Ikachan

Get the game, here: (disabled, for now)
Get the original, here: Pixel Workshop

Log:

20081114
Well...yeah. This has become a long log proving that I do very little, very slowly. Blarrrh. Language is something else. I translate a line, and I think to myself, "Hey, yeah, sure, that sounds right", and then a few lines later--after seeing something--I question the first line. And then I think, "Hey, it seems like it could be both". And, rationally, it probably could. But, the way I'm understanding it, versus the way the author wrote it, COULD be quite different. I mean, even if it's literally correct (and I do like being literal), the inference could be off--which I happen to ponder over a fair bit. And then, (it has happend, before ;) ) I decide on neither and do something else (play games). :D

ANYWAY...what I'm saying is that I'm still translating. I'm now not satisfied at all with my first translation and I've sent it far, far away. You won't find it here, anymore. Nope. Prepare (or not) yourself for my SECOND translation!...someday. :) This month, I'd like. :P

20080402
Well, I've learned a fair amount more Japanese since I first (and second) started translating this game. And, well, I've tightened the old belt and started translating it, again. In fact, I've been translating it since October of last year (200710--which means I've spent about three days on it. :D ). I had hoped to make some sort of "Anniversary Translation", but...I got lazy. er. Yeap. And I'm not, necessarily, working on it, right now. I just felt like updating something, and I picked this. Weee! :)

20061014
Wow...talk about a break! And what about all the green tea I drank?! I figured if I drank enough I would just "know" Japanese, and I wouldn't have to actually learn the language. Alas, people in Vietnam drink green tea, too; although my Vietnamese is excellent now, my Japanese is still as pathetic as usual. That was a joke. ;) Anyway, I have decided to package this thing up and let anyone else, that wants to, see it. It's not completely OR thoroughly translated. I shall call this version .9. Yes, that sounds good enough. Really, I would rather someone that knows Japanese better than me to finish OR fully translate this fine, little game correctly. I think I have done a pretty good job with the little knowledge that I have, but I have beat the game...and beat it again...and I pretty much know the story. And, well, I am just tired of it. There are some things the little critters say that I just had to "liberally" translate, because I really had little clue what the Japanese was saying. So, yeah. There you go. Enjoy! ;)

event.ptx: I could not get question marks and exclamation marks to work. Why? I do not know. I am glad periods and commas work now, though. I had to just hack it with the upside down "?" and erase all the "!" Which looks VERY silly, by the way. But, like I said, I am rather tired of playing with this game. Fun game that it is. For a while. Hehe.

staff.ptx: Three entries I left untranslated. Signified by three little periods. Also, I think that there is an error in the original credits. Maybe not, since the dude has put out several verions of this cute game, already...I don't know. It's just that "Nakahara Masaharu shows up several times, but, under "Level Debuggers," "Nakahara Mashaharu" shows up. The only time in the credits--and it sounds weird. "Mashaharu", that is. Sounds...lazy. Seems odd to me... Oh well, I do not know Japanese well enough to communicate with it, so I cannot really ask Mr. Pixel about it. Forgive me, Mr. Pixel! Hahahaha. ;)

words.ptx: One sentence I completely left untranslated. Signified by three little periods. Just like in staff.ptx. No real clue what it says, either.

ReadMe.txt: I think I translated this one pretty well. Not that many people actually read the "Readme." Fruitcakes. Why else do you think we put them there? Anyway, there's only one part I didn't understand there, and it's unimportant. If you read it, you will see where I wrote my uncertainty. That, and I'm not too sure what "hitokuchi" means (all Hiragana). I think I got it right, however.

I think the music was my favorite part of this game--especially the first score you hear during the course of the game. Not the title or the intro music. Not that they are bad, I am just saying that neither of those were the ones that I liked the best. Yeah. You understand, now, yes? ;)

20060916
Okay...not too bad. Here's what I found out:

staff.ptx: Appended the date of the new release to the list of previous releases. No big deal. The format of the date has also changed. Before it was all in Japanese, now it's YYYY/MM/DD version. Another non-problem.

ReadMe.txt: Yes, it is now named "ReadMe.txt." So I was right on with my liberty. Except mine was "readme.txt." Close enough for me, though. ;) All that changed was the removal of a slightly confusing sentence. That's appreciated. Hahahaha.

event.ptx: I didn't notice any sentence differences, so no new translating, THANKFULLY! However, a small number of punctuation has now made itself visible. Good. Very good. Things like: . , / ` ^ and that's about it. I still do not know what I am going to use for ! and ?. No " ' ; or : either. Other than that, - was previously used to divide portions of the script, but ~ has taken its place. Also, / used to be the line delimiter, but { has taken its place. I'm not sure why those two were changed, because I never needed to use the /. Still don't.

Also, there is what seems to be a FPS counter on the top-right of the screen that did NOT used to be there. It's usefulness is dubious. Now, I need to play through the game again to see if anything in that aspect has changed. I'm quite sure that several things that I have translated are wrong. The problem usually has to do with verb conjugations. That, and I think Kanji could be used at some points, but, for whatever reason, the author decided to use plain Hiragana, confusing this amateur Japanese learner--aptly named Joshua. ;) The sentence structure I am still getting used to, too. In English, I would say "I went to the park;" in Japanese, something like, "Park went." From the context, we can discern that the park went somewhere, as it is a common problem in Japan for recreational areas to turn up missing. ;) And that's an EASY sentence! Hahahaha.

20060915
Made a little shockwave flash for the web page. It's down there at the bottom. Yes, that one. Hey, I said it was little.
Also, I clicked on the link to Pixel's site and found out that "Ikachan" is now version 1.5.2.0. Yay. Now, I have to see what more work I have to do. Hopefully not a lot. Hehe.

20060912
Started making this snazzy web page for the showing off my translation for Pixel's snazzy game. I used his artwork liberally.

20060908
Beat...completed a full play-through of "Ikachan." Found lots of bugs. Bugs in my translations, that is. That game ran fine and was quite fun. Short, but fun. And cute.
Bugs realized: punctuation is not dislplayed. None of it. Originally, the "space" character would not display, either. But, I found a way around that problem. Yay. ;)

20060907
Finished translating "Ikachan."
Files included: event.ptx, staff.ptx, words.ptx, and "readme.txt." "readme.txt" wasn't actually "readme" but some garbage letters that my English version of Windows XP did not want to show correctly. It is/was certainly a readme, however. So, that's why I named it that. ;)

20060905
Scrapped all previous work and started retranslating "Ikachan" version 1.4.2.0.

By the way, I will mention another fun game made by the same people: "Cave Story (or, Doukutsu Monogatari)"
Find it at the same place as "Ikachan," or the English versions at Aeon Genesis, or Mirai Gamer.