BBI: R is still alive!

Hello dear followers and visitors!

We have a new website that you can visit here!

We apologize for the super lack of updates. We've been so busy we haven't been able to work on BBI. But now we do! We also have a few things to say:

• We are active in Facebook! If you wish to keep up-to-date in our progress, please join this group.
• We also have a Discord group if you are interested!

As for the development itself:

• We are working with a our new and stable game engine for this. So far it's going really well. We were able to add a lot of missing functions from the original game. Here's a list:
• Basic VN functions such as save/load everywhere, log function (press middle mouse to enter, right click to cancel) and so on.
• 720p, 16:9 display instead of 4:3 ratio. Meaning it's great for widescreen monitors!
• Animation functions
• Music layering and so on!
• Goatjesus has been proofreading and rewriting parts of the script to be more cohesive and interesting. He also did the grunt work to optimize all assets to avoid performance issues. Great work as always!

We'd love to update more in the future but thank you for following the development of Bluebird's Illusion!

~Team Autumn Bird

BBIR Team needs your help!

Delays and Thank Yous

by goku-no-baka

Hello everyone. I'm the Project Leader, Renasci. I would like to apologize for all the delays of the project and my long term absence. I left all of the work to Bluebird's Circle and Archeia, both of them being busy with various projects, due to my lingering illness. I would also like to apologize about the spam in my twitter. Rest assured that I have unsubscribed. Horoscopes will no longer flood your twitter notices.

I had a long talk with Archeia yesterday and with some luck we might be able to make the progress a tad faster than our current speed. We also have a new person in the team named, Yami. I'll properly introduce him once we get our foundation stable.

I also want to thank the Bluebird's Illusion Group in Deviantart for their support and our followers for your extreme patience. Going back to the blog and seeing the conversations in the cbox always bring a smile to our faces. We're definitely doing our best to get this thing done. 

Another thing I'd like to brought up is the Engine. There had been constant questions about why are we moving to a new engine. It's mostly "Aren't you guys just translating? Why are you guys making a new engine for this?"
 

The main reason is...to make the English translation possible. 

In our dev diaries and early entries, you should be able to see one of the biggest problems we were facing. The last attempt we did is that we kept getting an error message when we use the word, "Brother." The other one would be how ugly the fonts looked and how we couldn't figure out how to change the font. Many other things. There's also the issue of repacking the game. Translating visual novels and working with their engines requires an experienced programmer. 

I'm definitely not one. Archeia, who is the only one remotely close to a programmer, has little interest in learning NScripter and is interested in other fields. The question we had back then, "Should we keep working with this engine or should we just use our own?"

It didn't take long for us to agree that we should just use our own. Because we can work better with an engine we spent our life on. We don't want to keep working with NScripter and end up scrapping the project. There's very little interest in BBI from other translation groups last time we tried to hire people or translators. If we won't do it, who will?

If that isn't convincing enough, Archeia also brought up a few things that I found interesting:

• Windows 8 is supported as long as you play in desktop mode.
• A possibility that they can be playable on IOS and Android devices.
• Everyone can use the engine if they want to make their own visual novels.

I know that our decision might be unclear to some people. But everyone is free to try to translate BBI. If they can do it with its current engine and fix the existing bugs, we would gladly support them. But as it stands, we would like to work with our own methods and develop something that is worth our time and effort. That's why we're working hard on the game in the first place! :)

Thank you very much for your continued support and we will definitely get this game done. We're almost there!

Fun News~

Hola everyone, due to work, universities, Renasci being mortally ill (it's complicated) and unable to go online at all, we had been on halt for a while now. The project has to be returned to my hands and using the scarce time I have to reorganize the project in her stead. But after a talk with my trusty partner, BlueBird's Circle, we decided that we'll release a demo on February 14. 

We were going to surprise you guys this December 25th, but alas, things happened and destroyed our plans. We would like to thank everyone with their patience and we're glad that you guys didn't give up on us! The demo would be extremely short, probably a chapter long, but hey? At least it's a proof that we are working on it. And another good news would be, the translation is now 95% done. All that's left is inputting them in the game.

We still have to fix some images, such as the ever annoying Envy's hair because of artifacts, but we'll get there~

There's also a large chance we can provide IOS, Android and Mac support. But we'll get there in due time. (They're written in LUA so it's like, lol <_<;)

Thanks and have some happy holidays everyone!

