Monday, December 13, 2010

A boy has the right to dream.

Greetings, everybody. It’s Letty again (it’s about time, really), and I’m here to give you guys an update concerning what’s been happening the world of Rosenkreuzstilette and Schwer and Schwer Alike. It’s been a while, and I owe everyone an apology for that. I promise to be a little more attentive to this thing, mostly since I’m starting to have a reason to care again. There’s much to be done in the coming days, and it’s about time we get started on it!

I’m going to begin with the first thing that everyone’s dying to know about: the status of Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel. And that status is… I don’t know. The Comiket 79 catalog is out now, and [erka:es], in true IseWOMI fashion, is absent from the line-up, meaning that the game clearly will not be released at this winter’s Comic Market. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all we know. There hasn’t been any significant update to the [erka:es] website since the end of last August, and not a single update either on this month or November. Back in September, there was a response to an e-mail from one “Danielu Yoshikoto” that, as far as I can tell, translates to “RKS:F is still being worked on, and we hope we’ll be done with it soon.” That’s pretty much the last thing we’ve heard about Freudenstachel. Is it done? Is it close to being done? Did they start over? We don’t know, and until they say something else, we won’t. Patience is a virtue, as they say, so we’ll have to show some virtue for this one.

Speaking of, I’m finally in a position to start up that interview I’d been wanting to hold, so hopefully within the week, I’ll get in contact with [erka:es] so I can ask them personally about the Freudenstachel status and some of the intricacies of the original game. I found myself browsing the Wiki again recently, and I really don’t know where some of that information comes from. I’ve pretty much reserved myself to not worry about it until I get better information anyway, but until then, everything there, unless pretty obvious, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Now, on to greater things. Ravy Comics continues to be straight-up atrocious, but I’ve got to hand it to the guy for figuring out some of what he has in the world of “hacking” RKS (though I can’t say I approve of all of it) and for supporting [erka:es] in his own way. That said, one of his little guides includes a way of putting the English script into RKS version 1.06a, since the current patch isn’t compatible with it. If you want to do that workaround by simply copying the scenario.dat file over, you’re more than welcome to, but there’s a reason we haven’t updated the English patch for compatibility, and no, it’s not because TDOMMX has a new job (or because he can't update his own site due to an evil Digimon that took over his computer). It’s actually because we’re doing it over. There was a lot of bad blood between TDO and myself by the end of the project, mostly due to his problems with the Grolla script, and as a result, things didn’t turn out the way we hoped. Because of this, we’ve decided to revamp the entire translation for both Spiritia and Grolla for one final, completed work. I can’t imagine that Spiritia’s script will be too much different, but we’ll see. Here’s the details of the revamp:

The scripts will be rewritten using the current script, the translations we already have from Tanin and Akira, and finally, a new translation done by Ryusui of Watercrown Productions (you may know him from his re-translation of Capcom's Breath of Fire II). Exciting, I know! I will personally handle all of the rewriting with full roundtable discussions over the new script revision (if you’re interested in participating in this, feel free to send us a line about it). Once that’s done, we’ll work on changing the necessary .dat files, as well as hacking the .exe, to bring the script to the new version. But that’s not all! We hope to get some of the original image files for the game, so we can do some more-complete image editing. It’ll make everything feel a little more perfect to us, and in turn, it’ll be better for you all. What’s the ETA on this, you ask? We’ll let you know when we find out.

The art contest is still being worked on. I feel really bad about not having been able to do anything about it before, as a number of circumstances in and outside of my life screwed that up, but it is still on the horizon. The contest will begin anew after we complete the first physical English release of the game. That way, we’ll actually have a prize to send out. Of course, Kiora’s Rosenkreuzstilette AfterStory doujinshi is still out there to be won, and there WILL be a new item up for grabs in the contest. What is that item, you ask? Let’s just say that some people like playing dress-up. That’s all the clue you get!

Grolla novelization is still happening, but first, I’m working on a re-Let’s Play of Rosenkreuzstilette. “Letty!” you may be saying. “That game has been LP’d, like, a million times! Why can’t you be original?” Well, truth be told, I made the very first Let's Play for the game, and I’m absolutely ashamed of it. I want to redeem myself and create something worthy of the game while adding in some tidbits of information and little bonuses that you may or may not find anywhere else. It’s fun, right? Right. So I’m working on that first.

That’s really all I can think to say for now. Please support [erka:es] by purchasing their game if you haven’t already. Heck, e-mail us a picture or copy of your receipt from DLSite (important info taken out, of course), and I might even give you something, even if it’s a little mention here or in a video. Any and all Freudenstachel updates can be found here, as usual, and we’ll keep you up to speed the best we can. Thanks for reading! If I forgot anything, I’ll append it later.

