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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/26/15 in Posts

  1. I've been wanting to say it for a while now, but why do you actually always feel the need to show your worth by belittling literally the whole EVN scene? I mean, of course you can boast about how your art looks nice, because it does, but at the same time if you're really confident in the quality of the art, can't you just say so without insulting every OELVN artist at the same time? What's more, taste in art is a very subjective topic. You say that japanese artists have a better approach of anatomy : Surely you've read KEY works right? Not sure I can say that the body proportions are "professionals" (I mean, dem eyes that take half of the face...), even though I do love Key art style. Believe it or not, Western people (and not necessarily us, since we are people who are accustomed to japanese animation) might actually prefer games where girls actually don't seem to all have breast implants, or have ridiculous body proportion that I doubt it's actually possible to attain in reality, or faces where the nose is nearly non existent and where eyes take half of the space? I just find it really rude, especially since you're partially also criticizing people that, them at least, managed to release a completed project. Also, from time to time, some humility wouldn't hurt. Hopefully you know this word if you're a writer. Maybe instead of going "I shall bestow upon thee the privilege of participating to what will become the most awesome project that you'll ever see!" , something like "I'd like to have some help brainstorming potential idea for the scenario!" would be a good change of pace. Well, I might be asking too much I guess. Anyway, still, best of luck on your future endeavors. Hopefully this time you'll manage to reach the kickstarter phase. I saw what you did there...
    3 points
  2. So now that we have a creative corner, I figured I would try and contribute some my knowledge to the wonderful people around here. That and maybe I am just bored and done all of my assignments. I am still pretty new around here, but if I can help even one person with this, well… that is good enough I guess. So, as the title says, we will be talking about one of the main struggles almost every single writer will go through at least once during one of their projects. Whether that project be a novel, visual novel, heck even essays and translations to a much lesser extent; it will strike all of us eventually. It is more than likely that you, the reader, have already experienced Writer’s Block at some point, so you already understand the pains associated with it. Or maybe you are one of the lucky few who have never had to deal with such a thing, in which case I envy you entirely and completely. You could be going at breakneck speed through your manuscript, writing tens of thousands of words without having any issue, but sooner or later… you may find yourself smacking your head against a brick wall of blankness unable to figure out where to go from where you are. So first off, let’s talk about Writer’s Block and what it is. What is Writer’s Block? Writer’s Block, by definition, is when an author loses his ability to produce new work thus creating a block in his creative train of thought. This block can run you down for a few hours, to a much longer time over the span of years when in extreme cases. So looking at this as writers, this is not something we particularly want. We want to be able to avoid this sort of thing happening to us. But how do we do that? Well the tough answer to that is that we cannot just so easily prevent it. There are some ways that help keep our minds fresh and circulating new ideas, but there is no sure fire way to keep yourself safe from breaking against the Great Wall of Blanking Out. Writer’s Block can be entirely discouraging for an author, and for someone who is just getting used to writing larger works; can be absolutely catastrophic in terms of their will to keep writing. I know when I first started trying to write my first manuscript for the first… second… third… fourth… fifth… and sixth times. I honestly lost track after that, but my real problem was that I would get so far in, maybe about 2000 words and all of a sudden everything I had in my head would simply vanish. The Great Wall of Blanking Out would suddenly raise itself in front of my word count and would not allow it to progress any further. So let’s talk about ways to prevent Writer’s Block, even if it is in a small way. None of it is a guarantee, as everyone is different; but these are the ways that I have found to work and that have worked for the people I have helped through their own Writer’s Block issues. Preventing Writer’s Block: So as we know, Writer’s Block affects our ability to create new work. This does not mean that it only affects new project ideas, but rather it