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Tay

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  1. Like
    Tay reacted to mitchhamilton for a blog entry, The Grisaia Series is Kind of Genius   
    Until it's not. HA! GOT YOU, YOU STUPID SHIT! I pulled you into false sense of security and BAM! subverted your expectations! 
     
    Before you go on, I want you to know that this will have spoilers to all 3 The Fruit of Grisaia games so quickly read all of them and come back if you haven't already.
     
    But anyways, I decided to delve a little bit into the anime of Grisaia no Kajitsu and while the opening text displayed over each character as they are presented on screen I began to think about my own interpretation of the characters from the series and how it does a great job of somewhat subverting the anime/visual novel trope with it's characters. Feels like this is what Doki Doki Literature Club tried to do but instead of being smart it instead did "hey, reader, wouldn't be weird if one of the cute girls started bleeding from their eyes? Pretty creepy for a visual novel with cute anime girls set in a school environment." But Grisaia somewhat embraces these tropes and turns them on their head. Instead of taking place in a high school environment where only a few characters matter and therefor have actual names and faces it takes the approach of having it still set in a high school where literally only the important characters exist since there's no one else in the school!
     
    I've honestly never noticed the subtle genius of this on Grisaia's part. How many visual novels have you read where the entire school is nothing but background noises? They do away with the pointlessness of background characters altogether and make them literally isolated because that's pretty much how it is in every VN. It's this type of subtlety I enjoy from an almost parody to visual novels.
     
    Well, what about the character's themselves? Well, I'm glad you asked, me! You have the usual character tropes in Grisaia, sure. There's the tsundere, the unapproachable one, the obedient one, the slut, the loli, all of whom who you expect certain traits from but again, it subverts your expectations.
     
    The tsundere takes on a facade to hide her own identity, so her own action of trying to be a tsundere is simply so she can hide the real part of her. Christopher Nolan must be turning in his grave thinkign he couldn't come up with a character this deep in cliches! The unapproachable girl is so unapproachable that she tries to kill Yuuji, LITERALLY! The obedient one acts like the childhood friend because... well, she is and even goes to far as to dress up as a maid. The slut instantly attaches herself to the MC and offers her body, not out of her own personal feelings but because she feels she needs to be punished. The loli's character is a result of her abuse as a child  causing her to be emotionally stunted.
     
    All characters have an underlining dark reason for why they fall into these cliches which pulls the reader in to learn more and honestly, I'm sad I never caught any of this in my first or second read through of the series. It's so well done, so subtle that it makes me really appreciate the first VN more looking back on it and I'm glad I went back to the anime to remember all this.
     
    ...And then the sequels came out. 
     
    Yeah, remember that first bit of this blog? If not, might want to scroll up some. It's the bit about bringing you into a salse fense of security.
     
    Yeah, you read that right and I did that on purpose. What are you gonna do now?
     
    My comrades @DarkZedge and @Dergonu informed me that later entries in the series involved Yuuji ending up in a harem with every girl. I don't know how to look at this angle as more than fan service and undermining the emotional investment I had with the characters, especially when the first one was doing so well in NOT succumbing to your typical visual novel tropes, although there was the  Makina's sex scenes with Yuuji where this emotionally damaged girl is having sex with someone who she views as her papa shivers but then the sequels do fall into the biggest trope of all, the "everyone wants the MC's dick" trope. Every girl who he slightly breathes in the direction of wants to be a part of his life.
     
    This cliche has infested the anime, manga, and visual novel world like a cancer and in visual novels its more acceptable since you project yourself into the character more often than not and therefor feel fulfilled as a person while your visual novel counter part is fully filling your waifus with his massive love!
     
    But I digress. Grisaia felt smarter than that, I felt more respect for the character's before I learned they all fell into this overused trope. I feel like the series went on for one more visual novel long than it should have, like The Hobbit movies. We get a whole backstory of Yuuji's training, his life with his master which was nice but to top it all off we get a plot about a father figure of his coming back and causing a mess with all the girls coming together to save him in the end, or something.
     
    You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like I remember nothing about the 3rd one, aside from a fight with the dude, and seeing his sister again but when I do think back on it I just feel like it wouldn't have missed anything to be a bit more condensed, cause that's what remembering it is like. I can't remember anything aside from bits and pieces because those were the ones the set itself the most from this overly long series.
     
    "No, don't you see, Mitch?! They subvert your expectations again by making each character unique and he STILL ends up with all of them? Isn't that clever?" That's fine and all but the girls were dealing with crippling emotional baggage that was dealt with one by one and felt we had actual climax to, and not the climax Yuuji got in Amane's massive vagina! 
     
    I would've preferred if Yuuji died, cause I'm american and that's how we end every series these days. That or they think he died and he decided to start a new peaceful life while the girls must take their once again broken lives and rebuild the pieces but this time with more efficiency thanks to Yuuji. As opposed to the alternative route where they live on an island, ignore their problems and have everything solved by sweet, juicy Yuuji cum!
     
    Though I will say I did like the implication that the routes at some point all converge, so he sleeps with all of them while solving their problems. But then the problem arises with Amane's where it goes deep into the future with them being happily married then eventually dying. And you know what? That's perfectly fine with me.
  2. Like
    Tay reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Why I haven't posted recently? (a new addiction)   
    Needless to say, when I hit my latest speed bump in the form of another partial burnout on VNs, I was left wondering what to do with all that free time.  For about forty hours of that time, it was Ghost of Tsushima, but when that was over, I accidentally picked up my first litrpg on Kindle Unlimited... and oh god, I almost wish I hadn't.
    The problem, when I analyze it in retrospect, is that my fondness for anime like SAO, Log Horizon, and Overlord had primed me perfectly, my addictive personality instantly latching onto the familiar elements to draw me in beyond retrieval.  While roughly two-thirds of the books I downloaded weren't worth reading, the ones that were left me unable to stop (The Chaos Seeds, in particular).  
    I'm pretty sure anyone who paid attention during the peak of my VN of the Month years can probably guess that I have a tendency to throw myself into my addictions rather than trying to restrain myself.  In this case, it was made worse by the fact that I'd been 'starved' of anything worth my attention (new) for months on end, so when my first litrpg dug its claws into my stimulus-starved brain, I became incapable of stopping.
    In fact, I haven't really stopped even now, despite 70 different books completed from over a dozen authors in just under forty days.  I even ignored last month's releases, despite Phantom Trigger's latest episode having come out.  I don't even remember the VN I was playing at the time anymore, because I've consumed so much content of late between long bouts of stress working with even more stressed out clients who want even more for less than usual.
    I'm mostly writing this post to laugh at myself, since I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of ceasing to indulge in reading the near-endless list of litrpgs available for free with my KU subscription...
  3. Like
    Tay reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana and VN of the Month Announcement   
    ... I'm going to be blunt about this... I can't  believe this was written by the same guy who wrote Nekopara, Sakura Bitmap, and Strawberry Nauts.  This VN has an overwhelming degree of impact compared to his other works, to the point where I'm even willing to consider it a kamige.  Music, music-usage, story, presentation, art, and art usage are all at their highest levels, combining to create a nakige whose impact is far out of proportion to its length (which is only about seven hours, for me). 
    I honestly wasn't expecting the emotional impact of this VN.  In terms of this quality, it approaches Houkago no Futekikakusha, without being an utsuge... I literally cried throughout the entire game, to the point where my sinuses are swollen and my eyes bloodshot.  From the very beginning, this game makes no pretense at being anything other than what it is... a cathartic trip full of love, despair, sorrow, and loss with a drop of hope. 
    I won't spoil you as to the central concept, even though it is tempting.  Based on the fact that no details of the setting other than the characters are revealed in any detail on either the official website or the Getchu page, in addition to my own experience, I can say straight out that this is a VN best enjoyed without someone giving you details to the setting or situation.  I will say that it is a fantasy setting, based in a world that has early nineteenth-century tech (no guns that I saw though), based on the presence of an ice box and ice sellers in the game.  This is also based on the fact that matches exist but electric lights apparently don't, since the characters are using candles and oil lamps. 
    This game is pretty short, mostly due to its structure, where heroine 'paths' only come into existence after the main story is over, as epilogues for each of the four individual heroines (Haru, Yuki, Kotose, and Ren).  There is no 'true' heroine in this game, for those are wondering.  All the heroines are quite literally equal, though the protagonist is a bit more intimate with Ren and Haru, which is probably more of a reflection of the writer's preferences than anything else.
    This game is 100% 'business', including the slice-of-life scenes.  Not one scene in this VN is wasted on something other than portraying the characters' suffering and joy or progressing the story.  To be blunt, if this game weren't so perfectly designed, I'd probably be calling it 'bare-bones' in that aspect.  That lack of wasted time is actually of immense help, as it prevents the phenomenon of 'contempt due to familiarity' that tends to occur when a VN has an excess of 'meaningless' slice-of-life scenes. 
    This VN isn't humor-centric, so don't expect a lot of laughs out of it.  The heroines have serious issues, and even in everyday life, those issues peek out from beneath the surface on a regular basis.  As a result, humorous situations are relatively limited after the setting's central issue gets introduced to you and you come to understand the protagonist's objective.
    Unfortunately, there is little more I can say about this VN without ruining it for you.  I can say it is a first-class nakige, and I can say it is a cry-fest designed to suck the tears out of you with a virtual vacuum cleaner.  However, that is just a repeat of what I said above.  I do advise that anyone who goes into this VN should do so without excessive prior knowledge, as it is a VN that is best enjoyed with a 'clean slate' the first time around.
    VN of the month November 2016
    Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana
  4. Like
    Tay reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Busy and a preview of July's releases   
    ... exactly how many times have I mentioned that I'm busy lately...?  Seriously.  I'm in the middle of VN withdrawal for the first time in over three years... and I'm realizing how addicted I am.  I'd be perfectly happy to play a kusoge for the second time, at the moment... if I had the time.  The best I can do these days is drop in for a few minutes and maybe a quick post or two. 
    Considering that I originally started this style of work because it made me enough money in a short enough period of time to both support me and my habits (gaming, anime, books, and importing VNs) while leaving me time to actually enjoy them...  Unfortunately, my choice seems to be backfiring for the second time in five years.  If anything, this time is worse, because I actually failed to deliver for the first time in the last decade. 
    Anyway, enough complaints...
    While I have the time, I'm going to list up the VNs I plan to read from July's releases, when they are released:
    Tsumikui (maybe, and only maybe because it is an otomege, and good otomege are rarer than kamige charage)
    Ojousama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu
    Senren Banka (obviously)
    Muramasa: Shokuzai Hen (new Muramasa content? Whoohoo!)
    Aristear Remain
    Floral Flowlove (Saga Planets' games since Hatsuyuki Sakura have been much weaker... but I'll probably still give it a chance)
    Amatsutsumi (Purple Software has been on a roll with most of their releases in recent years... so I'm definitely playing this one)
    Kimi to Yumemishi (new company... hopefully it will be interesting)
  5. Like
    Tay reacted to Fred the Barber for a blog entry, Writing more powerful sentences   
    Last time I talked about trade-offs in editing and high-level motifs; macro-scale stuff. This time, I want to talk about a micro-scale topic: how to make an individual line better. As before, I'll be demonstrating this with examples drawn from recent editing experience. Before writing this post, I went around looking for other people talking about similar things, and I found this reference: http://kristensguide.com/Writing/powerful_sentences.asp. Frankly, it's great; probably better than what I have, especially in terms of breadth of topics. Give it a read and get your editing learning on. For this post, I'm going to deep dive into one single topic mentioned there, though, for which I've been saving up examples: putting the first and last words of your sentence to good use.
    The first and last words of a sentence are powerful. They're memorable. Forgetting the middle of a sentence is natural, so put a word at the end of a sentence when you really, really want that one word to be remembered.
    Okay, so what did you get from that last paragraph. I hope it was "first", "powerful", "memorable", "forgetting", and "remembered", because that's the point of this blog post.
    Anyway, let's look at some examples from my recent edits to Majo Koi Nikki, some to the prologue patch we're about to release, and some later. I'll point out other things that I changed as well and why, but this one point is going to be the running theme.
     
