Mr Poltroon

3/10 for trying.
 
Not that I'd do any better. So much so, I wont even attempt to make one myself. 

Is your blood boiling because of certain, recently locked posts? Well boy do I have a solution for you! Come and harmonize your rage with today's winner "Ramenadon".
 

 


 
 
 

 
   

    (~2 weeks pass)    

 
   

 
   

 
   

 
 

I've been wanting to say it for a while now, but why do you actually always feel the need to show your worth by belittling literally the whole EVN scene? I mean, of course you can boast about how your art looks nice, because it does, but at the same time if you're really confident in the quality of the art, can't you just say so without insulting every OELVN artist at the same time? What's more, taste in art is a very subjective topic. You say that japanese artists have a better approach of anatomy : Surely you've read KEY works right? Not sure I can say that the body proportions are "professionals" (I mean, dem eyes that take half of the face...), even though I do love Key art style. Believe it or not, Western people (and not necessarily us, since we are people who are accustomed to japanese animation) might actually prefer games where girls actually don't seem to all have breast implants, or have ridiculous body proportion that I doubt it's actually possible to attain in reality, or faces where the nose is nearly non existent and where eyes take half of the space?
 
I just find it really rude, especially since you're partially also criticizing people that, them at least, managed to release a completed project.
 
Also, from time to time, some humility wouldn't hurt. Hopefully you know this word if you're a writer. Maybe instead of going "I shall bestow upon thee the privilege of participating to what will become the most awesome project that you'll ever see!" , something like "I'd like to have some help brainstorming potential idea for the scenario!" would be a good change of pace. Well, I might be asking too much I guess.
 
Anyway, still, best of luck on your future endeavors. Hopefully this time you'll manage to reach the kickstarter phase.
 
I saw what you did there...

Me too, me too!
 

You know what's bollocks?

Being so bad at a game you can't ever finish it or find out the story... (Sengoku Rance)

OK, I finally got it to work, I could never get this site's version to work, no matter what compatibility I tried running it in. The game would crash as soon as it tired to load.

So, I went to this other site where a member posted their uploaded RAR files of the original Japanese game. I got it, then used the DVD English patch that was included with this site's download of the game. Now, even that didn't quite work at first, as the game would immediately go to a Black screen and stay that way upon the intro movie being played.    I should mention that while my computer isn't top of the line spec wise, it having a Hexacore CPU, an NVIDIA 760 4GB FTW edition, and 8 GB of RAM still makes it a force to be reckoned with, and shouldn't (In my opinion) be having movie playing issues.

When I mounted the games ISO, I noticed two folders at the top of the list, movie-hi and movie-low. I took the file from the movie-low folder and pasted it into the games folder, and BAM! problem solved. This might just be a problem of not having a codec to play the intro movie properly, but I doubt it. 
Hopefully, this post will help out someone else that's having the same issues as me.

Hello everyone . I wanted to let you know that Without Within has just been released for free on Steam:
 
http://store.steampowered.com/app/345650
 
I am sure a few people here have kindly voted for the game when it was on Greenlight, so I wanted to say thank you .
 
Please feel free to check out it! And if you want to leave a review, that would be a big help. Thanks so much folks .

Too often does a handful of poorly-translated lines blemish an otherwise splendid fan translation. "What does this phrase mean?" "How can I construct an English equivalent for this?" "Why does my mom hate me?"
 
Fret no longer, for I've come upon the paragon of modern ingenuity. I introduce to you TranslationParty.com!
 

 
How does this work? Well, type in any phrase, and Translation Party will put it through the flawless Bing Translator (Google Translate was formerly used, but that was a little too flawless), then put the Japanese result back into English, then put the English result back into Japanese, and so forth until the phrase finally repeats itself. Thus, perfect equilibrium is achieved.
 
Take an example:
 

 
Naturally, inputting Japanese works as well. Take a look at this sentence that only a linguistic genius could translate properly:
 

 
Our lord and savior Translation Party eventually produced:
 

 
Unfortunately, this exponential duplication of mammaries came to a tragic end when Bing Translator exceeded its limit. It is well that perfection should come at a cost, after all.
 
Now go out there and translate some timeless masterpiece. Only your own patience limits your literary potential!

Alright people, tone down the chatter.
While talking about... er... pretty pictures may be rather interesting to you, it hasn't got much to do with the TL Project.
So please, try to keep the thread moderately on-topic.
 
Let's all continue waiting for the slaves or the return of our hacker.

You know what's bollocks?

Being so bad at a game you can't ever finish it or find out the story... (Sengoku Rance)

You know what's bollocks?

Being so bad at a game you can't ever finish it or find out the story... (Sengoku Rance)

You know what's bollocks?

Being so bad at a game you can't ever finish it or find out the story... (Sengoku Rance)

You know what's bollocks?

