Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

So I translated pretty much straight all day yesterday and a little this morning. Script progress according to number of files is about 80%. I'd like to keep translating but there are some things that I should shift my attention to.

It's fun using my translation aid. It seems to speed things up, though I spend a lot of time entering phrases into the TM. At this rate it's tempting to think I could have this finished off after a couple more days like yesterday, but I don't want to over promise or burn myself out. Suffice to say it may be a few weeks rather than a few months before this one is in the bag.

EDIT: Just looking back over my progress in the past. The best progress I made on the script was during the holidays, from Dec 26th to Dec 27th where I translated about 5% in around a day. Yesterday I translated nearly 9% in a single day. It's hard to make a direct comparison, but I seem to be translating faster at any rate. Not bragging, just pleased that the 8 month break I took to program seems like it might pay off.

I feel it's always a good idea to pace ourselves and avoid burnout, but I'm intrigued to learn that your translation system is proving quite fruitful. That break you enjoyed has meshed well with our whole situation at D-D, and my work on Burning Heroes has rather followed suit with your own activities regarding Aretha-II. After a good length of down time since I helped with the Slayers story, I have become active again with Burning Heroes just these past two weeks. In fact, I've been working on the Laila scenario this weekend and hope to go as far as I can by late tonight. Then, I will have advanced as far as possible with both Ryu and Laila, leaving Gaou and Naga who need and deserve the same loving attention.

By the time you wind down Aretha-II - if it's a matter of weeks - I should be caught up with Ritchie's translation work to the point I can shift to early formatting with Aretha-II, because we already have a few screens in our hot little hands that will give me a rough idea of the space available for both characters and lines.

Perhaps Bongo` will emerge a little further from deep exile and have a moment to fix some of Draken's menus in Chaos Seed and then maybe even shoot me over his raw Aretha-II inserter so I can check the formatting efforts on the emulator. Matt, we certainly appreciate the report and the news of progress. The Aretha-II story sounds like a fun challenge to make it as exciting as Bongo is hoping it can be. For my own part, performing the next step with your newly translated blocks will give me more fun things to do - diversions from constantly building - as the days become chillier during the upcoming fall and winter months.

I hope I haven't talked down the script in Aretha too much. I'll be curious to hear your impression once you get your hands on it. One thing I can say is that in one part there are a lot of chickens.

WB, I don't know that I realized you were involved in your house building business during the summer. I have a lot of respect for you. I helped do some of the prep work for my brother putting a new roof on his and my sister-in-law's house and I was wiped out after a day. I wouldn't want to do that for a living, but it must be fun to see a project come together. I hope you have plenty of good help on all your projects, just like DD.

Good to hear that our efforts may align well. I ended up pushing Aretha back a bit for Madou which has now had an initial release and an update, so now I figure it's time to get Aretha out of the way so I can start digging into some of the other super cool scripts I have in my hands like Welcome to Pia Carrot 2 and Urusei Yatsura - Stay with You. I also need to go back and do some final checking on Lady Sword... No rest for the wicked they say.

Thanks for working so hard on the translation Filler, I think Dynamic Designs has been really lucky to have translators such as you and Ritchie. Good luck on the other scripts you are working on or considering.

Well, it's sort of funny, but a "typical" RPG script paves the way to a story and a genre that many of us have learned to love a lot! This approach may take on the appearance of a "formula" after a while, but tampering with the "tried and true" sometimes leads to a game that flops. I can perceive the whole translation aspect becoming rather pedestrian after a time, but it's that hard, raw script - along with the music, other aural features, and visuals in the game that may offer the ingredients for a quite charming story. Plus, the princess is quite easy on the eyes. For me, I'm sure it'll be love at first sight! This gal will have lots of spirit - the sort of spunk in a woman that scintillates a man who is secure in his own identity and never feels threatened by a powerful, ambitious woman - not to mention serving as an anecdotal role model for real-world women everywhere.

As for building homes, a devotee becomes accustomed to the rigors. I try stay in the best physical shape possible and build up my stamina. This summer, I got acclimated to the unusually intense Virginia heat. When people said I shouldn't hang insulation in a 110 degree attic, I took it as a personal challenge. Staying well hydrated, I segmented it out in a few days, and this lowered ambient temperatures by 10 or 15 degrees on the second floor - enough for both me and my sub-contractors to perform more efficiently. Yes, I have good subs who perform certain tasks - such as siding, finished roofs, and drywall. I do all of the designing, much of the framing, all the electrical, some of the plumbing, and a good chunk of the insulation. I will have even more subs come in and install kitchens, finished floors, tile work, HVAC, the central vacuum, and a whirlpool tub. The more I do myself, however, the lower my mortgage will be! I enjoy watching a new abode rise above what was once a dense forest filled with poison ivy and brambles - to know that my toil was a major catalyst in this transformation.

Heh, I retreat to my air-conditioned Hobby Shop across the way occasionally, to recuperate and work on RPG scripts for an hour or so. When I emerge, I tell my crews I have been doing a bunch of that nasty old "paperwork", hee-hee...!

Ha, I recall that Feda had a ton of chickens running around in one of the early villages. These were uttering really strange noises until someone suggested that I make them sound more like normal barnyard fowl! That reminds me - I need to get the next Feda revision out the door. (Yes, TF and RS, I know, I know! It's the danged house's fault, not mine!)

Matt, it's always a pleasure! I hope we will have a chance to work on yet another big "formula" RPG together in the future! And tell us more about your new career track when you get a chance.

Small update: 84% complete by number of files. Picking away at this a little each night. I discovered a small error in the program logic the other night which I was happy to have been able to fix. Now it's working better, and I've adjusted the visual styles and some of the formatting of punctuation and capitalization to be a little nicer. Small incremental changes are slowly making this process more pleasant and effective. Pleasant and effective? Translating?! Hell is starting to freeze over...

Ha-ha...!! See!? See...!? It's almost as addictive as writing and nearly in our laps - to boot! Wake up, B-Man! I will need a rudimentary inserter soon... Thanks for the update, Matt. Whoa! 84 percentavos!

Hell freezing over!? Try the assembly side of life. Especially when you have a game like Chaos Seed
that looks at you cock-eyed when you ask it for more Vram space. This game is a nasty cup of warm poop. But I ready myself for such a task and push on, my friend! Why!? Because people like Draken, Bill, TF, you and the whole bunch put soo much time and effort into these projects as I do.

Heh, I know what you mean. Everyone's hard work is a big motivator.

Hey, may I ask you a favor? I'm having some trouble with this one term that I've seen crop up twice in the script now: "手着れ". It looks like it shows up about 5 times total, but I can't find anything on it. Would you mind checking the font for this and see if there wasn't a misidentified kanji? This seems like the most likely candidate "手遅れ".

Actually, ironically the kanji that I think is supposed to be the other one (遅) also shows up in the very next sentence and I think it should be 着. It looks like these two just got transposed. Could you confirm?

What you all just expressed reminds me of what we used to say in certain military circles during one of my previous careers. "It's amazing what people can accomplish when no one cares who takes credit." Yep, the act of creating sometime special through effective teamwork is all a humble person needs to satisfy Maslow's definition of self-actualization. The fuel of motivation is fired by the fruition of success.