Leaderboard

Using translated VNs as a model to improve your writing is probably a bad idea. Most releases employ literal translations by translators and editors who aren't professional fiction writers. Using OELVNs as a model won't be much better since, again, most groups don't employ professional fiction writers. You're probably better off reading popular fiction novels, honestly.

Haruka is a funny game. I love Alicesoft as a company in general. http://reviews.fuwanovel.net/2016/04/05/beat-blades-haruka/ This is my first post as part of the fuwa reviews team. How did you like it?

I did say this thread was a terrible idea in the BM forums... Still, to some extent, the purpose of this was to contain offtopic rants about moderation in a single thread rather than letting it happen all over the forums - and there's not much point in it if we don't let people rant to their heart's content. I appreciate all types of feedback - good or bad - so long as they reflect what the members are thinking. When it gets to name-calling, that's a no-no and I'd consider banning someone for it (at the very least, I'd talk to them and hide the posts.) Wasn't watching the thread too closely, though. I figured there'd be enough moderation around here and that I wouldn't have to do anything about it. Guess that was wrong, huh. Sorry for that. Should've paid some more attention. On the topic of banning, temp bans are a little slap to the wrist. They're a way of saying "don't do that". There's no reason to actually ban someone it if the person is going to tone down - oftentimes it just serves to make members saltier and angrier, which is a terrible result. As you said, there are very real people behind your computer screen - you can actually make them understand what type of site this is and how their behavior here should be through talking. Banning often has no result other than creating a troublemaker, lol. Obviously uncooperative types aside, I continue to think it's a really shitty method to stop people from being arses. Still, there are many ways to moderate the site, and none of them is obviously better than the other, in my opinion... Yours is fine, but I'd like you to keep in mind that I'm not soft because I'm lazy or because I want some lulz. I moderate the way I do precisely because I'm dealing with actual human beings.

A lot of people say the same thing – “writing VNs is quite different to writing novels.” I would say it’s a quarter truth. There ARE some differences, like having better and fuller control of where you end a screen, and less narration of external events due to background images, but the basics are the same, and 99% of what is needed to write VNs can be learnt better in the novel world than in the VN world. After which, you just apply different techniques to produce the same effects. For example: Question – with the ability to describe external events largely taken away through the use of background images and sprites, how would you slow down the pacing of a scene? Answer – You can still describe changes in the environment not revealed with static background images, or focus on internal dialogue. Question – But wouldn’t ADV format cut down on your ability to write long pieces of external narration, even if you could technically narrate changes in the environment? Answer – Most people get around this with either an ADV/NVL blend, OR a greater focus on internal dialogue which is, in essence, dialogue. These are applications of standard novel techniques. Dunno, I don’t really see the virtues to be honest . I can’t think of many prose techniques which stem from the Visual Novel landscape that I’d actually like to employ. Overuse of ellipses? Well you can do that with novels, but you actually learn more (and better) alternatives if you choose to read novels and not VNs. Timing is a little different due to the box/page thing, but eh, all that does is encourage the writer to use less prose, and that’s hardly a new technique. ADV does exclude the ‘he said,’ ‘she said’, lines … which is actually kinda irritating cause you can slot those words in the middle of a sentence to slow down the pacing: “I suppose,” she said, as she gazed out the window, "but I’d rather have the option.” As you can see, the pacing of the sentence has slowed using that interjection thingy. ADV cocks this up, but you can still get around it by selecting different techniques. I bet most VNs would use ellipses here: NameGoesHere: I suppose … but I’d rather have the option. It’s not like it’s a new or grand technique or anything. You’re more limited in what you can do, and you might choose different techniques to apply to VNs than what you would in novels, but what I’m trying to say is that learning to write novels gives you a more rounded writing education, imo. What writers actually need to learn from VNs is how you compose a narrative using pictures, but that won't help your prose any. Of course, a lot of prominent people disagree with me, but eh. I suppose that’s just another example of how there’s no ‘right or wrong’ in writing, I guess.

