then be the next priority so a beta patch can be compiled and tested.

I won't lie. Burn out is a very really thing, and I believe is the main reason why most VN fan translation patches never see the light of day. But that's something that should almost entirely encompass the translation itself, since (from having already worked on two previous projects) that's the most tedious process, especially if the script is very long. But since I edit my own translations, I am constantly editing as I translate, which makes that process take even longer, in addition to what I'm doing now which is editing the entire script for consistency, typo/grammar fixes, checking translation accuracy, etc. I've been doing stuff like this for a long, long time (even before Studio Frisay was a thing), so I would say I'm used to it, but that doesn't make it any less of a thing I have to put a lot of dedication into. I do it as a hobby, but I still want to put out the best product possible. Sometimes, time off from a project is necessary to finally complete it. And I can say this, once the translation was completed last year, there was no way I wasn't going to see this patch to completion eventually. On a lighter note, everything surrounding Trumple seems to be cursed in general, seeing as how the studio only produced this one game almost 15 years ago. But I'm glad that the game still lives on currently, and will pretty soon live on in English, too.

And now with the editing of Nagisa's arc complete, the script is about 66% of the way done with about 12K lines left to go. Not much else to say other than I appreciate the comments and encouragement to finish this project. It's already been a year since this project began and I'm looking forward to sharing it with others.

Yui 2 is the true ending and directly continues from Yui 1 storywise. Since it also focuses on Yui, I just called it Yui 2 for simplicity. No poll, only because (if there is going to be a next project) it would have to be something I would already be interested in working on, considering how much time and effort goes into producing these patches. You're still free to make suggestions if you want, since there could be some game out there I'm not aware of that I could deem worthwhile to do a patch for at some point. For now, I'm just trying to focus on getting this patch out.

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates since October. I had to pause the project for a bit, but it is still very much alive and I have been making steady progress on it recently, even finishing the editing for Airi's arc and I'm about a third of the way through Nagisa's arc currently, with 51% of the script edited. I will be aiming to complete the editing process before the end of next month, and then the QC process will begin. So at this point in time, I believe a release of the full patch by sometime in March is very doable and is a goal I plan on achieving, especially considering the extended break over the last few months. I'll be aiming to make some more frequent updates as I complete the editing for each arc in the coming weeks.

It took almost 2 weeks longer than I had originally hoped, but now the translation is finally complete after nearly 7 months of working on it. Granted, I had taken a more leisurely approach to the translation this time compared to when I did Imaimo and H2O, but I feel I still managed to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Suffice it to say, I'm relieved the biggest and most tedious portion of the patch process is now done so I can now move on to editing the game's images, of which almost all that require editing are for the UI, so not that bad really in comparison to the previous two projects. It always feels wonderful when the UI gets done because it feels like an official localization, which is generally what I'm striving for each time I've worked on these projects to make playing the game as seamless and enjoyable as possible. Anyway, in the meantime while I'm working on the images, I'd also like to point out that the game is currently 50% off on DMM for the next two days, and if possible, please consider buying the game. So, I'll be back for another update either this or next month.

It took a bit longer than I had anticipated, but now Nagisa's arc is finally complete, bringing the total script to just about 66% complete. Her arc in particular has 3 lengthy H scenes all in a row right at the very end, so that was partially the reason that it took me a bit longer. But anyway, there are just about 12,000 lines left, and it all revolves around Yui split into two parts, Yui 1 and Yui 2. I'm still hoping to get the translation done by no later than July, so it shouldn't be that long before I get into editing the images and then the script. So I'll probably have another update next month sometime as we approach the grand finale.

About a month later, and now another arc is complete, this time with Airi. That brings the current total to about 45% complete for the entire script. Although there's still about 20,000 lines to go, it always feels better once I get over the 50% mark, which I should hit sometime next week in Nagisa's arc. Funnily enough, Nagisa's arc is almost exactly the same size as Airi's, even down to the amount of text itself, with only 482 characters separating them. Both arcs were written by the same author, Saitou Kenji, so that may have had something to do with it. So I'll get back to working on it and have another update next month.