Odenvard

Confession: I just nearly died I learned today that really cold rain is not a force to be reckoned with.

Huh, lot's of strange issues in this thread that I didn't even know were possible. That is, they're far from being outside the realm of possibility, but, even having worked with various digital devices as much as I have, these issues still seem strange. Err, there is that. I share your pain, for that most part (I'm gonna jinx myself by mentioning this, but it seems like my headphones break less often when I have at least two sets of them, and currently I have two such working sets).

I'd say I have a pretty clearly defined opinion about voice acting; If it's actually good, it can add quite a lot to the experience. If it's anything less than good, or if it's too inconsistent, such as if side characters pop up much at all but are unvoiced (unvoiced protag is fine), it tends to detract (and distract) from the experience more than it adds. Of course, while I don't know if I can honestly name any cases where a VN which had no voice acting would suffer from somehow gaining good voice acting, or any cases of VNs with good voice acting that would improve in the absense of voice acting anyways, but it's worth noting that voice acting is often expensive for companies who make any sort of game at all. As such, it's quite possible that a company could end up either funding the creation of any other parts of a game less due to including voice acting, especially if they realize they underestimated the cost of voice acting after they've already commited too much money to its inclusion. This is particularly likely for small/indie/new companies, who are also the ones who are hit hardest by making this mistake. With that in mind, I would say that VNs made by a big company that has less to worry about with regards to the risks of including voice acting benefit the most from it; There are limits to how much any one part of a VN can benefit from additional funds, due to things like artists/writers not being physically capable of producing more than a certain amount of material in a given amount of time no matter how much they're payed, and a big company is far more likely to actually run into those limits. Plus, they'll be more likely to actually be able to pay for good voice actors. Meanwhile, VNs made by small/indie/new companies not only don't have as much to gain from voice acting (there's more risk of them not being able to get good enough voice actors for voice acting to actually be a good thing for the VN), but they also risk making other parts of the VN worse; Whether that be due to mistakes made when determining how much they should spend on voice acting leading to other parts of the game needing to be rushed to make the game profitable, or due to intentional planning which nonetheless leads to less resources (funds/possibly time due to available funds) being commited to other parts of the VN. Because of this, VNs made by these companies may even be said to indirectly benefit from not including voice acting.

To be honest, easy mode seems to make these maps harder, so I went and did one with just halftime (no nofail :P). Amusingly, despite being absolutely lazy with this, it turned out to be a higher overall score than my highest nofail on this map. Anyways, its a C rank: Btw, my images work for perfectly for me. Are you somehow blocking postimg or something? In any case, those previous ones are all runs of Linkin Park, Steve Aoki - A Light That Never Comes [Insane], just as this one is. The first one is D rank, 181730 score, 46.32% accuracy, 262x300+309x100+36x50+194xMisses. Nofail Second one is D rank, 355675 score, 68.79% accuracy, 465x300+239x100+38x50+59xMisses. Nofail Third one is D rank, 355360 score, 67.10% accuracy, 452x300+239x100+35x50+75xMisses. Nofail In case you can't even see this one, its C rank, 362719 score, 72.87% accuracy, 506x300+211x100+44x50+40xMisses. Half Time If you seriously can't see any of my images, then I guess I'll make another post with links to a temp general file hosting site with the images instead, or something.

Depends on what kind of readme it is, then. I'd stick by my general estimate of "most readmes", but VNs don't really have much to gain from said readmes. I have played a decent amount of RPG Maker h-rpgs, and translators for those often put important stuff in the readmes, or just make more useful ones. There was one such game that had a "translation notes" of some sort, and I read that. It was interesting to read, at least, and gave me a better understanding of why some parts of the game seemed slightly off in their translation. Basically, I read readmes for pretty much everything, but sometimes I can't read them, and sometimes I get the same information from elsewhere before the readme would have been relevant (such as readmes which are basically just installation instructions), though I suppose I skim even those readmes before realizing their uselessness. Not all readmes are equal, and readmes for pretty much any other sort of software is more important than readmes for VNs.

I would say I read most readmes, and that I tend to turn to them as one of the first areas to search for a solution when running into an issue. However, some readmes are basically useless, and sometimes readmes are still in japanese (such as with some fan translations), or some other condition makes the readme unreadable to me. Of course, I actually read documentation and consult search engines to find problems to technical issues on nearly a daily basis, so I doubt I could be considered the norm... Having served as a temporary tech support for some of my friends in the past, I've been exposed to how much a lot of people simply refuse to read, even when doing so would solve their problem in a matter of seconds.

