[heklin]

ok, this will be rather long, but please bear with me.

first off: the reason for my dissapearance after AX in 06

when AX ended, i planned to fly home, pick up a few things, and fly back to help my
"irc adopted" kids matt and hope move (aka dessert and kittykyo),then visit a few
friends, return home, and send the finalized scripts to the rest of the staff for
closed testing with a release shortly after if we had no problems. however, things
didnt go quite as planned. normally i would ship whatever i was bringing over ahead
of time and pick it up when i got here, however, on this occasion i didnt have the
time to do it, so i simply loaded up my luggage with the manga's and doujinshi i had
picked up to fulfill requests of some friends and jumped back on the plane. i arrived
at LA int. airport with no problems, however, while going through security i got
pulled to the side, and held for about 4 hours with no explanation of what was going
on. next thing i know im being arrested for possesion of child pornogrophy (CP) and
am carted off to jail (which is why i was unable to contact anyone, since my phone
and everything else was confiscated, i wasnt even able to contact dessert and let him
know what was going on).

it wasnt until i went to court 3 days later that the reason they charged me was for
the doujinshi i had brought back with me (vol 1-4 of comic lo, vol 1-7 of comic rin,
komoe anthology 1-5, and shonen ai no bigaku 1-8, as well as random other doujins, 42
in total) and that i was being charged with 900+ counts of possesion of CP with
intent to distibute. after about 8 months of fighting the charges hopeing to get them
dismissed (at the time, manga was still a grey area in the new laws)i was given the
offer of a pleabargain to drop the charges in exchange for pleading guilty to tax
evasion, which after some thought i decided to take and was sentenced to 16 months
jail time and parole. the manga's i had with me were all to be destroyed, and my
personal effects (like my computer and other stuff i had with me) were sent to my
home back in akita. i finished my sentence and was released on parole with no
problems, however a stipulation of my parole was i was not to be around computer
equipment, anime, or manga for the duration, and my parole officer randomly checked
up on me to verify it.

it wasnt until late 08 that dessert was able to get ahold of me through a friend and found out what was going on, and i asked him not to spread details around ( for obvious reasons i didnt want the general public knowing i had been arrested for CP)

that brings us to my current issue. while i was in jail, my japanese visa expired, along with my passport (at the time i had no clue that they did since you dont exactly get to keep that stuff when yer in jail >< ) so after my release i started the renewal proccess. with all the homeland security shit, and the upcoming election, as well as now having a criminal record, it took almost 7 months to get my passport reissued, however, i am still having issues with getting a visa and being able to go home. my request for renewal was denied due to my new criminal record, and i have to get it expunged from my record before i can re-apply for a visa.

and thats where i am at now, going through the proccess for the expungement (my hearing is in oct) to allow me to get my new visa and return home.


now to address the shuffle issue

as dessert had said before, the only complete copy of the scripts is currently sitting on the computer that was shipped home. ( i now realize that having only one storage for a complete project like that was a bad idea) through staff and other members of the channel, we were able to recover parts of the script, engine, graphics etc, about 1/3rd of all the files. since it looks like its going to be awhile i am planning on picking up with what we have available, and redoing the remaining work needed before release.

shuffle WILL be released

to me, it doesnt matter that mangagamer has (or will, at this point its not clear) started a translation of the game

there are a few reasons for my decision, first of all being all the people that bought a physical copy of the original game (mangagamer is a download site, you get nothing other than a digital download)next is the fact that i want to keep the game story as close to the original as possible, which most companies dont do when they do a commercial translation.probably the biggest reason is my personal commitment to the entire shuffle line of games(yes, i still plan to do tick tack, really really, etc, as well as possibly the novels)

as for the website, i havent been able to get ahold of the staffmember who is currently handling everything, so i know about as much as whats going on with it as you guys do, however, if i cant contact him this week, i will look into at least getting a forum up somewhere.

so yea, its been a pretty rough ride for gamepatch these last few years, but we arent dead and buried yet. i cant thank the people who have stuck with this so long enough,so the only thing i can do to say thanks is get the patch out!

if you have any questins, you can either drop me a message here on asuki, or swing by the irc channel, #gamepatch on irc.rizon.net and leave me a message there.i now have full time access to a computer so i will be doing updates alot more often.