Zalor

My passion is the piano.  If I'm not sleeping, working, playing visual novels, or any combination of those (I love my job  ), I'm typically at my piano.  Lately I've been playing a lot of Video Game music (I'm currently playing through the Piano Collections from Final Fantasy VII - XIII-2), but I also go on Classical binges, my most recent being trying to learn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGz5fifRB3s.
 


 
I did a Katawa Shoujo medley last year for piano.  There's also a bonus, unrelated song on there.
 
There's a history behind the piano that revolved around a person, so I'm honestly not sure which I'm more connected to - my memories of that person, or the instrument itself.  Regardless, I'm furthering my studies of it at University.
 
Maybe one day, when I can play my feelings...

Some stories benefit from brevity and others overstay their welcome. Others have such a rich setting that it's better if things are fully explored. Like most things, it depends. I say this as someone who really liked Grisaia's common route, though.
That said, I get not wanting a good book, TV show, movie, VN to end.

Couldn't recommend Swan Song enough, honestly one of the best Visual Novels I have ever read. It's a great read that fits the harshness of winter perfectly. On a side note, I first read Swan Song during my Christmas break from 2011 to 2012. Considering all the hype at that time of a 2012 apocalypse, I figured it would be a perfect time to read Swan Song.  

Think a lot of the VNs already suggested have winter themes to be honest... Swan Song is certainly one, *cough* Kanon *cough* counts, True Remembrance is set in winter (not sure if you can call it winter themed, but all the clothes etc match the setting.) Other than that... Cartagra seems to be wintery? The vndb tag is kinda rubbish for this though.

I keep em. My logic being that it's like a book, once you read it you keep it and look at it every once in a while to look at you favorite parts and scenes. Except that VNs have CGs and OSTs instead of books which are just words.

Yes, Kanon is a great staring point. Kanon was a revolutionary VN that really helped establish story based Visual Novels. Before Kanon visual novels were mostly just hentai games. There were a few that tried to tell a story before Kanon, but it was really Kanon's success that stopped Visual novels from being exclusively porn games. It disappoints me how most people aren't very enthusiastic about Kanon on these forums as it is not only historically important but honestly quite good. A lot of creativity went into most of the character routes. On top of Kanon having some really imaginative stories, it is really well written. I even wrote a whole a whole literary analysis in which I deconstructed a complicated friendship between two characters. (Link to my analysis is in my signature).
 
In conclusion you should definitely read Kanon.   

Teaching? If you got the education to do it it can be pretty damn worth it.
With my current education I can give lessons paid up to 50/60e per hour which can be pretty rad. And even if you don't get up to those numbers, teaching to high-school students is rather trivial and can earn you money. I don't know how private tuition is in your country though.

For those of us that have graduated from high school and are in the midst of higher education (technically, I came back to higher education two years ago), one of the biggest issues is balancing work and college with our otaku life. 
 
If you are primarily working retail, I'm sorry to say that you are screwed.  Long hours, low pay, and a frequently unpredictable work schedule combined with the need to study... it is only natural that your otaku life will vanish (mine did for about a year when I was 18-19). 
 
My basic advice is... find a job that pays either the same or more than a retail job from home, so you can manage your hours to give you time to play, watch, and/or read your otaku materials.  This is the path I went down... and I will never regret it, despite the fact that my particular line of work is frequently hellish in terms of how much time it eats. 
 
College... an ideal solution is learning to speed read effectively.  The minimum pace at which you should be able to read to effectively compress your college study time is a page every 1.3 minutes.  Why do I say this?  Because most textbook chapters are about 12-21 pages long, and if you read at that pace, you can generally finish a chapter in about a half hour or so.  Assuming you read each chapter twice, in order to retain more of it in your memory, this means you spend an hour on each chapter (other than note-taking).  Since a pace of two chapters a week is generally all you need to keep up in most courses (in my experience anyway), this means you can spend less time studying and more time playing, watching, etc. 
 
To be honest, speed-reading isn't something everyone is going to be able to pick up.  Some people just don't have the right type of brain structure to absorb large amounts of text quickly.  Others can't adapt to particular speed-reading techniques.  Yet others simply can't learn well from text and need to have it explained to them verbally or in pictures.  Either way, this can eat more time.
 