12 comments:

  1. Isn't Diablomon / Diaboromon is the Digimon who hacked in the internet from the first Digimon movie? So wouldn't he be the one responsible for royally boning TDOMMX's computer?

    Man, it was that bad between you and TDOMMX with the Grollschwert script (no offense). I can understand wanting that amount of perfection for the game's English release, since I want perfection in my art, but look at me - I'm a terrible artist at best. Wish I could buy the game from DLsite, but something happened to me on my front with me downloading games into my brother's. Long story short: my family are being Nazis about playing PC doujins on my brother's computer even though I'm not only one to blame; my brother downloads craploads of height loss videos, guitars lessons, and other crap like that on his computer (brother's stuff taking well over 60+ gigs while the games I had prior to the hard drive nuking was in the 20GB range). So unless I can buy the game behind my parents back, I'm stuck with what I have. However, I'm playing limited number of doujin games now...

    I look forward to your LP of RKS. I was a fan of Marriland's walkthrough series of Pokemon D/P on YouTube back in my Pokemon Pearl playing days. His walkthough was very insightful and entertaining, so I'm guessing this RKS LP is gonna be as good as that. I was actually thinking of working a FAQ/Walkthrough of RKS for GameFAQs. I was work on one for a time last year although I constantly lost motivation wondering anyone out would actually use it, but thanks to that incident, I lost everything that I was working on and have to start over...

    Now for this tidbit:

    "Of course, Kiora’s Rosenkreuzstilette AfterStory doujinshi is still out there to be won, and there WILL be a new item up for grabs in the contest. What is that item, you ask? Let’s just say that some people like playing dress-up. That’s all the clue you get!"

    Do I sense (Grolla) cosplay?

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  2. It sounds like you need to get yourself your own computer/laptop, Viper...

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  3. Seem like we have to wait more and more..

    And I've waited so long for the new official art of Pamela, that I decide to contact alphes, but it seem he didn't receive it from tasofro (where I try to contact him).

    Letty if u could. Plz contact alphes too, he is Pamela's author so it wouldn't be the problem, right?

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  5. Okay,

    Well, I can for one say I'm both shocked and disappointed about RKSF's delay. I was so looking forward to it coming out and purchasing it so I could hack some of my mp3's into it (For private uses only) and enjoy it even more. But at least I did purchase a copy of RKS off of DLsite a while back. How else could I get that awesome DVD case cover?

    I also hope that when you interview erka:es, you include our questions form a while back, especially mine.

    But wait, What's this:...

    "Of course, Kiora’s Rosenkreuzstilette AfterStory doujinshi is still out there to be won, and there WILL be a new item up for grabs in the contest. What is that item, you ask? Let’s just say that some people like playing dress-up. That’s all the clue you get!"

    I do not know how I should be felling about this. After we were leaning towards the "giving everyone a prize" routine not too long ago, I'm not really fond of going back to "giving only a single person multiple rare prizes," because I especially know what happy-go-lucky jokster around here is going to win, even if I, someone who helped the RKS series to great lengths by spreading the word on dA, creating a forum and fanclub, introducing new fans to the series, and even helping with it's share of customized merchandise, I fail to see why we can't just work it out so everyone gets a share of the prize(s).

    @Viper: You are not a terrible artist, and you have never been. Dispite all you never done for me, you just have to keep practicing. Look at me. I used to suck completely, but then I got the proper utilities and training, and here I am now. You don;'t have to be an art god like WOMI or Akira to draw. There's plenty of people that are well-impressed with your art in it's current state to actually look at it. You just have to believe.

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  6. Nice news Letty, I look forward to your interview !

    About dress-up... I remember some videos you posted on Youtube, I saw that with my brother. Nice home-made cosplays !

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  7. Just one thing I would like to add:

    If anyone took my written information as a very negative comment, I'm sorry. It's just I wrote that when I first saw this information, so I got very stressed.

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  8. Multicommentary would be great. I mean, most of them make videos funnier by default.

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  9. I'm starting to think that this game will never be relleased.

    The delay is comparable than what we got from twilight princess. And in the end the game wasn't all that great. I hope RKSF not to deceive us like that too.

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  10. I just read WOMI's personal blog. It seems that he is hoping to have the game released sometime in 2011.

    I think what was holding WOMI back so long was that he was probably attending college, or something else that was important to his life.

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  11. We'll see this year, then ! Till then, hapy new year for 2011 ;-)

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  12. Another year of wait, both forpatch 1.06b's (re)translation and for Freudenstachel's Official release.

    Well, we fans are patient, and something made with heart and love is all we can hope for.

    Happy 2011!

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