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shcboomer

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  1. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from KyouBell in 50 translated VNs you should read before you die   
    Interesting list, I'm surprised Clannad isn't on there. o.0
  2. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Silvz in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    Usually, it's the line playing out of sync with the text. Either ahead or behind. Reloading a save fixes it the majority of the time.
  3. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Silvz in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2018/04/13/fatal-twelve/
    Rinka best girl. Literally.
     
  4. Like
    shcboomer reacted to solidbatman in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    im done with vns again. bye
  5. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from tymmur in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    I basically went with this distinction here. I believe it would be common to consider this "yuri". As this is an all-ages title and there is no explicit sexual content, shoujo-ai may be more appropriate. (At least by VNDB standards.) However, I assure you there is romance involved.

    You tell me bats, you tell me.
  6. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    I basically went with this distinction here. I believe it would be common to consider this "yuri". As this is an all-ages title and there is no explicit sexual content, shoujo-ai may be more appropriate. (At least by VNDB standards.) However, I assure you there is romance involved.

    You tell me bats, you tell me.
  7. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from tymmur in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2018/04/13/fatal-twelve/
    Rinka best girl. Literally.
     
  8. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from ChaosRaven in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2018/04/13/fatal-twelve/
    Rinka best girl. Literally.
     
  9. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2018/04/13/fatal-twelve/
    Rinka best girl. Literally.
     
  10. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Fred the Barber in Fatal Twelve Review Discussion   
    https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2018/04/13/fatal-twelve/
    Rinka best girl. Literally.
     
  11. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from amaiannie in Hi everyone!   
    Welcome to Fuwan. o/
  12. Like
    shcboomer reacted to InvertMouse in Character designs (with post on The Last Birdling)   
    Hi there . As always, I hate stealth promos, so I want to share my post on The Last Birdling first:
     


    To avoid more shameless plugs, I would like to dedicate this thread to character designs in general. From all the VNs you have played, are there any character designs that stand out? A few of my thoughts:
    1) It doesn't necessarily have to be about the costumes. For instance, perhaps a character sports a hairstyle you have never seen before.
    2) Sometimes, it can be about body types. Let's say with Love Live (though it is not a VN), I think plenty of people appreciate Nozomi. Though she is pretty of course, she also stands out by not necessarily fitting into the unrealistically slim stereotype.
    3) Many VNs take place in school settings. This limits what designers can do, but the uniforms themselves can stand out, and the cast still have casual clothes. Also, what designers do to separate characters from one another while in uniform is worth a mention. Different shoes, sock lengths etc. It undoubtedly also helps fulfill a various of fetishes.
    Happy to hear examples, opinions and anything else related to the topic of design. Thank you !
  13. Like
    shcboomer reacted to InvertMouse in Transparency with decision trees (The Last Birdling)   
    Hi everyone . Thank you again for letting me post my blog entry here:

    This time I talk about the choice systems I have used in previous games, and the method I plan to adopt in The Last Birdling. Hope you like it!


     
    A few points I would be happy to hear thoughts on:

    1) If a choice has no impact on the ending, is it better for the game to be linear? I played Akiba's Trip recently, and I imagine a lot of those choices had no effect on the ending, but some of them were hilarious so they never bothered me. See, I always had this theory. If it has "attitude", you can get away with almost anything.

    2) Is it dishonest to boast about x number of endings if most of them are just instant gameovers? This doesn't offend me, but when it is being done all the time, it results in a "yeah let me guess" type of reaction.

    3) For those who have played it, how awful did you think Mass Effect 3's ending was? In terms of player agency, maybe it is a travesty compared to older titles like Star Wars KOTOR. That said, back in the days, cutscenes were less expensive to produce (well I wouldn't know a thing about that). Is it really possible to produce multiple vastly different endings when you know most players will miss a bunch of that content?

    4) More branches means longer game length. Does it also risk potential fluff routes and less editing time (spellcheck, skim read once and call it a job done)?

