[HN Gopher] Japanese bookstore simulator translated into English...
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Japanese bookstore simulator translated into English after 24 years
Author : keiferski
Score : 276 points
Date : 2021-05-29 08:01 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rhizome.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rhizome.org)
| xrd wrote:
| This game (actually this write-up) makes me reconsider how I've
| long felt that Visual Basic was a pox on the computer industry.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| VB is definitely easier to learn and run. Cf with powerbuilder,
| oracle form 4 (so many bugs I recalled), forget what is the
| third one then. The thick client vs CICS ...
| shasheene wrote:
| For translation, using a Weblate instance makes a lot more sense
| over using Google Sheets https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate
|
| hosted.weblate.org is only free for open-source projects, but it
| shouldn't be hard to find alternative hosting, or launch a Docker
| container in the cloud??
| jka wrote:
| The key is probably to make the community onboarding and
| experience as easy as possible, to allow for spontaneous
| community translation projects like the one in the article.
|
| It's nice to see that the Weblate project itself provides some
| guidance (and checklists) around community-building:
| https://docs.weblate.org/en/weblate-4.6.2/devel/community.ht...
|
| (perhaps expanding that could be one meta-method for improving
| the accessibility and suitability of Weblate for situations
| like this. agree that hosting -- or having something available
| online that works already -- can often be an obstacle to
| adoption too)
| shasheene wrote:
| Weblate allows anonymous translation suggestions (to accept a
| suggestion you have to be logged in though).
|
| I'm not associated, I just use it for a personal project and
| find it great. Not perfect, but still great.
| nottorp wrote:
| Doesn't stuff like this infringe on 30 million intellectual
| property laws and is punishable by death in the US?
| butz wrote:
| Considering that some reverse engineering projects have
| received DMCAs on GitHub, it would be better to publish only a
| patch file, not full game, even if it is freeware.
| yreg wrote:
| There is something magical about these massively multiplayer
| Google sheets where a large amount of strangers collaborates on
| the same goal without outside communication.
|
| I've experienced it when Eliezer Yudkowsky -- after several books
| of content -- put the hero of his story in a nearly impossible
| situation to get out of. He challenged his readers to find a
| solution within 60 hours otherwise they get the bad ending.
|
| Observing the organic collection, deduplication and rating of
| ideas in the sheet was an interesting experience.
|
| [0] HPMOR (the story) -- http://www.hpmor.com/
|
| [1] Final Exam (the chapter with the assignment) -
| http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/113
|
| [2] The Spreadsheet -
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17-zbmElKXWv9nqcsDzop...
| ralfd wrote:
| Something with a carbon string cutting heads off was the
| solution, right? (Why though, I don't recall the setup for this
| magical solution).
| yreg wrote:
| Yes, the canon solution was a (partial) transfiguration
| attack which was submitted in 36 flavours (deduplicated as
| "string through air").
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Is there a Visual Basic that compiles for all platforms? Man that
| would be a killer app. As a teen, I hadn't even formally learned
| BASIC, but somehow I was able to cobble together programs with
| VB, and it gave me confidence that I could learn more.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| There really is a huge gap left behind by the decline of VB.
| I've been designing a few games with Godot recently and I've
| really come to enjoy how intuitive it is for building
| interfaces and getting prototypes up and running. However the
| proprietary scripting language (GDScript) itself is rather
| limited. Having a solid WYSIWYG form builder backed by e.g.
| Python that generates binaries for a number of target platforms
| would be incredible.
|
| I may be in the minority but I really enjoy proper desktop
| software over SaaS web equivalents.
| billfruit wrote:
| Lazarus might serve the purpose, its based on Pascal, which
| in most respects a better system than VB.
| syockit wrote:
| The closest you get to having a RAD IDE for WinForms is
| probably Lazarus, but it's based on Pascal. For BASIC, there's
| a project called WinFBE which seems to be in active
| development.
| 2ion wrote:
| I'd argue that QtCreator is a contender here as well. The
| forms/widget editor is quite powerful.
