Amagami Translation Project

[Anonymous No.]

I have solved the text spacing problem and the limit has now been expanded to 150 characters and the text looks marginally better, which means that it's now actually possible to translate it and insert it into the game without running over the text box and getting the forth line to cut itself in half while you try and read it.

So I guess I can officially announce the project as started and I guess I'm the leader of it. There are still some technical hurdles like of getting the rest of the 5.6 % of the script files that haven't been able to be extracted by the tool to work to extract correctly and I may be able to fix vertical spacing if I ever find out if it's easy enough to hack the text routine.

But anyways, I guess I'm posting because I am currently recruiting anyone that's interested to join the project. If there are people interested, they can contact me via IRC at irc.rizon.net @ #amagamitranslation.

I also want to discuss three issues with /jp/ today on the project.

1.) Does the font spacing look adequate as a solution? I'll try my best with what I can do with vertical spacing if you guys fine it unsatifactory. It is the best I can do for the moment.

2.) Should I try and talk this out with Enterbrain to make the translation official? I'm just afraid because they're a subsidary of a megaconglomerate publishing company that I don't really want to mess with.

3.) Should I release an alpha patch to see if other people can get it working and as a proof of concept?

Thanks for the input.

[Anonymous No.]

1) It looks pretty horrible. If there's no choice, fine, but if it's possible to improve, it would be for the better.
2) No.
3) Sure, go for it.

Good luck.

[cxd9615gb !X61s66Bit. No.]

1) Looks good to me, more than acceptable.

2) They probably won't be interested and might even try to stop the project. I guess.

3) I'd be willing to alpha test a patch for you on my PS2.

[Anonymous No.]

1) As long as the lack of a space after the comma is because you didn't enter it and not because of any limitation of the engine, it's very readable.
2) No.
3) Are there any reasons not to release an alpha patch?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768497

What's wrong with it? Here's what it was before I actually got the hack to work. Can you be more specific? Is it the spacing, size, even the font itself? I'll try to improve the vertical spacing if possible but that might not be possible depending. I'll be working on it to see if I can make it better.

>>8768503

I probably need someone to confirm this for me with an extra DVD and a modded PS2 to play something like that. If you are willing to do it, that would be great. I don't really have plans to translate much for the alpha patch beyond the prologue, though, so sorry if it's a waste.

>>8768517

The space after the comma was my fault. I don't really have no reasons to not release it except for the fact that I have to deal with Aaeru doing unnecessary things with it, and she is already lurking my IRC. I also hope she's not reading this. But besides that, no, I don't have a reason not to release one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768464
2 - talk to JAST/MangaGamer instead

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768575

Would they be any better in trying to negotiate with such a large company in Japan?

I've heard some horror stories on their policies with working translations and such. I also don't know inherently if they would accept it at all, seeing that this is a PS2 game.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768575
Haha no.

[Y10NRDY !kxh.1oTAkU No.]

>>8768464
Awesome! Way to go, OP! Good luck on your journey!

People are going to be mean to you but don't let the basement demons hurt your feelings or distract you from your mission! I believe in you!

[Anonymous No.]

This has been very high on my wishlist but I don't think I'll get my hopes up quite yet.

[cxd9615gb !X61s66Bit. No.]

>>8768570
My PS2 is a debug machine, not that it really matters.

But yeah, I can spare a DVD-R.

[Anonymous No.]

Good Luck OP.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768621

I'm in need of dedicated people to get script translations, menu translations, image editing for the menu and such but all the pieces are there for the game to be translated.

>>8768625

I see, so it should be able to play it modded...

I'll test it thoroughly to make sure that it works 100% on the emulator before releasing it to you to test.

>>8768612
>>8768631

Thanks.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768464 (OP)
>1.) Does the font spacing look adequate as a solution?
For a PC game? Acceptable, if ugly. For a PS2 game? No, not at all. I wouldn't be able to read something that small on a TV screen. Even if you were to stretch them in an ugly manner it would be better for readability; the current size is going to be a serious problem on TV screens considering the average player's distance from the screen.

