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kivandopulus

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  1. Like
    kivandopulus reacted to fhc in Translation Aggregator google not working anymore   
    https://github.com/Sinflower/Translation-Aggregator/releases
  2. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from nekofuwafuwa in What are "Classic" VNs?   
    There are very few games corresponding this criteria. Most of them are one time thing. Here are the ones I can return to over the years discovering new layer of depth each time:
    DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen
    Eve: Burst Error
    Kuro no Danshou: The Literary Fragment
    Es no Houteishiki
    Kono Yo no Hate de Koi o Utau Shoujo YU-NO
    Canaan ~Yakusoku no Chi~
    EVE: The Lost One
    luv wave
    One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~
    Kazeoto, Chirin
    EVE Zero
    Nijuuei
    Eve: The Fatal Attraction 
    Kusarihime ~Euthanasia~
    Interlude
    Cross†Channel
  3. Confused
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Ramaladni in Getting a Visual Novel 100% Save File - Tutorial on Sagaoz   
    Why are you trying to make a fool of yourself so diligently? Try finding https://vndb.org/v433 , smartass. That's just ONE example, but how would you know, you're just a regular troll who can't do anything worthwhile.
  4. Confused
    kivandopulus got a reaction from McDerpingheimer III in Getting a Visual Novel 100% Save File - Tutorial on Sagaoz   
    Just taking VNDB first character reading takes me astray in at least 50% of the time. Google search finds it at completely different sound category. Also doujin circles belong to different than usual sounds. 
  5. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from nekofuwafuwa in Let me guess, your forum?   
    Reddit drives me mad as it's not individualistic enough. Flairs are repeatable, and posts have to get lost in megathreads. New topics get buried in news and useless steam sales in just one day. It all reminds a busy anthill.
    Fuwa is for punks of visual novels. We hardly ever agree on anything, and just as punks, we're not dead despite our golden days long gone.
  6. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from vizualfan in H-Code please!   
    If ITH/ITHVNR does not find the thread, hongfire AGTH thread is the one that helped me a lot of times as it has lots of hcodes on those hundreds of pages.
    Textractor seems to have built-in manual hook search. Tutorial here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eecEOacF6mw
    I myself use Hook Any Text to find threads https://mx-futhark.github.io/hook-any-text/
  7. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from vizualfan in Need help with ITH   
    Google hongfire ITH, it has lots of versions. Might also try ITHVNR, not sure for Win7 compatibility, though.
  8. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from AustriaVNFan in A comparison of using Machine Translations (VNR + Google Translate) vs Application of Grammar/Vocab Knowledge for Reading Visual Novels in Japanese   
    Couple remarks to experiment conditions. Atlas and LEC are non-neuro machine translation services, so it's unfair to compare them with Google translate. I show comparison with other neuro machine translation services like Bing and Yandex. Another point is that substitutions are must have for difficult proper names. Once you subsitite 小鳥 for Kotori, you'll never see small bird in text. The same goes for Mihagino. There are also some tools to improve machine translation with honorifics like TAHelper and replacement scripts, but I did not explore them personally as I'm perfectly fine to see Mr. before girls names as I know that -san is meant.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 1
    Haruto -「はい、どうぞー」
    Personal translation: 「Come inー」
    Bing: Yes, please.
    Yandex: Yes, please.」
    Google Translate: "Yes, please."
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 2
    Ayano - 「失礼いたします」
    Personal translation: 「Excuse me.」
    Bing: I'm sorry.
    Yandex: Excuse me.」
    Google Translate: "excuse me"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 3
    Narration - 入ってきたのは、花束を持った美萩野さんだった。
    Personal translation: It was Mihagino-san coming in holding a bouquet.
    Bing: It was Mr. Mihagino who came in with the bouquet.
    Yandex: Mihagino had a bouquet of flowers.
    Google Translate: Mihagino who had a bunch of flowers came in.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 4
    Haruto - 「あ……っと、美萩野さん」
    Personal translation: 「Ah... Oh, it's Mihagino-san.」
    Bing: "Oh... Mr. Mihagino.