| viraptor wrote:
| Lazarus is a good call. There's also Winforms 2.0 support in
| mono, which gives you all major platforms via .NET. You can
| even use VB.NET with it.
| butz wrote:
| And here's what happens when one uses Google Translate to
| translate a video game: https://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-
| fantasy-iv/
| 867-5309 wrote:
| reminds me of the dodgily-translated Pokemon Gameboy roms from
| circa turn of the millennium
| joelburget wrote:
| For those looking to run this on a Mac, the following seems to
| have worked for me (M1, Big Sur 11.2.3):
|
| ``` brew tap gcenx/wine brew install --cask --no-quarantine wine-
| crossover brew install winetricks winetricks corefonts vcrun6
| vb5run native_oleaut32 vcrun2010 richtx32 comdlg32 comctl32ocx
| wine BookStory_en.exe ```
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Oh sweet - thanks for this. I will add it to the README
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Such a lovely story. So great.
| bdowling wrote:
| Was this done with the permission of Kairosoft? Kairosoft may not
| approve of an unlicensed translation of a game that they still
| distribute on their web site, for various reasons including that
| a poor quality translation may tarnish their business reputation.
|
| (edit: Nothing about permission in article.)
| nanoshelter wrote:
| The article spells out how the company responded...
| malwarebytess wrote:
| I have serious doubts that someone downloading this near 30
| year old game's clearly fan translated version is going to be
| shocked and appalled by the poor quality translation and then
| reflect this onto Kairosoft's "business reputation."
|
| How about weighing a couple _potential_ morons thinking less of
| a company against the archival value and reach of a project
| like this? In my view it isn 't even close. The translation is
| worth it.
|
| Not everything needs to be reduced to "business reputation" and
| "$". Especially when we're talking about 24 year old japanese
| software. If anything a translation would improve outcomes for
| the company in myriad ways. One may be laying groundwork for a
| modern product that they could actually sell.
| fenomas wrote:
| I don't know why everyone's piling on GP here. This isn't
| abandonware, the game is still being distributed by a company
| that still operates. And TFA author isn't distributing a mod
| or a patch, they're distributing the full actual game, which
| the owner is also still distributing.
|
| I mean even then it _may_ still be fine. But speculating
| about what the company might possibly think is beside the
| point - they 're right there active on twitter! It's
| perfectly reasonable to wonder why TFA author didn't bother
| to reach out.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| If the general very strict adherence to copyright in Japan
| is anything to go by, contacting them would probably mean
| getting a 'no, absolutely not' back initially, and even if
| they find someone there who is receptive to the idea the
| chances of getting full, legally sound permission seem
| remote.
|
| Not contacting them means keeping the clearance status at
| 'legally copyright infringement' rather than 'explicitly
| forbidden by the owners'. The two are the same if you just
| want to answer the 'Is this legal?' question, but for a
| noncommercial community translation effort like this it
| changes the 'Is this morally sound?' one.
| lmm wrote:
| To my mind wilful ignorance is not a defence. If you know
| they'd say no if you asked so you don't ask them, that
| means you know it's against their wishes.
| lostcolony wrote:
| "To my mind" isn't really a legally defensible position.
|
| It's unlikely Kairosoft, or any company, will sue in the
| US without first notifying. Courts much prefer you solve
| things without taking up their time, and so most company
| lawyers know to first give notice.
|
| Given that, it makes perfect sense NOT to ask for
| permission. If Kairosoft is unaware of it, or okay with
| it, for the time being at least, they can just ignore it.
| If that stance later changes, they will almost assuredly
| notify (especially given the international nature of it,
| since an international court case, against fans, for
| something they're not selling, is going to be a lot of
| trouble and expense and loss of good will, for no real
| gain) in which case the translation can be taken down.
