🚀 Ultra Ren'Py Translator — Patreon Summary

From v19.2.0 → v0.24.0 Period: April 2026 → May 2026 · 112 updates · ~12K lines audited

💬 Message to the community

Hello supporters! 🧡

This past month and a half has been the biggest leap in the translator's history. We went from "a tool that works" to a professional platform ready for public distribution. Here's a recap of everything you received — and only you — during development:

🎯 The most important stuff in 30 seconds

• 🤖 3 new AI engines: Claude, GPT, OpenRouter (free) — for translating slang, idioms, and NSFW content that Google censors

• 🔴 LIVE mode XUnity AutoTranslator-style — the game gets translated while you play it

• 🥷 Silent Walker — captures 28,000+ strings without opening the game (invisible mode)

• 🎮 RPG Maker MV/MZ/XP/VX/VX Ace + Unity + Godot — full support, not just Ren'Py

• 🌐 99.9% coverage — used to be ~85%, now 99.9% thanks to the autonomous loop

• 🚀 +10x faster — Microsoft Edge Translator: 681 strings/second

• 🛡️ Auto-updater with automatic downloads + integrated bug reporter

• 🐛 112 documented improvements + exhaustive bug audit before release

🤖 Artificial Intelligence — The revolution from v0.17 to v0.24

The translator used to depend 100% on Google/Bing. If it failed with slang ("weeb", "sus", "based"), idioms, or NSFW content (which Google censors), you'd be stuck with English text. Not anymore.

What you already have:

• 🧠 Claude (Anthropic) — the most accurate for complex narrative

• 💬 GPT-4o-mini (OpenAI) — balance between speed and quality

• 🆓 OpenRouter (8 free models) — DeepSeek, Qwen, Llama 3.3, Venice Uncensored for NSFW

  • Free tier: 20 requests/min, 50/day without credits, 1000/day with $5 credit

  • Auto-fallback: if a model gets rate-limited, it automatically tries the next one

• 🤖 LLM as PRIMARY engine — not just fallback, you can translate EVERYTHING with AI

• 🔄 Aggressive 2nd pass — if the LLM gives up classifying something as "untranslatable", it forces a retry with an improved prompt

• 📦 Automatic chunking — splits large batches (>200 strings) to avoid the LLM's context limit

• 🛡️ Smart pre-filter — before spending tokens, filters out onomatopoeia, code, identifiers

Real-world result: in MILFingFields (52K strings) we recovered ~8000 strings that Google had left untranslated. In TheShrinkR&R we recovered idioms like "OK → Accept", "Yes → Yes" that the LLM initially rejected.

🔴 LIVE Mode — Real-time translation

What is it? Like XUnity AutoTranslator but for Ren'Py. You toggle it on, run the game, and as you play, what appears on screen gets translated.

How it works:

1. We spin up a local HTTP server at 127.0.0.1:7861

2. The game sends HTTP requests when displaying new text

3. We translate on-the-fly with the selected engine

4. We cache in SQLite so the next session is instant

The good parts:

• 🎯 SMART mode — only blocks for genuinely new strings (doesn't re-translate what's already done)

• ⚡ Google parallelization — 8 concurrent workers (was 1 sequential before)

• 🔁 Auto-failover — if Google fails 3 times in a row, automatic switch to Bing

• 🤖 LLM support in LIVE — DeepSeek/GPT/Claude translating while you play

• 🧬 Pre-warm — loads the SQLite cache into RAM at startup (lookups <1ms)

🥷 Silent Walker — Invisible capture

The classic Ren'Py problem: the translator only sees literal strings from the code. f-strings, .format(), dynamic concatenation, and custom scripts (phone chat, quest logs) slip through.

The v0.23.2 solution: we boot the game with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=dummy — the game runs invisibly, executes its init, we walk the entire AST + screens + bytecode + tl.strings, and dump to sidecar. No game window opening up.

Real-world results:

• 🎯 28,000+ strings captured in ~3 seconds (Hacker mode v0.23.3)

• 📦 Bytecode Cache Extractor — extracts strings from .rpyb files (Ren'Py cache) that the AST misses

• 🧠 Symbolic Walker — walks ALL branches/labels/screens in the code, not just the main flow

• 🤖 Auto-Walker — the game auto-plays itself to capture dynamic strings (f-strings, .format)

🎮 Expanded multi-engine support

RPG Maker (v0.10.0, v0.12.6)

• MV / MZ / XP / VX / VX Ace — full support

• Native decryptor integrated — decrypts .rpgmvp, .rpgmvo automatically

• MTool support — compatible with the MTool translator format

• 19 RPG Maker-specific bugfixes

Unity

• XUnity AutoTranslator + BepInEx support

• Auto-detects if BepInEx is already installed

Godot

• Dedicated panel + specific translator

🌐 Improved internationalization

• 🌍 150+ languages supported (Google + Bing)

• 🇸🇰 🇨🇿 🇵🇱 🇩🇪 — Unicode quote fixes for Slavic/European languages („ ‟, « »)

• 🇯🇵 🇰🇷 🇨🇳 — Unicode fonts auto-injected for Asian languages

• Diacritics — typographic correction (em-dashes, NBSP, zero-width chars)

