lux-pain translation investigation! @redux-pain - Tumblr Blog

TIMELINE, part 2

CHAPTER 10: Thursday, October 11. First encounter: Hidaka Naoto. Arthur Mays returns to teaching at Kisaragi Academy. Hidaka Naoto begins guest lecturing at Kisaragi Academy. Andou Mako reported dead. Muraki Kaoru attempts suicide inside her home. Hirooka Tomoyo's ex-boyfriend sets a fire at the Civic Hall. Hoshino Kunio attacks a police officer and flees his store. Takano Reiji finishes his Od distribution survey. Former residence of "Joujima" Lil (name can be read in multiple ways) finally tracked down by FORT based on a series of blog posts. Ray Platière names Silent 683, The Eternal Voice. SILENT BATTLES: Hoshino Kunio (Maggot), Lil (Clymenus).

CHAPTER 11: Friday, October 12.

Liu Yee intercepts and captures Hoshino Kunio at AMS Bank. While eluding capture, Tanaka infects Tsuji Anan and Hamana Katsuhisa with his Silent, Oce. Kamishiro Nami and Melody identify Tanaka as the culprit in the Soejima Mansion case, and reveal that Nozaki Mika's smell is on his clothes. Midou Akira attacks and delays Tanaka. Asst. Inspector Tanaka revealed as the serial killer and Andou Mako's murderer. Nozaki Mika and Midou Akira hospitalized. Arthur Mays decides to donate his painting of Lil to a museum in France. Hino Honoka and Matsumura Aoi eat and talk at Sweet Ring. SILENT BATTLES: Tsuji Anan (Oce), Hamana Katsuhisa (Oce), Tanaka (Oce).

CHAPTER 17: Thursday, October 18. Kamishiro Nami reports that Mint has vanished, and asks Atsuki to search for her. After school, Nami and Melody are found at Tazaki Enterprises, confronting Tazaki over his neglect of the animals he keeps. Tazaki thinks about killing them both. Liu Yee still unconscious. Hino Honoka reveals to Saijou Atsuki that Kiryuu Hibiki is in the hospital. Last sightings of Hidaka Naoto, first in the PC room by Saijou Atsuki, and later at Sweet Ring, with Akira and his father present. Hidaka sets out to capture Mint, whom he's been seeing in his photographs. Arthur Mays has an ominous nightmare and senses disaster in the future. He decides to paint his prediction. Midou Akira first reports symptoms of infection by Maggot. Unami Ryou remembers his history with Takano Reiji. Naruse Shinji absent from school. Nozaki Mika hasn't heard from him since the previous night. Ookura Yuuji reports seeing him out walking last night. Shinji did not respond to him when he called out. Last sighting of Kagami Kyousuke, presumably killed during the night. Kamada Touma reports that he can read people's minds now. All FORT systems crash. Contact is made via encrypted lines. Takano Reiji found dead. One and only visit to the Chitose Pond location. Saijou Atsuki first encounters Mint's Residual Thoughts outside Soejima Manor. Hino Honoka encounters Graham Miller while leaving International Shinsei Hospital. Miller tries to nudge her towards a breakdown by telling her that Hibiki will die just like her previous patients. However, she is NEVER infected by Miller's Silent. Police will later speculate (in chapter 19) that Hidaka Naoto's death took place on this night. Data in chapter 20 reveals that he met with Graham Miller, who was posing as an informant on AMS Bank. Nozaki Mika sees Tohno Kei in the street after school. While she's distracted, Graham Miller brainwashes her, setting her up for a later kidnapping attempt on Yamase Rui. Tohno Kei witnesses the event but is unable to stop it. Razzly Portman will later report that Nozaki Mika lost touch with Seagull Broadcasting on this date. Evening: Last sighting of Naruse Shinji by Saijou Atsuki.

