Best viewed with a fixed-width font. 80 character width - Extend window horizontally until you can see the whole line -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haru no Ashioto -The Footsteps of Spring- Standalone Unofficial English Demo Fansubbed 2004 by insani and No Name Losers Version 1.0 FINAL ### CONTENTS SECTION 1 - CRITICAL INFO 1.1. System requirements 1.2. Enabling Japanese support in Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 1.3. WARNING: About the "Haruoto Demo" font 1.4. Known issues 1.5. Version history SECTION 2 - GAME INFO 2.1. What is Haru no Ashioto -The Footsteps of Spring-? 2.2. Is there any adult content in this game? 2.3. How to play this game 2.4. Essential notes SECTION 3 - SUB INFO 3.1. The story behind the project 3.2. Will you be completing the rest of the game? 3.3. Can you fansub ? 3.4. Fansub credits 3.5. Contacting us and additional links ### SECTION 1 - CRITICAL INFO ## 1.1. System Requirements Unlike minori's other games, you will need a decent computer in order to run this demo. This is because there are heavy special effects used, plus video is mandatory. CPU 700MHz minimum, 1GHz+ recommended ** MMX, SSE technology supported MEMORY 256MB for lag-free transitions, 512MB recommended if multi-tasking HDD 250 megabytes, 7200 RPM hard drive speed recommended VIDEO 16-bit color at 800x600, 32-bit color recommended for optimum video output SOUND 16-bit DirectSound compatible sound chip/card OS Windows 98j/MEj Or Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 with Japanese support installed ** THIS GAME WILL ONLY RUN ON THE JAPANESE VERSIONS OF WINDOWS 98 AND WINDOWS ME. IF YOU HAVE THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THESE OPERATING SYSTEMS, THIS GAME WILL NOT WORK. SOFTWARE DirectX 8.1b or higher ** Go to http://www.microsoft.com/directx/ for the latest build. XviD MPEG4 codec, Koepi's 2004.05.06. V1.0.1 build or newer ** Go to http://www.koepi.org for the latest build. ** Or you can use the FFDshow-alpha filter which is a universal MPEG4 decoder. It's at... http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=53761 -> (Use ffdshow-alpha, NOT ffdshow) ## 1.2. Enabling Japanese support in Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 Even though everything in this demo is in English, the text encoding is still in Japanese SHIFT-JIS. Therefore you will need to enable Japanese support on your computer if you haven't done so already. Here's the walkthrough ... ** Windows 2000 1. Bring up the CONTROL PANEL and go to REGIONAL OPTIONS. 2. In the LANGUAGE SETTINGS window, make sure JAPANESE is checked. 3. Hit the SET DEFAULT button. Set your system locale to JAPANESE and press OK. 4. Press OK again, install any necessary files, and reboot your computer. ** Windows XP 1. Bring up the CONTROL PANEL and go to REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE OPTIONS. 2. Go to the LANGUAGES tab. Make sure the INSTALL FILES FOR EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES box is checked. Install any necessary files. 3. Go to the ADVANCED tab. Set your language for non-Unicode programs to JAPANESE. 4. Press OK and reboot your computer. I don't have a copy of Windows Server 2003 so I don't know the exact instructions on how to enable Japanese support there. It's probably very similar to one of the above guides, so there's nothing to worry about. Alternately, if you already have all the Japanese support files installed but don't want to change your system locale (and restart your computer), you can use AppLocale to run Haruoto while retaining your English system locale. Note that this program only works in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. ** Grab AppLocale at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx ## 1.3. WARNING: About the "Haruoto Demo" font This font is a hack of the Japanese font "Rufu-ji" and is required in order to display the game text properly. However, even though it has a full set of kana, DO NOT USE THIS FONT OUTSIDE OF THE GAME. We have changed some of the kanji in order to display names properly, and I don't think you'll be too happy when "ima" shows up as "Yuzuki". ## 1.4. Known issues Did you find some "bugs" in the game? Chances are that we know about them already, and they're addressed here ... + Don't change the font. If you do, the display will mess up. We had to make a custom font in order for the names to display correctly in some areas. + Viewing the log in novel mode (the mode where the entire screen has a purple hue) might corrupt the display of some of the character names. We couldn't fix this, and it's pretty trivial anyway, since novel mode only occurs in the tech demo portion of the game. + Due to a glitch, the close-up of Nagomi in the hospital room doesn't have any mouth movements. We couldn't fix this, either. ## 1.5. Version history 2004.07.01. Initial and final release. We will not make a V1.1 because we are satisfied with this product. ### SECTION 2 - GAME INFO ## 2.1. What is Haru no Ashioto -The Footsteps of Spring-? Haruoto is a bishoujo game (you might know them as 'hentai