SilverLi

A preview of Oyako Rankan, an NTR eroge from AliceSoft, along with an English prologue patch and Let's Play video.   [Preview][NTR] Oyako Rankan + English prologue patch + Let's Play video

Looks like I missed out   I probably won't be able to join in the future anyways though 
 
Good enough that I can read Zebhra's recap ~ Once you guys get reaaaallly good you should totally record them 

Enjoy your miserable life. Grind until you die.
 
Agarest Zero is the second game but it is a prequel to Agarest GoW. I played the games in release order though. GoW, Zero and GoW2. But the correct order is Zero, GoW and GoW2. I only ever put effort into GoW and failed after 140 hours of gameplay. I can't really help you with that.

For those who keep up with FuwaReviews (and I hope you do!), I just finished up my reviews of both of the Fault games that currently have English translations by Sekai Project.
 
Milestone One
Milestone Two
 
If you can't tell, I think this series shows a lot of promise, but I'm not entirely sure I like the release schedule.  What do you all think?
 
Spoilers in spoiler tags please!

Laziness, and a reluctance to think for themselves.
 

I think the plan was to release Shiny Days in August, Seinarukana in September and probably one or two additional games during Fall. But they messed up and got delayed when the new site took way too much time and resources. Hopefully we could see an update in a week or two about the game when everything about Shiny Days is cooling down with all the shipping and patches. A November release of Seinarukana is maybe a bit optimistic but that's my guess.

Just got some AliceSoft stuff in and thought I could share it here. I needed stuff to tide me over until the next Rance game/OVA drops.
 
C82 AliceSoft set:

Well I am happy to see they are at least responding to the potential customers and give us information. They seem eager at least.

Up to date I haven't really visited a lot of countries. Denmark, Egypt, Turkey, Greece (Crete) and England. The biggest experience was probably Egypt when I saw the pyramids and bathed in the Red Sea. London is always an experience when you live in a decently large city compared to my country's standard (roughly 110k population) compared to London with a couple of millions.
 
But what do I want to visit:
China - I am really interested in the Chinese history and it would be awesome to experience it.
USA - Route 66. I love driving. Driving that road and at the same time experience USA in a different view would be nice.
Bigger cities/capitols in Europe. I really think the eastern part of Europe is interesting and probably really beautiful with the unique style.
Austria/Switzerland - Skiing in the Alps.
Russia - Just to see the country with my own eyes. I am fascinated by the Russian history too. 
Japan - Yet again the history is fascinating. 
 
The list probably goes on when I figure out new stuff. Yes I have a history fetish.

Hey everyone. I'm glad to announce that we're reviving the Mentorship Program after reworking it a bit. The thread will be divided into two main parts, one talking about the overall changes and one talking about the recruitment process. Feel free to share your thoughts once you're done reading this wall of text. 
 
 
Rework
 
Introduction to the Mentorship Program: New VN players will be able to easily request a player mentor who has some experience playing VNs and is willing to be a friend and contact as they begin this great adventure. The mentor will email/PM an introduction to the new player, talk about the VN player's first game (and, ideally, nerd out with them), suggest follow-up games based on the new player's preferences, and be willing to answer quick questions such as "How do I make my computer Japanese?" or "What is a senpai-sama?".   What was changed with the rework: How is this different from the original experiment? Well, we tweaked a few stuff here and there. I don't know exactly how many Mentors we had, but I believe starting with too many was a mistake, so we're going to start low and add more with time if needed. For starters, me and Tay thought about going with 5. I'm now the Mentorship Coordinator, meaning I'll be responsible for gathering feedback, redirecting the mentees to their mentors and all that. I'm basically going to be the one doing what Tay would have had to do, giving him some more space to focus on other aspects of the website that need a bit more of his attention. This also ensures a more efficient communication route for everyone, as we all know Tay is a really busy man. You could say that I'm a quality of life bridge. We don't have anything set yet, but I'd like to post an update regarding the project status every now and then, maybe monthly. This would contain feedback from all the involved parties. What the mentors think about how we're doing, what the mentees think about the usefulness of the project, my very own thoughts about the efficiency and progress we achieved compared to the previous update. I highly value communication, not only between the involved, but with the community as well, it's a way to show that we are, in fact, doing what we volunteered to do, and that we're a reliable way to introduce someone to the genre.  
 
