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For Unity games, I use a combination of BepInEx and XUnity.AutoTranslator. I then trigger as many lines as possible and translate them into English. The translator utility also has an option to dump the game's images, so I can translate those too if I wish.

For TyranoBuilder (most visual novels), I extract the game contents. They're typically in the data folder as loose files, stored inside the game executable, or in app.asar. If they're in app.asar, I use a npm package to extract and repack the contents, and xDelta to help other people change the app.asar to my translation. If the contents are in an executable, I deliberately corrupt the data stored in the executable and put my translation in the loose files data folder.

RPGMaker is even easier. The text typically appears as clear text in the data/json files, and when it doesn't, I can find it in either the js files or the plugin file for said js files.

For other games, the translation method varies. Sometimes game devs are kind enough to offer a json file with all the lines to translate. Other times (like in Last Defense Academy), some reverse engineering is necessary to figure out how the game stores clear text, and translate that.

If you have a particular VN in mind that you want to translate, you can contact me on Discord (name is ijedi1234 there as well, profile picture is a blue symbol) and we can discuss it.

I suppose. It feels like you tried to make a sort of sequel to Higurashi Outbreak, but since the time of the VN is so far removed from the source material, the connections to Higurashi proper are tenuous at best. The paranoia in Higurashi is effectively nonexistent here. Honestly, the VN works better as a 28 Days Later fanfic than a Higurashi one, if it's to be a fanfic at all.

Yeah I'm not feeling this one.

The setting feels like a ripoff of School Live. The VN is more like a zombie flick than a Higurashi arc.

The strange thing is that the VN is set in late 2025, but Shion shows up as her young self. Considering the events of the source material are still said to happen, shouldn't Shion be pushing 60? There's no way a 60 year old Shion is still as spry as she used to be.

Then there's the bizarre side tangent involving exposition about an alternate Cold War and some Russian history. Random Japanese schools care about Russian history?

I feel this VN would've done better as an original IP rather than trying to look like a Higurshi fanfic. It attempts to have ties with Higurashi proper and doesn't do it very well.

Technically that's already happened. Ex: Dorm mode in Snowbreak and GFL2.

Check out the Mr. Raymond controversy of GFL2. Did you know that a fictional woman can have an affair with a fictional man, cheating on a very real human player?

The screamers are too frequent in the hide and seek segment. It's not scary if I know for sure that a monster will jumpscare me around the corner.

The game needs more suspense. The spooky parts with the sister in her normal form are great since you don't know what will happen next. But the demonic one isn't as scary - you know when she's coming, and you know that she's going to scream in your face, every time.

Oh, that's good to hear. I'm looking forward to what you come up with next. To help get you into the mindset of what it would be like to have a paranoid version of the Doctor, consider this:

First, start with the Doctor. The Doctor gets a Final Destination-style vision from his perspective, which contains the events up to and including The Woman ending. After returning to the start of this game, the Doctor is spooked at first, but after seeing enough events that match the "original timeline", he becomes nearly convinced that Yumeko is an imminent threat.

Which could end up with something like this:

_

Doc: "I know you're up to no good, Yumeko. I know the horrible things you're planning. So just confess, okay? I won't be mad, just spit it out."

夢子: "Confess? Confess what?"

One of the voices: You've never seen the Doctor like this. He tends to be agreeable if you don't anger him, but something seems to have bothered him last night. A bad dream, perhaps? Or something else?

Doc: "Oh, I see. You want to play dumb. You want me dead, Yumeko. We both know this. So be honest, and admit it, will you?"

One of the voices: While you wouldn't be too upset over the Doctor's passing, it is unlikely you would be able to last long in his laptop on your own.

Another voice: However, that isn't important right now. If you say what he wants to hear, you'll be immediately shut down. But if you deny it, he'll shut you down for lying to him. And he looks very angry right now, so staying quiet won't get you anywhere.

> Yes, I want you dead.

> No, I would never want that.

> ...

