Clephas
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Posts posted by Clephas
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1 minute ago, BUGA said:
I’ll look into an emulator to see if I can salvage my loss. I am not to pc savvy, but I will do my due diligence. But yes, I do have my locale and system language to Japanese. I left the display language to English.
I will now take all this into account if I decide to purchase another degenerate game lol. Makes sense for older titles to just be left behind when there are 50 more just like it.
This particular fetish at least on VNBD does not have many new releases, it seems erogamescape at least to me has the better list, I find links to games on dlsite that don’t pop up on google when you enter them manually.
Lastly, if it’s not much trouble I have another issue where I bought a game from “DMM” Fanza Games.
They want me to install this program, which is fine by itself. But it’s on an unsecured website, it’s the official link to the game. I asked someone about this particular problem and they said they ran into no problems despite downloading the same software. I am on the other assuming if download anything from that site I am at risk. Thoughts?
DMM in general is a problematic website. They randomly decide not to sell things to westerners for a time, going so far as to ip-block us, only to suddenly let us back in to buy their stuff, only to not let us use it. I honestly don't recommend buying anything from DMM.
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1 hour ago, BUGA said:
First, thank you for the information and fast response kindly.
This is rather unfortunate I suppose there is no recourse within means to be able to run the game? For future purposes where can I find this information on vndb so that I don’t end up in a similar situation?
Obvious solution is an emulator for an earlier form of Windows. I'd suggest 7 or XP, given when it came out.
As for solutions for game engines, the only real advice I can give you is stick to games made after 2014 or ones made by popular companies. The one you picked was an obscure game by a defunct minor company that seems to have gone out of business before 2016, which means it didn't even make it to the Covid era... To check for engines, you can either check the game's official website (the engine is often listed there) or click the releases for the game and look to see if the game engine is listed.
Thankfully for you, there are plenty of nukige of this type that have come out in recent years (for some reason milfs made a huge comeback in the last three years after years of being ignored) so this particular fetish is covered. I guess the nukige community has regressed to the point where they have an Oedipus Complex...?
The big problem with older nukige is that no one bothers to find solutions for fixing problems with them, since more nukige come out every year than every other genre combined. Even if you ask for help, it is unlikely anyone will have a solution with this type of game if you couldn't find it elsewhere.
Oh, just in case... did you make sure your locale is set to Japan and your system language to Japanese? I didn't mention this solution earlier because it is the general assumption that that is the first thing everyone tries...
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First, the reason behind the error is probably simply that the game's engine has some kind of incompatibility with your operating system. The game is originally from 2010, and it looks like they didn't use a familiar engine, which probably means it is one of the random engines from that time or one they coded themselves (if it was a famous one like kirikiri, realive or siglus, it would have been listed on the vndb page).
The error itself is a generic one that pops up sometimes when JVNs fail to activate due to incompatibilities, saying 'An error during initial setup. The script file cannot be found.' It's not a terribly unusual sight of late, since some of the updates a few years ago to Windows 10 rendered some older VNs completely incompatible. Windows 11 is even worse.
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Hello, Lady- Narita Shinri is nothing if not confident, though he is more than a bit of a pervert. His other side is that of a ruthless avenger.
Tokyo Babel- Written by Higashide Yuuichirou, it is one of the few high-quality VNs of the type that have been translated. It is all-ages (no ero content) and heavy on the action. Protagonist is the type that punishes himself constantly for his past. Basic story is that God started squishing all the parallel worlds, closed off Hell and Heaven, and a portion of the angels and demons got together to guide humans through Purgatory (that is combined with a fake version of Tokyo) to Jacob's Ladder.
Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori- Also from Front Wing, just like Grisaia. Protagonist is a WWII Zero pilot who is doing a kamikaze attack on a US ship when he suddenly finds himself in another world. Generally good story with Grisaia-style comedy, though it is heavier on the violence.
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42 minutes ago, NowItsAngeTime said:
I just realized I have quite a lot of visual novels I've stalled or have been considering dropping and I'd rather finish these before getting more new ones. Just been having trouble getting motivation for any of them. Looking/ hoping for any user to provide me any motivation for any of these VNs to continue because I'd rather not let them go to waste.