CHAPTER 19: Saturday, October 20. Ookura Yuuji encountered at the Civic Hall. (Exact situation depends on whether he and Hirooka Tomoyo are still infected by Silent.) Nagashima Aya reports that Hidaka Naoto's body was found by police in a river in the next town over. His time of death is unclear due to the water, but forensics estimates the night of October 18. His face had been removed. Inoue Takuya encountered at Soejima Manor. If his infection was not cured, he may be cured here or ignored again. IF HINO HONOKA'S SILENT INFECTION WAS CURED: Honoka encountered at Shinsei Hospital, where she reports that she dreamed about Kiryuu Hibiki smiling, and has a feeling he may wake up from his coma today. IF HINO HONOKA'S SILENT INFECTION WAS NOT CURED: Honoka goes berserk after Hibiki's death and rampages through the hospital, leaving several patients dead and others injured. Police take her into custody. Analysis by a FORT telepath shows a Hijacking similar to Tanaka's. IF MAKINO SAYURI'S INFECTION WAS CURED: Makino Sayuri attends the wedding of a friend at Santa Maria Church. IF MAKINO SAYURI'S INFECTION WAS NOT CURED: Makino Sayuri is encountered at City Hall. She may be cured or ignored. If ignored, she is arrested, feeling that she's being stalked due to her psychic powers and police custody is the safest place to be. Razzly Portman reports that Seagull Broadcasting lost touch with Nozaki Mika about two days ago. Hamana Katsuhisa, reinfected by Graham Miller's Oce, attacks Yamase Rui and Tohno Kei in Rui's office. GAME OVER: Hamana kills Saijou Atsuki. GOOD ROUTE: Atsuki removes Hamana's Silent infection, but the infection is too deep for Hamana to mentally recover. Tohno Kei returns to Atsuki's body and Atsuki learns all the information Kei had been investigating, including Graham Miller's brainwashing of Nozaki Mika. While searching the city for Mint, Saijou Atsuki visits Tazaki Enterprises with Mint and finds Yamase Yui overseeing a crime scene. Tazaki Hiroshi has vanished after killing his wife and daughter, along with all the animals on the lot. Saijou Atsuki and Kamishiro Nami find Mint's spirit at Crimson Hill. Mint has recently encountered Graham Miller, and recognized him as a danger to Nami. He taunted her, telling her that the power she wants to use for defending Nami actually came from him. In the present, Mint attacks Atsuki, sensing that he has the same power as Graham and believing him to be Nami's enemy. After Atsuki removes Mint's infection, her spirit passes on. Touched by Mint's love for her, Nami resolves to try harder to bridge the gap between humans and animals. Night: Saijou Atsuki battles Edward Steiner beneath AMS Bank. Liu Yee arrives in time to eat Edward's mind after Atsuki defeats him. SILENT BATTLES: Hamana Katsuhisa (Oce). Mint (Oce). Edward Steiner (main body of Maggot). POTENTIAL SILENT BATTLES: Makino Sayuri (Maggot; if ignored until now), Inoue Takuya (Maggot; if ignored until now)

CHAPTER 20: Sunday, October 21. Natsuki Venefskuja has nightmares about being attacked. Kagami Kyousuke's body is found in the cemetery with no defensive wounds or signs of intoxication. Inagaki Shunichi and Yamase Yui investigate his papers left behind at Deep Sea. GOOD ROUTE: Kiryuu Hibiki reveals the truth about Silent and his history with Edward to Saijou Atsuki and Unami Ryou. 70% of Kisaragi's police officers are found to have low-level Silent infections. Naruse Shinji reports to Saijou Atsuki that some unknown data was sent automatically from his computer. This turns out to be a signal from Hidaka Naoto, asking the US military to blockade Kisaragi City and kill all the telepaths and everyone infected by Silent. The data was set to go off as a dead man's switch in case of his death. Graham Miller broadcasts a looping video blaming Kamishiro Nami and Yamase Rui for all the recent tragic events in Kisaragi City. He reveals that the US army is about to storm the city, and suggests that people can save themselves by handing the girls over. Mobs begin to sweep the city, looking for both girls. Kamada Touma uses his telepathic abilities to seek out Yamase Rui and helps her hide in Soejima Manor. Midou Kenichi, Enokida Shigeru and Inagaki Shunichi all help to control members of the mob. GOOD ROUTE: Unami Ryou, Hino Honoka and Kiryuu Hibiki all help to control casualties at the hospital. Yamase Yui and Nagashima Aya are attacked and tied up by Silent infectees. Nola loses communication with FORT and Nagashima Aya at the police station. Naruse Shinji and Nozaki Mika stand their ground at Seagull while trying to deliver information. Liu Yee and Saijou Atsuki assist Ryou, Hibiki and Honoka at the hospital, save Yui and Aya at the police station, and save Shinji and Mika at Seagull. Liu Yee and Saijou Atsuki save Naruse Shinji and Nozaki Mika from a mob at Seagull. Liu Yee and Saijou Atsuki save Yamase Yui and Nagashima Aya from the infected police officers at the police station. Melody's memory is wiped during the battle with Graham Miller. Saijou Atsuki traces Miller and Kamishiro Nami to Crimson Hill and defeats Miller's Silent.

#other meta #timeline

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TIMELINE part 1

This is a rough timeline I tried to put together, including not just game events we see, but also things referenced in the timeline, and trying to figure out when certain things like infections happened. The infections wound up being a little too much work for not enough payoff, so I didn't finish recording all of them.

Thanks to Bara_no_Uta's walkthrough for the precise chapter numbers for Silent battles. This covers chapter 00-09, plus events that happened before the game.