    Original:
      Looking in the mirror, she pondered for a second and answered with a shy smile on her face.
    Potential problems:
    - "on her face" is extraneous
    - that extraneous phrase is squatting on valuable real estate at the end of the sentence.
    Mine:
      Looking in the mirror, she pondered for a second, and then she answered with a shy smile.
    Changes:
    - drop "on her face" (for both reasons above - it's less verbose, and now I get "smile" as the last word in the sentence, which is great)
    - the comma after "she ponders for a second" is intended to give the reader that same mental pause as "she" has, to better set up the last part
    - "then she" somehow pushes you out of that mental pause and into the most important part: that shy smile, lingering at the end of the sentence.
     
    Original:
      Tokeizaka-san irritatedly flips through the book, but her hand stops suddenly.
    Potential problems:
    - With the benefit of spell-check, "irritatedly" => irritably
    - "suddenly" is often overused
    I actually really like the original; if you left it alone, aside from the spell-check correction, I wouldn't fault you for it. The verbs are great, "irritably" is a good use of a modifier, and the sentence communicates multiple events very concisely. But there's always room for improvement.
    Mine:
      Irritated, Tokeizaka-san flips through the book, until her hand suddenly stops.
    Changes:
    - Drop "suddenly." "Stops" is strong enough to carry that feeling of suddenness on its own, so "suddenly" is only making things weaker. I've also noticed a tendency for raw JP translations to overuse "suddenly", which makes me especially biased to remove it. It's the typical problem of overuse: if everything is happening suddenly, it might as well all be happening normally.
    - Move those good words, "irritably" and "stops" to the memorable points of the sentence. "Stops" we got for free, "irritably" requires a small bit of juggling. Unfortunately, Tokeizaka-san's family name is a bit unwieldy at best; better to bury it in the middle of the sentence and let the nice, emotive words take pride of place.
    - Swapping "but" for "until" made for a clearer plot to the sentence, I thought.
     
    Original:
    - The colorful beauty article are displayed neatly.
    Potential problems:
    - Engrish
    - Passive voice
    - Not flashy enough
    Mine:
    - Iridescent beauty products dot the shelves, arranged with flawless precision.

    On that last potential problem: normally my style is pretty spare. My typical goal is to drop adjectives and adverbs, and make verbs and nouns stronger to carry the weight of description, without going overboard on vocabulary. More often than not, I'm trying to make long sentences shorter and punchier.
    I didn't do that here.
    For context on why, it would help for you to hear the ridiculously high-brow BGM accompanying this scene and see the gorgeous background art. So, here:
    Background:


    BGM:
     
    Equally important for context, you need to know about the surrounding narration: basically, the narrator is currently marveling at just how amazing this beauty parlor is.
    One of the benefits of generally being spare with your adjectives and adverbs is that they then work a lot better when you actually do pull them out. A good mental model is that you have a budget: don't spend your nice words if you don't need to. Only pull them out when you're going for the razzle dazzle. The analogy breaks down fast, but basically, if you're constantly using flowery language and overdecorating the ordinary scenes, nobody's going to be impressed when something extraordinary happens, just like the overuse of "suddenly" I mentioned earlier. Since this actually is an extraordinary moment for our narrator, I'm spending a few nice words now.
    And again, I want to call attention to the first and last words of the sentence. Those are strong places in a sentence (or, especially in the case of a VN, a line). Previously there were pretty weak words there ("The colorful" and "neatly"); now we've got "iridescent" and "precision". Good words in good places.
     
    One last thing to mention. I wrote each of these up in the middle of editing, and then later edited that up into a blog post. I made changes to the edited line itself in the process of writing all this stuff up, which made it better. In fact, I even noticed a problem while writing up this blog post and further refined the line. You'll never know what it was (probably). The point being, simply spending time reflecting on an edit, and especially writing down your observations and motivations for certain choices, will help you do better work. You don't have to be this thorough all the time (I certainly am not), but every time you do an exercise like that, you'll learn from it, and then you can write up your own blog post and teach me something.
     
  6. Like
    Tay reacted to Dergonu for a blog entry, Tsui Yuri translation project - 50% translated!   
    We just hit 50% translation! Yaay!

    I just wrapped up the translation of Futaba's good ending last night, (fought through some H-scenes... ) And here we are!


     
    So with this, we are officially halfway there. It's a pretty good feeling. Although the actual line count hasn't changed that much since last week, just seeing the "50%" makes me feel awesome  


     
    I wanted to do something a bit special for the halfway mark, so I'm going to talk a bit about the game first, then I'll be answering some random questions some people might have/ just in general talk a bit about the project and how things are progressing on our end. Let's begin with some info about the game:


     
    Many people might not really know that much about this small, fairly new yurige by a fairly unknown company. In Tsui Yuri, you follow the twin sisters Futaba and Ichika, who get along very well. So well in fact, that their mother thinks it is a bit too much, and she asks them to spend some time apart. Seeing as they live in the same house, go to the same school and pretty much always do everything together, this is a bit hard, and their relationship is strained. The story is told from both girls' perspectives, and there is 2 routes, with 4 endings total.

    During the common route, you will make several choices that will impact the story and the girls' relationship. The "status" meter in game will show you how strongly each character cares for the other at any given time, and each choice will change this meter to a varying degree. One choice might bump Ichika's feelings a lot, where as some might make her care less and less for Futaba, and so on.


    Currently not translated, as the image editing is not done by me. It is in the works, but not done yet.


    What really interested me about this game was the choice and route system. There is no real set combination of choices that will lead to a route; you can freely play with the status meter, making different choices to see how it changes their feelings. To get a character's route, that character's feelings has to be stronger than the other one. (Meaning if Futaba has about 60% and Ichika has 40%, you enter Futaba's route.) But, if you manage to completely push it all the way to one side, (so now Ichika doesn't care about Futaba at all,) then you will get a bad ending. Meaning, which ending you get is decided by your choices in the common route, and not during the actual character route itself. This is really cool, because that means you actually get a "bad route" and not just a bad ending. (The line count in the bad routes are actually just a tiny bit shorter than the good ones. If you like bad endings with a bit of meat to them, these are actually pretty good. Also, yandere fans, look out.)

    In addition, some of the choices you make in the common route will give you different variations of each scene, some which includes unique CGs, so saving and testing out new stuff is actually pretty much required. (Though, seeing as the game is quite short, it's a neat feature, not something that makes you sigh because you have read something similar before.)

    Story wise, it is a very light game with no real "plot" other than two sisters growing more and more fond of each other. It deals with them moving from the line of "sisters" to "lovers" and things like that. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for yuri fans it's a really solid title. Also, like I mentioned, the bad endings are actually pretty dark, so for the twisted fellas out there, this one might be a bit interesting for you if you can stomach some adorableness first.  


     
    Let us take a quick look at the characters:

    Ichika



    Ichika is the smart, cool and collected sister. She speaks politely, has a very calm air to her, is a perfect honor student and is also the vice-president on the student council. She is a bit too soft on Futaba, always helping her out with anything Futaba needs. Although she is very smart, she isn't the brightest when it comes to relationships in general - she simply isn't that used to interacting with people.


     
    Futaba (God I love her pout.)



    Futaba is the energy bomb of the two. She loves Ichika more than anything in the world, and always follows her sister around. She is way too spoiled, and doesn't do much on her own; she wants her sister to help her out with it. She isn't the smartest kid around, but she is very good at sports, and is a member of the tennis club. She is also way too adorable.


     
    Yuri



    The sisters' childhood friend and Ichika's classmate. Yuri is a bit of a joker who tends to put ideas in the girls' heads. She speaks her mind, even if what she has to say isn't the most appropriate, which makes for some hilarious situations.

    But although she tends to joke around a lot, she has a bit of an adult-like feel to her and is a very mature person when she needs to be.


     
    Saki



    The sisters' second childhood friend and Futaba's classmate. She is a bit different from Yuri, and is a lot more polite and in many ways, similar to Ichika. Saki is a very gentle and sweet person, and wants to help the sisters out whenever they are feeling down. One big difference between Ichika and Saki is that Saki gets what people are thinking a lot easier, making her a bit less of an "airhead" when it comes to relationships and people's feelings.