No.

Err, by score, I meant how well I did. I guess accuracy percentage is actually what I use. I suppose something to keep in mind is that my ability to read maps is WAY ahead of my physical limits... that is, I know what I need to do to beat any given map long, long before I can actually do that thing well enough for that information to be actionable. That's probably a pretty big factor in why what I do seems to actually work. Here's a score from the end of last month (pretty much just a week ago), on an insane map, which is above my play level, but not as far as some of the stuff I play; Here's a play from that same map, but from earlier today; And here's a play from same map, from immediately after the previous one; Slightly worse, but that can be pretty much entirely attributed to being tired from the play right before it. All three of these ranks are D's, but there is a clear, cleanly defined jump here. These are probably what one would consider "higher end D's", but this sort of pattern carries throughout all of my plays, from high ranks up to SS to the lowest D's. Mentioning "score" probably gave the wrong idea, but the accuracy is the biggest factor when I check these patterns. I just consider accuracy to be a better indicator of proficiency than score itself,and thus more of a score than score itself, all things considered..

To be fair, I can actually get extremely consistent scores on maps I get low D ranks on. For example, when I was just re-getting into osu, I was getting as low to 10-15% on certain really hard maps, but the accuracy I got on such maps stayed extremely consistent at any given time. At this point, I seem to get 20% consistently on the super hard ones, and as high as 40% on certain ones. For any map, however, the accuracy doesn't change too much within the same day for me, unless I specifically note certain mess ups I'm making and actively practice my way around those. I do attempt this mindful sort of practice of stuff well enough in my skill range, but I try not to do this on the ones way out of my league, though, since just focusing on getting hits at all is far more useful. It is my firm belief that, in a lot of cases, simple practice on tasks notably above what you want to actually accomplish with a certain skill can lead to the same overall skill than (necessarily more focused) practice of tasks sitting mostly within your skill level in less time overall. Of course, it's generally a good idea to mix the two practice styles, rather than sticking to either entirely.

Just as the titles says, I would like to know; has moege ever improved your life in some way? To give an example, I point to my own experience: There was a time where, due to having read a bunch of stuff I really, really did not enjoy reading, for an extended period of time, with no real breaks (school related, so I had to read it) , and a bunch of other stress from other things at the same time, I ended up burned out on reading. When I say that, I don't just mean something like "gah, I really don't want to read anymore", but rather that I found myself unable to read anything beyond the most absolute, basic stuff. Like, maybe a paragraph long at most, it was that bad. It was a headache to force myself to do, and, if I pushed myself hard enough to try it anyway, I would rapidly reach a point that my vision blurred to the point where no amount of effort would have let me read any further. It got better slowly, over time. Not a whole lot better, but it eventually reached a critical point; a point where, upon discovering them, I was able to read VNs. Not super complex ones, mind you. Simple ones, VNs who's value lied far more in having cute girls in them than in any real story they might have had. Basically, moege, as well as VNs which, while not necessarily moege, had the critical elements of such. Of course, not only could I read these, but I could actually enjoy them. Being able to enjoy reading was nothing new to me; before the whole previously explained issue occured, I probably could be said to have enjoyed reading far more than the average person. But being able to enjoy these when I enjoyed them was a different ordeal. To make a long story less long, I likely recovered from the "trauma" (seems a little obsurd to call it that, but it was an obsurd ordeal no matter what anyways) far, far quicker than I otherwise would have. I likely gained more time overall than I spent reading these VNs. Of course, I'm sure I would have eventually recovered either way. Still, to this day, I'm thankful to the effect that positive effect VNs had on me. So, yeah. I don't expect stories like mine are that commonplace, but I'd love to hear about any good things that moege (or just any VNs with what you would consider "at least a decent focus on cute girls") have lead to for you.

So, I've gotten slightly better than when I posted that score. One thing I like to do is play maps that are way above my skill level on no fail. It serves as good practice, and is even, somewhat ironically, far less stressful than practing on my skill level. After all, if the map is so hard for you that just getting a few hits is pretty impressive, then its quite a decent bit easier to brush off failure as being normal, while still being possible to learn from it. Here's an example of a score I got on the insane difficulty of the map I previously posted about; Also, here's a legit, no-no-fail, score from the hard map of a cool map for a cool song; I can confirm that eye strain can be a problem... the circles have stayed with me an hour or two after one or two of my play sessions.