Art by Robo-Shark

Some little things

I know we've been sort of inactive lately, it's mostly because of my job that has this project on a halt in terms of development. Currently, I was looking over the old engine and slowly having some features from it to the new one. It's mostly the mouse giving me problems haha.

But the good part is some things that I couldn't do from the old engine was don with the new engine. Except, I'm still having trouble importing some new stuff in...

I'll update you guys on that when I have the chance ;-;

Meeting Ends

Hey there everyone! This is AutumnBirdsCircle, some of you may remember me as BluebirdsCircle until my google account was suspended and I had to make a new one. Copyright be darned! So, my deadline was the 29th, and there's a lot been going on lately. Me and my good friend and editor Alex have been working night and day to get the translations done for Bluebird's Illusion. He's been so fantastic!! Give him a hand everyone! 


I have to say, this passed month has been intense. Waking up only to know you're going back to the exact same line of duty sure gets to you every once in a while. Tomorrow is my 17th birthday (the 29th) and there's nothing more I want more than to say thank you! You guys have given me the greatest present of all, the will to keep at it. Every, "YOU CAN DO IT!!" Makes me feel like episode 63.


To be honest, I want to hate this game since it's consumed my entire life, but I find the will to keep going and going. Anyway, I'm happy to announce it looks like we're on scheduled for the most part! 90% of the translations have been finalized and we're back on track! There's the Search I still need to do, but I can get that done in a little while. Also, thank you Archeia for taking my BS every day~~ ;_; My only regret is that I couldn't finish in time... Blue screen of death is my fiend.

So, thank you. From me to you! 

AutumnBirdsCircle 

Battles In BBI II

Since the RPG option is winning by a large margin, I suddenly have a brain blast from thinking of what we can incorporate, so here are some things that might interest some people gameplay wise. I would also like to add one thing...I might actually change the GUI/Hud/System graphics the game had due to not being able to emulate the exact same style and I need to make new system graphics for this RPG inclusion. Rest assured that it won't be terrible! ...I hope.

Free-Time Related Gameplay

• Remember how in BBI where you can go to certain areas and talk to people? At one point, there are no scenes in these places and most of the time, it's just Edward just saying nothing to do here and stuff. Here's the possibility of incorporating a gameplay in it. To strengthen the Alchemy of the Playable Characters, you can do requests from certain people in the army or from the city. So what does this mean?
• Falman would like to see a material that is made from X. From here you can do some research, or maybe just some small chitter chatter with the random dudes from the military to think of ways to do Falman's request.

• Did you know? In FMA, Edward actually incorporate people's alchemic techniques for his benefit. One example is major Armstrong's earth spike that he uses in battle. Edward also started doing this AFTER he saw it. He used it mostly on the Greed Battle.

• So what does the above thing have to do with this? Well you can discuss some alchemic achievements by other state alchemists so you can use them in battle too. In a sense, Edward is a learning student :)

• This new feature will also open up new character scenarios and add-ons that the original didn't have. And since we removed the Ocean-X cameos since we thought they contribute absolutely nothing to the story, we can use them to give you guys quests/tasks/requests instead, in case none of the army needs one! 

Character Related Skills

• Edward Elric
• If you guys played the GBA games of FMA, it would be something similar, if not, lemme do a very quick summary. What Edward does is that he combos cards/elements to do a specific alchemic type of skill/achievement. This can range from healing, attack, support and debuffs/hex/cursing the enemy. Another good example of this type of battle system is Legend of Legaia from the PS1.

• So his style of gameplay in BBI is mostly this. You guys can combine many different type of elements and discover new alchemic endeavors. Once discovered, they will be freely available anytime on your skill subset so you won't have to input the same thing over and over!

• Edward is also a Jack of All Trades from what I noticed with his Alchemic Skills. So he can also influence his surroundings to make a specific Alchemic Skill stronger in terms of damage.

• Alphonse Elric
• Alphonse for the most part in The GBA version a physical attacker and let's cats do his bidding. After he collects a specific amount. The same thing goes here for the most part except he can also affect the field to make Alchemic Skills stronger. But you must be wondering, if Alphonse doesn't do much alchemy as Edward, what is this for? Which brings us to the next point:

• Roy Mustang
• The dearly beloved and hated Flame Alchemist. His skills are mostly focused on fire, fire, fire and fire. So what does this got to do with Alphonse?