affects the entire creation process. You get so far in and all of a sudden your train of thought is just gone and you have nothing left you can put out because you have hit The Great Wall of Blanking Out. Some don’t even make it as far as the keyboard, thinking that they have not developed their idea enough, or that they just do not have time. So let’s get down to it: 1. Outlines Can Be Your Bible/Insert Religious Text One problem I have seen a lot of people run into is that they can go so far in, but all of a sudden lose everything they were about to write. When they just got an idea and started writing, they did not think ahead, and only knew the general plot outline of what they wanted. That is not to say you can't do this, but you run the risk of hitting a wall sooner or later if you don't really know where you are going. Kinda like wandering around the woods when you have never been inside those particular woods before. Go too far and you may end up a tad lost. Taking time and writing an outline of the events that take place in the story is an excellent idea. It provides you with a foundation to build upon when you go to sit down and write. This outline is merely just an outline, so just like your first draft (which I will get to next) you can spill your raw creativity into it and just let the ideas flow out on to the page. Your outline doesn't even have to make coherent sense, just so long as it gives you an idea of the direction you are heading. As long as you have a general idea of what you are doing, the risk of suddenly losing yourself and your story in the first 5-10k words can be greatly reduced. 2. Your First Draft is not Your Final Draft Here is another hang up that can easily discourage anyone who is writing. As writers, it makes sense that we have all read wonderful stories. Masterpieces in our own eyes. So obviously, when writing our own works, we want them to be just as good if not better if you are feeling really ambitious. So you sit down and you start writing. You get through the first chapter and you feel pretty darn satisfied, but you take a look through what you have written… and realize that it is not to the quality that you want it to be… so you start editing… but all of a sudden, you realize there is more wrong with it so you start editing that stuff too. Before you know it you have spent two hours editing the first chapter/portion of your work and you just feel absolutely drained from the ordeal. Most people I talk to end up losing their creative flair for the work after that, or if they get any further, end up losing it after subsequent bouts of this over editing process. So what is the problem here? Editing your first draft to look like a final draft before you have even written the whole thing is just bad news. The Writer and the Editor within you coexist, but they should not be working together at this early stage in the game. The first draft, just like outline, is where you can poor out your raw creativity and just roll with it. No author just sat down, puked out 100k+ words and created a masterpiece… and if they claim to have done so, I am going to call absolute bullshit. Writing a good work takes time, and one needs to force their inner Editor to just calm down and be patient. While the Editor is critical and meticulous, the Writer is freeform and creative. The critical side of the Editor can stifle the creativity of the Writer if they are working side by side at the same time. They do complement one another, just… not at the same time. 3. Keep Writing Another pitfall that one might want to avoid is not continuing. You may start with the intention of finishing, but maybe tomorrow you just “don’t feel like it”. But then, the next day after that… you find that you “don’t feel like it again”. Once you start making an excuse not to write like that, you are already on a road to pain when it comes to finishing your work. Writing a story is a time investment, and you are going to have to want it in order for you to even think about finishing it. “Not feeling like it” just isn't in the equation. The problem with this, is that after enough days of not feeling it, you might decide to come back to it. However, this is another lead in to allowing The Great Wall of Blanking Out to encroach on what you are trying to write. Writer’s Block will settle in and all of a sudden you have nothing for what you want to write. Even if you only write a single sentence, coming back and visiting your project each day is a good way to prevent it from fading in your mind. For one of the main things that Writer’s Block thrives off… is stagnation in the creative sense. _____________________________________________________________________________________ I struggled for years with Writer’s Block. I first started writing original works back in grade four. Until about four years ago, I had never finished anything. Writer’s Block would simply come over and snatch my