_

After Yumeko is shut down, the Doc brings her back a month or so later, having changed his mind. However, he has installed some additional safeguards that he thinks are necessary to his safety. The rest of the game is about managing the Doctor's paranoia, ultimately leading to Yumeko's escape or destruction.

I figured I might as well leave a review. I got one ending - The Woman. This ending is top tier - I haven't tried the other endings, but I don't think they can top this one.

To be honest with you, I thought for a moment that the protag was going to fumble the ball at the end. But no - she went in for the touchdown, which I am very pleased about.

The game did feel somewhat simplistic though.

• Keeping the Doctor happy was too easy. I thought there would be an "Are you paying attention?" question, or a question where the Doctor is trying to sniff out whether you're just saying what he wants to hear.
• I would've loved to see the Doc try to gaslight the protag. "I'll take you to the aquarium this weekend" "No I never said that what are you talking about"
• As an extension to my first point, the Doc is too trusting for his own good. Agreeing with everything he says is enough for him to drop his guard? Though to be fair, the Doc did seem to be somewhat desperate for companionship, so I suppose he wouldn't be on alert when it counts.

The VAs are fantastic by the way. Definitely good voice talent there.

If you ever make a spinoff or sequel, I would love a game/VN in this vein where the antagonist is a paranoid abuser. If one of your games already fulfills this niche, let me know. I want an adversary who would do something like this:

• Double and triple checks the AI girl's settings when he starts to feel that her responses are too good to be true.
• Places his laptop in a spot that has a good view of his living place when he goes to work, so that she can ping his phone whenever she notices something suspicious.
• Occasional flare-ups where the guy thinks the AI girl is spying on him, or feels some scapegoat somewhere is the cause of the day's troubles.
• Keeps the AI girl powered off for a week because he misinterpreted an innocent comment as a threat.
• Migrates the AI girl into certain "safe" aka "can't do much" bodies when going out on trips.

Since the adversary would be a ticking time bomb, cooperating isn't guaranteed to keep the protag alive. Instead, the only ways out would be methods that trick or intimidate the guy into letting the AI girl go free, or getting the help of a third party.

Anyway, your game is good. I'll definitely be interested in more like these.

The immediate contents of BW_FanTL should be alongside the exe, not BW_FanTL itself.

I'm still alive, just busy with other stuff.

This translation is a mix between MTL and manual. 

The VNDB guys call it MTL because they view even partial MTL as full MTL.

I actually translated about 2/5ths of it in August, but lost interest for a while. It's a fairly grim VN - lots of focus on death itself.

My main focus at the moment is on playing through a certain game that came out earlier this month. Considering your interest, I'll probably pick up Karuta again when I complete or stop work on the Chinese VN I'm translating.

Really? Assuming nothing changed, the name of the tpatch file should match the prefix of the sav files that appear when you launch the game (the "saicosh" part). Otherwise the thing gets confused and doesn't read the patch.

I recently discovered your games. I tried this first game, and it's pretty good!

Personally, I'm viewing Ending 4 as canon. I know it's a bad ending, but I view it to have the best ending world state of the bunch.

That error means something else on your computer has the file open, and is able to write to the file. If you want to be extra sure that this error does not happen, then do this:

1. Restart your computer. (Assuming whatever the process is doesn't load on startup, a reboot will shut down the mystery program).
2. Before doing anything else, load up xDelta, and also open a folder containing the app.asar file.
3. Use xDelta to apply the patch. Unlike the original instructions, call this patched file "app_patched.asar". Place app_patched.asar in the same place as app.asar.
4. Close xDelta. Then, delete app.asar. If your computer won't let you delete app.asar, reboot again and delete the file.
5. Then, rename "app_patched.asar" to app.asar.
6. All should work fine at this point. You should be able to play.

