If anyone is reading this, then that means our project has gone horribly wrong...

Wait, wait, let me start over.

Since you are reading this, it means we here at mirror moon have finally finished our project.
It took far longer than any of us imagined, but through the collective efforts of many,
we finally got this thing on the road.

And now, without further ado...


________________________________________________________________________________

                              Tsukihime Liner Notes

                                                                           by
                                                                       Ryuusoul
________________________________________________________________________________




    Table of Contents
_______________________________________

I.	Japanese Terms
   		1. Japanese name order
   		2. Romaji
   		3. Some common honorifics and suffixes
   		4. Random terms

II. 	Fan Questions

III. 	Special Messages From The Staff



 I. Japanese Terms
_______________________________________
   
I found out that translating things from one language to another was harder than I thought.
Sometimes, there are less direct equivalents than one would imagine.
In Tsukihime, we did our best to try and maintain the feel of the original Japanese.
For those unfamiliar with the Japanese language, it is heavily shaded with levels of politeness.
There are different ways of talking to seniors, strangers, friends, and variations of intimacy 
within those levels. Since we were lazy... 
(I mean, since we wanted to keep the feel of the original Japanese),
we decided to keep many of the suffixes or titles of address in Japanese.
Consequently, a brief primer is necessary for those of you completely lost.
This certainly isn't presented at the level of learning Japanese... just a brief introduction.


1. Japanese name order

Japanese put the family name first, followed by the person's given name.
For example, the protagonist is Tohno Shiki. This means his family's name (or "last name") 
is Tohno. His "first name" in Western order would be Shiki. 
But, we decided to go with the Japanese name order.
Why? Just because.

It isn't uncommon for people to refer to others using only their family name.
For example, Ciel-Senpai uses "Tohno-kun" to refer to Shiki. Confused?
We'll get into those other terms later...
   

2.  Romaji

Romaji is just the term used to describe how one would write Japanese using the Western alphabet.
Tips on pronunciation:

a = hot
i = heat
u = hoop
e = head
o = hope

If you see two vowels next to each other, like in "Nii-san", it means the sound is "extended".
You would hold the vowel sound twice as long as usual. In Japanese, that will change the meaning.


3.  Some common honorifics and suffixes

I mentioned about levels of formality and all that. One of those ways is by use of honorifics.
In English, we have Mr., Mrs., and Ms., for example. In Japanese, they have a lot more titles.
Here's a quick list of the ones used in the game.

   -san
The suffix -san, such as "Smith-san" is a generic word for Mr./Mrs./Ms.
It implies some level of formality or distance between the speaker and the person referred to.
For example, Shiki refers to Yumizuka Satsuki as Yumizuka-san. He calls her by her last name
because he isn't exactly close friends with her, and tacks on the "-san" for added formality.
On the other hand, he just calls Inui Arihiko by his given name, "Arihiko".

   -sama
This is a much more polite term than "-san", and is reserved for people of a higher status.
This status could be based on relationship (i.e. a store clerk and a customer), for example.
Kohaku, a maid at the Tohno mansion, refers to Tohno Akiha as "Akiha-sama".
She uses the term "-sama" to show respect, yet uses Akiha's given name to infer familiarity.
By contrast, she uses "Shiki-san" to refer to Shiki because Shiki is uncomfortable 
with such politeness. By further contrast, her sister Hisui continues to use "Shiki-sama"
because she is a very formal person...

   -kun
This is a term generally reserved for males and those of a lesser standing. 
It is also more "familiar" term, so it may be used as a term of endearment for a younger person 
within an organization. As mentioned before, Ciel-senpai uses "Tohno-kun" to refer to Shiki.

   -chan
This is a term generally reserved for younger females. It can denote a closer relationship 
between the speaker and the one referred to. 
Kohaku calls Hisui, "Hisui-chan" because Hisui is her younger sister.