Hapymaher - this is the only English purple soft VN I've not even read a single route of. The lucid dream theme seems interesting, but none of the characters have been particularly likeable yet, but I don't think I met them all. Maybe like three of them
Nanairo reincarnation- I heard that there's surprisingly good drama, but I just can't get over the stupid setting of demons living in your house thing
Chrono clock - I only finished DD's route and I was heavily disappointed. I heard that the clock rewinding gimmick is heavily underutilized in other routes and the other non-DD heroines haven't particularly interested me
Hello lady! - please tell me the main character stops the dumb groping shenanigans. When he gropes the black hair girl the way beginning that immediately pissed me off. Which sucks because the story seems interesting enough
That's a lot of complaints... but I'll answer your questions and/or state the attraction or primary audience for each.
Hapymaher- Hapymaher has three things going for it. 1) The soundtrack. There are maybe three VNs I've read in all my years that have a BGM soundtrack that manages to reach the feet of Hapymaher. 2) The atmosphere that mixes sorrow and despair with the surreality of a dream. 3) Catharsis: The primary attraction of all nakige is that you can let stuff out by crying vicariously for the characters. I'll be blunt, if you don't do this, you have no business playing or assessing nakige at all.
Nanairo Reincarnation- Nanairo Reincarnation mixes bloody horror, everyday life, and nakige elements into a single story. If you are getting hung up on the oni (oni are not truly demon analogues despite what some careless translators think), you probably are obsessing over the wrong thing. If you care about the oni issue so much, I'll go ahead and note what they actually are (which you have to finish the old girlfriend's path to find out). Check the spoiler box if you want to:
SpoilerFirst, oni in this setting are the same as ghosts at the core. The fundamental differences are that: 1) They can inflict their physical presence upon the world to some extent, 2) They need sustenance to sustain their self-awareness 3) They are bound to their master through a contractual obligation. That family's oni are essentially shards of the current head's spirit combined with shards of the source oni's spirit to create a new oni, with the blood or semen used to create them serving as a physical catalyst for them to be able to interact with the physical world. The founder of the family was an onmyouji who couldn't bear to let go of his wife's ghost, so he bound her using a technique that turned her into an oni. All oni from then on originate from her as the original oni, passed down through the generations in the same manner as the beginning of this story. Last of all, the reason most oni die with their master is that it is the only way to properly return their souls to the wheel of reincarnation. If they are left free, they are damned to eventually fade away or turn into dark spirits like some ghosts do.
Chrono Clock- Purple Soft has two types of stories, one where you are primarily supposed to cry over the characters' plights and be freed by them overcoming them or solving the problem, and the other where there is some kind of central story that doesn't focus on emotional catharsis. Chrono Clock is solidly in the latter area. TBH, to this day I don't understand why Chrono Clock got priority for localization when Purple Soft had so many better games, but as weaker plotge go it is one of the better ones.
Hello Lady- To answer your question, he does the groping thing to every girl once. He also obsesses over oppai no matter what, but no matter the path he becomes more serious and focused once you get to the first turning point (after the party, when you end up rapidly making choices to direct to a heroine path).
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16 hours ago, Erogamer said:
I get it, I am against crappy translations, but the sad thing is that I have seen some MTL's that were better than "official" translations. ChatGPT I am not familiar with, but it looks better than standard MTL. I just think Zaka came off a little harsh.
Most of the early Mangagamer translations were MTL... until they redid most of them (Edelweiss's original localization was an abomination). The biggest improvement in MTL is in the English grammar, not the actual translation, from what I can see. Before, the mtls would try so hard to translate stuff directly that the results were garbled word spaghetti.
MTL is completely useless for turns of phrase, proverbs, idioms, and the like, and it still screws up the subject of sentences roughly 60% of the time from what I can see. On the other hand, most localizers and fantls are just as bad on the former. The latter is mostly because Japanese prose and dialogue heavily overuse implied subjects and pronouns. Essentially, a decent translation of a scene requires the translator to comprehend the entirety of the context of the scene up until the line in question, which is where MTL seems to fail the most drastically. At the same time, most English-speakers share a similar problem, as English grammar doesn't use implied subjects, though the use of pronouns in place of names and the like is normal. From what I can tell, this is why decent manual translations consistently beat out even the most advanced MTL.
The best option would to be to make a specialized MTL setup for translating prose, but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
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I don't know about short ones, but Baldr Sky's steam version is all-ages and Tokyo Babel is as well. The downside is that they are both fairly long VNs.
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8 hours ago, Epschy said:
Writers, how can I avoid being a sponge?