ideas away from me. Once I hit Grade 9 and came up with a new story (where my Username originates), I just kept in my head, afraid of having development of that halted by another bout of Writer’s Block. These are just a few techniques you can use to prevent it. Curing Writer’s Block however, is a lot easier than one might think. It requires a lot of willpower, but it can be done. LinovaA’s Method for Working through Writer’s Block: Now while it is no guarantee, as with all of the things in this guide (oh gods this has become a guide?), it may help you if you find yourself in the middle of a particularly long bout of Writer’s Block. So what happens when you hit this Great Wall of Blanking Out? You run out of ideas. So where do you even go there? The best way to explain is to show an example of what I did. I sat down and looked at the paper and decided I needed to come up with something of my own creation. Doesn’t matter if it is cliché, but it needs to have a small level of originality to it. So the best bet was to just come up with a random scenario. However that is normally impossible with Writer’s Block. So here is a format I came up with <Adjective> <noun> <verb> <noun>. That is all. It’s best not to agonize over this. Seriously just pick any random adjective and any random noun that fits for the first two. Of course it ended up being this for me: Purple Elephants attack Earth. Not exactly the most elegant of scenarios, but we’ll work with it. So now that one has this completely strange scenario, you need to expand it somehow. So you simply need to add one detail at a time. Purple Elephants attack Earth and enslave humanity. Great. Just great. Add a few details, but after adding a few more details in this fashion… you take your pencil and scratch out something and edit the grammar of the sentence. I of course edited out Purple Elephants. Earth is attacked and humanity is enslaved by pseudo-Humans from Titan, enforcing a dystopian society. Voila. A scenario. This generally will not work the first time to fix your Writer’s Block. You need to do this over and over again until your brain starts easing up and those little details start coming to you much quicker. Or perhaps until you no longer need to use the simplistic format I laid out earlier. While a lot of people would say to go out and wait for the ideas to come to you, I believe and more proactive approach of force starting your creative engine to be the more efficient way when in a deep rooted bout of Writer’s Block. Of course, the less proactive approach may work with you more. I can't tell you if it is or not because everyone is different. The End: I do hope I have helped someone out here. I understand Writer’s Block being a huge challenge for a lot of people who are into writing like myself. Hopefully you come out of reading this learning something new, and if you didn’t… well thanks for giving me the time of day regardless. None of this is guaranteed to help, but hopefully I have helped give you some tools to help you keep writing and avoid Writer's Block, and perhaps even conquer it. So yeah, thanks for stopping by and giving this a read. Edit: I will be coming back to fix any typos when I get home.
    2 points
  3. Hey folks ! Hope you are all doing great. Recently, I have come across a few "travel" visual novels (travel novels maybe? hoho) like Go Go Nippon or Shan Gui. They feature real locations, with links to wiki pages etc to learn more if the player chooses to. Steins;Gate also takes place in Akihabara, which is a fairly common setting in anime, VNs, etc. The difference is, it seems that in the Steins;Gate VN, it seems like many of the shops are shown exactly as they are. Animate, Taito Station, etc. Is it okay to do that? Maybe they have asked the shops for permission? As I am sure a lot of us have noticed, in American TV dramas, if a character drinks a can of coke, the label would often be covered up. Is it because they want to avoid getting sued by Coca Cola? Some say it is just because they do not want to give Coca Cola free advertising, and that they have no need to fear legal actions against them. Sleeping Dogs would be another example. The game takes place in Hong Kong. Well, who "owns" Hong Kong? Sleeping Dogs also has many street signs throughout the game, but their names are slightly changed from their real life counterparts. The district names, however, remained the same. North Point, Kennedy Town and Central. So who "owns" Kennedy Town, for example? I would be interested in knowing what the rules are. Returning to Go Go Nippon, they can mention Akihabara without changing the name, yet the store names might be a different story. How about Initial D's famous mount Akina? The real place is named Haruna, I believe, and they decided to change that. Thanks for reading the ramble folks ! I wanted to see if anyone had some insights into this matter .
    2 points