TIMELINE: Lux-Pain was released in 2008. If we go by the founding date of Kisaragi Academy, it seems the game takes place some time between 2012 and 2026. However, according to Ryou in chapter 19, AMS Bank was created 10 years ago, and the description of the bank makes it sound like this was related to the Japanese financial Big Bang, which went on through the 1980s and 1990s. If so, then AMS Bank 1998 > present day 2008 sounds completely plausible as well, with the Taishou era date being more of an estimate. However, Enokida tells us a story that helps a little more: he's 45, and his aunt was killed as a young girl when the post office was bombed in WWII. This must have been in 1944-1945, most likely early-to-mid-1945 when the bombing was at its most intense. He tells the story as though his aunt was an only child at the time. If this is 2008, he would have been born in 1963, and to make this story work, his parent would need to be born in 1945 and produce him at 18. This is such a tight schedule that it seems more likely that Lux-Pain is indeed set ~2012 or later, giving his parent a couple more years to be born and produce him while also matching the 100-years-post-Taishou story. So I would guess Enokida was actually born in 1967 or a bit later. There may have been some kind of delay in creating the AMS Bank megacorp, such that it only happened in 2002, after the Big Bang was over.

(I think the parent is more likely to be a father, by the way, since the post office job seems to have been passed down.)

150 years ago: Kisaragi City founded. 100 years ago: Kisaragi Academy founded during an unknown year in the Taishou era (1912-1926) (source: FORT entry on Kisaragi Academy) 1944-1945: Enokida Shigeru's aunt killed as a young child along with her puppy when the local post office is bombed. Over 70 years ago: Unami Ryou's grandfather, Unami Yousuke, founds Touhou-dou, a cram school connected to a bookstore. 1960s, my best guess being 1967: Enokida Shigeru born 1980s-1990s: Japanese financial Big Bang, a series of deregulation measures that lead to AMS Bank being created by a merger with overseas bank Morgen Sea. Somewhere from 1992-2006: Touhou-dou cram school closes; bookstore continues 1994-1999: Securities commission deregulation carried out by Japanese Ministry of Finance; possible impetus for AMS Bank's formation Ten years ago, possibly around 2002: AMS Bank created by a merger with overseas bank Morgen Sea to create a megabank. Five years ago: Sakai Yumiko opens Cinema Road in District 4. Three years ago: Hoshino Kunio takes early retirement from the SDF and opens DAY&NIGHT convenience store. Just over two years ago: District 4 finishes its transformation from the warehouse district into a commercial area, thanks to Inagaki Shunichi's music house, Deep Sea. Two years ago: Razzly Portman moves to Kisaragi City and begins work as the chief broadcaster for Seagull News. Arthur Mays starts working at Kisaragi Academy. Just over one year ago, probably a matter of days before the next event: Arthur Mays meets Lil and is infected by her Silent (already in existence before her death, therefore it was probably spawned by her decision to commit suicide rather than her death). He is Clymenus' FIRST and experiences a more severe infection than anyone else. One year ago: Lil dies; her Silent either goes on to infect multiple people through the internet, or had already done so. Some time within the previous year, leaning more towards a full year ago: Tanaka carries out a series of random stabbings. He visits Sakai Yumiko's theatre, Cinema Road, and watches a film called Convergence multiple times. Sakai realizes that he is the serial stabber, but stays quiet because she doesn't want the film to be blamed for his actions. This round of stabbings ends when Tanaka unsuccessfully attacks Nozaki Mika, who was in the company of Midou Akira. A man named Endou Shouji is arrested in the process of attacking a female student and charged with 12 counts of murder. He admits guilt for the crime he was arrested for, but denies involvement in the other 11. (Note: This is indeed how it's phrased in the Japanese game, implying that Endou successfully murdered the school girl even though he was caught.)

UNKNOWN DATE within the past year: Kamishiro Yayoi and Yamato Tadashi both infected by Lil's Silent through unclear form of contact; both join the same online space for a group of depressed individuals who become more and more serious about planning a group suicide. Yamato is not suicidal himself, but stays in the group because he finds it amusing. UNKNOWN DATE, presumably in the year 2012 or a few years later: Graham Miller causes the Shanghai Incident over the course of three months. UNKNOWN DATE: Graham Miller relocates to Kisaragi City. UNKNOWN DATE prior to October 4: Tanaka is infected by Graham Miller's Silent, Oce, and starts planning a new series of attacks. As his original self is slowly eaten away, he loses his sense of self-preservation in what FORT scientists will later call a Hijack. However, he is never directly controlled by Miller, and the method of infection remains unclear. October 4: Makino Sayuri attacked by unknown assailant; later comments trace her infection with Maggot to this date. UNKNOWN DATE prior to October 5: Midou Akira is infected by Lil's Silent, Clymenus, most likely through contact with Kamishiro Yayoi or his homeroom teacher Yamato Tadashi. UNKNOWN DATE prior to October 6, presumably only a day or two: Edward Steiner arrives in town. Over a series of days, he makes contact with a number of individuals, including Hoshino Kunio and Makino Sayuri, infecting them all with his Silent, Maggot, on dates that are never made clear. UNKNOWN DATE prior to October 7 and most likely after October 4: Graham Miller makes direct contact with Hoshino Kunio and Yamato Tadashi and begins brainwashing them into a plan to take over the city. However, neither one is ever infected by his Silent, Oce. (Yamato's Clymenus infection was cleared on October 4, and no Thoughts on this subject were detected at that point.) A thread on the Kisaragi BBS reports that Hoshino's treatment of his customers has gotten worse recently, either because of this brainwashing or because of his Silent infection (by Edward's Silent, Maggot). UNKNOWN DATE just prior to October 9: Either Graham Miller OR Tanaka infects an unknown arsonist with Graham's Silent, Oce, and the arsonist begins broadcasting Thoughts that are identical to every other individual infected by Oce. Therefore, on October 9, FORT mistakes the arsonist for their serial killer target. It is never made clear whether this was done deliberately (meaning Miller was deliberately covering for Tanaka) or happened by accident (meaning Miller was unaware of Tanaka or just wasn't interested in monitoring him) October 12: Tsuji Anan and Hamana Katsuhisa infected by Oce after incidental contact with Tanaka; infections are cleared on the same day

