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ef Project Page? It's here.

2009.06.29. (Note: This update has been written in (very poor) slang to make it impossible for any non-native English speaker or machine translator to understand!)

Them nips out yonder seen those last holl'rin' yaks we shot o'er the week'n. They chick'nfed them horses and scrambled what we'uz tryin' to say in th'purdy periwinkle container! Darn-tootin' translation wuz'off the bloody chain! We'z like "minori don't want no greens" an' that's smooth as a hotfudg sundae ona lazy Sundee, mirite? But they gots one of them dee-mend-ted minds runnin' the farm! They sez we sez "minori appears to not require greens, that they don' appear to want'im! Hello suzacu! Ya missed the entire... whachacallitz? Noo-on-sez! Righty-o! That conversion fail't impress all the fine lassies'n germs here in T-dot-O! But oh my stars! Wat'zis pimplin' pinprick near the end? NNL canceled Wind Chapter 4? What you say! Take off every zig! Them horses had'ta been breathin' some strong paul-in! Wind was into the drink years ago! Oh? One more zig? NNL? A fansub group with lotsa crit-u-schismisms? From who? You mean Gemot? Them mormons? Oh, no person with'uh noggin listenz t'mormons! They be jus'a gagglin' quorum... a cesspool of elitism!

*ahem*

suzacu, please learn English. Your translations are incorrect. You are misinformed about everything, including NNL's history with Gemot and Gemot's members. Thank you.

2009.06.22. Eh... not interested in writing up the ANorth 2K9 report. Who cares in the long run?

Recent developments: minori has just locked out anyone outside Japan from viewing their web site. (Try visiting it right now!) This confirms what we've known all along: they don't care about us. Now we feel vindicated in our decision to make every ef game release a standalone.

Patches are more ethical? Bullshit! minori doesn't need your money, minori doesn't want your money, and minori certainly can support itself with Japan-only sales. In their eyes, you are just a filthy gaijin. End of story.

Anyway, the translator working on chapter 4 (Mizuki) has bowed out. If you would like to assist us, send an e-mail! Chapters 3 and 5 are still moving along, although it's slower than expected.

Update: If you really want to visit minori, use this proxy link! Happy surfing!

2009.05.25. This is what happens when you buy an ef doujin at an anime convention without checking the contents first: (image)

Worst $15 ever spent. Anyway, ANorth 2K9 was quite bad in general, especially compared to last year. I'll have a full con report in the coming days.

2009.04.28. One comment about ef Chapter 1 I'd like to address here:

If there's anything I want to complaint from this release is, it's actually not regarding the nature of the piracy in it... But more about how NNL tampered with the content of the game... I always want to enjoy a game in a manner it's originally released in Japan... and being a stand alone release... I kept thinking about how many stuffs are changed or omitted during the localization...

The fact that the opening movie is not there in the release has already made me feel somewhat disappointed...

This wasn't made clear in the readme, so here's the full disclosure of what was changed:

DRM circumvented
The original game required a serial code input. The game would then encrypt the data files on-the-fly using the provided serial code, plus system information. This meant that a straight copy of the files to any other computer would cause the game to crash. In addition, the game required users to switch to Japanese local time.

What we did was shoehorn all data into the demo executable, which had none of the DRM. minori probably realized this security hole themselves, because the demo is no longer available on their site. The downside to this is that the memories option in the menu is disabled, but who really cares about replaying ero scenes? If you're that desperate, save right before the ero scene. Same deal.

Unused CG removed
We ran a filter through all the chapter 1 scripts to figure out which files to include. Surprisingly, a small amount of event CG went unused. There are complete event CG rips of the game (with the unused pics) floating around if you look hard enough. Therefore, we simply didn't include them, reducing build size further.

Text block removal
Actually, there isn't any. Some text blocks were reduced in length due to redundancy, but we made it a goal to not outright delete any text blocks. Chapter 1 has 8120 text blocks. The player will get all 8120. The script flowed much better than Wind - a breath of heart, where about 25% of the text blocks were edited out.

Opening movie
The opening movie played at the end of the first script (which is actually the second) in the demo. This was changed to the end of chapter 2 in the retail release. We left it out intentionally because the movie is not part of chapter 1. The player is experiencing it in "a manner it's originally released in Japan." (sic) For ef - the latter tale, the opening movie is played at the beginning of chapter 4. Therefore, you won't see that one in our chapter 3 build.

Localization
Ah, the big one. Another goal of the localization was to have zero translation notes. Anyone who plays ef Chapter 1 is smart enough to use the internet, and therefore is smart enough to use Google for any words that seem foreign. There were barely any cultural references in the chapter, but we did change some jokes which just didn't work in English if literally translated. Explaining jokes is stupid, simple as that. We left in honorifics like good little boys, except whenever a person isn't being directly addressed. This came from the experience of slogging through the Wind script.

