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Random Stranger posted:I pulled a lot of our masters from Share which, like anything computer software related that comes out of Japan, is janky as hell. I used to be heavily vested in Dricas back in the dreamcast days trying to toy with PSO and Jesus Christ can they make horrible software.
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Dec 31, 2013 03:23
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flyboi posted:I used to be heavily vested in Dricas back in the dreamcast days trying to toy with PSO and Jesus Christ can they make horrible software. I'm reminded of the days I skimmed Vector to hunt down Japanese freeware games and see what the culture there was like. Some of it just doesn't work even with locale switches and dependencies installed, but I did find quite a few games which worked with no effort or character corruption or what have you. I believe the likelihood of Japanese software being barebones and buggy comes from an environment that leaned towards machines instead of architecture (companies sold machines by the brand and model, instead of selling 'IBM clones' in the US), though I don't have enough information to make a more convincing guess, just wild speculation from how the Japanese PC scene was conveyed overseas (in the form of landmark machines like the MSX, FM-Towns, PC-98 and so on). I'd actually like to know more of why Japanese software is so rickety sometimes. I think it'd be a fascinating bit of research.
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Dec 31, 2013 05:16
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Chronomaster posted:I'd actually like to know more of why Japanese software is so rickety sometimes. I think it'd be a fascinating bit of research. Shot in the dark but I'm thinking it's related to the Japanese language requiring a more powerful machine to word process with, which slowed down the adoption of PC's over there. Writing on a computer with Kanji is most commonly done by writing out a sentence clause phonetically and then hitting spacebar; the computer then tries to figure out what exactly you're trying to say, relying on grammar rules and context to make the best possible guess. This actually requires a fair bit of programming and processing power/memory, similar to having an on-the-fly grammar check, and has to happen at an OS level (e.g. in English, Notepad.exe has no spell/grammar check functionality but the Japanese kanji-finding function will still work here). As a bit of an off-the-wall example, "kumo" in Japanese can mean 'cloud' or 'spider'. If you were to write a sentence like "The dark kumo in the sky meant it was going to rain soon" there is nothing grammatically wrong with kumo meaning 'spider' here, but it is complete nonsense unless you're playing a very weird videogame or something. So when you write out this sentence in Japanese anywhere in the OS it will give you the kumo kanji for 'cloud' which you could then override for the kanji for 'spider' if that's really what you were going for. The OS will keep track of your typing habits and re-order kanji based on how you use them (e.g. if you use unusual Kanji for your name, like "Suzuki" is usually 鈴木 but can also be 須々木, it will start giving you the 2nd spelling as the 1st choice if you pick it enough). While commonplace now, cost-effective computers that could do this didn't really start showing up until the 90's (like 1994-ish, you would ideally want a good 386 with a few megs of RAM at least), and the extra fonts you needed for kanji could be pretty heavy, like a few hundred megs at a time when your hard drive might not be that much bigger than that (this is an optional install in Windows XP for English versions, but if you install XP in Japanese the option is auto-checked and greyed out so you can't deselect it and break the OS, increasing the minimum system requirements); computers were somewhat common before then for us, though, since you could straight-type in English without a grammar checker no problem. Relatedly, basically everything related to programming requires considerable English skills to do well; a lot of software, tools, documentation, and even how they're put together is made with English in mind and very little of it is even available in non-English versions; I consulted for a Japanese company that was deploying Windows XP Embedded images because the official Microsoft tool to make the images was English-only. If English programmers were forced to use, say, Chinese software to program in some weird Chinese programming language, they'd produce some pretty rickety poo poo too. univbee fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Dec 31, 2013 |
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Dec 31, 2013 05:38
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univbee posted:Shot in the dark but I'm thinking it's related to the Japanese language requiring a more powerful machine to word process with, which slowed down the adoption of PC's over there. Nah, that's not really right. Remember that Metal Gear and its sequel were originally written for the MSX, the most popular Japanese home PC. Sure, Japanese programmers need to learn new words and new syntax, but guess what? Literally everyone else in the world does. Unless you're assuming that people somewhere natively understand what things like "char[] array = new char[] { 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd' };" mean.