Recruitment
 
Now that I explained what was changed, let's go for the fun part, the recruitment.
 
Requirements: Played at least 4 of the Starter VNs listed below, and find it enjoyable to talk about them. Capacity to open-mindedly nerd out about visual novels. You need to be nice.  Have some Fuwa exposure: Been a member of Fuwanovel for at least six months and have at least 100 posts.  
Starter VNs: Katawa Shoujo Planetarian Narcissu Fate/Stay Night Clannad G-Senjou Steins;Gate Eden* Higurashi Saya no Uta Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo   What you'll do as a mentor: You'll get an email/PM with a new mentee's contact information. With that in hands, you'll send that person a PM/email (based on their preferences) introducing yourself, telling a little about your history with VNs, and whatever else you feel fit for a first message. After that, essentially, just be nice and be a friend. Answer their questions, talk about the game they're playing, nerd out with them (Sakura = best girl), offer game suggestions, show them around Fuwa, help them find the next game to try, etc. Make friends!  
What changed from before?
I added a few VNs to the Starter list, and with that, I felt that increasing the minimum amount of read VNs from the list was needed. While some might find some of the additions questionable, I believe lots of people are being introduced to the genre through steam, which makes games available there a bit more valuable. The same goes for short and popular ones such as SnU and for ones with great anime adaptations such as Steins;Gate. I'll probably add more eventually, but that should be a good list for now. I removed the part that said "Not a big time commitment", as that's something entirely up to how your interaction goes and to how many mentees you choose to take. Just keep in mind that as we're trying to have just a few mentors for now, we might have to set a minimum of newcomers each will have to take care of, just not sure how many. I didn't mentioned the Handbook because I'm still to work on it, some small changes will be made and some will be updated, don't worry, you'll have it once it's ready.  
 
Final words
 
I find the Mentorship Program to be a really great thing we have here, and simply letting it die would be a shame, that's why I decided to talk with Tay and revive it. Interested in being a Mentor? Send me a PM with the following form filled and we'll talk more there. This thread is an announcement and the changes should be discussed here, please don't post your form here nor PM me with your thoughts about the rework, unless you, for whatever reason, really don't want to make them public. 
 
 

Well, I guess I absolutely have to play it now, lol.   That way I can bash it or praise it properly. 

Down's assistance has been invaluable, and his dedication to the Days series really shows.  He deserves a free copy of the game for all the work he's done.

And with it, the amusement derived from Tay’s mailbox. Boo!
 
 
A change which has been quite obvious and welcome. The increased discussion on the forums, and the increased translation projects and development on the boards have been fantastic. In the past a lot of the activity on the forums has been just people mucking around, which is not something that's sustainable into the future.

