Rise above the world to the top of the atmosphere…
I’ve conquered carpal tunnel. I’ve taken down tendonitis.
But more importantly I’ve recognized and destroyed my decade long battle with depression that was keeping me from fighting everything else in my life.
The drugs are not scary, the drugs do not numb me. The drugs do not make me happy. They let me be me.
I love myself on Zoloft. I love every one of you who hasn’t given up on me. I love the energy we bring to this project and together we are gonna beat this thing.
I’ve been getting a lot questions both concerned and cruel from all channels of communication so this post is to set the record straight.
Some progress has not been updated to the site but summer was more difficult than I had anticipated. There was a lot of life shit I will not share with you all that took up the majority of late May and June. But most critically, my hands were and are more deeply injured than I was admitting to myself at the time.
I’m trying everything, traditional therapy, braces, vitamins, ultrasound, ASTYM, even steroids. I’ve gotten nerve tests and invested hundreds in a more ergonomic workstation and dictation software. But at the end of the day I needed an internship and what I could get involved using a laptop on a shitty shared table all day. Once that started is when the “steady” progress dropped off. I literally could not sit and type any more. It’s over now and I have moved back into an environment where I can use Dragon dictation but the effects very much still remain.
I understand it’s frustrating to be waiting for me. But that pales to the frustration of not being able to do basic life tasks. It’s hurts to write, mouse, stir a pot, drive a car, sometime just to twist a lid or doorknob. (My saving grace is that most eroge have an auto-mode.) I know some of you don’t believe this but I think of this project everyday. I am still very much committed to seeing it through. You can believe in me or not but let this post stand as proof I believe in y’all enough to share this information with you.
What has been long suspected has finally become true, Key launched an official site for the all-ages edition of Kud Wafter!
There will be some new content but it is unclear how much (the complete file size is not even decided yet).
I will do my best to get a copy and adapt the patch for both versions.
As for patch progress, I’d like to apologize for the slowness. It’s been a busy semester finishing up my undergrad while being a full-time grad student. Unfortunately I’ve really gone and messed up my wrist trying to make thesis deadlines which of course limits my progress on this as well. Hopefully spring break will give me enough time to rest up so I’ll be back to full power soon! \(>w<)/
Despite my life’s best efforts to sabotage progress, the project has reached 25% translation! In celebration, here is a short history of Kud’s homeland and it’s real-life inspirations. Most of this is extracted from and based upon the encyclopedia entry Riki reads on the fourth day of the game.
I don’t consider anything in this spoilers because knowing about Kud’s homeland will not spoil any of the games in any way. The name Tebwa was not in Little Busters (2007) because the back story of the island had not been developed yet. It was first named in EX but not given any significant background until Kud Wafter.
Commonly called The Republic of Tebwa or simply Tebwa.
In this alternative history, the USSR wanted control over the ocean but when the League of Nations divided the Southern islands, they were split with America and the USSR ended up only with this small equatorial nation in the middle of the pacific.
Tebwa was abandoned by the USSR when the economy crumbled. After that it became an independent island republic. The domain comprises of volcanic islands, coral islands, atolls, and surrounding reefs. The Tebwa islands include thirteen archipelagos covering approximately 800 square kilometers of land. The largest archipelago is the size of Tokyo’s 23 wards (622 square kilometers).
After the 19th century it became unstable from colonization and a regional support plan is moving towards political stabilization. This group, the Pacific Rim Economic Organization found success with a large scale bank project. Presently, the primary industries of Tebwa are space exploration, tourism, fishing and agriculture. However in recent years, valuable underwater metal deposits have been found and mining has commenced.
The Republic of Tebwa is based on the Republic of Kiribati. Tebwa Island corresponds to the Tarawa atoll where the majority of the Kiribati population lives. Tarawa was controlled by the Japanese during World War II until US Marines seized the island.
The Makin Islands are in the same region of Kiribati as Tawara. One of the Makin islands, Tebua Tarawa disappeared underwater in 1999. It is from this island that the name of the fictional nation is derived.
The Republic of Kiribati also controls Kiritimati/Christmas Island. Kiritimati was the site of British and US hydrogen bomb tests during the cold war and Japan once planned to build a spaceport on the island for the failed HOPE-X project.
Though the Russian name is different, there is also a real Star City in Russia. It is the home of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. There is also a statue of Kud’s namesake, Laika, in the city.
I am participating in the Key 15th Anniversary Project which is now open for general submissions:
From Key15th.com:
We are now accepting messages, letters, and images (fan art, cosplay, etc.) over at our Submission Wiki. Registration is not required for submissions, but it is highly recommended as it helps with user identification and allows for email notifications. It is, however, required for file uploads. To provide a few examples, some of the messages and images submitted to the Key 10th Anniversary Letter Project have been uploaded to the submission wiki. Please read the criteria first before submitting something. Note that although we do accept video submissions, we are still working out the guidelines/criteria for that aspect of the project, and video uploads are not currently allowed on the wiki.