     

     

     
    Moving over to some questions and answers.


     
    Question... (kind of): When I started the project, I felt that there was a few people who weren't quite sure whether or not I could do this. I think the quality of the final translation was their main concern. Basically, am I a complete scrub, or do I actually have some skills?  

    Answer: Well, a few things to keep in mind. 1, this game is very fluffy and very simple. It is also quite short. That does not mean it's something to underestimate of course, but I would never have started the project if I wasn't ready. There is a reason I aimed for a short, fluffy title without any intricate plot lines that would be hard to follow for a new translator.

    In addition, the second I felt a bit overwhelmed, I stopped the project for a bit, as I knew that wasn't the way things should be. I am completely comfortable with this project now, and although I know my translation will not be a top tier piece of work, I can assure you at the very least, it won't be wrong. Like, I won't translate peppers to peas. (Isn't that right Kriririri ) 

    Anyways, I know I am new to this, I know I will make some tiny mistakes here and there, I know the quality will be a bit lower than what some of the very skilled individuals out there manages, but overall I am happy with the way things are going. I'm learning a lot, I'm improving, and this is just the beginning of my translation career. (Even if that makes some people more angry than happy )


     
    Question: Will there be a prologue patch/ partial patch released?

    Answer: We still have a few issues with the engine, (which is stupid and retarded,) so a potential patch now would have a few annoying bugs and errors which would just be distracting. The scripts also aren't really polished quite yet, as it's only been me and an editor working on it as of right now so... I'm going to say, no. It just wouldn't be a pleasant read in its current state, and seeing as the game is so short, it's pretty much pointless either way.


     
    Question: Do you have an ETA for the patch?

    Answer: It's hard to say. I could give you a rough estimate, but I would rather not. The thing is, the amount of time I have to work on this is a bit limited. I absolutely love working on it, and I have a blast the entire time I do, (except for when the damn H-scenes suck the life out of me.)

    The thing is, this is my first translation. I have never translated anything before, and the work is very tasking. Sounds silly, I mean, all I do is look at something in Japanese, then write it in English, right? Well, there is a lot more to it, and honestly, it's very mentally draining. Even just a simple one hour session can leave me exhausted. Not because I get bored, but simply because I have to think a lot, and I'm not used to that. Wait...

    Because of the fairly limited amount of time I have each week, there is only so much I can get done on a weekly basis without overworking myself. This is a very new thing to me, and I want to make sure I move forward at a comfortable pace. Seeing as I have no deadline or anything, I can take it exactly at the pace I personally feel is right, even though that might be a bit frustrating to others.

    Basically, I can say that it will be released in 2016 for sure, but I can't say anything more specific than that.


     
    A bit of progress on how things are going on our end.

    The translation and editing is going fine, and is moving around the same speed. The reason the editing is lagging a tiny bit behind me right now, is because the translation I work on every week isn't made available on the GIT for the editor until I upload it on Thursday nights. That means he literally has to edit it all during that night to get it ready for the Friday update, which ... well, if he was doing that I'd be a bit worried.


     
    We have met a few problems in the game which the hacker has to take a look at. This is something I can't do anything about, as I barely know what a computer is, so without Porygon on this project, this whole thing would not have been possible. (Thank you so much.)


     
    Image editing will be done so that the entire menu and UI is in English. There is no ETA on this, and all I can say is that it will be done at some point. An individual approached me without me asking for their help, which made me extremely happy. As of right now, I don't know if they want to be mentioned or not, so I'll wait until I know that for sure before I talk about that any more. Point is, it will be done at some point.


     
    To finish up this post, I'll just put out there that we are working hard and that the patch will be finished. I know a decent amount of new teams tend to suddenly just die out and vanish. That will not be the case with this project. Like I said before, I'm having a blast translating this. Although it might not seem like I'm getting a lot done, it's simply because I'm making sure I don't rush through things. Also keep in mind that real life is a thing, and that sometimes it takes priority over the translation.

    Thanks for sticking with me and the team, and I hope you are looking forward to the patch.

    See you in next week's update.



  7. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Other Oddball Punctuation in VNs: A Final Roundup   
    It's sad but true: we've finally come to the end of our tour of Japanese punctuation for VN editors. But before we bid adieu, there are a few more types we have yet to cover. None merit full blog posts, however, so I offer them up here in a bit of a punctuation grab bag. Reach in if you dare.
    The placeholder:  〇
    The 〇 is typically used to censor offensive language by replacing one of the characters in a word. It's the equivalent of writing "f*ck" or "sh-t" or in English. Everyone knows what's being said, but we can all pretend we didn't say it. Kumbaya, amirite? Cursing really isn't a thing in Japanese, of course, so these marks get used either for our naughtiest bits — think "cock" and "dick," or "pussy" and "cunt" — or certain other socially offensive terms. You might be surprised to see censoring in the middle of an H-scene that, in all other respects, has spared no detail or volume of liquid, but there you go. Just think of them as pixel mosaics for written text.
    As for editing these bad boys, you should almost always just go with uncensored English. Fuck yeah. The one situation where you might want to consider doing otherwise is when a VN also bleeps these words in the VO. In that case, you'd also be justified in using the censored English equivalent with either *, -, or _ replacing vowels as needed. Pick only one wildcard and be consistent in its use.
    Another use for these characters in Japanese is to mask portions of real-life names or places — e.g., Bu〇er King. This is done both out of a sense of propriety and to avoid the wrath of real-life lawyers. You'll conceivably see the names of celebrities, bands, games, movies, etc. all masked in this fashion. Thankfully, there's a long tradition of this in Western literature as well, most notably in the Victorian era — "I sent my butler out to the renowned psychic, Madame G—, to seek her advice on the matter." Our best course of action during editing is to mimic the Japanese, but do so in the English tradition, replacing the omitted portion with an em-dash — two if the excised text is particularly long.
    Sometimes, rather than use 〇 for masking, a VN writer will choose to come up with soundalike parody names for the person, place, or thing being referenced. And so you'll end up with people talking about anime like Wagonball Z and Tailor Moon. If the VN chooses this option, then so should you. Do your best to come up with witty replacements in English.
    More rarely, you'll see a double 〇〇 all by its lonesome. This just stands for "word goes here." It's a literal placeholder. If you encounter it in narration, you can usually replace it with a few underscores, like _________. If it appears in voiced dialogue, possible options include "blahblah," "yada yada," "blankity-blank," or whatever else you can think up.
    Parentheses: ( )
    In VNs, these typically indicate a line should be read as internal monologue, or in some cases, a stage whisper.
    The meaning is clear in both languages, so best to keep these as they are. Unless, of course, your text engine is one of those rare snowflakes that can output English italics. In that case, use those.
    Bedazzlers: ★☆♪♫❤❆❀✿❁
    Okay, they're not actually called "bedazzlers," but it's a good a name as any. You know what I'm talking about, right? That big ol' box of typographical Lucky Charms that gets dumped right onto VN text to provide some wacky flavor to the proceedings. Hearts, stars, flowers, snowflakes, music notes, Zodiac signs, etc. 
    Some common uses include:
    - A music note at the end of a line to show it's being sung. ("Fly me to the moon♪")
    - A heart somewhere in a line to indicate puppy love at its most disgusting. ("He's so dreeeamy❤")
    - A name or term being bracketed by stars to show that it's extrasupervery OMGmagical. ("Aha! I've transformed into ☆Magical Girl Bertha☆")
    - A tiny gun so we can commit suicide after enduring all the above.
    These little pretties are self-explanatory enough that I tend to leave them as is. Japan's gotta Japan, right? But use your best judgement; if you feel like they're getting in the way of the of the English narrative, go ahead and prune them back — or omit them entirely.
    Full stop.
    Not the punctuation; the whole series of punctuation articles. We're done. If I think of any more oddball Japanese punctuation marks worth discussing, I'll add them to the end of this post. But otherwise: happy f〇cking editing!
  8. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.   
    This past weekend marked the unofficial start of summer here in the States, and to celebrate, dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster threw down the gauntlet in a major way. The hot dog, it declared, is a sandwich. It consists of bread (the bun) holding some filling (a plump, juicy hot dog). It meets the textbook definition of a sandwich. Therefore, it’s a sandwich.
    The reaction from Team Hot Dog was swift. “Nooo! That’s not true!” they Luke Skywalkered across the Twiterverse. “Hot dogs are hot dogs! Shuttuuuuuhp!” Whereas Team Sandwich raised nary a peep. “Cool,” they said. “We like sandwiches. Welcome to the club.”
    And why was that? Maybe a look at similar sort of statement can help us try to figure it out:
    Gone Home is a visual novel.

    Nooo! That’s not true! Gone Home isn’t a VN! Shuttuuuuhp!
    Very light spoilers to follow.
    If you don’t know, Gone Home is a game that came out in 2013, created by a handful of former BioShock devs. In it, you assume the role of an American college student who comes home from a year abroad only to find her parents’ house deserted, a cryptic note from her sister taped to the front door. The rest of the game is spent finding out just what happened.
    Except it’s not a “game” as such. And you don’t really “play.” You simply wander the house using FPS controls, going from room to room and reading/hearing scattered bits of documentary evidence – letters, journal entries, crumpled-up notes, etc. – that help you unravel the mystery. That’s it. Some gamers have dismissively called it a “walking simulator,” but there’s clearly more to it than that. Gone Home is a digital experience that exists primarily to convey an authored text, one that shares structural similarities with traditional novels/short stories. That text is then given strong support by on-screen visual elements to form a cohesive whole.
    While there’s no hard and fast definition of “visual novel” that I’m aware of, the above seems to do the job pretty well. And by that definition, Gone Home is a visual novel.
    Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t take the form of a written novel!
    Sure it does – an epistolary novel, to be specific. Here, I’ll even save you the trip to Wikipedia:
    Some well-known entries in this genre include Frankenstein, Dracula, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and World War Z. In Gone Home’s case, the main narrative thread is told via your sister’s journal entries, which are penned as letters in absentia to you. Additional plot is introduced via other letters, newspaper clippings, and historical documents. Sound familiar? Yup. In fact, if you printed the collected documents of Gone Home in paperback, it would hold up extremely well as an example of the epistolary form.
    Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.

