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Credits

New Love Plus+ EN is an active, ongoing project. It stands on well over a decade of community work on the Love Plus series. The people and teams below made this one possible.

Current work

Active development is currently down to a single maintainer. People from the project's Discord chip in when they can, mostly filling knowledge gaps on the game's file formats and 3DS internals rather than doing translation or editing work.

Zhoumaru: a large UI overhaul and translation work on the current patch.

Project lineage

The English translation of Love Plus has changed hands several times over the years. Each group's work carried into the next, and this project inherits all of it. The Dev History page has the full timeline; the short version:

• TLWiki group: started the first Love Plus (DS) translation and laid the early groundwork.
• jjjewel & team: completed the original Love Plus / LovePlus+ (DS) English patch. jjjewel gave explicit permission for her team's translated scripts to be reused and integrated into the 3DS sequel.
• Dgrin: de facto coordinator of the effort (roughly 2015–present). Ran the GBAtemp threads, wrote the install guides, managed script integration, announced the first public partial patch on 15 August 2017, runs the LovePlusProject GitHub org and Discord, and announced the NLPPCTR MOD project (2025). Contemporary Proboards posts credit the same organizing role to the handle .:[R]Plus:.; the project's own credits name it only as “Discord: LovePlusProject.”
• Makein team: opened the GBAtemp request thread and maintain NLPPGit; credited alongside Dgrin for work on the 3DS project.
• MGDanon: worked out the HANS delivery method and produced the first in-game English proof of concept for the 3DS game (2016).
• LovePlusProject: the GitHub organization and Discord that host the project's tooling and script repos (NLPPATCH, NLPTextTool, NLPUnpacker, NLPPCTR) and coordinate contributions. Run by Dgrin (above).
• gdkchan & Demonslayerx8: reverse-engineering and programming on the New Love Plus unpacker, used to extract the 3DS game's models and files for modding. gdkchan also wrote NLPTextTool, which defines the .dbin2 script format still used today.
• Mayne, DMeisterX, Shakkolvan, Scarymonsters, Kai, and Oli: the translation and editing team behind the earlier English patch effort, now inactive. Between them: image and script translation, proofreading, image editing, stability checking, GitHub management, and official-guide translation. Their finished work carries into this project.

NLPPATCH project contributors

NLPPATCH is an earlier community translation/patching effort this project's tooling draws on. Its own contributors, by area:

• Hacking: deaknaew, froid_san, kiwiz (Kai), gdkchan, MGDanon, Makein, Chulio, Zander1995, Nagato, Asia81, internetakias, ofan, NCDyson, Aikin-Ai
• 28% translation: jjjewel's team's project
• "New script": Bango, Cozy Translations
• LP to NLP+ integration: impeio92, Keimeow
• Proofread/correction: Bango, Incolbum
• TextR, Strings & Stringu translation: Jaslyn
• Graphic translation: eyenight, Jaslyn, Karuta, Bango
• Graphic editing: Kaizerscythe, Shakkolvan, Yuuyuun, bigcookie

Several of these names, notably impeio92, froid_san, deaknaew, Chulio, Jaslyn, Nagato, and the graphics translators, come from Dgrin's in-thread credit lists rather than surviving posts by those people; many of the original posts were later deleted. Treat them as credited second-hand.

k7ra: a 2020 machine-translation pass and a Citra-only menu / image patch, with NLPPGit release activity from that period. Referenced as a translation-asset source. rinkohot1337: a separate 2020 independent machine translation of about 401 scripts.

This patch

NewLovePlusPlusEngPatcher: the English patch tooling, UI work, script packaging, and project maintenance.

This fan translation and patch builds on work from many people in the New Love Plus modding community and the wider 3DS homebrew scene. New Love Plus+ and all original game content remain the property of Konami. This project does not distribute the game ROM. You must own a legal copy.