UNKNOWN DATE just prior to October 16: Kamada Touma infected by Edward Steiner's Silent, Maggot, through unclear means.

UNKNOWN DATE before October 18: Midou Akira infected with Maggot through unclear means. UNKNOWN DATE before October 20: Hamana Katsuhisa reinfected with Oce, and ALSO, separately, directly mind controlled by Graham Miller. His infection continues long enough that he's considered "Hijacked" and his original self is no longer present

Timeline of confirmed deaths:

October 11: Andou Mako dies in hospital

Late October 16 or early 17: Death of Takano Reiji

October 17: Presumed physical death of Mint

October 18: Hidaka Naoto murdered

Late October 18 or early 19: Kagami Kyousuke murdered. His body is found on the 21st.

Late October 19 or early 20: Tazaki Hiroshi murders his wife and daughter and vanishes into the city. I believe Mint's spirit kills him but I've lost track of the details on that

#other meta #timeline

CORRECTIONS:

1. Apparently the Mint sprite I found a while back is not much of a discovery after all, as I just realized it does appear in the game when you're looking at the Silent parts. It must be stored differently from the other sprites, since it doesn't show up in the sheets ripped from the game's sprite files.

2. I sourced Graham's line "Do what thou wilt" to the Bible; however, considering how much the game is indebted to occultism, like with all the different demon names for the monsters, I think it must actually be a reference to Aleister Crowley's motto for Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." I'm gonna blame this one on dying-Google, since I did look up both the Japanese and English phrasing when I got to the line in the game, but didn't get any results telling me that Crowley famously used it as well. (It does appear briefly in the Bible, just not in any famous sections, and seemed like a pretty random pull when I was translating.)

#other meta

ONGOING MYSTERIES:

Mismatched Silent symptoms

Despite being infected by Edward Steiner's Silent, Maggot, Hoshino Kunio never displays any characteristics of this Silent, which is supposed to make targets see a dream world in their sleep, leading to intense derealization when they wake up from these dreams. Hino Honoka meets a mysterious foreigner outside Shinsei Hospital; only if you handle this correctly do you see the single line that identifies this foreigner as GRAHAM, because his Silent repeats it during your later battle. However, Graham's Silent never infected Honoka. Instead, her infection is also part of Edward's Maggot. Honoka never displays any of Maggot's characteristics either! Both Hoshino and Honoka display violent behavior instead, which is linked to Graham's Silent, Oce.

IMO it's very easy to mistake Graham for Edward in this whole thing, because… that's what I did! The mystery observer for Hibiki and Liu Yee's battle left a Residual Thought at AMS BANK, which is linked to Edward; Edward is the one in Hibiki's backstory and seems more likely to want loose ends tied up on that front; Honoka was infected by Edward's Silent; the stranger Honoka meets is described as friendly-looking and Edward clearly has the more friendly sprite; Edward is the old man whose eyes Takano remembers as significant… This is probably an intentional red herring intended as a bonus twist for correctly completing the game, but once you do learn it's Graham, that leaves us with the question of why we were even tricked. How were Honoka and Hoshino infected with Edward's Silent at all? The only solution seems to be: Graham is so powerful that his mind control completely overrides any Silent infections the target may have, and causes them to think and act as though they HAVE been infected by Oce, with one exception: they don't have the "rip and tear" style Thoughts that Oce gives people, which are all supposed to appear identical to telepaths no matter whose brain they occupy.

It appears that his Hijack ability (which is listed under FORT's section for "Groups"? Inexplicably?) is something that happened with:

#other meta

Now that I have everything done, including those BBS threads about Pink and Plus, it's time to figure out What The Bad Guy Can Actually Do. What are Graham's specific powers, and what are Edward's?

