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

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[-] Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space 0 points 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.social 1 points 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?

[-] Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space 1 points 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.social 2 points 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.

[-] Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space 2 points 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.