   Onii-sama, Nii-san, Onii-san, Nii-chan, Ani, Aniki
These are all terms for "older brother". Depending on the suffix, it can be more or less formal.
Akiha calls Shiki, "Nii-san". It sounds a little formal,
but that's because Akiha is a proper young lady!

   Onee-sama, Nee-san, Onee-san, Nee-chan, Ane, Aneki
These are all terms for "older sister". As with the above, varying levels of formality.
Hisui calls Kohaku, "Nee-san", but then again, Hisui is pretty formal...

   Senpai
This is a term to refer to a senior in your organization. This could mean many things.
In a karate class, it could be someone of higher rank. In school, it could be an upperclassman.
Shiki refers to Ciel as Ciel-senpai because she is in the third year of high school, while he
is only in the second.

   Sensei
Sensei means literally "teacher", so it is a term reserved for... teachers. But it also can be 
used for people you respect greatly, which is why Shiki always refers to Aoko as "Sensei". In a
sense, these people could probably be considered as teachers outside of the strict academic
sense. Doctors are also referred to as teachers. In other words, it's a term with a lot more
loaded meaning than simply "teacher".


4. Random terms

   Shouji
Those are those paper doors that you see whenever you think of a Japanese house.

   Tatami
Tatami are those traditional straw mats you see whenever you think of a Japanese house.

... Okay, this section seemed like it would have been bigger...



 II. Fan Questions
_______________________________________

This is where we answer a few questions from fans interested about the project.


Q (darkfusion): Well, I'm curious as to what was the hardest part about making the patch?

A (Ryuusoul): I'd have to say it was the distinct lack of fangirls professing their undying
admiration for me. TakaJun concurs very heartily. I mean, at one point, the best I had was
Konoha (Mirioki) and Royal Knight. Their cheering did keep me motivated, though. Um...maybe
my first FEMALE fangirl was Murky. Thank you, Murky!

In all seriousness, though, for me, it was probably the H-scenes. Being a translator who got 
interested in Tsukihime despite the H-scenes (instead of because of them), it was kind of a 
trial going through them. That, and maybe the Nasu grammar (tm). Nasu's writing style is very 
interesting... you can find web sites in Japanese with sections dedicated to helping people 
understand just what the heck he was trying to say. His choice in kanji 
(the Chinese characters used in Japanese) was often very... creative.

From an overall project standpoint, it was probably making sure that everyone was motivated
at the same time and working in the same direction. Even I originally quit the project after
translation was finished, thinking that it was well on it's way to completion. I later came 
back when I noticed progress was a little stalled during the six months I was away. 
Of course, a lot of this was due to the fact that we had so many people working on the project,
it was going in too many directions. After clearing our kitchen of too many cooks,
we set up a head chef and went out from there. I hope you all enjoy the taste.


Q (darkfusion): Also how exactly does the process of patch translation work? 
I'm curious as other game translation patches like the one for F/SN or Shuffle! and Tick! Tack!
(those two are being done by different groups) are in the works and I'm curious as to how 
exactly the whole process is done.

A (Ryuusoul): I'm not going to go into the exact details of everything. However, there are
a few core processes that need to be done. First, is obviously the scripting side of things.
You need to have someone who can work with the game engine and make sure everything comes
together. Second is the translation. This includes both the game script as well as any image
editing necessary to translate pictures into English. Third is the proofing. Fourth is combining
the English with the game. Fifth is smoothing everything out and making sure it works. With a 
work as monumentally large as Tsukihime, it is imperative that everyone is exactly on the same 
page... we found that out the hard way. While it was common sense that we all knew, it was
harder to put into practice than we originally thought. What worked best for us was to have many
people checking up on the script to find errors, and to have only one person to either reject
or approve and implement changes.


Q (darkfusion): Another question is on average, how long did it take to translate just
one of the scenarios?