Another way of compressing time is to take as many classes as you can in distance learning, read the textbook quickly, then complete all the required course work in a matter of days or weeks.  To be honest, the kind of concentration this takes is beyond most people.  It is hard on the body and brain, and most people simply don't concentrate that well on educational materials.  Another problem is that you need to pick out the right professor for your distance learning.  Some force you to obey a schedule, whereas others let you simply do everything at your own pace.  The latter is definitely preferable, as it allows you to rapidly complete your coursework whenever you have time. 
 
The last time-compressing method (one of my primary ones) is extreme multitasking done through parallel mental processing.  To be honest, this method is... hard on the brain.  In my experience, this method should really only be used in emergencies (sort of like energy drinks).  Basically, you visualize a task you need to do as being compressed into a box and separated from the other task you want to do.  In my case, this usually means reading a vn and typing for work at the same time (I usually set the VN on auto at half the normal speed).  I basically absorb all the information I need to do my work beforehand, organize it inside my brain, then start the vn and let my hands act independently of my eyes.  This really only works if your work-task is something that doesn't require the use of your eyes, and I generally have to go through my work and correct misspellings and grammatical errors caused by bad spacing and the like afterward.  I'm actually unsure if this is something other people can do, as I learned to do this out of desperation so I could play more VNs despite a growing workload.  The biggest downside to this is that I sometimes fall apart completely afterward and have to sleep for fourteen hours straight to get functional again... it is a lot like translating, since I have to think in two languages at once, lol (I could never have done this without my experience as a fansubber-translator). 
 
Anyway, as you probably guessed, this is basically a 'balance rl with otakuism' thread.  Feel free to post your own experiences and methodology here for others' viewing. 
 
Edit:  Don't ask me about details about how to do the parallel multitasking... I figured it out by intuition, and I'm about 90% sure my brain structure is abnormal in some way...

It has Oyari Ashito's artwork - that's all I need to know to throw my money at them.

Hello everyone!
 
You can call me Clestae, my username. I'm new to fuwa, although not extremely new to visual novels. I haven't played all the "old great ones," but thanks to this website, I hope to soon
 
I'm also part of the team developing Lucid9, so keep on the lookout for us!
 
I'm a native English speaker. I enjoy writing on the side (can't draw worth anything >.<), and like general "nerd" hobbies (anime, video games, tabletop, etc.), along with just trying to get through school!
 
So yeah. I guess those are the important things

One of the reasons Fal is so interesting to me is that even at the end, she's not just super deredere devoted to Chris, she still has her own demands, selfishness etc.

Hi. I made a thing. Please watch the thing. Hope you like the thing. If not please tell me why so I can make better things. Still learning this thing-making business.
 

Answers in bold. As you're done with the VN, I suggest you read the short stories. Sadly, only 3/7 is translated.

I randomly decided to check up on Fuwa while taking a study break, and I'm glad to see that the Symphonic Rain thread is still active. Anyway, I still haven't read Phorni's route (and probably won't get to it until the semester ends), but I still don't see how Fal is a bad person. I feel like this is just going to be a repeat of the discussion we had over a month ago on page 3 of this thread, but being manipulative is human. I am currently reading Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice for school, and that book is about how it was culturally expected to marry for money. Committing yourself to a person for the rest of your life based on economic incentives may seem manipulative, but it wasn't in the 18th century, nor was it for most of history. Marrying for love is fairly new concept that has only really been going on for the past 200, maybe 300 years. My point is that while Fal did initially start a relationship with Chris out of self interest, what is wrong with that? What's more, I think she genuinely does love him by the end of the story.
 
As for the argument that she is monster


 
I'm sorry if I came across as a bit of an asshole in my defending Fal, but when somebody tells me
 
I do take slight offense. I suppose one of the reason's I like Fal so much is because I myself am not much of a romantic. I can like somebody, but if I were to marry somebody I too would do so at least partially out of an economic or social incentive, not purely out of an emotion. If I were Chris I would pick Fal and that is why she is my personal favorite. That said, as a character Torta is the most interesting for analyzing. So personally I like Fal the most, but as a literary critic I like Torta the best.  
 
Edit: Somebody should vote for Ms. Cordell lol.

