Kurokusari

Happy birthday to @Jade, even though I didn't know you much other than according to your post you like to post on Love Live thread (By the way, did you like Eli's voice? If so then I suggest you to continue your stalled Dracu Riot and play Azusa route, because Azusa seiyuu was also Eli's seiyuu). Anyway, hope you in well in upcoming year, and by the way you still quite young at age 20. Also, even though I didn't play Love Live free games, I also hope we got know each other better in here.
Also happy birthday to @Kurokusari here and thanks for Dracu Riot Interface patch instruction back at the patching thread. Hope you got well in upcoming years. And if you had chance to come here, better fix your birth year since apparently it was mistaken you as 100 years old (Or if you really 100 years old it's okay too).

NEW FEATURES WORTH MENTIONING
You can tag other forums users in your posts. Just write “@” and then their username, and wait a bit – a menu will pop up allowing you to choose the user. Our WYSIWYG editor is more stable and MUCH more moddable Profiles are now much more dynamic and have a neat new follower system Blogs now have a lot of new design options and content blocks. Importing feeds SHOULD work better than before, too. We can now create Q & A forums if there’s a reason for one Lots of back-end improvements that lets us easily change a ton of things around the forums People have now discovered the “Mark Site as Read” button (Mods, admins, literally anyone who has editing powers here – feel free to add other good stuff here) The forums sidbar updates every 60 seconds, so freshly new topics may not show up immediately. Just give them a minute, and they'll appear.
BUGS/PROBLEMS
(Green text indicates an issue is resolved or fixed)
THEMES
1. New Forums Theme Called “Temporal”
Any interest in making a different logo/hosting a logo competition for it? Background Images: If you click on the paintbrush (the design menu) you can choose between a few background images. If you want different ones, get the rights to (or written permissions for) a nice image and then contact me : P 2. FuwaFabulous
If there are colors you want me to add back into the color picker, go get the hex colors from the Wayback Machine and send them to me. These sorts of changes are obnoxious, so we need to share the pain. 3. All Themes
Index page sidebars are not properly ordering new posts - FIXED Avatar sizes are weird and strict. Tay or Nay needs to figure out where in the ACP you can relax the rules (both on dimensions and size, probably) For some reason there isn’t a space between “Location” and the user’s designated “location” on the user profiles (and user info boxes next to posts) Find out if it’s possible to hide chat bubble It’s EASY to narrow the functional part of the forums (see how there are sections of background to the right and left of the forums content?). Right now we’re using 90% of the screen space for the content. If you want me to lower that, I will drop it to 85%. Before I do so, however, someone should personally (or convince Eclipsed to : P) agree to make a poll for feedback on this change Can’t hide sidebar: sorry, Lewy : (. Anybody had any luck hiding it? (Note: if you have designer access (like ACP access people or GMs), DO NOT DELETE THE CONTENT BLOCKS) My Content” button is gone. Need to figure out what replaced it. 4. “Gravity Green 2013” 
Theme is no longer supported by its dev and was not upgraded to support IPB 4. That’s why it’s missing. The dev has no plans on upgrading it. 
FORUMS APP
Fix avatars limits Likes are currently anonymous. This is not acceptable. FIXED Notifications are not working like they used to. Need to figure out the best way to establish user settings to make them more useable The old friends system is gone Note to self: Let user groups get the “ghost edit” permission set FIXED Notifications options are restricted to everybody. What’s up with that? Recent visitors on profile pages are limited to one, meaning it will always show you and no one else, making it an effectively useless feature. FIXED Make Profiles default to the “About Me” page Profile pages aren’t prominently displaying user’s last status message No full editor feature when editing a post (?) Profile pages – customization options? Is there no longer an option to preview posts before posting? Does the user receive a notification when they are tagged with @? Is the "go to first unread post" option gone on the thread page? Auto line skip when pressing enter is a little annoying. You can't see all of the emoticons unless you type a single character into the search field New messaging system lists participants triggers Nosebleed’s OCD and is literally Hitler. When you go to "edit my profile" the box to edit your interests is incredibly small. You can only see two(?) lines of text at a time and IIRC it was larger before. Reporting a member (not a post, the actual member) seems to be gone Raw BBCode editing is absent Spoiler tag in chat is absent A link to the front page is absent (< this was on purpose, Maef. I have to fix two menu items before I can turn it back on. The Home button is made and everything, just need to get things ready for it, first) Spoiler BBCode as it exists now doesn’t work as well as the last one. Ex: You need to delete an entire spoiler if you want to delete it because to the BBCode problem. Since you can't edit raw code, you have to copy content, delete all spoiler and then paste. Impossibility to reset font size automatically (size 14 btw, old one was 12 IIRC) Be able to change your star ratings on blogs, etc. Image compression screwed up some images in blogs Can’t add headers to articles Blog header images messed up due to difference in formatting Need report option in chat Need some rich text editing features in the chat Now, when I click on sidebar topics [even the ones I've never read before], it takes me to the latest post of it, instead of the last seen [or first], which is pretty annoying Zaka says: if you edit an off-site blog post that's RSS linked the new one gets pulled and you have a lovely double post to deal with. I'm not sure if this is preventable, intended, or needed in general. Zaka doesn’t make any sense. What Zaka means is that imported feeds are at risk of doubling up. Tay understands Zaka. Tay will look into this. Incorrect posting permissions for some forums - FIXED (Link) The post preview when hovering over topics is neat, but it seems kind of buggy. Specifically, when clicking between "First post" and "Latest post" it sometimes closes itself.  Inconsistent Line Spacing Possible: text under the quote in some posts disappear? Donations Link Not Working (On purpose) Rooke's Theme Broken - Yaaay! Working on it Likes back to anonymous FIXED (hopefully Fuwa Recognition Blog RSS broken on other sites Flash of red before colors reload on FuwaFabulous Users can Post threads in TL Projects Forum FIXED There's no longer a "Back to top" button underneath every post The chat option in the Ignore user settings is removed Chat has no longer a pop-up option  Chat is smaller compared to before, also the avatars no longer shows up in the chat messages. Profile cover photo is now extremely small, compared to before, really annoying. Although, the upload for the cover photo is improved. The message feed in the small box is gone, which is annoying. Please put that back. Ghost Editing showing up for staff Clear Formatting Button FIXED