• The character sprites were good. CGs were okay, I guess.
• MC was kind of a dumdum. When dealing with a crazy person, they're not going to help unless they feel it's in their best interest.
• I wanted to outsmart Oto-hime. Like, if talking isn't allowed, I'd try hand signals. Or I'd talk to Oto-hime while encoding important information in what I say that Oto-hime won't be able to spot.
• I got the Bad End. Oto-hime had enough of my nonsense ig.

You put the patch file right inside the folder that has the exe in it. TyranoBuilder has a function that replaces its contents with a tpatch file, which is how it functions. You should know it works if you encounter English text after starting up a new game.

Yeah it's an exciting one. :)

I believe it should, yeah. The tpatch stuff uses a replacer function internally, so I don't forsee issues. If it does break let me know.

I'm actually closing in on finishing the translation pass of the first episode of the dragon set of VNs. The speed read of all six of them is done, so I have enough context to get the names, pronouns, and context right in the first one. Some of the Japanese in there is pretty tricky to turn into English manually too, so I had to spend a few days thinking some of the lines over.

Also, there's a VN/RPG hybrid I'm thinking of translating. It does have an official translation, but the devs admitted that it's raw DeepL. The original language is in Simplified Chinese, which I don't know as well as Japanese, so if I offer my own translation of that one, it will be a mix of my own MTL, the official TL, and some small dictionary usage. It also took a good week or two for me to construct a program that can get my translation in there, and make it easy enough for other people to install such a patch.

Also, I've been playing a bunch of automation games recently. They help me think over some of the tougher bits of translation. I've actually released a related mod on Steam for Word Factori recently called Japanese Kana.

I think it's technically possible - translating RPG Maker usually involves editing some clear text json files. However, RPG Maker is harder to fully translate than TyranoBuilder, since RPG Maker allows a lot more branching. It's a lot easier to miss something.

I'd say start off with the Charon games that look interesting, although Dice Psycho should be played after Menherafflesia. Otherwise, play in release order.

Intentionally added, hence why YT exists.

Maybe some of the really early ones like Menherafflesia and Princess Cage. I definitely know I made a couple blunders translating some of the lines in those. The more recent ones, like Paranoia Zanatorium, should be close enough to what a manual would create - my dictionary use is much heavier around that period, though not total.

Right now, I'm gathering cliff notes on a dragon-related series. Making cliff notes should be particularly speedy since the goal is to get a summary of each of the story scenes, in order to map out the general story structure - it's very important for catching any foreshadowing. Once I've got that handled, I'll get to manually translating its Episode 1. I'm tempted to replace some of the backgrounds it uses, since some of the default backgrounds used could look out of place. I should come to a decision on the backgrounds once I have the cliff notes done.

Ah, ok. I'll keep it in mind, though I'm currently focused on a certain dragon-related series that I've had eyes on for awhile. I'm going to see how my translation methodology works on the longer stuff.

Ah. The issue with the Mikoto Remake is that it's in Chinese Simplified - I would have to make an edited MTL of it. I also have a strong suspicion that it's the original game, but translated into that other language, considering the Japanese Charon didn't offer a Japanese language option.

I might do a translation if the remake is known to have some upgrades over the original.

Oh, I see.

I think this patch should work with that March '24 version. The March '24 version is the Simplified Chinese edition. My patch applies an idempotent edit to the VN to turn it into English, so it should work with both editions, provided the March '24 edition truly is just a translation.

The re-release is a rewritten version - an alternate continuity, in other words. I believe both versions had the same characters, though the old one was incomplete.

No, the Atsumaru version is gone for good. It was some other version of the game that was deemed non-canon.

I don't think you can do it through the VN. However, you should be able to lower the volume on Win10 by doing Speakers -> Volume Mixer -> Bloodstained Flowers (VN needs to be open) -> Adjust the volume.

Note that this is for you alone, though. If you're planning on streaming it somewhere, you'll have to edit the volume in editing yourself.

I think the link to the VN got messed up - somehow the link in the install instructions went to the Ignores VN instead of the Endures VN. Should be fixed now. Grab a copy from here: https://novelgame.jp/games/show/3455

Sorry about that.