(I had a hard time figuring out where I should post this, so if I ever posted it in the wrong place, forgive me! ><)   Hello everyone! Today, I'm not here to talk to you as a representative of the Lucid9 Staff, but as a representative of Joilly.     What is Joilly?   Joilly is a mix of 3 different things :   1°) It's first of all a Visual Novel builder / engine which goal is to enable people with 0 programming knowledge to create their own Visual Novels, through the use of a very intuitive and very user-friendly interface (basically, very similar to a video editor). This engine has distinctive features :   - It's a javascript + html5 based engine.   - It's an online engine, meaning that you don't need to download any software, and that all the progress of the conception of your Visual Novel is saved online.   - The scene editor is where you can edit the scenes of your VN, and scroll the pages of your script. You will be able to create, edit, and test in real time your visual novel in the scenes or pages of the timeline, where you can add characters, backgrounds, CGs, music, and handle animations for your assets. (screenshot inside the spoiler)

  - It uses a flowchart diagram system to manage the different scenes scripted, the order of the scenes and the branching (screenshot inside the spoiler).  

  - The Asset manager library is your dumping ground/library for all your visual novel assets, including images, sounds, and video. Inside your library, you can also create folders and subfolders to organize all your assets, whether they are characters, CGs, visual novel soundtracks, or the OP video of your visual novel. We are limited with dropbox and amazon file storage for the moment since we don't have any money yet to get our own storage space.

