New home sweet home

Hello everyone! We know that you're all excited about the upcoming English patch to The Second Night, and in preparation for that, we're proud to unveil our new homepage.

Although the blog you're reading now is a great way for us to keep you updated on our progress, we felt it's a little cluttered and confusing for those simply stumbling upon our website, or those who just want to download the patch.

Speaking of which, we've moved the patches to a new set of high-speed servers. Although we've worked hard to ensure downloads were speedy in the past, they should now be consistently fast, wherever you're located.

We will continue updating this blog, so be sure to check back here for the latest on the project. Thank you all for your support.

Translation Update

Quick update:

I just more or less finished the base translation of Chapter 5. I may try and address the few lines I left out at some point.

We also seem to have another translator who has been doing edits and working on Chapter 4, which looks like it's about 40% or so complete. Many thanks to whoever has been doing that.

Anyway, it looks like the base translation at least is finally moving along at a decent pace. We appreciate your patience greatly. You'll get a more concrete image of the progress when the line counts update. [Line counts have now been updated. --Yirba]

Thanks,
Pascal

Kickstarter: Printed interview with Ryukishi07? [updated]

British games journalist John Szczepaniak has set up a Kickstarter to publish a book featuring in-depth interviews with as many Japanese game developers as possible.

It's an ambitious project, and one we're sure many of you would be interested in. But why are we talking about it on this blog?

Well, if funded, the book will have an entire section dedicated to visual novels. What's more, we've been promised that this section will contain an interview with Ryukishi07 about his work.

The visual novel section will also likely have interviews with Kotaro Uchikoshi (Ever17, 999, Virtue's Last Reward) and someone from Key/Visual Art's, if not Jun Maeda himself.

The Kickstarter only has a few days left, so if you're interested, show your support! :-)

Update: The project has now reached its goal. Thanks to those who backed it.

Chapter 3 (More or less) translated!

Just reached the bottom of the script for Chapter 3. The line counts won't have updated (they've now been updated --Yirba), but I've translated nearly every line in that script. Some lines are beyond my comprehension, but I might try a super-liberal translation for those. Gonna read over it in the next few days for spelling errors and general edits.

Now I'm deliberating as to whether to go ahead and do the long chapter 4. I think instead I might tidy up the super-short Chapter ?, and then do chapter 5, which should make the translation about 45% complete.

--Pascal

The Second Night translation resumes!

Thanks to all of you who are waiting patiently. 

I'm sorry that progress has been as slow as it has been these past couple months--I've been swamped with exams and university applications and stuff. This is just a quick update to let everyone know that I'm going to start translating regularly again now. I'm aiming for at least 30 lines a day, but hope to manage as much as 50-100, depending on how free I am. Not making any promises though.

Also, please bear in mind that this is just the first step. Once the script is translated, I or someone else will need to edit and do a QA on it.

Regardless, please be excited. I have every intention of finishing this.

--Pascal. 

PS: We're still looking for translators. Contact info by the line counts to the right.

Higanbana - The First Night - English Patch 1.2

Apologies for the wait with the translation of The Second Night, and thanks for everyone's support despite of that. We are gradually making progress and are committed to seeing this translation through to the end. Unfortunately, as is the nature of these kinds of projects, we cannot provide an estimate as to how long it will take.

However, for people who have yet to read The First Night, today we are releasing an updated translation for it:

Release changes

• Windows and Mac installers
• Detection of incorrectly-installed patches
• Save/load system improvements
• Music room enhancements
• Minor bug fixes
• Typo/grammar fixes

Warning: Saves in-between chapters can become corrupted. If you're changing patch versions, wait until you've completed your current chapter to avoid corrupt save problems.

Download
[Windows] [Mac OS X] [Installer-free patch]

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In addition, we are currently looking for additional translators. If you have a good grasp of the Japanese language and would be willing to help us out, we'd really appreciate it. There's no obligation to translate a certain amount of text, so you can try it out and if it's not for you, you can stop whenever you want. Please contact us by sending an email to:

contact (AT) spiderlilytranslations (DOT) com

Many thanks!

07th Expansion character popularity polls now open [updated]

07th Expansion have opened their character popularity polls. Running until the end of October, a series of four polls will allow fans to vote for their favourite characters from Higurashi, Umineko, Higanbana and Rose Guns Days.

The schedule is:

• Higurashi (5 October ~ 10 October)
• Higanbana (12 October ~ 17 October)
• Rose Guns Days (19 October ~ 24 October)
• Umineko (26 October ~ 31 October)

You can place your votes at 07th Expansion's website.

For a guide on how to vote, check out our video below: