Rance Series

[Rodcocker]

The sales figures are shocking. But who knows - would the translators ever see the hard figures? Maybe MangaGamer is feeding them a little bit of misinformation to help justify the salaries they are paying.

Utlimately, I feel like this is a big loss. Sure, some people have gripes about Arunaru's quality, but honesty it is an ero RPG. The people that have the drive to do the work are clearly... special. I'll take a 7/10 translation vs no translation, and from what I've seen so far, what has been produced is good enough.

I think he makes a good point about alternative funding (kickstarter, or another platform). It's like all the free to play games where they survive on the whales dropping big money. This stuff is clearly niche, but I'm sure there is some people willing to pay more, possibly a lot more, to get all the Rance games translated, but they currently have no avenue to do it. The fact that MangaGamer hasn't done it yet could quite possibly mean that things aren't as bad as they appear.

Overall, I'll take it one game at time and be thankful for any Rance game that gets a half-decent English translation. It already seemed like a miracle when MangaGamer picked up the rights. Going by the translation status on the blog, I'd put the odds for the rest at:

Quest: no reason for Manga Gamer not to get it over the line as it seems all the translation/editing is done.
Rance 01 / IX: tentative as probably only 50% of the way there on both of them.
Rance X: just pray for this one.

I guess if MangaGamer annouce 03 then they must still have some confidence in the whole affair.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

I'm not sure if that only happens on a first run

It's way too generous in telling me that. I could have captured these territories alone and would have had a lot of fun doing it. It totally spoils victory

Git gud, start a second playthrough, show the game who's boss by getting a score that isn't -40

not actually spoiler

I also got this skip forward event on first playthru. It is very easy to accidentally go super slow on first playthrough

Is there a specific turn when you lose?

Afaik, there is no hard time limit. But once you reach a certain point in the game, when you are close to defeat them a time limit starts.

 

[KingDoofus]

Venus Blood Frontier's campaign makes a pretty compelling case for an alternative. They raised over 200k from 1,705 backers (and they're gonna sell it to a new customer base once it's translated!). To Rodcocker's point about subsisting on whales, that means every person on average donated over $100. But that's not an accurate way to frame it. Over 250 backers donated $5 or less. That means there's a population strongly tugging that average to $100. The numbers of people in each donation tier are right there on the Kickstarter website, so I'll let someone who's more interested do the math (I'm too lazy to do it), but basically whales were a huge part of that campaign. Sengoku Rance was $35. I suppose a whale who wanted to support the game could buy multiple copies and give it to their friends, but they might not want to bother with the extra effort (and it presupposes they're okay sharing that they play h-games. Or have any friends).

If there's any lesson to be learned from this - and I hope somebody's fucking learning it - it's that in a market this niche there needs to be an outlet in these games for whales to whale it up and make up some of the cost to allow these companies and employees to, you know, feasibly exist. I'd never heard of Venus Blood Frontier, though I understand it's popular in certain circles. Imagine how much a Sengoku Rance kickstarter would've made.

Spoiler

MILLIONS

 

[TigerKnee]

I feel like a big argument against there being whales for a SR kickstarter is that a lot of community feel like they were "betrayed" by the fantranslators turning commercial + having an existing fantranslation.

Remember that a failed Kickstarter would be a very bad look for Alicesoft when it comes to commercial viability.

 

[Jaedar]

I feel like a big argument against there being whales for a SR kickstarter is that a lot of community feel like they were "betrayed" by the fantranslators turning commercial + having an existing fantranslation.

Remember that a failed Kickstarter would be a very bad look for Alicesoft when it comes to commercial viability.

For SR you'd be right, but I don't see how it would apply to Rance X ?

 

[Bohrain]

I'd pay money to get I, 03 and X translations out faster.

 

[KingDoofus]

TigerKnee, you're probably right. But if there's one thing I've learned in my time as a degenerate: never underestimate peoples' willingness to pay for video games or porn when they have money.

(I took another look at the VBF kickstarter: 3 people pledged over $25,000. By the numbers Aru gave, Sengoku grossed around $70,000 in sales. Comparatively, that's over 1/3 of sales from 3 people. Sengoku might've had a more resistant kickstarter base, but man...)

