tymmur

I'm still stuck with highest percentage as Not sexually involved. It turns out that being a heterosexual male adds to not sexually involved. What is up with women and their views on men, which makes them fail to connect with men???? Looks at Maggie Oh, now it makes perfect sense.

It's the internet. Girls are guys and children are 40+ year old men. Guys however can be girls. It's properly safest to just use "it" instead of "him" or "her"

I couldn't find a good avatar so I ended up just using a mirror.

There's still some hope, guys. Steam critic and influencer (if you will) Jim Sterling is sticking up for us 
 
 

This time I will write about my main field of expertise: programming. It's entirely different from the previous post (planning the story) and as such justifies splitting the two topics into two posts. This post assumes using Ren'Py, though it should be doable with most or all engines. I just had to make a choice if I write specific keywords.
First of all, don't be afraid of adding more files. Ideally you should use a one file, one task approach. Also name the files in a way that allows you to find them easily and use a folder layout if possible. You need to split between setup, file access, flow control, story etc.
Setup
Make a file where you list backgrounds and their filepath. Add spaces to make the paths align on top of each other. That way it will be easy to spot typos in the paths. Do the same for music, possibly in the same file.
Next up is characters. Make a list of characters (possibly in a new file) and assign names, color etc, again with spaces and an aligned layout. Add comments at the end of each line to write the color in human readable text (as in not the color value numbers). Also list the characters to set sprites for each. Possibly do it in one file for each character or in one file, but then sort them alphabetically. You should sort them in the same order as the first list, but it's a good idea to keep the names and colors as a list to get an overview.
Make a file with sound effects using the same approach.
If you do this right, you have some files, which list all the media files you use. No other text files access media files and changing the media files can be done from the setup files only. Also the setup doesn't contain much other data than shortcuts to the media files.
Story
For each scene, make one file. If done right, it's close to one file for each paper on the board, but in some cases one paper-one file is not the best option. Start with a label, name it the same as the file and name the file something fitting. End the file with a return. Write a story where it's just the story. No jumps, questions or anything like that. All the media file usage comes from the setup files and nothing is called directly.
Each file should set the scene, like setting music and background at the top and clean up as in removing all sprites at the end as well as canceling all audio and leave the screen black.
Asking questions to the player and branching accordingly contains some exceptions to those rules. More about that later.
Flow control
Make one file containing flow control logic. It exploits the difference between jump and call. Simply put, call will go to a label and when it encounters a return, it will go back to the line it called from and continue from there. Jump will not go back, meaning if you call and then jump, the return will go all the way back to the call.
Now you should add a call to each label in the order you want the labels to be called. Since each event file ends with a return, the story will return to the flow control and move on to the next line. This way the order of events is purely controlled by one file and is not mixed into the story.
Questions/branching/flags
In case a question is asked, return just before asking it. Next you ask in the flow control and branch according to the answer.
You need to make labels in flow control and when you get the answer from a question, you jump to a label in flow control and continue from there. Since you aren't going back, jump should be used and not call. Each such labels will then call an event and since the screen should not be black while the question is asked, events ending with a question and those starting with one should skip cleaning up and setting up and just continue. This is the exception to the cleanup rule.
If you want to use flags, you set the flag in flow control and you test for flag conditions when figuring out which event label to call, which is also done in flow control. This way you have all flags and actions based on flags placed in the same file.
Testing
When writing an event (story), just add call scene after start and testing it will be quick and easy. This will allow testing text, sprites etc without having to consider flow of the story. It's a huge timesaver to not have to fast forward to the scene you work on for each change you need to test. Naturally you should test the VN in the final form before publishing, but you will likely do a lot of small tests multiple times a day while working on it to catch typos and similar as early as possible.
Final words
If you follow this guide, you will end up with a layout where each file has a purpose and it's easy to tell the parts apart. It helps a lot of you want to swap the order of events as this can be done without touching the story itself. Likewise you can't break the flow control by accident by changing the events and changing which media files to use will not affect either. In other words it's a design, which heavily reduce the risk of bugs and it also reduce the need for testing after making changes.
Now put those two posts together and make sure you have at least one paper for each event file. However in some cases it might make sense to merge multiple papers into one event file. It's something to consider in each case and I can't tell you in general if it's right or wrong to do it in your specific scene. It's one of those things you have to figure out on your own.

If you've ever read one of those wonderful VN game reviews saying "story was OK, but there was no gameplay, you just click on the screen to advance the text, 4/10", imagine that as a GOG curator (personal interpretation).