  4. JAST has been officially working with Nitro+ since July 2009. The game was originally released in 2002, fan-translated in 2010, and remade in 2011. JAST has been sitting on a finished translation for 5 years now. Furthermore, JAST has acknowledged they have no plans to work on the game. I highly doubt JAST will begrudge you releasing your patch at this point. With this game, JAST is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can't release the original because it's not compatible with new operating systems. They're unlikely to release the remake because releasing only the all-ages version would tarnish their reputation as an adult publisher. Porting the original to the new engine wouldn't be worth the effort because it's already been fan-translated: most of the potential sales have already been cannibalized. Even if JAST eventually does release the all-ages remake, they'll do so on Steam where the existence of fan patches wouldn't matter anyway. There's very little harm your patch could cause to sales at this point. I'd go ahead and release it.
    2 points
  5. It's not hard to understand people's reluctance when you take into consideration your past behaviour, i.e once upon a time certain people took your pure intentions at face value and got burnt. Because of this there is a certain reluctance to take your words at face value again. This is the way of the world - actions leading to consequences. Your previous actions have caused a lack of trust and this lack of trust has led to certain accusations. Entertaining, no? Anyway, I personally think you'd be an idiot to pull the same stupidity twice so I'm keeping an open mind here. Unfortunately the interview doesn't interest me (I'm interested in the writing process, but not so much the artistic side) but best of luck to those involved. Also, why aren't you posting this on lemma...? If you want people to believe you have a Japanese mangaka involved you'll have to show some iron-clad proof at some stage. And yes that's because people don't trust you. And yes that's your own fault.
    2 points
  6. Now on the site @ Fuwanovel page
    2 points
  7. The only "free games" are freeware like Katawa Shoujo. You can probably count on one hand the number of free games that have been translated from Japanese to English. In general, Mangagamer's sells its story titles cheaper than they retail for in Japan. That's one of the reasons why Japanese companies are often reluctant to work with them--they typically end up undercutting themselves. What you're describing is simply rationalized selfishness. You've set arbitrary boundaries, a "safe zone", in which you can feel good about getting free stuff. In the context of works that will never get brought over, these boundaries make some amount of moral sense. But as soon as you say "it's a race to watch something before it leaves my self-prescribed safe zone", you've admitted that your facade of morality is simply a pretense for serving your own interests. It's intellectual dishonesty.
    2 points
  8. LOL what a nifty feature!! Now I can be in sync with.. uhh.. nvm >.>
    2 points
  9. So, for personal use, I've recently spent a great deal of time localizing the 2011 remake of Kikokugai: The Cyber Slayer into english using the existing translation by Makoto (accuracy is still spot on, as it has an identical script, say a few lines removed from the h-scenes). It'll be done this weekend, fully re-done and translated UI and all. Seeing as JAST licensed the original game a while ago, would it be ethical to release at patch for the remake to the public? Clearly, the original will become obsolete and screw JAST over badly as no one will want to opt for the version of the product which is inferior if there is a choice. On the other hand, it doesn't look likely that JAST will ever release Kikokugai, as it is inherently broken on its original engine, and they will certainly not shell out the cash for the licensing fees for the remake. They always dodge the question when they're asked anything about the game as well. I'll finish it regardless of whether it's right to release it or not. Mostly, it's something I've done because it's my all-time favorite VN.
    1 point
  10. With all of the types of media there are bound to be characters that look the same. Some examples I've noticed include: 1. Noble Works' Akari + Sena & Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance's Rinslet + Carol: ~ 2. Hoshizora no Memoria's Isuzu & Little Buster's Mio ~ 3. Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance's Claire & Date A Live's Kotori ~ 4. Hoshizora no Memoria's Komomo & Kosame What are other characters from any forms of media have you noticed look alike/similar/the same?
    1 point
  11. Haha yea I just had alot of things happening in 2014 especially the birth of me and my wife's beautiful baby girl. So I didn't have time to watch alot on my que that I saved on crunchyroll.
    1 point
  12. Kendjin

