Well, another blog about eroge ^^
Haven't had much time to play eroges recently, finishing Heavens feel translation and trying to get Brass Restoration and all that... But here's a few I've played recently.

Chrono Belt: Ayakashibito and Bullet Butlers fan disc. Must buy if you're a fan of either one or both games. Super awesome action and battles! A much better fan disc then, say, F/HA ^^ Score: 9.5

G-Senjou no Maou: Very good game. The story felt a bit convenient at times, but the story is great none the less. It's one of those games where everything is so good that the small flaws become very apparent. Score: 9

Edelweiss: Now, this is a game where the flaws are overwhelmed by the good aspects of the game. The story is convenient again, but the comedy, the songs, and the scenario more than makes up for the flaws. But I'm also biased towards Overdrive ^^ Score: 9

Sekien no Inganock: The world atmosphere is great, as with the story. The art is... unique. Oh, but the Hscenes are worse than Kanon, and boy, that's BAAAAAAAAD. Score: 8.5

Ikusamegami Zero: Enjoyed the game, got addicted to it. But too much to go through the second time. Oh, and not enough loli Score: 8.0

Wizard's Climber: Played it over and over. A typical Soft house Chara game. Score: 8.0

Currently playing: Symphonic Rain: Depressing so far... I hear the ending is great, so I'll keep at it.

Here's some detailed current progress on the games I'm involved in.

• TakaJun's blog
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As some of you may know, encubed has had the opportunity to talk with Circus (a Japanese visual novel company) about the commercial localization of some of their products, including Da Capo and Suika AS+. While Circus is not in charge of the translation team(s) working on these games, they did show an interest in what the fans would have to say about the quality they'd expect when they buy a commercial translation.

So this is your chance to let the localization companies know how you feel about their work. When do you consider a translation worth buying? Please let them know by reading and replying to the interview report (link).

• Message's blog
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I would like to bring to your attention a translation project that several of my friends have been working on over the past year. While under more favourable circumstances I would be doing this simply because this game's story is extremeley good, the current situation calls for a slightly more urgent call: We are having serious trouble finding a translator.

The project is Saya no Uta, a famous horror game created by Nitro+ (authors of Demonbane and Phantom of Inferno), giving a Lovecraft-like account of the excellent madness of a man lost of this world. The game is relatively short and the language is not extremely difficult, but the writing is more literary than colloquial so kanji abound. Don't expect to be able to work through it easily with only one or two years of Japanese classes behind you. To illustrate, the first 15% of the game has been translated by sebasdoes who had to give up for spending the better part of his time reading dictionaries instead of actually translating.

We have requested help on the project page several times, we have posted calls for help in encubed gemot and we have asked around amongst our contacts for nigh on three months now. We are however still no single step further than before. I would therefore like to ask the following of our readership:
If you know someone who can handle a literary text of Japanese and translate it truthfully to (fair to decent) English, please ask that person if he/she is interested in translating this famous horror story with us. We may be able to supply that person with a free copy of the game in exchange (but not before most of the work is done). It is not absolutely necessary that this person finishes the entire script translation on his/her own, but it IS greatly preferred.

Note that this is not a mirror moon project, but some mirror moon people are involved in it. In fact we have all positions filled, except for the translator. People interested in this job are encouraged to contact Teus (link). Please spread the word, so that we can bring this great game to the English audiences!

• Message's blog
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To now we get to an idea that is kinda cool. Kamen Rider Rising started as an idea I had one night while watching Venture Bros. I had started watching Kamen Rider Kabuto (yeah, I know, it sucked balls at the end!) and had this silly idea of “What would Kamen Rider be like if the hero was a monarch butterfly?” After having this strange.. and lame dream about it I was almost scared of the idea… but then I though… “What if the Rider was trapped in a dream world?” Well.. the Monarch thing was silly and current concept does not contain a Monarched themed Rider… more like a Knight in armor (not themed after any particular bug).

So, why the name “Rising”? It comes from the phrase “off to a raising start.” Ironically enough, the hero is trapped in his dream (in a comma no less) and cannot escape.

Plot. Our hero is a aspiring manga artist (comic book artist) who has a thing for the old comics. Unable to dream, he imagines his dreams threw the works of the comic books he creates. One day while working on an idea for a new comic book, he starts hearing people whispering rumors about terrible nightmares overcoming people, and even some people not waking up! This all seems like nothing more than chit chat gossip until our hero has his first dream of his entire life that night! It is a terrible nightmare where a giant monster slices off his arms and ruins his ability to draw! He wakes up, just before the monster smashes him.

• TheXev's blog
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Yeah, I know this is a real rare treat: TheXev is writing a blog. I wonder if people even remember what I do around here. I know I don't remember what I do around here... ~_~

Message gets all the flames for taking time, but I haven't done any work on Men At Work! 2 in over a year... why doesn't 4chan flame me? :/ foowy. Guess it goes to show how much demand there is for that. I guess I need to get my confidence back to get my butt in gear. Then today, while sitting at a Pizza Hut down the street and reading the internet news off my phone I read a story (I'll be damned if i can find a "real HTTP" link to it now) about a Japanese blogger who recently won an award for best beginning writer (or something.. its a very prestigious award).

The thing about the article wasn't that she got this award via blogging, or even the staggering information that there are more Japanese blogs then English ones (37% vs 36%), and that most Japanese blogs are personal, rather then contain news. No, the thing that got me is that she was able to show others her creative abilities by blogging. I don't like to talk about my personal life, and I only ever thought of blogs as either being personal or about news...