Reminiscence Translation Project

 
Game info:
 
Progress:
 
Staff:
 
Synopsis:
 
Contact:
IRC: #yakusoku @ Rizon
Twitter: https://twitter.com/YakusokuTL
 
FAQ:
Q: Why so many TBAs?
A: Things are subject to change at this stage, so until things have settled in I'm leaving it as TBA. Also waiting for script count.
 
Q: Expected release date?
A: Too far off to say for certain.
 
Q: Will you be translating the sequel as well?
A: Most likely.
 
Q: Does this mean you gave up on Clover Day's?
A: No, progress is still moving. Working on the same game every waking moment gets kind of stale. I'm going to be working on this for a change of pace. This won't hinder the progress of Clover Day's much, as I have a bit of downtime while I wait for other people in the team to finish work.
 
Q: Best girl?
A:

Hey everyone. I'm glad to announce that we're reviving the Mentorship Program after reworking it a bit. The thread will be divided into two main parts, one talking about the overall changes and one talking about the recruitment process. Feel free to share your thoughts once you're done reading this wall of text. 
 
 
Rework
 
Introduction to the Mentorship Program: New VN players will be able to easily request a player mentor who has some experience playing VNs and is willing to be a friend and contact as they begin this great adventure. The mentor will email/PM an introduction to the new player, talk about the VN player's first game (and, ideally, nerd out with them), suggest follow-up games based on the new player's preferences, and be willing to answer quick questions such as "How do I make my computer Japanese?" or "What is a senpai-sama?".   What was changed with the rework: How is this different from the original experiment? Well, we tweaked a few stuff here and there. I don't know exactly how many Mentors we had, but I believe starting with too many was a mistake, so we're going to start low and add more with time if needed. For starters, me and Tay thought about going with 5. I'm now the Mentorship Coordinator, meaning I'll be responsible for gathering feedback, redirecting the mentees to their mentors and all that. I'm basically going to be the one doing what Tay would have had to do, giving him some more space to focus on other aspects of the website that need a bit more of his attention. This also ensures a more efficient communication route for everyone, as we all know Tay is a really busy man. You could say that I'm a quality of life bridge. We don't have anything set yet, but I'd like to post an update regarding the project status every now and then, maybe monthly. This would contain feedback from all the involved parties. What the mentors think about how we're doing, what the mentees think about the usefulness of the project, my very own thoughts about the efficiency and progress we achieved compared to the previous update. I highly value communication, not only between the involved, but with the community as well, it's a way to show that we are, in fact, doing what we volunteered to do, and that we're a reliable way to introduce someone to the genre.  
 
Recruitment
 
Now that I explained what was changed, let's go for the fun part, the recruitment.
 