    Yandex: Ah....... Mihagino, Mihagino, Mihagino, Mihagino」
    Google Translate: "Ah ...... Uh, Mihagino-san"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 5
    Ayano - 「お見舞いにうかがったのですが、お邪魔ではありませんか?」
    Personal translation: 「I'm visiting you since you were sick. I hope I'm not disturbing you?」
    Bing: "I was asked to visit, but do not disturb you? 」
    Yandex: "I asked for a visit, but is not it a bother you?"」
    Google Translate: "I was caught asking you, is not you in the way?"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 6
    Narration - 驚きが顔に出てたのか、美萩野さんは申し訳なさそうに聞いてくる。
    Personal translation: I must have made a surprised face as Mihigano asked that apologetically.
    Bing: The surprise came out on the face, and Mihagino-San hears it apologetic.
    Yandex: Mihagino asked me if there was a surprise in his face.
    Google Translate: Mihagino asked to be sorry for a surprise appearing on the face.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 7
    Haruto - 「いや、そんなことない。全然ないからっ」
    Personal Translation: 「Nah, that's not true. You're not disturbing me at all.」
    Bing: No, that's not true. Not at all. "
    Yandex: "No, it's not.Not at all.」
    Google Translate: "No, that's not true.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 8
    Ayano - 「ありがとうございます。それでは、失礼いたします」
    Personal Translation: 「Thank you very much. Well then, excuse me.」
    Bing: "Thank you very much. I'll be sorry.
    Yandex: "Thank you.So, excuse me.」
    Google Translate: "Thank you very much, then I will excuse you."
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 9
    Narration - 持ってきてくれた花を花びんに生けると、前と同じようにベッドの脇の椅子に座った。
    Personal Translation: After she arranged the flowers she brought in a vase, she sat on the chair besides the bed like last time.
    Bing: I sat in a chair on the side of the bed as before, when I put the flowers that I brought in the vase.
    Yandex: When I put the flower in the flower vase, I sat on the chair by the bed as before.
    Google Translate: When I lived on a flower with the flowers that brought me, I sat on the chair next to the bed just as before.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 10
    Haruto - 「ありがとう。来てくれて、嬉しいよ」
    Personal Translation: Thank you. I'm glad you came.
    Bing: Thank I'm so glad you're here.
    Yandex: "Thank you.I'm glad you're here.」
    Google Translate: "Thank you, I am glad you came"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Conclusion:
    Gender, multiple meanings in context and honorifics remain weak points. There's no arguing that manual translation is better. The actual question is what variants you have to read untranslated works:
    1.  JUST LEARN JAPANESE ALREADY! The best variant, but requires either 2+ years of dedicated study with some study group or 5+ years of dedicated study alone, or eternity if you slack.
    2. Manual translation. Takes at least x10 times more to read any visual novel, making forget previous events with time and lose enthusiasm with such horrible pace. In theory should help learning Japanese. In practice makes you drowsy each 10 minutes resulting in never finishing anything without proper dedication.
    3. Machine neuro translation. Allows you to read whatever you want at a normal pace right away without big hit to the meaning provided you can put up with some broken grammar.
    There is no just one right answer. All people are different. First and second variants are suitable only for some 10% of people, others would get demotivated before finishing anything. I advocate for machine neuro translation only because it's available just as you set up your mind to try untranslated visual novels. You get to appreciate the media and then need to decide for yourself if you want to try more works this way first or start learning the language at this point. I also have selfish motives here as I'd like to see untranslated visual novels discussion bloom after all those dark decades for untranslated vns. For those who are 100% sure that reading machine neuro translations automatically makes you understand nothing, I only urge to try machine neuro translation and then read proper English translation. That will make you see for yourself whether there are myriads of hidden meanings lost in initial playthrough or it's the very same story.
  9. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from onorub in A comparison of using Machine Translations (VNR + Google Translate) vs Application of Grammar/Vocab Knowledge for Reading Visual Novels in Japanese   
    Couple remarks to experiment conditions. Atlas and LEC are non-neuro machine translation services, so it's unfair to compare them with Google translate. I show comparison with other neuro machine translation services like Bing and Yandex. Another point is that substitutions are must have for difficult proper names. Once you subsitite 小鳥 for Kotori, you'll never see small bird in text. The same goes for Mihagino. There are also some tools to improve machine translation with honorifics like TAHelper and replacement scripts, but I did not explore them personally as I'm perfectly fine to see Mr. before girls names as I know that -san is meant.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 1
    Haruto -「はい、どうぞー」
    Personal translation: 「Come inー」
    Bing: Yes, please.
