ef - a fairy tale of the two. Chapter 1: Miyako Miyamura No Name Losers 2009.03.15. Build A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INSTALLATION System requirements: Any CPU made since 2000 256MB memory 2.5GB hard drive space during install 920MB hard drive space for permanent files Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 or better 800x600 true color display XviD MPEG-4 support is not required for chapter 1, but will be required for subsequent chapters East Asian language support NOT required 1. Install the ef NNL font via Control Panel > Fonts. Text will not display correctly with any other font. The font used in ef Supah Preview is not compatible with this release. 2. Unpack the build to an empty folder where you want the game to reside. 3. Run the installer. Due to extreme compression techniques, installation time largely depends on CPU strength. Here are some estimated installation times for various CPUs: Core i7, high end Core 2 < 8 minutes Mainstream Core 2/Phenom 10-12 minutes Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 19 minutes Pentium 4 3.0 GHz 22 minutes Atom 1.6 GHz (netbook) 32.5 minutes Please do not open any of the temporary files created during the installation, otherwise there may be disk access errors. If the installation is aborted, you must delete all files in the folder, unpack the build, and try again. If the installer keeps crashing, you do not have enough available memory for unpacking. 4. Enjoy! There is no flashback feature, so save often if you want to revisit any particular scenes! Controls are covered in the in-game help file. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KNOWLEDGE Is this a continuation of the project that was canceled in 2008? Yes. Akira, the original translator, bowed out due to personal reasons. DragonSamurai55 approached us at the beginning of 2009 and wanted to continue where he had stopped. Therefore, this localization contains work from three translators. What is the translation style? The editing guidelines set during ef Supah Preview remain unchanged. There are zero translation notes. Any text (especially jokes) requiring obscure Japanese culture knowledge has been localized into an English equivalent that retains the spirit of the original. Idioms are used where appropriate. Honorifics are removed unless a person is being directly addressed. In an age where fansubs feature clunky text and contain piles of notes, we tried to keep the pace as smooth as possible. If you still come across an unfamiliar term such as shoujo manga, Google is your best friend. Lastly, all text that didn't match what was presented on the screen was changed. Why is this a standalone build? Short answer: minori will not stand to gain any profit from imports. Long answer: Once upon a time in 2002, minori published Wind in CD form. This game used a basic version of their Musica engine. No Name Losers completed an alpha build based on the CD version. Around this time, minori discontinued the CD version and released a DVD version. We never did figure out the old Musica format entirely. There were intermittent crashes in some areas. Luckily, the new Musica format had unencrypted scripts for the picking after container encryption was defeated. A new, stable build was produced that worked only for the DVD version. When the patch was released, Wind DVD for the PC was no longer being produced. minori discontinued Wind DVD in favor of the PlayStation2 version which is still available to this day. This meant that minori was no longer making any money from Wind DVD PC. Buying it second-hand does not help the company, so the theory that buying the game to support the company was no longer viable. If you want to support minori, you can simply buy the PS2 version for the low, low price of $35. minori is notorious for short print runs. They also never intended for ef to be imported. The game implemented multiple DRM techniques to discourage non-Japanese users from ever running the game. By foreseeing what would happen in the future and releasing a standalone, we would avoid the acquisition mess that plagued Wind DVD's patch release. The Underdogs, a library containing thousands of PC games from the 80s and 90s, is a highly respected site. Few people would dare call them out for hosting abandonware to download. If it weren't for the ESA, all titles in their library would be available for download. Is what they are doing still illegal? Yes. But isn't fansubbing illegal anyway? There have been a billion arguments about this, but it's still illegal. Making a standalone is not any more illegal than a patch with a short shelf life. If NNL had to do it all again knowing that Wind DVD would only have a short print run, we would have considered a standalone. However, due to our agreement with insani, the idea would have been rejected. All games will eventually end up as abandonware. However, some games become abandonware faster than others. ef - the first tale is effectively abandonware because it is no longer possible to obtain a legal copy that will support minori. That, in a nutshell, is why we chose this path. It's not because we didn't care. It's because we tried to keep it real. As for the piracy issue, a patch for a discontinued game would simply cause most people to head to their favorite torrent site. It is our hope that this DRM-free standalone discourages people from pirating the actual Japanese DVD image file. We have provided a practical alternative by engineering our build into under 400 megabytes. That's much more convenient than spending hours on torrent sites. 390MB for all of chapter 1? Are you kidding me? Instead of storing compiled game files, the installer stores all data in raw format, allowing for superior compression. All game files are then compiled on-the-fly. UHARC was used for image compression because it is up to 25% better than 7-zip while maintaining an acceptable unpacking speed. 7-zip was used for the remaining files because it is slightly faster and better than UHARC when it comes to non-image files. These techniques allowed us to store all of chapter 1 in under double the size of ef Supah Preview. Are you continuing with chapter 2? No. A group that wishes to remain anonymous is also localizing the first two chapters of ef. They have decided on a patch release. We believe their localization will be outstanding, so there is no point in wasting our time. Instead, we're moving ahead and working on chapter 3, contained in ef - the latter tale. We will not announce a release date for now, because as always, the project is subject to cancelation at any time. If you would like to assist us, you may contact us via e-mail. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CREDITS Translation Akira DragonSamurai55 Reikoku Editing Moogy [http://tsukuru.info/b] woodrix Coding Shu Director GipFace -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTACT - enenel gmail com | http://nnl1.com