I think we can be fairly certain that whatever they do, they think of money. If they intentionally skip some companies, it will be those companies, which are most profitable for them. If they made as much on VNs as on AAA games, they would reject the demand to remove anything.
I wasn't aware of that. It seems to me that while GOG started out as a platform for old games, they have no problems taking in new ones or even videos. They seem to sell whatever they can profit from. But regardless of who it is, somebody will realize the potential profit in distributing/reselling VNs. Jast and MG are likely candidates, but there could be more. I don't see a doomed future for EVNs, but they will get less mainstream if the big distributors won't sell them. Also it doesn't help with the reputation that VNs are "Japanese rape games".
This and one more thing. GOG is not new anymore and as such they are more trustworthy with payments than some brand new company nobody heard of before. GOG even do regional pricing better than steam as it really do accept the local currency for apparently all countries. Steam skips out on a number of currencies.

welp, here we go.
https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/top-videogame-company-steam-removing-sexually-graphic-content/  

This is the essence of what I would say. Writing on the computer is no good and while pen and paper is better for something like this, you need to go big and make an overview, something like this:
Place a pin to mark where the story starts. Next place one for each branching point and each ending. Next you put strings on the pins to indicate the flow of the story and to visualize how the branching points are connected. Next you take a small piece of paper, write the title of an event and then you pin it on/next to a string. Repeat with all the events. You will end up with a visual overview of distribution of events and order of events. As you write each scene in more detail, you will likely figure out some events needs to happen in a different order and you swap them as needed. Events can be a scene or just some information like "protagonist remembers having met heroine years ago". Basically you add a piece of paper for anything where order will affect how other events are written.
Back to the future had the script and hence the timeline made this way. Naturally without the branching points, but the order of events were planned like this. Some scenes required Marty to have experience with something and then that something was written on another paper and it had to go into the story earlier. A proper overview for planning is required for something like that to work well.
 
As for programming, I would say make a file for each event and give them proper names. This will help if you want to swap something at some point or insert a new scene between two existing scenes. Since the story has to match the plan, the files/programming should too or you will lose the overview.

Hi everyone, Its been a week since I joined here but this is my first time writing an introductory post. (this is the first forum i've ever joined as well)
Just call me Mikan, nice to meet you
I just started reading visual novels just recently and I immediately came to love it because it serves great character interactions that never fails to bore me and good character developments which really leaves me in awe and craving for more.
So far, the ones I have mostly read and finished are Moeges such as My Girlfriend is The President, WagaHigh, Fureraba, Princess Evangile and Chrono Clock. I've also finished other types of VN's such as Grisaia no Kajitsu and Little Busters and planning to consume more and more other interesting titles :3c
I also do editing on series's from danbooru so if there is anything I could help in editing on VN translations as well, I would be more than glad to help!!
Edit: I forgot to say that im new to editing as well so I may not be much but please allow me to help o u o)7
 I hope I could get along with you all uwu

That has nothing to do with this thread at all. Nobody said anything like that and nobody thinks like that. Human made translations is a good thing and they are read by everybody here. It's so easy to make other people look bad if you start to make fake quotes, but you will not win any popularity contents by doing so.
The debate here is about VNs with no translation at all. Can they be read using a machine translation or will the reader have to study Japanese in order to read such VNs? I fail to see the claimed "eliteism", which states you have to be able to read Japanese if no translation exist. It's merely stating facts.
If you just want to read VNs, which have English translations (official or fan made), then there is nothing in this thread, which will even remotely affect you.

That has nothing to do with this thread at all. Nobody said anything like that and nobody thinks like that. Human made translations is a good thing and they are read by everybody here. It's so easy to make other people look bad if you start to make fake quotes, but you will not win any popularity contents by doing so.
The debate here is about VNs with no translation at all. Can they be read using a machine translation or will the reader have to study Japanese in order to read such VNs? I fail to see the claimed "eliteism", which states you have to be able to read Japanese if no translation exist. It's merely stating facts.
If you just want to read VNs, which have English translations (official or fan made), then there is nothing in this thread, which will even remotely affect you.

Welcome to Fuwa. It's always nice to see new people who seem to love VNs like the rest of us.
I really like those two. In fact I would say YMK is a great VN because it dares to dig deep into some serious problems, which a lot of people prefer not to talk about. Because of this I would imagine the intended reader is somewhat older than the average intended VN reader and possibly aimed more at experienced VN readers. However considering this was your introduction and you are here anyway, I might have to rethink the age group.
Being shy is fine. In fact it can be hard to be a thinker and not shy at the same time, meaning a certain amount of shyness could be a positive trait, at least in some cases. Just make sure you don't go overboard in shyness and end up not posting when you want to post.

Not at all! You can all use them any way you want!  If you wanna do something in return help me out by downloading my VNs FREE Demo on Steam and give me some reviews (reviews help me not get buried by Steam)! 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/809680/Panzer_Hearts__Visual_Novel/

It's Dergonu. That explains everything. I just went ahead and tried again and intensionally made different choices while staying within myself. That just made it worse. Now "Not sexually involved" increased and "Masturbation" showed up as least likely. However I'm the subject of sexual fantasy. Now is your chance girls. Come and cure my unwanted asexuality.