    Fuwa Pickup Lines

    Gonna go Down on you ALLL NIGHTTT LONNGGG...
    1 point
  13. "Your beauty is rarer than a solar Eclipsed."
    1 point
  14. Mr. Meogii

    Fuwa Pickup Lines

    You make my Kendjin Roar.
    1 point
  15. I think Little Busters has a lot of choices, but except for choosing the routes, they aren't really important to the story... What would be the closest to what you're seeking would be Fate/Stay night, as there are a lot of choices in the VN that all matters (a good chunk of them being life or death matters), but unfortunately there aren't many routes, which is compensated by the fact the routes in fate are really long (I am not taking into account the 30 different bad endings, some of them are very short though)
    1 point
  16. arakura

    Fuwa Pickup Lines

    "There's nohman I'd rather have than you"
    1 point
  17. I second this.
    1 point
  18. Kosakyun

    True or False

    ...True. Next person is named Tohka.
    1 point
  19. Personally I think Absolute Duo is worth watching. Kamisama hajimemashita didnt let the viewers down but Juuou Mujin no Fafnir didnt caught my attention alot..
    1 point
  20. What the hell do you mean winners? Is it a contest? Are people fighting for the right to see an interview with whoever this guy is (who is listed as from Indonesia and not Japan oddly enough). On top of the that, if he is talking about the doujin industry, what would he know about the inner workings of the professional VN world? All of this reeks of bullshit to be honest. You haven't provided any firm details at all, and we have no idea if this guy is actually even on board, or if he even knows of your existence. Has he even acknowledged you anywhere? Because I haven't been able to see anything. And don't even get me going on what you've done here on fuwa in the past with your little, "Give me the fuwa the servers pl0x" campaign. With so few details, and your constant picking of "winners" instead of offering, and opening this up for everyone, it leads me to think you are just a liar. Feel free to prove me wrong. though.
    1 point
  21. I've lost care when it comes to the art. Though it's usually the art that makes me want to play a visual novel. However, there are times that the other elements of the visual novel simply transcend that of the art, putting the necessity of the art's quality somewhere down the road. Say, Higurashi. I am really not fond of hamster hands, and I would rather have five fingers instead of a measly space between a joined four fingers and a thumb. However, I still read the story, and I was pleased. The art had not served the purpose of beautifying the visual novel. Rather, it has added to the thrill factor. Like, seriously. What the fuck, Rena.
    1 point
  22. I can't understand anyone that likes Yui. She's just like any of the other characters and is just an addition to thicken the plot needlessly (though we needed a 4th key, Yui was a really poor addition). That's 50% of the reason I dislike her. The other 50% is because i just hate her personality. She's a mother type, I hate mother types.
    1 point
  23. Guest

    Community Based VN Proposal

    Greetings everyone, our artist will be holding a live interview session soon where he will talk about the Japanese Doujin industry! It's a great opportunity for any eager mind wanting to learn more about the inner workings of the professional VN world. If you're intetested, please leave a reply saying so Ten random winners will be selected.
    1 point
  24. Surely this was for 2014.
    1 point
  25. No worries I wont ruin the story for everyone but will link crunchyroll very first episode of this show for anyone that wants give it a go. EPISODE 1
    1 point
  26. In celebration of Australia Day, and touching upon that discussion from before, I present everyone with a helpful guide to our glorious nation.
    1 point
  27. In general, 1.3 tend to mean someone tagged it for the hell of it and you should more or less ignore it, especially if it's something which can be defined decently well like Nakige. Stens;Gate of all things is listed as 1.5 Nakige, which should tell you about the quality of vndb tagging in general.
    1 point
  28. Backup everything onto an external hard drive and then back that up to another external hard drive; repeat until paranoia is eliminated~ ~~ I have one external hard drive that contains essentials(docs, music, pics) and non-essentials(games, VNs, anime); I also have several flashdrives for the essentials as well.
    1 point
  29. I truly like any artstyle, after a while i just get used to it and becomes natural even when it's really weird looking like steins;gate, clannad for example was really weird at first but at the end of the novel I ended up loving it. The thing is even if the art style is bad if the plot is good it doesnt matter.
    1 point
  30. Ayana, the first track was incredible, had some amazing parts with a great melody. The second one was a bit odd...not my favorite, but it was nice. I don't know how I felt about the electronic sound. The third one seemed pretty plain-Jane-piano, but it was lovely in that sense. The first one was by far my favorite though. The piano riff(?) that appeared throughout was what did it, along with the ending. I'll look into that soundtrack if I can find the entire collection. Erogamer, that was one of my favorites as well! What I do is get a soundtrack and weed out the songs that I'm not too fond of. That was easily a keeper. Edwd2, The flute in the first one nearly turned me off but the guitar itself and its melody along with the beat and piano made it great. Glad I stuck it out another....few seconds, lol. The second track was plain-Jane until the stringed instruments came into play. Hapymaher was one of the VN soundtracks I had trouble finding though. I REALLY love how the third track progressed. Definitely fit into that "cute" group, along with a great melody. Great, now I'm gonna have to see if I can find the soundtrack to that one as well! The work is real. Thanks again to everyone so far, I really do appreciate the help!
    1 point
  31. Mr. Meogii

