It’s been a while since we released the Tomoyo After patch, and after a short break, things are moving again. Today, I have a few announcements to make.
- Team Fluffy (Little Busters! VN Team) will merge into the Doki VN Department. This will allow coders on both teams to collaborate to improve the hacking tools for the key visual novels. In addition, the merge should mean that projects will get finished quicker than originally planned. Clannad_Man has more details below.
- Delwack will succeed Clannad_Man as the head of the VN Department. I am sure Del will do a great job, so please give him your support!
- In order to ensure that future VN projects run smoothly, it will be necessary to recruit another dedicated VN translator.
Greetings, Doki Legion!
Thought you were rid of me? Ready to read another ‘brief’ wall of text? No? Alrighty then. I’ll make this brief. I have temporarily returned with the sole purpose of providing you with an important update.
Team Fluffy has agreed to merge into the Doki Visual Novel Department effective immediately. As part of the merger, the Little Busters! VN Translation Project has also been transferred to the Doki VN Dept. Any future updates & patches involving ‘Little Busters!’ & Little Busters! Ex’ will be released through Doki.
The rationale behind the merger is as follows: both groups have capabilities and resources which could be utilized by the other to enhance the quality and efficiency of their works. Members from both teams will collaborate to work on enhancing tools for use in the Memorial/CE/Ex translation patches of Tomoyo After, Little Busters!, and potentially Clannad as well. For the most part, those working on Tomoyo After (Orig. or ME) will continue doing so, as will those who have been working on Little Busters! Ex. As each VN being worked on is at a different stage of progress, there will be some crossover between group members who otherwise wouldn’t have much to do, including image editors, translation checkers, etc. As work on TA and LB! comes to a close, work will be redirected to Clannad. In this way, those involved feel the translation patches for Tomoyo After ME and Little Busters! Ex will be checked & released quicker than otherwise possible, in turn allowing Clannad’s final translation patch to be prepared quicker than otherwise possible. What happens beyond then… well, it’s too far in the future for anyone to tell, especially me.
One more time, on behalf of Doki Fansubs and the most passionate VN team in existence, I thank you for your continued support. Look forward to all the great things yet to come from the VN team, and be sure to give the new VN Division Head, Delwack, a proper show of support.
Peace!
– The Clannad Man
Translator Recruitment:
If you are interested, please send me an email at holo@doki.co. We’ll have a chat on IRC and I can give you more details and answer any questions that you may have.
Saturday 20th October 2012 
11:48 PM 
Awesome! It’s great to hear this level of collaboration coming together, and for such a great project! That’s quite the To-Do list, though. While it looks like things are picking up momentum, it seems like my dear Clannad is even farther away than ever… Still, I look forward to hearing the progress on all these awesome VNs!
This is AWESOME news! ^^ Was following TF and their work as well as you guys, and now you’re combined! Good stuff! Looking forward to getting translation patches for all those VN’s from you! ^^ Also, Delwack, congrats on your new position, I’m sure you’ll do and excellent job! Keep up the good work! (o^-’)b
Might as well ask: when playing LB for the first time, would it be advised to start with Ecstasy, or Memorial, or the original?
I would like to know that too. Can anyone give advice on that matter?
The Memorial Edition is the same as the Ecstacy Edition except that it doesn’t have the H-scenes I believe (which the Ecstacy Edition DOES), so choose one of those depending on whether you want the H or not. The original version has less content, and is inferior.
If you are talking about LB with the current English patch, they are all essentially the same. The ME/EX content has not yet been done and the patches just enable you in essence to play the original, LB no matter what version you’ve bought! This is quite a feat in and of itself, but it does mean that effectively all versions are (almost exactly) the same right now.
I hope you guys know what you’re doing cuz LB! is not easy to translate you know with the battle system and all that but i know you guys will pour much effort in this game…. so thank you and good luck.. ;D
A-Hahahahahaha!
