Zander

Where is the fun in starting a translation project when you can't crush the efforts of another group in the process?

Translation
Prologue - 100% (1791/1791)
Main School - 100% (2691/2691)
Tonoko Route - 100% (8709/8709)
Branch School - 35% (2039/5846)
Total - 22% (15229/68206)
TLC
Prologue - 100% (1791/1791)
Main School - 6% (157/2691)
Branch School - 3% (187/5846)
Total - 3% (2135/68206)
Edit
Prologue - 100% (1791/1791)
Main School - 6% (157/2691)
Branch School - 25% (1441/5846)
Total - 5% (3360/68206)
Ittaku has fully translated Tonoko's route. He'll be moving onto Miyabi's soon enough, but he can relish in this great achievement right now. Branch School in terms of both TL and Editing is going strong as well.
We are still looking for a permanent TLC to work on this project. Please PM me if you're interested in working as a TLC for this project.
That's all for this week. See you in another couple of weeks.

Holy shit we recorded this back when Summer Pockets had just come out.
Anyway, in this lovely podcast me, @babiker, @Zander, and @Barry Benson (rip in permaban) talk about fan TL today (spoiler: it's dead, or maybe it's not dead, or maybe it's complicated). Then we talk about the past and present of today's Fuwanovel. Turn up the volume when bee speaks, he can't into audio editing.

A very happy birthday to you, @Darklord Rooke!

Time to find some editors who really like peanuts then.

Ninetail Director Keimaru responded to feedback on the Prefundia on Twitter, which I translated on my Twitter account with retweets linking back to the originals.  I've aggregated the Tweets here, starting with this one.
"Reception [of the Venus Blood Frontier Prefundia] has been generally favorable, but one request that has stood out is to add an editor to the team.  We're currently examining this.
"Ninetail's games truly have a ton of text and the cost of translation is no joke, making this a difficult situation.
"Though I think the situation has changed considerably, a previous translation estimate for a certain Venus Blood title rang up at $300,000--just for the translation--and we gave up.  For this campaign, that would work out to 75% of a $400k goal, and [would be] completely infeasible.
"Like magic, we managed to reduce the cost by 2/3, so it's painful to start piling on more costs again.  If the goal were $200k that would be one thing, but that seems like a pretty infeasible target.
"But I do want to respond to users' expectations as much as possible.  I think we've responded to almost every other request fans made of us with the Prefundia announcement.  Adding this as a stretch goal is certainly one possibility, but right now I'm not sure [about contractual feasibility?].  We'll look into it."
 

I saw that the otomege company Otomate is interested in making Switch VNs, so maybe that'll be the push a needed to buy one! My pretty boys now on a bigger screeeeeen!
I like to read VNs on my Vita (it was part of the reason I bought one), but Sony is doing their best to make everyone that still uses it to give up. Shame on you, Sony, I'll NTR you with Nintendo if they give me otome!!!

I think it has the potential to do so. After all look how many VNs came to the Vita (even in English) and the Switch is able to offer that portability that no other current console does. Plus we're already seeing publishers like Spike Chunsoft, Aksys, PQube, and Limited Run Games move over to Switch and those are all publishers that've had a hand to play in pushing VNs on Vita (especially if you include otomes in the definition). Couple all of that with a really nice screen and hardware, and a large and growing install base, and it stands to reason that it could wind up being common for VNs to come onto Switch and possibly get more people interested in reading them.
As for me I would enjoy reading VNs on it, and I'm hoping somehow that we get the Switch version of Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm to come over (not sure that that's likely though), along with anything else. I originally liked playing VNs on TV (weird, I know) but being able to combine that with playing while out and about would make it incredibly convenient and easy to play.

Yup, definitely.
VNs are quite popular on the portable consoles since I've always seen releases of them on the PSP and the Vita. Now that Sony doesn't want to focus on portable consoles these days as well as Nintendo being open to third-party titles, we'll probably be seeing VNs on the Switch a fair bit now.
It may take a while for other third-party publishers to get on board though since many before were quite suspect about the Switch's potential and Nintendo's previous policy about it being a "family console". Some companies are already on board with ecchi games since we've got Senran Kagura and Gal Gun 2 on it.
As for me reading VNs on it, I don't really mind. I sometimes use my laptop to read VNs before going to bed so if the VNs are on the Switch, things would be even more convenient. It'll be like reading a book, lol. However, I'd still have my policy that if I buy VNs on the Switch then the original game would have to be an all-ages version from the start. If the game originally had 18+ content which got cut for the Switch version then I would buy it on the PC instead.