 

[CyberModuled]

After seeing the millions Subverse got on Kickstarter, I'll never underestimate horny again (and yes, I realize that Studio FOV have tons of more clout than a niche JP porn game series but still, I'd probably back a TL as well).

 

[Cyberarmy]

I'll never underestimate horny again

Dick is a powerful but mindless tool.

 

[Jason Liang]

Subverse is a dream game. Artificial Girl + Stellaris + Master of Orion... it's like selling a ride to the moon

 

[Bohrain]

Stellaris? I'm pretty sure Subverse isn't going to be a 4X game. It's a twin stick shooter + light TRPG + smut.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's pretty much a matter of fact that you need to be on Steam to sell decent numbers. I'd bet that even GoG is roughly a 1k-10k sales ceiling unless the game has "The Witcher" in its title. Couple that with the fact that Sengoku Rance has literally been translated a decade ago for free.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Hmm I've played this to death back in the day but maybe the official translation should be supported. Decisions, decisions...

 

[Jaedar]

Hmm I've played this to death back in the day but maybe the official translation should be supported. Decisions, decisions...

Back in the day was a long time ago. I bet you don't even remember half of it!

 

[Jason Liang]

haniho update-

supposedly TADA is bored now that he retired so he started playing through the entire series. He is currently on RQM, and decided there's too much grinding so put out a double XP patch last week or so

Also, art ~

 

[Nostaljaded]

haniho update-
... He is currently on RQM, and decided there's too much grinding so put out a double XP patch last week or so

Could you provide the link to TADA's new, personal RQM patch post?


Have 2 suggestions since he's at it now:
- Maria's weapon sound effect broke with his older personal patch, need to check whether it's fixed now.

- Add in an increasing XP multiplier for each new floor in Malgreed Dungeon X as incentives for taking risks to continue with dwindling party and available skills.
E.g. 1x when entering current floor, 1.4x on continuing floor+1, 1.9x on floor+2, 2.5x on floor+3...

 

[Jason Liang]

http://boards.4channel.org/vg/thread/272227649#q272738806

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mWYZPKZYlnD1h2gOVEjsNenPNhSqrQuk

https://twitter.com/hanny_king/status/1199061841663553536

Supposedly this is just an interim patch and he plans to release another RQM patch in the near future

I'm not exactly sure what is the correct way to fix RQM's gameplay. It just isn't spicy enough

 

[Nostaljaded]

Thanks.

The new, reduced-grind patch is for new players only, not much use to existing players due to:
- no savegame compatibility
- magnum campaign is cut

 

[Jaedar]

I feel like trying machine translated Rance X. Can someone point me to instructions how to set it up, as well as basic good to have referemce resources?

I know they exist in this thread, but search is not being helpful.

 

[Bohrain]

Check the Alicesoft thread on 4chan /vg/. They had a step-by-step guide last time I checked.

 

[Jaedar]

Check the Alicesoft thread on 4chan /vg/. They had a step-by-step guide last time I checked.

Well, I followed that guide (it's here currently:https://pastebin.com/Np8rfwTg).

Half the links are outdated, but I still managed to sort of get it to work but VNR kept adding garbage output to the text box, and when I tried to find somewhere to edit that, the whole thing collapsed and now nothing is getting translated. Have to say, the interface in this program is incredibly shitty.

The translation quality I did see was pretty decent though, but seems it will take a few hours of fiddling (at least) to get this to a playable state.

 

[TigerKnee]

Use Textractor, VNR is resource-hogging, questionable shady shit.

I don't think you even need anything special to hook RX with it - it automatically detects the hook.

https://github.com/Artikash/Textractor

 

[Jason Liang]

Rance X really, really should be played last though

 

[flyingjohn]

Playing a machine translated rance game is like playing a machine translated planescape torment.
See if you can find a translated script somewhere and read along,it is worth it.

 

[Jaedar]

Playing a machine translated rance game is like playing a machine translated planescape torment.
See if you can find a translated script somewhere and read along,it is worth it.

After playing half the tutorial dungeon, I am inclined to agree. I get the gist of what is going on (spaceship, Rance trying to find some special monster gal to H, aliens, etc), but for a game with as much reading as this, having the individual lines be gibberish half the time is not acceptable. Having all the ability texts and such be gibberish as well makes the combat a lot less interesting too.

Guess I will wait for the mangagamer translation to drop. With any luck it will happen before 2030.