>2.) Should I try and talk this out with Enterbrain to make the translation official?
No. The success rate for doing that kind of stuff with a non-doujin company is very low to begin with, for visual novels it's extremely low (due to the lack of market here), for console VNs it's EXTREMELY low, and for VNs for a dead console it's simply impossible. If you're lucky, they turn a blind eye after being informed. More likely would be that once they have been notified they can't turn a blind eye without people asking them and they send you a C&D.

>3.) Should I release an alpha patch to see if other people can get it working and as a proof of concept?
That would be very nice.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768604
There is a miniscule chance JAST or MG would be interested. Now, the deal is they would be interested in the translation, not in the hacking stuff.
There is no translation yet, right? Then they wouldn't even move.

[Anonymous No.]

That's pretty cool, I never thought anyone would tackle this given the platform it's on. This font definitely looks better compared to the previous one. Damn, I need to learn some asm someday.

[Anonymous No.]

1. Looks good to me.

2. No. They probably wouldn't care and would instead just throw C&D's at you. Even if they did want to, unless Amagami gets a port to a newer console or the PC, I can't see it working out well at all.

3. Probably. Better off to make sure it's working well on a wide spectrum early on, than having to fix more issues later on down the road.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768570
The vertical spacing and small font size will make it a real pain to read for any prolonged amount of time, and
>>8768650
has a good point as well.

I mean, it's not deal-breaking, it won't make it unreadable, but it's a significant issue that IF POSSIBLE needs to be fixed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768650
>>8768668

I see. So it could potentially be a problem. Unfortunately, I don't really have a choice in making it that small. I was restricted to 69 characters per text box with the text before the hack.

The alternate solution is to switch font sizes to be the biggest it can each time but that has many potential problems. That's why I need an alpha patch to see if it will work.

>>8768651

That's correct. None yet as of so far. I have two interested translators but they have not been really briefed yet on the thing and such. I guess I shouldn't try then...

>>8768652

I used a built in control code to do this. It was a simple ASCII codes of S-JIS are used to control text size in the script. At the end of the prologue, the protagonist shouts something and the text gets bigger. I experimented with it to get the current solution.

>>8768656

I see. I still hope it might encourage them to port it to PC so I don't have to do this roundabout hacking. If they do, they will most likely use KiriKiri2 as their game engine, as that was what the fandisks for PC used.

[Anonymous No.]

I've got nothing useful to say but good luck OP.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768570
If you wanted, you could ban Aaeru from your channel. You should also register it if you're planning on using it for any length of time.

[Anonymous No.]

Also, I need to mention that the PS2 original version is probably the only support version at this point for this. I'm considering the Ebikore+ version but it has a file that holds the data for the system icons and such that I haven't exactly cracked yet. Picture related. The scripts are also ordered differently so that will be a problem for me also.

>>8768703

I won't ban her if she does nothing, she's free look in it. I'm doing most of my work with the people I have by private chatting with them anyways. It's already registered, and has been on Rizon for some time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768684
>I see. I still hope it might encourage them to port it to PC
It won't. Trust me. The market for English-language VNs is almost nonexistent. JAST has J-List to back it up and draws a lot of kids looking for porn with their marketing, but MangaGamer is still struggling to stay in business. Their best-selling title has sold just over 1.000 copies. At 40 euros/copy that means 40.000 euros, which is far, far less than the costs associated with completely porting a game like Amagami to PC and professionally releasing it. The Japanese market, with far better sales, hasn't been able to convince them, what makes you think a nonexistent market would?

>I see. So it could potentially be a problem. Unfortunately, I don't really have a choice in making it that small. I was restricted to 69 characters per text box with the text before the hack.
Isn't it possible to add more text boxes to a scene? Like, an untranslated scene normally having 70 lines having 100 lines in the translation?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768731

I see. But this is Kadokawa Holdings Group we're talking about. They're pretty big, and probably the largest company that has a VN to be translated. If they wanted to, they could wreck me if I mess with them. They're much bigger than Visual Arts and I bet their money is why the anime got aired in the first place and they were even able to port the DVDs of the first season here. I'm still afraid in a sense that they will go after me for this though if I don't do it with their permission.