    Nooo! It’s not a VN! You walk around in a 3D environment!
    So what? Macbeth is a play; we can all agree on that. Sleep No More is a highly regarded re-contextualizing of that play as performance spaces meant to be walked through and experienced. The fact that you sit on your ass through one and physically traverse the other doesn’t change the fact that both are plays. They both have actors, scenes, and staging.
    And besides, several other VN titles use the exploration of 3D environments to frame their textual elements – Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, Danganronpa, etc.
    Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.
    Nooo! It’s not a VN! It’s a game that just happens to have text!
    There’s almost zero “gameplay” in Gone Home. Seriously. Most of one’s time in so-called “narrative-driven” games like BioShock or Final Fantasy [n] or Persona is spent doing non-narrative things – fighting, more often than not. In Gone Home, if you’re not reading/listening to documents, you’re usually (a) walking, (b) turning on lamps, or (c) opening cupboards and looking at cans of soup. The “game,” such as it is, exists solely to deliver the narrative.
    Baldr Sky, Aselia, the Rance VNs – all have far more gameplay than Gone Home could ever dream of.
    Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.

    Nooo! It’s not a VN! You can finish the game without reading most of it!
    While Gone Home definitely gives you a great deal of leeway in what you choose to read, and in what order, there are still certain key documents that act as plot gateways. These help ensure there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end with an identifiable narrative arc in between.
    Anyway, I can also “finish” a more traditional VN without reading most of it. Maybe I get an early bad ending. Or I can read one route to completion and decide to stop, missing most of the content.
    Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.
    Nooo! It’s not a VN! If it is, then any game can claim the same!
    Nope. Slippery slope denied. Just because Gone Home can be considered a VN, that doesn’t mean Tetris or Call of Duty: Jackalope can; it’s still a fairly high bar. Take The Walking Dead series by Telltale, for example. A number of people have argued that these games could (and should) be considered VNs, but I’d disagree. That could be a whole blog post by itself, but suffice to say their narrative form is much closer to that of a TV script than a novel or story.
    All kings are men, but not all men are kings. Just because VNs prioritize narrative doesn’t mean all games that prioritize narrative are VNs.

    Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t have sprites against a background!
    So what? Go tell that to Narcissu.
    Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t have hand-drawn art!
    So what? Go tell that to any recent VN using 3D character models/backdrops.
    Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t have routes! And heroines!
    Are we seriously having this conversation?
    Nooo! It’s not a VN! Its creators don’t even call it that!
    So what? Authorial intent means nothing. All the audience can judge is what’s on the page/screen. And what’s there is a visual novel. (For the record, the devs call it a "story exploration" game.)
    Okay, class. What have we learned?
    Our Gone Home experiment, interestingly enough, is the reverse of the hot dog situation. Visual novel fans (a.k.a., Team Sandwich) tend to be the ones arguing against Gone Home (a.k.a., Team Hot Dog) being considered part of the genre, rather than the other way around. Larger resists smaller, rather than smaller resisting larger. And why is that?
    For Team Hot Dog, the object of its affection is more than a tube-shaped piece of meat on a bun. It’s the whole emotional experience surrounding the idea of “hot dog” – the childhood ballgames, the smell of charcoal in the backyard grill. There’s a good reason I can watch the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on TV next month, but not the Boar’s Head Ham and Cheese on Rye Eating Contest. To admit that a hot dog is just a sandwich is to risk making it less special somehow, to blur the lines of its magic.
    And for members of Team VN, a “visual novel” is more than just any old game that combines textual narrative with computer graphics. It’s also the emotional experience of all the VNs they’ve played until now – experiences that are often colored by very specific art styles and narrative conceits. To admit that a “game” like Gone Home can be a visual novel is to risk making the genre seem less special somehow, to blur the lines of its magic.
    In both cases, the emotional experience of a thing proves to be just as true and just as powerful as the dictionary definition of that thing. And unless your name happens to be Merriam or Webster, there’s very little to be done about the latter. But the former is a matter of personal interpretation; personal interpretation remains a hill that one can choose to defend and, indeed, die upon.
    In other words, it’s possible for the statements “Gone Home is a visual novel,” and “I don’t consider Gone Home to be a visual novel,” to both be true simultaneously. But if you put ketchup on your hot dog sandwich, you’re just a bloody idiot.
    Update #1: Now watch as I argue that Gone Home really isn't a visual novel. Proof you can have your cake and piss on it too.
  9. Like
    Tay reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Some explanations about my current state   
    Some people here already know that I hurt my knee falling down the stairs a while ago... what most of you don't know is that the stuff they have me on (non-narcotic pain drugs, sleep pills, and antibiotics) in combination make me a zombie for most of the day... I sleep around twelve hours a day, am fuzzy for two to three hours more, have to do rehab exercises for another two hours, and I spend around four hours of what is remaining working. 
    Needless to say, this doesn't leave much time for anything else... which is why VN of the Month is so far behind.  Normally, by this point I would have played through at least four or five of the month's VNs, and I would probably be considering which one - if any - was worth the VN of the month rating... as it is, it has taken me a little over seventeen days to finish just two VNs from April's releases. 
    I'm basically venting my frustration right now... since I lose money with every day I can't work at full capacity and I go a little more stir crazy with every day I can't go out and get some fresh air without using crutches.  For the first time in almost nine years, I actually had to use up my entire pay for a month for bills and food  (the medical bills being the highest, obviously). 
    Needless to say, I'm in a sour mood.
    If I seem harsh toward the remaining VNs this month, please forgive me.  It is really, really hard to concentrate outside of work right now... and I'm actually having to reconsider a lot of my plans for the rest of the year based on the costs I project for the rest of the next few months.  Nothing pisses me off more than being unable to rectify everyday money problems (which is why I work so much normally)....
    Anyway, that's enough moaning from me for now.  The two key points are that the above are the reasons VN of the Month is so far behind and I so rarely post, despite the fact that I'm technically 'online' (I rarely if ever shut down the fuwanovel tab, lol) all the time.  If I'm slow to respond, it is because I'm not myself, not because I'm not interested in doing so.
  10. Like
    Tay reacted to littleshogun for a blog entry, Hanbei on Girl's Lap Review   
    Visual Novel Translation Status (04/09/2016)
    To be honest the title for this week was quite cheesy and for the header image this time it was quite hard to find the fitting title. Anyway, the man on MC's lap (Yes the header image was from otome game) was Hanbei Takenaka from just recently released Destiny Princess. Anyway, this is another my review on VNTS here, and from now on I'll commented based on each segment just like last week. For my opening comment, this week was quite plain to be honest. And if Tay interested in otome game, I'm not by the way.
    Sekai Project
    Well, not much to be honest other than KARAKARA managed to reach the progress at 77.22% and Maitetsu at 6.39%. Both of those was more interesting because of the seiyuu to be honest, and also factoring the opening video (Or maybe I'm far more interested in those 2 production value). For Korean VN, the progress was at 1.29%. Lucid9, the girl's sprite quite good looking, although I must questioning why Sekai released only prologue here and if you allow me to speculate maybe they want try to repeat Katawa Shoujo success which start from releasing the common route first, and then waiting for 4 years to finally released the full version. The production value was quite high with voice acting there, and well let's just hope Lucid9 take time to made the character route worthwhile unlike No One But You which is rushed according to the review here.
    One last note, as for Root Double (And in response to Decay musing), I'd still suspect Regista or Yeti was behind the delay instead of Sekai, but I think if somehow the Japanese company managed to force Sekai to delay it more in this month, well there's still May to speculate I guess (Or in another word I'm willing to wait for 51 days more).
    Fan Translation
    Astral Air this time managed to pick up again at 0.69% compared to last week which is only at 0.2%, and interestingly apparently Chuee (or Supreme Tentacle) also pick up on Corona's route this week. Sakusaku, I think I already made the comment on my thread, but let's wait until May 2nd for more update here once again. Irotoridori, well this one had history in regard of the translation and good luck akerou (Oh the progress now was at 8%). Monster Girl Quest Paradox, I knew the original had interesting story but maybe this game set in alternate history (Also will the artist update the H-Scene drawing so we'll more willing to lost instead of encourage us to winning indirectly because of bad drawing) and to be honest I didn't know much about this.
    I think this time we had some interesting news from community member here. For Ittaku, congratulations to find one more editor for To Hearts 2 and by the way for anyone else who read this will some of you interested to editing twin route at To Heart 2 (Not mine since I didn't had confidence enough in English editing). As for Bishoujo Mangekyou, congratulations for reaching 50.5% for the progress, Arcadeotic and if you ask me the VN was quite interesting with the score apparently quite high at VNDB for something labeled nukige (The again so does Monster Girl Quest), the premise was like teacher and vampire thing, and according to VNDB Ringorin was voicing white haired girl. Good luck Arcadeotic. We also had new translation project from dergonu (Maybe will be added on VNTS project in coming weeks) here, and by the way if you expected it was yuri VN, the answer was correct. Good luck Dergonu, and as for the progress right now it was at 3.1%. Oh, and about Tokyo Necro, I think I just wait and see for this since there's a wall with name JAST USA there, and recently I saw the CG from there and it was very scary (Some of these involving brain iirc).
    Oh, congratulation for the establishment of 'Dracu Riot Completion Translation' project, although to be honest there's still not much news and progress this week, other than good luck Decay in your new position. But seeing fiddle's habit when they submit the progress when each route is finished back at Noble Noodle Works translation project, I think that's understandable. And for the untranslated script in Miu's route, the line count was comparable to some short VN (Around 5000 lines) so maybe the progress still take a while. Well, let me said thanks to one of 'Elite Four of Fuwanovel' Nosebleed here for establishing this project once again.
    As for my closing comment, for Sharin localization announcement, no much comment needed. Also I'm waiting for Dangan Ronpa 2 if only because of the involvement many famous seiyuu there. For Fata Morgana house, not interested but maybe there was some user here who interested with that kind of graphic.
    I think that's all for this week.
  11. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Save the Visual Novels! Eat the Whales!   
    How do you eat an entire whale? One bite at a time. Preferably with Cholula.
    How do you edit/translate/whatever a visual novel? One line at a time. Preferably with bourbon.
    Whether you’re a fan of the final product or not, one of the things that impresses me most about MDZ’s fan translation of Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort is that it got released, period. As in, if you were so inclined, you could download the installer right now, patch the original Japanese game, and go play the thing on your new-fangled Windows Pee-Cee. No demos, no one-route partial patches. The whole damned VN in English, finished on schedule and out there in the world.
    The project didn’t stall. It didn’t wind up in no-updates-in-six-months-but-we-think-they’re-still-working-on-it hell. It didn’t climb into that white panel van with Little Busters EX, never to be heard from again. The nice man was lying to you, Little Busters EX — there were no cute little puppies in the back. What were you thinking?!
    The KoiRizo team did nothing particularly special to make this happen. We just ate the whale one bite at a time.
    The rhythm method
    By his own account, MDZ worked very methodically on the project, spending an average of 30 minutes every day translating scripts into English. Not when he felt like it. Not when inspiration struck. Not when enough people harassed him with all-caps emails asking why the HELL hadn’t there been any progress updates on the KoiRizo tracker lately. He made it an expected part of his routine, like brushing his teeth or eating dinner. He scheduled regular translation sessions between classes or before heading out in the morning.
    He did a little bit. Every. Single. Day.
    There’s a word for that: consistency. That’s what gets things done in the real world, not 48-hour marathons every random.randint(1,6) weekends fueled by Red Bull, Hot Pockets, and intense self-loathing. Consistency keeps you from getting burned out. Consistency lets you make reasonable schedules and estimates, then stick to them. Consistency is like goddamned black magic.
    Over the course of the project, MDZ had consistency in spades. If he can maintain that approach to life, I have a feeling he’ll be successful at whatever he puts his mind to after college.
    When I came on board as an editor, I kept a somewhat similar schedule. I resolved to set aside my commuting time each workday for editing. And so for 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the evening, Monday through Friday, I’d park my butt in a train seat, break out my laptop, and just edit.
    Weekdays were reserved for my family. If you’re married with kids, you know there is no such thing as free time on weekends. If you’re not married and don’t have kids, please tell me what the outside world is like. I hear they came out with a PlayStation 2? That’s gotta be pretty awesome.
    Anyway, that’s what I ended up doing. Edit every single workday. For six months. Until it was done.
    (Six months? That long to edit a medium-length visual novel? Yeah, that long. KoiRizo weighs in at 36,000+ lines. Over six months, that works out to about 1,400 lines a week, or 210 lines per hour. That’s an edited line every 17 seconds or so, with most of the lines needing substantial polishing/rewriting. I have no idea what pace other VN editors work at, but I felt like this was one I could maintain over the long haul. Call it the distance runner’s lope.)