In the game, the people he's known to directly control are Hamana and Mika. He dispatches them to carry out quick missions: take care of this or that person for me. Both Hamana and Mika are infected by his Silent, *but* there's a key difference. Mika doesn't have the violent impulses common to his other infectees, and when we read her mind, she doesn't seem to know what her mission is touching Rui. So at that time, Graham can't forcibly implant his intentions into someone incompatible and make them kill a close friend.

His direct kills (Kagami, Hidaka, Pink and Plus from the message boards) happen off screen, so we don't know *what* he does to kill people. Edward was able to compel Takano into suicide, but he doesn't seem to have given the order "kill yourself". Instead he destroyed Takano's mind, which resulted somehow in the uncontrollable urge to climb into Chitose Pond. As we see in Takano's Residual Thoughts, this had to be associated with something positive: the warm water of the womb. I don't think it's made clear whether Edward:

-used some personal psychic ability that he knew would cause suicidal actions without having to directly order suicide (in this case, implanting the idea that water = safety)

-knew from prior experience that the action of destroying someone's mind always leads them to commit suicide in some way

-just didn't care about the final outcome, and only knew that doing this has always solved his problems in the past

But Edward, at least, has no direct control that forces people to do what he says; both Takano and Shinji act in suicidal ways but under their own command, and Shinji recovers.

#other meta

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The lost previous draft of Lux-Pain:

Here's what I've managed to gather from looking through the code. There are some remnants of things from a previous version of the game that must have been close to finished when it was revised:

Atsuki's name was Yuuki for most of development. In the location descriptions, there's only one pierce of text in the files that doesn't appear in the game: some text describing the apartment he lives in during the game. (Which is called "Mansion Phonim", apparently.) The text describes it as "Yuuki's apartment", and apparently it was going to be its own location. While I was translating that part, I did manage to track down a Japanese-language article promoting the game before its release, in which the protagonist is called Yuuki, so this information made it far enough to be distributed to reporters. That also means the apartment was cut pretty late in development. (However, every other piece of cut material in the files uses "Atsuki", so this change was made late enough that a lot of that material had been altered to use the new name. The apartment location is the only known cut that happened before the name change.)

2. Yuuki's past would have been different from Atsuki's. The code for the items list shows a number of removed concepts and items that seem to be hinting at a different backstory, one where he was nearly killed by a car while playing with a childhood friend, and this friend was actually killed in front of him. I think the items are hinting that he may have developed psychic powers after that, which was cause for concern from his parents. In the final game, Atsuki was a latent psychic as a child, but he only gained his powers after surviving the operation to have the Lux Pain item Gawain implanted.

#removed dialogue #in the code

CHAPTER 24:

Now, what about that mysterious chapter 24 that only has a couple of files? Here are the locations that have files for chapter 24: BANK (completely empty), FORT (file is not empty but contains only coding, no usable text. 3,612 bits), HALL (Civic Hall), MAPXX (446 bits), DIVE. So it would've been the basic Kisaragi MAP, with clickable versions of the bank and the Civic Hall, plus some way of accessing the FORT background.

(A debug menu I found among the event files seems to indicate that there was once going to be a clickable FORT location on the map, one that was different from the one you access through the menu in the final game.)

My guess about this tiny handful of Chapter 24 files? This was going to be the Extras section at one point in development. In the final game, it's just... the Extras menu, but if my guess is correct, they originally wanted it to be a clickable map just like the one we use in the game. You would've started out on the main Kisaragi map, and then clicked on different locations to access different types of files.

#in the code #removed dialogue

I hope my posts about the coding make any kind of sense, btw. Keep in mind I've been staring at these files for about 8 years now, thinking things like, "ah, my old friend rouka.evt!" I tried to explain things like "rouka.evt is the file name for scenes that take place in the school hallway", but I apologize if it's still too confusing.

The Debug Menu

A file called "dbg_menu" gives us a look at the menu that was used while they were messing around and debugging the game. There are some alternate translations from the ones we see in the finished game… and also TWO "Kisaragi Gakuen" locations! Judging from the order the labels appear in, the first Kisaragi Gakuen looks like it was actually set in the top left district near the Civic Hall and Cemetery. It must be that "kgaku" location that was left in the code for the event files. In the final game, the top left district is the only place with 3 locations instead of 4 or more, so this original Kisaragi Gakuen was never replaced with anything.

The "Rainbow Hill" mistake seems to have been present in the game since they first started translating. (It's actually supposed to be Crimson Hill, because of the sunsets. The kanji are so similar that I didn't notice this myself until quite a ways through.) The debugged version of Soejima Mansion also used a different kanji to write the -tei in Soejima-tei, a suffix used for cottages or mansions. The Yuuhigaoka setting was originally named after the park instead of the housing complex, which is why its event files are named park.evt.

It also looks like there was a clickable FORT setting that was different from the one you access through the menu?