I've noticed that my writing style is highly influenced by whatever work I most recently read. This is true, for example, in my most recent novel, which has a lot of slapstick comedy even though I hate novels or animes that uses this element. The VN I've read before writing this work was SMEE's Fureraba - a moe, kusoge, with the same kind of comedy I used in my work.
I would definitely like to avoid having my writing style being affected this way, but to have a solid writing, or to be adaptable.
Am I the only who suffers from this? Is there anything I can do to avoid this? (Note: I've read 60 light novel volumes and 6 regular novels in my life. Maybe my problem is having read few books?)
It is perfectly normal to channel other people's styles or try to absorb the best parts of them. To be blunt, completely unique styles aren't that common anymore, so it isn't really being a sponge. It's learning from your predecessors. If you feel bad about it, just acknowledge them when you self-publish.
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*Clephas causes an army of nekololi ninjas to manifest atop a gigantic altar surrounded by green flames and commit seppuku to call forth their abyssal master, however only silence is returned.*
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One place where AI tools will probably shine is in artwork. To be blunt, the only thing that stands out in AI-made games so far is the visual shine. If you just want visual perfection, nothing does it like an AI. On the other hand, if you want visual brilliance, it will probably be reliant on actual artists until the first AIs gain self-awareness and human independence vanishes forever, lol.
Oh and AI-made games' writing is...terrifyingly bland and informative without showing any signs of creative flair whatsoever. You'd think that with all the examples of top-quality writing out there, the base quality would be at least slightly better, but it hovers around just below mediocre.
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1 hour ago, Novel21 said:
What really, so it's not much different from anime. I'm going to give it a try anyway.
Never said it was bad, it is actually a gem. I just thought the H was - typical of a lot of that era's VNs - intrusive and excessive at times. I also tend to prefer VNs where the protagonist is the central role or at the very least equal with the heroine on all levels. While there are a few paths (in the fandisc and in the main game) where he is central, the one that is considered canon has him being basically a side-character.
If I had to compare this game to another one, it would be Aokana, because Aokana was modeled after it in concept. This game is executed better though.
Edit: I used to make wall of text posts about stuff like this, but I just don't have that kind of energy in me anymore.
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I've seen the AI-generated games that are popping up on DLsite, and I even played a few. My first thought after doing so was... boredom. They look beautiful and technically hit the fetish points of those trying to play them, but they somehow manage to be completely bland and soulless nonetheless.
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4 hours ago, LAsuka said:
Games are excessively long and padded out because writers are paid based on the number of lines they write.
Even if you feel "every scene is necessary" or if you feel the VN is too short, that's because the writer did a very good job masking the fluff, and making the fluff seem "integral" to the story, when in actual fact, it adds absolutely no value, and is the writer just pulling ideas from (for lack of a better term) his ass. But hey, if you thought the fluff was good, more power to you. The work exists for the reader, after all.
Translators are the ones paid by the word, symbols or lines. While there might be VN writers out there paid by the line, most of the time when someone hires a writer it is either based on time or by the project. The company either pays a by the hour salary for time spent in office on the project or a single lump sum to contract for the project. I have only been hired with a by word count on three occasions in the last twenty years, since it is usually a recipe for contract disputes on both sides.
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23 hours ago, Zalor said:
Interesting that you say that most VNs are too short. I feel like VNs are awfully padded out a lot of the time. Instead of showing us what's necessary, they'll beat us with the same SOL dynamics for ages and consider that "character development." That said, I completely agree with you on Dies Irae. I feel like Ange doesn't like the work (which in and of itself is fine), but used the video as an excuse to bash on it without sticking to the topic at hand.
I should also add that the writing in Dies Irae's fight scenes is superb and I couldn't disagree more with this take from the video. It's about one of the few VNs where I actually go back time to time and reread the fights.
His comment about plotge being too padded/long is the one I was referring to. Mindless SOL and repeated dating scenes are unnecessary fluff even in SOL games, because they often don't do anything for the character dynamics or character development, which is supposed to be the point. I tend to subconsciously ignore that type of VN now that I don't feel like I have to play them all the time.
Generally speaking, even in a romance SOL VN, you only need one or at the most two dating scenes that don't lead into drama or the conflict of the path. However, some companies (Yuzusoft comes to mind) include way too many date scenes (not to mention interminably long h-scenes), resulting in a lot of unnecessary padding. To be blunt, it might sound counter-intuitive, but I often thought of dating as non-SOL content, because (unless the characters are married or the characters have had numerous lovers) dating is a deliberate departure from daily life, a low-level stress-test for romantic relationships because 'dating' has been so beautified in anime culture.