Requirements: Played at least 4 of the Starter VNs listed below, and find it enjoyable to talk about them. Capacity to open-mindedly nerd out about visual novels. You need to be nice.  Have some Fuwa exposure: Been a member of Fuwanovel for at least six months and have at least 100 posts.  
Starter VNs: Katawa Shoujo Planetarian Narcissu Fate/Stay Night Clannad G-Senjou Steins;Gate Eden* Higurashi Saya no Uta Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo   What you'll do as a mentor: You'll get an email/PM with a new mentee's contact information. With that in hands, you'll send that person a PM/email (based on their preferences) introducing yourself, telling a little about your history with VNs, and whatever else you feel fit for a first message. After that, essentially, just be nice and be a friend. Answer their questions, talk about the game they're playing, nerd out with them (Sakura = best girl), offer game suggestions, show them around Fuwa, help them find the next game to try, etc. Make friends!  
What changed from before?
I added a few VNs to the Starter list, and with that, I felt that increasing the minimum amount of read VNs from the list was needed. While some might find some of the additions questionable, I believe lots of people are being introduced to the genre through steam, which makes games available there a bit more valuable. The same goes for short and popular ones such as SnU and for ones with great anime adaptations such as Steins;Gate. I'll probably add more eventually, but that should be a good list for now. I removed the part that said "Not a big time commitment", as that's something entirely up to how your interaction goes and to how many mentees you choose to take. Just keep in mind that as we're trying to have just a few mentors for now, we might have to set a minimum of newcomers each will have to take care of, just not sure how many. I didn't mentioned the Handbook because I'm still to work on it, some small changes will be made and some will be updated, don't worry, you'll have it once it's ready.  
 
Final words
 
I find the Mentorship Program to be a really great thing we have here, and simply letting it die would be a shame, that's why I decided to talk with Tay and revive it. Interested in being a Mentor? Send me a PM with the following form filled and we'll talk more there. This thread is an announcement and the changes should be discussed here, please don't post your form here nor PM me with your thoughts about the rework, unless you, for whatever reason, really don't want to make them public. 
 
 

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

Just download the patch and rename it to a "patchx" where x is the highest patch number you have, plus 1.
For example:
I have patch.xp3, patch2.xp3, and patch3.xp3. 
I'll download the patch I need and rename it to patch4.xp3 (because +1 of the highest patch number of what I have, which is patch3)
 
Don't forget to put it in the game folder!
 
Hope this helps.

Yeah this was shamelessly ripped from Eien no Aselia but I was really intrigued by this question. Believe it or not, I spent good 10 minutes thinking about my answer on this one. The question goes something like this:
 
The choices are the same but I added the 'None' to mix it up a bit.
 
For some missing details, try to imagine the situation as your own in the future. On what is the most possible situation you'll have at this point of time. Your child can be a boy or a grill, whichever you prefer.
 
I hope you won't simply slap an answer and that's it. I'm curious to how will you reason your morals and views on why did you choose that specific person to save. We can discuss about our different answers and views but please try not to get butthurt too much. And people, try not to provoke others into it. I'm sure you guys are good enough to phrase it non-aggressively. I'd like to keep this as civil as much as possible.
 
Now to start off, my answer.
I'd choose my child. I'm sure that it'll be hell after he survives but at least he has some hope. I have my siblings and I'm very sure that they'll take care of them when I'm gone. Living without parents will be tough but he still has a long road ahead of him. I'll pray that he'll find his happiness like his parents. The reason why I didn't choose myself or my wife is because by this point of our lives, I'm sure that we already enjoyed the ups and downs in life. 
 
I'm aware that this a bit too sentimental since the forums have a lot threads like boobs, traps, lolis, moe, boobs, etc. Some sort of serious discussion might be a good change of pace. Or you guys might raise pitchforks and chase me out of town
 
Edit: I CAN'T MAKE A POLL. IT'S SO HARD.
Edit: I did it. Now praise me.

Anime Expo runs from July 2nd - 5th in Los Angeles, and all three major english VN publishers will be present and announcing new products. This is the biggest convention of the year for VNs, and contains the highest concentration of new announcements, it's pretty exciting! Here's who will be there and what to expect from them: 
 
JAST
 
JAST's panel comes first at 10PM PDT on Thursday. Nobody is really sure what to expect from JAST, but they have claimed that they will be announcing some stuff there. The safe guess is a new Alcot game (moege dev, makers of My Girlfriend is the President and Clover Days), which is something they teased around six months ago. The more far-fetched guess is Muramasa by Nitro+. It seems like this is going to happen eventually, but JAST has also said they want to wait until projects are further along before announcing them, to avoid Hanachirasu and Sumaga incidents in the future. If you're attending, JAST's booth is #1319.
 
