Narcosis

I think everyone, who already declared their interest should be up on the list; check out the first post, if you're not sure. Ren will propably add the rest before the giveaway.

Narcissu is a mature themed vn. It's not your typical out of the mill moege, our market is flooded with nowadays. It was adapted from a short novel written by Tomo Kataoka, which tells a story of a terminally ill girl. You should read it. Even if you won't like it that much, you should read it anyway. It's one of those very few vn's everyone should read.

People pay too much attention to trivial things. Read in your own pace and stop pondering how long will it take you to finish; reading should be a joy, not a punishment.

Stop using CCCP. Use K-Lite. Normally this shouldn't be an issue, since codecs don't have anything to do with the game itself and a game can't force people to uninstall something, which is an integral part of a normally functioning system nowadays. Konosora seems to be seriously messed up. Unfortunately, I haven't played it yet, so I can't give any tips on how to deal with it, but I'll definately take a look. Most of japanese devs are really bad with actually being able to use or program anything into their games and they are obsessively stubborn with remaining behind.

Current situation with Kancolle, to put it bluntly, is really complicated. Kadokawa never thought that game might bring such an interest; they weren't prepared for that, both technically and financially. The reason why they ban the oversea IP's is because the game is japanese and for japanese market only and it's servers are overloaded. I doubt this will change, as Kadokawa does not associate any bigger plans with Kancolle. The sole fact the game's legal situation is complicated as well, does not make it any better. Kancolle is a perfect example of wasted potential. It's a fun little browser game, but with better management it could definately become a lot more than that.

Nice post, Cleph. You definately read enough visual novels to be able to have at least a bit of orientation in terms of japanese market. I can't entirely agree on saying that most of the companies you mentioned produce high quality stuff (with a bunch of exceptions, it's really mediocre in most cases), but nonetheless they play an important role in the visual novel industry. It might be a good idea to actually supplement this list a bit more and then pin it up; it should prove to be more helpful for those who seek new games to play, rather than all those recommendation threads.

Systems like E-mote or Cybernoids' Live2D have a lot of potential; the issue is, most of the time it's just a fancy and expensive graphical enchantment that does not add anything to the immersiveness of the story; unless the animations make a part of it, as in having some actual impact in a way how the interaction between player and the game is being established, there's no actual use for it besides making the characters on the screen a little bit more "realistic". E-mote does not change anything in terms of interactivity in vn's. A lot of titles from PC-98 were a lot more immersive than most of modern eroge, since they gave players the ability to control actions during important moments or even h-scenes. There is no innovation, when it comes to that. The only actual benefit of this system is making the game look a lot preetier and lively, while the line between a game and animation blurs even further. I guess it might be useful for bigger studios, if they add enough gainaxing it might increase their visual novel sales; it's hard for them to sell anything nowadays and remain competitive on the market.

I can't treat seriously people, who step into the eroge-centered community and start to dismiss the erotic content and it's translation. You can have your opinions in that case, just refrain from voicing them openly and try to adapt to the rest. A lot of people mixes translation with modification. Even if it's the creator, who modifies their own work, they typically do not do it because they thought their previous job on it was bad; they most often do it because of the pressure, that's put onto them, from various reasons. In a lot of the cases, it's the publishers or "fans" themselves, who force them to change certain things. I can only feel pity towards them, simply because they failed to remain true to themselves. Translators are in no place to provide their own modifications to the work they are translating. Their only job is to translate the work and do it as best, as possible. Each translator has it's own way of translating, when it comes to both sharing the liberties of translation work and remaining as close to the original. If anything, those things should be discussed instead asking whether translators are authorized to cut the erotic content out of eroge.

The only thing I see in those two topics is a personal battlefield for a bunch of certain users, who try to enforce their views and opinions upon others, as if they would be the only right thing in the world. The job of a translator is to translate; they are in no position to judge the work and decide how and what should actually be translated. VN translation in most of it's entirety, as it is now, is something people do in their free time. Therefore, I'd like to say this - if you don't like something, don't TL it; no one actually forces you to translate anything. Don't forget, that translating a book, or a story isn't translating for you own sake; it's mainly for the others. Don't say something along the words "I don't like the h-content in this vn, therefore I will not TL it.". Again, as a translator, you are in no position to decide about it. You either TL something, or do not. If you're planning to make a partial translation, you can as well stop already. No one's going to treat you seriously anyway. Large part of this community is incredibly immature; topics like these wouldn't even appear otherwise.

I don't think you understand the meaning of a full-fledged game engine written in python from scratch. There is a reason why most devs use C++ or advanced programming platforms like .net, even if they are horrible. Rance based simulations like DMC you mentioned are nothing, even if they use pygame. SRPG's are static; there's no real-time simulation going on the screen, it's just drawing static assets and applaying simple graphic effects to them. Where's the "3d" you're talking about? You mean these fancy textures or pseudo-3d map stored within the game? Catacomb Abyss did a better job on much worse machines, ages ago and it rendered a fully working 3d enviroment in realtime. Python can't handle advanced graphics manipulation on a massive scale, it is inneficient. It was never meant for that kind of usage in the first place. People do various shit nowadays and I don't doubt it's possible to run even 3d based games in Python, but you won't create complex games with highly advanced graphics. Python is just too slow to handle all the calculations required to run them in realtime. Games do use python backends. There's only a bunch of games written in python from scratch, like Galcon or Frets on Fire and those are the games I am talking about. Even games like EVE, Pirates of the Carraibean or Civilisation IV can't be trully treated as examples, cause they are all written in C++ and only use Python interpreters for scripting. Panda3D which is used alongside python isn't python itself - it only uses it as a frontend for scripting. Python is often used for DB management because it's clear and reliable and that's preety much it's main point of existence. To make it understand better how python is actually used in real life, read this instead. Anyway, this is all but an offtopic.