|
| So legally, this is the sounder strategy. But you may be
| talking about the ethics of it. We'd have to define what
| we mean by ethics before really diving into that, but
| consider - if they were to ask permission, even if
| everyone involved in creating the game, even if the CEO
| of the company, were all on board letting them translate
| it...the lawyers likely wouldn't be. Actually, the
| lawyers might WANT to say yes, too, but feel it their
| legal duty to say no - "If we give them the okay others
| might etc etc and it would weaken future cases in court
| and etc etc". And based on that the company would say no,
| even though -everyone involved- there wants to say yes.
| Not asking, then, gives the company plausible defense
| later should they need to assert their copyrights,
| without actually telling the translators 'no' now.
|
| In short, not asking, regardless of how the company feels
| about it, risks only that the translators will later have
| to scrap their work. It does not risk the company
| anything (and in fact gives them the option to allow
| their work to reach a broader audience AND to assert
| their copyright any time they choose). As long as the
| translators are okay with that risk, it presents a win-
| win.
|
| Now, what makes sense to do -in Japan-, I couldn't say.
| 2ion wrote:
| Japanese media publishers are notorious for being unforgiving
| for unauthorized copies. The only reason this has little
| impact in the West is that most media produced for the
| Japanese market in whatever form do not even make it to
| Western markets and are a true niche interest here.
| bdowling wrote:
| The company here can decide for itself whether it is in its
| best interest to allow an unlicensed fan translation of one
| of its programs. If it is, then the company does nothing. If
| not, then the company will tell them to stop what they're
| doing.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| Why are you doing work for Kairosoft unpaid?
|
| Like at least put in an applications, your time is
| valuable.
| ratww wrote:
| _> Like at least put in an applications_
|
| Job interviews take way too much time. People have better
| things to do, such as working for free translating old
| games.
| egypturnash wrote:
| According to this fan wiki I found
| (https://kairosoft.fandom.com/wiki/Kairosoft_Wiki),
| Kairosoft hasn't touched PCs since 2001, and has been doing
| mobile stuff. They have done more than a few games that
| seem to be in the same general genre as this one, but
| haven't done a new version of Book Store Story.
|
| Maybe this will result in them seeing this outpouring of
| love for a 24 year old game and deciding to do a remake to
| their modern standards!
|
| Or maybe a Cease & Desist letter from a lawyer. We shall
| see.
| andrewzah wrote:
| I strongly doubt a fan translation of a game from 1997 is going
| to reflect on or tarnish -anything-. Fan translations are very
| common, and without them games would be forever unavailable to
| people who don't speak that language.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Japanese understanding for copyright is like enforceable
| shrinkwrap software licensing entitled to authors, literally
| "authorship rights".
|
| American version is like rights holder's right to protect
| mostly financial interest, almost literally "copy-rights".
|
| When ones from different sides meet a misunderstanding like
| this happens; one side says "it's not going to hurt your
| sales", the other side says "how dare you mess with someone
| else's binary" and the discussions go nowhere.
|
| As for resolution, an emerging choice is to make the author
| monetize the pirated translation and let them take down the
| free version. Don't work always as sometimes the rights
| holder consider that a negligible gain or minor loss with
| high reputation risks to day jobs.
|
| So, "it's not going to hurt sales" won't work. "Do you have
| any idea to make it official" is probably better.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Actually the issue is Japanese "copyright" is very hard
| issue. I knew it killed bubblegum crisis in my days.
| bdowling wrote:
| Kairosoft is a company of about 20 people with capitalization
| of 100 million yen (not sure what that means exactly). [0].
| They make games for current game consoles including Nintendo
| Switch and Sony Playstation 4, and games for iOS and Android.
| [1]. That's not the kind of company that doesn't care about
| its reputation or protecting its brand image and trademarks.
|
| Kairosoft also produces English translations of many of its
| games. [2]. According to this photo from the article, the
| translation appears to be incomplete and leaves much of the
| text appearing as strings of question marks. [3] I don't
| believe that a company that produces dozens of games,
| including for current systems and many translated into
| English, would approve of an incomplete fan translation of
| one of its games.