    Special topics in calamity physics
    So why all this rambling about whales and consistency? Because I just got back from vacation a few days ago and I’ve been surprised at how long it’s taken me to get my head back into the various projects I’ve been working on (or even writing this blog). And then I got to wondering how often something small like that snowballs into a stalled or even failed project. A missed day turns into a skipped week turns into a skipped month turns into a dead translation.
    Which then got me thinking about the coefficient of friction.
    It’s basic physics, which I excelled at (failing repeatedly). In layman’s terms, it’s a ratio (μ) that gives you a sense how much force two surfaces exert on each other and, therefore, how much force you need to exert to get something moving from a dead stop. Wooden block on ice? Low coefficient of friction. Wooden block on shag carpet? High coefficient of friction ... and a senseless crime against tasteful décor. Once you overcome that initial friction, it takes comparatively little force to keep an object in motion.
    I can easily imagine there’s a coefficient of friction between us and our work, some quantifiable level of resistance that needs be overcome before we get our asses in gear and be productive. And unlike the one in Physics 101, which is constant for any two materials, this one is different every single day. It depends on a bunch of different factors: how interested we are in our projects, how appreciated we feel, what other projects we’ve got going on at the same time, how much sleep we’ve gotten, what else is going on in our lives, whether or not the Mets are currently in the World Series, etc.
    Let’s call it the coefficient of slackitude.
    Once we get started on a project and make it part of our everyday routine, we can largely ignore this number. We’ve overcome the initial slackitude and, with moderate effort, can keep things rolling along fairly smoothly. But each time we let things coast to a stop, even for a few days, we’ve got to overcome the slackitude all over again. And since that value is variable, it might be much harder the second time around. In fact, it probably will be.
    Eventually, we’ll fail to do so. And our project will die.
    The takeaway
    So other than the fact that I had no business being anywhere near a physics classroom, what can we take away from my incoherent ramblings? A couple things:
    The easiest way to make sure your project gets finished is to stick to a regular schedule. Eat the whale a little at a time — every day if you can. Minimize the gaps. Avoid having to face off against that nasty coefficient of slackitude more than once. The easiest way to make sure your project gets started at all is to pick a time when that coefficient of slackitude is low — when you’re excited by the prospect, when you’re well-rested, when you have relatively few competing interests. When you can focus. Use that time to build your momentum, so when your interest wanes or real life intrudes — it always does and it always will — the project is so embedded in your routine that you can just ride it out. We need more finished translations in the world. So pull up a chair and eat your whale. Do it for your team. Do it for yourself. Do it for poor Little Busters EX, drugged and ball-gagged in a basement somewhere, forever wondering when it’ll finally get to see the puppies.
  12. Like
    Tay reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Some thoughts and an update   
    I'm guessing some of those that follow my blog are wondering why I haven't started up any random VNs this month... there are a number of reasons.
    1) I'm busy.  I have my work, with an addition of university, which takes up about 80% of my time, save for a few days like today when I have time to rest and relax.
    2) I simply don't have an appreciation for anything in my backlog right now.  I cleared out most of the most interesting stuff over the last two years, and I'm keeping what little is left for a truly rainy day, when I'm not busy and I don't have anything better to do.
    3)  This has been a very dry quarter.  July, August, and September were mostly dry of interesting releases, and I'm saving up energy for Kenseiki Alpha Ride, which I promised certain people I would play early on, rather than waiting until a later date as I commonly do with most gameplay-VNs.
    4) This has been a particularly bad month irl.  I've been helping my brother get ready to move his family into our place for a few months while their old place is on the market and they are closing on their new place, I've been applying for a graduate program, and I got several major commissions that have kept me locked down a lot more than I would have liked.
    5) I promised myself I wouldn't play any more moege/charage until I've played Kenseiki or the new Fortissimo. 
    Now for my thoughts...  Today's post is going to be focused on what makes a good chuunige.
    I should probably define the origins of chuuni as opposed to what a chuunige is.  First of all, if any of you have seen Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai, you have at least a vague idea of what chuunibyou is like.  Basically, take your average D&D nut or cosplayer and add some delusions of glory to him, and you have a chuunibyou patient.  That's simplifying matters somewhat, but it is also fairly accurate for a good portion of them, though.
    Chuuni, on the other hand, is literature, games, anime, etc. that feels like it comes out of the mind of a chuunibyou patient.  Drama on a large scale, often in somewhat familiar settings, is probably the easiest and most obvious way to tell if something is chuuni.  In addition, in a good chuuni-anything, the protagonist is never a self-insert carbon copy of your average harem-building protagonist.  I say this because it is the easiest way to tell when something isn't a chuunige, as chuuni protagonists are supposed to experience and/or be something that is beyond what you can experience in your life, whether it is psychologically or physically. 
    Most chuunige have action of some sort, but not all of them do.  A famous chuunige that isn't mostly action - that a lot of you will have played - is G-senjou no Maou.  In a way, Sharin no Kuni can also be considered a chuunige, for a similar reason. 
    The more 'standard' type of chuunige is the 'gakuen battle' type.  The most obvious translated examples of this are Tsukihime, FSN, and Comyu.  In this type, a schoolkid somehow gets mixed up in a horrible situation that should kill him right off the bat, but he somehow survives to become central to 'the conflict'. 
    A rarer type is the 'mature protagonist taking on the world' type.  This is easily my favorite type, as protagonists in these VNs tend to have more solid philosophies and are less... idiotic.  I think most people will agree that Shirou from FSN is a bit immature, though he had mature aspects.  However, protagonists in these are adults, whether they are grown up fully or not.  An example of this type that is translated would be Sharin no Kuni's protagonist.  For untranslated, Hello, Lady and Vermillion Bind of Blood (Toshiro from Vermillion reminds me of Auron from FF X, hahaha)  come to mind.  Generally speaking, the themes of these VNs will be a lot larger in scale than you usually see in the gakuen battle types.  This is because the themes are generally written to keep pace with the protagonists, lol. 
    The last type is the 'poetic' type, where a writer is obviously masturbating with his keyboard.  Masada's works are the most obvious examples of this (Dies Irae, Paradise Lost, Kajiri Kamui Kagura), though Light's 'other' chuuni-crew also writes similar VNs, and Devils Devel Concept and Bradyon Veda by Akatsuki Works both fall into this category.  In this type of chuunige, the action, the story, and the visuals all exist as an excuse for the writer to try to blow you away.  Currently, the only one of this type in translation is Tokyo Babel, whose release is sometime off... though I'm tempted to include Sekien no Inganock in this crew.  For someone who loves complex, deep prose, these VNs are pure crack... but in exchange, they are also incredibly difficult to read for someone not native to the language.
    Overall, reading chuunige is all about having fun.  It isn't about being moe-ed to death or being awed by the pretty pastel colors... it is about enjoying the part of you that never quite gave up that desire to be or see something more...
  13. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today   
    I’m on a much-needed vacation deep in the woods. There’s running water, crappy mobile service, something that could generously be described as “heat,” and not much else.   Also, I’m fairly sure an owlbear rummaged through our garbage last night.   This means you have a whole week free from my inane ramblings. It also means that on a scale from “wearing underwear today” to “not wearing underwear today,” I’m not wearing underwear today. It's vacation and I don't wannuh.     Deal with it. Then discuss.
  14. Like
    Tay reacted to astro for a blog entry, taypls 7   
    Really liking the new FuwaWhiteTM Theme. Those new forum updates are really working wonders.

    taypls
  15. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, VN Image Editing: The Skinny on Vertical Type   
    You know how you can translate Japanese far too literally and end up with stilted and nonsensical prose? It’s also possible reinterpret Japanese graphics far too literally and up with an illegible mess. Case in point: vertical type.