games' or 'eroge') that was released for the PC on July 23rd, 2004. It's the third bishoujo game from minori (http://www.minori.ph) after Bittersweet Fools and Wind -a breath of heart-. According to the Japanese, this game is much better than minori's first two offerings (Haruoto has an average score of 85% compared to 75% for Bitter- sweet Fools and 67% for Wind -a breath of heart-). In fact, they have ranked it as one of the top ten games of 2004. See ... http://erogamescape.dyndns.org/~ap2/ero/toukei_kaiseki/toukei_year.php?year=2004 This game is not related to Bittersweet Fools or Wind -a breath of heart-. However, nbkz Sakai is still the game director, and Makoto Shinkai did the opening movie, just like in Wind. As of this demo release, there is no anime series for Haruoto. There isn't one planned in the near future, either, but don't be surprised if you see it in 2005 or 2006. They did make an anime out of Wind -a breath of heart-, after all. This demo is a fusion of two official Haruoto demos by minori. The first part of the game is a technical demo which was released two months before the game in order for minori to work out any kinks in the engine. We used the last version of the technical demo, V1.15. The second part of the game is the main demo which covers the first chapter of the game. Overall, this demo is about 1250 text blocks long (equivalent to five anime episodes of text), and is 25% larger than the Wind -a breath of heart- demo. The good thing is that there's a complete save/load system in this demo, so you don't have to worry about how much free time you have. ## 2.2. Is there any adult content in this game? Not in the demo. However, there are a couple of ecchi scenes so don't get your 10 year-old to play this game. Besides, he wouldn't be able to understand the story. The full game does have a good amount of adult content, so keep that in mind if you feel like purchasing it because you think it's good. ## 2.3. How to play this game The first part of the demo is basically a tutorial and will show you how to play. Just press Enter or left click to go through the text. One thing that isn't mentioned is that you can hit CTRL to make the text scroll at mach speed. ## 2.4. Essential notes We assume you know what the primary honorifics are and what they mean. If you don't, read this primer at: http://www.derik.org/Gateway/novels/honorific.htm Yuzuki's random rambling - Give yourself a pat on the back if you got all of her jokes in the tech demo. Otherwise, here's a explanation of the harder ones. "Yes... it's so cruel! You'll be stuck this way forever and be the object of worship of all the wannabe big-brothers in the world ..." -> These people are called 'rorikon' (or the English spelling which is 'lolicon'). These people like very young-looking, child-like anime characters. They also play games like this one. But don't let that scare you off into not playing this game. ;) "Mr. Sakurano doesn't even have a picture of himself included, so I'm worried whether or not he might return." -> Tatsuki isn't in the technical demo. Therefore, he wouldn't have a picture of himself included in bg.paz, which is where all the CG is stored. However, this joke is a bit ruined since our demo's bg.paz does have a picture of Tatsuki (for the main demo). Treat yourself to something tasty if you got this line without needing to read this! Nagomi: "I've got a bad feeling about this." Yuzuki: "Nagomi-chan, are you having morning-after sickness? We're still students, so please be careful of your actions!" -> Morning-after sickness is the condition some women get when they become pregnant, of course. Nagomi: "... You're breaking my heart, guys. Keep it up." Yuzuki: "So despite your appearance, you have a heart of glass." -> Glass breaks easily. You should have got this. Nagomi: "Okay, okay already! ... I don't know why, but I'm sorry it ever happened!" Yuzuki: "That's a completely incoherent statement, but I think I understand what you're trying to say." -> Nagomi is apologizing to the gods for anything that caused her to be in this tech demo with the two blockheads. ONIICHAN - If you don't know what this is, you obviously haven't experienced Wind -a breath of heart-. Anyway, it just means "older brother". Remember that Yuu is Tatsuki's cousin, not sister. TEACHER - You probably know what the idea of this is. For those who don't, EMPLOYMENT it's not an exam you take to get your teaching credentials. EXAM Instead, you take it in order to land a teaching job. Here's what we changed from the Japanese versions besides the text and CG, if you're interested ... + The menu option "insani's web site" originally sent you to minori's web site. However, we have changed it for our own evil purposes. >:D + About 25 lines in the main demo were removed or combined with previous lines because they were too heavy-handed and/or redundant. + The combined music track total of the official demos was 7. We have doubled the music selection to 14 because we want you to get a better taste of the game's music. + All music tracks were re-encoded off the Haru no Ashioto OST, "Solstice" for