And it's over! JAST announced Flowers, an all-ages yuri/mystery VN, for fall 2015 which is kind of crazy since everyone thought MangaGamer would be the ones to handle that. Also SoniComi, which was translated and edited by the power duo of Tulip Goddess Maria and Ritobito, so actually look forward to that "soon". Seinarukana will also be out Fall 2015... supposedly. The Alcot game they teased earlier in the year was a no-show, but JAST seemed to imply that they may have more to announce at Comic-con so there is still hope for the moege lovers out there.
 
Sekai Project
 
SP comes second, their panel is at 7PM PDT on Saturday. I know even less of what to expect from SP than JAST. I believe Key is attending AX as well. I would not be surprised by the announcement of another Key game being licensed, be it LB, Rewrite, or maybe even Angel Beats?? They planned to work with Doki on Clannad before that was dashed by the community's desire for a total retranslation, and Doki teased some Little Busters news sometime this summer, so LB may be the most likely suspect. They will also probably announce some doujin games, as is Sekai Project's habit. Interestingly, they just set up a Japanese twitter account and is tweeting about AX in it. It would be a humorous twist if they announce they'll be translating some OELVNs into Japanese. SP's booth is #1720.
 
Panel summary: Sekai Project continues to impress with their ability to license popular titles. They've managed to grab the highly lucrative Akabei Soft partnership, and will start by releasing G-Senjou no Maou this summer. They've licensed Root Double, a popular survival story made by the director of the Infinity games. They've also announced Chrono Clock for release "soon", which establishes a new partnership with the respected eroge developer Purple Software. Additional news: There will be a remake for the entire Narcissu trilogy, including part 3 in english for the first time, World End Economica Ep. 2 is releasing this month, and Clannad is releasing in November.
 
MangaGamer
 
MangaGamer is last, hosting their panel at 9PM PDT on Saturday. Ryukishi07 of Higurashi and Umineko fame is attending the panel with them, likely to talk about Higurashi's western release. It may be too soon to announce another license deal with him, but who knows, it could happen. MangaGamer has teased four announcements, including three whole new partners. They have separately teased an announcement of a yuri game, and have recently conspicuously posted pictures of SonoHana merchandise at their booth (although they're known to sell goods from completely unrelated VNs). My guess: The one announcement from a current partner is going to be Tsuriotsu from Navel, but really, it could be anything. MG's booth is #919.
 
AND THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE! The big announcement of the MangaGamer panel was their partnership with Alice Soft, starting with Beat Blades Haruka. Other announcements included Himawari, a sci-fi work known in Japan for its intricate storytelling, A Kiss For The Petals - Remember How We Met is an all-ages yuri VN coming to Steam from the popular SonoHana yuri series, and MangaGamer will be updating and releasing the Witch Hunt translation of Umineko for sale, with new character sprites. Other news was that Sweet Sweat in Summer will be out this month, Kara no Shoujo 2 will be out this fall, and they're aiming for an end of 2015 release for Gahkthun.
 
Honorable mentions: Degica is attending and talked about their upcoming Muv-Luv kickstarter, which will go live late August or early September. Aksys Games announced that Zero Escape 3 is in the works and will be available in Summer 2016.
 
So what are you guys excited about? What do you think is going to happen? If you're attending, feel free to talk about your experiences on the show floor, although keep in mind this thread is about visual novels. I will be updating this post as new information comes out. Your wildest dreams didn't come true? Remember, Otakon is later this month and MG and others will have more announcements there, too. 

I could be wrong, but I don't think it has been mentioned in this thread yet. Technically America's traditional culture has been severely marginalized due to the dominance of European immigrants and their descendants a couple hundred years ago. Native American culture has had to bow its head to the power of Post-Colonist America. Everyone probably already knows this, but I felt like saying it regardless.
 
To be perfectly honest, I don't really feel like America (Post-colonist America to get technical) has much of a culture. As Clephas pointed out earlier, certain states have their quirks; but their isn't much of a national culture. American culture could probably be simplified for two notable aspects: 1) Staunch Individualism (ironically I'm a collectivist, but whatever) and 2) borrowing what we like from other cultures. The culture we have most borrowed from for obvious reasons is England, but we've taken a lot from all over the place. 

I'll take this one then. I haven't really done anything since I always come up late lol.
 