Otomege tend to be mass-produced for portable consoles, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of them start popping up on the Switch.  I also wouldn't be surprised to see non-ero versions of Light's games make their way over to the Switch as well, along with a generous samplings of other games that can do without erotic content.  However, I would be greatly surprised if it goes much beyond that.

I've noticed a lot of VNs are coming to the Switch; a lot of VNs originally released on the Playstation Vita are getting remakes, like Norn9, and there is also the Kickstarter for My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?.
What do you think? Will the Nintendo Switch become a popular platform for VNs (particularly in the West)? Would you, personally, enjoy reading VNs on it? 

Game is good. Better than 2 but I haven't really played much of it. 

Its the Undertale effect. Game is good, fanbase ruins it by being insufferable much like me. 

It's something that one can reach in 1 month, but that's a milestone that a very large portion of the VN community hasn't reached. The subset of people that both A) are willing to invest time and effort to learn Japanese at all and B) are willing to work on or start a translation project is rather small. There's no reason to discourage someone before they even begin.
Not to mention, as I understand it, unlike Tymmur, you're not a translator yourself. I don't think you're in a position to rebuke anyone. 
With that said, I agree that OP should refine their Japanese skills before taking on an independent project, and that they should maybe leave this one to the mysterious fan translator. Their enthusiasm is to be respected, however.

oh good. another cdprojekt red game for the gaming community to jizz all over. I hate the witcher 3 simply because of the fanbase and I have a feeling that despite loving the look of the game, I will end up hating this too.
 
also no gameplay yet they'll get a pass unlike every other company that does the same thing

We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!

Sorry about that, I'm on vacation at the moment, (up in the mountains with bad internet,) so I can only check Fuwa so much in a day. I read your second PM, but didn't have the time to respond. 
I think what you mentioned there and here is something worth discussing. (Whether or not moderation in blogs should be treated a little differently than the main site.) 
I think letting the blog's owner know when some content on their blog gets hidden/ moderated is reasonable. Though, while blogs are "separate" from the forum in one way, they are still displayed on the main page daily, and so we do have to moderate content that breaks the forum rules on blogs similarily to the rest of the forum, and this probably won't change unless the blogs get disconnected from the main site even further. (Which I doubt people want.) 

I would disagree. I think there is a distinction between trolling, i.e coming to the thread with the intent of shitposting, and getting heated over an argument / discussion. There is still value in his post between the insults, and I was also referring to his posts in general as Lesiak referred to [Kiri often helps people out in the voluntary tech support forum].
 
There are instances in Kara no Shojo where it is in NVL format with no background images or images displayed except for brief CGs between text passages. I would call something made entirely in that style a VN, but I suppose that is down to personal opinion.
 
Of course, but I believe you specifically mentioned places where the majority of people do not have access to smartphones, thus I see it as relevant. Many people do have a feature phone as their only device.
I don't think I made any suggestions about your preferences? Unless you mean Kiri. Personally I have a similarily sized smartphone and I enjoy reading stuff on it. I played the Ace Attorney series on it as well, actually.

This is an experiment I did for a C64 a while ago. It showcases a vn-like game format with a text window large enough to fit in a character name and two lines for characters, as well as a command prompt below, all of that along with graphics. All of this is running in 320x200 (actually 160x200, since the program runs in multicolor mode which doubles the size of each pixel horizontally in order to fit in more colours, in this case 16 displayed on-screen at once from 8). NVL is clearly possible and will fit even more text at the cost of background visibility (translucency is something which is too much for C64 to handle realistically). This runs on a hardware that has a 1mhz CPU and 64 kilobytes of shared RAM. Even certain very old feature phones are capable of more.
Fite me.

The problem is, I think the conclusion that it was doable was obvious to everyone here already and Kiri's or Narcosis' posts went to the problem of how and to what extent it's doable. If you present an example on how to configure a VN on a feature phone, commenting on whether it would be comfortable to play or if it would feel like playing a VN at all (I think Tymmur's actual argument was that it wouldn't read like a VN, not that it wouldn't "technically" be one) is absolutely reasonable. And Kiri was very much arguing that we're small-minded fools for not appreciating the possibility of playing VNs on an old Nokia and the headache it would very likely cause after 10+ minutes of straining your eyesight.