I also tried to add text boxes a bit back. Won't work for a variety of reasons. Here's the end result of that. I will work on it as a solution for the people who want to play it on their TVs. Not everything is known about the script format at this point so more research and hacking will have to be done to understand it.

It also screwed the game completely up and I had to go to my backup to get it working okay again. There is a theoretical limit of 65535 characters per text box, or FFFF in hex. But this hack took me so long to do...

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768786

Bleh, that wasn't the end result picture. This is.

[Anonymous No.]

Could you not set it to native resolution and scale up to get a feel of what it's like on PS2 on the PC?

I'd offer to test it on the PS2, since I have a swap magic PS2 but it's currently at home and I won't have access to it till June or so.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768786
>They're pretty big, and probably the largest company that has a VN to be translated. If they wanted to, they could wreck me if I mess with them.
Don't give them the opportunity.

Keep it on 4chan and IRC. When you're done release it anonymously. That way there's nothing you can do.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768804

I'm going to try and do that. Not everyone on my team will agree and I will add credits for them only. But the main problem was Aaeru and her plans so I had to negociate and argue it over the conditions which she was allowed to do anything to the patch and such Other than that, that's my plan for release.

>>8768805

Here is the menu screen scaled up for you. 900p and 4x Native though, sorry. I have a Radeon Mobility 5650. But any point past those settings I've done here will lag the game to below 30 fps. Looks quite nice when it is around 30 fps or high though, although the huge frame drops are quite noticable above that range as well.

[Anonymous No.]

Wouldn't the PSP version be easier to work with?

[Anonymous No.]

1) I don't think everything will fit with that spacing.
2) Remember what happened to Chaos;Head?
3) Very yes.
Godspeed, OP.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768856

Same problems and it also has the Ebikore+ PS2 problem with an encoded .ARC file for system icons. I was still able to kind of insert Latin character problems with it, but as of right now, there are too many differences with the PSP and PS2 versions and since I got it hacked on the PS2, it will be the ones I will work on.

>>8768871

1.) Text routine hacking is still going on, but it went from literally not fitting the box for the translation to maybe around 10% not fitting the line, a big improvement. 150 characters per text box should be enough for the translators.
2.) Yes. That's why I decided no and I will make this unofficially. It's a pity...

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768849
Looks pretty nice, although since it's CG you probably don't need to scale.
What I mean though was that if you set it to 1x Native resolution then run it full screen, it's the same as playing it on the PS2 no?

How bad is the FPS anyways lower settings?

[Anonymous No.]

Here's a bigger font for all of you to see. 96 characters total, 32 per line. Still restricting in my opinion but I'll try and find a way to add more text boxes and such for the people who want to play it on the TV.

>>8769170

Yes, that is correct.

FPS just goes below 30 if I go any higher than 4x Native Resolution. If you scale it at least 2x, it will look marginally better full-screen and shouldn't hit the GPU that much.

[Anonymous No.]

Good luck op. Wish I could help you in some non-technical way.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771816
Cudder <3

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771824
Please don't feed the Cudder.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8771824
No, I'm much older than 3.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771877
Cudder >>3?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771887
In before bit shifting joke.

Cudder is a woman in her forties who writes firmware for vending machines and serves on a high-profile board of directors.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771816

>I may be able to fix vertical spacing if I ever find out if it's easy enough to hack the text routine.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771893
Don't forget single mother with cats.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768464
Hm, I think you should stop translating this. Last thing these peasants need is another galge.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8772771

I would not stop this, and we don't get that many galge games translated anyways of this kind. It's something different and I've worked too hard and far already to get a solution of this kind.

But anyways, I've decided for releasing an alpha patch with a majority of people wanting to see how it works. Ebikore+ support will be worked along but release schedule wise, no partial releases. Font issues are to be considered and I will consider the possibility of using the picture's font size. Further font modifications will depend on the feasibility of low-level hacking the game executable.