|
| [0] https://kairosoft.net/company/
|
| [1] https://kairosoft.net/game/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft
|
| [3] https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png
| staticman2 wrote:
| I don't see how this is harming anyone even if it's a bad
| translation.
|
| And if doing things without an author's permission upsets
| you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Not like I care either way, I don't think it's comparable
| to fanfictions.
|
| Fanfictions are legal, this one, not so much. At the very
| least, the redistribution the game part surely isn't.
| schrijver wrote:
| Fan fiction does infringe copyright most of the time--at
| least under EU copyright, which does not have fair use.
| Under US copyright, defending fan fiction as fair use
| isn't quite the slam dunk either.
|
| If publishers aren't quick to litigate fan fiction away,
| I'd say it's because they decided that it's actually
| beneficial to them. It keeps the community invested in
| the fictional universe, and the canonical works only gain
| in respect--and these are the only ones making money. So
| it's a social contract between fan fiction authors and
| publishers. That is why fan fiction communities try to
| moderate submissions to keep their end of the bargain--
| i.e. no selling of fan fiction, and no fan fiction that
| could be seen as detrimental to the image of the work
| (for example erotica is not allowed in many places).
|
| Related to this, the novel 50 shades of grey had a pretty
| interesting genesis where it started out as a twilight
| fan fiction, which was booted of fan fiction sites
| because of its explicit content. The author then created
| her own website. Because she gained a massive following,
| she realised that she could commercialise the novel.
| That's when she changed all the names in the novel to no
| longer refer to Twilight characters. Because she had
| already transposed the characters to another universe, at
| that point there wasn't much of Twilight left and she was
| free to market and sell it.
| bdowling wrote:
| > And if doing things without an author's permission
| upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net.
|
| It doesn't upset me. It's just that no one making fan
| fictions or fan translations should be surprised when
| they receive a cease and desist letter, DMCA takedown
| notice, or copyright infringement complaint.
|
| edit: Actually, it does bother me that some of us think
| that it's perfectly okay to distribute fan translations
| of other people's work. It seems like when the work is a
| game or is in a language that few of us understand, like
| Japanese, respect for the rights of the creators goes out
| the window. This causes real problems for the creators,
| particularly individuals and small companies, that might
| want to enforce their rights, but don't have the budget
| or legal resources to do so. So, many of them are victims
| of international "fans" who do whatever they want. Here,
| there's no indication that the fans even tried to contact
| the company about doing a legitimate licensed
| translation; they just did whatever they wanted to
| without any regard for the rights of the creators.
| SirGiggles wrote:
| I'm of the opinion that a fan translation is acceptable,
| so long as it requires the end user to have purchased the
| original product.
|
| In some visual novels, patches are distributed via delta
| patches that are designed to be used on the binaries
| provided by the original installation. Or in some other
| cases, the group only provides certain modified archives
| which are installed by overwriting the original
| installation.
|
| In both cases, the end user who doesn't understand
| Japanese (or in some other VNs, Chinese) are able to play
| while the publisher/developer still gets compensated for
| their work.
| viraptor wrote:
| Honestly, if you're not translating for market X, then I
| can't see a moral reason to object to making a complete
| fan hacked release in that market. If the company is
| interested enough to do their own translation, that's a
| different issue.
|
| But for things which you'll not be able to enjoy in a
| legal way, even if you want to spend the money? I'm all
| for piracy of software / books / music / art in that
| situation.
| andrewzah wrote:
| This reminds me of the fan translation projects for games like
| Ace Attorney from Japanese -> Korean. They also found a way to
| extract the game strings and put them into a google doc. It was
| super cool.