No.
I realize some people might be a little confused about what this thread is meant to do. To quote Down for those who haven't actually read the thread's first post:
In addition, here is a snippet from the Forum Rules:
In general, try to keep the above posts in mind for next time when deciding whether you should bump this thread or contact a moderator about the situation. (Most of the time you will be better off going for the latter.)
 
On topic, I personally like to let users know when I hide their content, however the specific case in question had a certain user trolling, and other people quoting/ replying to him then also had their content hidden. In these cases, it can be hard to let everyone know that they had their content hidden, especially when many people join in. Like Palas said though, in those situations a simple "stop it" message from a mod goes a long way. That is something we can look into doing more often, so people don't make the situation worse by posting again, thinking it was some kind of mistake/ bug.

This is kind of an interesting one for me (and don't be afraid to start an argument if there's something that seriously bothers you. I can't promise changes will be made, but it's definitely worthwhile to listen to the community.) 
Hiding posts in particular is something we never gave warnings for, not that it usually happens on blogs in the first place. 
If someone makes a thread, should it be the duty of the mod team to message whoever made the thread that posts in it were hidden? I'd lean towards no, but a blog might be different because it feels like a much more personal thing. 
We do, after all, have self-moderation toggled on for blogs, but no one can delete or edit comments in a thread just because they made it. 
I dunno. Maybe it's worth thinking about. 

We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!

Why hello there! This thread shall be my blog, and shall both be an opportunity to sesquipedalianize my writing and detail the trials and tribulations of the Supah Challenge.
A week-something ago I realized that the challenge had potential. After some wavering, and a frenzied but ultimately unsuccessful search for the sixth edition RtK 1 online, I decided I would be a cool bro and scan it for upload... oh, and it could be cool to actually use too, so I bought it online like a boss. After waiting merely a week for its arrival, I set to my schedule: I would study at 22.00 each day for around an hour. I chose to do 34 kanji a day, as the first and second lesson combined had that many kanji.

Previous experience include learning all the kana from Ixrec's guide (using mnemonics that aren't completely different from stories, in a way - み was midget, incidentally), and a few Kanji/compounds learnt from radical lookups and similar.

On the first day, my workload was comparatively light; I had the advantages of knowing near all the lesson 1 kanji, and the lesson 2 kanji were very easy to remember in general. The only real issue was me writing stuff at the wrong sizes and orientations, which got unacceptably out of hand. However, that just meant doing it again while reviewing, so it was mostly alright.

On the second day, god five mouths / nose over/between eye slept. Yes, I was tired as fuck all day and actually fell asleep laptop on chest at around ten. While I was tired as fuck, I did decide to at least review some old kanji. Which turned out to be a massive 4.

Today, I woke up at 7am, feeling just as tired as the last day. This malaise slowly subsided, and at around 15.00 I managed to get 34 new kanji in as planned (I ws not at all sure I'd be in working condition at 22.00). I note that this took quite a long time as I experienced it, but not unbearably so. I also did this with a significant amount of auditory and other distractions around me for part of it, which was not the best thing to happen ever.

Getting these kanji in was significantly more difficult; some of the stories were somewhat... lacking - some I constructed my own stories for, I think. With all that said, I still remember everything after some Anki usage, as far as I can tell. The Anki deck seems to be slightly off; post a bill (a kanji which had a pretty difficult story, but I spent enough time obsessing over that I'll probably remember it anyway) did not appear and two kanji that I weren't at yet did. That said, those kanji (deca...what the hell ten days and ladle) had extremely easy stories, and I just memorized them quickly.

We'll see if I continue a slightly more haphazard way of scheduling my learning at this point until I feel confident I won't be messed up at 22.00 or not, and whether it will work. On day five, I will probably also experiment with using multiple learning sessions per day - this likely has its disadvantages, but will increase my speed (I'll aim for 50 a day, probably).

Motivation: medium. Able to resume after 1 day of no new kanji. Able to survive despite using a different time. 34 kanji per day workable. Well, this might well work out for me!

I am mildly surprised.

We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!

We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!