However, I would like to thank you for the input, /jp/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8771893 >>8772428
How do you know?

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8771893
Partially right.
>>8772428
Totally wrong.

>>8773825
Move the origin up ~10 pixels and decrease the line spacing and you should get 4x32 = 128.

[Anonymous No.]

Cudder pls go.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8776493

That's not the issue though. The main issue is where exactly in the executable it is. I've only narrowed it down to around 15,500 lines out of a possible 450,000 of disassembly before I came upon that solution.

But implementation-wise, what your said seems like a good idea.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8777992
>I've only narrowed it down to around 15,500 lines out of a possible 450,000 of disassembly
Fuck, I praise you people who can work with that shit. I'm not illiterate at programming, but whenever I see ASM I just... can't.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8778060

That's still not a lot of narrow down, mind you, and I can read ASM but it's like trying to decrypt hieroglyphics with a small broken piece of the Rosetta Stone. freesmiler, the original dude who worked on this, is trying to get a custom build of the emulator to output stuff out into the console from the game binary itself. Fixing the text spacing is not the biggest priority for me at the moment, truth to be told.

I still have to get the tool operational to decode the remaining 5.6% of the scripts in the game and I have to get a solution for hosting the scripts privately. All those will take time and energy from doing such a task until later.

If I can get a 4th line running, I'll also need to change how the backlog works since it will overlap the first line of a text box with the last line of the one before it if I use 4 lines.

[Anonymous No.]

I guess getting Tl'd is cool and all
but I kinda' liked this as a really fun entry level japanese game
and a question althoguh I haven't read this yet: are you patching the ps2 or psp iso?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8778094
See
>>8768884

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8777992
I saw you're using an emulator. Does it have a debugger? It may be easier to play with the code and see immediate changes.

If the text window positions aren't set in the script you can search for constants in the right range --- I assume you've measured the important coordinates. [The last time I checked IDA didn't have an easy way to do this. I stopped fighting with it a long time ago due to its Win32 bias and other limitations, and developed our own analysis framework where that can be done with something like

SELECT addr, dis_alg, imm_val FROM code_dis_a WHERE NOT NULL(imm_val) AND (imm_val > 120 OR imm_val < 150) ORDER BY addr

]

>>8778060
Even I don't work in traditional Asm anymore. Algebraic is much easier to read.

[Anonymous No.]

Can we get some nii-nii in here

[Anonymous No.]

>>8781893

[Anonymous No.]

>>8778090
My system is capable of backups so I can try an alpha patch if needed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8781870

Yeah, sorry. I don't exactly specialize or deal with things much like you do. Coordinates are measured but I was only able to narrow down that much disassembly due to those coordinates and blocking out all the other subroutines in the code. Debugging the emulator or hooking the binary to IDA or any other program to debug is currently impossible.

As such, the only real way to "hack" the binary is to rewrite it with hex or to such. Again, there are still other issues are worth solving first before hacking the binary should be done. So that will get decidedly held off until further notice.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8768650
Was the unofficial translation of Ar Tonelico 2 ever finished?

[Anonymous No.]

If you can translate why don't you translate something good? SubaHibi or White Album 2 for example?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8781913
sauce?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782549
Because the translator's opinion is more important than you're opinion when it's his translation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782549
Different people have different perceptions of good. Nobody is going to spend their free time using hard earned skills on a project that they are not passionate about.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782553
>>8782555
But...but the anime was shit! Is the VN really good?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782552
The SICP VN.

It's make-believe.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782558
That's the case for most adaptations. Except for Shuffle! I guess, though neither the VN or anime were anything special.

What ever happened to the Idolmaster project?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782562
The patch was released and it had no mistakes at all. We all had fun playing Idolmaster then decided to hide the patch.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782563
You MONSTERS.

I meant the PSP one the fuuka guy was working on.

[Anonymous No.]

Anybody got a torrent for this game? Also you can hack ps2 isos, but you wont do super robot war games? Whats wrong with you?

[Anonymous No.]