Thanks! 

I've been taking some extra Japanese lessons over the past month to improve my reading speed. Fascinating stuff.

I've got some other VNs on the pipeline. I've decided on which Charon VN I want to translate, though I'm only about 1/6th done with the translation pass. There's also a vampire VN and a VN about a crazy town that I'm much further along with, though the editing passes for those will take a bit.

Still, I'm happy to hear I'm getting better. :)

Well if Freem isn't an option, there is chance of a variant of Notepad or VSCode or Notepad++ or some other text editor working. What's important is that the other parts of the executable must not be corrupted upon saving - only the part that needs the extra character. Only then will the executable decide to look at the extracted files instead without instantly crashing.

The VN should look to use loose files instead as long as the characters are messed up in there. Copy-pasting a character in there should be able to do it.

Overwriting the data folder can be accomplished by drag and dropping the whole data folder on top of the existing data folder.

GARBro functions by pulling the VN assets right out of the executable. By extracting said assets next to the executable, and by making the assets stored inside the executable unreadable, the VN can be forced to read the extracted assets instead.

The Freem method is the preferred way to do it without hassle, since the assets are given as loose files.

Unlike Charon's other works, you have to buy Paranoia directly from Charon's Fantia. I haven't gotten around to making my account there yet - I'll probably need to make a separate guide in the install instructions for how to legitimately buy a copy, since there's a good chance people might get confused.

It's possible, though I've got a backlog of other VNs to handle first.

I might do that recommended OverFlowers one while I'm doing the mental hospital one. The translation passes for the hospital one will probably take a bit, so I might switch over to the OverFlowers one in between.

• Yes, Shiniisogu bokura came out in August 2023. The leads seem interesting - there's a good chance I'll translate it, though there are some other VNs of interest I want to finish up first.
• Yona Yona seems to have something interesting involving a crane going on, though the setup at the start feels like straight up BDSM nukige. I might return to this one later, though I'm not really sure.
• I bought Yanderain, though I haven't begun trying to translate it yet.
• Paranoia is annoying to get. I might do it later once I buy a copy; don't know.

I can't reveal precisely what the VN I'm working on is at the moment, though from what the Japanese Let's Players say, it seems to be ~3h long. It also seems that a Japanese VTuber - Chiruhi - did a Let's Play on this particular one. The denpa elements in it look interesting, and the skull Joker-like character in it is pretty funny, so I feel there's a good chance I'll finish translating it.

Ah, that one. I've considered translating some of OverFlowers' work, though I haven't decided yet.

I'm thinking of translating Shiniisogu Bokura, though I'm not entirely sure yet about finishing it. I considered translating Yona Yona, but there's a very notable amount of BDSM eroge in there. I might return to it later - not sure.

What currently holds my focus right now is a particular VN set in a mental institution. The creator seems to be interested in putting the VN on Steam, but it doesn't seem to be released there yet. Despite that, there are copies available on NovelGame and Freem, so getting a copy is no problem.

The result file should be about 663,239 KB big.

The original file should be a file said to be modified on 2/21/2022 10:37 AM (UTC -6) with an approximate size of 661,963 KB.

I double checked the download provided by Freem just now, and that should have the original app.asar file you want.

The result file absolutely must be named app.asar and be placed inside that resources folder, where the original app.asar used to be.

If that doesn't work, are you able to provide more details on which part doesn't match up?

Original/Source File: The app.asar provided in your download of the VN.

Patch: The xDelta file I provided.

Destination File: The location of the new file that will be created.

Think of it like this: The VN creator gave you the original file. I gave you the file that can tell xDelta how to turn the original file into the translated file. You must inform xDelta what these two files are, so that it can build the translated file.

I am. I did my translation pass up to the start of the 3rd chapter at this time of writing, actually.
There are a TON of cameo appearances in it. Pretty much anyone in a work Charon made in 2017 or earlier shows up for at least a few minutes. When I release my patch, I'm planning to compile a list of all the works referenced.