CCD is not an image, it's just a header file containing some data required for CloneCD to manipulate the actual IMG file it's attached to. They need to be in the same exact folder to work, as CCD simply points to the IMG file anyway. You can completely omit the header files and just mount the actual images instead.

Python is too slow as a game programming language; it's only actual use is for the DB data storage/manipulation. EVE uses Python to power it's DB's. The only reason why Ren'Py was created is because it is easy to learn and very powerful, while VN's do not require any heavy code manipulation on the fly; it's just loading static assets into the memory. It is currently possible to port most, if not almost all VN's to Ren'Py; except some of the games that use 3D or are gameplay heavy and require realtime data manipulation, it should be possible to replicate almost every single function or effect needed to make both of the games look alike. The only question is what for and it's where the OP failed to communicate.

Don't force me to download that MuvLuv copy to show my 7 year old PC is able to run it without any hassle. One word - Get Power ISO. Daemon Tools is shit. .ccd is a control file used by CloneCD software to mark the properties for a real image file. In other words, you're not running the actual image, you're trying to run it through a control file and I'm not even sure why DT doesn't recognise it, since it should. You should also have a file called "MUVLUV_EXTRA.IMG" within the same directory as well (either that, or some sub-directories). Try to run the IMG instead the CCD file.

People are often trying too hard.

You need to work in japanese locale to be able to properly extract files and software needs to support japanese encoding. You also need a text/scripting editor which handles unicode/Shift-JIS strings. Notepad++ should work fine. I'm not sure about .scn, but it definately isn't a clean text format, it may be encrypted. A lot of work on vn translation deals with RCE (reverse code engineering). It's not something anyone can do, but almost everyone can learn it, at least to some degree. There's a bunch of sites and online resources dealing with a variety of tools and different engines. http://vn.i-forge.net/tools/ is a preety comprehensible repository. There also was an extensive list of most japanese vn engines used to date, including the used file formats and various tidbits regarding on how they work, but I can't seem to find it on the net anymore. You can also find some information and tools on tl-wiki. Just like Dracu Riot, Amairo is running on KiriKiri. It's actually one of the easiest engines to work with and there's a whole bunch of different tool available.

There's too many vn's that deserve an english TL when they will propably never get them, as opposed to some titles being actually TL'ed; both by fans and as official releases. Standards of the modern community had fallen tremendously though, so I don't expect much besides more lousy moege being developed and translated.

If it's not too late you can count me in as well.

Everyone? Or just "anyone"? :> Welcome aboard. I see we both have some similiar interests.

I'm not surprised. After all, it's JAST who's responsible for publishing Nitro+'s visual novels outside Japan. It's good they want to offer their mechandise directly to people; as long as prices will remain reasonable, I won't give a rat's ass.

How is the OP supposed to run anything, if he propably does not have the codecs properly installed? MPC-HC alone isn't enough to play certain formats. It's just a player that uses the codecs installed within the system to playback files. Just get the K-lite Standard pack, Kafu. It comes with all the essential codecs + MPC-HC. Once installed, it should work without issues. You don't even need to configure anything. It does not affect other applications. I'm not even sure why CCCP affected IMHHW movie playback in the first place, while it shouldn't; it's propably because your system codecs are seriously messed up or you have a bunch of conflicting ones installed alltogether. Go to your installed programs, uninstall all the unnecessary trash/codecs/players from your system, install K-Lite Standard and set it to use the built-in MPC-HC during installation. You don't need to do anything else after that. Everything should work perfectly fine. Remember to check and update the codecs from time to time. It's why I always tell people to stop using all the shitty codec packs, including CCCP. THEY NEVER FUCKING WORK AS INTENDED and always break things, they shouldn't otherwise even come into contact with. I never had a single issue with K-Lite and I'm using it from years.

Are you Implying I can't do it by myself? _._ I will try later this week. I'm too busy working on my game right now.

Perhaps I should try as well. In the end, I have nothing particular to play anymore.

You know what's really stupid? The sole fact that XBox360 was one of the worst selling and least popular consoles in the entire gaming history in Japan. You think it will change with Xbone? I seriously doubt that. Japan is simply too fixated on Sony's products. But hey, money can buy you everything nowadays. I'm not saying Xbox360 was bad; in fact it was a lot better than PS3 and a lot of nice japanese games came out for it (hey there, Cave - yes, I'm looking at you!), especially for XBLA; the ones that wouldn't ever came out on PS3, out of obvious reasons. But a fact is a fact - Japan isn't that much interested in MS's console. After all, they have a console of their own. I'm still wondering how much MS actually paid Nitro+ & 5pb, that made them take such a move. It's just hillarious. At the same point it just shows that Nitro+ isn't in the best financial shape. No sane developer ever publishes for unpopular console, unless someone's shoving them money down their throats.

Nice try, Ryuu. FLATFLATFLATFLATFLATFLAT

Huehuehue, Nitro+. I'm not sure who's dumber - japanese devs, or companies making shitty consoles with 100% profit in mind and nothing else besides that. Back in the days people literally threw money to get shit like the NES or C64; nowadays console companies pay critically-acclaimed studios/devs to make console-exclusive games, just to boost sales of their poor, shitty consoles. Of course, both Nitro+ and 5Pb. took the bait, as expected. Wake up, Japan.