A (Ryuusoul): Wow, you sure ask a lot of questions! But, you came to the right place. Actually,
the difference in sizes between the scenarios make that a little tough to answer. Plus,
some scenarios had multiple people working on them while others just had one. Furthermore,
I know my translation speed got better as time went on... Tsukihime was my first translation
project and there was definitely a learning curve. Some scenarios, like the Kohaku arc, took me
less than a month. Others, like Ciel's, took slightly longer. When I joined the team in
September 2004, percentage translated was in the single digits. By June 2005, only 10 months
later, translation was completed. Of course, the delay in release time since then highlights
just how crucial all the other aspects of a project are.


Q (darkfusion): On a side note, it must be pretty awkward to translate the H-scenes. 
Speaking of which, does this patch uncensor those scenes?

A (Ryuusoul): Yeah, tell me about it. Ironically, we have two versions of the patch.
One is the regular translation and the other is actually a non-ero patch. This actually 
removes the pictures entirely and attempts to work around those scenes. Give Message a hand
for working hard on that part of the project. So, the answer is "no", we didn't uncensor
the scenes.

A (TakaJun): It was the worst hell you can imagine!! I don't know how many hairs I pulled
out during this one scene. Thank God I only did one... (well, I did proof the four others,
but translating is uncomparable hell) I don't know how Ryuusoul lived through all those
H scenes.

A (Ryuusoul): I wonder the same thing...


Q (Decay of This/That life): What did you have to do for image editing (what did you edit,
why, how was it efficiency-wise), and do you think those changes are better for the players?

A (Ryuusoul): We had two image editors, Nichigo and puKKa. I'm extremely pleased with the
job they did. They used photoshop to put our translations in place of where there originally
was Japanese in the image files. Some of this was trickier, since some files had a word
grayed out as part of the menu screen, and then have a separate picture file with the word
brightened to be used when an option was selected. This required a little more precision
than simply pasting a translation in. Why did we do it? Well, we figured that if people
couldn't read Japanese, then having day titles or menu options in Japanese wouldn't do them
any good...


Q (question): When did you start the translation project, and how long did you think it would
take...... and how long did it REALLY take? What difficulties did you encounter that
contributed to the length of the project?

A (Ryuusoul): That question has been kind of answered in part via other questions, but I'll
answer it directly here. Tsukihime is the joint project between Revolve and mirror moon.
It sounds like an important distinction, but only in terms of group history. As far as working
goes, it never made much of a difference... Revolve started working on it in early 2004,
according to TheXev. Progress didn't really kick off until early September, when I joined up.
By strange coincidence, mirror moon, which had been working independently since July 2004,
joined up with us at about the same time... We thought we were around perhaps 12% when that
happened, but due to a silly error (silly chendo), we were actually in the low single digits
of percentage translated. From then on out, things went very smoothly in terms of translation.
We divided it up by scene blocks and went on from there. When TakaJun joined us in June 2005,
we had around ten percent left to translate. Both of us worked furiously and finished the
translation. At around this point, I felt the project was in good hands and I retired from
translation... sort of. All through this time, we had a million proofers independently
working on editing files, which resulted in a giant cluster... When beta testing started, it
was recognized that a rewrite was needed, or at least the style be made similar. Shirakani
took it upon himself to rewrite Tsukihime, but there were a few stylistic disagreements over
his method. At around this time, in January 2006, I suddenly reappeared on the translation
scene. I took over Shirakani's rewrite, which was taking a long time because he literally
was rewriting everything, and things took off from there. I finished my massive proof
and moved on to Melty Blood. Sadly, progress on the Beta testing did not resume until a few
months later, but after it did, we got on the same page and hashed out what you see today.