    Japanese text is typically typeset one of two ways: the traditional tategaki style (characters arranged in vertical columns, read from right to left), or the more modern yokogaki style (characters arranged in horizontal rows, read left to right, as in English). When editing images for visual novels, you’ll usually be dealing with a lot of tategaki, but it’s possible you’ll encounter some yokogaki as well. Unless you just bought a pamphlet from that crazy guy hanging out beneath the subway stairs — Happy Birthday to Gravy! I’m Made of Bees! — you will literally never see English typeset this way. So how do you handle it when you do?

    Typically, as long as you have the room, you’d set it the same as you would any other English text: horizontal, left to right, for maximum legibility. But what if you don’t have room? Particularly when dealing with UI elements, you might only have enough real estate for a single vertical column of characters. What then?

    Grab it by the spine
    Thankfully, generations of English-language typesetters have already solved this problem for us. Just walk over to your media shelf and look for yourself. See all those books, DVDs, video games you’ve got lined up there? Not only did you spend an obscene amount of money on those — seriously, how are you ever going to pay off your student loans this way? — but their spines all display titles the exact same way: horizontal type, rotated 90 degrees clockwise so that it reads from top to bottom. Any designer worth his or her salt will tell you that’s how it’s done.

    So there’s your answer. Do that. You’re welcome.

    But now you face a much bigger challenge: convincing non-designers that this is, in fact, the best approach.

    The vertical smile frown
    This came up once on a project where almost the entire UI was arranged in vertical lines of Japanese calligraphy. I’d painstakingly set hundreds of text elements in the correct bookspine-style, only to get a note back from the project lead asking that everything be re-typeset in the exact manner of the original Japanese, character stacked atop character.

    Y
    o
    u

    k
    n
    o
    w
    ,

    l
    i
    k
    e

    t
    h
    i
    s
    ?

    I’ve been a professional designer for enough years that, honestly, I forget not everyone gives much thought to why you don’t set type like this. So in that sense, the request didn’t annoy me; I understood the motivation behind it. But I did end up having to write a fairly lengthy defense of bookspine-style type as a result. Since I’m not the first person to face this problem, and I know I won’t be the last, I thought it might be useful to summarize a few of those points here.

    If you’re an image editor, maybe it’ll give you ammunition to back up your case one day. If you’re working with an image editor, maybe it’ll provide some insight into the thought he or she puts into typesetting. If you’re my mom, maybe you’ll finally believe I learned something in college.

    The End of the World as We Know It
    Seeing is believing, so let’s try all the options and see for ourselves what works and what doesn’t. I’ve cropped in on a small slice from a hypothetical UI sprite sheet for our discussion. I’ve also simplified it, hiding all the various hover and active states, so all we’re dealing with is the vanilla text.
    Here’s the original edited version:

    For this project, we need a script/calligraphic type that will remain legible even at very small sizes. (I do all my VN reading on an 8” tablet, so I use that as my small-screen baseline.) We land on this font here, a clean Western script that still feels right at home among traditional Eastern design elements. And since you can see that some of the UI text runs very long — these are chapter titles, I imagine — compactness is also a consideration. This typeface handles that quite nicely.
    Let’s see what happens if, rather than bookspine-style, we run these lines vertically:

    What’s wrong here? More like, what isn’t?

    It doesn’t fit: Unlike squarish Japanese characters, English letters tend to be taller than they are wide. This means if you stack them vertically, you’ll end up with something that eats up almost twice as much space as horizontal type. You’ll need to reduce the point size to make everything fit. Or worse yet, squish the letters vertically to compensate. Yuck.

    It fights against the letterforms: This is a script face, so it slants rightward, one letter leading the eye into the next. Moreover, lowercase letters set in script often physically join to one another, as if written in a smooth, flowing hand. A vertical stack is antithetical to both of these: there is no “next” letter to lead the eye into, nor is there any adjoining character to connect to.

    It looks like a gap-toothed palooka: Notice how some of the letter pairs almost overlap, while others have relatively large spaces between them. This is another reason English type wasn’t meant to stack vertically. Even though there’s exactly the same amount of space between the baseline of each letter, some have descenders (e.g., the “tails” of the letters y or q), some have ascenders (e.g., the “flagstaff” of the letters b or d), and some have neither (e.g., x or o). This gives the vertical type a drunken stagger-step of sorts, an ungainly visual gait that we’d like to avoid at all costs.

    It doesn’t handle punctuation well: There’s no graceful way to handle periods, colons, and so forth in vertical type. You could center it below the last letter, as in the original Japanese, but that looks confusing in English. And how would you handle a possessive, like “Darbury’s cat”? Stacked vertically, it would look more like “Darbury, scat.” (Fine. See ya, ingrate.)

    It’s borderline illegible: There’s been lots and lots of research into the science of how people read — how we recognize letters, words, and sentences. There’s a lot of pattern recognition going on in our brains and, for native speakers of Western languages, those patterns almost always work horizontally. Setting type vertically can literally slow down reading and comprehension speed by an order of magnitude.

    So let’s be clear: this sucks. But there are a few things we can do to slightly minimize the suckage. First, let’s set everything in all caps. Like this
    That eliminates our gap-tooth problem; uppercase letters don’t have ascenders or descenders, so all the letters now appear evenly spaced. But we’ve had to reduce the point size even further to make everything fit. (We started out at 20pt. We’re now at 12pt.) Also, our calligraphic type still slants to the right, making each letter feel like a drunk who leans against a wall only to find it isn’t there. We want a handwritten feel to the type, however, so we try switching to an upright block letter font instead:

    This is pretty much as good as it’ll get ... and it’s still not great. It’s still hard to read, and we’ve had to sacrifice the elegance of a script typeface. But wait — it gets worse. Right now, these lines have lots of padding left and right, since I’ve hidden all the other elements on this sprite sheet. What happens when they sit closer together, as they probably will in-game. You get this:

    I don’t know about you, but my brain wants to start reading horizontally adjacent words as sentences: “It birds and eye listen” Huh? It’s like trying to drive an SUV where the steering is constantly pulling to the right. It’s not what we’re looking for in a car, and it’s not what we’re looking for in our typesetting.

    In short, vertically set text is a god-awful mess. Don’t use it. (Obligatory waffling: Okay, maybe if there’s one or two vertical buttons in the whole game. And maybe if they were really, really short — you know, like “SAVE” and “QUIT”? Maybe then you could get away with it. But otherwise, nononono a thousand times no.)

    Introducing my backup singers
    I’m not the only one preaching this gospel. These fine folks agree:
     
     
     
     
     

    So the next time someone asks you to set vertical type, just say no. Then link to this blog post and tell ‘em Darbury told ya so. 
  16. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Oh, The Jokes I Have Broke (Part 1 of ∞)   
    As any translator can probably tell you, Japanese jokes are a huge pain to capture in English. There are unfamiliar memes, cultural references, wordplay, riffs on kanji characters — none of which are particularly easy to convey to Western audiences. If you get lucky, a few nips and tucks in editing are all you need to make one of these unwieldy beasts work in English. If you get unlucky, however, you end up having to grab the rib spreader and do some major linguistic surgery.
    Sometimes the patients pull through. Sometimes they die on the operating table. These are their stories.
    Joke 1: Pearls before swine
    In this scene from KoiRizo, Soutarou has just finished giving one of the girls a bit of helpful advice passed down to him by his grandfather. The raw translation is below:
    Soutarou: “... That's the motto that they followed back then, I think. Well you know, according to my grandfather.”
    Riho: “Your grandfather's ball bag?”
    Soutarou: “A-Although I think that he got it from my grandmother...”
    Riho: “Ha ...?!”
    Soutarou: “...”
    Riho: “I just said a really strange thing ―!”
    Get it? Get it? No, of course you don’t. KoiRizo was intended as a literal translation, and read literally, this makes zero sense. At this point in my editing, the only choice I had was to go back to the original script, break out the Japanese > English dictionaries, and see if I could figure out what the hell was going on here.
    As near as I could figure, Riho meant to use the word “chiebukuro” — literally, “sack of wisdom.” She intended to say something about Soutarou’s pop-pop being a pretty smart guy, chock full of good advice. Instead, she uses “tamafukuro” — literally, “ball sack.” You can understand Soutarou’s confusion when Riho starts talking about his grandfather’s wrinkly old nuts. Nice guy that he is, however, Souatrou tries to give her a graceful out, suggesting it was actually his grandmother who provided the advice. Riho realizes her error and is appropriately mortified.
    Great. We’ve puzzled it out ... but at this point, the joke still doesn’t work in translation. “Sack of wisdom” isn’t a common English phrase, so the reader won’t catch the intended meaning behind Riho’s mistake. It just sounds like a plain old non sequitur right now. So our next task is to change her line to something that (1) works as a Freudian slip, (2) comes out of the blue, and (3) is sexually shocking enough to catch Soutarou off guard.
    The version I eventually settled on ran something like this:
    Soutarou: “... That was the common advice back then, I think. Well, you know, according to my grandfather.”
    Riho: “Your grandfather must have really liked giving you pearl necklaces, huh?”
    Soutarou: “A-Actually, it might have been my grandmother who liked giving out pearls of wisdom ...”
    Riho: “Ha ...?!”
    Soutarou: “...”
    Riho: “I can’t believe I just said that ―!”
    Here, we’ve keep the same basic structure, but rather than “sack of wisdom,” Riho tries (and fails) to say “pearls of wisdom,” a much more common English idiom. And now, rather than Grandpa’s gnarly ballsack, we have the even more shocking image of the old guy giving his grandson pearl necklaces on a regular basis. Soutarou still gets to save the day by pivoting to his grandmother, and then the rest of the joke plays out pretty much as originally written.
    Does it work? I hope so, but one could just as easily argue that I broke it. It’s a different gag; there’s no doubting that. But at the end of the day, I’d rather have a joke that works and maintains the original’s spirit than one that’s accurate to a fault.

