VNREADER ADVANCE GUIDE/TUTORIAL PART 2

About the tutorial

Part 2 of the advance VNreader tutorial. An all-in-one program to translate as well as submit translations for Visual Novels.

I made names to important parts of the program. This tutorial assumes that you are done adding a game in your Spring Board which is covered in the basics.
Last update: June 4, 2014

Topics Covered:

• Side Controls

Related tutorials:
Basics 1
Advance series Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4  | 5 

 Launching your game with VNR

1. Open up the Spring Board and double click on the game icon you want to play.
2. Be a bit patient with VNR if your computer is slow, it will certainly crash if you run too many programs.It will download comments/subtitles/translation from their annot.me site.
3. Eventually your game would appear with a menu on the right side, I’ll call it Side Controls.
   • If it disappears,  simply hover your mouse to the left side of your game window.

Side Controls

 Menu

 

Text settings. 

The Text Settings will detect a game dialog (the in-game text/character talks/story). Most modern visual novel games can be easily detected, however some games won’t due to the fact that their game makers have securely encrypted their data to protect themselves from copycats, the rest of them just sucks at coding a proper engine. You need a hook code (a proper address of the game dialog) so VNreader can grab it and translate it for you.

• This is where you could select the correct game text thread. (The game dialog)
• This is where you put the /H code (hook code) for games that have complicated game engines.

This is an important part, because VNReader requires no hacking at all; It relies on the game’s in-game text. It will match the in-game text to the submitted translation.

If you are looking for /H Codes, it’s available AGTHDB or you could request one at Hongfire.

 Selecting the correct text dialog / Making subtitles appear

A couple of boxes will appear in the Text Settings.

CATEGORY	DESCRIPTION
dialog	Select this if the text detected is the game dialog.
chara	Some game engines separate character names from the character dialog, select this if the box show character names.
other	If there are texts that don’t belong to the first two categories above but still plays an important role of the game.
ignore	For text garbage that is not usable.

 In this example, I need to set H-code @a653332 as dialog in order for VNReader to detect the in-game text. Click the correct dialog button for subtitles to properly appear.

 Adding /H code & Edit /H code

1. Click “Edit /H Hook Code”
2. Paste or input /H code in the text box
3. Click “Save”

 

Voice Setting

This controls the TTS (text-to-speech) programs that you’ve installed in the Preferences.

1. When you open your game, skip to the part where the voiceless protagonist starts talking. Make sure his/her name appears in the dialog box. [screenshot]
2. Open the Voice Setting in the Menu
3. Click Enable [screenshot]
4. Click back on the game and the Voice Setting would detect character names if not click again on the game till the voice box can detect character names.
5. If you want your unvoiced character to talk, click on the check box to enable TTS program. [Screenshot]
6. Since I selected VOICEROID Yuraki as my default TTS program, VNR automatically opens Yukari and puts it behind your game so it won’t be distracting. If you choose Google TTS, no program would pop-out.
7. Now my voiceless protagonist can now speak!

• (Aside) means that there are no character names detected in the game dialog, this is usually the part where the character talks to himself or  the narration of the story. I check this one if the game has no narration voice.
• If the game is totally voiceless I recommend checking the “Enable voices for new characters” box.
• You can add gender to the character names in the voice setting but this won’t affect the TTS program.
• Click on “Refresh” if one of the character detection is wrong.
• Click on “Clear” to delete all TTS preferences.

Preferences

Covered in part 1.

Shared dictionary

Much like translator aggregator and translator helper’s substitution function, the shared dictionary can help substitute dialog, formal names and replace mistranslated words with correct translation. This can be game-specific or general. The amazing thing is, everyone is contributing for a better translation.

FUNCTION	DESCRIPTION
Add	Used to add words in the shared dictionary.
Duplicate	Duplicates the selected row/entry.
Delete	Deletes the selected row/entry.
Improve	Edit the selected row/entry.
User	Shows the user information of the person who submitted the dictionary entry.
Game	Shows the game information of the selected row/entry.

#	DESCRIPTION
1	User Information of the person who submitted the selected entry as well as time stamp of the submission.
2	Search dictioanary entries. Add @ for usernames, # for game titles.
3	Main menu for Shared Dictionary.
4	Extra functions menu. Backup dictionary, get statistics and etc.

To edit dictionary entry

Left click on the row and click Improve

 Japanese dictionary

This uses the built-in dictionary that you have downloaded in the Preferences. You can look-up words here.

 Test Machine Translator

Breaks down how the machine translate the sentence.

Subtitle Editor

Use this to edit user-submitted translation of the current running game.

1. Left click on the entry row.
2. Click “Improve” to edit translation.

Subtitle Maker

 More info will be added soon.

Game information

Covered in part 1.

Game discussion

Re-redirects you the game forum where you can discuss with a fan or translator.

Spring Board

Covered in part 1.

Game Board

Covered in part 1.

 

Update shared subtitles

Updates shared translation of the game as well as submitting your translation online. In case you wondered why your translation didn’t show up in other user computers.

Notification

Displays the program’s notification corner again in case you missed it.

 

Option

Modifies the Subtitle Box appearance and behavior

1.) Enable/Disable translation/subtitles.

2.) Configures how the subtitles look and it’s behavior

3.) Enables copying game text to clipboard. Useful if you’re using another translation program or simply wants game text to be copied automatically.

4.)Translation for the title of the game window.

5.)Configure the look of the “Subtitle Box”.

Zoom  – is the font size of the subtitles

Width – the width of the “subtitle box”

Count – is the maximum value of text for VNR to consider

G.I. – Glow intensity
G.R – Glow Radius

 Slim

Turns the Side Controls to a minimal appearance and shows the Comment Input Bar at the  bottom.

 

Sub

Show/Hide the Comment Input Bar

 Speak

Enable/Disable TTS

 

Capture

Takes a screenshot of the game and automatically saves it in the desktop and clipboard.

 Transp

Show/Hide background shadow of the Subtitle Box. Often referred as Glow Mode.

 FS

Turn your game to full screen mode. I recommend not touching this if you want VNR to work.

 Pause

Show/Hide Subtitle Box.

Closing remarks:

This ends part 2 of the advance tutorial.  Proceed to part 3,  it covers how to improve machine translation as well as shared dictionaries.

Help and Support

If you have problems in setting up VN reader, the official VNR forum is the place you want to go. {Here} Ignore the “Site under scontruction” and go register for an account. Go to “Subject” >”Visual Novel Reader” and create a topic there.

P.S.

I do not tolerate people copy pasting this to their site/forum. I prefer, you link back to this tutorial instead. It pains me that those people could not even answer questions from aspiring translators, many were left discouraged because they weren’t directed to the tutorial where I could have had provide answers to their questions. Thank you for the ones who reported the incident to me. I’m sorry for the watermarks. I really had to do it…..

Image Credits:

• Glasses by MONQMONK
• Dot Kareshi by Rejet