Okay, now to answer your question... It technically took about 2 3/4 years, but as far as real
working goes, a little over two years due to a big pause in the beginning. Translation took
only 10 months, and I expected it to be done before Christmas 2005... and it probably should
have been. What was our main problem? It was a lack of an absolute central direction. I am sorry
to say that some of this was my fault, as I up and left the project, but I honestly believed it
was on the right page at the time. With a project as large as Tsukihime, which you must remember
dwarfs The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy combined, any mistakes become greatly
amplified. I am also sorry to say that I personally believe some of our problems came from
a lack of initiative and motivation by some staff members. When I returned to the translation
scene, I kept much of that in mind and was perhaps a little bullying in my approach to
decision-making. Fortunately, I think some of the other staff members either respected me for
my work on the translation or welcomed my "energy" coming back into the project. I would be
amiss if I didn't credit Message for a lot of his administrative work on the beta testing.
I became the "attack dog" and the "bad guy" during some parts to keep progress going,
but he kept us grounded during this phase. All of that being said, I was still pleasantly
surprised by the dedication of many members in this project. There were a lot of people who
signed up and were not quite able to finish what they had allotted due to real life, but even
their contributions are greatly appreciated. In the end, I was happy to work with so many
wonderful people!

The number one lesson to be taken from the project? Making decisions. A wise man once told me
that managers don't exist to solve problems, but to make decisions. Once you make a
decision, you have no problems. I was always reluctant to just barge in and make decisions on
this project because I felt it wasn't my place... but when things didn't go anywhere, all it
took was a decision. What I jokingly called my Executive Decisions would often provide the
impetus for progress to start rolling again. My best advice I can offer to anyone doing such
a project where there is literally no face-to-face interaction is to make decisions. The rest
will take care of itself. 


Q: Why was onscripter used over nscripter?

A (TheXev): Onscripter is open source, so anyone is free to modify it.  
When we originally looked into translating Tsukihime, almost a year before we merged with 
mirror moon, I had formulated a method of using nscripter and allowing half-width characters
to be displayed. Onscripter was still in its early stages at the time, and no one within 
Revolve was capable of modifying the font for half-width at the time. After a year however, 
and putting Tsukihime on hold, we merged with mirror moon and chendo had figured out a way 
to modify onscripter to support half-width English characters. This allowed for a much 
cleaner insertion with less errors.  Many other new features of onscripter such as 
OpenGL support also enhanced the playing experience.

Q: What's up with all the commas?

A (Ryuusoul): That's intentional. Tsukihime is essentially a stream-of-consciousness work
and as a result, the commas are used to purposely disrupt the flow of reading in instances
where Shiki's mind either pauses or when people literally pause while speaking. I'm not going
to go into too much detail on the difference between ellipses and commas, but suffice it to
say that we (I) felt there is a distinct difference in how they feel, so I preserved their
use from the original.



 III. Special Messages From The Staff
_______________________________________

   chendo:

Fun fact: Two days before this release, I became legally able to work on Tsukihime. Keep both
hands on the keyboard when you play and have fun!


   Ryuusoul: 

Hello, everyone. It's been a long journey full of ups and downs, but it's over. Despite the
struggling through H-scenes, the wrestling with Nasu Grammar (tm), and the coordination woes,
I did enjoy my time working on the project. I'd like to say thanks to all the fans who kept up
hope and kept cheering us on the whole time. Yes, it does sound trite, but it really was 
fan energy that kept me going. Sure, our release isn't perfect, but thanks to the efforts of 
many project members, I think it's pretty darn good! Please make sure you thank not just the
translators, but everyone who helped with this undertaking. Lastly, whether you're new to the 
Type Moon world or an old-time fan, please enjoy the game!

With that said, I'd like to indulge myself and talk a little about my personal journey through
the project. People who want to be entertained should probably just skip this and start playing
the game...

I first was introduced to the world of Type Moon via the Tsukihime anime. Despite being bashed
for being woefully adapted from the game, I was fascinated by it back then and I still remember
it fondly. I was interested in more information about it and stumbled across EvoSpace's website.
From there, I got even more interested and found The Beast's Lair forums. From there, I
discovered the trailer for Fate/Stay Night and fell in love with it. FSN was actually my first
Type Moon game, since I was unable to get my hands on the Tsukibako at the time. FSN was
what solidly hooked me on Type Moon. I probably shouldn't say this, since everyone seems to
hates Shirou, but I felt like I had a lot in common with him, so it resonated deeper with me.
Anyway, after playing FSN and finally getting my Tsukibako from Japan, I got to play Tsukihime.
I became more active on the boards at Beast's Lair and began translating a lot of four panel
fan comics and doujinshi on the side. tjm suggested I join Revolve, and I did, not expecting
to have that go anywhere... the rest is history.