>>8784909
Maybe he'd rather work on something he's interested in.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8782567
Only perfect sun is done.
So you cant produce Chihaya or other idols even if you want to.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8784909
What's up with people (or maybe just one guy) demanding translations of SRW games all the time lately? This is /jp/ not /m/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8784938
its more than one person and /jp/ and /m/ have the same userbase.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8784909
I am pretty sure the ps2 super robot wars is easy to hack.
There is a chinese ver for alpha3 and that one came out years ago.
No reason why the white gaijins cant hack it if the chinese can do it years ago.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8784965
your forgetting most of the English userbase is retarded. if we could do it, we would have already.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8782528
Are you using XML for your script container format? We had a small initiative to move to it but our existing workflow was all CSV/relational stuff and the disadvantages of switching outweighted the advantages.

What's with that font rendering. Ouch.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8786829
HEY CUDDER WHY DON'T YOU USE JSON XML CONSIDERED HARMFUL I READ IT ON CAT-V.ORG

[Anonymous No.]

OP, check the IRC.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8784909
http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=70298
It's ~1GB bigger than what it could be if it's compressed with 7-Zip, but at least it's well seeded (Nyaa stats are inaccurate).

[Anonymous No.]

>>8786829

The tool accepts input and output with plain text files and it is a bit more convenient to have them in that format so we chose to stick with that. Tool still a bit buggy as there are still as mentioned 5.6% of the scripts that can't be decoded correctly.

That font is the default for Notepad++, just so you know.

>>8786995

Windows Update restarted my computer around 3:30 AM today so I couldn't see what you said because I only got back on at 10:00 AM. Just resend your message on IRC and I should be able to reply to you in a timely manner.

>>8787086

Please don't encourage piracy and actually buy the game. I understand that the original version is not in print anymore and therefore you can't get it in Japan or import it. But I do plan on supporting the Ebikore+ version when I release a patch so please buy it if you can.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8787817
You can leave if you don't like it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8787838

I'm not going to encourage it nevertheless but it's understandable since the majority of /jp/ has the same mindset like you do. If I wanted to leave, I' would just drop the project and say screw it.

The project itself does not have any legal grounds for it to be translated anyways but despite that, I am encouraging people to buy the game and I will get the effort to get it translated.

If I was that extreme on anti-copyright, I would have made negotiations with the company itself to get it translated and I would have deleted this thread for that one post, which would probably be pointless anyways since you can search it up on the archive. But I didn't. I'm just saying to support the original creators of the game, since they put effort into making this.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8787880
Japanese don't give a shit about us and us buying the game doesn't effect them at all.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8787880
you wont be getting anybody to buy this shit, im thinking you shouldn't bring any anti-piracy stuff up in /jp/ if your gonna come here. but thank you for doing this for us regardless.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8787817
>Please don't encourage piracy and actually buy the game.
I'll think about it if the translated game impresses me enough, even though I fully understand that creators will get less than a percent of what I'll have to pay for the DVD and shipping.
Also, HxD isn't that good for handling Shift-JIS text in non-Japanese locale. I use 010 Editor for this. It's not like it will help you much given your stance on piracy, though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8787880
I don't know why you would go through all that trouble for asshole like this.
>>8787934
>>8787940
>>8788008

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788058

/jp/ and in part the whole world isn't all rainbows and ideals. I'm doing it for the larger community of people. I only got interested because of the anime, after all.

But yeah, I know that there will be piracy but I want to keep that to a minimum as much as I can and I want people to support them. Kadokawa Shoten does have contacts in the US and such because they have localized their games and merchandise before, however. However, there is probably no way in living hell they'll localize this even if I did it all for free and handed it to them.

There are too many risks for me personally to take if I tried to contact them since I expect I'll only get C&D letters for this, so the translation is unofficial and therefore, in a sense, "illegal". I'm also trying to keep it relatively low-key before I release this. But still despite that, I want to work towards getting people to buy this so the actual company who made it is supported, even if they're huge and the mentality is "They don't need my money and they're not releasing the game here, I'll pirate".