As usual, the Japanese text is what appears in the files of the Japanese game, the double-wide text is what appears in the files of the English game, and the regular text is my translation of the Japanese text. If the final game contained a different version of either Japanese or English text, I put that in parentheses.

TEXT OF THE DEBUG MENU:

#in the code #removed dialogue

list of EMPTY files, and introducing the mysterious "chapter 24" (nothing too exciting)

There are two different types of empty text files I found in the game's coding: the first is extremely small, usually with a file size of 42 bits. These have only a few tiny lines of coding inside, showing that at the very least, some kind of placeholder file was created for this location and chapter. The second type of empty file has more coding, but still no dialogue. I don't know what the difference is, exactly. The bigger files might be scenes that made it further into production, or both file sizes might have the same importance.

I think these represent scenes that were cut or moved around. This is a list of which chapters contain the smaller empty files set at a certain location, the ones with only few tiny lines of code:

BANK: 2, 12, 24 (!) (AMS Bank) BIJUT: 3, 4, 9, 15 (Art classroom) CAFE: 15 (cafeteria/cafe) CEMET: 9, 13, 15, 17, 19 (cemetery) CHTS: 14, 15 (Chitose Pond) CHURC: 8, 12 CITYH: 9, 12 (City Hall) CLASS: 13, 15, 19 (Classroom) CNVNI: 12, 19 (Convenience store) COM_F: 9 (Company F) DPSEA: 12 (Deep Sea) FORT: 4, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19 (Scenes where you talk to Nola that use the FORT background; I think these were completely replaced in the final game) GENKN: 15 (school courtyard) HOKEN: 15 (nurse's office) KGAKU: 8, 12, 14 (chapter 14 file is 64 bits instead of all other small empty files, which are 42) MEIKO: 12, 13, 19 (Meikou Elementary) P_ART: 12 (Production Art) PARK: 8, 12 (Yuuhigaoka Housing... and the adjacent park, which explains the file name) ROUKA: 9, 11, 15, 17 (school hallway) SEAGL: 15 (Seagull) SYOKU: 15 (the teachers' lounge) TAZAK: 12, 15 (Tazaki) TNMAT: 15 (PC Room at school) TRIPLE: 21 (Triple Step) TYBOX: 12 (Toybox)

#removed dialogue #in the code

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funnuraba

The Hoshino > Yamato thing

So I want to start by saying that I personally gravitate towards extremely niche ships where I'm often the only person who's interested. Because of that, I try to keep a very high standard of what I consider "intentional subtext". I've seen a lot of fandom theories where the person is clearly just spiraling and making things up out of a desire to validate their ship and make it more popular, and I really don't want that to happen to me just because I wound up in a space where no one is peer reviewing my opinions.

However. Lux-Pain does contain the following things:

An explicitly gay adult man with romantic feelings for another man

A lot of very intentional yaoi bait with the teenagers

A fujoshi character who comments on the above

According to a link on TVTropes, shortly after the game's release, the director commented on Atsuki/Liu Yee being popular with fans (on his now-dead blog)

A location (the radio tower) that references a real spree killing incident, the one that sparked the "denpa" genre as a whole

So, taking all of that into account, I don't think I'm reaching too far to say that Hoshino and Yamato's sad little aborted revolution is somewhat reminiscent of Yukio Mishima's attempt to overthrow the Japanese government, and that Hoshino's crashout where he thinks of Yamato as his "soulmate" seems like he could very well have feelings for him.

#I forgor to put this on the right blog #other meta

funnuraba

I've been working on a little essay about the Hoshino>Yamato thing, and how their failed revolution has always reminded me of Yukio Mishima's suicide. So I went to Mishima's Wikipedia page to see if there were any similarities in his early life, and I didn't find any. However, when I started looking at pictures of Mishima, I realized... they may have just... tweeted it out?

The (later-life) hairline, the sideburns, the face shape, nose and prominent eyebrows... maybe I don't even need to finish the essay.

So, yeah, I do tend to think that there's a tiny buried subplot where Hoshino briefly has some very twisted feelings for Yamato, although it's largely a result of *SPOILER* and we don't know whether they even knew each other before *SPOILER* started happening. I think aside from Ray, Yamato is the only character in the game who has a pun-like name, with Yamato being the ancient name for Japan and a rallying concept for right-wing nationalists--so while Hoshino is less overtly fascist than Yamato, there's definitely some subtext to him calling a guy named "Yamato" his soulmate.

There's also this, but it seems like a less likely reference.

#I forgor to put this on the right blog #other meta

As of yesterday the queue has run out, and I believe I've finished translating the main story, minus chapter 1 and most of chapter 2 since someone else was working on those at the time. I started setting up the first Archive scene to translate, but realized that it doesn't really have enough mistakes to be worth fixing. I may come back to check the other Archive scenes or finish a few meta posts after a break, but I am definitely ready for a break right now!

