Lambda

Boring introduction to understand why I'm making this tutorial. (You can skip this if you want)
So this tutorial is to create that so called "mechanical immersion" when you play a VN, kinda (?)
Personally I read old VNs with the help of chiitrans for parsing the text, to being able to immerse myself into the story I need to read it in full-screen mode (I just can't read it otherwise) and this is not a problem when I read new novels that allow me to kinda cheat and use chiitrans even in full-screen mode but what about old VNs? With VNs that have resolutions of 640x480 or 800x600 you can't go full-screen and use chiitrans at the same time, the parser will either look really bad or it simply won't show.
Now, to fix this issue I used to use a virtual machine called Oracle VM VirtualBox, that program allowed me to scale the screen at any size I wanted so I could play the VNs in "full-screen" mode and it kinda worked... but the problem is... using a virtual machine was a pain in the ass in general  so I searched for an easier solution and here it is:
(End of the boring introduction)
 
What you will need:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ss3izesipa8ecca/res.rar
(OnTopReplica, ResizeEnableRunner and maybe Windows on top)
All the softwares are free and ad-free too but you can scan them if you want.
Tutorial:
1) Download, unpack and install everything (some of them don't require any installation).
2) See if you can take a shortcut by using ResizeEnableRunner, this wont work most of the time and it will make some VNs look bad, but you can try if you want.
Just resize the screen of the VN by clicking on the borders of the VN itself and while holding the left click drag it and expand it, just like you do with any other program.
 
 3) If that method doesn't work (80% of the time) or you just don't like how it looks, then use OnTopReplica.
a) Open the program and you will see this:
Left click on it...trust me on this one.

b) Select your VN and click in "-whole-"
c) Once your VN is selected you will know because the program will duplicate the screen, now you can resize it but that's not what we want to do, we want to go full-screen mode.
So go to: Resize > Full-screen. (you can also double click on the duplicated screen and it will do the same thing)
d) Now this is the important part, you will need to advance the text of the VN with your keyboard but you can also use your mouse.
Position the VN behind the duplicated window, then right click on the duplicated screen and click on "enable click-through", the duplicated screen will now be "transparent" so you can click through it.

Here is how it looks and a comparison using the stretching mode (with ResizeEnableRunner) and using the duplicated screen.
NOTE: The "resize enable runner" program uses the same method that Visual Novel Reader to stretch the visual novels.
Problems you may encounter while using the software:

*Some VNs will love to stay on top of the screen or they won't let you use, in my case chiitrans or the parser you normally use, for those cases use WindowsOnTop. 
Open it > assign a hotkey to it > and when have that issue just force the program to stay on top, this is how I solved it with some VNs, for example setsunai, or just old VNs.
 
*Why I'm seeing black borders? It's annoying!

 
Easy peasy Japanesey, now you can read your VNs full of runes and 象形文字 in full-screen mode for a perfect immersion.
Btw, if you are wondering about the delay between the duplicated screen and the original, well there isn't any. (I'm sure there is probably some but it's imperceptible)

You need to know something about me: I love cheese. Lovelovelove it.
Don’t know what to get me for my birthday? Cheese. Want to cheer me up at the end of a long day? Cheese. Watching the timer tick down on the bad guy’s bomb and you don’t know which wire to cut? Cheese. That doesn’t even make sense and I don’t care. You know why? Cheese.
And since you were kind enough to bring up the topic of cheese, I’ll go one step further and say the following: not much in life measures up to a good unpasteurized cheese. Something really rich and complex and made from raw milk. The good stuff. The real stuff. Something that makes you feel (and smell) like you’ve died and gone to cheese heaven. I’m talking cheese with a capital C.
But here’s the problem: I live in the United States, and here on this side of the pond, the FDA takes a dim view of unpasteurized dairy products such as these. In fact, it’s actually illegal to import or sell certain kinds of raw milk cheese here in the States — a traditional Camembert, for instance. There’s been some debate among foodies about the factual basis for that decision, but since I don’t know much about the science one way or the other, I’ll leave those debates to wiser minds than mine.
Anyway, in theory, the FDA ban shouldn’t really affect me much. The kinds of raw milk cheeses I prefer — funky, nuanced, mature — all pass these FDA requirements with flying colors. Yup, I should just be able to buy my curds and be on my whey. (Yeah, I did just write that. And no, I’m not taking it back.) But the reality of things isn’t nearly so kind. Most big chain supermarkets won’t carry unpasteurized cheeses at all, regardless of their provenance or if they’ve been approved for sale by the FDA. And why should they? Too much work for too little reward. Not only does unpasteurized cheese carry a certain stigma of food-borne illness, it requires extra care in shipping, handling, staff education, selling — and the demand just isn’t there yet to justify such efforts.
Sure, there are specialty cheese shops where one can go to buy the good stuff. (They’re called cheesemongers, which sounds pretty baller if you ask me.) And if you’re in the know, you might even have ways of getting some unadulterated cheese from the curd-loving community — unofficial food co-ops and that sort of thing. But for many people, unpasteurized cheese is simply something they don’t know much about or have easy access to. And so, they don’t buy it.

