sanahtlig

Saya and Fuminori from Saya's Song.

This is an original short story I wrote several years ago, inspired in part by anime culture. Title: Memory's Burden Synopsis: Eight years after a tragic accident claimed the lives of his father and beloved sister, Brian and his mother Clare struggle to cope with the rift their lost loved ones have left behind, as well as the growing rift between each other. https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2789148/1/Memory-s-Burden

For word-by-word lookup I find VNR pretty clumsy. When I have to use VNR, I use it only to hook. I actually display text in Translation Aggregator, using JParser for dictionary lookup. With JParser, I can look up every word in a line with a single sweep of the mouse. With VNR, this is not possible due to display lag and awkward "hit boxes" on the words.

I've tried creating H-codes twice, spending around 3hrs the first time with OllyDebug and around 7hrs the second time with Cheat Engine, using the guides available. I wasn't successful in either case. The problem is that the "low hanging fruit" of easy H-codes are usually already on the web. If you can't find one, then that typically means 1) it's a harder target or 2) there's a better way to hook the game that doesn't require an H-code. The guides themselves tell you that you need a working understanding of assembly language. That's nice and all, but if I'm going to have to sink time into learning a language, I'd rather it be Japanese...

Well, I tried to hook the second disk with VNR and it didn't work, even with PPSSPP 0.99. I got the Otomate hook, but it was fixed to SHIFT-JIS encoding with no option to change it. By changing the default encoding option to UTF-16 I was able to pick up text threads, but they had a font caching issue (fixable with an H-code perhaps, but we're already dealing with a specialized VNR-specific function, since ITH grabs nothing at all). My guess is the person who reported success hooking this game either was using an earlier version of the game (not the Tsuzuku version), or he got excited at seeing text threads and didn't verify that the text was being hooked accurately.

ITH won't work. It's a feature that's specifically coded into VNR. And it only works with the PPSSPP emulator. And not necessarily the latest versions. And only with certain game engines. I'm sure the guy who coded PPSSPP couldn't give a damn about Japanese learners trying to play Japanese import titles using his emulator. He didn't code the support. The makers of VNR did, probably because many of the good all-ages Japanese VNs are on PSP and therefore it was worth their while. I'll give a shot at hooking the game with the latest version of PPSSPP, but I suspect I'll have to downgrade to the version mentioned above to get it to work.

Yes. To be specific, Visual Novel Reader supports text hooking for compatible game engines using specific versions of PPSSPP. https://sakimichi.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/psp-otome-game-compatibility-and-notes/comment-page-1/ I'd suggest carefully reading the VNR PSP hooking page as the text hooking support is alpha-level: http://sakuradite.com/wiki/en/VNR/PSP

For those who can't wait, the game appears to be compatible with Visual Novel Reader. So you could hook the text from Disc 2 and keep playing with translation tools. I suspect the text difficulty is easier than the typical VN.

According to a comment by the project manager in the new forums: https://connect.jastusa.com/support/discussions/topics/5000025194/page/last#post-5000057746 These are the titles released in the past 3 years (2012-2014): Little Witch Romanesque Harajuku Dating Paradise Steins;Gate Saya's Song Moero Downhill Night Blaze School Days Yumina the Ethereal My Girlfriend is the President fandisc Total: 8 (-1 if Little Witch Romanesque excluded) This suggests most or all of the titles on their Tumblr page are planned be released in the next 6 months (release dates in parentheses): http://jastusa.tumblr.com/upcoming Kana Okaeri (released) Starless Hanachirasu (March) Shiny Days Raidy 3 Seinarukana Total: 6 (+2 if both versions of Little Witch Romanesque are counted) Other titles we know they're working on (translation started): http://forums.jastusa.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7341 Outlaw Django Sumaga Trample on Schatten Sweet Home

VNs are written for Japanese adults. They're pretty much the hardest source material you could choose to tackle, short of technical topics or Japanese literature. The easiest story-focused VNs are generally written at a higher "reading level" than mainstream anime and RPGs. Without text hooking, VNs would be something no one would consider tackling until they'd had the equivalent of 3 years of Japanese classes or so. They're so difficult and lengthy that even professional translators balk at translating VNs because it's so much work. I've been casually picking up Japanese while playing VNs, and I'm beginning to reach the point that I can understand many phrases unaided. That's the culmination of 8 years of playing VNs (50-100 Japanese VNs played).

It's not obvious at all. You're going to come across general-use words that have a lot of different meanings. Unfortunately, the only way to know what they mean in a given context is lots and lots of exposure. Japanese readers know what it means because in a classroom setting, given the specific events that came before, and given the age of the speaker, that's the meaning that fits. As a beginning language learner you won't be able to understand every word and every phrase "in the wild" (vs. textbook spoon-fed examples). It's just not possible, and you'll only frustrate yourself trying. Focus on attaining overall comprehension of the work as a whole. In many cases important topics will be repeated in different ways, allowing you more chances to figure out what's going on. Unless you're translating for others, understanding every word is completely unnecessary for overall comprehension. That's the entire basis of skimming. You actually only need to understand a few key words in each sentence and a few key sentences in a paragraph to get the overall idea. If even the overall idea is over your head, the work is too advanced (or too colloquial) and you should select something else.

Interactive Text Hooker is no longer maintained. I've encountered at least one title where it didn't hook the text, and I had to use Visual Novel Reader instead (which is maintained). I expect this will be an increasing issue going forward. The good news is that VNR can be configured to work similarly to ITH and is compatible with Translation Aggregator. The bad news is that VNR has quite the loading time and needs to be specially configured to do this; it also conflicts with TA occasionally, requiring TA to be restarted.