In the end, I have no real regrets, but after helping to translate Tsukihime and translating
Melty Blood, Melty Blood ReAct, and Melty Blood Act Cadenza (which I hope get their patches
released one day), I think it is time for me to move on. Some people don't know this, but I am
an exercise junkie and a martial arts nut... these things actually take up many hours of my day.
I've always felt you can learn a lot about yourself when you go out on the old bicycle for a
hundred miles... but, I digress. Translating is often a rewarding experience, but I truly wish
to focus even more on the other aspects of my life. In fact, that was the reason why I took my
original hiatus from translating in the first place... but I just hate unfinished business so
I wanted to see Tsukihime through to completion this time. I will probably remain in limited
contact just to prod and push the various Melty Blood projects along (although ArchDemon needs
no prodding with Act Cadenza; he is very motivated!). However, my days as a full time translator
and project manager are over. With people like TakaJun and tjm working on Fate/Stay Night,
I see a bright future ahead for Type Moon translation projects!


   TakaJun:

Hi, everyone. I decided to add a few things in here after the patch was released. Although I
did not go through as much hell as Ryuusoul, I also took part in the Tsukihime translation. 
In all, it was a great experience and we learned a lot of things from it.

I am adding things in the liner because I forgot to thank all the people that helped me along
the way. (How dumb of me!)

First, huge kudos goes to Ryuusoul for all the translation, editing, and taking our project
forward. Really, this patch wouldn't be out without him. And I have to say I enjoyed some of his
mistranslation I found during my translation check. ^^

I would like to thank TheXev for making fun of m- I mean, for his great job. Message for his
non-ero patch and the easter eggs (hope people enjoy them). All the beta testers, editors, and
everyone else related to this project deserves a big thanks from me.

Now with the lessons we learned from Tsukihime, I and others are starting to translate other
games such as MAW2 and Fate. Please look forward to those.

I hope everyone enjoys Tsukihime and I hope this will open up everyone's interest in visual
novels.

TakaJun



   TheXev:

So, after founding Revolve Translations however many years ago and basically starting a bunch
of projects that should have been finished years ago, wefre finally releasing the one project
we though would be done last: Tsukihime. Little could I have imagined when I first started
tinkering with this project, that it would be finished before Melty Blood, let alone Farland
Symphony (which wasnft very difficult to hack).

How many years has it been since I got into this whole ordeal? I think it was back in 2004...
not 2003... that I had started playing around with possible nscripter hacks, and even
attempting to compile onscripter.  Unfortunately none of us knew C back them,
so we werenft able to patch onscripter and begin Tsukihime sooner.
This was well before the release of the anime, and after hearing about the anime I assumed that
I should just wait.

Thatfs right, nearly a whole year. I figured gthe fans will come, right?h

Well, I was right and I was wrong. I had some minor interest, but many wanted Tsukihime done
before Melty Blood. Even so, the skills of most who volunteered to translate were outright
terrible.

Unlike many who were drawn into this entire Type-Moon universe via the anime, I was drawn
in due to a seemly completely random event involving Alerith and Soulfang in the old
#import-gamers channel one day.

Soulfang: gMelty Bloodh
Alerith: gMelty Bloodh

I had no clue what they were talking about, so I googled it and downloaded a demo off a
Japanese site without even knowing what it was.  I had just gotten DSL, and I wanted to simply
marvel at how large the number on the rate per second displayed and how I could download files
that used to take me governighth using Getright on auto redial in less then a half hour.