Edit: Done

So this past week I was kind of bored and decided to dedicate a lot of my free time to this one level ROM hack I did about the Fuwanovel community. Basically I just hacked into one of my favorite video games (Fire Emblem 7 for the gba) and completely customized the text, events, characters, etc. It's just a parody of the VN community with a particular focus on Fuwanovel and with Tay as the main character. Here is the entire Intro and first chapter: 
 
Part 1:

I was bored. I did this. This was probably a terrible idea but LMFAO wHo cAREAS HAHA Xd. Yeah my mic is a potato, hope you enjoy it. (✿◠‿◠)
 

Welcome to the forums!
Coincidentally, the chosen VN for the month in the VN Reading Club is Yume Miru Kusuri.
Try checking it out if you feel like discussing it with us. The discussion should be at the latest few pages.
http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/10402-vn-reading-club-june-2015-yume-miru-kusuri/?view=getnewpost

I just finished Emi's route on Katawa Shoujo and I have to say that I am not impressed. I didn't really set any sort of standard but it's still . . . bad, for me. I almost didn't get to see the ending coming for the reason that the buildup was so weak that I didn't notice it. They dragged on the problem for too long that it became boring so yeah, pacing problems. I thought another conflict would rise after that and that would be the real clincher. Too bad I was wrong. I appreciate that they put a not too negative feel on the disability but they barely utilized it. It became something like a normal trait . . .


Hide your pitchforks people. This is merely my opinion and I have only read one route so far and I believe there was more than one writer so it should be different.

Hi everybody,
 
Thanks for your patience as I've been away from the site for a few days. I've got a lot of small updates to share with you, and to avoid the wrath of the entire community the mods, I will put all of them together in one post instead of clogging up the recent topics box. 
 
FuwaDirectory Update: The /index.php?/topic/7975-the-fuwadirectory/">FuwaDirectory has been cleaned up a bit. It's not quite 100% done, but we're getting there.
 
Coding Updates: Nayleen has been doing a lot of work lately, and we all owe him a toast of good health and fortune. The database and behind-the-scenes work is substantial, and on top of that there aren't many people out there who could manage the server as well as he does. We put out a call for coders to help out and got a lot of volunteers, so hopefully we can get that rolling soon and free Nay up to work his arcane magicks on site features.
 
LC Coordinator: For those who haven't heard, Nohman has agreed to be our community LC Coordinator. That means he has the unfortunate obligation to work with me and coordinate site updates. Poor guy : P. But, seriously, this is a huge help to me and like so many others, Nohman is bringing some incredible skills to the table and we're lucky to have him help out.
 
LC Liaison: Eclipsed is taking over a new job (which, sadly, has not yet received a cool title): watching LC discussions and working with me to keep the whole community appraised of important stuff. AKA: making sure site work is being related to the community so we're mostly on the same page.
 
Super-Beato: Beato has stepped up and taken charge of coordinating the front site redesign. In short, this is a really good thing. Emi continues as our design genius, Nayleen is working on the code, I'm working on text assets (and coordinating with others on and off Fuwa to get guides written for the front site, as well), Rooke is editing the assets, and several people have started helping by reading-through and commenting on assets. Thank you, everyone!
 
Ren: Just wanted to thank Ren for his help as LC Speaker of the House (that job has since been phased out) and all of his support. On a personal note, you were a great friend to me last month, and really helped me out. Thank you : ).
 
Stray Cat & Player Mentors Program: Stray Cat is one of those people who has pretty much always stepped up to help in any way he can. He's willing to help me sort out the Player Mentor program. All I can say is, "Thank you, and god help us..." 
 
Board Mods: I'd like to thank all of our board moderators (past and present) for their help on the site. We're continuing to tinker with various forums moderating schema, but the BMs have been a huge help. Thank you so much for your time and efforts : ).
 
Rose & Recognition: Rose has been doing an amazing job highlighting cool threads around Fuwa and cool VN projects around the VN-verse. Ironically, working on the recognition team is a fairly thankless job. I want to let him know that his work has been widely used and appreciated, and I hope everyone will drop him a "thank you" for his time.
 
FuwaChat: We tried moving the FuwaChat to the forums index to increase its appeal. Chaos ensued. The leaders of this movement have since been rounded up and summarily shot. Carry on.
 
VNTL-Moon: Continues to grow in popularity! I'm seeing it linked-to more and more often as time goes by. : D
 
Last Week's VNTS Post: Sorry for not being around to write it. I will probably miss ~4 weeks a year, but in the future I'll try to give you forewarning.
 