Contents of this Update:
1. Introduction 2. Site analytics 3. Abbreviated financial report 4. Loligeddon feedback survey 5. Commentary from Tay       ----------------------------------- 1. Introduction   I hope the information in this community update is both useful and interesting to those of you who want to keep a finger on Fuwa’s pulse. This report may not look like a lot, but it took a lot of time to compile (especially trying to compensate for an analytics bug which I’m incapable of fixing myself). Now that it’s done, I’m already noticing things I should have included but forgot. Just remind me of questions you have in the thread below, and I’ll try to reply to everything.   - Tay     ----------------------------------- 2. Site analytics   A few weeks ago we started paying for a second, small server to host our analytics software. There’s a bug in the software which makes it difficult to get hard numbers for the past few weeks, but I think I found a clever work-around. Here are the numbers as best as I'm able to find:    Front site: 4-5k unique visitors a day and something like 7-8k daily hits
  Fuwazette Blog: Weekdays: 1.7k unique visitors (average); Weekends: 2-4k unique visitors per day following VNTS posts
  Forums: 6-10k unique visitors a day, 11-15k hits per day
  Reviews Hub: 40-60 unique visitors a day; each time a FuwaReviews review goes up, it spikes to several hundred uniques per day for several days
  VNTL-Moon: ~60 unique visitors a day, ~100 hits     ----------------------------------- 3. Abbreviated Financial report   Many members have been extremely generous with their donations, and from the bottom of my heart I want to say THANK YOU. All donated site funds have been put directly towards site costs: I’ve saved up a 3 month rainy day fund (split between donations and my personal funds) We’ve had one full round of software license fees We paid $100 past site debts Put aside funds for new Reviews Hub theme $70 spent on developing an articles hub site which ended up being extremely unsecure and ex’d by Nayleen (Maef and I were SO CLOSE). $40 of the $70 came from saved-up donation funds. Free: The feeling you get flirting with Flutterz or getting clever ideas in a PM from Eclipsed Free: #Renenvy   ----------------------------------- 4. Feedback Survey: Loli Policy   I promised Sanah a follow-up survey about Loligeddon, and haven’t been able to follow-up until now (well, technically, a bit later in October). If you’d like to give feedback on the Loli policies, have suggestions for changing them, or have something you want to tell me, here’s the link:   https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Yp2ADO3AROV7LvQ3mS47g0sINkFn-OEaPRPf6ZHzsqE/viewform?usp=send_form    Any proposed changes will be considered with our law maester when I next talk to him. There’s an option to include your forums username and be added to a follow-up roundatable discussion (space is limited) once that occurs.     ----------------------------------- 5. Commentary from Tay   Commentary on Analytics: It may come as a surprise to some that this quarterly update is the first time I’ve officially opened our analytics numbers to the public (Nay’s done it in the past, but always on his own impetus). This coincides with a decision to make the front site open-source and seek help from a much larger coding pool than before. These may be small steps, but they’re meaningful and I hope they’ll represent the seeds for yet more transparency in the future.   So. Let’s talk about these numbers. The big-picture take-home message is that Fuwa has continued to grow in the four(ish) months since our last analytics report. I’m a big data nerd who likes to try to use big-boy statistics (and, inevitably, breaks something and needs a math genius friend’s help), so here are a few other trends: Users are spending a lot more time, on average, in the Visual Novel and Dev/Translation boards. Almost twice as much time as they were in March 2015 Walkthroughs are still a huge draw New members are, literally, about nine times more likely to go to the dev boards than they were in March 2015 (within their first week on the boards). They’re about six times more likely to regularly go there afterwards. The amount of VN-centric sites linking to Fuwanovel has increased a tremendous amount. Like, a seriously crazy amount. Several times more links to us from other VN communities than in March 2015 (I didn’t do any hard numbers for this, though, since I only thought to check it right before posting this. Apologies.) Tay’s daily hatemail has decreased by several hundred percent since March 2015 The blog’s popularity on VNTS days has increased by about 45% since July. The front site’s traffic has decreased somewhere between 20-40% since pre-torrents, but the other sites have maintained solid, steady growth Daily user registrations on all the various sites are still a horrible approximation for traffic and engagement Autoposting is the bomb Our Google+ page is a lonely, lonely place, but I met a few really nice people on there who have since become friends. So… yay. Google+ did something good. The reviews hub traffic has continued to steadily grow. It’s not a steep growth, but it’s steady. The traffic spikes for FuwaReviews official reviews are higher than ever and they last for longer than the used to, as well. Our new anti-spam-user software is doing fairly well, which is great     Commentary on Site Finances: I just wanted to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site. As soon as I can get Nay’s help with an authentication library (or something like that), I’ve got a slick new donations app which will automate the donation process and make sure you get your goodies instantly.     Commentary on Site Leadership: Fuwanovel is an important part of my life. I’ve learned a lot over the years from building and running this place, and many of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from making mistakes or falling short of goals and deadlines. I’d like to open up a bit and share a bit of vulnerability on two such shortcomings.   