maximum quality that 112kbps OGG can provide. + We used a high quality version of the opening video that was in a gaming magazine's promo CD, improving on the very-crappy MPEG encode which was in the official demo. ### SECTION 3 - SUB INFO ## 3.1. The story behind the project The people in the Wind Translation Project were bored one day in the middle of July 2004 and wanted to do something else for a little while. minori's new game turned out to be our next victim. It took Ed less than 15 minutes (no, I'm not kidding) to figure out minori's new PAZ format. What was even better was that the script files weren't encrypted unlike Wind! We could edit the script code directly, making us able to delete lines, add in CG, and script in lots of other funky ideas! There was a problem with mouth movements in the demo. When we changed the Japanese names to their English equivalents, the people's mouths didn't move. sagara figured out that the animation files stored the Japanese names them- selves, and made a little tool to modify the animation files so that mouth movement would work with English names! Reikoku was supposed to be the translator for this project, but he was busy with real-life, moving from his mondo-expensivo home to a run-down apartment. gp32, the main translator for the Wind Translation Project, decided to do the whole thing. No one knows why. This was truly a team effort, with everyone from the project pitching in to help complete the puzzle. When the whole thing was all said and done, it was a joint fansub with a whole bunch of different groups. However, using the name "Wind Translation Project" isn't really a good idea for a non-Wind product. Therefore, we decided on using our individual groups in the credit listing. But that was problematic. Observe: -> Haru no Ashioto English Demo [CnC+es+MnT+nnl].exe (CnC=Chibi no Choco, es=EroShift, MnT=Miyuki no Tamari, nnl=No Name Losers) Isn't that uuuugly? We thought that it was ridiculous because we had worked together for over three months. gp32 didn't want to be associated with Miyuki no Tamari any more, either. Ed, gp32, and sagara all decided to merge into one super-duper eroge group called "insani". NNL would remain since NNL was the only group out of the four which had more than one member involved. And so, the filename became: -> Haru no Ashioto English Demo [insani+nnl].exe Muuuuch better. The terms 'WTP' and 'EroShift' were no more! gp32 decided to make a spiffy new web site outlining both this project and the Wind project. madgat obtained a super-duper version of the final opening video (the one with Yuzuki skydiving) and we used that. Gotta keep the minority spirit, after all! Landcaster did his usual high-bitrate encoding because we really don't need to conform to some silly 175/233MB filesize for a game demo. We might as well keep it at the highest video quality possible. Unlike most other eroge game translation projects, this was a secret project until the moment we released it. Now that it's been released, we're quietly working on Wind -a breath of heart- again. ## 3.2. Will you be completing the rest of the game? Complete the demo and you'll find out. ## 3.3. Can you fansub ? Go to insani's web site (http://www.insani.org) and read the FAQ. ## 3.4. Fansub credits The credits are shown at the completion of the demo. Here's a text version if you want it ... Translation gp32 [insani] (Seung Park) NSIS installer File format hacking ChocoEd [insani] (Edward Keyes) Animation hacking sagara [insani] (Kevin Tardiff) Co-ordination GipFace [NNL] (Dave Lim) Editing Executable hacking Script insertion Video onscreens Video encoding Landcaster [NNL] Graphic editing gp32 Landcaster HQ video raw source madgat [NNL] Primary quality check Quality check NamaeX [independent] zalas [seichi] ## 3.5. Contacting us and additional links Do you want to give us some feedback? We'll listen to anything you say, ranging from any translation/editing/coding errors you spot to a simple thank you! ** Give us some feedback! insani http://www.insani.org (General questions/comments about the demo should be directed here.) No Name Losers http://www.nnl1.com [#nnl @ irc.zirc.org] (Want to contact one of the NNL members directly? Do it here.) ** Anime/fansub related links. BitTorrent list - AnimeSuki http://www.animesuki.com (BT archive for 'ethical' anime fansubs) BitTorrent list - MIRKX http://www.mirkx.com (Like AnimeSuki ... except there's 'unethical' stuff, too <_<) Renai-Games message board http://groups.yahoo.com/group/renai_games/ (All-age discussion on bishoujo games like this one) GameFAQs Haruoto: http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gentopic.php?board=921589 (If you want to give us feedback about this demo but don't want to email insani or NNL, use this message board. We check it every day.) ** English bishoujo game localizers. Convince them to pick up this game! Tell them to play this demo if they want proof on how good it is! (WARNING: Adult content) G-Collections http://www.g-collections.com Peach Princess http://www.peapri.com ... End of readme TXT, now enjoy the game!