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Dec 31, 2013 06:04
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Nipponophile posted:Nah, that's not really right. Remember that Metal Gear and its sequel were originally written for the MSX, the most popular Japanese home PC. I think he has a valid guess, especially when you're dealing with characters that don't represent anything that you read natively (which could probably be argued as to whether Latin characters are common enough in Japan, but for this sake let us say it is not). There are also programming languages that are Japanese friendly, but then you come up against APIs that are written with English speakers in mind. You try to create a low level API on your own, and you have to deal with a symbolic language using English mnemonics (could easily be wrong about this. Can't imagine changing the symbol names back and forth between languages is hard). Every step working in a non-native environment just means more trouble down the line. That, and the resulting late adoption would easily explain why Japanese x86 programs seem to lag behind American or European developed software. It seems pretty reasonable. EDIT: Also, the label you used for the char array example would have given away what was going on with that instruction. English speakers with basic Algebra could probably figure that all out. Chronomaster fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Dec 31, 2013 |
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Dec 31, 2013 06:24
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Nipponophile posted:Nah, that's not really right. Remember that Metal Gear and its sequel were originally written for the MSX, the most popular Japanese home PC. The MSX definitely had its share of titles in Japan but there have only been like two or three or so other successful Japanese-made PC game series that weren't MMO's or Hentai games. The programming syntax itself isn't so bad but the lack of good documentation and tools is the real issue. This is obviously going to vary based on specific situations but before I came along to help that company with XP Embedded they were pretty much just taking their best guess with all the options because there was zero Japanese documentation for it.
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Dec 31, 2013 06:28
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Chronomaster posted:I think he has a valid guess, especially when you're dealing with characters that don't represent anything that you read natively (which could probably be argued as to whether Latin characters are common enough in Japan, but for this sake let us say it is not). What? I would be amazed if the average Japanese schoolchild couldn't recite the alphabet forwards and backwards. It is ubiquitous in Japanese culture. I really don't understand this thing about Japanese programmers being universally terrible as a culture. Do you guys honestly think that corporations like Sony, Matsushita, Nintendo, Sega, Namco, Capcom, and all the others rose to prominence using purely Japanese programming languages written and used only by Japanese people? The primary development language on the PS2 was C, for pete's sake, and look at all the amazing JRPGs and such that came out there.
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Dec 31, 2013 06:34
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univbee posted:The MSX definitely had its share of titles in Japan but there have only been like two or three or so other successful Japanese-made PC game series that weren't MMO's or Hentai games. I heard that this is because people in Japan don't have much room for big PC rigs, so most gaming was done on consoles with other people. The generalization is that only turbonerds in Japan have gaming rigs, therefore MMOs and porn.
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Dec 31, 2013 06:34
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Waffleman_ posted:I heard that this is because people in Japan don't have much room for big PC rigs, so most gaming was done on consoles with other people. The generalization is that only turbonerds in Japan have gaming rigs, therefore MMOs and porn. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's any better today, but a few years ago you had to be careful if you told people you were a PC Gamer because they would immediately assume "hentai games". And that's really it, people tended not to have PC's at home in Japan the same way the West did in the 80's and 90's, which is the kind of thing that would have a cascading effect. Nipponophile posted:What? I would be amazed if the average Japanese schoolchild couldn't recite the alphabet forwards and backwards. It is ubiquitous in Japanese culture. The lettering is common but English isn't. It's getting there, but still has a ways to go. quote:I really don't understand this thing about Japanese programmers being universally terrible as a culture. Do you guys honestly think that corporations like Sony, Matsushita, Nintendo, Sega, Namco, Capcom, and all the others rose to prominence using purely Japanese programming languages written and used only by Japanese people? The primary development language on the PS2 was C, for pete's sake, and look at all the amazing JRPGs and such that came out there. The point being made initially was that a lot of PC software was quite fragile and required very specific things in order to work right (like requiring that the non-Unicode locale be set to Shift-JIS and stuff like that). You see this in the English professional world for specialized business software, but it's relatively uncommon outside of there (e.g. you don't really see it in off-the-shelf software or popular shareware downloads), while it's a lot more commonplace in Japan. Why that is, is an interesting question, and maybe it has to do with the fact that it wasn't until the late 90's that you started seeing a bigger base of different computer models in Japan.
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Dec 31, 2013 06:51
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 The sun is setting on 2013 and Arino rides out one last time before the end of the year as he challenges the long awaited Derby Stallion. Will this game be a photo finish? This episode was translated by zari-gani and checked by Hirayuki, both of whom did a metric ton of work on it. BTW, if you want to know anything about Japanese horse racing you can now ask us because we know a disturbing amount about the subject for people who aren't actually betting on these horses. Torrent Download
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Jan 1, 2014 01:21
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Random Stranger posted:
 was going on, so I really can't wait to watch it. Thank you guys for doing this!  Also, Toujima-horse is kinda disturbing. 