I’d like to publicly apologize for my inconsistent presence in the community. I have not been able to give the site everything it’s needed, and I want everyone to know that I recognize it. Beyond being busy in general, I’ve had a truly bizarre amount of freak accidents or tropical storms or RL craziness mess up my genuinely well-meaning plans time and time again. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m more or less just trying to express that I’m likely as frustrated as you with the lack of progress in certain site projects. I have plans burning in my brain for where we need to go and what we need to do in order to get there, and at times I, too, get a little burned out and discouraged when I see the discrepancy between where we are and where we need to be.   Secondly, I’d like to apologize to the dozens of friends who have spent hundreds of hours participating and working on the site who don't feel adequately appreciated. In the real world I make a real effort to reach out to and thank the people I work with for their good work. It’s an important part of being a leader, and it’s an important part of being a friend. I am disappointed when I review my track record for tracking and recognizing all the work done by so many great people on this site. When I get "Fuwa time", I tend to jump in and do work on the site without taking time to check in with everybody. I want to improve in this department, and I hope you'll help me as I try to do better.   As far as site leadership goes, only one other thing to discuss: adding another (/more) admin(s). This is something I feel like I’ve discussed so many times I worry that you all think I’m a broken record. I’ll be the first to agree that we need to spread the autonomy around. The way this works at the moment is that all the different parts of Fuwanovel have a dedicated leader who has the autonomy to run their project within a pre-agreed upon framework that she/he and I set at the beginning of the quarter (or year, depending on the project). It’s not a perfect system – in many ways because this is a hobby site, not a paying job, and I’m fairly adamant that people keep Fuwa in a healthy balance and not burn out – but it’s also not too bad.    Judging from recent posts as well as more than a few a hellaton PMs and emails, many people disagree with me on two fronts: the forums and the front site. I’ll tackle each of those below.       Commentary on the Forums: I’m quite happy with the trends I’m seeing in the analytics. I like to think that the improved engagement of new members with the VN and Dev boards heralds the wider change of userbase from torrent-seekers to VN-community-seekers. Even if that’s not true, VN engagement is higher than it was earlier this year, and traffic is still robust.   I’m still embarrassed and frustrated about the forums’ sidebar formatting. I spent an hour last week trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it, but I can’t find my old notes anywhere. I’ve reached out to Nay about this and other things, of course, and I really hope I can get this fixed for you soon.   Earlier this quarter Sanah and I had some great discussions about the limitations of the current blog app and how we might provide a better blogging platform for users. At the moment I’m still waiting to see how the upcoming IPB 4 forums’ software upgrade feels for our bloggers. Sanah eventually opted to start his own blog and use the Fuwa app to drive readers to his new location. That’s, obviously, fantastic, since my goal with the blogs app has always been to give people a platform and help drive VN fans to them. So, what I’m getting at here is that if the IPB 4 upgrade is poorly received, I’m up to the challenge of finding a way to host a blogging platform if need be. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but the blog authors need to know, at the very least, that we’ll do our best to take care of them.   Not going to write any more about Loligeddon. Go take the survey if you want to share your views and/or propose policy changes. I will personally review all the entries.   Quite a few people have asked me to add a forums admin who would be in charge of both moderation and engagement. I’m skeptical of the idea due to past experience, but it’s brought up enough that I’m willing to open the door to feedback. Would you like me to make a survey about the forums experience and include a field for you to write desired forums organizational/leadership changes?       Commentary on the Front Site: Here’s the situation: we’ve committed to the open-source plan, but I’m not technical enough to make sure that’s set up or manage the various software forks that will result. Nayleen, our webmaster, has been traveling and working and dealing with craziness and thus hasn’t been around lately, but as far as I’m aware he’s sticking with us. Which is a good thing: the man’s a genius.    Back in August Nay and I realized that the plans we had for the front site were too ambitious to try and bite off all at once, so we decided to scale-back the initial launch plans and simply try and get a basic redesign up and running (using a lot of the old code under the hood) which would then be improved bit-by-bit over the next few months. This was poorly communicated to the design team, and Emi and Beato deserve an apology. Furthermore, that scaled-back version is still not up and running. Which is frustrating. It isn’t something I or a novice coder can address, however, since the front site is written with multiple coding languages.    The critical bottlenecks are currently: open development onto git (or wherever) (which Nay has already done to some extent), finalize the database structure so the other coders can know how it’s structured, roll out the design update with or without an underlying total code revamp, tackle each module one at a time thereafter. (Maef and I have been working on the articles and team builder concepts, and I think they’re going to be pretty great.)   After the bottlenecks are addressed and the rest of the design timeline is sorted out, Nay, maef and I will be posting some more information on the rest of the evil plans.       Conclusion Thank you for reading this post and for being a part of this community. I’m dedicated to keeping the site alive and improving it (even if by uneven pacing), and having friends and fellow fans like you makes the effort worth it.   Tay

