I’m just curious about when it may come out.
So long is the wait.
I would get other games but My comp is down i’m using a friends
Any one else feel the same?
K, this is where Kumiko would post some sort of long rant. Alas, alas, Kumiko-chan is no longer with Peach Princess, so I will have to do.
Hey, where are you goi–HEY! Get baaaack heeere!
coughs
Anyway, Pea Pri does not have extremely large sales. Plus they charge less for their titles than is done in Japan. Why is this important? Because lots of work on these games has to be done in Japan. They have to get the original game artists to uncensor the CG for the game (otherwise it will wind up looking really poorly uncensored, enough so to detract from the experience), they have to get the original Japanese programmers to help them make the programming changes necessary to get the game to run on English systems and display English text, and so on. The Japanese companies see low sales at low prices and thus Pea Pri projects get low priority.
Aside from all this, Little My Maid is HUGE. Mammoth. Gargantuan. The script consists of several hundred files, all of which have to be checked for consistency problems et al.
So, in a nutshell, Little My Maid is a huge, huge, ridiculously complex project that (justifiably) isn’t getting as much support on the Japanese end as us otaku would otherwise hope.
I hate to reply to myself, but let me just add:
If you want to see Little My Maid come out faster, buy their other products. If there’s a higher volume, then there’s more of an incentive to get work done.
yeah…
Actually, Little My Maid is the one game that i really really want more than all the others
ive been buying other stuff to support PeachPrincess…but its kinda bothersome that the one i wanted is coming out so late…
quote:
Originally posted by exoarchaeologist:
yeah...
Actually, Little My Maid is the one game that i really really want more than all the othersive been buying other stuff to support PeachPrincess...but its kinda bothersome that the one i wanted is coming out so late...
And Little My Maid: Pandora's Box (the sequel). And Doushin (Synchronous Hearts).
And while you're at it, get Snow Drop, Critical Point, and Tokimeki Checkin.
The more I read about LMM the more I want to play it. I already have all the Peach Princess games except WC. If I could I would pre-order LMM Pandoras Box too.
Well, sometimes you have to wait a very long time for some good things. but I don’t think it will take all THAT long time, even if it is very possible that we won’t see Little My Maid this year…
quote:
Originally posted by woodelf:
I don't mind waiting but I would like to know why LMM is takinmg so long?
That's kinda hard to say, but I'd say that it takes long because that LMM is BIG... Kumiko said before that just when they think that they have got everything, the japanese company sends in some more material... and then more... and so on... And considering the many paths and turns the game is rumored to have, it might be no surpise that it takes long time to arrange everything in the right order... also, they may not have gotten all the required material, wich is the case of many of the gmaes Peach Princess plans to relese... Hmm, Kumiko mentioned once before that Slave Bazaar has a journal which has to be redrawn in english, so that game may take quite some time too..
quote:
Originally posted by Spectator Beholder:
That's kinda hard to say, but I'd say that it takes long because that LMM is BIG... Kumiko said before that just when they think that they have got everything, the japanese company sends in some more material... and then more... and so on... And considering the many paths and turns the game is rumored to have, it might be no surpise that it takes long time to arrange everything in the right order... also, they may not have gotten all the required material, wich is the case of many of the gmaes Peach Princess plans to relese... Hmm, Kumiko mentioned once before that Slave Bazaar has a journal which has to be redrawn in english, so that game may take quite some time too..
Slave Bazaar also was not developed by its publisher--a different developer made it and either Crowd or Will (Pea Pri's Japanese contacts) published it. So to get Slave Bazaar done, they'd need to talk to both companies, which complicates it.
I’ve been waiting to play LMM ever since I picked up the artbook. Oh well, at least it’ll give me time to try and translate some of what’s in the artbook. (Big emphasis on “try”)
quote:
Originally posted by Nandemonai:
Slave Bazaar also was not developed by its publisher--a different developer made it and either Crowd or Will (Pea Pri's Japanese contacts) published it. So to get Slave Bazaar done, they'd need to talk to both companies, which complicates it.