I wasnft a real big fan of fighting games then, even now Ifm not, but Melty Bloodfs short demo
had me hooked. The sheer surprise of this game being a fighting game on PC, let alone such a
marvelous one, took me by surprise. Unlike fighting games I had played before, this one didnft
involve multiple levels of punching and kicking, but a simple gsoft, med, hard, parryh based
system that I could understand easily. Hardcore fighting game fans say there is little
difference, but I beg to disagree... I was drawn into the wonderful game of Melty Blood, and
set out to learn as much as I could about it.

I somehow managed to break out of my Melty Blood addiction a few months after ReACT was
released. After discovering Tsukihime and then later EvoSpacefs Beastlair shortly after the
anime premiered, I was finally able to enjoy some amount of the plot involved with EvoSpace. 
Without a doubt, EvoSpace was the very first person I asked to translate Tsukihime. 
He turned me down... :/  When EvoSpace added the forum (yeah, it wasnft always part of the
site, believe it or not peoples), it was very slow and offered very little. 
Maybe a few active people posting random things. Now itfs the largest forum for English 
Type-Moonfs fans, and covers nearly all Type-Moon topics.

So lots of stuff has happened, we met chendo and MirrorMoon, merged Revolve and MirrorMoon
into a translating force like the world hasnft seen... just a lazy one with really bad 
ADD (TakaJun: imouto) and ADHD (TakaJun: I need more eroge, Ifm suffering from withdrawal!)

So many faces, people, bots (asmodean) have come and gone and got banned and blocked by ompfs,
itfs hard to remember it all! My real life seems far more interesting that anything thatfs gone
on in the chat room. Itfs all such a blur. I kinda let go and let chendo handle things, simply
because he was capable and had lots of neat ideas that I simply hadnft thought about: such as 
the CVS system for translation. I let go, I let him handle it. I had pretty much been the 
driving force in Revolve up until that point, but I knew I wasnft going to be capable of
controlling a project like Tsukihime, not with the scope of people working on it, and the lac
 of time I had while still attempting to finish collage.

I think the most amazing thing, pausing and rereading from this point, and editing a few
things... is simply how much any of this matters to me. Ifve lost interest in Type-Moon and
had lost interest in game hacking only up until a few months ago, when I got back into doing
by taking over the Men At Work! 2 project from Top50. I guess Ifve matured to the point that
my entire life doesnft revolve around what I do online, and up until I entered college in 2002,
it had. The online world had been my escape from the crappy life I had at home, and filled in
the time when I wasnft at school. Now, 4 years out of High School, out of college, my life
isnft all that bad. Not fantastic, but Ifm fed, Ifm clam, and Ifm not built up with all the
pressure I used to have.

We have accomplished something though. We made many mistakes with Tsukihime, and wefve gained
an incredible amount of knowledge on localizing games in an efficient manner (because we did
do Tsukihime in the most inefficient manner possible). Projects in progress such as 
Fate/Stay Night and Men At Work! 2 are very well organized, and have a minimal number of people
working on them for high efficacy. Unfortunately TakaJun is the core translator for both, so we
must keep him supplied with eroge to prevent him from burning out. lol

I donft think Revolve or MirrorMoon has done Tsukihime in the most efficient manner, far from
it. But the experience gained on this project will lead into new endeavors that will surely
live up to expectations of our seemingly gvaporwareh group. Our motto is gRevolve Translations:
Wefre too good to finish projects.h So to all you naysayers out there that think wefve been
sitting around with our thumbs up our butts, tooting our own horn and making ourselves seem all
high and mighty (I still have yet to fully understand where that came from? Sorry if we get
excited about something we love to do :P), this project represents the gigantic middle finger
from all of us.

And if you seriously think you can do a better job on this project, please feel free to do so.
Start from scratch, and make it better.  I welcome it.