Getting back to the subject at hand, my year long funk, I think part of it is related to not being able to vent my creative abilities. In all truth, my goals in life are to making a living of writing (and writing video games, like RPGs), yet I haven't been able to actually bring myself to muse over any of these silly side ideas. So......

• TheXev's blog
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I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier, but I wanted to mention this in case some of you don't visit the forums.

krfsm on the mirror moon forums has announced the creation of a patch which allows the importing of voices from the PS2 version.

While I haven't had a chance to enjoy the patch yet (my game probably arrives next week), I can imagine it must be great!

Much thanks to krfsm for his contribution to the fan community!

Read the details here.

• Ryuusoul's blog
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I just wanted to throw this out there...

Someone recently had the following complaint on the forum about the translation (I'm not picking on you, it just raised a good point):

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I can kinda see stuff like daimyo and nii-san, changing daimyo to "lord", "count", or whatever would be appropriate would be kinda like changing "emporer" to "king", and siblings always referring to each other as "brother" or "sister" in English sounds kinda odd, so stuff like that is alright as long as its not a dub.

But do they really have to leave words like "archer" untranslated? Its not like they're "the Japanese equivalent to an archer", they ARE archers, they use a bow and arrows, and that's what they'd refer to them as in English, too.
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But just to clear up some confusion...
Words like periyerai, aperyu, and many other words with furigana/kanji over them in the original game are NOT Japanese words. They were made up words used in the world of Utawarerumono that Japanese wouldn't even be able to understand and had furigana over them in the original version. Some of these were modified versions of Japanese, Okinawan, or Ainu words; others were simply just made up. The only Japanese words that I can remember not translating and having furigana were the terms of address. The rest of them are made-up words or intentional variations on Japanese. There is one notable exception to this late in the game, but it's a spoiler, so I won't mention it here. In order to get the reference, I've left it in Japanese.

• Ryuusoul's blog
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I've been cruising the internets when I'm not busy with mirror moon, work, or writing my own story, and I have stumbled across (with the nudge from Peorth and Graus) about Katawa Shoujo.

Katawa Shoujo (goddammit, I keep typing 'Kawata') is the biggest (known) Original English Language Visual Novel (more commonly known as OELVN) project to date. I believe they are approaching the 200,000 word mark, which is pretty big, considering it's almost a third of the size of Tsukihime, quite hefty itself.

It is an eroge and is under development by Four Leaf Studios. KS was partially inspired by a thread on 4chan's /a/ board, which is fairly amazing in my opinion, as you have to have balls of steel or lack of brains to take a page of doodles, character descriptions and ideas, scenarios and somehow compile it into a visual novel.

Katawa Shoujo's main quirkiness (apart from the easily-typoable name; did it again :/) is that all of the main characters are disabled in some way. The main character you play, Hisao, has a heart condition; some are blind, some are without legs, and so on. The story is set in a school for the disabled. I thought it was initially odd at first to have a visual novel full of cripples, I gradually warmed up to the idea, as it brings out the idea that disabled people have feelings, too.

I have seen some of the character designs and I am definitely already liking some characters more than others (so sue me). Also, the backing music is composed by NicolArmarfi, and after hearing a sample (namely Romance in Andante II), I would have to say the music is probably one of the main things I'm looking forward to in Katawa Shoujo.

A demo is being worked on, although estimated time of completion is unknown.

I'll be keeping an eye on this project, so I guess I'll keep people posted.

Website: http://katawashoujo.blogspot.com/
Forum: http://ks.renai.us/
IRC: #zettai-shoujou on irc.rizon.net

• chendo's blog
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I have done up a screencast of QED showcasing the basic features.

This is my first screencast so it's terrible, some things bug out here and there, and I constantly have to switch between Dvorak and Qwerty otherwise you would be wondering why I'm saying L when it shows up as N, etc :p

Please be warned: This video contains POSSIBLE SPOILERS for ALL ROUTES IN FATE/STAY NIGHT!

I avoid the UBW and HF files, but the dashboard contains maybe ten lines out of HF Day 4. From what I read, it's not that much different to the other Day 4s, so maybe not.

The screencast is encoded with H264 in the Quicktime container, so you'll either need Quicktime or Quicktime Alternative to view it. The size is 31.3mb and the duration is 23 minutes and 39 seconds.

View

Enjoy!

• chendo's blog
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Been a loooooooong while since I last posted a blog here.

Anyway, it's 2008 and I'm working full time for a year. The sad thing is, I have more free time working full time than I had working three full days a week plus five units a semester at uni.

So with my free time, I've been getting back into the scene, catching up various things (which involve playing Tsukihime a whole year and a bit after it was originally released >_<, and playing Fate/stay night). One of the major things I'm working on, however, is this little fickle thing we call 'QED'.

It's one of those weird acronyms that is out of sync with the words itself. It's an acronym for 'distributed quality enforcement', and also the codename of a fairly exciting tool that I'm developing for mirror moon. In a nutshell, it allows us to streamline the proofing/editing process by quite a lot. I'm estimating that it'll increase the ease of reporting errors in the text, as well as making the grue's (GRand Unifying Editor) job much easier.

Previously, we have tried a variety of different solutions for proofing, including Trac, flyspray and are currently using just a forum thread for it. Trac and flyspray was too complex for what we wanted, but granted, they were full on issue reporting applications. I happened to browse the forums one day and came across the forum thread with a day of UBW's proofing.

• chendo's blog
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