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Jan 1, 2014 01:29
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Here's an interesting fact for you, all the horses in the game are real horses (except the ones that Arino creates, of course). Any that weren't actively racing at the time appear to get to use their real names. Ones that were active, however, have their names slightly changed to "hide" their identity. I should say, I haven't confirmed the name change for every single one of the dozens of horses that are racing in the game, but it was true for at least ten of them and I'll assume that the pattern holds. I have so many things I want to crack jokes about with this episode but it would spoil one of the craziest, weirdest challenges.
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Jan 1, 2014 01:39
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Thanks for the episode! It's currently 10:52 PM in the eastern US, and my torrent software estimates the torrent will finish in 10 minutes, and an average episode of Game Center CX is 58 minutes. I know what I'm doing for the rest of 2013!
bdr9 fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jan 1, 2014 |
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Jan 1, 2014 04:52
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Awesome. Thank you. Game Center CX best show best thread.
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Jan 1, 2014 05:23
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Random Stranger posted:I have so many things I want to crack jokes about with this episode but it would spoil one of the craziest, weirdest challenges. I hope you're making note of those jokes so you can use them when you think it's safe. This is an episode I desperately want to know more about how you translated certain things.
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Jan 1, 2014 07:37
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That was one of the most hilarious GCCX episodes I've ever seen. From the horses names, the cameo appearances, the retrospective, Kan peeking through the door and Arino's reaction, all the way to the ending-- GCCX tends to be entertaining, but this one was laugh-out-loud funny.
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Jan 1, 2014 08:57
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Yes, Derby Stallion was even more amazing than usual.
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Jan 1, 2014 10:27
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That was a good episode but I don't think a great one, simply because so much of the game was kind of dull and saved only by Arino's own charisma.
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Jan 1, 2014 11:10
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It's almost completely Arino for me anyways, it's him who makes the show shine for people like me who don't really have many/any fond memories of the games of old (probably). I'm sure people who lived and gamed during the particular era get that extra nostalgia splash from the show though. Oftentimes it's Arino's performance outside the game that makes or breaks things.
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Jan 1, 2014 12:49
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Honestly, I thought the episode was kind of boring. Not much of anything to get excited about, and not much funny happened, either. The lack of a tamage segment also hurts the episode. It was mostly looking at the same screen over and over with occasional shots of horse-shaped blobs crossing a finish line. I'm not sure what they were thinking with this game, to be honest.
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Jan 1, 2014 17:17
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I thought that episode was hilarious but it was definitely a slow starter.
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Jan 1, 2014 17:21
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Yeah, it is completely Arino and company that made it so enjoyable. The game itself was pretty boring. Not an episode I'd recommend for newcomers to the show.
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Jan 1, 2014 20:51
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Good job with all the horse name puns, some of those must have been pretty hard to find a suitably horse-related word for. Does anyone know the name of the song that plays over the episode contents preview?
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Jan 1, 2014 22:08
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Potsticker posted:Not an episode I'd recommend for newcomers to the show. Speaking of, what would you recommend for newcomers to the show? I told someone about it and they were interested in seeing an episode next time I met up with them.
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Jan 2, 2014 01:58
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Zebia posted:Speaking of, what would you recommend for newcomers to the show? I told someone about it and they were interested in seeing an episode next time I met up with them.
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Jan 2, 2014 02:05
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Pyrovile posted:There are some suggestions in the OP, but I feel like the best answer to this question is always a game that you (or in this case they) are familiar with. I agree here. When someone first told me about the show, I wasn't super interested. But then when I looked into the episode list and saw which ones were translated, and saw some of my favorite games listed? I immediately had to check it out.
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Jan 2, 2014 02:08
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Gyre posted:Good job with all the horse name puns, some of those must have been pretty hard to find a suitably horse-related word for. It was actually surprisingly easy, asides from Kanter. Random Stranger came up with that one when I asked the team for help. For those interested in the original names/puns: Uma=horse, so all Arino did was put an "u" before "ma" in all the names (save for Urakawa). Toujiuma, Nakayauma, Katayauma, Inoko Umax, Umakawa Shun. The big exception was Kan's horse, where he just added ba (also means horse) to make it "Kanba".
