Sunday, May 17, 2020

Amayui Castle Meister - Append Supplement English Patch

It has been over a year since I "translated" about 90% of the game's dialogue to make the game somewhat understandable using VisualNovelReader. The intention of doing this project was to serve as a stopgap measure until an actual patch was developed by ZAP and I'm happy to say quite a few people appreciate the work that was done.

Unfortunately, it appears there's been a stagnation in the progress of ZAP's dialogue patch and reception of their Pre-Release 2 patch doesn't seem to be that positive. This is fine, as it's a project done on the free time of all involved and from what I can tell, interface translations are more their thing.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, I managed to get in contact with some people experienced with working on Eushully games and even managed to get my hands on tools that allow me to develop my own patch using VNR submissions. By doing so, all the work that was done on VNR by myself and others can be immortalized in the form of something less reliant on software that from my understanding is no longer being updated. This also provides an opportunity to proofread many of the submissions (a lot of mine need it badly). A few weeks ago I put this plan into action and today, I am happy to present the Append Supplement patch.

This patch is meant to complement the Pre-release 2 patch released by ZAP. It covers the dialogue of all 5 appends with only the first append having any overlap since Pre-release 2 covers Append 1 content. Approximately 7% of all the game's dialogue is newly covered with this patch, bringing the total amount of patched dialogue up to 70%.

As always, I would add a disclaimer that the basis for these translations is machine translation. I still lack proficiency in the Japanese language and instead used a mix of dictionaries, deductive reasoning, and my knowledge of the game to produce dialogue that is a little more pleasing for players to read compared to actual machine translation. I am also inexperienced with the patching process so this patch could potentially cause the game to crash. Please let me know of any mistakes I have made.

Patch and Installation Stuff


Patch Download Link

This patch is installed the same way as ZAP's patches. Unzip the folder and copy the BIN files within that folder into the game folder after installing everything else (Appends, official patches, and ZAP's patches). Make sure to back up AGF and BIN files before installing my patch and ZAP's patches.

Credits

This patch would not have been possible without the help of a number of people.
  • Chazu, for helping me get in contact with Yuuko Shionji.
  • Yuuko Shionji, for providing advice on translation work (including a bit of TLC) and getting me in contact with FlamePaladin.
  • FlamePaladin, for providing the tools that made this possible and also for giving some advice on how to patch Eushully games.
  • Asmodean and SaintLouisX for making the tools that were used.
  • Lysander, for improving upon a number of my VNR submissions with his own and giving me some translation advice.
Additional Info

As of this post, I am also working on the main game dialogue. This part of the project is in its infancy, but I have been logging my progress on a Google Doc. Feel free to check it out and view its version history to see how I am progressing. Note that it is filled with spoilers because I am also logging the contents of each file I am patching to make it easier to refer back to. I predict completing all of the main game dialogue will take a few months at least.

(By the way, I don't have any plans to translate the sex scenes any time soon. Sorry.)

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