First thing to do - get away from VNs. I would wager the same rule applies for aspiring Japanese fiction writers also, VNs aren't the kind of place you find exceptional prose. If the prose in VNs were exceptional, they'd make a living off only that prose. Most authors start off mimicking their favourite writers ... kinda. It's a natural stage in a person's development as a writer and one of the first steps toward developing your own style. A person reads a lot to get an understanding of what works, what doesn't, what they enjoy, and how they pull that off. This includes mimicking stuff you think is awesome, and shunning stuff you find terrible. You're going to have to narrow it down. 'Exceptional' is a subjective term, it tends to differ from person to person. What you're really after is how writers build the sort of effects you want to create, in an effective manner, because different styles are created with an end effect in mind. Some authors use adjectives and adverbs so powerful that a single word is all it takes to produce a clear image. It should be noted that these adverbs and adjectives are often not in standard use and it takes someone with a pretty complete control over a language to do this. Someone with this sort of control (and it's rare) can create vivid images with short, punchy sentences. Some authors prefer a smooth, flowing, conversational style. Some authors seem to require the reader to hurl their novel across the room in frustration, and they'll craft complex sentences which are hard to decipher. Each style benefits from different techniques, which is why you read extensively when you're young so you have an understanding of different styles and the techniques used to create them. To be honest, if you're asking for examples at this stage it's an indication that either a) you haven't read enough or b) you haven't paid enough attention or thought enough about what you're reading. Then you go away and find authors whose style matches what you desire to create and you mimic, then you find other authors who do something slightly different and you mimic them also, then after a while you take the best points and you make your own style. However, nobody else can find this 'exceptional' prose for you, that's your homework as a writer. My heros are Pratchett, Adams, those kinds or writers. I also model my style off some romance novels cause I like a kind of flowing style (which you more often find in women authors.) During this process, I've learnt to identify stuff which is 'undesirable' to me, analysed what made it 'undesirable' and learnt to stay away from those practices. Nobody else could identify this stuff for me, it's a personal process because nobody knows what you like. Bad writing is always the same, making the same sorts of mistakes - however good writing is good in different ways. Different writers will give you theories, very few of these theories will be iron clad rules but most of these theories will be what works for them. It's hard to copy, because what works is different for different people. Your homework as a writer is to develop your own style through research and study. This is why everybody's first advice to writers is the same - 'read everything and read widely. After you think you've read everything, read some more.' ... Except for VNs. Don't read those. There are some OELVNs written by professional authors, but you'd be better off reading their books rather than their VNs. Studying prose in VNs will give you a limited education and appreciation of prose. Reading writing advice from different authors doesn't count - it's good as a supplementary material, but you need to think about stuff yourself. Good luck

The House in Fata Morgana: Demo Now Available! http://blog.mangagamer.org/2016/04/05/the-house-in-fata-morgana-demo-now-available/ https://vndb.org/v12402 From Black Dragon Hunt ask.fm, guy who was doing programming on this translation: I don't know much about this VN, but I felt in love with it from the first moment I saw screens and few tags on vndb months ago. Hopefully it is as good as I want it to be. Demo have only 246 MB, but it's supposed to be "beefy".

Well, obviously and as has been said before, if what you want is to get a taste of the range of possibilities of the english language, you're better off reading Nabokov, Woolf or Shakespeare than even the best translated VNs like Grisaia or Dra+Koi. But the thing is, and that's pretty obvious, you don't write a visual novel like you write a novel. Not that visual novels have bad prose or w/e, it's just that for two media with two different ways of delivering text, the approach to writing has to be different. In particular if your VN is going to be in ADV format. Therefore it would actually be good for you to read visual novels in order to see what kind of writing techniques are used. The issue is that I'm not sure there are really a lot of good samples in EVNs. There is definitely a whole range of available interesting prose and techniques in japanese VNs, but you don't write in japanese like you write in english either so it's all kinda useless to you. So yeah, idk. Maybe the best thing you could do is to read theater. Theatrics is probably what's closest to ADV dialogs. Reading great english prose books certainly can't hurt anyway. But contrary to previous advices I wouldn't say to avoid VNs, because you need to understand the medium you're using too.

Damn, this thread is intense. and im just here eating popcorn.

Hid 12 posts here... Please do realize that advocating what may very well be a crime is against the rules and can land you severe punishment (both in real life and here.)