    Yandex: Yes, please.」
    Google Translate: "Yes, please."
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 2
    Ayano - 「失礼いたします」
    Personal translation: 「Excuse me.」
    Bing: I'm sorry.
    Yandex: Excuse me.」
    Google Translate: "excuse me"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 3
    Narration - 入ってきたのは、花束を持った美萩野さんだった。
    Personal translation: It was Mihagino-san coming in holding a bouquet.
    Bing: It was Mr. Mihagino who came in with the bouquet.
    Yandex: Mihagino had a bouquet of flowers.
    Google Translate: Mihagino who had a bunch of flowers came in.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 4
    Haruto - 「あ……っと、美萩野さん」
    Personal translation: 「Ah... Oh, it's Mihagino-san.」
    Bing: "Oh... Mr. Mihagino.
    Yandex: Ah....... Mihagino, Mihagino, Mihagino, Mihagino」
    Google Translate: "Ah ...... Uh, Mihagino-san"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 5
    Ayano - 「お見舞いにうかがったのですが、お邪魔ではありませんか?」
    Personal translation: 「I'm visiting you since you were sick. I hope I'm not disturbing you?」
    Bing: "I was asked to visit, but do not disturb you? 」
    Yandex: "I asked for a visit, but is not it a bother you?"」
    Google Translate: "I was caught asking you, is not you in the way?"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 6
    Narration - 驚きが顔に出てたのか、美萩野さんは申し訳なさそうに聞いてくる。
    Personal translation: I must have made a surprised face as Mihigano asked that apologetically.
    Bing: The surprise came out on the face, and Mihagino-San hears it apologetic.
    Yandex: Mihagino asked me if there was a surprise in his face.
    Google Translate: Mihagino asked to be sorry for a surprise appearing on the face.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 7
    Haruto - 「いや、そんなことない。全然ないからっ」
    Personal Translation: 「Nah, that's not true. You're not disturbing me at all.」
    Bing: No, that's not true. Not at all. "
    Yandex: "No, it's not.Not at all.」
    Google Translate: "No, that's not true.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 8
    Ayano - 「ありがとうございます。それでは、失礼いたします」
    Personal Translation: 「Thank you very much. Well then, excuse me.」
    Bing: "Thank you very much. I'll be sorry.
    Yandex: "Thank you.So, excuse me.」
    Google Translate: "Thank you very much, then I will excuse you."
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 9
    Narration - 持ってきてくれた花を花びんに生けると、前と同じようにベッドの脇の椅子に座った。
    Personal Translation: After she arranged the flowers she brought in a vase, she sat on the chair besides the bed like last time.
    Bing: I sat in a chair on the side of the bed as before, when I put the flowers that I brought in the vase.
    Yandex: When I put the flower in the flower vase, I sat on the chair by the bed as before.
    Google Translate: When I lived on a flower with the flowers that brought me, I sat on the chair next to the bed just as before.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Line 10
    Haruto - 「ありがとう。来てくれて、嬉しいよ」
    Personal Translation: Thank you. I'm glad you came.
    Bing: Thank I'm so glad you're here.
    Yandex: "Thank you.I'm glad you're here.」
    Google Translate: "Thank you, I am glad you came"
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Conclusion:
    Gender, multiple meanings in context and honorifics remain weak points. There's no arguing that manual translation is better. The actual question is what variants you have to read untranslated works:
    1.  JUST LEARN JAPANESE ALREADY! The best variant, but requires either 2+ years of dedicated study with some study group or 5+ years of dedicated study alone, or eternity if you slack.
    2. Manual translation. Takes at least x10 times more to read any visual novel, making forget previous events with time and lose enthusiasm with such horrible pace. In theory should help learning Japanese. In practice makes you drowsy each 10 minutes resulting in never finishing anything without proper dedication.
    3. Machine neuro translation. Allows you to read whatever you want at a normal pace right away without big hit to the meaning provided you can put up with some broken grammar.
    There is no just one right answer. All people are different. First and second variants are suitable only for some 10% of people, others would get demotivated before finishing anything. I advocate for machine neuro translation only because it's available just as you set up your mind to try untranslated visual novels. You get to appreciate the media and then need to decide for yourself if you want to try more works this way first or start learning the language at this point. I also have selfish motives here as I'd like to see untranslated visual novels discussion bloom after all those dark decades for untranslated vns. For those who are 100% sure that reading machine neuro translations automatically makes you understand nothing, I only urge to try machine neuro translation and then read proper English translation. That will make you see for yourself whether there are myriads of hidden meanings lost in initial playthrough or it's the very same story.