Of the 49 sprited characters in Lux-Pain:

With FORT; same basic position through story: Atsuki, Aya, Kenzo, Liu Yee, Natsuki, Nola, Ray (7)

In a bad position when you start; emotionally healed over the course of the game and survives all the endings except the extreme bad ones: Akira, Arthur, Mika, Sakai, Yayoi (5)

Neutral when you start; can die depending on your choices: Hibiki, Honoka (2)

Neutral to bad when you start, can be arrested/otherwise messed up depending on your choices: Hirooka, Sayuri, Takuya, Yui, Yuzi/Yuuji (5)

Neutral when you start, improves over course of game: Inagaki, Kenichi, Tsuji (3)

Neutral when you start, traumatized in some way near the end but healing: Aoi, Nami, Ryou, Shinji, Touma, Rui (6)

About the same: Ai, Enokida, Meiling, Razzly, Suzu (5)

Die during the game no matter what you do: Hidaka, Kagami, Mako, Melody's original personality, Takano, Tazaki (6)

Already dead by the time you "meet": Lil, Mint (would have been 50th sprited character) (1 or 2 depending whether we count Mint)

Random sprites: Picus guy, police guy (2)

Is you: Kei (1)

Big bads: Edward, Graham (2)

The eclectic mini-boss squad: (4 total): Hamana: The way he dresses and talks shows that he was already a violent thug before infection. He can kill you, ending the game, and presumably keeps rampaging after that. In that ending, most likely he wound up getting killed or mindwiped after the curtain fell for Atsuki. If you avoid getting that bad end, he just wanders off, but Atsuki says he'll never recover. ENDING: Mentally destroyed, probably dead soon after.

Hoshino: Volatile and aggressive, but probably wouldn't have done much on his own except run his store out of business. However, the BBS reveals that Graham personally spent a few days hypnotizing him and Yamato, leaving them with Silent infections that played on their fixations and magnified their violent impulses. His mind is manipulated by FORT to make him contact Yamato, and they later examine him in depth, but do we ever hear that he was actually mindwiped? ENDING: In FORT custody in some capacity. They might be able to do some kind of trap/neuter/release on him.

Tanaka: already a serial killer before Silent infection (? I'm actually not completely sure of this; his killings were "last year" vs the Shanghai Incident, which... do we ever get a timeline on that? His infection was through direct contact with Graham, who only fled to Kisaragi after Shanghai). Progressively hollowed out after Silent infection, but behaved identically to his former self. ENDING: either killed (bad ending) OR mindless husk in FORT custody with no remaining personality.

Yamato: Already had a vicious and abusive personality. It's possible he wasn't quite as bad by nature as he is at the start of the game. I'm sure his spying on the suicide group for fun was prompted directly by Lil's Silent infecting him with the concepts of "suicide" + "extreme sympathy"--i.e., appreciating other people's emotions, which is then filtered through his original shitty personality in the only way he's capable of understanding. However, the fact that he goes overseas to shoot means that he doesn't have a license for target shooting in Japan. You can technically get those, but they're heavily regulated and require you to pass a stringent series of tests on your knowledge and mental health, which you have to renew on a regular basis. In other words: even without an infection, Yamato has to do his target shooting overseas because he couldn't pass this test. ENDING: Mindwiped by Hibiki; his body is in FORT custody, with no remaining personality or memories.

In the English version of the game, the RECORD incorrectly states that Tanaka was "given a new personality" by FORT, but this is a mistranslation of the original text, which is just talking about how the Silent infection "hijacked" him and replaced his personality. No one at FORT has the capacity to create and transplant personalities. So Yamato, Tanaka and possibly Hoshino... well, presumably FORT just disposes of empty bodies after a case is closed. Tanaka has been officially and publicly disappeared, but Yamato and Hoshino have families and would have to be staged deaths.

Before I checked that translation, I was thinking it might've been fun/disturbing if the sequel had materialized and you see Tanaka and Yamato's bodies working as FORT grunts, and it turns out a lot of their workers are just repurposed bodies with basic worker drone personalities implanted after they get mindwiped--but it's actually a plot point that only Graham can implant and override like that.

The most important thing is that according to the RECORD, Honoka never kills Hibiki in the bad end! He dies on his own and that event is the trigger that makes her go on a rampage, killing several other patients. (I'm not sure how this could happen, since the only difference between timelines is dealing with Honoka's Silent. Maybe the physical exposure to Honoka's infection is what kills him if you don't cure her? She's infected with Maggot, the same Silent that was used to give Hibiki his powers.)

Total physical kill count, not including non-sprited characters:

#other meta

Part 5 of "removed things"

This was going to be item 5 on my list of things that were removed from the game, but it got very long and involved, so here's a separate post.

(TL;DR: Hibiki's name appears in the file for characters who send you text messages. (No secret messages, sorry.) So do four empty placeholders, which seem to fit into English ABC order. I wanted to figure out who could have filled those spaces.)