• Did you know? It's revealed that Roy Mustang isn't really that incompetent under the rain or being drenched in water. But it actually makes his alchemy powers STRONGER after he does some alchemic magic. This is revealed in the manga when Risa Hawkeye said, I just assumed you were useless when drenched in water. We will also have to research back and read the manga to remember the explanation, but for now, let's ride with this one recollection.

• And in BBI, Alphonse and Roy are together when fighting, this is why I thought the two should cover each other's lacking in alchemic...accessibility...that Edward has.

And that's it for now, some things might subject to change depending on your feedback guys, so please keep us updated if you guys would like to add some things or dislike or aren't sure about!

There is Progress! Just not that great.

So instead have an Edward as we work on rewriting and translating the remaining days.

Translating Still~

We're still translating Day 3 onward because of the branching points. 

Everyone is busy with Junior/College/Work so we couldn't focus on BBI 100%. 

We're very sorry but we hope that everyone will remain patient!

We're not dead

...It's just that with all the translating on top of college, going to the hospital, working and all those crazy life events--we haven't been able to focus ourselves like we want to.

Despite everything, we CAN leave an image though. It's not very interesting to say the least, but we hope it will do.

★Remastered Version Preview

After many tears, sweat and bloodshed, the remastered version is finally functional!

Enjoy, ENJOY, ENJOOOOOOYYYY

~Words from the crying heart of Archeia~

OMG! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!? It's actually REAL! xD

~Words from the torn heart of Bluebird's Circle~

Yesterday, I updated the progress report like crazy and early this morning. Hopefully everyone is enjoying our progress so far!

▼Remastering Progress

Hi everyone! Renasci speaking and I'm here to deliver the latest news!
Archeia is working very hard but had to take a break today due to her final exams for this trimester. But she left us with these images to show her progress!

Subtitles are not final

Title Screen is finally implemented!

Monologues are in!

CG and Indicator is now properly placed~ The only problem remaining is using the original size

And finally, I'll leave some art~

★Remastering!~~

=comparison between the original JPG and our PNG=

~CLICK PICTURE FOR FULL VIEW~

Bluebird's Circle here on more updates! So--the team decided we were going to remaster everything from the start. Sound effects, smoothing out the sprite work and replacing the low quality tracks with orchestral ones. Everyone's pitching in to help! Just improving and smoothing. :)

=============================

Archeia here, I successfully worked with the engine and the result can be seen below:

This is NOT, I repeat, NOT in the game.

Now it has italics etc. 

Choices are given a cursor instead of changing font text for the sake of readability and accuracy.

★Scans and Scripts

Archeia managed to talked to Bluebird's Circle's earlier and gave us the RAW and modified version of Day 1-4 scripts. We're currently changing how some things are phrased for the sake of fluency~

Bluebird's Circle, Faith, translated Bluebird's Illusion manga pages a while back. Archeia took the liberty of editing and cleaning them. Here you go~

★Collaboration~

I recently contacted the Bluebird's Circle and we are on a collaborative effort to translate the game!
Unfortunately, it'll take a day or two for us to fix the Day 1 - 4 scripts to something comprehensible. But please don't worry, we're working very hard on it!

Archeia on the other hand has been busy with her finals in college. We've been working hard on making the English script work on Nscripter instead of PONscripter or ONScripter-EN due to the lack of the menu bar. It's really taxing and time consuming to do so, but we're doing our best!

That's all of the news for today. Instead enjoy this awesome preview from Bluebird's Circle:

More updates

Bluebird's Circle here! :D Hey guys! I just wanted to say, we've finished the whole script for day one. *hazza!* We'll see what happens!! Most likely, we'll have a demo for you guys soon! ^^ Keep reading for more updates on the patch!

You can ignore Archeia's ranting below but please remember:

We're not giving up on this game and

we'll make sure that it's going to be enjoyable!

With that warning. I'm going on and rant~
I hate to say this but I can see why this game has so many failed translations to English. The script isn't so good. There, I said it!