The problem, is that writing for VNs is different than writing a book. I know that at least Dischan struggled with that for a while. As one of their writers was a good writer for books, but he didn't write in a way that accommodated VNs very well. When writing a visual novel, you have to take into account that audio and visuals will accompany the writing. In particular because of visuals, you don't need to describe things quite as much as your would for a book. Furthermore, how writing is presented is very important as well. Will you mostly use textboxs, or go for full screen text, or will you use a different style all together (Like how Narcissu and Swan Song use neither of the typical styles). If you present text differently, you can write differently. Swan Song is written more like a novel, and the way text is presented in that VN works with that. Swan Song would be a very different (a worse VN), if it used the same exact script but in textbox format. So the gist of my point is that simply being a good fiction writer for pure text media, won't necessarily make you a good VN writer. You need to see good writing in the medium you are planning to write for.

I found the writing in the review disjointed and difficult to follow, likely due to an overuse of hyphens and the convoluted way the words are organized. That's my main criticism. The content itself seems good. As for the game, the H-scenes and filler slice-of-life scenes (many even repeat multiple times) get tedious. I'm not much of a fan of multiple variations on the same basic H-scene. This design choice adds to the sense of repetition. I think this game would've benefited from an increased focus on gameplay and a smaller number of unique sex scenes that show actual character and relationship development. The Venus Blood series illustrates how such a balance can be achieved without making the game any less sexy.

@hsmsful@Dergonu@Zebhra@Funyarinpa Calling out some of the asmr squad.

I just fell in love with Kaguya-hime all over again

I never expected to read a VN that made Civ references, but, well, here we are.

Yes. It can, and should be. Rule enforcement only comes second after having some lulz to a lot of them. Remember my wall of text from last page? Point in case.

some people believe that a good and complicated prose makes a good vn (I won't give names but people that are consider gurus in this vn world), in fact they gave a lower score to some vns just because it has a simple writing style, I don't agree with this at all, if something is good it is good no matter how complex the writing style is. At the end of the day if the story is bad no matter how good the prose is the story will still be bad.

One Thousand Lies is legit.

Honestly, what a silly reason to drop a VN, though in your case that was the final nail in the coffin eh? Wow, guess you'll be one of the < 100 people out of 3000+ that give S;G a < 7 VNDB score. Damn hipsters

You know.... if you are willing to pay there are a lot of good free lancers that work for peanuts at Guru.

I'm a fan of the humor in Demonbane, which is as chuuni as it gets. Humor isn't a necessity for every story, of course, and it may not be appropriate for yours if that's how you feel about it; but it's definitely not out of bounds for a chuunige. I really like Clephas's characterization of the chuuni protagonist as a hedge philosopher, and I think Zalor is right about it applying to the antagonist as well. To put t another way, in general, the main players usually have a very obvious and central motive for what they do, the motive is very ideological, and it's usually at least a little bit crazy: I want to destroy the world because people are irredeemable I want to save people even though I don't really get along with anybody, because doing otherwise would leave a bad taste in my mouth Something along these lines.

