tymmur

I like this idea, but there is one issue I have been wondering about. If people haven't read a VN, odds are that they don't know about fuwa, VNDB or any other VN related server. Adding one more will likely end up as one more they fail to read before starting to read VNs, or fails to start. How do you plan to inform people before they are so experienced that they show up on fuwa on their own, hence it being too late to advice them on what to read first?

Good point. However I will hesitate a bit in calling Musumaker a raising sim. I view raising sims as something different than VNs and they tend to be hybrid games. When mentioning a hybrid game, people tend to think of something like Sengoku Rance where the VN parts exist, but it wouldn't be a great VN without the other parts. Musumaker is different than that. It is by far primarily a VN. You need to go through 3k lines before even reach anything, which isn't pure VN and it takes almost another 1k lines before it has unlocked all the raising sim features. Cutting non-VN contents would result in a VN, which works as a VN. In fact it would still be a good VN. This is despite the fact that the VN and non-VN elements work well together. In other words I feel that calling Musumaker a raising sim is the same as claiming worse VN quality than it really is. Because of this, I don't think Musumaker as a raising sim, more like a VN, which happens to have some raising sim elements.

Musumaker contains a raising simulator and a financial minigame. There is also a shop where you can buy items with surplus money from the financial minigame. Despite this, Musumaker is primarily a VN. The gameplay is the usual VN gameplay. It asks questions once in a while and sets flags to remember the answers. Flags can then be used to unlock or block certain scenes or entire routes. The reason why I mention it in this thread is that flags can be set by normal VN questions, raising simulator, financial minigame or shop item ownership. I like this approach. You have to do some thinking on how to trigger each route. Some trigger conditions are obvious, like take good care of the girl you are aiming for. Other trigger conditions might not be equally obvious, but it has safeguards against being annoyingly tricky. If you pay attention to the dialogue, you will get hints about some trigger conditions. There are other safeguards as well to assist in not ending up with the same route each time, though I won't go into spoilerish details about those.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Nope, it really doesn't. I paid attention and it does something other than "get votes for user on date x". Something is going on, which can't be explained by timezones.

The fact that he called me retarded and "your poor brain" would contradict your statement. I was specifically saying that about an NVL on such a tiny screen. To get readable text on such a small monitor is a challenge. If you want to put CG behind the text and keep the text readable, you will likely lose the ability to watch the CG, particularly considering the quality and brightness of some of them. I question if it is a VN if it displays text and CG, but not at the same time.

It's a good summary. I will compare it to this: Yes it's technically possible, but you are not in for a good user experience and that's just one reason why people aren't actually doing it.

That's quite interesting. I wasn't aware that anybody had attempted this. It must require a disk because it needs to be able to load more text/graphics while playing or possibly creative usage of ROM. It's not intended to maximize the reading experience though. It's more like getting that retro feel and the knowledge that it is running on 1982 hardware. It could also be part of the community, which still makes demos for old hardware to see how skilled each group is in pushing limited hardware. That's not how C64 graphics work. Hi-res mode (320x200) stores a monochrome screen where each pixel is either on or off. It divides the screen into 8x8 blocks and then it can set the on and off colors for each block. The result is 16 colors on the screen, but only two in each 8x8 block. Multi color mode prints each pixel twice (hence 4x8 blocks and 160x200 screen), but then each pixel has two bits and can select from 4 colors. This way the screen still has 16 colors, but each block can have up to 4 colors. The reason for this rather odd system is that both systems use 9 kB for the entire screen. Being allowed to use all colors everywhere would require 32 kB. All computers back then uses weird systems to reduce memory usage and the commodore approach is actually easy to understand and work with compared to some of the other systems in use back then.

If you pick a single person to verbally assault like that without warning, how is that different from bullying? Besides you make no sense in what you are saying when compared with my actual experience working with either text length limitations or pixel limitations. You have to make compromises to get it to work and it will hurt the quality of the end product. Reading a VN (or VN like game) on such a resolution will be a poor experience judged by normal VN standards and that is before the issues of the screen size is taken into account.

You can put two bikes together side by side. That won't make it a car even though it has 4 wheels. Likewise if we start to accept the limitations you talk about, we will have to argue how many limitations we can accept while still calling it a VN. NVL at such a resolution is just a novel, which shows a picture whenever the text is hidden. It's also a topic how little text you can accept at once and still classify it in the novel genre. This is another good question. What is a smartphone and what is a basic phone? If you look at a phone, what criteria would you use to decide if it's a smartphone or not? If it is able to install and run a VN, it could be argued that it is in the smartphone category. A basic phone can be as simple as only being able to make phone calls and send SMS using a monochrome display. Obviously anything which could be considered a VN would require a lot more than that.

Based on personal observations: almost all of them

The question was asked in English. It's fair to assume the goal is a language using Latin characters. You do not want to read a VN using latin characters on such a resolution. Another problem not mentioned yet is that the smaller the text, the higher the resolution is needed for readability. Low resolution and low screen size is a horrible combination for extended reading sessions.

Pay attention to who made which claim. It isn't possible to put a decent amount of text on such a small screen. If you are to add BG and sprites as well, the screen resolution for the text is like 240x60. For comparison here is a screenshot of text in 320x200. Sure you can make room for more text if you don't use a monospace font, but still we are talking something like 5 words per line on 4-5 lines, which is even a high estimate. Sure you can split the text into such short lines, but the resolution will make it a rather poor reading experience even before we get to the screen size.

They didn't specify where it would have to be illegal and Valve do sell in Germany too. It's actually an American ban since post ww2, the US forced Germany and Austria to ban support of what was viewed as an anti-American ideology. However I was actually thinking of another kind of law, one I assume is present in America as well. It's illegal to encourage other people to commit crime. Steam recently kicked out an announced game prior to release because it turned out to be a first person shooter where the player is a school shooter and apparently made in a way which should encourage such actions.

Valve stated they will be removing illegal contents. This could be used to remove either of your examples without going back on what they said.