Being so bad at a game you can't ever finish it or find out the story... (Sengoku Rance)

Thank you, Major! It's everything I could have asked for. And much more. I dedicate this hatemail reveal to you. I tried to keep the editing to a minimum, but I did censor the language and clarify one or two phrases.
 

 
Sometimes the hatemail is so absurd I can't help myself and I respond. Doesn't happen very often, but it happened with this one. Enjoy, and please take your seats: the revelations in this exchange may be overwhelming.  
* I think he meant "or"
   
 
* I can neither confirm nor deny this statement ** Trying to keep a straight face  
 
 

Alright, it was about time I tried this out.

So now that we have a creative corner, I figured I would try and contribute some my knowledge to the wonderful people around here. That and maybe I am just bored and done all of my assignments. 
 
I am still pretty new around here, but if I can help even one person with this, well… that is good enough I guess.


So, as the title says, we will be talking about one of the main struggles almost every single writer will go through at least once during one of their projects. Whether that project be a novel, visual novel, heck even essays and translations to a much lesser extent; it will strike all of us eventually. It is more than likely that you, the reader, have already experienced Writer’s Block at some point, so you already understand the pains associated with it. Or maybe you are one of the lucky few who have never had to deal with such a thing, in which case I envy you entirely and completely.
 
You could be going at breakneck speed through your manuscript, writing tens of thousands of words without having any issue, but sooner or later… you may find yourself smacking your head against a brick wall of blankness unable to figure out where to go from where you are.
 
 
So first off, let’s talk about Writer’s Block and what it is.
 
 
What is Writer’s Block?
 
Writer’s Block, by definition, is when an author loses his ability to produce new work thus creating a block in his creative train of thought. This block can run you down for a few hours, to a much longer time over the span of years when in extreme cases.
So looking at this as writers, this is not something we particularly want. We want to be able to avoid this sort of thing happening to us. But how do we do that?
Well the tough answer to that is that we cannot just so easily prevent it. There are some ways that help keep our minds fresh and circulating new ideas, but there is no sure fire way to keep yourself safe from breaking against the Great Wall of Blanking Out.
Writer’s Block can be entirely discouraging for an author, and for someone who is just getting used to writing larger works; can be absolutely catastrophic in terms of their will to keep writing. I know when I first started trying to write my first manuscript for the first… second… third… fourth… fifth… and sixth times. I honestly lost track after that, but my real problem was that I would get so far in, maybe about 2000 words and all of a sudden everything I had in my head would simply vanish. The Great Wall of Blanking Out would suddenly raise itself in front of my word count and would not allow it to progress any further.

So let’s talk about ways to prevent Writer’s Block, even if it is in a small way. None of it is a guarantee, as everyone is different; but these are the ways that I have found to work and that have worked for the people I have helped through their own Writer’s Block issues.
 
Preventing Writer’s Block:
 
So as we know, Writer’s Block affects our ability to create new work. This does not mean that it only affects new project ideas, but rather it affects the entire creation process. You get so far in and all of a sudden your train of thought is just gone and you have nothing left you can put out because you have hit The Great Wall of Blanking Out. Some don’t even make it as far as the keyboard, thinking that they have not developed their idea enough, or that they just do not have time.
 
So let’s get down to it:
 
1. Outlines Can Be Your Bible/Insert Religious Text
 
One problem I have seen a lot of people run into is that they can go so far in, but all of a sudden lose everything they were about to write. When they just got an idea and started writing, they did not think ahead, and only knew the general plot outline of what they wanted.
 
That is not to say you can't do this, but you run the risk of hitting a wall sooner or later if you don't really know where you are going. Kinda like wandering around the woods when you have never been inside those particular woods before. Go too far and you may end up a tad lost.
 
Taking time and writing an outline of the events that take place in the story is an excellent idea. It provides you with a foundation to build upon when you go to sit down and write. This outline is merely just an outline, so just like your first draft (which I will get to next) you can spill your raw creativity into it and just let the ideas flow out on to the page.
 
Your outline doesn't even have to make coherent sense, just so long as it gives you an idea of the direction you are heading. As long as you have a general idea of what you are doing, the risk of suddenly losing yourself and your story in the first 5-10k words can be greatly reduced.
 
2. Your First Draft is not Your Final Draft
 
Here is another hang up that can easily discourage anyone who is writing. As writers, it makes sense that we have all read wonderful stories. Masterpieces in our own eyes. So obviously, when writing our own works, we want them to be just as good if not better if you are feeling really ambitious.
 
So you sit down and you start writing. You get through the first chapter and you feel pretty darn satisfied, but you take a look through what you have written… and realize that it is not to the quality that you want it to be… so you start editing… but all of a sudden, you realize there is more wrong with it so you start editing that stuff too. Before you know it you have spent two hours editing the first chapter/portion of your work and you just feel absolutely drained from the ordeal. Most people I talk to end up losing their creative flair for the work after that, or if they get any further, end up losing it after subsequent bouts of this over editing process.
So what is the problem here?
 