Kickstarter Live now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1183318884/false-elegy-the-dark-fantasy-visual-novel In order to find his lost friend, a divine entity has to bind with a beautiful demon corrupted by sin. With their lives connected as one, the only way to survive is by withstanding heaven and hell together. "This messed up world consists of those who fall and those who thrive off of the fallen. Whatever you choose, you'll be one of the two." Since the dawn of man, Ascendants have been seen soaring in the skies. To the humans, they are ethereal, divine and immortal beings; guardians of earth and protectors of humankind. But even among the Ascendants, there are those who have Fallen. Areon is an Ascendant who hunts the creatures born from sin; the Fallen. Together with his partner Eden, he purges the world little by little. Everything goes effortlessly until Areon is asked to participate in the Divinity project; a project to rehabilitate Fallen. Only the best Ascendants are chosen due to the dangers. During the project, a Divinity Link will be formed between the two until one Ascends, or one Falls. At the selection, the beautiful Ark caught his attention. A Fallen that had been caught three weeks ago, but never approached due to her insanely corrupted personality. Areon, undaunted by her ferocity, forms a link with Ark. However, he did not realize that his powers will be irrelevant. What will be challenged are his wits, resolve, and mental fortitude. What awaits him is a bigger task than he could have ever imagined. Prepare for the release of the demo. Will you change the story? Or will the story change you? Who are we? Hey! We're Team geNe6 and we're an international team striving to make our mark in the visual novel world. Our goal is to create the high-quality visual novel which everyone has been waiting for, while also introducing people to the medium. Inspired by both Japanese and western media, we hope to create something unique, and surprise everyone with our upcoming visual novel; False Elegy. Characters General info: The story will contain psychological, action, fantasy, romance and mature elements We are aiming for around 15-20 hours of reading time. Sprites will have different poses with different expressions. The visual novel will contain original backgrounds. Music will be composed exclusively for the visual novel. Progress We are currently working towards finishing the demo! The demo will cover the first chapter of the story. Writing: 100% of the demo Editing: 100% Character Art: 100% CG Art: 100% WIP CG art: Background Art: 100% GUI: 100% Music: 100% Programming: 100% Feel free to introduce yourself and please share your first impressions! Questions, comments, and criticism are always welcome! Follow us now on twitter!: https://twitter.com/Team_geNe6 or on facebook!: https://www.facebook.com/FalseElegy/ Lemmasoft version of this post: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=37416

Although I haven't played the title yet, I have a comment concerning the dresses of the characters. For good chuuni fighting scenes, the characters also should have cool looking dresses that somehow reflect who they are. And overall I think the good old F/SN did a better job here with the dresses for both, the male and female characters and especially the servants. In Tokyo Babel, we have Astaroth as the sole highlight, but the rest are just dressed in plain school uniforms and a... maid dress?! Aren't they supposed to be (warrior) angels and demons?! But while the school uniforms of the male characters in Tokyo Babel look still kind of okay with their elegant simplicity, I can't exactly say the same for the female ones. Especially Samael - does she want to fight or clean the kitchen?! And the rest of the girls also look more like ready for pillow fight than anything else. Compared to Rider's cool dress in F/SN that's just a joke.

also suggesting you try out "one thausand lies", as it really delivered language-wise, especially when considering that its actually non commercial. cant await the authors/writers next work(s), if there´re going to be any.

Of course you are

Yeah. I listen to audio porn research tapes when I go to sleep. I even listen to it on the bus and occasionally in school. Fite me irl bruh

Literally the only thing I quote from Lethal Weapon 4. Well... that and "chicken flied lice", because racism is always good for a laugh.

Wha wha what?!? You, you shouldn't just say things like that and make me feel like this and all!!!

The tool itself is a way to stop people from accessing the site for a certain amount of time. The way it's used is up for the user. Your post makes sense. It's why I don't criticize Nay's way of modding - I think it's perfectly valid. Still, if possible, I'd like people to stop being arses over saying they're not welcome. It's not like I never ban anyone. It's just that I prefer seeing if we can work things out before doing that... And I don't really think that's wrong. One of the advantages of being a small community is that we can pay attention to all the members, and make judgments afer familiarizing ourselves with the situations that led to the trouble-making and the nuance in the whole issue - and I think it'd be a waste to throw that privilege away. Things aren't black and white, and a kick in the nuts isn't always the right way to go about rule-breaking. Of course, it also depends on what the member is doing. Certain transgressions would just get someone banned, yes. Ugh. I suck at writing text-walls. Hopefully this managed to explain what I think about moderation better. If it didn't, rip me

Confession: I honestly still think of myself as a teenager, but I haven't been one for 2 years now

Temp bans aren't supposed to stop people being arses, it's to tell them they've 'overstepped the line in a significant way' and that 'if they can't follow the rules, they're not welcome on the site'. It's to 'remove' the 'arse element' from the community, not 'change' the 'arse element' into something which smells like roses. If you're using it as a tool to 'stop people acting like an arse', you're using it mistakenly. It's a tool which says 'respect the rules or you're no longer welcome on the site.' Think of it as a 'swift kick in the nuts', it's not supposed to make them nice or stop them from being an arse, it punishes and makes you feel good ... Ha! Everybody knows that most ‘users’ on the internet are nothing but pieces of computer code, created by a devious mind to impersonate the worst aspects of human behaviour, and unleashed on the web for unknown, nefarious purposes. Almost like a virus. And you wouldn't be humane to a virus, would you? That'd just be silly ...

