Statement of Affairs

[DerxwnaKapsyla]

So, the translation project is coming along rather well. The graphical assets, I suppose barring a few, are all translated. We have items translated as well as abilities - these will need some refining to make them respectful of their character limits. The server is currently working on modifying the skills file to respect the character limits. All in all, progress is progressing smoothly!

However, I've noticed some issues with the forum-side of affairs. While I'm not against the translating of the story-related events, the entire effort currently is a disjointed and disorganized mess. It would appear that people are scrambling to find out what they can contribute and translate, and the story thread is a mess. To this end, I should probably make a new thread for translating the story to try and get better organization going in there. Mark down who is translating what, since there is a lot to translate.

Aside from the story, several different people seem to be compiling and distributing the various translated assets and injecting them into their games. I do not suggest doing this, as we are still constantly updating stuff, and it'd be much better if we didn't have partial patches floating around. You're free to inject the stuff into your game, but do so privately and do not distribute it. It's much harder to contain issues and spread fixes if there's a million different incomplete builds floating around, and it gets even more problematic when Hemo releases new builds of the game, since we have to ensure that they work on newer builds first. Please understand that if your game breaks because of a hastily done translation compilation, we will not be able to assist you in fixing it.

If you have any questions, ANY at all, I highly suggest you come onto the Shoddy Server to get real-time answers. Someone is usually there at all times of the day, so your question should be answered relatively quickly. Not to mention it's where all the on-the-spot information for the translation patch is, so you'll be immediately informed on whats currently going on!

[DerxwnaKapsyla]

State of Affairs - November 4th, 2015: the Comiket 89 build and how it affects the translation, where the progress is on the current translation, and the wiki

When Comiket 89 rolls around, a new build of TPDP will be released as well. We've gone most of what we know about the game, but thanks to TPDP Gaiden, we have a... slightly better inkling as to what we can expect from the new update.

The update will require us to, more or less, re translate various things due to how a few new things are being added. With the addition of facial expressions to cut-in graphics for characters, additional plot elements, and who knows what else, we cannot accurately rely on what we have translated. The addition of a new form, potentially new moves and abilities, will mean we'd have to retranslate those things as well to accommodate.

What I'm saying here is, when the Comiket 89 build comes out, if you still want to play in English, please do not update your game to that build. They will more than likely be entirely incompatible.

As for where the current translation progress is at? Our editor is hyper backed up by school and is unable to provide feedback on strings that need editing. This will likely be the case until December at the earliest, and that's the most likely scenario. Worst case scenario is they're backed up until after Comiket 89. I may take matters into my own hands and do the revision process myself, but I will need their save file first and foremost - mine is being used for wiki documentation, and I do not wish to jump ahead without documenting the current areas.

On the topic of the wiki, the main page has gotten overhauled, and several location pages have been thrown up! We also have a detailed networking page, as well as a page describing the Reincarnation process. The wiki still needs a lot more polish, especially with the Comiket 89 build rolling around. So if you think you can help, hop on by and see what all you can do!

Remember, if you have any questions or comments, I highly suggest you come onto the #TPDP IRC Channel over at Rizon to get real-time answers, a link to the channel can be found on the wiki's main page. Someone is usually there at all times of the day, so your question should be answered relatively quickly. Not to mention it's where all the on-the-spot information for the translation patch is, so you'll be immediately informed on whats currently going on!

[DerxwnaKapsyla]

State of Affairs - December 1st, 2015: Translation Patch and the Wiki, How You Can Help

So on Thanksgiving, we finally released the complete translation patch! It's taken us a long time but hey, we made it here! But this is only the beginning, the next thing we need to do is work on documentation for the game. And that involves - you guessed it, the wiki.

Currently the wiki is in a rather less than ideal state. Several skills and abilities are using their names from old translation builds, some Puppets have inaccurate stat spreads and types from older builds (I think), and none of the skill pages have any information as to what they do! This is not good. So here's what you all are going to do to help!

If you have a wiki account, head on over and start filling in things you know for skills and abilities - don't worry about fancying it just yet. It's more important that we get the information, and then make it look nice and tidy. Do you notice a skill or ability name that's got the wrong translation? Fix it up to what the current translation uses! Does a Puppet have the wrong skill spread? Well make it have the right spread!  Let's get this wiki up to optimal standards. And if you don't have an account? Just sign on up! We'll work on getting you verified ASAP!

... What do you mean you want to wait until the Comiket 89 build? You say that Hemo's adding new stuff and that'll completely change the data we already have? Well, you're not wrong! But just consider something for a moment, will you?

Why did the translation patch take so long to come out?



That's what I thought. Get working on the wiki.

