QUOTE (Hen na Otoko @ May 12 2008, 03:14 AM)

OK thanks this was exactly the type of answer I was lookin for - I won't waste time/HD space trying to d/l it then. I had to ask cause this game looks suspiciously like LD2, and if it's true that it has the same engine then i'll steer clear of it and just bide my time til the AG3 exp comes out.
However, if anybody has evidence to contradict this good man's statements then please let me know, because this game looks pretty good.
I'm glad it did help. But as I said, these are just assumptions, so I also would love for someone else to verify/contradict what I said. ^^
At my current download speed, I'll be able to confirm (test myself, show screenshots, whatever's needed) in about 6-7 hours (also due to work ><).
EDIT: Extracting... Installing... Watching hard-drive space disappear bit-by-bit (or should that be gigabit-by-gigabit?)... patching.
Running. Right, well first off, the Start/Options/Exit buttons are in the same position as on LD2, the options screen is virtually the same as LD2's (except no options for simple animation).
Okay, after a few minutes of playing through the storyline, I can confirm a few things.
- First of all, the storyline scenes are NOT pre-rendered. They render in realtime. You can't control the camera, though. This is like on LD2 when you've not broken out of conversation (except on here, you CAN'T break out of convo).
- The graphics engine is certainly the same graphics engine that LD2 uses, although it has been tweaked. Now I achieve about 58 FPS when one girl is in view, when on LD2, I only got about 42. Now when a girl and a guy are in view together, I get the speed I got with only 1 girl on LD2, which is a nice improvement. That's also with several postprocessing filters in effect simultaneously (sepia, blur, probably more).
- The character talking/gesture animations appear to be identical to LD2's.
- Many in-game option-selecting sounds are the same as in LD2. (Spot a common theme here? ;P)
- The music at the start of the game is the same style as Chikan Wa Hanzai's (no complaints there). =D
- There is a "Now Loading" screen which becomes annoying very quickly, as it is VERY unnecessary most of the time. It seems that almost every time the camera changes view, it appears, complete with a tediously slow fade-in (like LD2's). It's been implemented in another cheap way, which is what lets me know it's unnecessary. It is simply an image being overlaid on top of the 3D scene, but it leaves a column of 1 or 2 pixels down the left-hand side of the screen uncovered. These pixels still animate, and there's maybe a quarter-second gap during which they stop animating before they drastically change colour as the new scene appears. Then "Now Loading" disappears. In my opinion, a quarter-second momentary freeze is much more preferable than it being dragged out over 4-5 seconds or so by a damn "Now Loading" fading in and waiting. (4 seconds may not sound much, but believe me, it gets annoying quickly.)
- There is one good new thing about the loading screen, though. The "Now Loading" now animates, which should help some people with slow comps be assured that the game has not totally frozen during long loading times.
- When you click "Start" in the running game to start a brand new game, for the first time since your comp's last booted, the load time is pretty long. It might be a little shorter than LD2's, I'm not sure. HOWEVER, when you do that for a second time (so that much already is still in your computer's memory), the load time is extremely fast! About 7 seconds! (Major improvement over LD2, which, even on a second run, still takes about half a minute, or maybe more, on my comp).
- This game takes up
less than half the space of LD2 - only 4.41 GB, versus about 10.2 GB for LD2, even though there appear to be more characters in this game (see below)!
For people interested in modding:- On inspection of the ODF folder, it appears very similar to LD2's ODF folder. The subfolders are named in the same way (a, b, c, etc, for each character). However, there are very few (only 1 or 2) ODF files in each of these subfolders, rather than many. For example, in subfolder b, the ODF is b_01_base.ODF (not padded to 3 digits any more, either). Then there are the usual TEA files, and BMPs and TGAs.
- The file encryption on all files within the subfolders is the same as on LD2's files. I used the TeaTime Decrypter on them and suddenly they were readable (e.g. BMPs can be viewed, or edited with Paint).
- The enormous ODA files, which I believe hold the animation, are not in every person's folder any more! =D Only some people's, and there are still less ODAs than in LD2. I believe this is what is largely responsible for the fact that even though there appear to be more characters than in LD2 (judging by the names of the subfolders in the ODF folder), the installed game takes up less space than LD2 does!
- There is a subfolder in ODF called 'nekoyama'. This is a reference to the cat which a girl from Chikan Wa Hanzai was friendly with. Now the cat actually exists as a 3D model.

- The TEXT folder's TXT files are NOT immediately editable with Notepad. The TeaTime Decrypter also fails to make them readable. Therefore FULLTIME have used another encryption method with these, which is an annoyance, but I have no doubt that if this game becomes popular, it will fall into the able hands of a coder who is determined to crack that encryption.

EDIT:
Damn it! It doesn't work with stereoscopic (3D) shutter glasses.

Yet another thing Chikan Wa Hanzai had going for it. I will never understand why CwH didn't become very popular. A massively underrated game. =/ But that's for another topic.