Of course they can handle what they’ve picked up. It’s not like they’ll dig themselves into a hole here.
They know what they’re doing, and I’m sure they’ll translate it fine.
I still don’t get why you guys don’t just buy the rights and distribute this thing all over the USA through Steam or something! you would make a killing off it I think and some people wouldn’t have to pirate the game’s ISO cause they cannot import it.
For starters we aren’t a US group.
sorry, I am used to using the USA as a generic term for english, bad habit due to rare communication with the UK or other english priority countries.
Second thing, I remember reading that Visual Art’s is not even considering a localization of Key games unless the price is right which was around 1 million-5million I think.
I hope you can finish translating before the end of 2012. XD
Oh yeah. December 21st 2012. Forgot about that. The day will come and go and I probably won’t even realise.
They should release the patch before New Years Day! >3<
Just curious if it has been noticed before, but..Not sure if this happens to original LB; however in LB:Ex when it says [Character name] [Stat] has decreased by [XX] Amount it actually increases the stats not decreases.
I realise it wasn’t mentioned in the post which probably means no, but I figured I might as well ask anyway. Is any work planned to be done with the Perfect Edition being released later this month? I’m planning on buying it regardless, but it would be much better if I could go through it without having to deal with external programs such as text hookers to get through the parts I can’t understand.
Could you please give an estimate of when the three extra routes will be done? As in, when will the patch essentially, be finished? How far are you guys right now? I tried checking on Twitter, but all your comments are… A bit disorganized.
Dead Page…. seems like this project may lead to BAD END
Eh?
Eh? I heard that they just finished the Sasasasasegawa route. Working on the Futaki route and have little progress on Saya’s route.
I don’t want to pressure anyone or be ungrateful (after all, this is free) but a rough estimate of how long it’ll take would be nice. Two or three months is my totally wild and uneducated guess.
Judging from it,it should be way longer.So dont get your hopes up.We may go through the Beta-Tester-Discover Bugs-Delay completion again.(Tomoyo After)
Thus should they start to look for beta tester expect the patch come out within the next 3 months.
I believe the team has learned the risks of posting a release date. I did not expect that the cause of Tomoyo After’s delay would be due to coding issues as the team had not experienced any by the time of the announcement. Though the Summer 2012 mark was hit, it was somewhat past the expected July date, and for that I apologize.
Again, internal deadlines are in place, though I do not expect them to be communicated publicly for fear that they might be off by a bit. Be aware, however, that the VN Division is hard at work on both Tomoyo After’s update and Little Busters! Ex at this time.
Any new Infos yet :/ ?
What would you like to know, Shadowwakumu? ‘New Infos’ could mean just about anything.
For example, did you know Rokudaime is slacking in his duties? He should be giving constant updates to the Doki Legion! But noooooo, he’s fine letting Clannad Man stop by out of the blue to help out. =P
It’s fine though. I know what you want. You want to know the full story of the Little Busters, not some watered down version. You are a true Key fan! And that, my friend, deserves a (minor) update.
Phlebas was nice enough to offer a way to allow people to track the translation team’s progress. By viewing the following document, you can follow along with the work the group is doing:
http://tinyurl.com/LittleBustersUpdates
Mind you, this does not give details on everything being worked on. Coding and testing issues are still being worked on separately, for example. This guide isn’t meant to serve as a release timetable, just a guide for the curious.
I will say that there has been progress in recent weeks. If work on LB! goes similarly to what was seen on Tomoyo After, there should be increased activity in the coming weeks. (Speaking about Tomoyo After, there’s been progress on that front as well. It’s strange having two VNs being worked on at the same time, no?)
Have a good one!