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Jan 2, 2014 02:30
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Zebia posted:Speaking of, what would you recommend for newcomers to the show? I told someone about it and they were interested in seeing an episode next time I met up with them. That's not an easy question to answer. I think the first one I saw was Ultraman, when I was looking through Youtube for tokusatsu games and that got me personally interested. At first I thought the less familiar I was with a game, the more enjoyable the episode, but there's been a variety of quality all around. Maybe see what genre of games they enjoy? For Puzzle games, Wrecking Crew, Solomon's Key, and Tower of Babel are all good. The Chief does well at puzzle games so they're a good way to show how good he can be. For Quiz games, I think Child Rearing Quiz: My Angel was really great. Though thinking about it I'm not sure there's been a bad Quiz episode. Platformers: Mystery of Atlantis (or Challenger. I get those two games mixed up for some reason. Maybe both were good?), Umihara Kawase, Legacy of the Wizard, Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa, Dragon Buster-- These are usually ones where Arino struggles a lot and sometimes gets a lot of help from the crew. This is most likely the place to start. Quest of Ki and Mighty Bomb Jack are both really good, bu Tokimemo is hilarious, but probably not one I'd show someone as the very first episode. Densha de Go similarly is good, but maybe not for the very first episode. I liked Milon's Secret Castle, but it was a childhood favorite and I know that game back and forth. Paris-Dakkar Rally might be a good one, too. It's such a crazy game on its own that the spectacle of the thing would be entertaining to show off, but in this case Arino and crew are there as well.
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Jan 2, 2014 02:35
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Of all the places I didn't expect to learn about horse incest...
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Jan 2, 2014 02:54
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Potsticker posted:Quest of Ki and Mighty Bomb Jack are both really good, bu Er, I think you left a thought unfinished there. Or you might be that one boss from E.V.O.: Search For Eden Scaly Haylie fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jan 2, 2014 |
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Jan 2, 2014 03:22
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Had to have been one of the funniest episodes in a while if only for just how much everyone was into the actual racing and watching the results play out. But I must have replayed the ice cream segment dozens of times. The look on Arino's face when he pulls up the sign leaves me in stitches.
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Jan 2, 2014 03:32
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Lizard Wizard posted:Er, I think you left a thought unfinished there. Haha. I don't know how that happened. Well, those are good challenges. But if you want the full experience it's a lot more than just watching one episode.
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Jan 2, 2014 03:36
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Lizard Wizard posted:Er, I think you left a thought unfinished there. Now I kinda want to see them play E.V.O. on the show. Loved that game  Thanks for the new episode! Gonna get to downloadin'
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Jan 2, 2014 06:24
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Finally watched the Ocarina of Time episodes and I liked it a lot, but was a little bummed the assistant did three dungeons (and three mini dungeons) for him when Arino was away. I know it probably would took longer if he didn't do that, but a shame to not see Arino's reaction to those dungeons.
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Jan 2, 2014 06:45
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Gyre posted:Good job with all the horse name puns, some of those must have been pretty hard to find a suitably horse-related word for. Serebro - Gun, if we're talking about the same thing.
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Jan 2, 2014 10:50
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Nipponophile posted:Of all the places I didn't expect to learn about horse incest... As soon as I saw that the game had simulated bloodlines and such I thought to myself there's no way Arino isn't going to gently caress up and make some kind of inbred cripple horse without even realising.
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Jan 2, 2014 12:05
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The fact that they never tell him about it on air makes me think they didn't realize it until they were done filming and went through the footage again. It's pretty cool that it can happen in the game though.
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Jan 2, 2014 12:51
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It's not that surprising, lineage is a huge deal when it comes to nearly any animal breeding, from pedigree cats and dogs to working animals to conservation efforts with endangered species.
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Jan 2, 2014 14:34
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RabidWeasel posted:As soon as I saw that the game had simulated bloodlines and such I thought to myself there's no way Arino isn't going to gently caress up and make some kind of inbred cripple horse without even realising. It's hard to avoid Northern Taste. It was a real horse that fathered a significant portion of Japanese race horses. There were over 1700 foals. Northern Taste's father was even more prolific. Northern Dancer was the busiest stud in the world and his stud fee was a world record...
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Jan 2, 2014 15:58
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Random Stranger posted:It's hard to avoid Northern Taste. It was a real horse that fathered a significant portion of Japanese race horses. There were over 1700 foals. Are you telling me this horse racing game simulates real Japanese horse racing history? Edit: I just looked it up, wow, I'm kind of stunned that was a thing.
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Jan 2, 2014 16:05
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