FAQ & Troubleshooting
Frequently asked questions
Grown from real recurring questions in Discord.
I got an error while patching
Post the error as a new post in the Discord #bug-reports forum, along with where you got the game file you patched. Where the dump came from is usually the first thing that matters. See the Install Guide for the known-good dumps the patcher accepts.
Which patch method should I use: HANS, LayeredFS, CIA?
Run the EngPatcher tool on a dump you make from your own game. It writes a one-click English .cia, and also a Luma3DS / Azahar LayeredFS build if you'd rather not reinstall. The old HANS redirect (a patched .code file) was how the 2017 NLPPATCH release was applied; this project doesn't use it. There's still an optional small code.bin patch, but only for drawing romaji names, not a global text hook. Full steps are on the Install Guide.
Why is so much of the game still in Japanese?
Dialogue scripts are around 56% English: Manaka and the common route are finished, but Rinko and Nene are still close to the 2017 baseline. Phone / SMS text is at 0% in the default build. The system and menu text shows ~98%, but that's an unreviewed machine-translation pass, not finished writing. The Progress page breaks all of this down.
Is the translation machine-translated?
The finished routes (Manaka, common) are human-edited and carry the earlier team's work forward. Unfinished machine-drafted dialogue is kept out of the build, not injected. The main system / menu text is currently a machine pass and is openly labelled that way on the Progress page while it gets reviewed. No AI-only dialogue ships in a gold build.
Patching took hours. Is that normal?
On a first run with no prebuilt English UI bake, yes. It builds the menu textures from scratch, roughly 16 hours of CPU time, once per machine. With the bake present (downloaded from CI, or kept from a previous run) a patch takes minutes. Progress lines mean it's still working, not stuck.
I want to help: how do I contribute?
The biggest need right now is playtesters and proofreaders: play a patched build, or read through translated lines, and report the bad translations, typos, and bugs you hit in the Discord #bug-reports forum. No tools or Japanese needed, and it's credited.
Next easiest is the Localization Workbench, a set of offline HTML pages for translating leftover Japanese dialogue and strings and reviewing UI images. Download it from GitHub, open index.html, do some lines, and post the saved JSON in the Discord #translated-work-to-review channel. No install.
For code and asset changes, fork the patcher repo, base your branch off main, make your changes, and open a pull request. Either way, work that passes review is credited on this site's Credits page and on GitHub. The Volunteer page has full steps.
Do I need Python or git to help translate?
No. That's only for the patcher tool itself. The Localization Workbench is plain offline HTML: download the folder from GitHub, open index.html in your browser, translate or audit, and post the file it saves to Discord.
What's the "Bleeding-Edge" branch?
A branch on the patcher repo with a lot of experimental, unfinished, and potentially broken work. Try it at your own risk. If you're contributing, do not base your work off Bleeding-Edge; always branch off main.
Are you taking donations?
No. The patch is free and always will be. If someone charged you for it, for a copy of the game with it pre-applied, or for early access, you were scammed.
When will this be done?
No firm timeline. It's volunteer work done in spare time. Progress updates land in the Changelog devlog as they happen, not on a schedule.