Amayui Castle Meister - Complete English Patch

This is a post announcing the release of the Complete English Patch for Amayui Castle Meister. This consists of the following:

• Append Supplement, which covers all Append dialogue.
• Main Game Dialogue, which covers all Main Game dialogue except Prologue.
• Prologue Revision, which is the ZAP Prologue Patch with some formatting adjustments and slight editing due to changes in term usage.
• Sex Scenes, which I did not announce here but it blew up on the internet anyways.
• Interface Patch Revision, which is a revised version of ZAP's Interface Patch that improves term consistency, tries to fit most text into the interface, and uses names from Kamidori.

Note that the Eushully Wiki has been updated accordingly to accommodate both users of the Interface Patch Revision and the old ZAP Interface Patch.

Download and Installation Instructions

Download Link

For players who already have the game installed and have an existing patch installed, simply follow Step 6 in the following directions.

Like with all other patches, this is installed after all parts of the game are installed. Install the game and its components in the following order:

1. Install the base game.
2. Install Append 1.
3. Install Patch 1.07.
4. Install Appends 2-5.
1. To install Append 4, do the following:
2. Open "BugBug1712_25thlauncher.exe."
3. Click the left green panel with Kisnir on it (she has the biggest boobs of the three).
4. Click the large top right golden panel with Kisnir on it. This will launch the installer and things should be straightforward from here.
5. Backup all BIN and AGF files in the game folder by copying them into another folder.
6. Unzip the folder with the translation patch and copy all of the contents into the game folder, overwriting as needed (readme is optional). 

Also remember to install Japanese fonts and run the game while your PC is in Japanese locale (or use a locale emulator). Do not enable the Unicode-8 compatibility option if you set your system locale to Japanese!! In addition, make sure to install Japanese Supplemental Fonts (found under Optional Features). This should address most common issues with running the game.

Credits

This patch would not have been possible without help from many 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. Also for giving permission to revise and distribute the Prologue Patch.
• 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 developing the tools that were used.
• Lysander, for improving upon a number of my VNR submissions with his own and giving me some translation advice.
• ue ai, for translating NG+ H-scenes.
• littleshogun and Ahegaoface, for their contributions to the Interface Patch Revision.
• The ZAP Interface Translation team:
• Zoltanar: Interface Translation, Tools, QA, and for giving me permission to revise and distribute the Interface Patch.
• Sol: Interface Translation, Image Editing, QA
• Raizu and airsblue: Interface Translation
• Last Order, Osura, LutfiDS: Helping Hands
• The Eushully Crew Discord, for offering moral support and a platform to promote the patch. Also, for reporting the many issues that the patch had to expedite bug fixing.

Below this point is a mess of nonsense because I wanted to address some stuff due to the dialogue patch releases. Stop reading if you value your sanity.

Addressing some common criticism and questions

After I released an Alpha version of the Sex Scene patch, it rapidly spread to various parts of the Internet and a patched version of Amayui even became available to torrent. It also resulted in some controversy, criticism, and questions that I wanted to address.

You hid the fact this is machine translated!

This is completely wrong. I've been transparent about it since the first article I posted over 3 years ago. It's possible that other people may have tried to be deceptive about the nature of this patch but I can't control their actions. It's also possible that some people may consider the work indistinguishable from human translation or a cut above the more typical machine translation that involves copying and pasting, perhaps with some slight editing to improve grammar.

Also, in direct response to the linked post, I don't own the Discord server. I am an admin on it though.

You should've lied about it being machine translated.

No, I'm not interested in that sort of deception. Furthermore, I was transparent about the method of the translation for a few reasons:

1. A lot of fan translation projects mostly consist of periodic updates that usually involve reporting progress percentage. There's not a clear indication of what exactly has been worked on over the period in question. I resolved this by linking to a Google Sheet showing that progress and reporting only when a major milestone had been reached.

2. There's also not a lot of transparency regarding the method used for translation. Machine translation is part of this story, but factors such as how much free time each person has or whether they're even communicating may not be conveyed to the public for a long time.

3. This translation project was supposed to complement ZAP's releases. It would provide players with a way to experience the game in English but since it's edited machine translation, the quality would likely be lower than a more polished release from a fan translation group such as the one ZAP was working on. This in turn would mean the ZAP dialogue translation release would serve to greatly enhance the experience of playing Amayui. Unfortunately, ZAP's dialogue translation project was cancelled so the dialogue patch that I largely worked on ended up being the best alternative.

Why use Google Translate?

Because I didn't know what DeepL was at the time. However, I did use DeepL for the sex scenes. If I were to do this again, I would use resources such as DeepL. I wish it could show romaji though.

Why Goddess of Marriage?

Because both the interface and prologue patches, which were done by a translator proficient in Japanese, used this term. This is actually the reason why a number of terms were chosen. When working on translating the dialogue, I prioritized working with what was already there because this patch was meant to be complementary with ZAP's work. However, this has now been changed to "Goddess of Bonds."

Why waste 10 months on this instead of learning Japanese?

I find learning Japanese in this way to be more enjoyable and I retain more of what I do happen to learn compared to traditional learning methods. While machine translation did a lot of the heavy lifting, this project did challenge and improve my language processing ability. Also, I "wasted" more than 1.5 years on this - 10 months is just how long it took to work on the patch and redo a bunch of the translations.

Thoughts on VNDB/Your patch being taken down?

Honestly, I don't mind it as much as I probably should. This project was initially meant to serve as a temporary measure for players who wanted to experience Amayui in English. However, after ZAP declared their project dead, my patch was the next best option so it ended up being more popular than I ever expected it to be. Also, the patch got posted elsewhere so even if VNDB were to take the patch down for good (since it's up again with a machine translation label), I personally don't mind. I do think it's a shame that some people may have been denied the ability to enjoy the game due to such a decision though.

On the other hand, I do have strong opinions when it comes to certain VNDB users, or perhaps certain individuals in the VN community in general, who vehemently oppose machine translation and translation work based on it/aided by it. I think they are being incredibly elitist to the point of making hardcore MMORPG players blush since not everyone can play VNs in the original language and may need an aid of some sort to do so (in the form of a true localization, a fan translation patch, text hooking software, etc). I also believe they are being very narrow-minded when it comes to the general usefulness of machine translation and may be in denial over the oncoming threat of automation and machine learning.

Can I donate to you?

Sorry, but I'm not accepting donations right now. I will say I am thankful for all the positivity though since while this section is devoted to criticism and questions, I got plenty of compliments too.

Are you planning on doing any other translation projects?

I'm currently considering helping Zoltanar with a possible Amayui Labyrinth Meister Interface Patch. However, even this remains only a possibility.

This patch sucks/There's something wrong with the patch!

The Eushully Crew discord has a bug report channel and I try to fix reported issues on a daily basis. Please don't get too excessive with the nitpicking though.