Miscellaneous ~ We're changing some.
# Posted on Dec. 11, 2009, 8:27 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

Over the next few days (hopefully no more than that) you'll begin to notice some changes as we tinker with the website a bit. It's nothing drastic, no major overhaul like when the current layout launched; rather, it's a culling of the stuff that doesn't work so well, and an addition of new things. The blog link will be replaced by a twitter link, the About Me will get a much-needed overhaul, the links page will get an update...

... but most visibly (and probably most controversial) is that a PayPal donate button will be going up on the site. This will direct you to a page detailing how our donation system works (with the actual button on the bottom of said page.) But since it's not up yet and people are immediately going to start crying foul, I figured I should explain right now.

Aeon Genesis is a loose collective of programmers, writers, and Japanese speakers. I spearhead the operation but by no means could I do this without lots and lots of help. As such I have been extremely hesitant to place a donate button on the site in the past. How could any funds added to the account ever be fairly distributed amongst all of the contributors? A few months ago, I hit upon the answer: a rainy day fund.

I'm still hashing out the details, but essentially we will have a private forum (possibly public-viewable) within the Pantheon wherein contributors can request funds. There needs to be a valid reason for a withdrawal from the fund. In my case, for instance, my student loan payments have dropped off in the past several months due in no small part to emergency veterinary bills, but this is a drastic example. The money could help finance a PS2 for Tyria so he could play the PS2 SRW games he's always wanted. It could go towards a pizza for a translator who's just finished a script, or who's motivation is flagging. It could help pay bus fare to help a contributor visit a sick family member. Stuff like that. Wide ranging, but not frivolous.

It's important to note that any donations made to the fund are strictly done as thanks for translations already released. We will not accept money for anything we have not produced, and do not want the pressure of someone claiming that they paid us for work that hasn't shown up yet. Furthermore, we will never withhold any releases due to lack of contributions to the fund. It would be nice to have an emergency pillow to fall back on, but everyone understands that times are tough, and I will not hold my work for ransom in this manner.

All that said, frankly, my finances are not very sound right now. I would not be doing this if I felt I didn't need to. I'd actually considered investigating Project Wonderful and placing an ad or two on the site, but figured that this would be, by far, the preferable next step. So when the button does go up, please, do what you can. We'll all appreciate it.

So, with all that out of the way, I'd just like to say that LUNAR *is* coming, hopefully within a few days if not a few weeks, and I hope to have something *else* for everyone on Christmas day. Better get my act in gear, eh?

Progress ~ LUNAR not quite ready
LUNAR Walking School
# Posted on Dec. 4, 2009, 5:56 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

I've edited Chapter 9 and am a good way through 10 (just done with the townie text), but 11 and 12 are going to be long ones. However, I have been posting brief updates to Twitter when they're available. I'm working hard on it, but LUNAR has a very particular flavor to it, and getting that across while still maintaining textual accuracy can be very tiring.

Progress ~ LUNAR: No promises, but...
LUNAR Walking School
# Posted on Nov. 29, 2009, 6:44 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

No promises, but if I can manage to edit even one chapter each day this week, LUNAR: Walking School might just be available by the weekend. I finished editing Chapter 7 (of 12) today, and as a bonus plowed through 8. Four left...

Major Release ~ Holy Umbrella is done.
Holy Umbrella: Dondera's Wild!!
# Posted on Nov. 2, 2009, 7:40 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

Enjoy!

Progress ~ Holy Umbrella enters beta testing.
Holy Umbrella: Dondera's Wild!!
# Posted on Oct. 29, 2009, 7:40 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

Betatesting on Holy Umbrella started last night. Should be a pretty quick deal, all told; the game is not very long and is a *lot* more stable than Mystic Ark was. It DOES have a lot of text, though! A surprising amount of text.

I've completely replaced the snapshot gallery with up-to-date material - 22 brand new screenshots, two of which you can see here.

Release ~ Mystic Ark v1.01
Mystic Ark
# Posted on Sept. 25, 2009, 11:37 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

This is a small (big) fix for a small (big) bug which caused random battles to stop completely just before fighting the last boss in world 3. I'm looking for a code to manually re-enable them, but in the meantime a patch which fixes the bug is up.

The nutjobs who programmed this crap need to be beaten with a tire iron. For those who are interested, the bug was caused by an extremely unlikely combination of factors, including (1) the location of one particular string in the rom, and (2) the particular method by which the string was accessed. The simple probability of any string starting at this address is one in 65535...

Major Release ~ Mystic Ark's out.
Mystic Ark
# Posted on Sept. 22, 2009, 12:33 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

After ten days of extreme beta testing and ten more(ish) of extreme midnight oil burning, Mystic Ark is finally available for public consumption. Do please be sure to read the readme, as it contains several notes about the translation itself.

And yes, this should work on your SNES, should you have a copier.

Progress ~ Mystic Ark Beta Test Progressing Smoothly
Mystic Ark
# Posted on Sept. 16, 2009, 5:03 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

Mystic Ark entered playtesting on Sunday afternoon, and the tests have been progressing smoothly. We've been moving at a quick pace (but are not sacrificing accuracy for speed) and are up to the fifth world on our initial playthrough. Second playthrough should go pretty quickly, faster than the initial one anyway. I've replaced the old screenshots on the project's page with 28 new ones showcasing the current work on the game.

Progress ~ Moving Forward (Mystic Ark, etc)
Mystic Ark
# Posted on Sept. 11, 2009, 5:04 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

So, since Dynamic Designs posted an update on their Mystic Ark project, I figured I should post an update on mine. As of about 5AM on Thursday, the script has been completely inserted. It's not entirely stable; I was able to play for about ten minutes last night before encountering a bug on the Bloodhook which wouldn't let me leave an item shop, but that's since been fixed. Due to the way the script is stored there are probably a lot of these minor little instabilities, all of which are easily fixed provided they're found in the first place. A fully proportional font has been implemented, as you can see in the screenshots below; in the event that the text needs to be centered, a command for that has been programmed as well. Further, a linebreak command has been added not only to menus but also to equipment displays, and it works better than I could have hoped. I'm writing this from work so I don't have a lot of time, but over the next few days (Monday, probably) I'll be updating the project page with completely new snapshots.

I'm also resolving to work on several games in order, as they're all fairly close to being done and pretty much require either further editing or minor hacking tasks. After Mystic Ark these are, in order, Holy Umbrella, LUNAR: Walking School, Megami Tensei, and Laplace's Demon. I may squeeze Hourai High in there somewhere, get the script ready for satsu to do the extra editing he wanted. But that's what my schedule looks like, at least for now.

Progress ~ *whistle*
Super Robot Wars EX
# Posted on Aug. 22, 2009, 10:39 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

It's far from perfect, but it's getting there!