You got 1 W too much on my Nick 😛
But thx anyways for the reply ^^ And also thx for the link :3 it’s really nice to see that now the progress states of the lines :3
My slacking was unintentional, I swear! 😛 I didn’t know this release post still had active posters. ( ^_^’) I’ve been replying in the Tomoyo After release post only, thinking people would post there, since it was the newest relevant release post about progress on the Key VN’s we’re working on. Sorry about that. I’ll check here as well from now on though. I’ll do my best to answer any questions, including, of course, questions about the progress of the translation work. But outside of that, we won’t be giving out constant weekly or monthly updates unless there’s something in particular to report, as we simply wouldn’t have anything to report a lot of the time if we did.
^_^
Awesome to see steady progress on the status tracker, I think those mean more to eager fans than any estimate date (or lack thereof). Anyway, I had a quick question — is the version being translated the ME or EX version? The status tracker says ME, but I coulda sworn the folks at TL said the EX version was underway. Or maybe my brains all addled D:.
BOTH the EX and the ME versions of Little Busters is being worked on. 😉 http://doki.co/visual-novels/little-busters/
A question, huh? Is the patch going to be released once it’s fully complete or are you going to release partial patches as the project goes on?
From Phlebas (who’s in charge of the LB translation): “depends on overall progress, I guess we might release Sasami+Kanata and leave Saya for last”.
So, no guarantees/promises, but it may be that you’ll get a partial patch with Sasami and Kanata’s routes, and then a final patch with Saya’s route. 😉
For anyone interested, it seems Visual Arts has released an English IOS release of Planetarian, and are apparently working on the SS sidestories of Little Busters! https://itunes.apple.com/app/planetarian-dream-little-star/id474121500 http://www.product.co.jp/iapp/
From what I’ve seen, there are some translation discrepancies from the original fan translation and the new official version. Somewhat surprisingly, the official version seems less accurate in areas than the original fan translation, but the editing, as others have mentioned, appears quite nice; the flow of the official kinetic novel translation seems well paced.
Regardless, I wholeheartedly support Key’s English language expansion (even if Planetarian was just released as a trial). I’d gladly purchase the English versions of Key games if they were released as such. Perhaps this is a sign of good things to come?
We can only hope! ^^ It’s a move in the right direction at least. I just hope the fans support it.
i love everything that key has done, and heard so many great things about this game (but have never played it) so it is great to hear about the patch. I was wondering if anyone knew where i could buy the game though? ^^”
Hi there superfangirl! It really depends on what’s convenient for you. There’s always eBay or Play Asia. If you use a proxy service like Taigaya, you can buy a copy off of Yahoo! Auctions Japan or any other Japanese site (Amazon Japan, for example).
Enjoy the game when you get it! ^_^
Just finished my first route (Kud). I love how this VN combines comedy, romance and drama in such a fluid way. The character cast is amazing, and your translation really helped showing each character’s personality.
Thank you for translating this wonderful gem.
Awesome. Wish you had an update on the projects page though. If not on the projects page, somewhere would be nice. Please?
You need to be a little more patient. 😉 It’s only been a month since Clannad Man provided an update a little further up on this page (check it if you haven’t already), and as he said there, Phlebas has made this: http://tinyurl.com/LittleBustersUpdates so you guys can track the translation team’s progress and what they are doing (though like he said, just bear in mind that it’s just a guide for the curious, and not a release timetable, so it does not give you the details of what is being worked on). This gives you a fairly good idea of how much of the new textual content (new lines at least) has been translated, edited, and proofread. Coding and testing issues comes in addition, so giving you a percentage of how much work is left overall is tough, as it would unavoidably be a slightly arbitrary number.
Anyway, I said in my reply post that we won’t be giving out constant weekly or monthly updates unless there’s something in particular to report, as we simply wouldn’t have anything to report a lot of the time if we did (telling you what line of text was last worked on is not very interesting or helpful after all, is it? 😉 ). I meant that. It’s not something I decided alone, I asked Delwack about it, and we agreed that doing so would not be productive. I COULD go and bother Phlebas and ask him about a status update right now, but I don’t want to, as I’m sure he’d have a hard time giving me something new and interesting to report (also, he’s asleep right now at the time of this post…), and it’s only been a month. But alright, if you wait another month, I promise I will at least ask Phlebas for an update and post it here. I’m not promising that it will be very interesting though. It might be, but it might not.
