Bredan

I'm not sure if I missed it or even when that got announced, but (from VNDB) it seems ALcot announced their last project : Clover Memory's. According to VNDB, it will be : A project to celebrate 20th anniversary of ALcot also marked as ALcot's last project. Crowdfunding starts on March 2024. Another one on the departure.

For your specific question and a generic answer : saving when the choices pop up and then going back to choose other options would be the way to go most of the time for many VNs. As it can get convoluted with some VNs, try to structure your choices well and give them a short evocative name/label if the game allows it. As you said, it wouldn't be surprising to end up with a lot of saves, especially with Clannad, that's probably why most VNs allow dozens of numbered saves. Now my true and longer answer for Clannad : I've always thought Clannad stands out even from a lot of other VNs of the same era by the sheer number of choices and how much convoluted the choices you have to make to attain certain ends are, added to the high number of ends, especially if you count all the minor ends (others than main heroins, and you should definitely count them for Clannad). As such, here is my advice for Clannad (but honestly it applies to most titles even if there is less choices) : - either use a walkthrough from the start and thus save when the walkthrough asks you to save and whenever you feel like. Most people wouldn't have their fun spoiled just by using a walkthrough for a romance/slice of life VN anyway. - or play it by saving whenever and choosing whatever you feel like choosing for the first 1, 2, 3 or whatever runs/ends you feel like, and then follow a walkthrough. This way intends to let you taste the VN as it was intended (including not being happy about not ending on the desired route for example) coupled with the benefits of not pushing it too far by ending up using a walkthrough. I know that way would be the better way for me with Clannad, but Clannad is especially long and that could make its reading even longer. One last point though for Clannad : whatever you choose to do, I suggest you keep Nagissa's route for last, whether you like her or not, as her route continues in Clannad part2 in the main VN.

Just a quick opinion here : when trying to learn the language, it might be better to avoid games with gameplay, as the tools to help you aren't best suited for gameplay parts. I don't know if the dating sim you have in mind should be in the 'have gameplay' category, but keep in mind that it might be easier for you to stay in the normal VN perimeter to learn JP. As for your question in itself, sorry I know too little about dating sims and let someone else answer you.

I've encountered this manga adaptation 16bit Sensation: Another Layer : it seems to be about VNs, their creation (MC is an illustrator), their decline and their golden age (story apparently places it in the early-mid 90s). I don't know if it is interesting or accurate and am not even sure I myself am going to watch it, but I figured I could let you know. If anyone knows it and can comment, please let us know.

ittaku (frequenting this forum) is the one who translated ToHeart2. If I remember well, he clearly said something along : ToHeart is not great and it is not required to read it before ToHeart2, as the stories aren't linked. You could try to find out his posts on this forum or ask him directly.

Here it goes. The two ultimate nukiges emulators : - https://hitomi.la - https://e-hentai.org I'm sorry, I'm leaving ^^.

When you search for a JP VN walkthrough, you'd better begin by https://seiya-saiga.com/ , as theirs are mostly the better and are accompanied by advices, full saves, basic infos etc. Here's the page for H2O～FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND～ : https://seiya-saiga.com/game/makura-soft/h2o.html

Sorry, I guess my answer deserved such a very pleasant reply...

I'll just say this : I wish there was 'VNDB' kind of sites for all types of games and books (with a story and characters at least). Sites like MAL or TheTVDB cover the films/series/animes mostly. Sites like Novel Updates cover some kind of books. But games (and a lot of book genres) are to my knowledge a lot less well covered. In the absence of such sites, I therefore wish a lot more things could be classified as VNs just to be present in VNDB. Well anyway, sorry to have disrupted your topic and have a good day.

I can do with bad/intrusive H scenes, but that other point... I've come to be unable to stand this over time and I consume a lot less of JP goods because of this overarching trend. Gem or not, that alone makes it not for me anymore. Too bad but thanks for letting me know.

I loved MuvLuv Alt, but I have to admit : even Age thought of the briefing scenes as a bit long, possibly tedious as is proved by the fact they gave one of the best BGM to those very briefing scenes. QED. (Youtube)

Ok, I knew my English was poor but it's worse than I thought.