Localization & dialogue

• LovePlusProject / NLPPATCH and contributors: early English script work, TextResource files, and plugin documentation. Portions ship in this release (vendored NLPPATCH snapshot, ~169/578 scripts from the 2017 release, still the Rinko / Nene early coverage today).
• Makein / NLPPGit: sister localization project, referenced as a translation-asset source and for its LayeredFS release format. This patch's finished scripts and UI are maintained separately in EngPatcher.
• EngPatcher: finished English dialogue (assets/scripts), the main TextResource table (translations.json), UI textures, and name/localization fixes beyond the original NLPPATCH scope, carrying forward the earlier team's translation and editing work.

Game file formats & packing tools

Merged into or shipped inside the patcher repo.

• kiwiz / nlpp-tools: core img.bin helpers, namely package unpack/repack (ie, pe), BCLIM conversion (png2bclim), and the Python img library. Vendored under tools/nlpp-tools/.
• deaknaew / Trb2xlsx: TRB character codebook (lookup.txt) used when rebuilding in-game text tables. Vendored under tools/Trb2xlsx/.
• NLPTextTool (gdkchan, via LovePlusProject): DBIN2 script format and encryption scheme. Dialogue is stored as NLPTextTool-compatible XML and packed .dbin2 files; name and script handling follow that format.
• yellows8 / DARCTool: DARC archive format reference. A darctool binary ships inside the vendored nlpp-tools tree; Windows packing uses EngPatcher's own DARC helper instead.
• deaknaew / png2texi: TEXI texture converter binary bundled with nlpp-tools (not used on the main UI bake path).

CIA build & 3DS tooling

Included in the repo or auto-downloaded when building.

• dnasdw / 3dstool: RomFS / NCCH extract and rebuild.
• 3DSGuy / Project_CTR (ctrtool, makerom): CIA / NCCH inspection and CIA rebuild.
• ihaveamac / 3DS-rom-tools: seeddb.bin for title-key handling.
• Batch-CIA-3DS-Decryptor-Redux: vendored decrypt.exe, used to decrypt CIA / cartridge dumps before patching. By davidmorom and xxmichibxx, from matiffeder's 3DS-stuff.

Fonts & libraries

• M PLUS 1p / M+ FONTS (SIL OFL 1.1): primary UI glyph font for the English menu textures.
• Google Fonts authors (Pixelify Sans, Press Start 2P, Silkscreen, VT323): optional editor / asset fonts (SIL OFL).
• Pillow, NumPy, zopfli, etcpak: Python libraries for image processing, compression, and ETC1 texture encoding.

Referenced, not merged

• LovePlusProject / NLPPCTR: Citra custom-texture reference pack; an optional dev import for comparing polished textures. Not part of the default shipped CIA unless explicitly merged during development.
• LovePlusProject / NLPUnpacker (orig. gdkchan): older img.bin unpacker, superseded here by kiwiz's nlpp-tools. Credited for format lineage only.
• Aikin-Ai / NLPLineWrapper, IcySon55 / Kuriimu: not used in this patch's codebase or release pipeline.

Graphics & fonts reference

Image translators match the game's in-graphic type using the project's reference sheet:

• Graphics & Text Reference (2025): the font reference sheet, showing which typefaces the game graphics use, at what sizes and styles.
• Citra texture set (title 00040000000F4E00): worked examples of those fonts as used in the Citra build's game graphics.

Community

gbatemp.net forums: for insight and useful tips on the game over the years.

Tools we use

Contributors doing reverse-engineering work commonly use Ghidra to dig into the 3DS binary. Some also use Cursor as an optional (paid) research accelerator. Neither is required to contribute.

Special thanks

Thanks to lolipop221 for name-select button art shared with the project, though it isn't in the current build.

Thanks to gamebrew.org for helping get the word out about resumed development.

Fonts: M PLUS 1p and Google Fonts (OFL).

New Love Plus+ © Konami. This English localization is made by fans who love the series, and is always free. Please support the official release.