Reviews: We're in the middle of fairly extensive brainstorming and re-structuring of the reviews hub and how the team will work going forward. We're fortunate to be receiving a lot of game reviews keys, so it's a good time to re-evaluate the program. I'd like to offer a quick apology to Ryechu for not giving some of his recent reviews the attention they deserved. We're going to work on improving that, going forward.
 
Think Tank Rangers: We've added a new Ranger! Welcome, Palas, to the crew! Rooke, Tiago and Palas have been very helpful in brainstorming the Reviews board and some broader strategy about how to handle VNs on the new front site. 
 
 
That's it for now, but expect more updates (including more concrete details) soon. I'm working through my PMs and emails this morning/afternoon during breaks, tomorrow's Fuwa work will mostly revolve around VNTS, and then this weekend I should be getting back to my to-do list (finishing metrics for nohman, getting Stray Cat a readable (read: not insane) tracking document, working through all the reviews brainstorming, and talking to Nay about the volunteer coders as well as the new supersecretthingy).
 
- Tay
 
 
PS: Please /index.php?/topic/10373-best-wishes-for-krill/">leave Krill a get-well message! The forums banner message will be taken down in a day or two.

Uhh no offense but this VN might not be really for you. I believe it requires some degree of understanding and looking from the perspective on the heroines since they each have their own problems. Maybe it needs a little bit of experience and affected by the environment you grew up in but that's just me.
 
First off, Nekoko's route:



 
Next up, Aeko's route:



 
If you aren't enjoying the two then you might throw out your monitor on Mizuki's route. Tbh it's the worst out of the three and based from your the VNs you mentioned, your taste is geared towards the action genre and not this kind of emotional trainwrecks.
 
Well these are just my thoughts and feel free to disregard them. 

*obligatory 404 girlfriend not found*
On a serious note, I'll only probably do that if I'll be reading something like Rewrite. Reading something like Yume Miru Kusuri with just about anybody else would be kinda awkward. Then again, we wouldn't be together if she isn't weird or isn't aware of my weird hobbies.
 
. . . All this hypothetical thinking is making me want a girlfriend. I have enough already anyway in the 2D world ;-;

Our Kickstarter is now live! Please, check it out! The Kickstarter has ended, thanks for your support!
 
The Demo for our game is released! We hope you'll enjoy it~
 
 
Hi everyone! I'm one of the members of an English VN project that's been going on for a while, and with our demo coming out hoooopefully next week, I wanted to go ahead and post about it here! (You might also recognize me from the other project I work on, the yuri VN Starlight Vega).
 
My team is called AlienWorks, and our game is called The Human Reignition Project, and it's a bishoujo VN with some sci-fi elements. You play as a guy called Ken, who attends a lecture on "The impacts of technology on society," which is just what it sounds like. See, in our setting, communication between people is almost entirely digital. Text messages, instant messaging, or even phone calls; the element of face-to-face interaction is  mostly gone. A lot of jobs have vanished, too, being replaced by more efficient robots that don't need a salary.
 

 
Kojo, the guy organizing the lecture, comes from an older generation, and while he knows his little group isn't going to change the world, he'd at least like to try to change a couple lives.
 
So far it all sounds pretty slice-of-life, I know, but there are some action-y, thriller-y elements that come into play later on. Can't spoil those quite yet though.
 
What we wanted to do was create a bishoujo game with the romance focus that we all love without setting our game in a school. Yeah, there are a couple similar elements to, say, Grisaia or what have you, but for the most part we've tried to steer clear of a lot of the plot and character tropes native to the genre. That said, the game will still include 18+ content in the form of H-scenes.
 
Real quick, I just wanted to mention a couple quick notes about the game. First off, like I said, our demo for the game should be out soon. Like, very soon. It's probably 90% done right now. The demo is all of our Act 1, which is about 30 scenes and I think somewhere around 40,000 words? We're going to launch it at the same time as a Kickstarter for our game. I know, I know, another VN on Kickstarter. Because we work with such talented artists though, we need the funding (we're talking a few hundred dollars per CG). Of course, you'll be able to play the demo without pledging money to the KS.
 

 
Once the demo's done, we'll be putting in on Steam Greenlight. We're published and also somewhat funded by Sekai Project, so you'll see it under their name, not ours. Same for the Kickstarter. At the moment, I'm not entirely sure what the final price of the game will be, but I do know that if you pledge for a digital copy on KS, it'll be cheaper than buying the game off Steam. No other pre-order bonuses though; sorry CoD fans.
 