    Joke 2: Deflowering the girls
    Here’s a joke I know I broke during editing. Smashed it to the ground and danced on the pieces. In my defense, it was looking at me funny.
    In the raw translation of this scene, resort manager Nagisa has just asked the staff to gather in their swimsuits for a big announcement:
    Nagisa: “I have a reason for calling you all here like this today.”
    Nagisa: “I'd like everyone to become the 'detergent' of the facilities.”
    Sango: “Detergent? Us?”
    Nagisa: “Oh, sorry. By detergent, I was referring more to advertising material.... In other words, I need you guys to photograph for an advertisement.”
    Again, another joke that makes no sense when read literally. And the only TL note I had to go on said, “This translation won't work in English.” Agreed. So I hauled out the J>E dictionary again, but had much less luck this time. At best, I came away with a wisp of a shred of a guess. My hunch was that Nagisa was using one very specific meaning of the word “senzai”— the foremost part of a garden, the loveliest flowers intended to set the stage and entice visitors in deeper — and Sango interpreted it as another more common meaning of “senzai” — namely, detergent. Nagisa clarifies her meaning, everyone has a chuckle, and the scene continues.
    I wasn’t sure if I was right — I’m an editor, not a translator — but lacking any better options, I decided to go with it. And I promptly flailed about like a clown being drowned in a bathtub. Right off the bat, I knew there weren’t any good English sound-alikes that would work here. So instead, I wrote about a dozen variations on garden and flower puns, but none of them managed to weave plausible misunderstanding with Nagisa’s actual meaning. Worse yet, they just weren’t funny.
    Next, I tried a few bawdier versions, but quickly abandoned those as well. This scene is going to get more risqué in a minute, but throwing in a sex joke right now would be tipping our hand too soon. (In one draft, I had Nagisa say she wants the girls to be the hook that lures visitors to the island. Sango replies, “What?! You want us to hook for you?” — i.e., she thought her boss wanted to pimp them out as resort hookers.)
    Having hit brick wall after brick wall, I decided to strip the joke down to its essence. What’s the basic structure here? Nagisa says she wants to use the girls to help sell the resort. Sango suffers a comic misunderstanding. Nagisa corrects her. The end. So that’s what I wrote:
    Nagisa: “There’s a reason why I’ve called everyone here like this today.”
    Nagisa: “I've decided to sell you.”
    Sango: “Sell us? Is that even legal?”
    Nagisa: “Oh, sorry. By ‘sell,’ I meant using you to help advertise the resort ... In layman’s terms, I need you guys to model for some publicity photos.”
    We lose the poeticism of the original — that image of the girls as flowers drawing visitors in — but in exchange, we get something that actually works as wordplay in English while still delivering the necessary plot info (Nagisa’s marketing brainstorm). It’s still not a particularly hilarious gag, but then again, neither was the original.
    In both examples, I ended up completely rewriting large chunks of each joke. And while I'm not entirely satisfied — I wish I could have kept more of the original language — I'm okay with the result. Editing is a balancing act. You want to remain as faithful to the original text as possible while maintaining the audience’s immersion in the work. If the reader suddenly comes across a joke that clearly doesn’t parse in English, that immersion is broken. They stop. They scroll back and re-read it a few times, trying to make sense of it. They wonder if they’re missing something, or if the TL team just messed it up. BAM. They’re now completely out of the world of the visual novel. The magic is broken.
    Because magic is only magic until you notice the strings. Or that dead clown in the bathtub.
  17. Like
    Tay reacted to astro for a blog entry, taypls 6   
    *** astro has shared contact details with Joe. ***
    Joe: Hi astro, I'm wondering can u pls translate Aiyoku no Eustia?
     
    Me: sorry I really don't have time to take on more projects right now
     
    Joe: But it's a rly good game
     
    Me: I'm sure it is. look, I hope that you're not asking me to do it for free at the very least - I don't even know who the heck you are
     
    Joe: Well how long will it take u to do it? I can pay u $2000 at most depending on how long it takes
     
    Me: ...Do you have any idea how long the game is?
     
    Joe: No idk japanese so I've never played it before
     

     
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
    Well, this isn't really Tay's fault, but my rule of thumb is to always blame Tay. taypls
  18. Like
    Tay reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Clephas' basic advice to untranslated beginners   
    Since I get asked questions constantly on this subject, I'll go ahead and list a few pieces of advice I felt apply to most beginners.
     
    1) Use translation aggregator and a text hooker, even if you feel like you should be getting out your kanji dictionary, out of a sense of self-reliance. I'll be blunt, it is hard to enjoy something if you have to refer to a kanji dictionary for every other non-particle word. I am sometimes stunned at people bragging about spending 100 hours on an 8 hour moege because they chose not to use a text hooker. That is not an efficient way of using your time, even if you want to learn kanji. It is actually more efficient time-wise to do kanji exercises separately and read your VNs with a text hooker (you'll still be done with both in half the time it would have taken for you to read it using a kanji dictionary).
     
    2) There are two methods you can choose to start your untranslated career... you can start off easy and work your way up, or you can smash your head into the walls of text of the harder VNs out there. I chose the latter, and most people choose the former. The walls of text method has the advantage of jump-starting your learning... but in exchange, you'll probably end up sleeping more to let you process all the new information you've gathered and you'll get frustrated more often. If you want to use the former method, I made a list here sometime ago ( http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/3493-for-love-of-vns-for-beginners/ ).
     
    3) jparser in Translation aggregator isn't perfect, nor is Mecab. They are tools to give you a chance to parse the kanji faster, rather than a translation tool. However, there is a good side-benefit to the frequently weird choices of furigana they make... and that is that you'll naturally learn the path to understanding kanji puns without having to look them up later, and it will become ever more easy to dissect more difficult words even without the tools later on.
     
    4) In the end, mastering reading untranslated VNs is an uphill battle for most people. Don't expect yourself or everything you use to be perfect from the beginning, as the very idea is absurd. You'll run into stumbling blocks constantly, and you'll worry endlessly about whether you really understood that last line for most of your first hundred VNs or so.
     
    5) If you read slowly in your native language, you will also read slowly in Japanese. Reading is reading, and it is a skill honed by a simple process of practice, practice, practice that never ends. Yes, learning to read fast in your own language will help you learn to read fast in Japanese once you've gotten to a certain level. If you are barely competent in your own language, I'll be frank in saying that this isn't for you, not to be mean but because it is the same skill, regardless of the details.
     
    6) Last of all, I'd suggest hitting a wide variety of genres early on, not just your favorite ones. Why? Because that sense of wonder and love for VNs is only going to last through your first twenty-five to forty VNs, and once you've gotten past that point, it is going to be harder and harder to grow beyond your limits on your own.
  19. Like
    Tay reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Ojousamas for All! (AKA, The First Reference Rule)   
    Pop quiz, hotshot.
    There’s an untranslated (i.e, romaji) word sitting there in the script you're editing, staring right up at you. It’s been left like that because the TL team figured people ought to know what it means. But will they really? And what are the ramifications if they don’t? You’re running out of time, and patch release day is breathing down your neck. What do you do?
    WHAT DO YOU DO?
    In the case of KoiRizo, I ended up relying on a journalistic standard commonly called “the first reference rule.” Here’s how it works.
    Visual novels for all!
    Let’s say you’re a journalist writing an article about efforts to improve educational standards in underdeveloped nations. At some point, you might find yourself needing to refer to The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, aka UNESCO. But if just you dropped the acronym “UNESCO” in there, most people wouldn’t know what the bloody hell you were talking about. And if you went with “The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization” every time, your prose would be about as ungainly as me at my prom. So a compromise gets struck: you explain the term on your first reference to it, then use the shorter form thereafter.
    An example first reference:
    “The director-general of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), pledged to make visual novels part of the global curriculum by 2025.”
    Or:
    “The director-general of UNESCO, the UN agency focused on international education efforts, pledged to make visual novels part of the global curriculum by 2025.”
    At this point, you’d be free to use “UNESCO” in any future references, since you’ve already explained the term. Everyone wins: the reader understands what you’re talking about, and you only have to use one word instead of eight.

    Ojousamas for all!
    The same holds true for visual novels. Let’s say an untranslated term like “ojousama” shows up in your script. if the reader has consumed a fair number of anime/manga/VNs, they might know this describes a young woman of certain means and refinement. It’s a common VN archetype, after all. But a relative newcomer to these genres would have no way of knowing that. They’d be lost if you just started dropping O-bombs out of the blue.
    So the first thing to do is determine context. Is this a one-off reference? If so, you can probably just fully translate the line and be done with it. (“She takes a limo to school? She must be an ojousama” becomes, “She takes a limo to school? She must come from money.”)
    In the case of KoiRizo, however, the word “ojousama” is used several dozen times. In fact, a character’s ojousama-ness becomes the focal point of an entire route. It would be a fool’s errand to try and excise it, particularly when there’s no one English word to replace it. So we apply the first reference rule.
    The initial mention in the translated KoiRizo script reads:
    “Because she's an ojousama, it'd be a given that she wouldn't worry about matters like money.”
    It hints at the meaning, but doesn't quite go far enough. So applying our rule, we update it to:
    “She's a proper young lady of means — an ojousama — so you'd expect her not to worry about things like money.”
    We’ve now defined the word “ojousama” in context and set the stage for its future use. This will make the rest of the VN flow much more smoothly for both new readers and purists who prefer their tropey terms untranslated. If several hours go by without us using the word again, it’s common courtesy to provide a reminder of its definition, but otherwise we should be good to go.