  10. Confused
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Happiness+ in A question to those who read untranslated Japanese VNs   
    Why should not I? Till 8 years old I knew no English words. Should I quit everything I like? That's just a wrong question.
  11. Confused
    kivandopulus got a reaction from McDerpingheimer III in A question to those who read untranslated Japanese VNs   
    Why should not I? Till 8 years old I knew no English words. Should I quit everything I like? That's just a wrong question.
  12. Confused
    kivandopulus got a reaction from McDerpingheimer III in A question to those who read untranslated Japanese VNs   
    A chauvinist approach again. I understand 99.9% of the Japanese text I read with machine translation + voice audition. I've seen such chauvinists in the past who say they'd read other reviews I collected (even reviews from densetsu), but not mine, since supposedly everyone else is 100% pro in Japanese. I'll definitely see more such people in the future. Good luck finding native Japanese to write reviews for you or writing them yourself after you learn language at 100%.
  13. Confused
    kivandopulus got a reaction from McDerpingheimer III in A question to those who read untranslated Japanese VNs   
    Not only review, but encourage everyone else to do so. As of now 80% of untranslated VNs don't even have descriptions, save for reviews. Those five people who actually know Japanese and do reviews focus only on recent games. Everyone else is just reading the same 200 translated VNs being offended by wrongly put commas etc trifles. Machine neuro translation is the best thing that happened to VN community since vndb creation and oh text hooker first release in 2003. Deny the progress, and the progress will deny you.
  14. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from AustriaVNFan in A question to those who read untranslated Japanese VNs   
    1. I never learned Japanese, although I can understand spoken Japanese after all these years of cultivating Japanese atmosphere around myself
    2. Watching anime since around 2008, reading VNs since 2014 or so. Ran out of translated VNs, so had to move forward to terra incognita.
    3. Don't remember first untranslated one. Might be Kikokugai, but I was not aware of translation, so had to translate it myself with mecab+edict and trying to grasp speech. It's not that difficult to understand provided that it's voiced and has mostly action scenes.
    4. All those word-by-word translations are waste of time, and I doubt it really helps learning language. I use ITHVNR+Translation Aggregator (Bing/Yandex machine translation). Google neuro translation introduced in November 2016 made the whole world change for me. It translates not words, but sentences, and it drew translation to a whole new quality level rendering engines that still use word-to-word translation obsolete.
    5. We're living in the age post google (and now also Bing and Yandex) neuro translation revolution. It's absolutely the best time to live. There's no need to spend half of your life to learn the language now. Start right away and pick up audio skills automatically in the meantime. It really grieves me when people consider google machine translation piece of crap like it used to be prior to November 2016.
  15. Like
    kivandopulus reacted to Chronopolis in What are you reading? Untranslated edition   
    The VN I dropped was Sakura no Mori Dreamers (just played the common route). For Aozora I played 3/5 routes and am planning to finish it. The game has some pretty depressing events. On some routes, you get hints of what happens to the other heroines, and its usually not happy.
    You should really play it if you are curious. Fumino is best girl.
  16. Like
    kivandopulus reacted to Chronopolis in What are you reading? Untranslated edition   
    Playing 果てしなく青い、この空の下で (vndb). I got interested when I saw it on a 2ch top 100 VN's list (youtube).
    It starts out with the MC living in a small countryside village in the recent past (1990's perhaps). The MC and mere 5 other students of the village school find out that this year will be their last. Hints of modernization are present, urged on by a tycoon scoundrel Doujima who seeks to take over the village. But as the MC spends time and gets to know some of his female schoolmates a bit better, he can't help but think they have a connection to the supernatural occurrences he starts experiencing.
    Art direction is more realistic, sort of like Kara no Shoujo. All the heroines have black hair(!). There's lots of little sfx, and periods without music. The CG feels a bit underwhelming because of the art style having few details. But it doesn't feel like the developers cut any corners. The sprite variations are expressive and the background CG blends well. Voice acting is fitting for the characters, is quite good.
    If I have to say, the story is not really moe. There is some moe appeal in there, but the heriones are quite... hard to approach. They have their own way of thinking, and often defy or baffle the protagonist. That and the VN can be a bit heavy. Not a relaxing or happy VN, instead a bit contemplative and unsettling.