 
Finally, most of us are gonna be at Anime Expo. I'll be at Sekai Project's table in the vendor hall for a lot of the time, and I might be at their panel, too. We're going to be selling a few prints done by our artists, as well as one guest piece by Doomfest. Here are previews for a couple of those:
 
 
 
If you're interested in following along more with the game, you can follow me on twitter @Raithfyre or the team @AlienworksDev (though I also run that, heh). Also, our website is reignitionproject.com, and we post major news to blogs there.
 
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy our game~ Just below, you can check out the character cards for our six heroines, and get an idea of what they're like. Yukino best girl, though.
 

No, in English you rarely do that, it sounds weird calling your sibling "big brother". You'd mostly use given names, maybe bro or something one word long (that's what my sister calls me), but not "big brother". I absolutely abhor any translation that does this.

Progress Update Week #47
 
 

 
Soon it'll be time for the final spurt.

Alright, I guess I'll do what I can to make it fit then. 
Btw I'll be using this render:
Its quality might be a bit off but I think I can fix that a bit. And if not I'll use the one you gave. Just some trial and error 



I believe this one is just the full height version of the one you provided.
 
Edit: Done

This is a long comprehesive guide 
It has now been moved to the mainsite.
to read it click the  chapter images for the individual parts:





 
note: part 4-5 not made yet. but hopefully will be added in future
 

 
 
 

(Okay. I’m just going to talk directly to Lewy, but y’all can listen in and pretend I’m talking to you, too.)
 
Hi Lewy. You look fabulous today. Hope you’re well. Anyway. Yes, thank you for bringing these things up. I really appreciate it when people speak up like this.
 
 
 
This is kinda hard to answer. A lot actually has been done, Lewy, and Nay and I are still working on it fairly actively (Nay’s been busy the last 2 weeks, but we’re picking up). I realize you’re upset that the new front site hasn’t rolled out yet, but that doesn’t mean work has stalled. Nay is working on the coding, and I’m working on the new content. There’s actually a LOT that’s going into the new site which you may not expect. For example: according to Outlook, I’ve spent 53 front-site-dedicated hours in the last 30 days working on academy lessons, writing/rewording text assets, planning games pages, coordinating with companies and devs about outreach features, and, yes, drooling over Emi’s and Beato’s work and Nay’s themes : P. Nay’s put in significant time as well. I want the new site to be up just as much – maybe even more : P – than you do, but the fact of the matter is that we don’t want to put up a crappy product, and we need to make sure we don’t burn out. We aren’t a business. We’re a fan site. And it’s important to keep perspective if we don’t want to burn out.
 
 
 
 
Oh, I’m calling hyperbole on this one : P. (But I love ya. I’m always kinda touched when you speak up about this, Lewy, because I appreciate that you care.) My honest reaction to this is to wonder if we’re both at fault: I recognize that I’ve done a poor job regularly communicating the cool stuff/updates we’re working on, but on your end it sounds like you haven’t been paying attention to all the stuff we *have* been doing. Fuwa’s traffic and engagement with the wider VN audience, and interactions with new VN players is likely at an all-time high from what I’ve been seeing lately.
 