It's possible JAST licensed the PC version but hit a technical hurdle that caused them to drop the project. If they licensed the project 9 months ago, I think they'd have said something about it by now if they were still actively working on it. Of course, it's also possible that JAST has been biding its time waiting for Eiyuu Senki Gold to release in Japan.

I'm seriously considering memorizing the radicals on this site: http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/ There's only ~200 of them. Since they're the building blocks of kanji, rather than the kanji themselves, there's not too many drawbacks to learning them by whatever means necessary, including RTK. It'll not only help me remember kanji, but it'll make it a lot easier to look them up too.

I think people bash RTK for the same reason they bash learning Japanese in romaji: you're not learning Japanese, you're learning an English bastardization of it. With RTK, you're learning a pneumonic that relies on English. This could end up impairing fluency in the long run. It's much harder to unlearn something than it is to learn it. RTK is great at getting you to associate kanji with English words. Do you want English words to pop in your head whenever you see a kanji, for the rest of your life? That's what you need to ask yourself.

Kickstarter wouldn't even let Sekai Project have nude dakimakura as an addon, if I recall correctly. Grisaia 18+ version has hardcore pornography.

Here's a start. Browse through their catalog. Ignore the titles with any NSFW elements on the cover. List the remaining titles that look interesting.

Overflow isn't even making games anymore, sadly. It's really disappointing because their School Days series was one-of-a-kind. Even Cross Days, possibly the least popular of the series, was a lot of fun to play.

Shiny Days will be out this year? Source?

It's a better game. Ultimate Boob Wars has significantly higher ratings on both EGS and VNDB vs. its prequel. It's the highest-rated Softhouse Seal title MG has localized. It has higher production values and some semblance of a plot.

MG's best-selling digital eroge last year was ImoPara--a full-length nukige currently selling for $45. #2 was Ultimate Boob Wars. #5 was Eroge. All full-length titles selling for $45. So no, the success of their nukige isn't explained by price. And in fact, the price per hour of playtime in "budget" nukige is pretty high, making them a poor value. Ironically, while MG deep discounts most of their story-driven eroge compared to Japanese release prices, their budget nukige sell at the same price or more in many cases.

I think you misunderstood that sentence. By "disparity", I meant the different order of titles in the rankings. Nukige top the digital sales, while story titles have a much stronger showing in hard copy sales. My point is that casuals (often attracted by tie-ins with H-anime; see Imouto Paradise) are less likely to buy into story eroge, the value of which are not obvious to the casual buyer. They're much more likely to impulse buy on porn value, which IS obvious at first glance. Since I can't poll every MG customer, I can't prove this point (and I doubt even MG has the data to comment with authority), but simply from listening to people in the community it seems like the most hardcore "fans" are also the least likely to actually buy VNs. In large part this is because the community scorns commercial localization efforts, and tends to espouse the belief that purchasing VNs is for those who don't know how to pirate. The more one integrates into such a community, the less likely they are to buy the VNs they play. Some have argued in the past that the low cost of nukige is responsible for their higher volume sales. We see now with the top-ranking digital sales of Imouto Paradise, Ultimate Boob Wars, and Eroge that this isn't the case. There really is just more customer demand for nukige vs. story-driven eroge on MG's site. This should push MG to license higher quality nukige, much to the delight of their current customer base...

I'll repeat what I've said before: market incentives are threatening to polarize the market between nukige and non-adult titles. Story-based eroge tend to cost much more to localize yet sell the same or worse than nukige. As long as these incentives exist, it's only a matter of time before the market adjusts to compensate. Companies go out of business. Leadership changes. Priorities on the Japanese side change. Relying on companies to fight the market and work on unprofitable projects over the long-term is foolhardy at best. I suspect this isn't true. And in fact, if you look at VNDB, the most popular titles aren't nukige. I suspect what's actually happening is that most VN sales occur to casuals: people who don't really follow VNs. This crowd is much more likely to go for nukige than story-driven eroge because these purchases by casuals are mostly impulse buys (the disparity of digital and hardcopy sales pretty much reinforces this point). While there's a large and thriving VN community at this point (80k registered users on VNDB alone), the vast majority don't purchase anything. Either we need to convince casuals that story-driven eroge are worth their time and money (this would take a lot of publicity), or existing fans need to support the medium. Otherwise there's a real threat that story-driven eroge are going to fade away from the commercial scene. Mangagamer has already shown disappointment that its moege don't sell very well. If sales of Princess Evangile don't meet expectations, it's quite possible they'll retract from the genre save for guaranteed successes like the Shuffle series.

JAST has been officially working with Nitro+ since July 2009. The game was originally released in 2002, fan-translated in 2010, and remade in 2011. JAST has been sitting on a finished translation for 5 years now. Furthermore, JAST has acknowledged they have no plans to work on the game. I highly doubt JAST will begrudge you releasing your patch at this point. With this game, JAST is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can't release the original because it's not compatible with new operating systems. They're unlikely to release the remake because releasing only the all-ages version would tarnish their reputation as an adult publisher. Porting the original to the new engine wouldn't be worth the effort because it's already been fan-translated: most of the potential sales have already been cannibalized. Even if JAST eventually does release the all-ages remake, they'll do so on Steam where the existence of fan patches wouldn't matter anyway. There's very little harm your patch could cause to sales at this point. I'd go ahead and release it.