Edit: The GNU Testament is here! The GNU Testament supersedes the original guide so read that instead

  • Spectacle8011A
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Any notes on, say, visual novels from DMM using SoftDenchi, Buddy Launcher, or DMM Game Launcher? I’d like to one day play some of the games I bought.

    • Yote.zip@pawb.socialOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t have any notes on those - do you have an example of a game that I could easily source from cs.rin to give a look?

      • Spectacle8011A
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ah, well, that’s a little trickier. Visual novels tend to have a lot of different releases, so if I gave you a suggestion of one that was on DMM, you might also be able get it from DLSite with PlayDRM, which does work through WINE. It could also be a physical release that comes with no DRM at all. Even if you wanted to buy the game from DMM, you need a Japanese IP address, so you’d need to get a VPN…these guys don’t make it easy.

        There’s this version of Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai which is supposedly exclusive to DMM: https://vndb.org/r44104

        I know the download edition of Flyable Heart is encumbered by SoftDenchi on both DLSite and DMM: https://vndb.org/v1179

        The download edition of Aiyoku no Eustia is only on DMM, and it uses DMM Game Player: https://vndb.org/r37403

        However, I own the physical edition of Aiyoku no Eustia (it cost about…$150), and it is encumbered by AlphaROM. That DRM actually has a legal bypass because it’s apparently so dodgy it fails to work for some Windows users, so I managed to wrangle it to work through WINE by getting a file from the DRM company. If you get a “No disc” error, then you’re running the AlphaROM version.

        Nonetheless, thanks for the offer anyway if this sounds like far too much effort to wrangle some eroge.

        • Yote.zip@pawb.socialOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I found a copy of flyable heart on rutracker, but when trying to run it the font is garbled and after clicking OK on the textbox at 1:21 in this video nothing happens. Nothing useful in the log. I’m not sure whether the crack (I think one is included?) or wine is having a problem with it. I think you’d probably be a lot more of an expert in this area than I am, unfortunately.

          • Spectacle8011A
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Ah, yes, you do need to configure WINE to display Japanese characters before you can run most Japanese visual novels.

            You’ll want to make sure ja_JP.UTF-8 is uncommented in /etc/locale.gen and that you’ve run locale-gen afterward. You also need some Japanese fonts installed to display the characters: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Localization/Japanese#Fonts

            Use LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 when invoking wine.

            That’s probably all you need at a basic level to get characters displayed, but there’s a more complete setup here: https://learnjapanese.moe/vn-linux/

            Yes, I suppose this is somewhat obscure. Oh well - I can get the DMM games working in a Windows virtual machine, and most visual novels run slow, but otherwise mostly fine without dedicated graphics.