    I would say it is similar but in many ways better than Kizuato (vndb), and compared to Higurashi it is much more subdued (no comedy, less edgyness). Would recommend if you want some interesting older work with decent plot.
    PS: speaking of no comedy, it reminds me of Sakura no Mori Dreamers which I played a while back. Full length action/horror with no comedy to lighten the mood. It was so stifling I dropped it.
  17. Thanks
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Happiness+ in How can we make visual novels more popular in the west?   
    I probably have the most exotic view on how to make visual novels popular.
    My answer is treat readers like intelligent adults by providing the most interesting stories the media has to offer. And translated VNs are suffocating for their seemingly large, but in fact very limited number of quality works with interesting stories. So naturally my attention falls to untranslated works. But that alone raises multiple issues - awareness, availability, language barrier, erotic scenes.
    I'm trying to raise awareness by giving small overviews to as broad range of visual novels as possible starting with the oldest. That provides description for obscure games and creates a solid timeline-based structure to see actual evolution of the media.
    Availability is another issue. How to make visual novels available from the browser? By providing video playthroughs! But visual novels aren't your usual games. They usually last for 30+ hours and require concentration which is ruined by bashing commentaries of let's players in my opinion.
    Language barrier is probably the gravest issue. Learning Japanese takes at least three years of diligent study and there's the need to read right now. Before 2014 google translate neural update I could not stand machine translation - excite, baidu, old google, honyaku, atlas are all just a joke so I had to read slowly through edict + mecab parsing. But google translate update made machine translation viable, so I feel absolutely comfortable reading with it. I perfectly understand what's being said out-loud without any translation and it's characters who usually move the plot, but I don't want to struggle through protagonist uneventful lines as well as narrator descriptions.
    Erotic scenes are easily eliminated with video editing. I usually make it perfectly clear that such scene ensues by giving 5 second censored footage and then skip scene entirely. From my experience in less that 1% of visual novels such scenes actually provide crucial for plot information. For the same reason we have censored versions of visual novels published now in Steam and those don't really stop being good games at all. Even Maitetsu that had the whole point of the game in fully animated erotic scenes managed to get to Steam so that we could assess its other sides. I actually had to drop the game as soon as I stumbled upon the first such scene, the disgust was that high - but now I will finally be able to play (or watch) it one day.
    My point is that limiting ourselves to nukige, translated works and the mess of EVN is not the only option. In order not to sink in this swamp we have to nurture refined tastes by reading such outstanding story-focused works as DiaboLiQuE, Luv wave, EVE: The Lost One, EVE Zero, EVE TFA, ELLE and some less perfect, but still very curious obscure species that I provide at my channel.
  18. Thanks
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Non-yuri VN blogs/sites worth following?   
    I'm collecting visual novel reviews sources to fill in my reviews database (except for yuri, otome, BL) with the overall number surpassing 100 already. But active ones are very few. Here are the non mentioned active ones:
    https://otakuoverdrive.com/
    https://awesomecurry.wordpress.com/
    http://jhipst3r.blogspot.com/
    https://vengilikes.wordpress.com/
  19. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Delete devblog updates from the Forums frontpage, add more space for latest blogposts   
    Does unpinning fall under the same category?
  20. Thanks
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Delete devblog updates from the Forums frontpage, add more space for latest blogposts   
    I'm not doing either. Going directly to blogs page each time...
    Absolutely agree with Plk_Lesiak that dev update feed should go from front page. But I'm also concerned about blogs page since Dev Boards Updates have not been updated for a year and FuwaReviews Team for over two years and they keep on being pinned and require scrolling down each time not to mention the image in Dev Boards Updates hanging for a year and my eyes really get weary of it. There's already Featured Entries on top of the page so why also having two ancient pinned threads as well...
  21. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from InvertMouse in A love for older VNs   
    I'm keeping a whole blog here on fuwa to dig for old VN gems. So far the quantity of VNs with interesting/fun plot in late 80s - early 90s surpassed my boldest expectations.
  22. Like
    kivandopulus got a reaction from Gibberish in A love for older VNs   
    I'm keeping a whole blog here on fuwa to dig for old VN gems. So far the quantity of VNs with interesting/fun plot in late 80s - early 90s surpassed my boldest expectations.
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