G-Senjou Ch.2 Speculation

So, given the fact that the majority of the community seems to be in support of us continuing the project, unless something extreme comes up, I’m pretty damn certain that we’re going to take this into full effect. As I’ve said before, only the teaser patch was guaranteed to come out of this, and until we get feedback on the release, that statement still stands. However, given the fact that we’re retaining the accuracy of the original text, and that our staff is competent enough to tackle the complex dialogue within, I can’t imagine any reason why we’d get disapproval. However, expect the unexpected, until something concrete comes out it’s still up in the air. None the less, say, hypothetically speaking, if we were to continue the project, these would be the initial details worth mentioning.

For those of you who don’t know already, G-Senjou no Maou’s eligible ladies come chapter by chapter. Should you choose to follow a girls route, the game will end prematurely there. Alternatively, you can continue the main story [Haru's Route] by avoiding the route at the appropriate flag. The individual routes aren’t a gimmick though, from what I understand every character is worth the time and effort, even if it’s arbitrary and unrelated to the main storyline. It should at least answer the “What if?” question. Keep in mind, G-Senjou is a long game, so the route has a lot of content indeed.

So, to dish out numbers, Chapter 2 is 970kb total out of 3,340kb [29%]. 322kb of that is Tsubaki’s route. The teaser patch was 337kb (for time reference).  We will likely have an additional two Chinese to English translator’s on top of the three we already have. This incorporates the need for a second editor, as I can’t imagine keeping up with the translation speed. However, we only have two TL Checks. Accany is fast [one long one a day during crunch time], and Ixrec is understandably average [One every two to three days.]. So having a speedy translation may be unnecessary, however, it’ll create a pool of work to be done. A foundation that will prevent time from being wasted.

As for releases, the patch is going to be out on Wednesday next week at the latest, but we’re aiming for Sunday. The major tasks have been completed, so the minor ones should proceed relatively smoothly. We just have to wait for the TLC, and as we wait, we have to do some simple name insertion and a second read-through for the sake of PR and QC. Following the release of the patch, the entire staff is going to take a week long break. We’re taking this break for two reasons. First, because this release was exhausting, and it’d be nice to have a breather, but second, we also hope that in that time we’ll be able to reconcile some staff, since we’ll be needing more for an efficient release. Lastly, 3rd, we’ll organize and centralize all the work that needs to be done, details included. There’s a bit more to do than simply cut and dry translating. After that break, translations will resume, but I will also be occupied with college at that time, so editing will be detrimentally slow. My summer break starts on the 12th, and I’ll get everything edited that has been translated within my two weeks of break done within the my first of summer, and thus the chain of events will continue. Since I don’t know what will change staff-wise between now and then, I can’t provide any sort of speculated release date, but I’ll do so once the work begins. I’m hoping to get it done before the end of July.

Staff wise, we need/would like:
-At least one more editor
-Another TL Check
-Five more arbitrary staff (QC and PR) and beta testers.
-A dedicated hacker
-Someone capable of video editing (For the credits)
-And someone who wants to fix our really shitty TL Wiki page.

So if you’re interested in volunteering, send me an email at neko7363x@gmail.com. Since I back everything up, and the files are available to the public via SVN [To download, not to edit], the application process is rather liberal and informal. Any effort would be appreciated. The more staff we can get, the faster we’ll be able to release the next patch. Please give us your best regards.

Call to activity.

So my short break from VN translation work has been curtly cut to an end. The lack of explanation and reason for my complete absence of activity can be blamed entirely on the “Swine Flu Epidemic” cursing our country’s regularity at the moment. My college campus flipped out into and exaggerated panic when it was confirmed to be on campus, and my resources for communication ended with my cell phone, as all campus resources had been shut down. Since our little scare is over though, I’m back, and it’s time to get to work.

On Koitate, nothing has changed. Canikizu is still busy, and you can’t expect to see any progress until his designated date of freedom, May 20th. There will be no progress whatsoever until that time. I have also received a few emails regarding Beta Testing, and I’d like to make a curt public statement to anyone’s future ambitions. Unfortunately, my little line breaking statistic was based on the presumption that the flow of events would occur at a natural pace, but sadly, reality is cruel, and it’s actually detrimentally low. As much as I’d love to start beta testing right away, my pride would be hurt by presenting testers with an incomplete patch, so at this point, I’m simply taking names for beta testing in the future. As soon as we have a coherent amount of line broken script files, I’ll open it up again. I apologize for the inconvenience, my b.

On G-Senjou no Maou, well, I think that Luola, the individual who serves as the foundation for the project stated the underlying issue well: “Chinese is one of world most difficult language, one word has different meanings. if is easy to get the main idea of a sentence but to translate it very descriptive and with out losing meanings, it will be hard. As you know, this game is the best visual novel in the years of 2008 and it won about 6 awards in 8 category. I don’t want this game to turn out badly in English”. So I considered the potential of invariably damaging the integrity of an accurate translation by filtering the dialogue through two complex languages. This changed my idealistic view of a full project, and the ultimate decision I made in regards was to go ahead and translate the entirety of chapter 1 (about 10% of the total in game content) in the form of a teaser patch. After that gets put on the table, we’ll let it sink into the community for a week or two, and based on how it’s received, we will determine if we’d be doing justice to the game by continuing to carry out the project, as it’s likely that any translation will be the only translation. Again, I’m not going to pull an Asceai on everyone and say this is set in stone until we’ve hit a milestone. Please only regard this project as a potential one, not an absolute. This decision was rooted from the thought that something was better than nothing, and if any other translation entity is capable of carrying out the work better than us, we will submit. I’m greatly in support of a Japanese to English translation as an alternative.