Despite jokes about cutting Kasumi's path (a lot of fans make that joke), there is very little you could cut from Dies Irae without weakening it. Dies Irae is a detail-oriented VN in the sense that every detail has its place in the story, right down to the deliberately exaggerated personalities of the main characters on both sides of the conflict.
Similarly, I can't see a reason to cut anything out of Muv-Luv Alternative (though Muv-luv itself could have done with a major trim).
Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai and the other games by that company actually base their appeal an their extremely detailed romance from high school to full adulthood, developing the relationship and having numerous tribulations. In that sense, I give that company kudos, because it got them a solid fanbase. However, it doesn't appeal to the people who want 'quick in, quick out' SOL romances like Wagamama High Spec.
Another thing that needs to be accounted for is reading speed. Even in English, there are people who simply don't read that quickly and those who read excessively fast. For me, completing an 800 page paperback novel in six hours is normal, but for most people that is the work of weeks of scattered reading or several days of concentrated reading. The disparity is inevitably going to lead to differing opinions and preferences for VN length and narration styles.
Someone who takes ten minutes to read a page in a novel probably isn't going to like a narrated battle scene that goes on for the equivalent of forty pages. Whereas for me it is simply entertaining.
Not to mention those VN fans who work full time aren't going to have enough free time to really enjoy a VN like Dies Irae even if they have an average or slightly above average reading speed. For someone like that, the wordiness of a game like Dies Irae isn't something to relish but something that eats into their free time more than they think is necessary.
... why am I defending my opponents? Stupid fairness brain...
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To be honest, this isn't one of your better videos... Length preferences are entirely a matter of taste and most VNs are too short, not too long. A lot of VNs cut out stuff so that they have excuses to make fandiscs, after all.
To some extent, I can agree that Hoshi Ori is too long, but for a certain crowd (who want to follow the romance until they are in the grave) it is an attractive game.
Your comments on Dies Irae were malicious and excessive. It was like listening to a 4chan troll's rant. I also found it amusing you were comparing it to Fate/Stay Night, when the experiences are completely different except for the beginning. Instead of pointing out things that could have been cut out to shorten the game (which was supposedly the premise of the video), you immediately decided to bash it in general, which kinda defeats the point of including it in the first place.
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DMM does this periodically, thoroughly blocking foreign IPs for months at a time, easing the restrictions for a while, then doing it again. Honestly, I dunno why they do it... I mean, all it does is cost them business.
Edit: I do know that early on it was an attempt to disrupt the pirates, but most of the people who do the actual work of ripping VNs live in China (incidentally why so many pirated VNs have spyware and ransomware on them), Korea, Southeast Asia, or Japan... IP blocks don't help at all with the Japanese, and it barely slows the rest, since the ones ripping are hackers in the first place. It's a pretty pointless way of doing things.
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59 minutes ago, av-x0 said:
I'm looking for works fine h-code of Routes(DVD),Routes(CD),ToHeart2 XRATED.
I find 3 h-codes of Routes.I tried with ith and ithvnr.
One of h-code for Routes(DVD) /HS1C@476999 /KF will force the game to close.
And applying the code for the Routes(DVD) /HB14@47CA20/kf and the one for the Routes(CD) /HS1C@476999/KF results in an infinite loop of text.
I thought that agth would work, but I couldn't find agth software on the net anymore.
vnr didn't work and textractor couldn't apply the code.
ToHeart2 XRATED couldn't find H-code on internet.
I did as much as I could, but I'm at the limit of my ability. please help me.Have you tried Textractor yet? You can get agth by downloading Translation Aggregator, as it comes attached to that program.
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12 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:
That's a shame, really. But I wonder if it is a good opportunity for Western developers to rise. I'd say, a big problem with VNs right now is how limited they are with the plots they cover and how annoying some of the cliches are, but smaller companies are generally a lot more creative.
Mmm... The question of whether this might stimulate the Western market... yes and no is the short answer, in my opinion.
Yes, some people will spend more on EVNs and thus stimulate some people to make more... but it probably won't be as much as you might think. In my experience, many JVN addicts tend to outright ignore EVNs if someone doesn't insistently push them to play them. The reason why this is a problem from the opinion of someone who wants an outcome where the JVN crowd heads for EVNs is that there are a huge number of untranslated 'classics' and high-quality VNs in Japan. Ironically, in recent years, the most creative ones are the least likely to get a translation, which actually makes sense, since mindless SOL is the flavor of the month right now in the localization industry (because it is easy to read and easy to translate).