Yeah, Kumiko said that too - they had to ask their contacts at Will to negotiate with that comapny for the rights to slave Bazaar.... Still, Kumiko also said that some things about Slave Bazaar had already been "fixed" since Will knew that Peach Princess would want to license Slave Bazaar...
Anyway, the biggest reason of why it takes so long time for Peach Princess to finish their gmaes is that their staff isn't all that big, and since Peach Princess isn't a "big" company yet, the Japanese companies can't priority the making of their games into english over their own projects, sadly enough...
Lame Disclaimer:
This is based on what I persoanlly know and Peapri doesn’t endorse the following information as accurate. However, I will try to have the staff talk about the status of LMM for the next update, but no promises ok? 
Personally, I think nandemonai exaggerated stuff a bit too much, and also I have always questioned everything Kumiko said in the first place (sorry, but a lot of the things Kumiko said are pretty inaccurate).
I have mentioned this before in another thread, but I don’t mind repeating it here.
The last time I asked the staff (a few weeks ago), LMM is currently in the “stuck” status. The script I believe is done translating (I think polishing needs to be done though; I read through a small portion of the translated Mari scenes and it needs proofing…but that was half a year ago so the script may very well be done polishing, I don’t know), but currently the staff in Will Japan are kinda stuck finding out where their source CGs and data were…which means the game is currently stuck at the CG uncensoring stage at this time. I am not sure if it’s about a priority problem like Nandemonai (or Kumiko if quoted) said since realistically I don’t think they (or any company) will prioritize peapri over their own games in the first place. I think the problem here is that Japanese companies for some stupid reason don’t like to keep records of their source files, and with CDRs and various other storage media how hard is it to archive things? Well…they are now digging for them.
I don’t think “immense/huge” is a good way to describe the situation for LMM. Yes, the script is for some reason split into hundreds of little files, but I see that as a “programming / implementation method.” It’s just Will’s choice to split them into multiple smaller files; other companies can choose to compile it into one big scenario script file…it’s just different ways different companies use for software implementation, that’s all. Yes, scripts in hundreds of little files are in some ways difficult to maintain all at once (even from just the FAT/cluster point of view), but my point is: using the word “huge” is a bit too exaggerating, if there is a meaning to it at all. I am not saying LMM is not a complicated game (it’s not easy to get all the endings, I can tell you that at the very least), but personally I just see the “hundreds of little files” issue as just a company’s way to implement the game, and doesn’t really justify the use of the word “huge”. Yes, “ridiculously complex” or “complicated” best describes the situation, but not “huge.”
Also, I believe they are also maintaining the same (ie outdated) engine for LMM to salvage some of the features such as the blinking eyes and other things, and also the fact that this is a maid-training simulation which is more than just a AVG game such as Snowdrop or CP which can share the same engine.
Now, considering these factors:
(outdated engine) + (japanese companies’ bad habits of archiving data) + (complicated script file system) + (other factors that I may not know of) = delay.
So in a nutshell, the current status of LMM is: various pieces of the game (“kit of parts” as architects like to use) are currently being gathered, and implementation will start as soon as all bits and pieces are ready, which is not the case at the moment unfortunately. Peapri is currently waiting for the japanese staff to get things going.
But like SB said, sometimes good things are worth the wait, and I think LMM is the case. I am currently not involved with the LMM project though so I can’t speak for it too much.
Anyhow, I do ask for your patience for this title. Thanks.
PS: Something caught my eye. CP was released in 1998 and LMM was relased in 1999. So that means CP is an older game than LMM. But then they can find the data for CP and got the stuff uncensored and everything and the game did come out in English…but they don’t have the data for a more recent game (LMM) readily accessible…I wonder why. (I am not being sarcastic here; I don’t know the answer myself…just questioning how Japanese companies work that’s all)
Heh, Lamuness-san, you feeling alright? I thought you said you’d avoid doing those long posts…
Okay, just kidding. But it’s good to remind everyone (or inform those who don’t know) that there’s a lot of things involved in translating a title over. It’s not just a simple matter of grabbing some translaters and working over the text.
