RKS Developer Diary #3 - German Language Lessons

Hi, everyone!  Kept you waiting, huh?  Sorry about the silence; a few things happened behind-the-scenes that demanded our full attention.  Without going into too much detail: it seems we may need to look into an alternative to crowdfunding for Operation Schwesternschaft.  Don't let that worry you, though.  Rosenkreuzstilette and Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel will still be coming out in English in the near future (you'd have to kill me to prevent that from happening).  This is just a matter of how we're going to finance the extra features.  We already have a prospect that we're following up on, and it's looking to be quite promising, so there's no need to be concerned.

While it sucks that this change of plan has affected our forward momentum, the project is still going strong and the finished release is definitely shaping up to be worth the wait.  If by some chance something major does happen, you can rest assured that you'll hear about it here first; we have no intention of keeping our fans in the dark.

That said, on with today's entry!  As many of you have noticed, in our fan translation of Rosenkreuzstilette, we took the liberty of correcting some of the German text so that it flowed more naturally.  WOMI has mentioned in his own Developer Diary that he doesn't know German all that well, so we did what we could to address the issue (with the support of some volunteers from Romhacking.net since no one on our team was fluent in German).  For our official release of the game, I'm pleased to report that we have a dedicated German native working with us to ensure the quality of the German flavor text.

This time around, we independently translated the German and Japanese text (with our German consultant Martin handling the German-to-English translation and our resident translator Tyler handling the Japanese-to-English version).  Once Martin and Tyler were finished, we compared the two translations and confirmed whether the two renditions actually conveyed the same meaning (and, where they didn't, determined whether this was intentional or not).  If the German was an actual reference, we make a point of tracking down the original source and using its exact phrasing wherever possible.  If we weren't sure about something, WOMI made himself available via email to answer any questions we might have.

Once we knew exactly what the German text was supposed to mean, we polished off our English renditions and passed them to Martin to translate back into German.  In many cases, the English and the original German matched up completely (as is the case in the screenshot comparisons above).  In a few instances, the German text ended up being completely different; you'll see a couple of examples of that in an upcoming Developer Diary on the game's Stage Titles.

As an example: the text in the [erka:es] logo is actually the title of a 17th Century text by the Rosenkreuz Orden, the real-life Order of the Rose Cross.  The title reads as follows:

"Allgemeine und General Reformation, der gantzen weiten Welt. Beneben der Fama Fraternitatis, Deß Löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes, an alle Gelehrte und Häupter Europae geschrieben: Auch einer kurtzen Responsion, von dem Herrn Haselmeyer gestellet, welcher deßwegen von den Jesuitern ist gefänglich eingezogen, und auff eine Galleren geschmiedet: Itzo öffentlich in Druck verfertiger, und allen trewen Hertzen communiciret worden...."

This is our English rendition of the title:

"The Pervasive and Universal Reformation of the Entire World. Addressed to the great savants and sovereigns of Europe and accompanied by the Fama Fraternitatis of the illustrious Order of the Rose Cross (which includes an afterword by Mr. Haselmeyer, who, for penning it, was imprisoned by the Jesuits and sentenced to the galley). Now printed, published, and entrusted to every open heart and mind...."

As you can see in the very first screenshot, we updated the original German text to match the manuscript's title (modernizing the punctuation where necessary such as replacing the slashes with commas) before integrating our English rendition and repositioning each element to maintain compositional balance.  The results speak for themselves; if you hadn't played the game in Japanese before, you probably wouldn't realize that the English translation wasn't part of the original graphic.

Well, that's enough for today's Developer Diary.  For our next entry, would you like to have a peek at the new Stage Titles or the new Stage Select Screen?  We'll cover both in due time; this is just a poll to see which you'd like to see first.

RKS Developer Diary #2 - Options, Options, Options

Hello again!  It's time for episode two of the RKS Developer Diary!

This time, we'll be having a look at the game's Options Menu (click on each thumbnail to show the full-sized graphic).  This is where we start to see the differences between an amateur effort and a professional endeavor.  As many of you may recall, Isemiya and WOMI gave us their blessing to translate Rosenkreuzstilette into English back in 2009.  But that was the extent of their involvement; we translated the text, cleaned up and edited the graphics, and hacked the text in the game executable on our own.  In some cases, cleaning the original graphics without the original source files proved to be impossible, so we had to rebuild many of the images from scratch.  The Options Menu is definitely the area that demanded the most reconstructive work, as you can see in the screenshots below and to the right.