In other news, I have been enlisted as an Editor for Ixrec’s Cross Channel Translation project. While a full team has yet to be organized, I’ll be assisting them. I’d imagine that it won’t involve much work, as Ixrec is not only a fast translator, but is also extremely competent at english. So I’ll be juggling work from these three projects for the next few months, the amount of commitment to efficient results is dependant on the speed in which I receive submissions.  That is all, I will post any updates as they come, chances are G-Senjou no Maou will have a few notable updates in the near future, as we’re finally cracking down on a bit of progress.

Koitate and G Senjou Updates

On Koitate, there has been a negligible 30 kb entry from our translator. Currently, Canikizu has been busy with exams and such, and any culturally knowledgeable individual knows that within the east side of the globe, that carries slave like implications of thorough studying. After he’s done with that, you can expect to see a gradual burst of progress. Hopefully, we’ll get the patch released prior to the end of my freshman year [June 12th ish], but there’s no way that I can even back up that promise until I’ve seen a bit more consistent progress. In other news, the line breakers have all but finished that which has been edited and such, and beta testing for a good half of Yukino’s route will open shortly to those whom are interested. It’s not really a selective process, just email me and I’ll get you the patch, and hopefully you’ll follow suite with proof reading, but I don’t exactly have any high expectations. As far as public releases go, the teaser patch re release is eminent. I’ve just been a bit lazy. It’s not like many people bother with teaser patches anyways.

As for G-Senjou, continuing speculation. Here’s the current state of affairs. The initial wave of enthusiasm died alongside the /jp/ thread that I had initiated. The project page is up and running, but so far, all we’ve gotten is myself, as a quality checker, some guy as an editor, and 3pies [Seraph] as a graphics editor. However, I did get an email yesterday from a figure working with the Chinese translation project, and I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to organize some sort of collaborative effort with him to at least get a foot down on progress. Even if we move slowly at first, something is better than nothing. When we make progress, we’ll be able to get a degree of publicity, which will hopefully further propagate our momentum with more staff volunteers.

G-Senjou Project Speculation(Cont.)

Alright, so I’ve been talking to /jp/ and it looks like people are enthusiastic to ressurect the G-Senjou project started by that negligible guy back in the day. I’ve extracted the scripts, and I’ve talked to Moogy about making a project page on TL Wiki, which he responded to, in summary, with “Why are you asking me?” At the current moment, someone on /jp/ is putting together the Wiki page, since I’m no good with that kind of stuff. That same person is also going to slightly modify the text documents, so that they’re more aesthetically pleasing(?), and so that they’re easier to translate. Fortunately for us, G-Senjou uses the Kirikiri engine, which is extremely comforting, as a series of tools made by Insani are available to the public to edit. I have also contacted the person who attempted to translate the game before, to see how he handled things. When it comes to programming mechanics, I’m ignorant, but hopefully I can pull it together to avoid weighing down the project. Fortunately, there’s a multitude of other editors available in case I slack, so it’s not a predominate concern. This project’s success is extremely realistic, but for now, I still don’t feel comfortable claiming that it is official, as I won’t do so until we have some solid progress. None the less, I’ll be tracing it, and I’ll be sure to keep detailed updates posted here

So what we have so far/What will happen gauranteed:

-A Project page on TL wiki:
-An editor
-A graphics editor
-A hacker, and by that, I mean anyone who’s competent enough to repack stuff.
-Beta Testers/Quality Check

That means all we need to have a full blown project is a loyal translator. The chances of finding one aren’t terrible though. Like Never17, we’ll leave translation as an open spectrum to whoever feels like it. All script files will be available to the public. Hopefully, it won’t take very long before somebody comes around and helps us out.

Future Plans- G Senjou no Maou

One day, 8 months ago, Asceai of Gemot Encubed decided to initiate a translation project for G-senjou no Maou, or, alternatively The Devil on G-String. In that time, he managed to accomplish next to nothing, and has yet to release his translated script files to the community, as the community berated him for his refusal to follow through. In that 8 months, however, as it’s to be expected that only one translating entity can work on a single project at any given time, he had the game reserved, and a more competent staff failed to intervene, and pick up his slack. In recent days though, with the releases of stellar titles in 2009 in particular, I believe that it would be beneficial to everyone if a game such as G-senjou no Maou could be released in english alongside the others.

The Devil on G-String is amongst the most popular titles in the Japanese gaming scene, and as Chaos;Head and Sumaga proved, hype isn’t generated without a cause. Therefore, after discussing the matter with /jp/ I have decided to try to put together a team for the project. This is only speculation right now though. The first step will be getting the project on the TL wiki, which has been indicated as a relatively simple ordeal to me by the people of /jp/. Right now, I am downloading the game, and as soon as I get the script files extracted, you can be damn sure I’ll make the attempt. Should this be successful, I’ll follow suite as an editor while I wait for a translator to volunteer, and from there, things should proceed smoothly. This approach is vastly similar to what happened with The iDolM@STER SP  translation project, and since I’ve seen it work, I’m not that worried.

Again, this is only speculation. I’m just going to get the ball rolling for now. Please by no means accept this as a formal claim until you see it on TL Wiki yourself. I’ll be sure to update when and if everything works out. I’d like to see this game get translated as much as the next person.