I’ve found that a lot of things in the business world are “ridiculously complex”. There’s a reason that a lot of people first read Dilbert because it’s funny, then later they read it because it’s true.
Well, I remember back when they announced that no, they weren’t done with the translation of Little My Maid because the Japanese companies had found extra files, bringing the total count up.
And while I’m on the subject, I’d like to apologize for misrepresenting. I was under the impression that there were hundreds of medium-to-large sized files. They’re all little bitty files?
quote:
Originally posted by ekylo:
those who don't know) that there's a lot of things involved in translating a title over. It's not just a simple matter of grabbing some translaters and working over the text.
Many people seems to think the opposite of that... Just visit some pirate boards, and you'll see... those are full of people asking for the games to be translated since they think that "you just have to put some text in the little windows"... *sigh* poor, twisted fools who don't even know what they are talking about [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/frown.gif[/img]. Then, again, who says that I do? [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]
quote:
I've found that a lot of things in the business world are "ridiculously complex". There's a reason that a lot of people first read Dilbert because it's funny, then later they read it because it's true. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
Ah, good old Dilbert [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]... I've read that comic sometimes and it's quite fun since it is partly sa parody, yet very real way of telling how the world of bussines works... But I think I prefer Foxtrot [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]
Yes, I know…after I posted my thing I said shit, that looks like a Kumiko-lecture post…I hope it doesn’t look that way, sorry. I know I may tend to write long posts, but I try not to make it boring/lecturing like 99% of Kumiko’s posts. If I do, say so and I will stop. Sorry again.
There more to things than just slapping the text with English. Like Kumiko said, trimming in text dialogue boxes are important, as well as various “illegal” characters, although the former is not too hard to resolve if you can program out a simple algorithm to figure out the appropiate line breaks. For games that have graphics in Japanese, those need to be changed to English…blah blah blah, so it’s not just translating the text.
Honestly, there is no need to feel bad or apologize, SB. You are just simply kinda paraphrasing what Kumiko ranted and lectured to all of us numerously about, and Kumiko was at that time the only public voice of peapri so I don’t blame you for fully taking everything Kumiko said, whether they are true or misleading. Anyhow, don’t worry about it.
The individual script files are small. It’s more like one file per little scene in the game, and then you get a crap load of these little files in other files which makes up the entire game.
That still sounds like a logistical nightmare. For one, it would be harder to create automated code to process the entire game script–such a program would have to navigate a file system instead of simply reading one big file. It would, I imagine, also make it very hard to check for continuity errors.
Well, creating a algorithm wouldn’t solve the problem entirely. From my experience English takes more “space” to display than Japanese, about 2-3 times if not more. So if there is a Japanese dialogue that takes up the entire dialogue window in the Japanese version, then most likely the English equivalent will require 2-3 windows to show the same text (in context).
So there is still manual checking too after the automatic trimming process.
Well i have tokimeki check-in, a very good game and i’v finished it completely. And i’ll be getting my new comp soon so it looks loike all i really need is mo’money so i can purchase all the games. Thanks for the explanations guys.
quote:
Originally posted by Lamuness:
Yes, I know...after I posted my thing I said shit, that looks like a Kumiko-lecture post...I hope it doesn't look that way, sorry. I know I may tend to write long posts, but I try not to make it boring/lecturing like 99% of Kumiko's posts. If I do, say so and I will stop. Sorry again.
Well like I said, sometimes it's good to go over that stuff again, even if it is in "lecture style". I mean, most of us who've been here for awhile usually knows that stuff and if it's something we've heard before, we could probably skip it but some of the newer people might not know that stuff unless they go through some of the older posts.