    All for gruel!
    You can even apply the rule in reverse. Here, two characters are about to spend 50 or so lines talking about a certain home-cooked dish. Original translation below:
    A: “Okay ... What's in the pot?”
    B: “Rice gruel with egg broth.”
    We don’t want to spend the next 50 lines saying “Rice gruel with egg broth.” Nor do we want to just say “gruel,” which sounds like something ladled out in a Depression-era orphanage. In fact, this is a steaming bowl of Japanese comfort food deliciousness. So we apply the rule in reverse, and bring back the untranslated term from the original script:
    A: “Okay ... What's in the pot?”
    B: “Ojiya — rice end egg porridge.”
    Now we can safely use the term “ojiya” for the next 50 lines. This ends up working better on several levels: it makes the dish sound more traditionally Japanese, it strikes the right emotional tone, and it helps us shave extra words from our lines.
    P.S. - If anyone knows where I can get a really good bowl of ojiya in New York City, I’m all ears.
  20. Like
    Tay reacted to ExtraMana for a blog entry, Doom II Mod is finished!- Download it here   
    The alpha of my Doom II mod is now ready to download.
    Hope you enjoy, any feedback on what needs to be changed for the final build of the map is highly appreciated (^-^).
     
    Mod download:
    http://www.moddb.com/mods/extramana/downloads/extramana-alpha-085
     
    Developer page:
    http://www.moddb.com/company/black-lagoon-company
  21. Like
    Tay reacted to Rose for a blog entry, Threads you should check out - Week #20   
    The following list only contains threads made from July 25 to August 01, any older thread will be placed under the "Updated" banner if new relevant content is added to it.



    If you don't know how the list works, please check the project
    thread.







    Visual Novel Discussion
    Console/Handheld Reception for Visual Novels (Link)
    VN Reading Club- August Chuunibyou Extravaganza (Voting) (Link)
    Kouki Yoshimune's (Muv-Luv Creator) Message to the World (Link)
    Poll: Which classes of sites or organizations have done the most to promote VNs in the West? (Link)
    The First Yuri Otomege (Link)
    Image of new Narcissu story (Link)
    Mangagamer climbing Navel's ladder (Link)
    Sekai Project and Winged Cloud are proud to announce the next epic game in the Sakura saga (Link)
    How much does your VN folder weigh? (Link)
    VNs with characters designed by different artists - Yes or no (Link)
    Upscaling vns (Link)
    Denpasoft Info & Announcements (Link)
    SoniComi english trailer (Link)
    Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma OP movie (Link)
    Kara no Shoujo 2 demo is out (Link)
    Life is Strange - Another take on choices (Link)
    Most memorable emotional moments in VN's (Link)
    Weekly VN Poll (Week 1) (Link)

    Development Boards
    Courting the Seasons (Link)
    Akihabara Guide: 2015 [Official Status Thread] (Link)
    Tsuki ni Yorisou Otome no Sahou + Append Disc (Link)
    An artirst searching a colaboration or information. (Link)

    Other Discussion
    Random Thoughts (Link)
    Board Game Online (Link)
    Akihabara: 2015 Guidebook Request (Link)
    Grandia 2 HD on Steam and GOG (Link)
    Heartbleed-Level Vulnerability Found In 950 Million Android Devices, Thanks To DRM (Link)
    What are the most badass skills that a person can have. (Link)

    Blog posts
    Rondo duo - Mixed feelings (Link)
    Japanese Ghosts, spirits, oni, etc: A bit of a crash course (Link)
    Crowdfunding visual novel localization: The perspective of an eroge enthusiast (Link)

  22. Like
    Tay reacted to Rose for a blog entry, Threads you should check out - Week #19   
    The following list only contains threads made from July 18 to July 25, any older thread will be placed under the "Updated" banner if new relevant content is added to it.



    If you don't know how the list works, please check the project
    thread.





    Visual Novel Discussion
    Mangagamer licenses Tokyo Babel (and Propeller's kusoge) (Link)
    Lightning Warrior Raidy 3 Info & Discussion (Now available) (Link)
    With the upcoming release of Windows 10, do you think that some VN's might have problems running? (Link)
    Which organization or site has done the most to promote VNs in the West? (Link)

    Development Boards
    Cocoro@Function translation (Link)
    A fan translation of Dies Irae battle scene 3 (Link)
    Boku no Hitori Sensou / My own private war - Translation? (Link)
    Criminal Investigations: With Woman's Tears (Updated 7/23/15) (Link)

    Other Discussion
    Starting a Translation company (Link)
    Way of the Samurai 4 Coming to Steam (Link)
    Cradle (Link)
    Ebay is the worst way to sell (Link)
    Characolle Key (Link)

    Blog posts
    Announcement: Migration to sanahtlig.blogspot.com and Blog update (Link)

  23. Like
    Tay reacted to Rose for a blog entry, Streaming and Bloodborne are actually nice, oh my   
    Blogging once again, dear lord here we go. I bought Bloodborne a while back together with a couple of games on Steam and Lords of the Fallen, I decided to save it for a bit later since I knew it would be an emotional roller coaster and I wanted to chill a bit more during my first weeks of vacations. I was something around halfway through Lords and then I managed to bug the game so hard that I'd have to reset my save so oh well, who cares about this anyway? Time for some Bloodborne.

    I started the game as usual, got rekt a few times, learned a bit about the combat, kept getting rekt, learned about some consumables, got rekt a bit more, and so onward. I decided to stream myself playing after I learned that the PS4 had a share function - which is a button on the controller with "share" written above it lmfao - and that I could just plug my PC headest on the USB port to use the mic. I think I played for around 3 hours or something like that, maybe a bit less or more, no idea, doesn't matter. The most viewers I got was 14 I believe and that was quite impressive imo, never had so many . Unfortunately, I don't really know a lot of the people who were there, or maybe I do know but their twitch username is different from what I know them as and that made me not recognize them, username issues. From the forums, I know Spiduh, Emi, Abyssal Monkey maybe, and Ren were there, sorry if I forgot anyone. That reminds me, Ren was raging on the chat that his video-game streams never got that many viewers and being salty, the usual I guess, I appreciate the salt regardless. This was the stream report:



    Died around 10 times total. Something like seven times to the boss and the other ones to random mobs because I was tilting.



    Had to decline three guys who wanted/offered to play with me because I don't have the Playstation Plus thing.



    Got Ren salty because he gets no viewers when he streams games. (Get rekt you scrub
    )


    Realized that I seriously need to git gud.



    Brother restarted our internet in the middle of the stream, production value at its finest.



    As usual, streaming is insanely fun and I decided to do it more now that I know that I'm able to. I'll probably stream my whole Bloodborne playthrough so whoever feels like it can come watch my tears and screams of pain and pleasure, though most of the time you'll probably only watch me going through the pain part. I don't have a fixed schedule for streaming but I'll be making a thread for the whole thing and keep announcing there when I'll be going live and all that, I don't feel like making a new one whenever I decide to stream, too much work. I guess that's it for this post, I'll just update it with a link to the stream thread and channel later. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you guys on stream.

    Stream thread: Link
    Stream channel: Link
  24. Like
    Tay reacted to Rose for a blog entry, Data Extraction Thread   
    Hello everyone! Rose here, bringing you guys a post about a really amazing thread we have here at Fuwanovel. The one on the spotlight this time is going to be the "Data extraction thread", created by maefdomn.



    Long time idea. If for whatever reason you need some data from a game, would it be music, sprites, CG's and if like me you SUCK with computers, well worry no more because I have the solution for you.



    -maefdomn on the thread's introduction


    It's common to enjoy a nice Visual Novel and then want some kind of data from the game, maybe for an avatar, maybe a wallpaper, who knows. On the data extraction thread, you get a huge list of file types and different methods for each, good methods for specific VNs, a list of a few useful websites, and versatile tools that are able to cover a wide variety of games. Needless to say, the explanations are well-written and following them step by step should be enough for you to get whatever you may want.

    While maef surely worked a lot to make this project a reality, some other members also helped, some testing the methods on the thread, others suggesting different methods, and so on. A shoutout to Zakamutt, Down, Blizzard884, The Major, Steve & Luch, dsp2003, and Binaryfail for being said members.

    The project is dead right now as maef isn't able to make the tests himself and he didn't found anyone willing to take it from his hands, but some other members are still helping anyone who needs some guidance beyond the original posts. So even if the project itself isn't being updated anymore, you can still search there for a way to extract your data, and ask for help if needed. Thank you Binaryfail, dsp2003, CryingWestern, and Kelebek1 for helping the community.

    Thanks a lot everyone who helped making this project the great success that it is, you guys are all amazing!
  25. Like
    Tay reacted to Rose for a blog entry, Threads you should check out - Week #16   
    The following list only contains threads made from June 27 to July 04, any older thread will be placed under the "Updated" banner if new relevant content is added to it.



    If you don't know how the list works, please check the project
    thread.







    Visual Novel Discussion
    About Higurashi's new TL (Link)
    New Pulltop title? "A Sky Full of Stars" (Link)
    Purrfectly Ever After Otome VN on Kickstarter (Link)
    What makes Grisaia no Kajitsu so great? (Link)
    Little Busters Inconsistencies [spoilers] (Link)
    VN Reading Club - July (Currently Voting) (Link)
    SonoHana Nyuu Jene! (Link)
    Why the lack of kiss CGs? (Link)
    AX2015 Hype/News Thread - New translation announcements and more! (Link)
    Most beautiful CGs you've ever seen (Link)
    Lemnisca Translations is teasing something (Link)

    Development Boards
    Galaktika Gamble [Might Need BG Artist] (Link)
    Composer looking for a VN to work on (Link)
    [TL Project] Imouto Paradise 2 [TL Needed] (Link)

    Staff Announcements
    New Chat App (Link)
    Eclipsed, the LC Community Liaison (Link)
    [Micro PSA] Forum Tags (Link)

    Other Discussion
    Dorm Life (Link)
    Clothing Preferences in 2D Animation (Link)
    Summer 2015 Anime Discussion (Link)
    Newest Ace Attorney Installment - Dai Gyakuten Saiban (Link)

    Blog posts
    Not much hope for 2015's VN of the Year? (Link)
    New Covers From 6/21/15-6/28/15 (Link)

    Fuwanovel community
    Your biggest fears (Link)
    Selling Some Figurines (Link)
    The otaku Western world through starlessn1ght's perspective (Link)

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