Some of you might be wondering why we would even need to revise the Options Menu in the first place.  After all, the Options Menu in the original Japanese version of the game was in English, right?  This is where a background in Computer Science and experience in technical writing is critical.

I'm sure every single one of you know what a keyboard is in a computing context.  You know what a mouse is.  You know what a window is.  What a recycling bin is.  A control panel.  An address.  A shortcut.  A cookie.  These are all terms that, although they have given meanings in English, have very specific meanings in the domain of computers.  To English-speaking computer gamers, these terms are standardized; we expect consistency across all of the games we play and instantly know what each expression means when we see them.  If a game for some reason refers to a screen as a panel, we'd all be thrown for a moment since this isn't the standard name for a computer display.

In RKS, the Japanese version of the Options Menu was not made with English computing standards in mind, yielding settings with confusing and sometimes indecipherable labels.  The best example of this would be "Back Ground", which controls how the game behaves when you switch your focus to a window other than the RKS game window (for instance, when you open a web browser while the game is running).  Depending on your selection, the game can automatically pause the action, or it can keep running in the background uninterrupted.  The term "Back Ground" is inadequate in describing what the setting actually does, and the fact that the word is misspelled doesn't help matters, either.  Add to this the fact that, when hacking the executable, the English text (the options themselves and the scrolling descriptions) must be shorter than or equal to the size of the original Japanese, we see that the labels for each setting need to be self-explanatory.  So, after much thought, "Back Ground", "Run", and "Stop" became "Background Behavior", "Run", and "Pause" ("Play" and "Pause" in the official version since size limitations were no longer an issue).

On the subject of size limitations:  because we only had so much room in which to fit the English descriptions of each of the volume settings and their shortcut keys, we had to leave out the fact that you could press the Confirm button to play a sample sound effect or voice clip in our original fan translation.  We're glad to restore this detail in the official release.

Given the constraints we had to work with, I'm proud of how the Options Menu in our fan translation turned out.  Of course, I'm not the type to pass up on an opportunity to improve on our work, so when RKS was officially licensed, I knew I just had to rebuild the Options Menu a second time using the original source files as a base.  I applied this philosophy to every graphic in the game.  Was it worth it?  You can see the results for yourself.

One of the advantages of having layered image files and the original source code is that you can fine-tune practically anything.  That is an advantage we simply had to make use of.  Have a look at Grolla's version of the control configuration screen to the left (officially rendered as "Controls").  Admittedly, rebuilding this particular graphic was extremely easy: tint the background, add a translucent window, typeset the text, done.  I added a subtle "frame" effect to the outside of the window and carried over the shadows behind each individual item, but there's otherwise nothing remarkable about this graphic aside from maybe the coloring being just a little off from the original.  Taking a cue from Spiritia's version, I decided to work in as many design elements as I could into Grolla's rendition for the official release.  The silhouette, the decorative trim on the left and right sides of the window, repositioning the graphical elements to make better use of the space and give the image some much-needed graphical balance -- things that would have been impossible without access to the source files.  As you can imagine, I'm very pleased with the results.

I feel I should mention something that many translators and even programmers tend to overlook when designing the visual look of their work:  the concept of alignment.  For every graphical element on the screen, imagine a line running vertically through the middle of that object, another line along its left edge, and a third along its right edge.  Check if these lines run through the same points on the elements above or below the one you're focusing on.  Do they line up?  Is the element itself aligned to the left edge?  The right edge? The center?  None of the above?  Where the alignment is inconsistent, does it complement another visual element?  If not, should you change it to be consistent with the rest of the design?

Take a closer look at the Japanese version of the Options Menu.  Notice that there's no real design philosophy to to the "Draw Frequency" ("Refresh Rate") option selections on the right.  Barring this one aberration (and a superb design choice to align the right side of the Volume labels with the left side volume bars, effectively combining them into a single well-defined line), all of the text is left-aligned.  So, how do you correct the outlier?  Line it up with the options above it.  And, since there's a lot of empty space on the left, nudge everything just a little to the left to fill up that space and give the settings on the right a bit more room between them.