I don't actually remember what exactly the first 5 VNs I played were, but I think that among whatever those 5 were includes Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius and Katawa Shoujo. I'd be tempted to also say Ever17, but I'm pretty sure I dropped it the first couple of times I tried to read it, and then, quite a bit later, actually read through it. Thinking about it, I also played a number of random flash games, some of which I'm pretty sure were at least similiar to VNs, with some of them perhaps qualifying outright. Also, lots of non-VN h-games. I think I even played True Love at some relatively early point. Basically, I don't know what my first games were directly, but I have a general idea of what kind of stuff it was. Seems pretty similiar to my start, though you apparently have a much clearer memory of your way here than I have of mine. Having read both Sunrider and Analogue, I'd say that they are both quite good, especially as an entry point to VNs.

Confession: I had read through a very large portion of this thread as a lurker, starting quite a while ago, simply because I was bored and figured this kind of thread would have amusing content. I've come to the conclusion that there is both amusing content here, as well as simply interesing conversations. Extra Confession: I tried to get through Fate/Stay Night, but I simply couldn't get myself interested enough to even get past the beginning part of the game. So I get where you are coming from.

The wine version seems to be up-to-date, so that indeed would not be the issue. reg.exe seems to be a way of modifying the registry (which, in wine, is simply a file within the wineprefix). If wine is complaining about reg.exe, I'd have to guess that the game is trying to work with the registry using reg.exe, but is failing in some way. If it's complaining due to a missing disk, maybe there's something it tries to grab from the disk that it can't get. It could also just be a different issue. Unless the game uses a registry entry to determine whether it needs the disk or not, you probably can't work around the issue using the registry. If you find you do need to edit it, such as if you find the some guide telling you to add something to it to get around a problem, using wine's "regedit" (wineskin probably has something that let's you open this from its ui) is likely the sanest way to edit the registry**. * Depending on how exactly mac handles mounting disk images and such, you should simply be able to mount the disk image at some directory, and then tell wine, using "winecfg", that said directory should be treated as a drive, which would probably be the most correct way of handling the issue. ** Wine's regedit acts essentially the same as window's actual regedit, providing a decent user interface for editing the registry manually. Programs which automatically add registry entries (such as installers, or software during its update process) are the things that would use reg.exe directly, seeing as reg.exe works off of invocation arguments (ie stuff told to the program as part of launching it, instead of interacting with the process when its already up). Essentially, regedit is usable for humans, and reg.exe is usable for other programs.

Hey, someone else who plays VNs in wine! (I use linux, but its the same software doing the emulation, ultimately) "To the Radiant Season" looks like an... interesting case. I'll try to look into it directly, and see if I get that issue. The Clannad issue seems like it can be worked around by using the previously suggested RLVM. "Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro Na" might indeed be worked around by mounting the whatever serves as the "play disc" (this would just be the game disc iso if there's only one, and the first one if there's multiple). As a tip for accomplishing this in wine in general, while I don't know exactly how wineskin handles things, try to have the iso mounted in a location which you can have wine read as the "d drive" (drive letter matters far less than the directory being listed as a disk drive in wine, of course). That way, when the game looks for a disk drive, it'll find that. Sadly, while I had not heard of AlphaROMDiE until now, look into it indicates is one of the types of programs wine has the most trouble with. That's not to say it can't work, but that's its quite difficult to troubleshoot. I did find a program which might accomplish the same thing, however. It's called RLSE Loader*, and that might be worth trying to use instead. *Not sure if I can link it, but if you search something like "RLSE Loader", you should find a blog (in korean?) that has a few images detailing how to use the program. If you find the same website I found for it, it links to another site (some site with cafe in the same) which actually has the download link for the program directly on it. Edit: Forgot to ask, but do you know what version of wine your using? Wineskin might be running into some of these issues because of relying on an old version of wine. Of course, if the version it uses is mostly up to date, it's probably not a problem.

