RPGX Situation Update

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So it's finally happened: Global RPGX is dead. Dibs on its stuff. It might come back in the form of scenes dumped into something else, like that stupid shovelware matching game, but I'm not anticipating anything. So, failing some kind of content recycling, that leaves it up to someone else to fill the void. I deeply wish I weren't retarded enough to be that guy, but here we are.

Anyway, I think I've just about worked out how I'm going to handle the situation. Here's my current line of thinking:

Project Management

First of all, I don't want to simply switch over to it and ignore the VNs that have been requested. But, I also know that there's a large amount of gacha content that people have been waiting a long time for. My plan is to try and juggle between VNs and gacha. Essentially, I'm going to block off RPGX content into "seasons" (1/4 of a year), and treat a number of seasons as if they were, themselves, one big VN translation project. When that's done, I'll switch to another VN, and then back to RPGX afterwards, and so on.

While I'm doing VNs (like right now), I'll still work on some gacha content, but it will come out less often than when I'm focusing on it. I'll be trying to work according to a ratio of lines—say, maybe 1 RPGX line for every 3 VN lines. I don't know for sure what proportion will make sense to do yet, but VNs will still be the top priority. These releases will just keep the blog a little more active.

Content Selection

To reiterate the above, I want to avoid making people wait years and years for the content they've already been waiting for. To some extent, this is governed by the story, as some scenes require that the narrative progress to a certain point for context. A few, like the Asagi bride scene, actually tie directly into an event's story.

I plan to cover both story and scenes, on an event-by-event basis. Events and chapters will be translated in chronological order, but I will prioritize heavily-requested future scenes where applicable. (See Voting for the full details.) So I'll be trying to move the story along, but other scenes can be fast tracked, in the same way that the official localizers fast tracked certain other characters, like Shikanosuke or the Shiranui beach scene.

That said, I cannot commit to keeping the established pace of one event every two weeks. I'm very busy (especially at the moment), and I don't have time to do everything. This means that some content will have to be skipped, although ideally I don't intend to leave it undone forever. Skipped content can be requested, just like future content.

Distribution

Hearing about the recent situation with Vimm's Lair (which was subject to mass-takedowns after too many people publicized it) made me realize something important: I do not want to be the guy who draws too much attention to something and ruins it for everyone. As such, I am going to have my own custom viewer, configured to contain only the scenes and stories that have been translated. The translation files should still work if copied on their own, but anyone using them will also want to take note of the custom files that I've either added or modified. Basically, if you already have one, just reapply scenes.js, sceneData.js and storyData.js over my versions. I think it should be fine.

Patches will not be distributed here, but I will probably link to updates when they arrive.

Style

This section is long and boring, so if you don't care, skip it. You're missing nothing.

I'm planning to meet the official localization style halfway, minus the parts of it that I really can't stand. For instance, I don't remember if Hestia ever comes back, but if she does, I am not going to have her say stupid shit like "I'm gonner wrassle up sum varmints, yeeee-haaawww!!!" or whatever. Even with me trying to play up to the localizers' sensibilities instead of my own, I can't bring myself to deviate from the script that badly.

In spite of Lilith's recent canonization of it in merchandise, I'm not keeping "Devildom"; it's going to be Demon World or Hell (so that you can still have Hell Knights, and so forth). Unfortunately, I'm forced to keep Diot, because although it sounds really stupid, it's actually a genius bit of localization. I certainly would never have thought of it, and I can't come up with anything better to replace it, so we're stuck with it.

I usually transliterate terms (mazoku instead of demon, etc.), in an attempt to avoid some of the problems that translation causes. If mazoku are demons, then how do you differentiate between demons, in the sense of fantasy creatures, and demons, in the sense of actual demons? If you translate inma as incubus or succubus, what happens when you have a situation like in Onmyou Kishi Towako, where Byron is an inma from the Incubus tribe? It's not dissimilar to removing honourifics, and then later discovering that you have to translate a line where somebody gets chastised for leaving -san off a name.

In this case, the official translation is very inconsistent about everything (Arts or Jutsu? Ki or qi or energy?), so I'm going to be using that as an excuse to do whatever I want, basically. I do know that transliteration will be important sometimes. Offhand, I remember that one semantic plot point of Torajiro's first appearance is that Kyoudai has an alternate reading. So on that basis, I think most common terms will get localized, but forms of address will be transliterated. In case this gets too obnoxious for the casual user, I might start to include a simple glossary file to explain these things. It would sure help if the viewer did hyperlinks.

Also, be forewarned, updating the translations through patches will probably cause issues of inconsistency when it comes to translated terms. If I change my mind on how to handle something, it could mean that a term completely changes between one patch and another.

I'm still going to just transliterate sound effects, but the viewer gives me the option to italicize them, which should hopefully make dialogue easier to read at times. Also, as with Taimaseiko Alice, I've added some custom sound files, which have been sourced both from the Internet and from TA0.

Finally, character names are mostly going to match whatever official Lilith transliterations I can find, as opposed to other official localizations. For example, Mercy instead of Merci or Mershey. (There will be exceptions, like Kurakuru.) Otherwise, I'm going to have to blindly defer to the Taimanin wiki. If I end up doing this long-term, I am going to need copies of the Character Visual Books pretty badly. If you've got any of them, then for God's sake, tell me what all the official spellings are.

Pop Culture

I am very much not hip with the kids, let alone the Japanese kids. As such, I may skip over certain events, particularly ones which involve other properties that I'm not familiar with—for example, the Black Lagoon crossover or the April Fools Kimetsu no Yaiba parody. I probably won't skip the Super Sonico event, because I don't remember it needing any extra context, and also the public deserves to see how stupid it is.

Just from doing a couple preliminary test translations, I've already determined that Sonoda Masaki likes putting in references to 1960s manga series. That's the kind of stuff that RPGX is full of, and I will get it wrong at times, because it will go right over my head.

Voting

Since we'll be prioritizing popular content, there will be a voting system to determine which scenes get translated first. Voting will be handled through Google Forms; anything else will be considered merely a request.

Here's how it works:

1. For every event, there are typically four scenes (R, HR, SR, Event SR). I will translate an event, plus one scene. Voting will determine which of the four event-related scenes gets picked.
2. There will also be an option for "Other". If this option wins, then I will pick, at my own discretion, one of the more highly-requested characters or scenes. This may include scenes from the future as long as they do not require any additional context, or might include scenes that were passed over from previous events. During the voting process, voters will have the option to make requests for one specific character or scene, which will be factored into the decision making.
3. "Other" will be the default winner for story chapters, as they do not typically come with scenes.
4. For reasons of context, a character's scenes must be translated in order of release. If there is an event scene for a character whose previous scene has not been completed, that previous scene will be the candidate to vote for, rather than the one appropriate for the event. Also, scenes which require significant story context will probably not be done until that point in the story is reached. (For example, no Future Yukikaze until the future universe is introduced as a concept.)

With all that said, I am still not going to officially commit to going far into the game. We'll see how it goes. If it proves to be too much work for too little benefit, I may reduce the workload or drop it altogether.

Here is the link for this project. I will post here when there are updates to it. Also, you do not need to download the base viewer that I provide if you have one of your own, but patches will overwrite certain essential files. You'll have to reapply the latest Japanese patch to fix this.

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