So enough on the issue. Where I can control it, such as my IRC and vanilla release patches, it is no piracy. Outside of that, I can't control if you people buy the game or not but I fervently hope that you'll buy it.

Picture not related. I just ran out of relevant development pictures in my folder.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788111
I really think your being too much of a moralfag for this place and the internet in general. piracy is normal these days, even more so for Japanese games and such. Stop worrying about people pirating and just translate the game, if you want too that is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788301

Moralfag or not, it's my stance and it is my policy on areas where I can control how my patch is being used. The obvious like not having my patch bundled along with an .iso or such things like that are what I'm more concerned about. If you don't have a legit copy, fine, you can still apply my patch because I can't control how you use it or not. I won't care as long as you are not on my IRC touting about it, telling people where to find the game illegally or asking how to pirate the game. Just because piracy is normal doesn't means it's right but if you'll hate me for that, have it your way.

And one other little point just so people know before they keep on asking me about translation. I AM NOT A TRANSLATOR. I'm only a hacker that managed to hack a solution for translating the game and just so happen to be able to be the leader also for the project.

Pic unrelated.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788386
Im just telling you, you should look where you are.
We don't give a shit about morals and if something is right or wrong. We also don't care about some Japanese company. you are making a big deal out of all this, you are on 4chan for gods sake. go to some yaoi fangirl form and tell them to buy it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788386
Why do you even care about what some Anonymous fucking people do, why do you care at all. just hack the fucking game if you want but don't shit up /jp/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788405
>>8788429

I'm doing this on pragmatic grounds rather than a moral ground to prevent piracy on places where I have some sort of presence because I would like to avoid having those charges used to convict me. I already said that I know what the general mindset here is from my previous post. You guys don't care because you have nothing to lose by pirating, and everything to gain from it, which.I understand that. Fine, I don't care except that it makes me look like a facilitator for piracy because me not doing anything to people that are talking about such things on places such as my IRC and the threads I make would make me guilty under the law.

I'm in a position where I have everything to lose by being the project leader, and the gains for me aren't enough to offset that possible risk, especially when the owner company has a presence in the United States, a relatively minor one but that simple fact makes all the difference from most other VN companies. It's not simply C&D anymore and wait for legal action to come to for me if they want to press charges, it's probably immediate arrest and charges.

It's a risk that I do not want to take, no matter how small it is, and will ruin my life on top of the fact that being in the United States means that our law can be directly applied and the charges will go through for that. Countless VN translation projects on VN companies and translation patches not caring about it other than C&D letters can not be assumed because of the fact that they're in the United States.

[Anonymous No.]

(cont.)

If you don't want this in /jp/, don't encourage it or post links about it in the threads I make or my IRC, because I will have to open my mouth and say what I said in >>8787817.

I really don't want to talk about this anymore since I'm quite sure I've made my stance clear. If you want a person to do this who doesn't give a care about this issue and is that fearless, I'm not that kind of person. Hate me for doing this, whatever, but it's necessary precautions I need to take.

tl;dr Don't post about pirating the game on threads I make on 4chan or IRC and I won't have to sprout my nonsense to you guys.

I will not talk anymore about this subject. Private chat me on this issue on IRC if you have further complaints.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>Please don't encourage piracy and actually buy the game. I understand that the original version is not in print anymore and therefore you can't get it in Japan or import it
A bit hard to buy something that isn't being sold, no?

>>8788008
If you're working with shift-JIS text you should be using shift-JIS locale.

>>8788585
>it's probably immediate arrest and charges
That depends on whether they can find you ;)

Protip: You're not the translator so you can say this is contract work and the legal issues are then not your responsibility. You're just providing services. Even better if you can have the translator(s) sign a liability waiver and have your own disclaimer too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8791129
You can buy it on Ebay for 100+ dollars

[Anonymous No.]

>>8788585
> it's probably immediate arrest and charges

Lol, that's cute.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8791137
Nevermind then.

[bluesummers !fgBuXPDOFM No.]

