A Blades of the Rose Cross Update

Hello, everyone.

As many of you already know, [erka:es] released Version 1.06a of Rosenkreuzstilette, which corrects a variety of bugs and allows the game to run on Vista and Windows 7. The staff of Darkside Translations and Schwer and Schwer Alike intend to release an update to our localization to incorporate these bugfixes into the English executable.

We'd like to take the opportunity to address any issues with our original release that we previously overlooked or ignored. To that end, if you have any suggestions or comments about our release, we ask you to send them our way, either by posting them as a comment to this blog update or by emailing us. We've received next to no constructive feedback on the quality of our localization, so we're wondering which aspects of our work need improvement.

As of this writing, there are three issues we intend to address:

1) The Start Menu shortcut to the RKS Online Manual currently points to the project page and not the English translation of the manual. The updated release will include a shortcut pointing to the proper URL.

2) Two Germans strings in our initial release were deliberately left untranslated. Namely, we left the "Die Zeit vergeht schnell..." ("My, how time flies...") in the Replay Mode fast-forward screen and the "Waffenenergie" ("Weapon Energy") on the Status subscreen as they originally were.

Because of its layout, it would be impossible to add an English translation to the Replay Mode text -- we'd have to remove the all-important timer or replace the German text with its English equivalent. From the outset of this project, we had no intention of removing any of the German text, so this line will remain unchanged.

As for the Status screen, we weren't able to come up with a translation layout that we felt looked good with both a full and empty inventory, so we decided to scratch adding the English translation altogether. If you check our proof-of-concept screenshots in the comments sections of an earlier blog post, you might find a shot of one of our attempts. In any event, we intend to experiment with the layout some more and see if we can come up with an attractive way of integrating an English translation.

3) As Kilgamayan pointed out in his Let's Play videos, we chose to translate the English name for Zeppelin Stage III as "Xanatos". This was my own idea. I didn't want to repeat "Thanatos" twice on the same screen, so I decided to use a variant of the name to convey the same reference (like using Kerberos instead of Cerberus). Other alternatives for the name included "Death" and "The Grim Reaper", both of which undermine the "subtlety" of the Castlevania shout-out.

In retrospect, the order in which the names appeared should have been reversed. "Thanatos" is the official nickname of the stage's boss, whereas "Xanatos" is just a variant. We intend to reverse the names in the updated release.

That said, please let us know what you think of our work. If you didn't like how we worded a line, didn't like the fonts we used, or thought that a graphic should have been nudged just one tiny pixel over, point it out and we'll give the matter some thought. We can't fix anything if we don't know it's broken, so fill us in!

Oh, and those of you who recognized Xanatos as the last name of Jonathan Frakes' character in Gargoyles: good job!

RKS Freudenstachel Delayed... Again!

Billion pointed out in the comments of the last post that Freudenstachel will not be released at Winter Comiket as originally planned and is slated for release next year. I guess we'll be seeing it at C78 next summer. Welp!

New RKS Patch Fixes Game Breaker

I apologize for the negligence I've been showing to this blog and RKS as a whole. I've been busy with a bunch of other unrelated things, but with this patch release, I can hopefully get back on track.

This is actually part of the reason I haven't done anything RKS-related lately. A huge bug was discovered that caused the game to completely fail to load and cause strange graphical errors within Windows, thanks to certain graphic driver updates. Whenever I would execute the game, my monitor would start blinking, and after a moment, my Nvidia drivers would inform me that it just recovered from a crash. This appears to have happened to someone else as well, as they sent [erka:es] a report on it that was shown in their last blog update. Well, it would appear that the new patch fixes this problem, making it possible for people like me to once again play this stellar game.

Unfortunately, there's a new issue. I haven't been able to test this completely yet, but the original RKS's 1.05c->1.06a patch does not work on the rks_e.exe file within the English "Rosenkreuzstilette ~Blades of the Rose Cross~" folder, and I don't know if the English patch will work on a 1.06a version of the game. Due to these developments, we will get to working on an update patch or something for the English version, which may very well require an entirely new installer. Luckily, there are no hitches with the current version of the Freudenstachel web trial, so that works out okay.

I'll be providing further updates by Saturday on what's going on, so stay tuned!

Edit:
Also, I got this in the mail today. (I ordered a free sample thing back in August, and it JUST showed up.) I have to cut off the ad part, but I think it's pretty sweet for a (bumper) sticker.

Comment Moderation is Back On

I'm starting to get spam comments, mostly for PRESCRIPTION DRUGS or HOT WOMEN XXX, so I've turned comment moderation back on. Sorry, everyone. :(

Time Attack Results

Final Times:

1st Place - Tanin - 04'47'69
2nd Place - Killing_Doll - 04'21"45

I am sorry to report that two other contenders, Cremator and ViperAcidZX, have been disqualified. Both Cremator and ViperAcidZX went to other stages during the course of gameplay, adding time to their replay outside the challenge guidelines. Tanin tried to pull a clever trick by running the timer on the password screen, but I deducted the time spent on there, because really, come on.

It would seem that the specifications were not as precise as I could have made them, and the challenge was ripe for exploiting. The next one will not be so... open.

Congrats to Tanin for winning, and thanks to everyone who participated!