Now have a look at the Japanese version of the Controls Menu and notice how much more chaotic it is compared to the Options Menu.  Sure, everything is still left-aligned, but the button labels are aligned to four different left margins.  This is the kind of design you use when you subtly want something to feel off.  Since this is likely not what WOMI intended, the localized versions instead center the text along a single line (and the official version expands on this by auto-centering the button mappings using some brand-new code).  The results speak for themselves.

Wow, ten paragraphs on just the Options Menu!  Did this entry help you learn a thing or two about standardized terminology or design?  Or was all you got out of it that we're perfectionistic control freaks?  Well, whatever you learned, we have plenty more aspects of the game we can go over before it's ready for launch.  Feel free to suggest a topic for a future Developer Diary in the comments.  And, of course, please spread the word and look forward to the official English release of Rosenkreuzstilette!

RKS Developer Diary #1 - The Title Screen

Hello, everyone!

During the lead-up to the official English release of Rosenkreuzstilette, I figured it'd be a good idea to start a Developer Diary to give everyone a behind-the-scenes look at our work and show off some of the tweaks we've been making under-the-hood to make the game the best it can be.  Every now and again, we'll upload a few screenshots with a bit of background and our rationale for making the decisions that we did.  If we changed anything from the original, rest assured that each change has been made with WOMI's expressed support.  Hell, in some cases, he was the one that asked us to make the change in the first place.

For our first entry, let's have a look at something everyone will encounter within seconds of launching the game:  the Title Screen.  First off, you'll notice that we decided against integrating an English rendition of the title ("Blades of the Rose Cross") into the game's logo.  This is for two reasons.  First, title is already a mouthful, especially for non-German speakers.  Second, given the naming scheme for each game and bonus mode in the series, localizing the main logo would set a messy precedent for every logo in the series to follow.  How would we integrate every word of "Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel ~Blades of the Rose Cross - The Sting of Joy~" into the logo without having the elements of the logo compete for the player's attention?  From a design standpoint, it just wouldn't work to our satisfaction, so we opted to take the purist route and drop the localized subtitles from the game's logos.  The localized renderings will still be present in the finished game (they're the names of the Final Stage of each game mode), so it's not like we're leaving anything untranslated.

Now, you might have noticed a subtle difference in the screenshots above and to your left.  Yes, the order of the menu items has been changed.  This tweak was made in order to address an issue pretty much every player has encountered during their first time playing the game (myself included).  Now, when you launch a game for the first time, it stands to reason that "New Game" or "Game Start" would be the option you'd pick to, y'know, start a new game.  In the original version of RKS, this wasn't actually the case: "Prologue" would start a new game, and "Game Start" would skip the opening stage and take you straight to the Stage Select Screen.  So, we tweaked the Main Menu to be more intuitive.  In addition, it makes more sense to select your game mode before choosing your starting point instead of afterwards, so we reversed the order of these selections accordingly.  It's no surprise that a good chunk of the people who decided to do a blind Let's Play of Rosenkreuzstilette had absolutely no idea that there was an entire stage that they might have missed just because they made the logical choice at the game's Title Screen.  We felt that this was an issue that just had to be addressed in the official English version, so we've done just that.

Also, you might notice that we no longer have a character limit for the flavor text in the bottom right corner.  That's right: the descriptions of each menu item can now accurately describe what each menu item actually does instead of being a truncated mess.

Well, that's it for this first edition of the RKS Developer Diary.  Feel free to comment on our progress, including whether or not you agree with our decisions.  If there's something in the game that you're curious to know about, just drop us a line and we might devote a future Developer Diary to it.

See you later!

Introducing Our English Cast

This post has been a long time coming.  The English voiceover project for Rosenkreuzstilette has been in the works since October of 2011. Hundreds of audition and thousands of hours later, we're finally ready to announce our cast.  I know the anime fans among you will be very pleased with some of our choices; more than a few of these names should ring a bell.

• Spiritia Rosenberg: Emily Koch
• Lilli: Kira Buckland
• Freudia Neuwahl: Sarah Wiedenheft
• Zorne Zeppelin: Amanda Lee
• Trauare Wrede: Britanny Lauda
• Luste Teuber: Kira Buckland
• Grolla Seyfarth: Sarah Blandy
• Sichte Meister: Natalie Van Sistine
• Liebea Palesch: Amanda Lee
• Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle: Rina Adachi
• Raimund Seyfarth: Lucas Schuneman
• Count Michael Zeppelin: Tristan MacAvery
• Iris Zeppelin: Kira Buckland
• Strudel: Jennifer Alyx
• Doris Warmind: Sarah Wiedenheft
• Pamela Arwig: Skyler Davenport
• Burkhardt Maid: Amanda Berning
• Eifer Skute: Sarah Wiedenheft
• Schirach Fühler: Amber Lee Conners
• Recht Refraktia: Sarah Blandy
• Link Refraktia: Sarah Blandy
• Kahl Palesch: David Hill, Jr.