>>8791129
>Protip: You're not the translator so you can say this is contract work and the legal issues are then not your responsibility. You're just providing services. Even better if you can have the translator(s) sign a liability waiver and have your own disclaimer too.

So what you're saying is, if shit goes down the translator's going to take it up the arse the most right? ^^

[Anonymous No.]

I probably could test it too. Got my ps2 chipmoded to read pirated dvds but no CDs ;_;, so we could play glorious
Bleach Blade Battlers 2 with multitap.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8791181
Frankly it is kinda hard to paint you as the mastermind behind all this Devious Illegal Work™. Like, look at this thread, the hacker is obviously the main driving force here. If he tries to shift responsibility to you in court you can always link this thread from our 2 archives.

I am not really sure you guys should even worry about legal stuff. Love Plus got fantranslated and nobody was sent to prison for this unspeakable affront to copyright. Two Tokimeki Memorial games got fantranslated and nobody gave a damn. LP and TM are huge brands with serious legal backing yet nothing happened.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8791129

Using Madedit. Works just as well for me. Also, you can buy the Ebikore+ version at PlayAsia. They used to have the regular version for cheaper but it went out of print.

http://www.play-asia.com/Amagami_EBKore/paOS-13-71-43-49-en-70-3zrb.html

At this point, support for this version should be almost definite but we'll wait and see when I can crack the .CLT file or if freesmiler does it faster than me.

>>8791181

bluesummers, just saying. I'm the one doing all this so I will not shift any responsibility towards you. It shall be all me if anything were to befall the project and I would do as much as possible to shift that burden all to me. I also do not know if Kadokawa Holdings Group created an office in Australia so you might be safe from all that. IRC chat me if you have any further concerns.

>>8791235

Oh yeah, Love Plus... The translation project didn't get some serious C&D for that?! If they were as secretive as me, then that makes sense but if they were more wanton about it like other projects, then I may need to reevaluate my logic and openness of the project, but I'll will still keep it safe for now. I would think that Konami would at least use this opportunity to get some serious cash overseas if they knew something like a translation project for it existed...

LP and TM only have huge legal backing in Japan though and since they have no presence overseas, legal action if any at all can't be done with really how big they are pales in comparison to Konami and Kadokawa Games.

Any other concerns about the issue as I said, I'm not addressing here. If you have a lot of issue with it and I do need to discuss it with you, you can find me on the IRC and I would be willing to private chat with you on that, because I made myself clear with those two posts and any posts before it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8791337
you do understand that the Japanese just dont give a shit about us at all right? they could make money but they still dont want anything to do with us. so just hack shit and stop worrying about shit that is never going to happen.

[Anonymous No.]

>1.) Does the font spacing look adequate as a solution?
Not really, bigger font and less vertical spacing would be better.

2.) Should I try and talk this out with Enterbrain to make the translation official?
No, even if you manage to get something from them, it will be a C&D letter.

3.) Should I release an alpha patch to see if other people can get it working and as a proof of concept?
Yes, it will help you recruit more people.

>I'm doing this on pragmatic grounds rather than a moral ground to prevent piracy on places where I have some sort of presence because I would like to avoid having those charges used to convict me.
By that logic moot should've been serving the first of his many lifetime sentences already. Don't overestimate your importance to Japanese companies, the whole international market isn't worth shit to them, let alone your project.
That said, best of luck.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8791337
>1337
There we go, buy it if you want to support them.

Also there's a difference between PoC and Alpha traditionally --- the former is really early in the process while the latter is when things are already progressing. The boundary isn't clear in all situations.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8795151

Well, it's pretty much a "gauge the potential issues in the game" kind of thing in regards to doing this kind of "alpha" patch I will eventually release in mid-June/early July as an aimed release for that.

Potential problems are already appearing left and right for this and it's not entirely clear if I have the talent and people to fix them...

[Anonymous No.]

>>8796933
Do you have translators/editors yet?

[Anonymous No.]

Translators, yes. We could probably be okay with the 2 active ones and one that I recruited but I have still yet to be in contact with him as he is in Japan and I kinda recruited him before I announced the project officially. Another is considering it but no answer as of this moment.