Editing your first draft to look like a final draft before you have even written the whole thing is just bad news. The Writer and the Editor within you coexist, but they should not be working together at this early stage in the game. The first draft, just like outline, is where you can poor out your raw creativity and just roll with it. No author just sat down, puked out 100k+ words and created a masterpiece… and if they claim to have done so, I am going to call absolute bullshit.
 
Writing a good work takes time, and one needs to force their inner Editor to just calm down and be patient. While the Editor is critical and meticulous, the Writer is freeform and creative. The critical side of the Editor can stifle the creativity of the Writer if they are working side by side at the same time. They do complement one another, just… not at the same time.
 
3. Keep Writing
 
Another pitfall that one might want to avoid is not continuing. You may start with the intention of finishing, but maybe tomorrow you just “don’t feel like it”. But then, the next day after that… you find that you “don’t feel like it again”.
 
Once you start making an excuse not to write like that, you are already on a road to pain when it comes to finishing your work. Writing a story is a time investment, and you are going to have to want it in order for you to even think about finishing it. “Not feeling like it” just isn't in the equation.
 
The problem with this, is that after enough days of not feeling it, you might decide to come back to it. However, this is another lead in to allowing The Great Wall of Blanking Out to encroach on what you are trying to write. Writer’s Block will settle in and all of a sudden you have nothing for what you want to write.
Even if you only write a single sentence, coming back and visiting your project each day is a good way to prevent it from fading in your mind. For one of the main things that Writer’s Block thrives off… is stagnation in the creative sense.
 
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I struggled for years with Writer’s Block. I first started writing original works back in grade four. Until about four years ago, I had never finished anything. Writer’s Block would simply come over and snatch my ideas away from me. Once I hit Grade 9 and came up with a new story (where my Username originates), I just kept in my head, afraid of having development of that halted by another bout of Writer’s Block.
These are just a few techniques you can use to prevent it. Curing Writer’s Block however, is a lot easier than one might think. It requires a lot of willpower, but it can be done.
 
LinovaA’s Method for Working through Writer’s Block:
 
Now while it is no guarantee, as with all of the things in this guide (oh gods this has become a guide?), it may help you if you find yourself in the middle of a particularly long bout of Writer’s Block.
So what happens when you hit this Great Wall of Blanking Out? You run out of ideas. So where do you even go there?
 
The best way to explain is to show an example of what I did.
I sat down and looked at the paper and decided I needed to come up with something of my own creation. Doesn’t matter if it is cliché, but it needs to have a small level of originality to it.

So the best bet was to just come up with a random scenario. However that is normally impossible with Writer’s Block. So here is a format I came up with
 
<Adjective> <noun> <verb> <noun>.
That is all.
 
It’s best not to agonize over this. Seriously just pick any random adjective and any random noun that fits for the first two.

Of course it ended up being this for me:
 
Purple Elephants attack Earth.
 
Not exactly the most elegant of scenarios, but we’ll work with it. So now that one has this completely strange scenario, you need to expand it somehow. So you simply need to add one detail at a time.
 
Purple Elephants attack Earth and enslave humanity.
 
Great. Just great.
 
Add a few details, but after adding a few more details in this fashion… you take your pencil and scratch out something and edit the grammar of the sentence. I of course edited out Purple Elephants.

Earth is attacked and humanity is enslaved by pseudo-Humans from Titan, enforcing a dystopian society.
 
Voila. A scenario. This generally will not work the first time to fix your Writer’s Block. You need to do this over and over again until your brain starts easing up and those little details start coming to you much quicker. Or perhaps until you no longer need to use the simplistic format I laid out earlier.
 
While a lot of people would say to go out and wait for the ideas to come to you, I believe and more proactive approach of force starting your creative engine to be the more efficient way when in a deep rooted bout of Writer’s Block. Of course, the less proactive approach may work with you more. I can't tell you if it is or not because everyone is different.
 
The End:


I do hope I have helped someone out here. I understand Writer’s Block being a huge challenge for a lot of people who are into writing like myself. Hopefully you come out of reading this learning something new, and if you didn’t… well thanks for giving me the time of day regardless.  None of this is guaranteed to help, but hopefully I have helped give you some tools to help you keep writing and avoid Writer's Block, and perhaps even conquer it.
 
So yeah, thanks for stopping by and giving this a read.
 
 
Edit: I will be coming back to fix any typos when I get home.

I'm curious to see a picture of Tay. We should get a cult going on here demanding Tay's picture. ;P

Happy birthday, Babiker. You were almost born on a great day.

If it there's nothing else to talk about, maybe not talking at all would be an option?

He's Azengar. He was on the team originally and I suppose he did stuff.
 
Now he's busy with real life, so even though a lot of stuff has been translated and edited, we can't add it back to the game. So we're waiting for his return, or the work of the slave (volunteers who don't know what they are doing but at least are trying).

True enough
 
I might just end up getting the all-ages version myself 

As should be apparent.