Transition speedup
Some of the fade ins and fade outs were remarkably slow. We increased the minimum transition speed. This feature improves the script on a technical level. The only time you'll see a slow fade is when you clear the game or reach a bad ending. That's it.

So what can we take from this? It's that this person's complaint is complete A+ bullshit. Ho ho ho!

Progress for the other chapters is going slower than normal, but still okay for now. If there's a release, it likely won't be before summer.

2009.04.12. ef Chapter 3 Demo is out! This covers the first 15% of the chapter. Grab it at the revamped ef project page here!

This demo is not the official demo by minori. The official demo only consisted of some crummy side story. This wasn't indicative of the actual chapter, so we decided to take matters into our own hands! Therefore, if the decision of ef Chapter 1 being a standalone didn't sit well with you, you're not going to like this, either. Game fansubs should not get different treatment than anime fansubs. All the haters can go cry in a corner while everyone else enjoys this!

This is the first release where I didn't have a major part in production. All I did was speed up minori's slow transitions (as usual) and give alternate suggestions to a few lines. Many thanks to DragonSamurai55 and Moogy for taking charge and creating a wonderful product!

2009.04.11. nnl1.com was down for the past two weeks, but no more! We switched hosting and are now hosted via visual-novels.net. Due to conflicting ideals over ef Chapter 1's method of release, we had to part ways with insani completely. We thank Edward Keyes of insani for hosting nnl1.com for over five years. It's time to move forward.

The top toolbar is busted for now. It'll be fixed within a week along with the Wind and ef project pages.

2009.03.18. ef Chapter 1 is out. I will not comment about other sites spreading anti-piracy propaganda. We already made our stance clear in the readme, and besides, it seems that there are plenty of other NNL fans who are willing to defend our decision in a civil manner. Thank you, guys. We'll take the high road this time and avoid a direct response.

A while back, I said that if we were to ever continue the ef project, there would be no announcement until we actually released something. So here we are. I would like to thank the entire team for embarking on a project that may (or may not) change the way people approach visual novel localizations. It's stupid that an unlicensed anime fansub has some degree of acceptance while a standalone for a discontinued game does not. Moogy, who is involved in several other visual novel projects, will try to convince other people that the standalone path is the most logical one. You may see more of them before the year is up!

We took many of your suggestions to heart. There were many people who complained that the ef Supah Preview font looked like something out of a kindergarten notebook. We changed the font to something much more readable and pleasing to the eyes. We never intended to include the removal-of-ero-scenes option, but after seeing the disappointed reactions from some, we decided to include it anyway. And for the people who actually liked Supah Blink Mode, it's unlocked once you clear the good ending. We also shoved in custom game over screens for each bad ending. Hope you enjoy these little bonuses!

The 3/15 release is not a finalized version. About 60% of the chapter got the usual double pass edit. However, during QC, we had no less than six different testers bail out on us. There were two options: delay the game even further, or interrupt edit pass 2 and do a quick runover of the last 40%. In that section, there is a noticeable change in writing style as the scripts shift from one translator to the other, although one-third of DragonSamurai55's translation was smoothed out by that point. The rest of the lines were done in his own style.

Now, I'm not trying to imply that the last 40% is bad by any means. It's very good! In fact, if I didn't bring up this issue, you probably would have never noticed anything. It's just that I know it could be better, and I am a perfectionist by nature. Every line needs to have maximum impact or the localization will suck. We're trying for the best possible quality. To drive home the point, here is a comparison of our first few lines in the game versus a scanlation of the manga: (image)

Thanks to TDOMMX, the original editor, for suggesting an alternative take on these lines. The scanlation, on the other hand, is more literal, and... well, as you can see, the literal translation sucks.

Build B, which will come out in a few weeks, will fix all reported errors and smooth out the last 40%. In addition, all music will be resampled from the recently released ef OST, Alato, for higher quality.

That being said, I don't have much time to deal with ef - the latter tale after I finalize Chapter 1, so creative control will be turned over to everyone else on the team. ef - the latter tale will not have to deal with conflicting styles. We'll have separate people working on entire sections, keeping the style consistent, so this issue shouldn't happen again.

2009.03.15. Surprise!

visual-novels.net will be mirroring this tomorrow. I'll talk more after I get a good night's sleep.

2009.01.12. Happy new year. There's nothing planned for this year, but you never know what will happen...

The Wind project page is offline and I don't know why. I contacted our host about it a while back, but it still hasn't been fixed. Therefore, both the ef and Wind project pages will be moved shortly to visual-novels.net. I criticized them before in the past for plagiarizing a Wind -a breath of heart- review, but mutio quickly replied that it was an honest mistake. He has since been friendly and responsive. All the ef and Wind material should still be on imouto.org, but visual-novels.net will be a mirror.