[DerxwnaKapsyla]

State of Affairs - January 10th, 2016: Base Patch 1.01 and Yume no Kakera, and the future

Welcome to the year 2016 everyone! A new year brings about many new things - in this case, we have Yume no Kakera to look forward to! But not just that, earlier last week we managed to put out a new patch for base TPDP 1.34 (Base 1.34 is how we occasionally refer to the first game)! The patch does quite a few things, such as revises the description on some moves and abilities to make them more accurate (ie: Macroburst now having a 30% confuse rate and no effect on weather, Total Solar Eclipse now saying it inflicts Fear instead of Darkness, etc), as well as fixing some typos in Items and Puppet names. For a full list of changes, head on over to this link and check it out! The best thing about this new update? It uses a brand new patching system! No more using Beat, and no more clunking around using it! The new patcher is rather easy to use, and does work if your game is already patched to English. However, I always suggest keeping a backup on hand in case something blows up horribly. You should also take the time to read the installation disclaimer, I worked hard to write it. One more thing - if your game is installed somewhere that isn't the game's default game directory as designated by Gensou Ningyou Enbu's installer (C:\game\FocasLens\幻想人形演舞), you will have to manually copy and paste the directory into the installer. It automatically appends the "幻想人形演舞" to the end of any folder selection, which makes the installer not detect the folder.

Now, as for Yume no Kakera. Or as we're calling it, Touhou Puppet Dance Performance: Shard of Dreams.



Yes, that is a translated title screen! Unfortunately, that's about it for right now! As you can see, Shard of Dreams is in ver1.012, which means there's been a few updates since FocasLens released it at Comiket 89. While we've probably got a good portion of the stuff roughly translated internally (none of it is properly finalized I'd say), we haven't applied any of it to the game yet, as we're waiting for FoLens to slow down updates and fix some of the bugs that are present (There's quite a few we noticed, unfortunately.) Right now we're preparing a translation of the Manual, which should hopefully be finished and uploaded sometime soon. The manual doesn't change too much from the Base 1.34 manual, but there is some new stuff in there (as well as images that will need to be re-translated, it's not that huge of a deal!). Content within the game will likely be thrown on the wiki first and foremost, before the game is translated, with the translated names and abilities. The wiki is undergoing some heavy work right now to accmidate the Shard of Dreams information, so keep watching.

As always, feel free to stop by the IRC Channel #TPDP over on the Rizon IRC Server for the latest on-the-spot news, to find a battle with someone (In either Base or YnK), or just to chill out and talk with people! A guide on how to connect to the IRC can be found here.

This is Derxwna, signing out folks! Hopefully you all have a great 2016, and stay tuned for more news!

[DerxwnaKapsyla]

State of Affairs - April 23rd, 2016: Shard of Dreams and the Ever-Delayed Translation

Hey all, it's that time of time again where I chime in with news about the translation! So, what do I have to report? Well, it's a long story, so please bear with me.

Back when we started the original Gensou Ningyou Enbu translation, it was nothing short of an organizational nightmare and a mess of hastily thrown together translations. Google was used for a lot of stuff, people who didn’t have a decent grasp of the language were using dictionaries as substitutes for not having people who could speak the language, and even those who could speak the language - we had quite a few hopping in and out, and so we had several different people providing different translations for things. In short, it was a disgrace to watch.

When Yume no Kakera came out, we organized a team proper and moved it to a place away from outside interference, so the team could work without getting opinions from several different sources at once while they were still trying to figure stuff out. In this smaller group, we came to one critical conclusion.

Everything needed to be re-translated from scratch.

There were so many inaccuracies and shoddily translated things, that when we had people who had a better grasp of the language look at it, realized that some of the stuff just didn’t hold up. So, we worked to go over everything we had, figuring out what needed retranslation and what was fine as is. As a result, several items, skills, and abilities have had their names refined and are now more accurate to what the actual Japanese text says. I am much more confident in this translation than I am the last. Some things, however, just couldn’t be saved, and as a result we had no option but to find a similar, but alternate sounding name. In worst case scenarios, we had to flat out localize it so that it could be comprehensible period (Say goodbye to Between Zeal & Calm and Chrysanthemum Water, by the way. Those names got axed hard).

Unfortunately, this all has one large drawback - time. You may think that it’d be easy to re-translate a wide selection of stuff, but that’s not necessarily the case. In the process of re-translating, we discovered a handful of names were pop-culture references. So we had to further research every single skill, item, and ability to make sure something wasn’t a reference we were missing. This added more time to the work. Not to mention, the group wasn’t always around 24/7 - one of them has a very active college schedule. So, even more time taken.

But if there’s one thing I can say, and I will restate it, it’s that I have faith that we’ve done the absolute best we can so far, and we hope that you can enjoy the product we put out. A lot of time and thought was put into the work we’re doing, several arguments and compromises and line drawing to do what we and I believe to be a quality product.

The first tier patch that will come out is an Interface Translation Patch. This will translate Skills, Abilities, Items, Puppet Names, Puppet Encyclopedia, and Graphical Interfaces.

The second big patch to come out will be the Story Translation Patch. As you can surmise, this will contain the translation for: the story, npc dialogue, trainer dialogue.

The third, and final tier of patches, will be the Battle Strings Patch. This patch will include the following: In-Battle Strings, other miscellaneous items in the executable file.

I just ask one thing of all of you - please, give us a little more time. I don’t know when we’ll be done. The first patch could be 4 days from now, it could be 4 weeks from now, in a bad case it could be 4 months (pray that isn’t the case!), but we need time. And I promise you, when we’re ready, when we have something we can show you, we will. I apologize for not getting this message out sooner, but better now than never!