Perfect Dark Guide

Perfect Dark was first released by 会長 (Kaichou, Chairman) in 2006. It was clearly based on Share, and uses the same method of pasting in an encrypted node list to connect to the network. While Share required clusters and triggers, the built-in Perfect Dark search engine can find files straight away, so search is much simpler. The interface can be displayed in English or Chinese.

The Perfect Dark network apparently hit its peak size of 50 000 nodes in 2009, but has declined to a little over 6 000 nodes today. It is still one of the biggest Japan-based peer-to-peer networks along with Share and Winny, and probably uses more bandwidth than these two. The official client for Perfect Dark requires 40 GB of hard drive space to set up a unity file, and a minimum download speed of 100 KB/s which explains why it is the heavy users who gravitate to it. There is a cracked version though which eliminates these restrictions, and even the mainline client seems to work on slower connections.

You can download either the official client or the cracked version at:

P2P ファイル共有ソフトノード登録所

1.23 was released by 会長 in December 2015, and is the latest version subtitled 'Intolerance.' クラック済み translates as 'cracking carried out.'

You can run a speed test of your internet connection at Speedtest.net. When you start up Perfect Dark for the first time, it will take you to the Settings dialog box, and you can select your download speed from the dropdown menu. Copy the port number, and then in your webbrowser, open up your router settings, navigate to NAT, and open that port number TCP in and out. I don't think Perfect Dark supports uPnP, so you will probably have to do this manually for any firewalls you are running. If you are running Windows Firewall, make sure the ports are open there as well.

Next click on Information, and then 'Add ip address/port.' You then go to one of these sites, and copy the Node list to your clipboard, and then paste it into the 'Add ip address/port' dialog box where it says Encrypted text.

P2P ファイル共有ソフトノード登録所

Perfect Dark Evolution

PerfectDark-jp

Click on Add, and now Perfect Dark will try to connect to these nodes, and add their own nodes to its database. Close the dialog box, and at the top of Information it should say 'perfect dark is online.'

On the search tab, type a word or phrase into the blank box, and then click on Add, just below. Perfect Dark will begin searching the nodes to which you are connected, gradually spidering out gathering more and more search results over time. You can nest search terms within other search terms by first clicking on the head term, and then adding a new search term underneath. Click New if you want to set up a separate search header.

In the search window, 'Review' is the rating assigned to the downloaded file by users. According to Kaicho, 'count' increases the more times a file has been downloaded. 'Sign' is the username of the original uploader.

Most of the searching is done within PD itself, but there is one Russian index site:

PerfectDark.org

You right-click on a file, and select 'Copy information to clipboard' if you want to check the translation on Google Translate.

Select 'download' from the same menu to download. Click on the download tab to see your progress. In the official client, you may need to let Perfect Dark run for a while, so it can build up a unity of 2 GB's before any downloads will start. The size of your unity is listed under the 'information' tab.

To upload, just click on the Upload tab, then 'upload file,' and browse to the location of the file you want to upload. It will disappear from the Uploads window once it has been uploaded. I believe any files you upload are probably added to your unity.

Board(ボード) and gather(ギャザー) are bulletin boards that can be downloaded, and contributed to. Under the information tab, flow is where people post notes that soon disappear. There is a Perfect Dark thread at AnimeSuki Forums.