Honestly, having semi-recently finished reading Clannad, I'm not sure why I didn't think to recommend it here. Anyways, I hope you enjoy yourself. Luckily for you, your tastes seem to generally match with a rather huge portion of available VNs, so you won't be too starved for options. Have fun

Alright, so I got a pretty good score on beatmap I previously struggled with pretty hard. Its a normal difficulty map, and technically on the lower end of that, at least star-wise, but considering that, when I first started playing osu, I got stuck below the skill level needed for most easy maps, it at least seems impressive for a zero talent player. This post conveniently serves as a test to make sure I can actually put up images as well.

Katawa Shoujo seems to fit what you're looking for on at least one of it's routes. Without spoiling anything in particular, the protagonist has a certain medical condition. Being in decent shape is a good thing in general, but probably even more important with this particular condition. If, in the beginning part of the game, you choose the options that involve doing exercise and stuff, you should be able to get onto the Emi route, which I would say at least sort of fits the bill on the "motivated by a heroine/girl character" requirement*. Also, the setting is a (special) high school, and you end up living in the dormitory, I'm pretty sure. Its an eroge with h-scenes on in options, and fades to end of scene with implied h-scene with that off. There's not really much in the way of h-scenes, but the option is there for preference in either direction. *Edit: To clarify, its the route that I'm suggesting qualifies, not the way onto it.

Okay, I gave in and made a VNDB account, and started the list of VNs I've read. Not a whole lot listed on there yet, but its kinda cool to have it, at least. Also, I've never stopped to appreciate the beautiful simplicity of that site. It seriously is a good, well designed site. Doesn't seem to make any cross site requests at all, so its really fast, too.

Well, there's the fact I'm using linux, so it serves as a "native" client, where as I would have to run the official client in wine to run it. "Opsu" is written in java, although implementation of the sound system seems to be per platform, so I don't know what the full list of operating systems it can run on is.

Hmm, I'm tempted to post stuff in this thread. I play Osu, in a sense, but I play with the "Opsu" client, which is pretty much just an open source osu client. It doesn't do things like ranked mode or multiplayer, though, it just let's you play osu beatmaps in singleplayer. What you would expect to work, such as score and mods, do work and there do not appear to be any real bugs, but its an unofficial client, hence it can't do anything that requires connection to the official servers and such. Beyond benefits like being cross-platform, it also avoids the stress of comparing your performance to other, better players, and stuff like that, which is part of why I play using it. Time will tell if I actually decide to post my scores, though.

The traits you mentioned about "Maou" probably make him one of the more interesting villians on this list in my eyes. I don't think I finished the VN he's in, and it would have been a while ago that I played it at all, but just about any character who has the "all according to plan" sort of thing done right can be quite interesting. As an example, I would point to the protagonist of War of The Human Tanks. He's a incredibly good commander, to the point that, if the game had a more serious tone, it would be more than a little unbelievable. Of course, its quite a silly game, story wise, so it works out well enough. He ends up being "a few steps ahead" of pretty much everyone when it comes to strategy and such, in any case, which sort of plays out in the actual gameplay, since simply being a human player makes it pretty easy to fight the AI enemy, even though they often have better tanks than you do, and such things. Another character, one who can kind of be considered a "villian who plays the role of a hero", is Rance, from the Rance series of games. I would dare say that he isn't really "evil" in any sense, and even quite a likeable character, but he's obviously rather... self-centered, I suppose one could say. Unlike either of the previously mentioned characters, much of his capability comes from directly being pretty powerful, rather than being good at planning and such. He's also just plain lucky, to a rather obsurd degree. He does consider himself a "hero", but many of his most heroic actions end up being done for fairly villainous reasons. Overall, however, I would sort of consider him to be one of the best protagonists and one of the best villains at the same time.

The secret is that the girls are so cute/attractive that the "refractory period" gives up and let's the protagonist do what he wants.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YuzMwUAHGyc?feature=oembed I have no idea if this will actually embed, cause the forum complains at me the the link has no video, but the link itself seems to be valid. Anyways, its a song I originally found while playing a certain game that some people here might know about. The song is probably a lot more fun than the gameplay for it in the game, though.

http://testyourvocab.com/result?user=9571388 So much for being a native speaker If knowing the definition of a word meant being able to state aloud the dictionary definition, then I would know 0 words, but that's mostly because I don't remember the definitions of words as a collection of other words, but directly. That is, for most words I know the definition of, I can't break down the definition for those words any further into other words the way that a dictionary does. I obviously know the meanings of the words, though. Same for bugbear