VN Ren'Py Twisted Memories [v0.9b] [BaiBai]

[nalgonas4ever]

For the people talking about the translation issues I would like to give my two cents as a person whose first language isn't english. It's been like 13 years or so since I started learning english and as far as I can tell I'm still learning, funny that getting on the avn world showed me that since I hadn't had the chance to practice or read a lot of it so I apreciate it a lot and part of that new knowledge is undertanding the nuances in the way different languages describe and aproach the narrative. As far as I know the roots of english and german are different so now imagine Baibai trying his hardest to truly translate the script intentions when you don't know many words and ways of speak; takes time and research as well as practice to express especific idea as a narrative, I myself search in google when my lexicon is lacking. Now with the information that Baibai is a student I can't be any more impressed with the quality of the game and the effort he's showing so I completly understand by he doens't want to use AI.

TL;DR : Writing in a language that isn't your first is hard and AI would fuck up the script.

 

[ca6YSHYO-VupnVoa]

Yeah I can't imagine there's any easy solution, but I hope BaiBai at least considers trying something, as the current method is really not working.

 

[Cherubin25]

Yeah I can't imagine there's any easy solution, but I hope BaiBai at least considers trying something, as the current method is really not working.

What do you mean? It is working. That it is a big on the slower side does not mean it is not working at all.

 

[ca6YSHYO-VupnVoa]

What do you mean? It is working. That it is a big on the slower side does not mean it is not working at all.

Multiple weeks, even months of the update being ready to go and just needing to translate is really not working, especially with what happened last year.

 

[Cherubin25]

Multiple weeks, even months of the update being ready to go and just needing to translate is really not working, especially with what happened last year.

Yeah, but the delay last year had other reasons.

 

[Alandir]

As far as I know the roots of english and german are different

It's not. English is a germanic language, though arguably with more Latin influences than most.
That being said, I agree with you.
The writing in this game is great and if baibai is most comfortable writing in German then it is what it is.
He's doing this as a hobby, the money he makes from donations isn't even close to a livable wage.
The entitlement of people, constantly complaining about not getting their free porn game fast enough is pretty tiring imo.

 

[zeerin3125]

It's not. English is a germanic language, though arguably with more Latin influences than most.
That being said, I agree with you.
The writing in this game is great and if baibai is most comfortable writing in German then it is what it is.
He's doing this as a hobby, the money he makes from donations isn't even close to a livable wage.
The entitlement of people, constantly complaining about not getting their free porn game fast enough is pretty tiring imo.

It's not entitlement to point out that he's doing the translating in one of the least optimal ways possible.

 

[shitass1001]

It's not entitlement to point out that he's doing the translating in one of the least optimal ways possible.

The problem is that optimal doesn't always mean best, sure he could throw all the dialogue into an AI and have it pump out translations quickly, but it wouldn't have the "soul" of what he wrote, it would be bland and generic simply because it passed through an AI translator.
The writing is one of the most unique things about this VN, and without it I would bargain that a lot of people wouldnt like it as much as they do, myself included. It wouldnt be the same if it was done through an AI

 

[mentosa]

The problem is that optimal doesn't always mean best, sure he could throw all the dialogue into an AI and have it pump out translations quickly, but it wouldn't have the "soul" of what he wrote, it would be bland and generic simply because it passed through an AI translator.
The writing is one of the most unique things about this VN, and without it I would bargain that a lot of people wouldnt like it as much as they do, myself included. It wouldnt be the same if it was done through an AI

Pretty sure what you said was never tested by anyone, despite numerous so called translators on the site searing that automated translation still sucks. I propose an experiment - let baibai give one of the most unique pages from his writing and his translation in english and then translate it with various LLM tools. Then compare. I would not be surprised if the translation would be not too bad.

Now, I'm not even mentioning that baibai knows which scenes have important dialogue and which ones don't. A hybrid approach could be used if LLM translation tools are not on par of the manual translation where unimportant scenes are translated automatically, occasionally adding some spice or corrections to those translations and important scenes left to be translated manually.

CRUCIAL QUESTION TO THE PERFECTIONISTS - if you knew that the game would never be completed if the current process was not optimized would you be ok with it? Or would you say that its better so see the game progressing faster by sacrificing a bit of quality? Because spoiler alert - that's most likely what is going to happen.

 

[Alandir]

Pretty sure what you said was never tested by anyone, despite numerous so called translators on the site searing that automated translation still sucks. I propose an experiment - let baibai give one of the most unique pages from his writing and his translation in english and then translate it with various LLM tools. Then compare. I would not be surprised if the translation would be not too bad.

Now, I'm not even mentioning that baibai knows which scenes have important dialogue and which ones don't. A hybrid approach could be used if LLM translation tools are not on par of the manual translation where unimportant scenes are translated automatically, occasionally adding some spice or corrections to those translations and important scenes left to be translated manually.

CRUCIAL QUESTION TO THE PERFECTIONISTS - if you knew that the game would never be completed if the current process was not optimized would you be ok with it? Or would you say that its better so see the game progressing faster by sacrificing a bit of quality? Because spoiler alert - that's most likely what is going to happen.