If you get the chance, please be sure to thank our actors for agreeing to voice some of our favorite characters.  There are six actors who wished to lend their voices to this project, but ultimately could not due to forces outside their control.  To that end, I'd like to extend a very special thank you to Mr. Patrick Seitz, Mr. David Vincent, Ms. Brina Palencia, Ms. Wendee Lee, Ms. Petrea Burchard, and Ms. Cristina Valenzuela.  If circumstances permit, we'd love to have a chance to work with you in the future.

That said, we now have a favor to ask of you, the fans.  We've started a Prefundia page to generate word-of-mouth and help garner support for the official release of Rosenkreuzstilette and RKS Freudenstachel.  Please help us spread the word to as many people as you can, and prove to the video game industry that if they won't support the franchises we grew up loving, we'll just do it ourselves.

We're moving out.

What's this?  A new post?  Yes, indeedy.  And these are going to be getting more and more frequent until we've officially settled in at our new online home.  I won't promise a particular schedule, but I have a very good idea of what I'm going to post (and when) once we get the ball rolling.

These past few months have been incredibly busy for us, and with good reason.  The time isn't right for us to let everything out of the bag just yet, but something so incredibly awesome happened this past weekend that I simply can't keep to myself.

To set the scene, this past weekend was Otakuthon 2015.  This time around, we take full credit for the festivities having a surprise guest.

Now, on a good convention weekend, you might have the chance to meet one of your childhood idols and get a few autographs and/or photo ops.

On a great weekend, you might share a meal with said childhood idol and chat about everything that does on behind the scenes and what they've been doing since the gig that made them famous before moving onto more candid and heartfelt topics that give you a whole new insight into the kind of person that they are.

On a superb weekend, you might get said childhood idol to lend their voice to the pet project you've been trying to get off the ground for the past few years.

This weekend was not a good weekend.  It was not a great weekend.  It wasn't even a superb weekend.  These words are woefully inadequate to describe my version of August 7th through 9th.

How do you describe a weekend in which one of your childhood idols:
- drives all the way from Syracuse, New York, to your place in Canada
- records all of the lines for his character in your home studio, blowing away all expectations and teaching both the producer (you) and director a thing or two in the process
- pulls some strings with the convention staff at the last minute to ensure that you have an official presence at the event
- shares a meal with you not once or twice, but six times over the course of the weekend, with laughs and candor aplenty, plus a few well-deserved jabs
- chills with you on your couch, watching the remake of the title that made him famous (and it's his first time seeing it)
- opens his panel with the full story of the reason why he was a last-minute addition to the con's guest list (i.e.: you)
- follows that up by coming through on a four-year-old promise to publicly pimp your game
- continues the festivities by co-hosting a discussion on the title that made him famous, all the while underscoring your own mastery of the subject matter, putting even the English director of said work to shame
- gives you everything you need to officially close the book on a twenty-year-old mystery
- out-of-the-blue gives you a personalized copy of their (critically well-received) book
- returns home not as an actor or colleague, but as a friend, bear hugs and all
- admits that, from the beginning, he was planning to do all of the above for free, just because you asked.

To call this past weekend fan-fucking-tastic would still be an understatement.  I'm legitimately dumbstruck here.  I've seen actors give back to their fans before, but this?  I really don't know where to begin...

Thank you, Tristan, for going so far out of your way to do so much for us.  It was a pleasure to have you as a guest in our home, and an honor to host a semi-impromptu (if abridged) reprise of Understanding Evangelion with you, and a joy to chill and chat with you, talking about anything and everything for three days straight.  Thank you for making this fanboy's dreams come true.

Yes, this weekend was fucking awesome.  And the takeaway? Aim for the stars; you just might reach them.

Anyway, while I work the giddiness out of my system....

Commence Operation Schwesternschaft.

The curtain has risen.  Who can say what has yet to unfold...?