Demonbane summer 2010 release

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#81

The ideal procedure would be to send translators and/or localization programmers into the development room. That’s how the mainstream game industry operates - translators and game developers working side by side, even when external contractors are involved. However, it requires a full-time staff and a lot of trust between companies (which takes time to develop). To be so accomodating, the developer also has to value the overseas markets.

Nowadays, localization engineers mainly serve an advisory role. During the early days, they had to write tools, add support for European fonts, and insert text. However, Japanese game programmers are now trained to do these themselves.

I think Kazoku Keikaku is an example of everything that is wrong with their localization system. Based on what’s been said, the contracted translators were unable to get the job done (progress was slow and what they eventually submitted was broken), requiring other people (including Shingo, who did a lot of editing) to salvage the project as best as possible.

It was a doomed effort from the get-go. A restart would probably be needed to produce a good translation.

#82

Exactly. :o

Western game companies heavily relying on the original Japanese company for performing work on the localization process is not exclusive to eroge: the same thing happens for console gaming and the MMO market.

There is one major difference however: when a console or hand held game is created, more often than not, there is an intention that languages other than Japanese will be used for it. For that reason, the original programmers ensure their development tools leave room for such expansion and maintain detailed instructions on how to make this possible. For the companies that are truly global market - Konami or CAPCOM for example - westerners are involved during the game production of the Japanese version to such an extent, the English stuff is already in the Japanese version (Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin immediately comes to mind).

Now the major difference, is that galge are the one of the few niches this is NOT done for. If you dissect the Japanese version of a Castlevania, you will find font files and the associative language engine for English, French, German, and Spanish. Hell… it even has the voice files for the English version. It’s the little things such as these, that make the localization process so simplistic. However if you dissect TokiMemo4, despite being from the same company, you will find nothing but Japanese because the engine isn’t designed for anything but Japanese. Some of the FX executors use English letters - not an issue for a game only using Japanese fonts, but a major problem for an American version. That makes potential localization a major headache, because it require rewriting the original engine.

Natsume is a good example. Not too long ago, they’d delay a Harvest Moon for 6 to 8 months, because of hassles involved with sending the beta back to Japan for more recoding. However their recent releases launched out the gates on time. That’s because if you dissect the Japanese versions of the newer Harvest Moon, you will see additions and extras (like fonts and text box coding), to accommodate versions for the American and European markets. Much of the hassles from yesteryear - not being designed for non-Japanese - are non-existent.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the Japanese galge industry suddenly investing more time and money, into making their new releases be English compatible from day one. :expressionless:

#83

Sad, because relative to the other kinds of games, that’s a fairly trivial change - I mean, you need to quit using OS widechar routines when in English ‘mode’, you need a font with some decent latin characters in it and you need to implement some trivial wordwrapping beyond the kinsoku shori, but that’s it. If it was part of the plan for your engine from the start, it would barely affect development time.

That said, a fairly large number of eroge companies use krkr/kag which supports other languages quite nicely-- OS widechar routines are only used if your scripts are in shift-jis, and full UTF-16 (or UCS-2, I’m not quite certain which) support is present. JAST doesn’t deal with any of the companies that use it though~

#84

since it should be pretty much done my guess 3 months till it goes gold tops

#85

Haha, I’m quite surprised at how close you guys are to hitting the nail on the head here in this thread.

Yes, the biggest issue is that most eroge companies do have to deal with the engine themselves, for one reason or another–often because it’s their exclusive engine. However, these engines were never designed with an English audience in mind in the first place, because there wasn’t much of a market for it when they first made the games. The engines often don’t have support for English text, such as text wrapping, English fonts, bold, italic, em-dashes, or other things we often take for granted because they never had a need for them in Japanese. Then you also have times where there may be a line that takes up the whole text box in Japanese, and so now it takes up more than the text box when you put it into English, because a word like ??? may only take 7 x 2-byte characters in Japanese, but in English its a nearly 50 x 1-byte character “National Research Institute of Police Science”.

Once the engine is ready and good to go, like with Overdrive and Circus games for us, it’s fairly easy to have an accurate estimate. But as soon as a new, un-adapted engine becomes involved, like for Koihime, it becomes extremely difficult to tell.

And yes, as you’ve mentioned, despite the fact that the English audience is one that should be vastly more broad and far more numerous than the Japanese audience, the amount of actual paying customers for an English release pales in comparison, so it’s hard to blame them for prioritizing the work that will actually make them more money when they have to choose between the two. Without money, they can’t continue to make games, so the choice for them is obvious. And until the English audience/market starts to change, neither is this.

And as for the idea of not even announcing the acquisition of a title until the release is nearly done–take a look at the current “fan” translation scene and tell me if you think it’s a good idea to not mention what’s being legitimately worked on.

So really, the only way to help shorten delays like these, is to give the original companies a good reason to prioritize their work on the English adaptation, AKA better sales, so in the end, it’s all up to you, the fans.

#86

Interestingly enough, BERKANA’s game Last Song has a game engine that supports English-type word wrapping out of the box. BERKANA is one of CROWD’s brands.