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15 hours ago, ShiningBird said:
I agree with you, the Japanese are rapidly releasing new visual novels. The demand in the west is not so great that there will be enough translators for all the novelties, there will be no one and nothing to pay them.
The AI idea is interesting, but it seems to me that we will not be able to see it very soonThe JVN industry in Japan is dying (except for nukige). There are entire months where there are no serious releases these days. Covid pretty much killed most of the minor companies and several of the major ones. This just accelerated the trend that began in 2019, as demand for SOL games, which were the bread and butter of the industry, started to fall rapidly with the lower buying power of the demographics that primarily consumed them.
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18 minutes ago, Satsuki said:
I actually don't, really. I mean, there are hundreds of VNs coming out every year. Even if you don't count low-price short nukige, we still have a massive backlog of VNs. Meanwhile, we have like, what, 5-6 localization companies capable of releasing fewer than 30 VNs in total a year (more like fewer than 20, actually...).
Long story short, localization works taking too long, and new VNs coming out too fast, plus the decades of backlog, so it's not at all a surprise that we still have a heck ton of untranslated stuff...
It's probably time for someone to train an AI specialized in translating VN already
I wonder how they'd even go about that, considering how varied the quality of Japanese to English translations are... Even if you provided every localized game and the original text as learning material, it probably wouldn't let it produce an accurate translation (though they'd probably also need to feed it high-quality prose in massive amounts to make it comprehensible).
More likely, you'd get something either slightly below or slightly above average, which isn't that high of quality either way... Though I imagine just cutting out the translation and editing staff would save a lot of money for localization companies... lol
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6 hours ago, ittaku said:
Not a bad summary, but you left out a massive reason they're not very profitable - piracy. People feel a sense of entitlement to porn, and also a degree of guilt with buying porn, so they pirate it instead. It's estimated there are 10x as many pirated copies of eroge compared to the number of units sold. Add a section of the community that is toxic and encourages piracy or discourages purchasing because they have some personal beef, and you've got a clusterfuck right there. Whilst pirating is rife in all media areas, eroge seems particularly bad, which makes it much worse when the profit margins are so slim now. VN translation is not a good business model, and virtually all the Western localisers do it because they're passionate about the medium, and most of the staff accept relatively poor pay for the same reason.
It is an issue, and one that doesn't really need to happen with localized VNs. To be blunt, compared to JVNs that haven't been localized, the prices are unbelievably cheap even in the most expensive cases. There is no excuse for pirating localized VNs... especially since sales on digital versions are a regular thing if you just wait.
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My list (ten):
Kamio Ami (Semiramis no Tenbin)- You don't mind being manipulated, as long as it is by a pretty girl.
Chitose (Silverio Vendetta)- You like functional yandere heroines and don't mind getting the shit beat out of you to make you a better person.
Belche (Draculius)- You like complex and layered relationships with women, especially ones where the woman serves multiple roles beyond wife and lover in your life.
Ritia (Evolimit)- You are willing to overlook a bit of cybernetic modification if it is for an adorable and kind-hearted girl who also happens to have the hobby of leading armies of young people against giant robots.
Kei (Dies Irae)- Being enemies doesn't mean much to you beyond spice to a relationship, and you have a thing for strong women with a serious fragile side.
Aria (Yurikago Yori Tenshi Made)- You don't mind patiently answering your partner's questions because figuring out her unique personal language is as intriguing to you as her body.
Velvet (Akeiro Kaikitan)- You like the quiet type, even if they seem a bit gloomy, and you have a bit of a savior complex.
Suzu (Ayakashibito)- You prefer to be as close as family with your partner, and the stronger that bond is, the better you feel about it.
Adelheit (Floral Flowlove)- You like taking care of your partner and the more hopelessly lazy they are, the more you like it. Her great singing voice and kind heart are just the cherry on top though.
Tonoko (Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no)- You prefer to be the more mature figure in the relationship, and you have a taste for girls that are smarter than you. If they are kind-hearted and sensitive, that only makes it better.
Barbarian and/or Sword & Sorcery Adventure games?
in Recommendations
Posted
https://vndb.org/v23199/chars#chars
Pretty sure this protagonist qualifies. He's from a destroyed barbarian tribe, and he is a slave fighter for the first half of the game. Dunno if he'll hit your Conan fetish though.