Editors, I only have one potential editor at the moment so yeah, doesn't seems that great from that perspective.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8797056
If by editing, you mean "proofreading" then yeah, its important but not difficult.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8799455
>>8797056
I'd even say that proofreading should be done in spell-checker (MS Word etc.) and what's left will be caught by readers once the patch is released (assuming that OP's team is willing to fix them after the release). Editing, on another hand, can't be left to community.

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!jgdEVcgEmoa No.]

>>8796933
Are the names embedded in the executable? If they are then move them to some unused area (compiler output is almost always bloated so there will be some) and change the references to point to it.

>>8797056
I don't think you'd want the font that small, since it was probably not designed to be pixel-accurate. It's getting blurry and difficult to focus on. If you're doing this with a PS2 and a real TV (especially CRT) it will be nearly unreadable.

>>8773825
This one is big enough to be (barely) clear.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8800472

Found the names yesterday in the AMAGAMI.IMG file. We have yet to decide on a singular font size since the fact of the matter is that we don't know if how much breathing room we have. Size 1 is apparently the ideal so far and we will use it if all the dialogue agrees to fit with that size. The point of the alpha patch is to kind of see if the text will fit so there will be some test cases for that in the prologue to gauge from other people which size we need to use.

We also need an image editor to edit all the images in the game to translate the menus and such. The game will leave you very behind after the prologue with moonrunes everywhere so if that's not translated, there will be some mass confusion. I hope I also don't have to write a manual on it...

[Anonymous No.]

>>8800878
For a game like amagami I would think distributed translation would work very well. With a save file, you can visit any scene in the game and translate or edit one tile at a time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>8800925

It would work and is what we're kinda doing except for the fact that there are way too many triggers in the game. One scene can easily cause you to lose three other scenes. Pic related. So it will take a while but it is still a pretty daunting task.

>>8800443

Planning to release the scripts, documentation, and source code altogether after release. Will probably stick around a bit to fix those errors but unless it's a big problem blocking gameplay, we probably won't do more than 1-2 post-release patches. The rest, the community if need be, will have to fix.

>>8800472

Oh and just to add on the other post. Names are found but the limit for the characters may still be 3 characters. Have yet to test extensively on that but I really don't want to discuss development here. If you do want to talk about those issues, you can use the IRC.

[Anonymous No.]

Have you considered just trying to recreate it in renpy or something?

[Cudder !MhMRSATORI!!FBeUS42x4uM No.]

>>8801726
>One scene can easily cause you to lose three other scenes.
If your goal is to translate all the text and you have it all extracted, I don't see how this is a problem.

>If you do want to talk about those issues, you can use the IRC.
I don't understand what's so favorable about using IRC over e.g. a mailing list. The message lengths are limited, timezones are going to interfere, and in general the medium is somewhat ephemeral. Realtime meetings are usually scheduled in advance, like conference calls.

...and feel free to contact us if you're interested in infrastructure solutions for distributed editing in the future. We've done this before with MangaGamer's Higurashi (the Editorashi proect).

[Anonymous No.]

>>8804668

The Tech Gigan disk is written in KiriKiri 2. That being said, there just too much work involved and skills that people on my team probably don't have in trying to rewrite it especially for a game of this magnitude. It would be a technologically impressive feat, although it would pretty much be getting the perks of doing whatever you want out of the game for a load of additional work. Tradeoff for that doesn't seem justified.

>>8805526

2308 + 2485 - ~2000 overlapping scripts = ~2700 some scripts. Mind you, most of them are small but to find all the places where they occur will take a freaking long time, especially with a dating sim, with all the special events and such you can only get once.

IRC is just more convenient for everyone and e-mail takes too long. Specialized software for this is also stupid and not needed when IRC can pretty much do most of the things I need it to do. Timezones have already been worked out and there doesn't need to be overly verbose in IRC.

I have plans for how to do distributed translation and editing but I will contact you if I have problems and need something.