    5) What is the point of multiple paths if there is a true ending in the end? Though I want to be edgy and say it's pointless, I actually like true endings. Not those everything is magically okay ones, but it's good to have something that tells you yes, this is indeed the end.

    6) Does it bug you when choices seem nonsensical, and you are forced to look up guides?

    7) I wonder why visual novels often have multiple paths, but it's much less common with traditional novels? Of course, we have the choose your own adventure books. Maybe having to turn to a particular page is just a pain.
    Thank you!
  14. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from InvertMouse in What counts as shameless promotion?   
    Can't really answer the rule questions. However, I can say I'm 100% behind you in terms of your work. We can really tell that you put your effort into it. I recall when I first played the web version of Unhack. Look how far you've gotten now. Congrats!
  15. Like
    shcboomer reacted to InvertMouse in What counts as shameless promotion?   
    Man, such a click-baity title .

    As some of you know, I released Unhack 2 recently. People who gave the game a chance mostly enjoyed it, but I had a hard time with discoverability. I hate shameless plugs, and I wanted to do the show-don't-tell thing, so maybe I was naive.

    Currently, I am working on The Last Birdling. I pour my life into these games (the earliest ones embarrassingly bad), so I don't want to pretend they're just for fun anymore. Still, I don't want to cross the line. Different forums have different rules, after all. The Fuwanovel forums are pretty kind and generous in terms of guidelines. Can I throw a couple of questions out and see what you think?

    1) If we have a new project to announce, should we restrict it to the Original VN Projects section, or can we post about it on Visual Novels Discussion? Is it a case where if it is a Western VN, it can only sit in the Original VN Projects section? Big Japanese releases clearly are allowed in Visual Novels Discussion. I am happy to follow the rules if everybody else does the same, but yeah, I would like to know what the situation is.

    2) Do we have issues with creators plugging projects as their very first post on these forums? There are places where that will constitute an instant warning or even ban. Actually, I guess this one doesn't apply in my case since I've loitered here for a while now.

    3) I want to write up some articles related to my upcoming games, which also links to bigger discussions. Is it okay with you guys if I shared them on this board? Hopefully I'll come up with something worthwhile (while sneakily talking about myself which shames me so much) along the way.

    Thank you so much for allowing me to be honest guys. Hopefully you won't find this annoying. I've cared deeply about my work for many years and really want my situation to improve .
  16. Like
    shcboomer reacted to Flutterz in It has been a while   
    Welcome back fellow LB nerd
    It is consistent, the other two are catgirls
  17. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Kaguya in It has been a while   
    Feels like it has been a while since I've been around here. What's new?

  18. Like
    shcboomer reacted to Funyarinpa in It has been a while   
    oh shit welcome back, missed you!
  19. Like
    shcboomer reacted to Zakamutt in It has been a while   
    Pic is 0/10, Riki doesn't have cat ears and the others do! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CONSISTENCY IN ART, EH? Welcome back though!
  20. Like
    shcboomer reacted to DrKleiner in I am back   
    @OriginalRen @Nosebleed @solidbatman @nohman @Okami @Down @Flutterz @Nayleen @~Mayumi~ @Tay @Kendjin @Steve @Luch @shcboomer
  21. Like
    shcboomer reacted to Flutterz in Hi everyone!   
    I WOULD IF I COULD DX
  22. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from The Striker in Hi everyone!   
    I feel like this is where I usually say a little something about myself. However, I'm a bit short on time. I'll just leave this here.

    Hi everyone!
  23. Like
    shcboomer reacted to Tay in (Archived) IPB 4 Update Complete   
    This thread used to be three separate threads dealing with A) the IPB 4 upgrade, B) our new theme, and C) Feedback. In a twist that surprised absolutely nobody, this attempt at being organized only fueled the madness and panic that users were feeling in the streets. I have extracted all the information, feedback, and bugs from this thread, and put it in a new one.
    Therefore: this thread is more or less a decayed corpse of rage and fear. You're welcome to read it and enjoy it, but all discussion on this topic should now go into the new thread.
     