|
| So I went through all of the hassle of modding my 3ds to change
| its language to Korean (Nintendo only allows specific languages
| per 3ds region), and patching a romfile of Ace Attorney. Then
| Nintendo released Ace Attorney 1-3 on the switch and pc, so that
| was great timing. It's still annoying on the switch as the game
| supports Korean, but only if you set your system language to
| Korean; hardly ideal if anyone else uses it. At least with Steam
| it can be configured per-game.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Yes, totally this. I really wish there was some way I could
| contribute to the project (they don't accept donations). Such a
| nice community of people too.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| me too, they had me at "japanese bookstore simulator"
| softgrow wrote:
| I tried to do something similar with Traffic Confusion
| https://web.archive.org/web/20021203070116/http://hd.st90.ar... I
| started using a resource editor on the Windows exe to extract
| resources and substituting in translated ones. Was all by hand
| (clicky-clicky-clicky) and really needed to be scripted.
| namuol wrote:
| I recently re-installed Kairosoft's "Game Dev Story" on my
| Android phone because I needed a good distraction from the world.
|
| I had to uninstall it years ago because it was shocking how
| easily I became hooked!
|
| I had no idea they were making games all the way back in 1997,
| but it makes perfect sense in hindsight: Game Dev Story is a
| masterful execution of this type of game and might even be a
| Magnum Opus of sorts for Kairosoft. Even if this type of game is
| not your cup of tea, it's interesting to check out if you're
| familiar with the history of video games.
|
| If it wasn't getting late on a Sunday night, I would be booting
| into Windows to give Bookstore Story a try, but I know if I do I
| might be up until 3 am...
| bemmu wrote:
| Whoa, initially missed that this one is also from Kairosoft.
| They now have a huge library of sim titles like these,
| available not just on iOS but PlayStation and I'm sure many
| other platforms as well.
| pvitz wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out that both games are from the same
| company. "Game Dev Story" is highly addictive and I also had to
| uninstall it some years ago because of this...
| Animats wrote:
| If you're looking for something old to restore, here's something
| I started - restoring one of the very earliest pieces of science
| fiction. This is "The Sky Pirate", by Garrett P. Serviss, better
| known for "Edison's Conquest of Mars". That one was intended as
| an unauthorized sequel to H.G. Wells's 1987 "War of the Worlds".
|
| "The Sky Pirate" was serialized in newspapers, and never
| published as a book. I brought back the first 3 chapters from
| Library of Congress scans of microfilms of newspapers from 2011.
| The Library of Congress ran those through an OCR program. The
| result needs much cleanup.
|
| Here's the first chapter, cleaned up.[1] Here's the prologue:
|
| _" The sea pirate has long been a fascinating figure of romance,
| but the march of progress has driven him into well deserved
| retirement, and he has now been replaced, in fiction at least, by
| the sky pirate, who is even more mysterious, more daring and more
| romantic than his predecessor. Read and there will unfold before
| you the extraordinary story of Captain Alfonso Payton and his
| airship, the Chameleon; of William Grayman, the richest man in
| the world; of his beautiful daughter, for whose ransom
| $10,000,000 was demanded; of Lieutenant Allen of the revenue
| service, of wonders by wireless and of fierce battles above the
| clouds."_
|
| It gets worse. The writing is terrible. The plot is lame. The
| characters are one-dimensional. I got through seven chapters
| before quitting in disgust. There's a reason that nobody, in a
| century, ever republished this.
|
| So I put it on Github.[2] After 110 years, it's clearly public
| domain. If someone wants to finish the job, fork the project on
| Github and go for it. Thanks.
|
| [1] https://github.com/John-Nagle/Sky-
| Pirate/blob/master/src/cha...
|
| [2] https://github.com/John-Nagle/Sky-Pirate
| rightbyte wrote:
| Cute story. Maybe you are not the first one to compile it from
| the issues, but others came to the same conclusion?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Could it be a century old piece of fanfiction?
| Animats wrote:
| Correction. "1897 War of the Worlds".
| Agentlien wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this, it was a fun comment to read. The
| effort itself is commendable and I understand why you would
| leave the remaining work for others.
|
| For some reason the prose reminds me of Allan Quatermain, which
| was a book I just couldn't get through.
| bussiere wrote:
| forked but i saw a barn and noble version :
| https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-sky-pirate-garrett-p-se...
|
| I'am curious to know if the barn and noble is a legit version.