When it comes down to it, when I set out to start Revolvefs Tsukihime project, I had hoped
that the Type-Moon fans would help us draw in talent to increase the groupfs power and ability
to produce finished projects. To my satisfaction, it has. With as many ups and downs as wefve
had over the last few years, wefve become a pretty tight nit group of friends, and I wouldnft
trade the time spent with them for anything.

In closing, I probably come off sounding a bit bitter. Well, I am. People think wefre all
fantastic and great, but wefre just real people just like you, with a few additional skills
and a lot of luck. Just remember this before expecting us to perform another act of super
hero like proportions.

Michael gTheXevh Reed


   Message:

It is done! And not a bit too soon. I have not experienced the full range of bumps and bruises
the other staff members have had to endure over the past three years, but from what I've seen...
Let's just say that Tsukihime was probably a whole lot bigger an undertaking than anyone had
expected at the beginning.

I first joined mirror moon in September 2005 as an alpha tester, after following the translation
of Tsukihime from the sidelines and having off-and-on contact with TheXev for about a year. For
about a month some alpha people worked while others didn't, until the term 'rewrite' got invented
and the testing was abandoned for 7 months.
It was about this time that I started thinking about helping to create a non-ero version of
Tsukihime, first of all because I really don't like having to fast forward through adult scenes
all the time, but also because I want to be able to recommend this game to people who feel the
same way. Now I'd like to say that I was given a green light on this deal at some point, but the
truth is that I kind of forced the idea unto the world by just starting and seeing how far I
could get.

As a consequence the non-ero version became a rather detached project, running in parallel to
the translation, and I had a very hard time finding people who could proofread my first draft
of edits. cyanoacry was a huge help however, spending many hours reading, fixing, polishing,
testing and discussing.
IT. WAS. AWFUL. The editing was. Nasu's style is bad enough as it is, but his eroscenes are just
horrible. Of course I can't be sure that he wrote these himself, but what do these people get
their kicks from!? "Nether Petals" has become an internationally accepted term for awfulness.
I'll refrain from going into detail, suffice it to say that I've wanted to throw the whole
idea out the door on several, no, many occasions.

But in retrospect it was worth the trouble, very much so considering what we can now prevent
other people from going through. We ended up with a version of Tsukihime that, I think, loses
extremely little of its content and none of its meaning. Of course you always lose something
when you start cutting and pasting, and in a game where sex and sexual violence is used more
often as a plot device than as fanservice it can be very difficult to strike a balance between
story and censoring. Nevertheless I believe Non-Ero Tsukihime to be every bit the original,
only without the awful junk called H-scenes.
Once again, a great many thanks go to the many discussions I had with cyanoacry about what
to keep and what to cut out, or how to move a certain meaning or detail outside of an adult
scene. My advice to all players is simple: Play Non-Ero!


By the time Ryuusoul finished the rewrite, I had more or less become a member of the mirror moon
staff and I moved on to take care of the initial beta project management. That was a stressy
time for me, having to divide my attention between near-fulltime school and near-fulltime beta.
I hereby extend my thanks to the rest of the staff for putting up with me during this period
without complaining.
Three months of beta testing later, I started working on release engineering. I am still amazed
at the many small things we kept finding that had not yet been done. Some of the tasks were
interesting, like learning to work with NSIS, others were a genuine pain. A very helpful push
forward was supplied by zalas when he fixed ONScripter's archive loading algorithm and compiled
it to win32 for us.

And that brings us to today, with the release of Tsukihime only a few days away (hopefully...).
Three years is much too long for people to work parttime on a project and I would not be
surprised if this is the last big translation project for some of us. But I greatly enjoyed
the year I worked on Tsukihime and I'm content with how everything turned out. What I will be
doing from here on I don't know yet, there are several projects that I imagine I could be
useful in. But having dissed school over the past two months in order to finish Tsukihime,
I'm not sure if I will have time for anything substantial for the rest of the year.

Tsukihime is an awesome game, I really hope everyone will enjoy it.

Maarten "Message" Groen