You can propose whatever the hell you want. It's not your call to make and it's not mine or anyone else's in this thread. It's the devs call.
If you are that concerned that whatever fictional story you're currently following will see it's end then I recommend you get into another genre, very few avns ever do. That's just what happens when you enjoy games made by passionate amateurs. Best thing to do is just to chill, sit back and enjoy the ride.
Complaining over and over about the pace of updates isn't gonna make the dev go any faster. Most suggestions you put forward have likely already been considered by them. So the only thing you're gonna achieve by complaining over and over again for every update is to annoy and exhaust the dev, increasing the likelihood of them just walking away from the project. This isn't about baibai in particular, but this happens for a lot of games on here and I don't think it's a coincidence that so many games get abandoned.
I know if I was working long days, spending my precious little free time to develop something and all I see over and over again are complaints about how I am not working fast enough, I certainly would loose the motivation to work on that thing sooner or later.

 

[linkkkkk_]

a weeb that can barely speak english is not possible

 

[nalgonas4ever]

It's not. English is a germanic language, though arguably with more Latin influences than most.
That being said, I agree with you.
The writing in this game is great and if baibai is most comfortable writing in German then it is what it is.
He's doing this as a hobby, the money he makes from donations isn't even close to a livable wage.
The entitlement of people, constantly complaining about not getting their free porn game fast enough is pretty tiring imo.

I admit I just did a surface level of research so I'm glad someone here knew better, thanks for clarifying that!

Also I'm 100% with you that some people not only here but in many threads complain like the devs owes them their first born child, even if you're on the subscriber star I think the point of those kinds of sites like patreon has been lost, the point been any amount of money you decide the dev deserves is in the form of donations so they should be disinterested in hopes for the people getting said money to fair better, it would be different if the game was on steam and full of bugs, then you can let your opinion be heard through your wallet and even then like I said before Baibai isn't a big company so as long as he stays healthy and motivated to work I don't mind waiting half a year for an update since he delivers good content. I blame this shitty culture of immediacy, people so acostumed to rapid gratification without concerning of the consecuences, it makes me sad.

 

[zeerin3125]

The problem is that optimal doesn't always mean best, sure he could throw all the dialogue into an AI and have it pump out translations quickly, but it wouldn't have the "soul" of what he wrote, it would be bland and generic simply because it passed through an AI translator.
The writing is one of the most unique things about this VN, and without it I would bargain that a lot of people wouldnt like it as much as they do, myself included. It wouldnt be the same if it was done through an AI

You'd have a point, except I'm pretty sure nobody was saying he should let an AI pump out the translations. I'm pretty sure the suggestion was primarily run it through the AI, and then run through the translation. If he doesn't like how the AI translated Dialogue A, but has no issues with Dialogue B, then all he needs to fix is Dialogue A, saving him time and effort.

Personally, I don't care either way. I'm not invested enough in this game. If there's only 1 update a year, fine. At least it's not abandoned, and that one update can be a pleasant surprise, assuming I remember the game's existence. But calling people entitled for saying that there's better ways the dev could be doing the translations is ridiculous, and that's the part specifically that I was calling out.

 

[Corvus Belli]

The problem is that optimal doesn't always mean best

Yes, it does. That's literally the definition of the word; "best; most effective; most favourable." You're thinking of "efficient", which isn't always a satisfactory result, just one that is acheived with the minimum of wasted resources/effort.

 

[colobancuz]

All this whining about translation reminds me of that guy who said that rendering in HS doesn't take any time and developers can get hundreds of renders almost instantly. Behind all these statements lies the assumption (not a conviction!) that BaiBai is doing this on purpose — delaying rendering, delaying translation, etc. Well, well...
AI translators speed up translation if you translate into your NATIVE language, which is well known to the developer, then it's easy and quick to fix all the machine translation mistakes. For a foreign language, this doesn't work - the correction can take just as long, and it's not a given that the quality will be better than if you translate it yourself. It's fine for communicating on the forum, but not so good for AVN.
And anyway, after enduring six months of (non)rendering, is it really so hard to wait another month for the translation...

 

[RG80100]

Translation has always taken time on this game, I don't see why everyone is surprised. If you read between the lines of each of Baibai's posts, it's obvious that the guy has a job and works mainly on weekends. If he were doing this full-time because he had 2-3k supporters, that would be one thing, but that's not the case at all.

 

[w123t4]

Itch starting to ban nsfw games and delete the games which have rape and incest content, subscribestar is fine by now but I don't think it will last long, if it finally fallen then many game will be forced to be abandoned, maybe including this one, better to be save to open some other payment platform.

 

[Xythurr]

Itch starting to ban nsfw games and delete the games which have rape and incest content, subscribestar is fine by now but I don't think it will last long, if it finally fallen then many game will be forced to be abandoned, maybe including this one, better to be save to open some other payment platform.

The great STEAM purge was just the beginning. The tyrannical overreach of payment processors is ramping up. Thankfully there is a bill in the U.S. that will nip this in the bud for Americans if it passes.
Japan is also taking steps to punish Visa's censorship.

 

[shitass1001]

Yes, it does. That's literally the definition of the word; "best; most effective; most favourable." You're thinking of "efficient", which isn't always a satisfactory result, just one that is acheived with the minimum of wasted resources/effort.

haha yeah I noticed this after posting it

 

[Nern]

I'm in a bind here, choosing whether to "send it" or "Let her make her mistake". I know I can always go back to it but I just want to know right ahead which route will make the MC less of an ass?