Consider some of the stuff we’ve done in the last 60 days, for example:
We’ve started our own VNTS program on the blog which has become quite popular, built VNTL-Moon (a TL updates aggregator), negotiated with the demeteloaf and the other nice guys on /r/visualnovels (Reddit) to get our VNTS posts included in their weekly TL posts (which I’m really appreciative of), and we’re drawing in a lot of traffic to the other Fuwa sites with this focus on TL A step-wise overhaul of Fuwa’s SEO which has had a major impact on visibility in the US, Europe and some parts of Asia (this is still in-progress because it’s complicated and takes a while) We’ve hired an analyst to help us track and improve our social media presence (focusing first on FB) After torrents went offline we restructured all of the sites and submitted them for review to 5 different tests, and were validated on all 5 (aka: we’re clean, and we’re safe to invest in the site). This was coupled with work to make sure all the site staff are squared away with participating on the site We got a new forums theme (party!) Launched the IP.Blogs and IP.Content apps I’ve got us approved (or in the process of approval) for 7 different affiliate programs to help pay for hosting (will be implemented on the “Buy” sections of game pages, etc.) ~40 more hours have gone into building the VN Reviews hub (still a little left to go before we can launch it in a major way, tho) I’ve successfully corrupted zaka We launched the VN players mentor program (I’m in the process of following-up on that, and eventually I’ll write up a brief report in case people are interested in how well the program worked) Added 5 new blogs to the reviews hub, talking with 4 more Negotiating partnerships with a few other VN communities I’m ~60% done reaching out to TL groups whose patches we used to host, as promised in my reddit open letter We’ve spent ~10 or so hours helping connect skilled hackers/TLers/TLCers/Editors with projects Overhauled the dev boards, got the two dev blogs functional Got the recognition team up and running (and they’re doing a great job, imo) We’re negotiating with a half-dozen devs or studios to get reviews copies of games for the reviews team, and extra licenses for giveaways and contests I’ve failed to give Rooke the attention his PMs deserve (< is that a positive? Hm. Not sure. Maybe I’d have more compassion if it weren’t for a certain drinking game he enjoys.) We’re ~50% done prepping our Google+ launch Oh, gosh. It’s 1AM here and my brain’s a little fuzzy. The last thing I’ll mention is we’ve done a lot of experimenting with financial stuff, too, and how best to keep Fuwa in the black (< which hasn’t yet happened : P). This takes a lot more time than you’d expect. That’s not an inconsequential list, but there are probably a lot of people who weren’t aware that we were working on all of the above. I mean, I hope you’re impressed with that list : P. We’re a hobby site, Lewy. Nobody’s being paid to do this (I’m literally operating at a loss, and Nay, for example, has a substantial opportunity cost to code for us instead of working overtime and rollin’ in the dough), and I’d much rather we all work at a sane pace and not burn out than run forward and unbalance our RL responsibilities.
 
 
 
Well, first of all, I didn’t realize that non-mods couldn’t post topics in the LC. That’s since been fixed. Apologies, Batman et. Al.  That was a major oversight, and I do feel bad about it.
 
You’re correct in that the LC has been pretty quiet lately, but that’s largely because we already decided on our priorities list and financial plan for Q1 2015, so there wasn’t a lot for us to talk about. We’re only just entering May (aka: Q2 2015), and I’m almost done drafting our next set of site priorities (read: project goals) and financial plan (I hoped to have it ready earlier this week, but a few devs have been slow to get back to me and I decided to wait so my reports would be complete). LC activity will increase when those are posted. That’s just the way these sorts of advisory committees work, Lewy. (In case you were concerned, the LC was made aware of the Q2 reports’ delay, and they knew the reasons for it, too.)
 
 Also, just remember that the LC is an advisory body for discussion about site issues. It’s not a decision making body. If you think a part of Fuwa isn’t working well, it’s the project managers (and then me) who have the power to change stuff. A quiet LC doesn’t mean their decision-making capacity is lessened in any way.
 
 
 
 
I posted about this several days ago, and I’ll continue to work with the mods on the issue.
 
 
 
Fuwa’s definitely growing, and keeping our best qualities (respect, friendliness, etc.) through the growth can be challenging. I think your worries are pretty normal. I’ve got them, too, from time to time. The best way I’ve learned to deal with it is to not focus on an abstract “Fuwanovel” – focus on the hobby and the goal to make VNs popular/support VNs in the West. All communities have problems, but we’ll be in especially bad shape if we start focusing too much on the meta-concept of Fuwanovel, and less on the hobby and our community goals.
 
 
 
I do worry a lot about this and I’m being as proactive as I can in brainstorming this issue. I can’t talk about any specifics yet, but Fuwa’s actually hosting some fascinating and enlightning private discussions among VN community leaders about this issue. When they’re all completed, you’ll see a handful of posts go up on the blog about the conferences and ideas/discussions we had.
 
 
 
Look. Nobody wanted this more than me, but Maef failed to turn in a completed application and – by Fuwa’s own laws – I couldn’t consider him for the job.
 
I’m SORRY, but it wasn’t my fault.
 
 
 
I’d be interested in hearing what you mean by this. I’m going to hold off in commenting yet because I think we’d be talking right past each other until you are a little clearer. Try to be as concrete as possible. That’ll help.
 
 
 
A lot of people have been extremely cool and stepped up in the comments and said they’re going to help us keep the forums looking/working better. I just want to say that I’m really, really grateful for everybody who is meeting us halfway.
 
 
 
 
I realize I didn’t get to all 10 points, but my brain is really, really tired and I think I should probably stop to let you respond. Thanks for posting, Lewy. I mean it.
- Tay

Men are going to turn into hungry beasts competing to be the alpha male. Whatever that means but like the others said the male:female ratio is terrible. 
Does that mean traps get a chance?