He touched my shitty painting and left a dirty finger print right on the middle He was my favorite teacher in hs though.

Made a banner for my own project, Bishoujo Mangekyou Probably won't make a lot of banners anymore

Damn, you're a year older than me, doesn't feel like that at all. Happy birthday @Dergonu, hope you have a good one.

agree with this, even if some things got lost on the translation still has an amazing writing which can be consider "hard" to read for its prose

Happy birthday to @Dergonu the yuri fag. I hope your birthday is filled with depression and Sono Hanabira.

Thank you everyone!

https://keinart.itch.io/one-thousand-lies

1. Do not like long flights 2. Have too few time (max 1 week) of free time a year 3. Generally like to see old gothic architecture and nature like wast savannah, tall mountains (obv when mountaineering), green forests... 4. Because I have very short period to enjoy vacation - this have to be done fast, so I do not have time to mind bed covers But travels do exaust me and I am very glad to see my olde home again. Probably one of the best things is that "homecoming" feel.

I was actually banned for like a day yesterday. No bullshit; I actually like it here. /r/vns is getting too stale for me.

おたんじょび　おめでとう、せんぱい！ Wasn't the first in the chat but I was in here!

So make them edgy as fuck. Additionally, I feel like what you said applies just as much to Chuuni antagonists as well. I've only seen a few scenes from Dies Irae, but holy shit is Reinhard cool and twisted (and his voice actor does a bloody good job portraying him).

Thanks for the quick reply. Nice signature too, Tincle Twinkle Festival?

Happy birthday Dergonu, you beautiful yuri-lover you

If I'm with someone I usually have a better time when I travel somewhere. Like, I'm fundamentally a shut in, but I've learned to appreciate some time off of my computer when traveling. Maybe you'll feel the same way on your one week trip. I used to feel very much like you when I had to go somewhere. "Why do I need to go through all this hassle!". But it might actually be a nice experience if you're open minded.

Travelling is nice, but I don't like doing it alone, reason being I'm lazy and prefer to sit in the comfort of my house so if I go alone I'll probably just spend the vast majority of my time indoors paying ridiculous amounts for the wifi.

Hey, I'm the translator for Angel Beats. First of all, thanks for taking interest, and going out of your way to post this on fuwanovel for me. I honestly had no idea until a mod on fuwa reached out to me via reddit mail. So, just like what I said in yesterday's update, I'm currently desperate for a hacker. You guys are talking about binaryfail, but I have no idea who that is, and if you guys could help me out, that would be extremely thankful. Also, I'm ready to accept any kind of criticism, suggestions, tips, questions, and opinions regarding this project. Again, thanks for taking interest!

Just wanted to mention I've fixed a bug in the "vaconv" tool from RLDev (used for converting from and to the proprietary .g00 image file format of the RealLive and SiglusEngine game engines). The bug is that if a .g00 file contains multiple images, vaconv places these over each other in the resulting .png, leaving only the last image visible and the others obscured partially or completely behind it. This typically makes editing impossible. Some people have found a workaround involving Crass, screenshots, manual image stitching and RealLiveMax (the all-Japanese RealLive SDK)... But this is a quite involved process. Instead I fixed vaconv so it properly places the various images of a .g00 below each other in the output .png, allowing an editor to change all of them without the manual hassle mentioned above. (And by "fixed", I mean "rewrote from scratch in C++", since I gave up on trying to compile the original OCaml code after half a night) This new tool is named "vaconv-cpp.exe" to distinguish it from the original "vaconv.exe" in RLDev. ("cpp" for "C++") Example with a file from Hanasaki Workspring: vaconv.exe _config_system_hscene_select_btn.g00 vaconv-cpp.exe _config_system_hscene_select_btn.g00 Download (includes complete source code as a VS2015 project). VS2015 runtime is required.