In the files for the text messages you receive throughout the game, the list of names looks like this: Dummy, Mika, Nami, Dummy, Dummy, Rui, Ryou, Dummy, Yayoi, Yui, Shinji, Akira, Hibiki, Honoka. The Dummy label is an empty placeholder used in some spots in the game files. The way they’re spaced out here makes it look like the devs might have been considering text messages from other characters at some point--and of course, Hibiki’s name is there, even though he never sends you anything. So they must’ve been considering him at the very least.

(There are no unused text messages in the file, sadly. I'm scratching my head about Hibiki's QR card here: the wiki lists it as an item, but a Japanese-language wiki for the game doesn't list it as an item. Did the English wiki base this on graphics that someone ripped from the game's files?)

The named characters who show up in this file are also the first 10 characters to appear in FORT’s Personal section, and they do so in exactly that order. And inside the text file for the Personal section, there are 4 Dummy placeholders in exactly the same spots! Because those 10 are the ones you can build relationship values with, you also see the same characters in the same order at the Love Fortunes section of Pumpkin Witch. However, the file for the love fortunes has no placeholders, and Hibiki’s name doesn’t appear there.

#other meta #in the code #removed dialogue

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And what are these different expressions, anyway?? We can only learn this from Rui, the only character who has all 10, and Hibiki, who has eleven files in his set, some of which are just labeled placeholders!

000: Neutral (often smiling; differs from 001 in blinking/mouth animations) 001: Smile (sometimes near-duplicate of 000; distinguished by blinking/mouth animations) 002: Angry/put out 003: Angrier/more put out (does not exist for most characters) 004: Surprised 005: Embarrassed/blushing/taken aback 006: Skeptical/dubious/smug (does not exist for most characters) 007: Skeptical (does not exist for most characters) 008: Sad/uncomfortable 009: Sadder/more uncomfortable (does not exist for most characters) 010: Exists as a placeholder image in Hibiki's set, labeled as another smiling sprite. Used only for Akira and Mika (two distraught sprites, I believe meant to be the 009 emotion) and Yuuji's special blue default appearance after he drinks the Adamantine Blue Ogre water.

Who has what:

#in the code

Messing around in Tinke:

I've mentioned previously that the game files contain a removed description for Atsuki's apartment (that would have been separate from Touhou-dou). In that description, Atsuki is called Yuuki in the Japanese text, but not in the English text, telling us that his name was completely changed by the time they did their own internal translation. Atsuki's files in the game's code are labeled UKI, which works for both names.

Kiryuu is in the "chra" and "chrb" files that are used to store sprite info for the main main characters (Mika, Akira and so on), but his files are called Z_01 instead of using part of his name.

These files all have a random assortment of numbers at the end, making it clear that some files were deleted: for example, Yui has YUI_BS000-YUI_BS005, and then we skip to YUI_BS008 for a total of 6. Kiryuu, aka Z_01, is the only one with the full eleven files.... except that files 3, 6, 7, 9 and 10 are actually sprites of a forward-facing Atsuki!

The first image is an attempt to use Atsuki's color palette on those dummy sprites, and the second is what you get when viewing the tile with A414 as your BPP setting. Then another attempt with a different Atsuki palette.

These are labeled NPC 01 with a kanji in front of each, representing the mood that was attached to each sprite number. There are five total. Two labeled 笑, laugh/smile, which tells us the devs might have been thinking of adding multiple smiling sprites for some characters. However, most characters have had their 3, 6, 7, 9 and 10 files deleted, so those numbers were probably always meant to be dumped.

I guess everyone started with 11 placeholder files to make sure they'd allotted enough space in the game files. Then as the sprites were finalized, the real ones would be saved over the placeholders, and finally the remaining placeholders would be deleted. Kiryuu must've had his sprites added very late, leaving him with all the placeholders intact and no name.

I was also finally able to figure out how to work things well enough to get the only trace of Mint's sprite.

This is all the info there is, and here it is stretched out a little bit:

What happened is that the sprite info is stored in a few different places. There are the sprites themselves, and then a separate file in a completely different folder contains the color palette for each character's group of sprites. If Mint's full sprites were ever in the game files, they were deleted, but her color palette is still in there with the others, and when viewed in certain settings, the palettes contain a version of the default sprite.

This is what the proportions were supposed to be, based on an attempt to view the file as a "map" instead of a tile, then using a plugin meant to be used on files from Rhythm Heaven. I think in order to view it properly, someone would have to figure out the exact unique way Lux-Pain was coded and create a plugin to filter files correctly in Tinke, as people have done for Rhythm Heaven, Professor Layton, etc.

(I don't know if anything is left in the coding that would replace those colored pixels on her face. You can see, though, that her chin moves across these four images, so they got far enough to animate her "talking" or meowing.)

#removed dialogue #in the code

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