Episode 1 Finally Released!
June 30, 2009 - Kanna
It only took us two years and three months, but we're finally able to bring you the first episode for School Days! I know what you're thinking, "Oh, it's only episode 1. I've watched that demo video of it many times over already while waiting for you guys." Yes, we took forever to finish, but this game isn't like your ordinary visual novel.
A lot of problems were in staffing. Not many people who play eroge know how to hack DirectX9, and not many people know how the Overflow game engine works either. It took basically 4 or 5 people to understand and manipulate the engine for a proper English translation. As you play the game you'll notice the subtitles changed into a smaller (perhaps more readable) style, we also took time to translate important visuals such as the note-passing between Sekai and Makoto. Once we figured everything out, the rest was easy work.
All in all, I'm just trying to say we took this long because we were going into uncharted territory and trying to build the foundations for our translation. Of course, future episodes shouldn't take as long and I hope to be at episode 3 or 4 by the end of the year.
Now, on to the actual release annoucement. Before installing the patch be sure to read our readme file. Hopefully we made everything easy to understand for everyone. The installer is made so you will be able to install the patch with or without an existing game installation. As mentioned in the readme, if you are on Vista/7 it's highly recommended to install our group's certificate. This will help with troubleshooting later on, and it's also required if you want full functionality in game explorer.
Ninja edit: Subtitles are turned off by default. To turn the feature on, start the game, move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen, click on options, then turn on subtitles. You only need to do this once per installation!
RC Release
April 4, 2009 - Kanna
Congratulations to us, we've finally reached the RC phase of our localization patch for School Days! The file has been released to our QA staff and current beta testers yesterday and right now we're making sure no bugs got through before making the release public. As thanks for supporting us, for those who've applied for the beta program before March 6, they will receive the final version, as well as all future releases, a week before everyone else.
Also, before anyone starts complaining on the forums about it, I would like to repeat that this release will only contain content for episode 1. Sorry to disappoint those who expect a full release, but we're trying really hard to get things done, I swear!
Cross Days Delay
April 3, 2009 - Kanna
I know this has nothing to do with our project but as a School Days fan I think I should report the bad news anyway. Today Overflow/STACK has announced yet another delay to the highly anticipated game "Cross Days." No real reason was mentioned but I bet it has something to do with game bugs and missed animation deadlines. One has to wonder how much money the company's losing over this...
So, the game release date has been pushed to June 26 instead of the previous date of April 24, which was of course delayed from February 22.
"Just how hard is it to string together a series of videos? Too difficult for Overflow, it would appear. Even their compatibility checker has had eleven revisions." - Sankaku Complex
Now, being a customer that actually buys Overflow's stuff, I'm not very happy with the delay but after having worked on the project for a year I think I have to defend the staff a bit. It's actually quite difficult to put videos together, even for one scene. For example, a 1 minute scene has 8 subsections and each one may have more than one cut. Then you have to dub and sync the audio to these and coordinate playback. Let's not forget the decision paths too, since each of the decisions has to go somewhere (not in the start of ep 3 though, see the links for details). So now you have to test and make sure your paths are correct, which means checking with the director and writers. Yes, they've been at this for 6 years and decision trees are part of any game but it's still damn hard to do.
The Cross Days compatibility checker for those who "played" it should already know it's not really 11 revisions. It's actually only 3 revisions to the actual engine and 11 test scenes. I've taken apart the program and the scripting engine has improved dramatically over School Days. So it's not really coding incompetence (except Summer Days; seriously whoever decided to use that engine is a moron) that's holding up the game but probably working out the storyline and paths.
For fun, I actually put up the decision flowchart I made for the QA staff so you can all see what a mess it is. Keep in mind this is only for the first 2 episodes, so imagine ep 6 being a clusterfuck of text and arrows.
School Days Route Paths Episodes 1 and 2
BBIAB
March 21, 2009 - Kanna
Playing Flyable Heart. See you in April.
Beta Program
March 11, 2009 - Kanna
Thank you all who've applied to the beta! A lot of people have turned up with interest to test our patch and we are happy that you haven't given up on us. The beta program is officially closed to new users, though I may still add a few more based on system configuration. I am happy to report that during the beta we had no major bugs with the release, so everything is set to go to RC phase. In the RC phase, I plan to allow the public to download and provide feedback for the patch. We are in the process of wrapping up the core components of the patch (ep 1 content has been locked in for some time now), but I have no exact time for when that'll be completed. Please check back periodically for updates.
Status Update
March 5, 2009 - Kanna
We are fast approaching our one year anniversary, and today I have good news. Our game patch has officially entered closed beta and we hope to have a final version released very soon. Even though we've only finalized episode 1 content, I feel we've come a long way. I have extended a request for beta testers for our regular forum users. If you are already registered in the forum, please sign up for the beta program. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
During the past few months, we have been internally testing the game installer. In order to be a complete replacement instead of a mere patch, we have had to restart halfway, so our development time was nearly doubled. The original idea seemed to be very solid, but unfortunately the libraries needed to perform online installations was flagged by many anti-virus scanners as malware. As a result, the installer size has grown from a few hundred kilobytes to around 260MB for just episode 1. We may consider releasing multiple installers to save redundancy, but it is unlikely at this point.
The information page has changed significantly and is now in line with our official documentation. As a preview for the patch, I have also posted it for public viewing. It is located at http://www.sekaiproject.net/readme