Programming and such

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Hmm, in my argumentation with a pirate recently, he said that he throught that “it’d EASY to change a japanese game into an english one, doing the programming and such”… he kinda said it, at last, since this is what he answered at my answer:

"As for programing I see you have no idea about it, if you are mentioning remaking game interface in english. It is work for 10-20 min. I can do this even without source code. All windows programing is standard and dont require much changes to localize, except if you are talking about DOS ones, but they are obsolete anyway. If that is not right then the game is badly done from the point of programing.
70.000$ for translation… that is the good reason to learn japanese… I will recomend for my sister to study japanese then, she will become milionaire.
I can recoment for PP to hire some japanese student to make this work for 7000$."

Well, since I myself really not have much konowledge about the programming, I was thinking of asking you who are more familiar with the “programming stuff”, since I aslo want to know myself how “hard” it’d actually be.

Oh, and sorry for posting another of my debattings with a pirate, but since this is something I also want to know more about, I see nothing bad in it, right ^^;;??

#2

I think he believe’s it’s just a matter of translating the visual text and he doesn’t realize that the underlying OS interface is usually different for each language. After all, that’s one of the reasons when a patch comes out for software, you need to specify the language version you are using. Yes, there is some cross portability when you write a program in something like java but you still sometimes lose functionality.

And despite the belief that all windows programming is standard, it sure as heck isn’t. I’ve talked to several Microsoft people about the different language versions. They pay out big bucks to their programmers who adapt their software for the different language OS versions and if anyone should know about the difficulty of doing it, it should be them.

#3

Will I never played pirates game before. I only intersted in new games. Who care about the pirates games. I don’t like it. Will my friend got pirates game and he played. He said it “doesn’t work right.”
Since I done the programming before, when you do right it is not easy because you have to translate one by one. You have to test play too. Will pirates games are cheap because they don’t chech the things. They have to release it.

[This message has been edited by Computermania (edited 12-31-2001).]

#4

Software porting is not as easy as that. People (read: pirates) often think it’s as simple as programming a webpage, but it’s not. If it was that easy then why do people pay great sums to use a licensed engine? Just because the engine is 2D instead of 3D doesn’t make it any less easier to program. I think it’s the same thing as people forgetting how much circuitry is behind the television screen and under the push of their fingers in a remote control.

To frame this in a W.E.B. DuBois manner of critique, people are thinking wrong about Bishoujo games because they do not know. The evil is Stupidity, and knowledge will educate people about Bishoujo games. (DuBois used Stupidity in the context of the world’s ignorance about subjects that the dominant social institution assumed largely through fallacious deductive reasoning)

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 12-31-2001).]

#5
quote:
Originally posted by woodelf:
[B]Keeping voice and animation and text
all in SYNC. No! wait pirated games never
have voice as it is too large a file to download. [B]

Actually there are voice versions of pirated games out there floating around. Since this day and age d/ling has become much faster so bigger files can sent around with less time.

#6

Thank you, everyone .

It’ll be interesting to see what he responds at Kumiko’s challenge .

#7

Which is why I haven’t responded to this topic until now with theses words:

What she said!

#8

Just thought you might want to think about this as well.

I’ve gotten a number of emails over the years about games that I talk about on my website, or that I’ve posted about on GameFAQ or Densetsu. Most of the emails I get are something to the effect that “I don’t have sound” or “my PC says that I cannot run the midi files.” Anyway, these emails then ask me what to do to fix it.

Well, one, I have never had a problem of this sort with the games I’ve purchased through JAST-USA, Himeya Soft, MIXX, or Peach Princess. And I’ve purchased a lot of them. The one time I did have a problem, I found out it was because the laser on my CD-ROM drive had gone bad after several years of use. So, it gets me very suspicious when people ask me about this.

Anyway, I did want to say that if someone sends you an email asking about how to fix a broken game, ask them what color the CD is. If it’s gold, or gold with a pale-blue sheen, guess what… it’s not a legitimate game. It’s a burned one.

Once I ask this question, I hardly ever get a reply from them.

But yes, as Doug said it best What she said.

On a side note, one good illustration of what Kumiko means by “translation vs. localization” look at the Viper games that Hobibox Europe has translated. ViperM and Viper 16 contain very broken english… some parts seriously so. So, you can’t just give a word-for-word translation (which is what 95% of the bablefish programs give you), you have to translate and interpret the language; otherwise you’ll get lines like, "The girlses delicate fist clamped rose."

Just something to think about.

Mike

#9

Well, even through I often debates with pirates now and then, I hardly get any “fan mails” (no spamming so far ) from those people . As far as I can remember, I’ve only gotten two “fan mails”, and one of them just wanted me to add another question to the dokusen poll and the other mail I got were from someone who wanted to know if Peach Princess couldn’t make a game with mind-control elements in it (I answered at this that PeaPri didn’t have enough resources to make a own game right now and that all they can do for now is to try and bring the Japanese ones to the english market).

But if anyone ever ask me about a problem like this, I know what to answer

#10
quote:
Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama:
For a game with mind elements... Mujintou Monogatari XX is something like that (personality swapping).

Monogatari XX?? Do you mean Desert Island Story XX?? Or is it another game you're speaking about?

#11

Yes, SpectatorBeholder, that’s the same one. Mujintoh Monogatari XX means ‘No Man’s Island Story XX’, or ‘Deserted Island Story XX’.

#12

Sorry posted this to the wrong board. Reposted my thoughts in Spectator’s post about the Animenation BBS

Mike

[This message has been edited by Mike Thomas (edited 01-03-2002).]

#13