This obviously poses a problem for cheese importers. Their business model is simple: acquire product from cheesemakers overseas, ship it to the United States, then repackage and sell it for enough to cover the costs of importing — plus a small profit. If the potential market is too small, however, it’s often not worth the cost of bringing the cheese over at all; they’d never recoup their initial investment. In that scenario, the importers go out of business, and we’re all stuck eating great big orange hunks of Velveeta™ brand cheeze food product instead.
So what some importers have started doing, in partnership with the international cheesemakers themselves, is offering alternate pasteurized versions of these very same cheeses for import and resale in America. They’re a little different from the originals — the pasteurization process has stripped away some of the quirkiness and complexity that made the cheeses so interesting in the first place — but they’re products that the big supermarket chains are now willing to stock and sell. And for many people, a good pasteurized cheese that’s somewhat close to the original is better than no cheese at all. As a bonus, the sales volume generated by the pasteurized cheeses often (but not always) allows the importers to bring over the unpasteurized version to those specialty shops stateside.
Win-win, right? Depends who you ask.
For example, a foodie friend of mine is absolutely livid, saying this whole pasteurized cheese business has left a bad taste in his mouth. He’s so upset, in fact, that he’s vowed never to support these particular cheese importers again. “Don’t you get it, Darbury?” he demands of me. “This is cheese censorship!”
He’s a good guy, my friend, but he has a flair for the dramatic.
“They’re selling people bastardized versions of these cheeses. Shoppers see Camembert on the label, but they’re not actually getting the real unpasteurized Camembert that people in France are eating. It might have started out that way, but they sucked the soul out of it for the sake of more sales here in America. And unless people research their cheese ahead of time, they won’t even know they’re not getting the real thing. The cheese importers are lying to us for a quick buck!”
Like I said, dramatic.
While I can’t swear to it, I tell him, I doubt the import companies are trying to systematically deceive the cheese eaters of America. I mean, the Camembert says “pasteurized” right there on the label. How much more notice do they have to give consumers? A giant red sticker that says, “WARNING! THIS CAMEMBERT IS NOT THE SAME AS THE UNPASTEURIZED CAMEMBERT YOU CAN GET IN FRANCE! IF YOU HAVE ANY RESPECT FOR YOURSELF, DON’T BUY THIS”? Besides, I say, now people are getting exposed to all sorts of different cheeses they might not have had access to otherwise. And even if those cheeses aren’t the pure and unadulterated experiences of the originals, they’re pretty close. Plus, those pasteurized alternatives are broadening the market for cheese in general, which means more foreign cheesemakers will be interested in importing their products to the States in the future. And hey, once the public demand is large enough, more big supermarkets might consider carrying unpasteurized cheese.
“What, do you work for the cheese importers or something? Why are you sticking up for them? They’re just rolling around in big piles of money and Brie right now, laughing at us. People deserve the cheeses that their makers originally intended. Simple as that. Either give us the original cheese, or don’t bother. Anything else is disrespectful to the vision of the dairy farmer. Anyway, I’m not interested in expanding the general audience for dairy products. I just want to be able to buy the cheeses I like, the way that I like them.”
But wait, I say. Aren’t a lot of the cheese importers also bringing over the unpasteurized originals as part of the deal that lets them sell the pasteurized versions?
“Seriously, Darbury — how much are they paying you to say stuff like this? There’s no guarantee they’ll ever bring over that original cheese. They just dump the pasteurized version on store shelves with some vague promise that, if enough people buy it, they might bring over the unpasteurized one. Whatever. And even when they do follow through, they do a crap-ass job of it. You know about Casu Marzu, right? It’s this amazing cheese made in Sardinia, filled with thousands of live, wriggling maggots. Sounds totally intense, right? You cut it open and they all come pouring out. But when the importers bring that cheese to America, you know what? There are no maggots in it. None.”
Well yeah, I say. I think that’s against every single customs regulation on the books. You can’t bring live maggots into the country. It’s straight up illegal. And kind of disgusting.
“Duh. Of course it is. Unlike some people, Darbury, I try to actually know what I’m talking about before I open my big mouth. What I’m trying to tell you is that if the importers really cared about what the cheese-enthusiast community thought, they’d put maggots back into the cheese before reselling it here. But they don’t. Because they’re greedy and lazy. And that’s why they’ll never see another dollar of my money.”
Wait, I say. Hold up. You want them to put maggots back into the cheese?
“Yeah. The original cheese had maggots before it was imported, so it should have maggots when I buy it here. Anything else is a lie.”
But they’re not even the same maggots, I say. Replacement maggots are no more authentic than the absence of maggots would be.
“Stop arguing semantics with me, Darbury. Censorship is censorship. If there aren’t any maggots in it, then it’s not Casu Marzu. And I won’t support cheese censorship. This is how Nazi Germany started.”
I slowly back away.
“Don’t let them win, Darbury! If you really care about cheese, it’s time to buy a cow and a couple of goats and learn how to make your own raw milk cheese. That way, you don’t have to sit around waiting for whatever those lying cheese importers are willing to foist on you.”
Then my friend throws a smoke bomb at the ground directly in front of him and vanishes, bad-ass ninja style.
"Don't let them win, Darburrrryyyyyy..."
Like I said, dramatic.
I’m glad he disappeared when he did, because what I was going to say next would have driven him completely over the edge. Here’s the thing: while I love raw milk cheese, I also enjoy having the pasteurized option available to me. For various reasons, most of my cheese eating is done in public places like trains or planes, and I’d prefer not to have random people look over and catch me noshing on something that smells like an elk just shat out a gangrenous foot. Certain things should be enjoyed in the privacy of one’s home; it’s just common courtesy. I don’t want to be That Guy on the Train, and those pasteurized cheeses go a long way toward helping me not be Him.
There’s more I could say about cheese, but — crap! — I just remembered this was supposed to be a blog about visual novels. Sorry! I honestly don’t know what came over me. Never sit down to write a post when you’re feeling hungry, amirite?
Lesson learned. Next time, I promise I’ll write something about visual novels. Unlike this blog post, which was clearly about cheese.