#87

In relation to Demonbane… weren’t they rebuilding the engine or something like that for this release? So it would be compatible for Windows 7 and the other major ones. I don’t remember the wording, but it seemed like more than just a little update to the engine. (I was under the impression it was so they could re-release it in Japan too doing that Best of thing [and didn’t someone say if it did well enough they at least wanted to consider making another title?] …at this rate it’s speculation… Can’t find/remember where I got the info… that’s no good!)

#88

Yes, they reworked the engine; it was announced at AX. Exactly how much they changed remains unknown though. PR talk aside, someone will have to look at the final product to know for sure.

As for future titles, JAST USA originally tried to license two games, Demonbane and Jingai Makyou. However, Nitro+ only wants to commit to one until they see the sales data. Naturally, the line of thinking is that Demonbane will determine whether the US effort continues or whether it ends right here.

#89

my guess is they re-worked it to work on full spec win7
hope it doesn’t make it take even more months

#90

The “fan” translation scene? What the heck are you talking about?

What has the"fan" translation scene managed to accomplish so far? They’ve only completed around 30~40 patches these past few years. Currently, there’s maybe 12 or so patches currently in the works that are actually making any significant progress. That’s hardly anything compared to the 9000~10000 titles in Japan.

The fan translation scene has been even less reliable/efficient than the official localization scene. They aren’t given any support/assistance from the Japanese companies, so they often take even longer than JAST or MG due to the fact that they not only have to translate the text, but they have to reverse engineer the game engines themselves. This also makes it difficult for the translation scene to find anyone who has the technical knowledge to do so. Additionally, since they receive no compensation for their works, they’re prone to giving up halfway through. When a fan announces that they’re working on a patch, there’s even less assurance that he’ll be committed to getting it done than the official companies.

The amount of titles that they’ve worked on is still miniscule compared to what’s in Japan. If a title has been chosen for localization by JAST (with the initial announcement withheld), the chances of some “fan” deciding to work on a patch for that title are pretty slim because of the sheer number of titles there are available, as well as the amount of work required by that “fan” to work on such a patch.

If the fan translation scene really pose that much of a threat to make withholding licensing announcements a bad idea, then I’d expect them to be a lot more faster and responsive to what goes on in the Japanese market. They would’ve pumped out patches for high-profile games like Yume Miru Kusuri, Shuffle, or Kazoku Keikaku a year or so after they’ve been released in Japan. They would’ve made their patches long before companies like JAST or MG would’ve had an opportunity to consider releasing a localization themselves. They wouldn’t take years to release translation patches for any of their games.

And don’t forget: You guys over at MG made an annoucement to release the Higurashi games long after someone else decided on releasing an English patch.

#91

I was thinking about this too. When I cycled through old news, I couldn’t find anything on dates unless they were ready or preparing to be so. If they have confidence in a summer release, then I have confidence in them. I know new issues have come up for Nitro+, but that news was posted on May 26, 2010. I had the impression that they, JAST, were really confident that it would be done in the coming months.

#92

my guess is they didn’t predict nitro+ would be releasing another title around the end of summer as well

#93

Nitroplus is having some serious technical problems with STEINS;GATE that they’ve been (and still are) rushing to patch. That’s one possible explanation, at least

#94

Well, one certainly can’t make an announcement when one doesn’t have a license to do so yet. :wink: Furthermore, if HOBIBOX/07th Expansion had known about the fan translation project, it would’ve been likely that MangaGamer would’ve never been offered a license for the game; it would’ve turned out the way Umineko is being handled now.

#95

What exactly do you mean? How is umineko being handled?

I thought that the dojinsoft author of Higurashi had actually blessed the fan translation project. Isn’t he the guy behind Umineko?

#96

I heard Ryukishi07 blessed the initial fan project as well and later MG picked it up. It is the same group - 07th Expansion. *I heard he blessed both Higurashi before MG and Umineko’s.

I am feeling a little discouraged. I think I should stop checking for updates until summer passes.

#97

steins gate bug issue are the problem
i hope they can fix steins gate soon so we can get demonbane

#98

It’s being left to fan translation. Not only is MangaGamer staying away from Umineko (with Higurashi, the unexpected costs and red tape probably left a bitter taste), but they’re even directing people to the unofficial project. At American conventions, Hobibox sells Umineko along with instructions on how to acquire the translation.

Yeah, that mess last year resulted from serious miscommunication. It turns out that while you can acquire an official, exclusive license from MangaGamer, it doesn’t prevent the release of free derivative works like fan translations (which remain fair game according to their EULA). Both MangaGamer and the fan translation group were shocked to learn of this policy.

07th Expansion didn’t officially recognize the fan translation (it’s simply allowed to exist as free doujin, much like any other fan effort that uses Higurashi characters), so negotiations with MangaGamer proceeded as if they were the only group pursuing an English release. Consequently, MangaGamer was completely unaware of the other effort.

#99

i kind of wish they gave us some info on recent progress or something…

#100

that is why i want either a staff blog or twitter or facebook for jast usa
or at least have the mods chime in every once in a while with progress reports
the last game they did that with was princess waltz and they haven’t done it since or family project or sometime around then
peter posted a few months ago but what he said didn’t help with any games