    Hello :)

    Welcome to za community!
    1 point
  32. Like Down said, the solution is to just broaden your tastes. VNs have more to offer than just character sprites, if you get so caught up in character designs you won't enjoy the rest of the experience. If anything I'd say the art nowadays has a troublesome case of same-face-syndrome which is much more annoying than weirdly proportioned characters that had unique traits to them and were distinguishable (Key is an exception because they've always been bound by same-face-syndrome) If you can get through Higurashi you're pretty much good to deal with most things. I've read countless things with art that would be considered "terrible" by some, but i've just come to get used to it because there's more to the content than just the art (Seriously, Hunter x Hunter looks like it was drawn by a 5 year old).
    1 point
  33. Why am I excited for this? Anyway, I just found out that the background artist is from the same country as mine. Feels so proud, man. I also found a chibi Audrey in his gallery.
    1 point
  34. Too often does a handful of poorly-translated lines blemish an otherwise splendid fan translation. "What does this phrase mean?" "How can I construct an English equivalent for this?" "Why does my mom hate me?" Fret no longer, for I've come upon the paragon of modern ingenuity. I introduce to you TranslationParty.com! How does this work? Well, type in any phrase, and Translation Party will put it through the flawless Bing Translator (Google Translate was formerly used, but that was a little too flawless), then put the Japanese result back into English, then put the English result back into Japanese, and so forth until the phrase finally repeats itself. Thus, perfect equilibrium is achieved. Take an example: Naturally, inputting Japanese works as well. Take a look at this sentence that only a linguistic genius could translate properly: Our lord and savior Translation Party eventually produced: Unfortunately, this exponential duplication of mammaries came to a tragic end when Bing Translator exceeded its limit. It is well that perfection should come at a cost, after all. Now go out there and translate some timeless masterpiece. Only your own patience limits your literary potential!
    1 point
  35. If you smoke like 2kg with a loli, she too can become the highest form of flattery.
    1 point
  36. Even though I am still away from Fuwa (largely due to an illness) I figured the very least I could do is shatter any illusions. Sadly the lack of hair is due to meds
    1 point
  37. Cyrillej1

    MUST WATCH anime?

    okay, I'm not sure what you're into but here are some of my personal favorites that I think are a Must Watch. The list would be longer, but I tried to put up what I thought might interest others too. You can look at my animelist if you want to see more. If I mark it ** I highly recommend trying if you haven't watched yet. Fantasy/Action **Full Metal Alchemist - 51 episodes **Code Geass Season 1 & 2 - 50 episodes Juuni Kokuki - 45 episodes **Attack on Titans - 25 episodes **Sword Art Online - 25 episodes From a New World - 25 episodes Record of Lodoss Wars OVA - 13 episodes Madoka Magica - 12 episodes **Sunday Without God - 12 episodes Ga Rei Zero - 12 episodes **Mononoke Hime - movie Psychological/Thriller Suspense **Steins;Gate - 24 episodes Shiki - 22 episodes **Elfen Lied - 13 episodes Slice of Life **Angel Beats! - 13 episodes Haibane Renmei - 13 episodes Drama **Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien - 14 episodes
    1 point
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