Satsuki

No it's not, unless SMEE somehow butchered the engine so badly it became like this. Case in point, Koichoco used the exact same engine as this game, and the translation team managed to pack all of this mess into a few arc files, with all of the images and UI into just 4 arc files. I mean, I know that some people are even fine with having their very desktop littered with files and folders, but having it a bit more tidy is just much better, yeah?

I really hope you have a better solution for the next patch, because holy hell, having to put a massive cluster of files right into the main game folder is a terrible idea. That's Eushully-level of bad.

I understand that you hate Nekonyan but...what? Amairo Islenauts project was abandoned years before Nekonyan became a thing. I never heard about any project for KoiChoco PSP, and in any case, the translation for the PC version was already finished long before Nekonyan so going after a simple porting project is just weird. As for Houkago no Cinderella, I'm not too sure about their situation but from what I read, they got DMCA by Hooksoft themselves, and people only assumed that they acted under Nekonyan's "order" with no real proof.

Only read a bit to check the quality of the translation (already finished the game long ago) and yeah, I agree that the translation is fine, but way too direct so lots of them just sounded either awkward or textbook-ish. Definitely requires some serious editing. Just a bit of advice from me, but rather than keeping the translation at point-blank range from the original, try to think about how you would say a sentence like that irl instead. Worked quite well for me before.

Any sort of help, here or in the real world, is based on picking and choosing. After all, like you said, it's not an obligation. That's why you don't see people going on GoFundMe and just throw money everywhere with their eyes closed. Gonna go and criticize the whole humanity next? Btw, your posts have been here for like 2 days already, so again, stop accusing us of things we don't do, yeah?

Oh, we are not gatekeeping anything. He can go ahead and translate the VN into cat language for all I care. In fact, I even wished him good luck right above, if you bother to read that one. However, that doesn't mean we will be obligated to provide him with any help - that's a completely different matter. Feel free to help him if you think MTL is perfectly up to your rock bottom standard, but you don't get to accuse people of being "that sort of community" for not helping with a not-so-good idea. I mean, who even are you?

Good job villainize the community for absolutely no reason, mate. Apparently any translation attempt should be treated equally, even if the translator does not know a slick of the language and will DEFINITELY butcher the whole thing?

Well, I have only tried 2 games from SVN (out of pure curiosity), and I have to say that the quality of MTL (or at very least, Sugoi), seems to heavily depend on the genre/setting of the game. For example, the translation for the 1st game that I tried, Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha, is completely nonsensical, probably due to all of the sci-fi and technical jargons (mainly about machine/weapon forging and stuff). However, in the 2nd game, Kanojo to Ore no Lovely Day, the translation is actually quite accurate and readable (other than the usual gender/pronounce confusion), which I assume thanks to its normal SoL/school life setting with no weird futuristic/fantasy element. Purple Soft titles will probably prove a challenge with all the mystery/fantasy stuff, so...good luck with it, I guess?

Why did you decide that I was offended? You have a dead wrong idea about the whole thing so I just corrected you, being a fan translator myself, with plenty of supporting evidences, and you are the one who keeps being weirdly stubborn about it. Depending on the job, having an extra language in your resume other than English is always beneficial. This is especially true for large companies that regularly work with oversea customers that may or may not be fluent in English. Also, nothing stops someone who is already fluent in Japanese to take on a translation project to improve their English instead. I saw quite a few VN/manga translators claimed that already. It's true that before Patreon, there were not many fan translation groups, though that had nothing to do with Patreon, more to do with VN was still WAY too niche at the time. You know what else was also founded in 2013, the same time as Patreon? Sekai Project. I would argue that they were the one that increased the exposure of VN and in turn increased the amount of people interested in translating VN. "If that was true you'd see lots of people releasing translations. You don't, though. Because it's lots of work" The opposite, actually. Because it's purely a hobby, and yes, it's a lot of work, that's why it takes a very long time for a translation to come out, due to people only working on it during their free time. You know, hobby, not full-time work?

I assume you are VERY new to this whole scene? Because translating VN while asking for patron and stuff is a pretty recent thing. Most translators, especially in the early days did the work for literally nothing. Hell, just take a look at the Translation Projects section right here on this forum, how many people can you see that are demanding payment for their works? Even though it's free work, it can still look really nice on your resume if you want to get involved in language-related job in the future. In my case, I was doing fan translation in my free time (not "years of my life") while studying oversea in order to improve my English. Worked amazingly well, I would say. For lots of people, this is not work, but a hobby. And you simply don't ask people to pay for your hobby. Well, unless you are underage and they are your parents, then sure

Joke on you, most of us fan translators do this just because we want people to be able to enjoy the same thing that we do (and spreading the VN genre blah blah...). Also, good language practice for the future. We don't do this in order to beg for money. Our day job can cover that just fine.

Btw, this is my personal way (so don't quote me on this) to tell if a game is a visual novel: A visual novel consists of 2 main elements - Visual (graphic) and Novel (wall of texts). These two are well capable of creating a whole visual novel all by themselves, with everything else being optional. Now, think about the game that get you all confused. Try removing every other elements from the game, leaving only Visual and Novel. After that, see if the game still remains fully functional, or if it's completely broken/turn into a completely different type of media. A visual novel would still work just fine without the interactive element. Take Late Shift for example (that's the only one in your list that I have tried), if you remove the choices from it, what do you have left? A short movie, nothing more than that.

I'm actually quite confused with your idea of "if it's an animated game made in Japan then it's a visual novel". They are allowed to make other types of the game too, you know? And yeah, I generally do not consider these games to be visual novel - just interactive game/movie. After all, it's a visual NOVEL, so the reading need to be the main part, not the clicking (I have tried a game of this type before - the darn thing made me pick a choice every minute or two) and listening. Other things should only play as support element that even if you remove them, the game will still work just fine. That's why kinetic novel - a type of visual novel - exists - there is no choice in the game, some don't even have voices, all you need to do is read. Btw, I do think that live-action and other non-traditional stuff are fine - as long as they still keep the elements mentioned above in the game.

That goes for just about anything and everything if you don't actually enjoy/have passion about the thing you do.

Not sure if you actually read my post, but again, "normal" is subjective. I can also say that since it's considered normal for a population, including me, but not for you, then it shows something and you need to change. The default setting is not there for weeding out "abnormal" people, it's just whatever the dev think it's right - and different devs have different ideas, and sometimes their ideas just happen to be different than your. So unless someone out there made a public poll of "is the default text speed too fast" and got overwhelming positive result, otherwise my opinion stays valid. After all, both you and I have zero idea about what the "population" actually think about this.