Perfect Dark

"Perfect Dark (パーフェクトダーク) is a peer-to-peer file-sharing (P2P) application from Japan designed for use with Microsoft Windows."
- Wikipedia English

In short, it's your best way to acquire obscure Japanese stuff, such as DLSite files, various doujin media, audio files₀ and other obscure Japanese lewd entertainment.

₀ Except for new releases, since new voice works seem to be uploaded into Perfect Dark rarely these days (there's still plenty of older ones though). Check Baidu instead.

System requirements:

• 40 GB hard drive space₁
• 100 KB/sec minimum upload speed₂
• 512 MB RAM

₁ Perfect Dark as a P2P system distributes files between its users. This cache is called unity, and the minimum you'll be able to limit it to is 40 GB.
₂ As an example, my maximum upload speed is barely 100 KB/sec, and the software works fine for me.

Install instructions

Generally you don't need to worry about getting the latest version, since the program updates itself automatically. The latest version at the moment of writing this is 1.22, available here:

https://www21.atwiki.jp/botubotubotubotu?cmd=upload&act=open&pageid=28&file=Perfect+Dark+v1.22.zip

• Extract, run perfect dark.exe, accept the EULA, next.
• Click ok (you should see the following image), and specify the speed of your internet connection.

• Set your language to English & enable auto-update.
• Specify the ports. You need to forward the main port (not the interface port). The method for doing this varies depending on your router/modem/firewall, so Google it. It's like setting up a torrent client, if you're familiar with that.
• Press ok.
• Next add nodes. Copy and paste the following lines to the "encrypted text:" text box and click add.

• Click close
• Perfect Dark should now look like this. The program by default starts separated into two panels. You can close either one with the box in the upper left corner, you don't necessarily need both.
• Check if your port is forwarded properly in the information tab. If the text is red, go back to step four.

Searching and downloading

Your main interface you'll be using is the search tab. Type a search word in the upper left white box and click add. Perfect Dark will now begin searching for any files with the specified text. Searching may be slow immediately after installing, because you don't have a decent sized cache built yet. You can still download regardless.

Example search words to use:

• 同人音声 (doujin voice)
• RJ123456 (DLsite catalogue numbers)₃
• Circle names (ajaib suara, シロクマの嫁, 俺だけが得する音声工房, etc.)
• Voice actor/actress names generally don't work. Use DLsite to search for works they've appeared in instead.

₃ All uploads don't necessarily have DLsite numbers, so search by name too to be sure.

• After you've found something you've liked, right click on it in the big right area and click download.
• The file will be moved to the download tab, where you can check its progress.
• After the download is finished, it will be moved from the download tab to the complete tab. At this stage, the file will be ready to use in a subfolder called "download" in the directory where the main executable of the program is. You don't need to leave it in the folder and can move it freely.

Occasionally Perfect Dark may notify you about your complete list growing too big without any reviews. In that case go to the complete tab, select a bunch of files and review them from the right click context menu. Right click again and choose clear reviewed item. I'm not sure how the grading works to be honest.

Don't expect gigabit download or upload speeds. Usually you'll be seeing 100-300 KB/sec download speeds. I'm running one instance of PD on a server with 100MB-1GB connections and it still doesn't use much bandwidth.

Linux, Wine and Servers

Perfect Dark works fine on Linux under Wine. Some things to remember:

• Use a Japanese locale (for example ja_JP.UTF-8 on Debian-based systems) to avoid font issues.
• The executable doesn't like being renamed, start it with "wine perfect\ dark.exe".