    FEEDBACK, ERROR REPORTING, AND INFO IS NOW FOUND IN A NEW THREAD:

     
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
    THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN FULFILLED

    Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears;
    On this day, the Eighth of October, twenty fifteen,
    history was made, and history was reborn!
    My friends, I bid you welcome…
    To IPB 4.0
     
    Please report bugs/anomalies here in this thread. IPB 4 gives us a lot more control over aesthetics than IPB 3 did, so if you have design suggestions you can post them here as well. I'd especially like feedback about the text editor, themes, and overall changes.
    Note: IPB 4 queues a bunch of background processes during installation, so it's likely still combing through the forums updating the database. That means there WILL be "bugs" which will self-resolve after the combing ends. I decided to keep the forums closed to the public until most of those processes were complete, but a few are still running and may give you glitches. Please report them in this thread.
  24. Like
    shcboomer got a reaction from Kosakyun in Fuwanovel Thoughts - Quarter 3   
    At this point I'm more of a shadow member, but let's throw out some thoughts.
     
    I've been around Fuwa for a while now. (I also shadow post/edit on Fuwazette?) Long enough to go through a bunch of different changes and FuwaPocalypse's. Let's just say the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure, people change, the site may change, even policies change, but at the end of the day a lot of the things that make Fuwa what it is really hasn't. Are people posting less in some of the boards? Sure. However, a lot of the discussion seems to have been moved from just one board to another.
     
    Do people lose interest in things after a while? Of course, it's only natural. It's possible to run all the activies in the world and still not have as much 'participation' as you like. It's just something you have to live with.
     