You don't seem to understand. That's not blaming or anything, it's a valuable information in and of itself : if what is considered normal for a populatin keeps not being suitable for you, it shows something. What you do with this information is up to you, whether it is 'blaming', 'wondering why', changing yourself or your settings, or even doing nothing of it.

You don't seem to have noticed that, for almost everything everywhere, the default setting can generally be considered what is considered (by the devs or whatever) the mean or 'normal' value for the population. This information does have value. And if you encounter the same kind of default on most products, that gives this information even more value. For exemple : - if every time you have to re-set the gamma, you may need to question your screen setting or eyes. - if every time you activate the auto read on VN with default speed you think it goes to quick, you may need to question if you are a slow reader... or if there's a trick linked to translation... no ?

Thanks for this. A little warning though : this title seems to appeal to a lot of fetishes ranging from habitual to what can surely be considered fairly extreme, even considering the VN community.

A few of mine (no particular order) : Asagiri Kaito (Akatsuki no Goei) Nikaidou Reika (Akatsuki no Goei) Shimazu Hidetaka (Reminiscence) Lilith (Tokyo Babel) Kazami Yuuji (Grisaia no Kajitsu) Arcueid Brunestud (Tsukihime) Shigure Sora (DEVILS DEVEL CONCEPT) Tenjindaira Haruhi (PRIMAL×HEARTS) Kouzuka Michi (PRIMAL×HEARTS) Naname Nanami (Ojou-sama wa Gokigen Naname) Akechi Hikari (Hyper→Highspeed→Genius) Kano Shiina (Kanojo * Step) Sakagami Tomoyo (CLANNAD) Fujibayashi Kyou (CLANNAD) Himegami Arisu (Yami to Hikari no Sanctuary) Himehoshi Arika (Ojou-sama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu!) Mochizuki Rina (Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~)

DC2 is often recognized as the best in the series. I tend to moderately agree, or at least it's pretty good. DC1 keeps a 'vintage' quality to it that brings back nostalgia. As for DC3, I've only read one of the two : I never read the one that takes place in the 'present' (Platinum I think it was called) and only read the one in the past/magic academia, and honestly, it wasn't bad I thought at the time (I've read it in Japanese all those years ago, I only vaguely remember). At the least, I thought it wasn't a shame in the series. Haven't read DC4, can't speak for sure, but it is very probable that it can be read before DC3 just as litleshogun said, as the stories/'continuities' of the DC series, despite not being as 'discontinued' as the Zelda series, are often only vaguely linked (through genealogy, the island/tree, Sakura and Suginamis mostly ^^).

Yeah you are right, will do. Thanks for this piece of software.

There's two different reasons to use those tools : - to read raw Japanese text while being assisted : great help and it is useful for beginners as well as veterans (beside your own head if you know the kanji/word, nothing can beat those tools to seek information) - to MTL in real time. If your need is MTL, I can't help you much as I'm not using translators : just know that Textractor itself can take care of some translation. About reading raw Japanese, there's nothing much to say, but here is a few things : - use Textractor as a hooker (on this point, same as if you want MTL), but don't use it for 'presentation' of the text. Textractor itself proposes a few things to 'present' the text but I suggest you don't use them ; - use one of these for text presentation : * Translation Aggregator : the oldest of the tools I'll speak of. It has most of what you need for raw Japanese presentation and is still being (vaguely) updated, although I don't really know to what extent. Considered a very good tool by most people reading VN in Japanese. * JL (https://github.com/rampaa/JL) : I discovered it very recently and am using it for the first time with the VN I'm currently reading. It is still very young and I encountered a few bug/crashes but it is very promising (modern UI, presentation very customizable, possibility to add Yomichan/Nazeka compatible EPWING dicts, mining for Anki). I probably will continue to use this, especially since it seems development of new functions is still continuing. * Chiitranslite : the one I've used for years (even after its hooker function began to not work). Not updated, considered obsolete for a lot of people, a lot of customization missing... despite all of this, it gave what I wanted : a raw, not colored, no space added, not touched in any way raw Japanese text. But the reasons I used it for so many years : it has functions no other tool propose (to my knowledge at least). 1 : you can select text and ask it to re-parse Japanese from the text you selected, extremely useful. The automated parsers will often fail you and this possibility is huge to me. Coupled to the opposite : select a 'parsed element' (word, expression or whatever) and 'break it', it's just wonderful. I can't get why other tools won't do this... 2 : presentation of words definitions not in lists, but words separated in tabs (in the popup window that shows dictionary items). The result : for readings that correspond to a lot of words, you can browse those words by changing tabs, far clearer than a list that might or might not be scrollable. Most tools presenting in list will show you a maximum of entries and this problem does not concern Chiitrans : if you have 60 entries, you have 60 tabs (first the words more or less sorted by frequencies, then the names). You have as well the side advantage to benefit from Chiitrans memorizing the last tab you consulted for each reading : for readings that correspond 99% of the time to the same word, it is useful to have the most likely definition proposed from the second encounter (independently of frequencies dicts). Textractor (the hooker) will send the raw JP text to the clipboard where all of the 3 'presentation' tools will get it. By the way : you could use any combination of the 3 tools at the same time (since all they do is catching text from the clipboard). Could help you choose your preferred tool. Your only limitation might be screen space ^^.