Also, see Clannad Man’s bottom post here: http://doki.co/2012/09/22/tomoyo-after-english-patch-v1/#comments
For anyone interested, Amaterasu Translations have finished their English patch of KEY’s latest game, Rewrite: http://amaterasu.tindabox.net/blog/?p=1710#comments If you’re going to grab their patch, make sure to at least leave them with a small word of appreciation in the comments.
Tbh I’d be perfectly content if they released it with saya untranslated and with a few bugs (as long as the game was playable still) i really just want the full patch for ex to come out. XD
Well, without including Saya’s route, it won’t be a full patch. 😉
True but the 1.0 patch could just be the not full patch (similar to how it is released currently) and then you can release Saya in the 2.0 patch when she is complete :p
The problem is that a lot of the common route and the original character routes had stuff added to it, especially Kud’s route. I rather they fix that part up and release it rather then have 2 EX routes patch.
I know. I was trying to point out that your initial post contradicts itself, but I guess that failed. ┐(￣ー￣)┌ You first say that for the time being you would be fine with getting a patch with Saya’s route untranslated, and with a few bugs. In other words, an unfinished, imperfect patch. As in, NOT a FULL patch. But then you also say you just want the full patch to come out, which would mean translating Saya’s route and fixing all the bugs. That completely invalidates your statement that you’d be content with an unfinished release, don’t you see? The two statements don’t fit together. They’re polar opposites.
(reread what i posted and realized I forgot a statement and now feel like a idiot. What I meant to say was I would have been okay if a unfinished patch with a few bugs and stuff was released currently and we just got Saya later. I do obviously want the full patch eventually but I wouldn’t have any issue getting it in pieces with Saya and bug fixes coming after the initial patch.
Understood. Well, I figured that was probably what you meant anyway. 😉
Btw as an aside with the current patch does the shooting mini game work? I got to the first one where I’m at a forest and there is a ring of numbers and no matter what i press or click nothing happens.
Well, that minigame is part of Saya’s route, and so is EX material, so I don’t really know. I guess maybe it oughta work somehow, but we haven’t tested it, or worked on it in the patch yet, so if you’re having problems getting it to work right my best advice would be to wait for a future EX patch before you play it.
[Sorry for my bad english]
I saw some information about Ecstasy translate. At January, 12 was fully translated Kanata and Sasami routes, but I can’t find and download patch because I don’t know where it could be. I downloaded patch from Soki, but it still old version (or I’ve got wrong link) with untranslated routes. Can someone do it please?
No patches for any of the EX routes have been released yet. If what you’re refering to is the online status sheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?pli=1&key=0Am1pV7ssY0D7dExyd3NxUTNGNUFHRWNLZjV3em8xbEE#gid=0 ), then I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood it’s purpose. It doesn’t show what patches have been released at all (you can find that info here: http://doki.co/visual-novels/little-busters/ and here: http://tlwiki.org/index.php?title=Little_Busters! ). It just tells you (or gives you an idea of) what is being worked on right now, or has been worked on (or finished) earlier. It gives you and idea of the progress in terms of how much of the new textual content (new lines at least) has been translated, edited, and proofread.
I saw it here (http://vntls.tindabox.net/project/little-busters/) yesterday, downloaded EX patch 6.0, but nothing changed. Thanks for answer
The 6.0 EX patch just allows you to read all the content from the Regular version of the game on an EX copy of the game. None of the new content has been translated. It says so in the release post. As for VNTL, I can’t say anything about the site, since I’m not familiar with it, but I advice you to always refer to our own official status pages on LB first, so you won’t get the wrong information.