⚡ Performance — The numbers that matter

MetricBeforeNowImprovementFastest engineBing legacy ~50 str/sMicrosoft Edge Translator681 str/s (13x)Cold startup1000ms565ms-43%Live translator lookupSQLite every callRAM memcache100x fasterActivator in large gamesIterate 30K keys per renderTop-level O(1) cache30-100x speedupBuffer writes20K syscalls10 flushes10x fasterGoogle in LIVE1 sequential worker8 parallel workers6-8x

🛡️ Stability — The dialog writer saga

Between v0.23.6 and v0.23.13 we hunted down an EPIC bug. The translator would hang in large games right after translating everything, just when writing the final file. The root cause: zombies from previous runs holding file locks. The fix:

• 💀 Zombie killer at startup — detects and kills ghost pythonw processes

• 🔒 Lock file — prevents 2 simultaneous instances

• 💓 Heartbeat file — writes DIRECTLY to disk on every critical operation

• 🚨 Global watchdog with os._exit(2) — if nothing progresses for 30 min, kills the process at OS level

• ⏰ Monkey-patched requests.timeout=30s — previously socket.recv() would hang forever in C code

🎨 Refreshed UI/UX

Migration to Flet (v0.07)

• Goodbye CustomTkinter, hello Flet 0.84 with Material Design

• Responsive layout, native dark theme, smooth animations

• 5 tabs: Home, Tools, Unity, RPG Maker, Console

New panels (v0.13.0)

• Update Log — all changelogs visible inside the app

• Tools — RPA extract/decompile/pack, error checking, export/import JSON

• Console — copy logs to clipboard with one click

Redesigned HomePanel (v0.17.1)

• Cleaner, more organized UI

• API keys separated per provider (Claude / OpenAI / OpenRouter) — persist between sessions

• "Get API Key" button with dynamic link to the provider

• "Save" button with visual feedback

🔄 Auto-Update + Bug Reporter

Auto-Updater (v0.09 → v0.12.3)

• Checks the GitHub Releases API on startup

• Downloads ZIP, validates integrity (testzip + path traversal protection)

• Self-destructing installer .bat

• 500MB size cap to prevent corrupt/malicious assets

Bug Reporter (v0.20.x)

• Exports a .zip with logs, prefs, sample game files, AI diagnosis

• AI Auto-Diagnose — the LLM reviews the logs and says "the problem is X because Y"

• Saved in the game's folder (not Desktop) so you don't lose it

🔬 Post-translation analysis + Autonomous Fix

After translating, the system analyzes what it wrote:

Categorized issues (v0.14.0):

• 🔴 SILENT_FAIL — Bing/Google returned same string

• 🔴 PARTIAL — language mixed in output

• 🔴 PLACEHOLDER_LOST — orphaned <t0>

• 🔴 ENCODING_BROKEN — é (latin1 mis-decoded)

• 🟡 TRUNCATION — translation <30% of original

• 🔵 ONOMATOPOEIA / PROPER_NAME / TOO_SHORT — expected

Autonomous Fix Loop (v0.14.1):

1. Detects fixable issues

2. Re-translates with adaptive strategy (engine switching)

3. Measures coverage, escalates if no progress

4. Falls back to individual 1-by-1

5. Last resort: LLM Fallback

6. Repeats until 99.9% coverage or convergence

Result: average coverage went from ~85% to 99.9%.

🎯 Month-by-month highlights

April 2026 (v0.07 → v0.10)

• 🚀 Migration to Flet 0.84 + cx_Freeze build system

• 🎮 RPG Maker MV/MZ — Deep Translation (19 bug fixes)

• 🔄 Auto-updater + release workflow

First half of May 2026 (v0.11 → v0.17)

• 🌐 Microsoft Edge Translator (MET) — 681 strings/s (breakthrough!)

• 🧬 AST Walker Brutal — extracts strings that regex misses

• 🔴 LIVE Translator — XUnity-style for Ren'Py

• 🔬 Post-translation analysis + auto-fix system

• 🎣 Universal Runtime Hook — captures runtime strings

• 🤖 LLM Fallback (Claude/GPT) integrated

• 🆓 OpenRouter — 8 free LLM models

• 🐛 Exhaustive audit — 22 bugs fixed

Second half of May 2026 (v0.18 → v0.24)

• 🐛 Exportable Bug Report + AI Auto-Diagnose

• 🌍 Expanded Slavic/European language support

• 🧬 Symbolic + Silent + Auto Walker — 28K+ strings without opening the game

• 📦 Bytecode Cache Extractor — captures phone chat / quest logs

• 🤖 LLM as PRIMARY engine (not just fallback)

• 🛡️ Defensive validation of Ren'Py vars/tags

• 📦 Automatic LLM chunking for large batches

• 🚀 v0.24.0 Public Release — final audit + 8 critical fixes

🔮 What's coming (sneak peek)

• 🎮 Wolf RPG and KiriKiri support (other Japanese VN engines)

• 🤖 DeepL as additional engine (premium quality)

• 📚 Glossary editor — define custom translations for proper names / game slang

• 🌐 Community translation cache — optional translation sharing between users

• 📊 Stats dashboard — real-time run statistics

💝 Thanks

Without you, this project wouldn't exist. Every bug you reported, every game you tested, every idea you contributed — it's all in here. Literally.

If you know someone who translates games as a hobby, professional translator, or just wants to play VNs in their language — tell them about the project. Growing the community helps us sustain development.

Until the next release. 🚀