We do not have a set date for when we will stop accepting submissions, which will last until January at the earliest, and probably longer than that. At the end of the submission phase, we will collect these fan submissions to the best of our capacity into a yearbook and DVD, which we will print and send to Key and related publishers on Key’s 15th anniversary next year. As a huge fan of Key, I personally ask you to please take a moment to voice your appreciation to Key and its staff members, and help showing them the extent of its fan base outside of Japan.
I know some talented Key fans follow this project so please submit your work! Let’s fill it up with Wafu!
This is general Kud news and speculation. It is not directly related to the translation.
Kud Wafter will be ported to PSP (not Vita)as the tentatively titled “Kud Wafter Conbaateddo Edishon” (yes Kud Engrish) Besides being all-ages this version will include new events and CGs. It also will have many PSP features such as : the ability to move BGM to your Memory Stick and listen to it without the game, a “Memory Disk” function to play the game without the disc, and a screenshot function. I don’t have a PSP but this is quite tempting!
Source : Akiba Jigoku!
Update: Dengeki Online has more visuals, this time a logo with the title romanized (not the hiragana used in the magazine that implied engrish titling) and some screen shots. As said above the engrish title was tentative and magazines tend to be behind so this is probably more accurate.
However I suspect KudWaf is going to end up fragmented like Tomoyo After. For Tomoyo the H-edition was first-press only then an expanded consumer port was released. That PS2 port was the definitive version until it was backported as an all-ages memorial edition five years later. The 18+ edition was never reissued. Considering Key is emphasizing all-ages versions of even Kanon and Air I would not be surprised if the same happened to dear Kud. Hopefully Key will reissue Kud PC in a normal (18+) or memorial (all-ages) edition within the next two years before it becomes too rare. I know this sounds glum but this is my prediction based on previous product cycles. I will support any PC edition in print when the patch is released.
I’ve added a progress page (above) it will not be updated daily or probably even weekly but it is there for the curious. I’ve been busy with other things so progress on 2719 has been slow but it is coming along.
Many people have (rightfully) voiced concern that I may be neglecting other aspects of patching. Rest assured, all steps have been considered, translation is just the major hurdle in a project like this. Below are some screenshots of text and image insertion.
I haven’t edited any images myself; EchoMateria was kind enough to allow me to use his work so these are just files from Little Busters! English edition inserted into Kud Wafter (many elements are the same). Likewise, the gameplay screenshots are real but should not be taken as featuring a final translation.
Just a friendly reminder that today is the birthday of our dear heroine, Кудрявка Анатолиевна Стругацкая!
This is a 4-panel comic that was on Visual Art’s website before the game was released. Please forgive my lackluster photoshop skills.
Nothing to say about translation progress except it is happening at a slow but steady rate.
Thanks to the efforts of a mysterious individual, the XOR key has been found and the script has been dumped successfully!
Now onto the slow part.
I will do at least a two pass translation. (not translation then QC but translating each line twice) This will take time and I will probably not update the blog frequently except at major milestones. I might tweet progress so if you’re curious take a look my timeline. If the project dies I will update this blog. Once I have finished the “Wafter” arc I will begin gathering a team for image-editing, patch creation, et cetera.
With the help of all of you I have finally made it to the starting gate.
It’s been a week since this projects declaration so I thought it might be beneficial to gather together the progress so far.
No script. No translation. It frustrates me but this is the reality of visual novel translation. This next week is my finals so I would love to start pouring over scripts after that but I still need help. Despite technical ineptitude, I’ve compiled my own binaries of RLDev (with help from AppleHQ) . The last step before translation is solving the XOR encryption.
After trying literally every file, ( I have no other method of attack) I have had limited success disassembling the (possibly?) system-level SEENs 9014, 9015, 9016, 9017 and 9020.
Most notably, I’ve had partial success disassembling the content SEEN 5001, the character list (which RLDev could already see) and the kepago calls were disassembled but the script stops after the first line (a title declaration). The bytecode and that data is available here.
A lurker found some Chinese “SEEN keys” and postulates following:
I used the same pattern as LBEX!/FIVE – looked at key 4 and it is simply key 1 xor key 2 and key 3 is just…well, I think you can figure out by observation alone. I was able to extract the SEEN but got syntax errors on disassembly – I’m not sure if it’s due to syntax changes in RealLive itself or code that wasn’t decrypted properly. But maybe one of the Chinese keys is actually key 4 and key 1 or 2 is key 4 xor the other, I dunno. If I get more time I’ll play around with it.
It looks like you run kprl -G KUDO -o kud_bytecode -x SEEN.txt or something to that effect and it outputs a ton of .RL bytecode files into “kud_bytecode”, which you [could] then disassemble file-by-file into actual scripts using kprl -d (script file).
However, although it doesn’t help that much, you *can* see the text by looking at the resulting RL files in a text editor – although I don’t know if it’s complete or if parts of it aren’t garbled.
The game.cfg entry I used is as follows: http://pastebin.com/TsY4vjmg
If anyone can experiment based on his information you would have my gratitude. Luckily this is RealLive not some completely undocumented engine and I’m sure someone can crack this nut!
Project Wafuu 