The Interview

Phlebas & echoMateria

<Aaerul> What got you into fan translation? and How did Dakkodango begin?
<~echoMateria> he was drunk and didn’t know any better
<@Phlebas> well it started as cheese’s one-man project, and I was the first one with enough committment to join as editor. I had too much free time at the time and wanted to do something better with it than just wait for projects to finish. I had playtested some games before and found out I’m pretty good at spotting mistakes
<@Phlebas> or that
<@Phlebas> it was fall of 2008
<Aaerul> first post aug 2008 http://dakkodango.com/?p=8
<Aaerul> a lot of people got their start in 2008
<Aaerul> for some reason
<Aaerul> its pretty interesting
<@Phlebas> after Tears to Tiara there was a bit of a break after which I managed to persuade cheese to tl EnA, which also happened to be one of echo’s favorites so we secured an essential image editor for it (for  ~2.5k images to edit, wouldn’t have been possible without)
<Aaerul> 2.5k images!
<@Phlebas> about same as seinarukana, incidentally
<Aaerul> and who was the image editor guy?
[00:03] <@Phlebas> though EnA’s were probably harder?
[00:03] <@Phlebas> uh, echo

<Aaerul> so it was just you, cheese and echo
<Aaerul> all along? for 2 whole projects?
<@Phlebas> well 1st was basically just cheese and me
<@Phlebas> there were a couple others that did small tasks
<@Phlebas> like subbing opening
<@Phlebas> and proofreading some of the script
<@Phlebas> but didn’t stick for long
<@Phlebas> 2nd was cheese echo and me yeah

<Aaerul> Eien no Aselia had a pretty good setting and nice character development.
<Aaerul> Battle can drag on and on and the sprites and music were not so good. What changes in the combat system have they made to the sequel?
<Aaerul> Are there less guys to fight? A common complaint was that you had to fight many many weak opponents in the first game.
<@Phlebas> the main difference is that EnA takes place on one large map where you wage a long campaign, in Seinarukana there are several different worlds and essentially every mission has a map of its own which you ‘clear’ once
<@Phlebas> there are some differences to the combat itself too of course
<Aaerul> I see
<@Phlebas> EnA’s was simpler but generally more challenging, while seinarukana’s is more ‘fun’ with lots of options
<@Phlebas> but also easier on the long run

<Aaerul> what about the interface?
<Aaerul> is it less clicky now?
<@Phlebas> hmm, well map movement’s easier

<Aaerul> in every way I see it, it is still a Dakkodango project, (the 2nd game)
<Aaerul> What was the reason for the move to TLWiki
<Aaerul> and why did you drop the Dakkodango label?
<@Phlebas> well dakkodango’s essentially cheese’s project
<@Phlebas> and he’s not translating seinarukana
<@Phlebas> so

<Aaerul> Are you looking for more helpers right now?
<@Phlebas> hmm not in particular
<@Phlebas> I like keeping things simple

<Aaerul> “we are in the process of translating Seinarukana – Spirit of Eternity Sword 2 for our own enjoyment and the benefit of those who got the Seinarukana Special Package for Eien no Aselia.”
<Aaerul> At the end of the day, what is in it for you that motivates you to slog it through years of hard work so that these projects come to fruition?
<@Phlebas> hmm, well everyone has their reasons, I like it when people enjoy the end result
<~echoMateria> working on proects like this helps us to practice our skills, like for example I got so better at using photoshop and learned so much while working on all the projects I did
<@Phlebas> good point, it’s also language training for me, had forgotten about that objective hehe
<~echoMateria> and it is good to have the games we like being playable by more people

<Aaerul> do you consider yourselves SRPG fans first and foremost, or visual novel fans?
<@Phlebas> I know there are people who strongly dislike SRPGs or anything with gameplay, but I like the whole general field
<@Phlebas> gameplay or not

Thanks