A 'bit out of context but still connected' quick update : have you followed the last few years progression in the department of AI ? I didn't until recently... am I reading an Asimov novel ? Are we really already debating the 'conscience' of this or that AI ? Of course, such an AI still needs one of the costliest and big 'datacenter' in the world. But still. I envisioned MTL everywhere in the near future, but not that near... by the way, time to debate : should we still call that MTL, since some of those AIs define themselves as human beings ? Seriously, do we need to invite Sarah to diner next weekend ?

I indeed couldn't translate the whole chapter in one go and did it in portions.

Hmm, I don't know about this. That was the first time I used it and I encountered no limitation other than not being able to translate the whole chapter in one go (generally, I translated paragraph after paragraph, or few lines if paragraph was too long). Maybe one chapter was not enough to get to the limitation you are speaking of ? Can't say. Also, I can't guarantee it, but it seems people successfully use Textractor with DeepL plugin.

For the first time, I tried DeepL. English not being my mother language, I first tried it with English-mother language (based on alphabet) : it was astonishing. I can't say it was perfect, but honestly I was impressed. I then decided to try it with Japanese (one chapter of a LN to be precise) : and again, I was impressed. The result was far lower in quality than my first attempt, but nonetheless, it was probably the best MTL I've ever seen. Also, note that the chapter I used had only a few dialogues, maybe it would have been a different result with a VN having a lot of them. Oh, well, but everything I just said is quite well known I guess... then why do I post this ? It's simple : I just wanted to warn the people that use DeepL, be it for VN or anything else. There's a deep flaw going with it : it is too good in a certain sense. Too good ? WTH ? Well, DeepL seems to be able to give sense to a sentence most of the time. Yeah, give sense even if the translation fails (partially or completely), and you the reader might not notice because the sentence might even make some sense in the context, just that it has not the sense it is supposed to. While the Google Translation lot would most likely just send you an unintelligible text that would at least warn you of the failure. I'm not sure there's a workaround, but I guess one should try, if possible, to use at least two engines in parallel and hoping to get the better of them. Note : my level at reading Japanese is quite high when we are speaking of reading VN/LN/Mangas etc. I'm positive I encounter very few passages I'm not correctly understanding and, when this happens, I generally know enough to get that I missed something, allowing me to do a bit of research if I feel like it. I'm not sure how I would fare with true literature for example (a lot less good I presume, but I guess it would depend of the writing). Also, when possible I'm still using a text hooker to help me seek out the few kanjis or words I might not know or remember.

Honestly, this post is old, but because you replied : both are largely outdated. Not that you can't use them, but there's a better soft in most cases, and that would be Textractor. It is better than most for multiple reasons : - more engine compatibility and pre-configured hooks ; - better OS compatibility than old softs, and even has 32 and 64bits versions ; - has the easiest to use tool to find your own hooks. Textractor also has a plugin system with a few of already developed ones in the base package. If you have the capability, you can of course develop our own plugins. In the past and depending of the era, I felt there was room for discussion as to what hooker one should use, but in 2022 Textractor should be the get to go and only when there's a problem, first try to fix it with Textractor and then try other softs. Sadly, it is no more maintained (except for maybe minor fixes ?) but even taking this into account, the above remains true in 2022.

I linked the VN opening version of Last Regrets but if you didn't already, I suggest you to listen to the full version (I'm not sure whether it has been made for the VN or later for the anime, but anyways).