I did have fun until the results decided to be a bitch and hate me

Hello,
My username says "poptartguy87", but you can call me Isla. I also go by Papaira when I'm acting as a developer/artist. Some people also call me "Papa", "Poptart", or more ambitiously "Poptart Papa".
I'm from the United States. I have two cats and I really love horror, yuri, and Arjuna from Fate/Grand Order. I first got into visual novels when I read Yume Miru Kusuri and Ever17 in middle school and I've loved them ever since...to the point that I took Japanese in high school just so I could work my way up to helping with translation projects someday. My backlog is atrocious, by the way. 
I joined because I thought it wouldn't hurt to have an account ready for whenever I wanted to jump into discussions. I'm shy, so it probably won't happen often, but hey, why not.
Nice to meet you all!
(My favorite VN of all time is Subarashiki Hibi if you couldn't already tell. I think Zakuro is precious.)

Did you even read what I wrote? Here is a summary:
translation tend to be incorrect lines can appear like they are somewhat correct without being so, creating a false sense of trust in the translation quality translation doesn't take context into consideration no consistency, like an object or person can change name, which hides it's the same object no editing. You focus on decoding the text rather than on the contents of the text, which hurts the reading enjoyment What more do you want me to explain?
Imagine two people with a boat and they discover a hole in it. A says if they put it in water, it will sink. B says we will never know unless we try it.
Why this story? It's because A is very absolute and it's based on knowledge, possibly even experience. B will accuse A of eliteism and wants to go ahead regardless of what A says. It's kind of like the same in this thread. If you already decided to follow the path of machine translations regardless of what other people say, you will see other people as obstructions unless they praise your choice.
Same here. If you want to use the software you mentioned, then I won't stop you. My point is (as I have written more than once by now) about recommending using machine translations to other people. Any guide or recommendation should have the disclaimer that there are serious objections due to severe quality concerns.

- sex with monsters
- sex with tentacles (consensual)
- skull-fucking
and best of all
- Selfcest
...  

I get the kanji part, but hiragana should be strait forward. You already know the idea of characters representing sounds and hiragana is just different characters based on the same system. Find a good hiragana cheat sheet online (yes, they are actually called that for some reason) and print it. Place the paper next to the monitor and then use hiragana furigana. This way you will be forced to look at the cheat sheet whenever you read a hiragana. That way you will force yourself to look at the paper frequently and fairly quickly you will remember some hiragana without looking at the paper and over time you will remember all of them. Combine this with other approaches to study hiragana as you need the theory behind some of them, like what's the difference between か and が. You really should learn how "sound modifiers" work instead of remembering each case they are used in as new characters.
If your hiragana studying consist of going through a list of hiragana trying to remember them all, then you will fail. It's so easy to remember them while you read the list and then forget them by the time you need them and reading the list again will not solve the problem. It's a matter of keeping a constant exposure, preferably daily to prevent yourself from forgetting what you learned during your last studying session.
Language studying not just a question of time spent. 30 minutes a day is more efficient than 4-5 hours once a week. The daily exposure and hence forcing your brain to not forget between studying sessions is quite valuable.

I've been analysing the sexual content of VNs, what's become more common, what gets the best ratings, and what content tends to come together; and thought I'd present some of my results in a slightly different way: in a quiz! Using the extensive character database on vndb, I tracked which appearance and personality traits were more or less likely to engage in types of sexual activity, and put the results in a quiz format so you can enter the tropes and it'll tell you how the percentages diverge from the average.
This is a slightly silly way to present the results, but I thought you guys might enjoy it.
You can try the quiz here.

Apparently I engages in "Not Sexually Involved"

Apparently I engages in "Not Sexually Involved"

Apparently I engages in "Not Sexually Involved"

This is the main issue. People encouraging other people to use MT. If you don't know much about MT or translations, then it sounds tempting and then people go into MT without knowing what they are going into. Multiple people have said the issue is not what people do themselves, but what they recommend to other people. I tried MT based on recommendations, which turned out to be based on false facts about quality.
And yes, it's important to understand what the tools does and that generally speaking, the tools aren't bad. Both text hooking and Translation Aggregator works well for both MT and as assistance for reading Japanese. In fact getting the text as text is extremely valuable if you want to copy paste kanji or words into dictionaries or similar.
Likewise machine translations is not all bad. They actually do ok in some cases. They handle technical descriptions surprisingly well (with occasional big blunders) while they do worse with spoken language. The problem with MT VNs is that they not only aim at using the least good part of MT, it also relies on expressions and references, which MT can't handle, making it even more confused. To top it off, MT is designed to translate contents, not anything related to reading pleasure. In other words you will likely have better luck using Google Translate on wikipedia pages than using it on VNs.