Hacker Wanted

[Minimoto]

Well I'm thinking of translating a visual novel. So far I'm debating through Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro na: Brighter than dawning blue, Otome wa boku ni koishiteru, and Honey Coming.
Most Likely: Otome wa boku ni koishiteru, Honey Coming
Least Likely: Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro na: Brighter than dawning blue

I'll be doing the translations myself but am in need of someone with some technical knowledge such as hacking the scripts and making patches. If anyone can assist me in doing so or teaching me how to, I would much appreciate it.

[zalas]

As a friendly reminder, there might be a higher chance of someone being interested if you can demonstrate your abilities for your part of the project. As for teaching, it'll be depend on the game engine whether you would be able to pick up the necessary skills to write a tool-chain in a reasonable amount of time.

[LoSs]

Translate at least 20% of your game and I'll think something about tools by that time. You can use crass or agth to dump the scripts.

[Minimoto]

Well, should I translate it where? Should I just do it on word in paragraph form or something? That's the thing, I'm not sure where to do it.

[Message]

I agree, LoSs is kind of presenting a chicken & egg problem. It would be a waste of effort on the hacker's part if the translator couldn't live up to his/her promises. On the other hand it would be a waste of effort on the translator's part if he/she had to do some hackjob notepad translation mess, only in order to get the hacker to set up a decent environment for creating easily-inserted translations.

[Moogy]

There's nothing wrong with a "Notepad translation mess." If the scripts aren't bytecode, then editing them straight-up in a text editor should be fine in most cases. All of Sharin no Kuni is done in Notepad/WordPad, for instance.

Hell, the Sumaga project doesn't even edit the files with scripting. He just sticks names + lines in Notepad and calls it a day.

Of course, if the scripts are in bytecode, you're not gonna be able to look at or edit them directly without a hacker, and having to have the game open to translate shit is pretty annoying.

Well, in either case, I think it's fine to want to consult a hacker beforehand, as long as you're capable of getting shit done.

But, really now, you don't need some fancy automatic insertion tool with previews and all of that other bling to finish a project.

Just, uh, don't use Word. For anything. Plain text is A-OK, Word documents are not.

[LoSs]

I've learned most of notepad++ hotkeys since I started translating stuff.

edit: gl!~

[Minimoto]

Okay then, I guess I'll do it on Notepad. I'll set this thing up on my blog http://www.somedaysoon.co.nr/ and see what's going on. If I have anyone who will confirm assistance, I'll place your name on staff section or something. If you want to see a sample, the prologue will be done by the weekend, if not a tad sooner, depends on my RL workload. Thanks for the advice guys.

[zalas]

Good luck.

[Asceai]

Could you name in advance the game you're going to work on? That way if I'm bored I can at least take a look (also, if there's existing tools; I know people here have worked on stuff for BGI- zalas, I'm looking at you)

[Minimoto]

I'm doing Honey Coming right now.

[Asceai]

I'll pass, then; I hated HoneyComing =p Good luck on your translation project.

[Minimoto]

That's a shame but thanks anyways.