I signed up just to thank you for this patch - I've been wanting to play this game for years and to see it in English is amazing. However:
You're welcome, I hope you have fun with it!
I vehemently disagree with this stance. Partly because, while innovative, it was not the original creator's intent. You have redesigned a part of the original creator's work, inserting tracked google links along the way, just to assuage your curiosity.
First off, I don't feel like I have to defend myself here tooth and nail, nor do I want to shamelessly bombard you with counter-arguments. It's just that I've thought hard before doing it this way, and only after relaying it to the team. Hopefully it will clarify things for others as well.
In my opinion, going against the creator's intent doesn't readily apply here because:
1) This game was never released outside of Japan. Playing it outside of Japan goes against the creator's intent in a way.
2) I haven't made any modifications to the game itself, merely altered at what time you can get each DLC. Furthermore, this is something that is already completely optional and has nothing to do with the 99,9% of the other content. Playing the DLC outside of Japan goes against the creator's intent in a way.
3) The DLC merely unlocks units/resources through a certain code. No unit/resource data is created. They're already in the game.
4) You're always free to ignore the links and play it as if there wasn't any DLC. If I hadn't included these links in the game, most people wouldn't be able to enjoy any DLC at all, because PSN is down for good. They'd have to scour the internet the way we have and spend a lot of time figuring it out. You're always free to do so yourself, but it goes against the creator's intent... in a way.
5) I never inserted google links just to assuage my curiosity. My main reason has always been to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. I know from unlocking all the DLC that getting everything at once doesn't add much, because it either overpowers you slightly, or the units your receive are for chapters later in the game that you can't use yet anyway. Getting the google link counts merely let's me see if this method works or not.
But my main objection is from a stance of preservation. There is no guarantee that those links will be up 5 years or even 5 months from now. A small part of the romhack ethos is to help preserve works for the distant future, and hiding content behind obscure links that may be deactivated flies against that. And even in the likely scenario those links are collected and archived here, they are still there littering the translation in game when they weren't in the original, and ten or twenty years from now they will just confuse and frustrate.
I really hope you reconsider this stance in the next revision.
To respond to your preservation point, I once again, respectfully have to counter it with my own Wave Cannon.
1) There is no option on RHDN to upload DLC, it would go against RHDN's other beliefs
2) Any link that is used to preserve this DLC can go dead at any time, whether it be from google drive, mega or whatever.
3) I'm not about the kick the bucket yet, or vanish into thin air. The links will be available for a long time. Suspension due to TOS violation notwithstanding.
4) When I said I'd leave it up to the community, it meant that the community is free to unite every DLC into a single zip file, and create its own download links however it wants (though it'll still be subjective to dead links. I just don't feel that I should do all of this myself because I am not the nanny of this game after all, and because I don't believe in that method due to reasons listed above.
5) The "DOWNLOAD" menu might confuse and frustrate right now, let alone in twenty years, because it already doesn't work anymore. These things happen when you play older games that aren't officially supported anymore.
6) I backed up the patch with subtitled movies in the same way, yet I hear no argument there. Maybe you'd just like to have all the DLC handed to you on a platter?
In short, while I do agree with some of your points, I think you went off on how things ideally would be, instead how it can be practically achieved. Either way, I still stand behind my stance, but the community is welcome to change things how they please. After all, I'm not the creator of the game. I merely gave it a second breath.