In the topic of the new content, it adds new lines for the routes that the original had?
I have the EX version but idk if I should read the original version first.
Yes, the EX version of the game adds new textual content to some of the routes already present in the original version of the game, in addition to entirely new routes. But when using the current patch on the EX version of the game (just make sure you grab the one called “Little Busters! EX Edition Partial English Patch” in that case, as opposed to the “Little Busters! (Original) Complete English Patch”, which you would grab if you were going to use it on the regular version of the game), you aren’t left with a copy that has all the original content from the regular version of the game translated, while the EX content is still there, just untranslated, no. You are instead left with the full version of the original version of the game, fully translated (well, 99.9% anyway. There are a few untranslated lines), without any of the EX content being left in the game, translated or otherwise. So, basically, the EX patch enables you to run the original version of the game on an EX copy of the game, without issues. 😉 So, if you can’t wait, then go ahead and download the current patch and use it with your EX copy, and you’ll be able to play through the original version.
Should you play the original first and then the EX version later? I don’t know, it’s hard to tell you what would be best to do in this case, because it depends on you and your tastes. I’ve played through visual novels and then played through newer, superior versions of the same game later, and enjoyed it, but there’s no denying that if you wait and then just play the upgraded version first, without having played the original version before, you’ll usually get the ultimate experience. If you’re patient, my personal advice would be to wait for the EX patch before you play. You shouldn’t think that you’re missing out on anything by not playing the original version first, because you really aren’t. The EX version is superior, and has all the content from the original plus much more, just with a few script changes in Haruka and Kud’s routes. But if you want to play now, or if you just want to play twice, or if you really want to be able to spot the few changes in the script, then go ahead and play the original version first. You can’t lose either way. 😉
I’ve made mistake. I meant Doki. It can create some misunderstand of anything.
Thanks so much for taking on the LB ME/EX translation project! I can’t wait to play through the routes (seriously, I’m slogging through them and a sub-snail’s pace in Japanese). After completing Refrain in the main story, I was just begging for more. What a rollercoaster ride!
You’re welcome! ^^
Is there a better place to have questions about this. It’s like no one uses the forums
I check BOTH the forums AND this thread every single day (unless something comes up, and I’m left too busy to do so), so I don’t really mind whether you post your questions here or in the forums. 😉 There are more people posting here, but some post in the forums, so I have to check both places anyway. ┐(￣ー￣)┌ All I ask is that if you post in the forums, check what topics have been made already (there aren’t that many) before posting a new onse, in case your question has already been answered. In the same way, if you want to ask a new question here in this thread, it would be nice if you at least took a look at the last 2 pages of comments first, for the same reason.
*one*
Random question. Are you guys going to make a patch for the Perfect Edition too now that it’s out?
Nothing regarding a patch for the Perfect Edition is in the works at this time. I doubt the resources are in place for the team to be able to work on such a new release, especially when considering complications with compiling data. I suppose there’s a remote possibility it could be worked on at some point, but not in the foreseeable future. Sorry.
Well, I asked Phlebas about this, as there were some questions about this in the forums as well, and the team might consider doing it at some point. Patching the PE with ME scripts should be no problem after all, as they are essentially the same. However, patching earlier releases with the additional PE content would be more work, and would take some time. Anyway, at the moment it’s at the bottom of the priority list, so IF we do it, it’ll be after everything else is done, so yeah, not in the foreseeable future at least. Strata, you can check my response to shadowfoxEX in the “Little Busters Perfect Edition TN?” forum post for details if you want. 🙂
Out of curiosity what do you guys think of the three new routes are they written well or just filler and not that well written?
They wouldn’t be “filler” even if they were poorly written, since “filler” is a term strictly reserved for non-canon material. The three new routes may have been added on later, but that doesn’t make them non-canon. Anyway, personally I haven’t played the game, so I couldn’t answer you, but Phlebas tells me that so far everything he has read has been good.