-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rune Factory 3 - Lesbian Weresheep Edition 1.2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like the Story of Seasons series it spin off from, Rune Factory has always had a strong LGBT+ fanbase, yet shied away from providing explicitly LGBT content or romance options. While today many talented romhackers have set about patching that in to older Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon games, the Rune Factory games have largely had to remain as they were. Until now. Rune Factory 3 seemed a logical choice for this hack for several reasons. For one, it was my favorite of the original three DS games in the series. For another, the protagonist had been described by both the series' creators, fans and in-universe characters as being "more feminine" than even your average soft anime farm boi. More to the point, Micah looks like the kind of spunky, peppy anime lesbian a number of real-life lesbians I know would make a picrew of. The game's central gimmick of Micah's sheep form was also easy to work with because what kind of a creep is gonna look at a hornless anime sheep, pull out their anime sheep gender callipers and go "hey, that sheep's a BOY!" A weird sheep creep, that's who! Standard Patch ------------ Included are two patches, the Standard patch and the "Hacker's Cut" patch. Apply only one of the two patches to your rom. The Standard patch changes the following: * Micah is now a woman, and referred to as such in the script and events. * The swimsuit costume now appropriately covers up Micah's lady nipples both in her portrait and on her 3D model's texture, as society seems to have some issue with lady nipples being as visible as dude nipples. Look, I can't patch society. * Audio clips that refer to Micah's gender are edited to either refer to her as a woman, or no longer mention gender at all. * The original game had a surprising amount of jokes regarding Micah "looking like a girl" or "being girly" and such. These jokes have either rewritten or replaced to make logical sense with Micah's current gender. * A handful of typos and grammatical errors in the original script have been fixed. What this hack does not change: * The story and script, aside from the aforementioned "girly Micah" jokes, has not been altered. * The baths. I couldn't figure out how to do the kind of event editing that would require. Luckily, the game barely mentions gendered bathrooms and nothing happens if you try to enter the women's bath anyway, so let's all politely pretend that Sharance has a unisex bathhouse and Micah just prefers the right side for unknown reasons. * How babies work. You'll still get your wife pregnant. Sometimes a lady gets another lady pregnant if they try hard enough. It happens. * Any other bugs or glitches that may be found in the original version will still be here. Hacker's Cut ------------ One of the reasons this hack wasn't too difficult to make is that the venn diagram of a standard dense anime boy protagonist and a standard dense lesbian overlaps in key areas. However, it is not a perfect circle. While the standard patch keeps most of the original 2009 localization intact, some retro gaming enthusiasts looking for gay sheep content may find themselves wishing for something more curated. The Hacker's Cut patch includes all the same features as the standard patch, but includes further changes to the script, mostly around the romantic events. It is not intended to be "better", just different (and largely because I was curious as to what it might look like). Not every event is altered, but enough is rewritten to stand out if you are already familiar with the original. Some of these changes are to help the characters feel less generic and "player sexual" and give them a more specific relationship with their identity as they grow closer to Micah. Some of the changes are due to my own tastes, such as toning down the Carmen/Carlos incestousness, changing some (not all) of Micah's meaner date options to flirtier teasing or cuter options than telling Raven to smile for the goddamn 20th time, and ATTEMPTING to add the veneer of pathos to the "let's end racism with flowers" plot point. Other changes are completely arbitrary and likely won't be noticed by anyone. There's too many to list in full but I tried to keep the same tone as the original localization (which, just for reference, quoted Jim Carey's The Mask LONG before I showed up). Which Patch Should I use? ------------ If you are specifically nostalgic for the original or want to experience a more "vanilla" Rune Factory 3 experience, you may be interested in the Standard Patch. If you've already played Rune Factory 3 and want something different or if you specifically want more than just a simple gender flip, consider giving the Hacker's Cut a try. In either case, remember to apply only one of the two patches to your rom. Requirements ------------ To install this patch you will need to apply it to an untrimmed copy of the North American release of Rune Factory 3 using xDelta. Acknowledgements ------------ This hack was made possible due to the hard work of previous romhackers and fan-translators who made my work a LOT easier with their tools and documentation. This includes the Rune Factory 2/3 Text Dumper by CUE, Tinke by pleoNeX, and the nsbmd-texture-tool by necco-atsume.