I think you are unique in your motivation and dedication Ren. Giveaways, prizes and competitions are unique. I have never crossed a person with this state of mind and dedication. Nothing against your games or how you are in person. But this is an unique feature and I think a lot of people think so too. I was surprised and a bit skeptical when I first saw your competitions. Why would anyone giveaway stuff for free (except the effort in the game). Peoples are lazy too and many of them can't force themselves to participate. But that's how a lot of us are.
 
Yes I agree with Maef. Most of us are plebs without any knowledge in how we should improve the site. I am probably one of them because my skill in programming isn't that good. Yes I got suggestions and ideas but I can't help improve them in any way what I think of. I could always try to help in some way. But I would still be dependent on someone else helping me. If I was really good at writing reviews I can't do anything about it except writing them and possibily post them on the forums or maybe the blog. But FuwaReviews are up and running. I don't really know who did everything behind in the shadows. But it isn't a site you just put up in an hour (well you can but it would be terrible). I studied web design in school and it is a lot trickier than you may think. I got mad respect for the guys knowing this and doing it on their spare time. 
 
But we should be able to take something from these and maybe try to pinpoint the problems and working together to fix the problems? Some of them are most likely easier to fix than others. If we can pinpoint the concerns we may at least get some answers later?

This thread was valid during summer because I was complaining so much during spring/summer. If you think the forum today is dead you lived under a rock a couple of months ago. We actually got a decent amount of new threads discussion everything in the VN section. The past day MuvLuv, VN club, Rewrite anime, announcements, what are you playing and at least 5 - 10 other threads are active. 
 
I recall analyzing the datatraffic from Nayleen back in May. The traffic was 1/3 or 1/4 (may be a bit wrong) of the same amount of traffic during April/May this year compared to last year at the same moment. I begun to question this and tried to get some change or at least a response. Nothing happened. But autumn is here and the activity is pretty good in my opinion. Yes I have been lurking since 2013 and I agree the forum were larger during that period of time. But it is actually good today I think. A couple of good discussions with some dead sub forums though. But as stated before in this topic. People tend to create subgroups with each other because you like each other. I still think the old Skype group was the best thing ever but because everyone else despised us I don't really care. I don't post that often either. If I post I try to at least do that with some substance. I can't shitpost.
 
But Ren. I enjoy your Streams and competitions. But they aren't for me. I can't force myself to lock myself up for several days or a couple of hours watching a stream. But I think this is pretty standard about forums. I have been playing a lot of different web browsers or other games with forums. They are dead in about a month even though you try. This forum is moving along and new members come and go. But as you see the old timers are here even though they are not posting stuff. That's what I like about them. They are not posting just because they have to be seen. Call me old fashioned but I am more annoyed by shitposting.
 
Call me lazy but I don't want to write these big avalanche topics about something I want to write. You know what? Because I am not entirely confident in my English. I hate to say so but my grammar is bad. So much for being lazy during some classes. I can feel the internal roar from you piercing my heart about the errors.
 
But I think you are being overreacting about the forum activity. I think that's fine at the moment, much better compared to 6 months ago. About the admin/management I think we all got opinions and thoughts how we should improve it. And yes the only thing which can improve is Tay stepping up and announcing something or at least doing some kind of change. Be it another temporary admin or whatever. But would it get better with another admin? I doubt it.
 
But a good rant post here. Enjoy. The forum is much better than 6 months ago. And sub groups are a part of every forum. Ren you got one yourself with your Teamspeak even though it is open for anyone. I know at least a couple of different Skype groups. But yes you should't totally ignore the forum even though you are doing stuff with other members outside of the forum.

Don’t make me hurt you >:c

We got some forum traffic data from the admins back in May (5k front site visits, 10k forum visits/day. Unique.)
 
I'd like to see what those numbers are now.

I usually quit a VN when I have read one or two routes I am interested in. I rarely read a route with a character I dislike. 

#notstartedthegameyet
 
You are better than me. I have everything set up too with the patch installed.

We got "Zaka the VN" in Swedish. It is horrible.
 
It is non-existent.

I am crawling to the cross and say sorry. Good job with the project!

For some mystifying reason, Tay allows me to write whatever I want in each week's VNTS. This week I wrote a little rant on this issue, basically mirroring a  lot of other people's thoughts: http://blog.fuwanovel.net/2015/09/visual-novel-translation-status-19092015/