The game suffers from ellipses overload (ex. Re..........Really......) for almost 95% of the game's script. Almost everyone has ellipses in their sentences every 5-10 of it or some sort. But that wasn't the biggest thing I have against it but rather the one below.

Edward is very unEdward-y, he doesn't react when he's called short, he has SELF-CONTROL which is very unlike him. He's also a complete doormat for some odd reason. I can see him having some self-restraint but not much to this effect.

Example script A:
Fandub: I swore never to put that white, putrid filth in my mouth and I haven't broken that oath since I was seven. I'm not breaking it now. I just don't get how people like that stuff I mean seriously, that stuff's secreted by a cow for hell's sake.

Original: That white stuff that comes out from a cow...how can I drink it?!

And when Al was going to call him short, Edward didn't even try to stop him or react. And when Al cooked food for him that had milk in it, he complained that it has milk and he doesn't want to eat it anymore even though it tastes good.


But!

Even though, Edward greatly dislikes milk, either for its taste, the fact that it is "an opaque, white liquid secreted by a cow" or both. He does, however, greatly enjoy stew and marvels that something comprised mainly of milk can taste so good.


At least Roy Mustang and Alphonse are in character to say the least.

(Ellipses are cut off for the sake of my sanity)

Roy: Speaking of which, this is the first time I've had the opportunity to drink Colonel Elric's tea! But it seems the taste isn't quite enough.
Edward: Well I apologize! I'm not the one who made the tea! It was those people at the other department.
Roy: Is it now? It's not like you could brew such wonderful tea!
Edward: *angry* Re...Really?

I will stop now before I scare people off haha~

Video 1

As promised! :)
Just some things:

1.) The font isn't final. I'm still trying to figure out how to do that one.
2.) Archeia did most of the leg work and didn't sleep at all just to make sure the text is inserted properly. For her first time, this is great! Please praise her for her hard work~
3.) The dialogue is based on Midnight Banshee's (Dejavu had her permission before so we just assumed we're allowed to use it as well since the project was also passed on to us), the Bluebird's Illusion Circle fandub and our own. Proper credits will be given and the like. We'll fix it of course, this is just to demonstrate the...hacking I guess XD

And a huge leap was made

Well they did say, 7th time is the lucky charm. I would like to thank the academy for---I mean Archeia, for finally fixing our main problem. Apparently, all we needed was the super awesome Notepad++. Internet, you never failed us~

**Archeia: After rechecking my email with star she said that she was using Onscripter-EN and I am glad we actually did the right thing and used it! I almost went with PONscripter hahaha.

**Renasci: Yeah, almost got ourselves off track there!

*minutes later, an onscripter-EN error happened*

**Archeia: You know what? Let's just move to PONscripter. I can't find that damn array error.

**Renasci: Me neither...

**Archeia: There we go, much much better. All I have to do is fix that spacing and change the font to something presentable.

**Renasci: Good job! Now all we have to do is find a translator...

**Archeia: ...Snap. I'll have to ask midnight banshee's translations or wait for that fandub.

Now that the text problem is fixed, full steam ahead!

History and a new beginning

This game was used to be translated by a scanlation group called Dejavu, but without any updates, Archeia asked for her files and if she could have the project instead. So she used to translate this game but had to step down due to many obligations. I asked her if she could pass it on to me, she gave me all the tools I will need and the PSD files. The Progress Report shows what I have done for the day, but the screenshots will be over the main blog post.

So far, I'm trying to figure out how to translate the toolbar but the maps should now be all replaced and the like. I still have some images that remain to be translated, but I'll check it out once I finish the basics :)


I finally figured this out. The only problem remaining is the script insertion, for some reason it works for OTHER parts of the game but in the very beginning, I have an issue where Alphonse is calling Edward, Brother. Weirdness '_')

Finally figured this one out as well. Apparently there's a variable called brothers#here, that's why the script has been bugging out on me. So I guess the only way to avoid it overall is to add "text here" in every dialogue. I have problems with my nscripter versions, one is that if I use the chinese one, the text will be sticked together regardless if I had it even spaced. As seen here:

If I use the english version, I get these weird symbols as seen here:

Well, I'll figure something out. Hopefully it won't take long :)

If there are any chinese speakers out there, please let me know as some of these files I cannot translate! Thank you very much for the interest.