| Animats wrote:
| It looks like someone else transcribed it and brought it out
| as a cheapie self-published book on B&N's platform.
|
| There's also a version on Lulu.[1]
|
| Both of those went on sale within the past 5 years, and I put
| the first seven chapters on Github 5 years ago. Hm.
|
| [1] https://www.lulu.com/shop/garrett-p-serviss/the-sky-
| pirate/e...
| Nition wrote:
| UI designed purely in WinForms!
| raverbashing wrote:
| How hard would it be to have a VB VM interpreter in JS I
| wonder?
| kfrzcode wrote:
| There are some questions we shouldn't ask...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's this one for qbasic: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=92
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| I love it. The enterprise-y look is perfect for a business sim.
| patcon wrote:
| The vibe and high described here feels really familiar.
|
| I'm involved in civic tech organizing -- communities of engaged
| citizens (yes tech, but also activists, public servants, lawyers,
| designs, and any engaged residents) who get together every week
| (usually in person) to pitch and work on continuing civic
| initiatives at "civic hacknights". Often these efforts involve
| some tech, but it's not a rule they must.
|
| On a good night, it's electric: some guy who's a construction
| foreman might join a group working on supporting emergency
| shelters, led by an amorphous group of whom its unclear who's
| leading and who's "volunteering". (There are some white dudes,
| but not ALL white dudes.) Maybe they've been visiting emergency
| shelters doing interviews, and some projects even lure some folks
| with experience in the problem domain (i.e. living on the street)
| to take on meaningful roles and learn.
|
| I have a hope that someday all civic action will have analogous
| citizen projects to complement official efforts, both
| intersecting in unexpected ways. Unexpected like, we've had
| public servants come out of their government day jobs to
| "launder" code into the community, meaning another community
| member takes over the codebase, while the staff goes back into
| city government to spend down some political capital in
| "liberating" some data to drive "that new community app that
| sprung up" (air quotes).
|
| On the good days, it feels a little bit like this article
| conveys, and I can kinda feel the leading edge of what a future
| civics might be, once government is truly built openly and is
| more permeable to the citizenry <3
| bigyikes wrote:
| > There are some white dudes, but not ALL white dudes
|
| Can you clarify what this statement means?
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| It's an American thing. I think it's best to just let it
| slide...
| Clampower wrote:
| No, this needs to be called out as the obvious racism it is
| as this mentality is slowly infiltrating the European tech
| sector.
| ikurei wrote:
| I understood it as a contrast with the wider tech world,
| where most people, and specially most people leading, are
| white males.
| pkos98 wrote:
| Especially in tech hubs in the US, there are approx. as
| many Asian as White people. So don't think this
| interpretation would make sense?
| [deleted]
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| It's not just white guys
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| Maybe white- and blue-collar?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Some people think that race is the most important thing about
| a person so they make sure to mention race in every
| situation.
| minitoar wrote:
| How can you tell that OP is a person that thinks race is
| the most important thing about a person?
| bmn__ wrote:
| It's an analogue to the "how can you tell someone is a
| vegan" trope.
| cocoricamo wrote:
| It's the same for crossfit and vapers. For reference I
| vape, but don't go telling... wait... damn.
| [deleted]
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > BookStory is written in Visual Basic 5, a programming language
| developed by Microsoft in the mid-90s. I econstituted the .exe
| file's machine-only instructions into human-readable source code
| with the help of a decompilation tool
|
| Because these were not machine instructions, that was virtual
| machine code. VB always was kind of like Java.
|
| > I figured I'd need a copy of Visual Studio 97, the original
| software used to write it. I replied to my tweet seeking a copy
| and a kind, pseudonymous internet stranger sent one.
| Surprisingly, it installed and ran successfully on Windows 10.
|
| I wonder if it could actually fit in an Excel file - all versions
| of MS Excel (I didn't check 2019 and 365) include a seemingly
| untouched VB5 IDE letting you embed VB code within your
| spreadsheets.
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(page generated 2021-05-31 23:02 UTC)