    Anyway, I guess all I'm trying to say is that things here are still going. Maybe not the most optimal way to get things done or move foward, but at least it's moving. I can't tell you the number of times where I thought Fuwa was actually done for. I'm not sure if you've all been around long enough to experience them, but there were certainly a lot of close calls. If you ever want to know about some of these events, talk to Ryechu.
  25. Like
    shcboomer reacted to Tay in 9/28 - Detailed Community Update   
    Contents of this Update:
    1. Introduction 2. Site analytics 3. Abbreviated financial report 4. Loligeddon feedback survey 5. Commentary from Tay       ----------------------------------- 1. Introduction   I hope the information in this community update is both useful and interesting to those of you who want to keep a finger on Fuwa’s pulse. This report may not look like a lot, but it took a lot of time to compile (especially trying to compensate for an analytics bug which I’m incapable of fixing myself). Now that it’s done, I’m already noticing things I should have included but forgot. Just remind me of questions you have in the thread below, and I’ll try to reply to everything.   - Tay     ----------------------------------- 2. Site analytics   A few weeks ago we started paying for a second, small server to host our analytics software. There’s a bug in the software which makes it difficult to get hard numbers for the past few weeks, but I think I found a clever work-around. Here are the numbers as best as I'm able to find:    Front site: 4-5k unique visitors a day and something like 7-8k daily hits
      Fuwazette Blog: Weekdays: 1.7k unique visitors (average); Weekends: 2-4k unique visitors per day following VNTS posts
      Forums: 6-10k unique visitors a day, 11-15k hits per day
      Reviews Hub: 40-60 unique visitors a day; each time a FuwaReviews review goes up, it spikes to several hundred uniques per day for several days
      VNTL-Moon: ~60 unique visitors a day, ~100 hits     ----------------------------------- 3. Abbreviated Financial report   Many members have been extremely generous with their donations, and from the bottom of my heart I want to say THANK YOU. All donated site funds have been put directly towards site costs: I’ve saved up a 3 month rainy day fund (split between donations and my personal funds) We’ve had one full round of software license fees We paid $100 past site debts Put aside funds for new Reviews Hub theme $70 spent on developing an articles hub site which ended up being extremely unsecure and ex’d by Nayleen (Maef and I were SO CLOSE). $40 of the $70 came from saved-up donation funds. Free: The feeling you get flirting with Flutterz or getting clever ideas in a PM from Eclipsed Free: #Renenvy   ----------------------------------- 4. Feedback Survey: Loli Policy   I promised Sanah a follow-up survey about Loligeddon, and haven’t been able to follow-up until now (well, technically, a bit later in October). If you’d like to give feedback on the Loli policies, have suggestions for changing them, or have something you want to tell me, here’s the link:   https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Yp2ADO3AROV7LvQ3mS47g0sINkFn-OEaPRPf6ZHzsqE/viewform?usp=send_form    Any proposed changes will be considered with our law maester when I next talk to him. There’s an option to include your forums username and be added to a follow-up roundatable discussion (space is limited) once that occurs.     ----------------------------------- 5. Commentary from Tay   Commentary on Analytics: It may come as a surprise to some that this quarterly update is the first time I’ve officially opened our analytics numbers to the public (Nay’s done it in the past, but always on his own impetus). This coincides with a decision to make the front site open-source and seek help from a much larger coding pool than before. These may be small steps, but they’re meaningful and I hope they’ll represent the seeds for yet more transparency in the future.   So. Let’s talk about these numbers. The big-picture take-home message is that Fuwa has continued to grow in the four(ish) months since our last analytics report. I’m a big data nerd who likes to try to use big-boy statistics (and, inevitably, breaks something and needs a math genius friend’s help), so here are a few other trends: Users are spending a lot more time, on average, in the Visual Novel and Dev/Translation boards. Almost twice as much time as they were in March 2015 Walkthroughs are still a huge draw New members are, literally, about nine times more likely to go to the dev boards than they were in March 2015 (within their first week on the boards). They’re about six times more likely to regularly go there afterwards. The amount of VN-centric sites linking to Fuwanovel has increased a tremendous amount. Like, a seriously crazy amount. Several times more links to us from other VN communities than in March 2015 (I didn’t do any hard numbers for this, though, since I only thought to check it right before posting this. Apologies.) Tay’s daily hatemail has decreased by several hundred percent since March 2015 The blog’s popularity on VNTS days has increased by about 45% since July. The front site’s traffic has decreased somewhere between 20-40% since pre-torrents, but the other sites have maintained solid, steady growth Daily user registrations on all the various sites are still a horrible approximation for traffic and engagement Autoposting is the bomb Our Google+ page is a lonely, lonely place, but I met a few really nice people on there who have since become friends. So… yay. Google+ did something good. The reviews hub traffic has continued to steadily grow. It’s not a steep growth, but it’s steady. The traffic spikes for FuwaReviews official reviews are higher than ever and they last for longer than the used to, as well. Our new anti-spam-user software is doing fairly well, which is great     Commentary on Site Finances: I just wanted to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site. As soon as I can get Nay’s help with an authentication library (or something like that), I’ve got a slick new donations app which will automate the donation process and make sure you get your goodies instantly.     Commentary on Site Leadership: Fuwanovel is an important part of my life. I’ve learned a lot over the years from building and running this place, and many of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from making mistakes or falling short of goals and deadlines. I’d like to open up a bit and share a bit of vulnerability on two such shortcomings.   I’d like to publicly apologize for my inconsistent presence in the community. I have not been able to give the site everything it’s needed, and I want everyone to know that I recognize it. Beyond being busy in general, I’ve had a truly bizarre amount of freak accidents or tropical storms or RL craziness mess up my genuinely well-meaning plans time and time again. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m more or less just trying to express that I’m likely as frustrated as you with the lack of progress in certain site projects. I have plans burning in my brain for where we need to go and what we need to do in order to get there, and at times I, too, get a little burned out and discouraged when I see the discrepancy between where we are and where we need to be.   Secondly, I’d like to apologize to the dozens of friends who have spent hundreds of hours participating and working on the site who don't feel adequately appreciated. In the real world I make a real effort to reach out to and thank the people I work with for their good work. It’s an important part of being a leader, and it’s an important part of being a friend. I am disappointed when I review my track record for tracking and recognizing all the work done by so many great people on this site. When I get "Fuwa time", I tend to jump in and do work on the site without taking time to check in with everybody. I want to improve in this department, and I hope you'll help me as I try to do better.   As far as site leadership goes, only one other thing to discuss: adding another (/more) admin(s). This is something I feel like I’ve discussed so many times I worry that you all think I’m a broken record. I’ll be the first to agree that we need to spread the autonomy around. The way this works at the moment is that all the different parts of Fuwanovel have a dedicated leader who has the autonomy to run their project within a pre-agreed upon framework that she/he and I set at the beginning of the quarter (or year, depending on the project). It’s not a perfect system – in many ways because this is a hobby site, not a paying job, and I’m fairly adamant that people keep Fuwa in a healthy balance and not burn out – but it’s also not too bad.    Judging from recent posts as well as more than a few a hellaton PMs and emails, many people disagree with me on two fronts: the forums and the front site. I’ll tackle each of those below.       Commentary on the Forums: I’m quite happy with the trends I’m seeing in the analytics. I like to think that the improved engagement of new members with the VN and Dev boards heralds the wider change of userbase from torrent-seekers to VN-community-seekers. Even if that’s not true, VN engagement is higher than it was earlier this year, and traffic is still robust.   I’m still embarrassed and frustrated about the forums’ sidebar formatting. I spent an hour last week trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it, but I can’t find my old notes anywhere. I’ve reached out to Nay about this and other things, of course, and I really hope I can get this fixed for you soon.   Earlier this quarter Sanah and I had some great discussions about the limitations of the current blog app and how we might provide a better blogging platform for users. At the moment I’m still waiting to see how the upcoming IPB 4 forums’ software upgrade feels for our bloggers. Sanah eventually opted to start his own blog and use the Fuwa app to drive readers to his new location. That’s, obviously, fantastic, since my goal with the blogs app has always been to give people a platform and help drive VN fans to them. So, what I’m getting at here is that if the IPB 4 upgrade is poorly received, I’m up to the challenge of finding a way to host a blogging platform if need be. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but the blog authors need to know, at the very least, that we’ll do our best to take care of them.   Not going to write any more about Loligeddon. Go take the survey if you want to share your views and/or propose policy changes. I will personally review all the entries.   Quite a few people have asked me to add a forums admin who would be in charge of both moderation and engagement. I’m skeptical of the idea due to past experience, but it’s brought up enough that I’m willing to open the door to feedback. Would you like me to make a survey about the forums experience and include a field for you to write desired forums organizational/leadership changes?       Commentary on the Front Site: Here’s the situation: we’ve committed to the open-source plan, but I’m not technical enough to make sure that’s set up or manage the various software forks that will result. Nayleen, our webmaster, has been traveling and working and dealing with craziness and thus hasn’t been around lately, but as far as I’m aware he’s sticking with us. Which is a good thing: the man’s a genius.    Back in August Nay and I realized that the plans we had for the front site were too ambitious to try and bite off all at once, so we decided to scale-back the initial launch plans and simply try and get a basic redesign up and running (using a lot of the old code under the hood) which would then be improved bit-by-bit over the next few months. This was poorly communicated to the design team, and Emi and Beato deserve an apology. Furthermore, that scaled-back version is still not up and running. Which is frustrating. It isn’t something I or a novice coder can address, however, since the front site is written with multiple coding languages.    The critical bottlenecks are currently: open development onto git (or wherever) (which Nay has already done to some extent), finalize the database structure so the other coders can know how it’s structured, roll out the design update with or without an underlying total code revamp, tackle each module one at a time thereafter. (Maef and I have been working on the articles and team builder concepts, and I think they’re going to be pretty great.)   After the bottlenecks are addressed and the rest of the design timeline is sorted out, Nay, maef and I will be posting some more information on the rest of the evil plans.       Conclusion Thank you for reading this post and for being a part of this community. I’m dedicated to keeping the site alive and improving it (even if by uneven pacing), and having friends and fellow fans like you makes the effort worth it.   Tay
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