  - Once the game is completed and is ready to be played, it will automatically be displayed on the Joilly site where other people will instantly be able to play.   Here is a live demo that might give you a better understanding of all the stuff I listed previously : - Scene editor : http://demo.joilly.com/editor.html - Flowchart : http://demo.joilly.com/scenes.html - Assets Manager : http://demo.joilly.com/assetmanager.html Don't hesitate to play it and give us feedback!     2°) The logical step that basically comes next is that we want Joilly to become as well a distribution platform for Visual Novels, where you'd be able to play directly and online all the Joilly Visual Novels, and where would be featured all the Visual Novels created / ported on Joilly. I guess you could compare it to a steam for Visual Novels (made on Joilly), or a Youtube for Visual Novels.    But not only be will it be a distribution platform, the Joilly site will also be the place where you'll be able to play the Visual Novels released in streaming. That means no downloading (only very fast loadings between scenes), and the possibility to play a VN on different supports without losing the save.   We already have a Joilly website ofc, but it's very far from being finished, and all our ideas, improvements and their possible implementation are still in development for the moment.     3°) Finally, we want Joilly to become a community for English Visual Novels, through the use of a forum system split between :   - A sub forum for the readers and the fans, where they will be able to discuss about their favorite VN on each specific thread for each VN, but also discuss about Visual Novels more generally. - A sub forum for creators where people would try to help each other regarding the engine, it will be the place where you can ask help to the developers of Joilly for technical issues, and our goal is to gather a little community of creators (writers, musicians, artists) willing to offer their skill for the creation of VN on Joilly.   Our aim is basically to create an ecosystem between English Visual Novel creation, distribution and community, and hopefully make it the easiest as possible for anyone who is interested in creating a Visual Novel to make it happen! And in the long term, get an active community of fan that we draw creators, and vice versa.     For who is Joilly?   Joilly is for EVERYONE to use, whether it is to play VN on the site, or whether it is to create your own VN. Whether you're a total amateur wanting to try VN creation for the first time, a studio that needs an engine to release your game, whether you want to make a free or maybe commercial VN in future, everyone is welcomed!   - We're planning on having free access for the readers, meaning that they will be able to access Joilly without any subscription. The commercial or freeware status of the VN that will be featured on Joilly will be dependent on the will of the studio (meaning that the user will have to pay to get access to the commercial VNs, which seems kinda logical I guess^^). - Creators will have free access as well. However, if Joilly ever gain in popularity, we might put a one time "pay-wall" for a symbolic sum of money (let's say 5 dollars for example?) in order to discourage trolls / unmotivated people / not serious enough people. That's the only payment we will implement for the creators, meaning that once this little sum is paid, they will be granted unlimited use of the engine to create their VN.     What is our current state?   For the moment, Joilly is still on alpha phase. What is available is : - The scene editor is nearly completely functional and needs beta testers. - The flowchart system is being worked on atm and should be finished soon. - Our developer is also working on the UI maker (that will enable the creators to customize their VN GUI) - Flag system is in the works   So, what do we need? 1°) We need creators that would act as beta-tester. 2°) We need a php programmer and a website designer (if possible one same person) for our site and our forums.     FAQ   1°) I want to help / participate in Joilly, what can I do? If you're a creator, you can try to help us by trying to create a Visual Novel on Joilly. We'd want (in order of priority) - A team that is lacking a programmer or isn't set on an engine to use. - A writer and artist that have art assets and a script. - A writer willing to write a short VN with the default available assets we can provide.   We would prioritize people that have assets already ready to be ported on the the engine. Those people would basically be testers for us so that we can find bugs, and also the testers is a way for us to get feedback for engine improvements. If you're ever interested in participating, just message me, and we'll discuss about it!   If you're a programmer and you know php, we're looking for a programmer to take care of the site and the forums. We want to work someone we can trust and form a partnership eventually, so if you're interested, same as before, just message me!     2°) Are you doing all of this for free? Do you plan to not get money at all? We haven't settled on an economical model yet, so we can't tell you for the moment. We will probably need some money at some point, if only to get our own servers and storage, so we will probably try to get money in some way (whether it is with ads, donation, ...). We will try to do this in a way where it won't restrict any creator in creating their VN, and where it wouldn't change anything for readers that wants to read VN on Joilly.     3°) What kind of Visual Novels will Joilly be supporting? - Joilly's primary goal is to support games focused on storytelling. - For content : any content is allowed, whether it is Otome-game, Bishoujo-game... as long as it respects our Terms of Service. (that means for example no heinous encouragement of any sort). H content is permitted as long as it's not the main goal of the VN (understand here : no nukige). - I would like to say that we want to encourage as well VN with gameplay elements, but honestly, the engine is not made for complex gameplay elements. The best you could do would probably be make a simple dating sim. Stats raising are not possible for example (so no RPG VN).     4°) Will Joilly ever become commercial? Well, I guess I'd need to go into the details to answer properly. First, you need to consider that we'd like to get our own storage space and servers, and that we need money for this. Also, even though we want to encourage people to become creators even if they don't have any funds, we do feel that it's fair for us to gain some sort of commission if ever someone wants to create a commercial VN with our engine. Also : - We don't plan on making the readers pay to access Joilly. Ever. - There will be most likely a payment system for creators that want to get some more features on the site (get a save slot, get some exposure on the site through our home page...). Those features will be accessible for the VN that manages to reach a certain number a view (some sort of milestones system) - We do plan on getting some money with "clean" advertisement on the site.     5°) So what are the possibilities I will have if I ever want to create and release a VN on Joilly? There are basically 3 possibilities :  - You want to make a free VN without wanting to get any income? Sure, no problems! We won't put any ads on your VN page. - You want to make a free VN and still get incomes? Sure, we will help you with advertisement on your VN page, and we'll get a little percentage of what you earned. - You want to make a commercial VN and get income? Sure, we will force the user to pay once if he ever wants to play your VN on Joilly, and we'll take a little percentage (probably through the use of Paypal).   This will also be the order of implementation, meaning that at the moment, we can only handle and publish free VN that won't get you any income. Later on, when we implement our clean advertisement system, we will be able to propose the second option to creators. And lastly, we will try to implement a system with paypal where the user has to unlock the content of the VN by paying with paypal, and where we'll take a little percentage.     6°) And what if I don't want to play to my VN online? We are planning to make it possible to download an executable to install the Joilly's VN on your computer, but it's not a priority for the moment. It will eventually get done. We want it to be a standalone executable, and not simply you being able to play it on your browser even when not connected.       7°) I don't trust cloud storage!  I think / heard that it's not safe! It's true that cloud storage is not totally safe, especially for small cloud storage companies. But, you have to consider two things : - The global progression of the creation of the VN on Joilly will be saved on the cloud, but also locally on the user's computer, and finally we do regular backups of the data. - The assets (sprites, music, CGs, BGs) have to be uploaded by the user on cloud storage (dropbox or amazon storage both works with Joilly). We are planning to implement as well a system of auxiliary cloud storage links in case that the first cloud storage link provided for the asset manager fails (so basically, you can upload your assets on both dropbox and amazon, and if the dropbox link ever fails, the asset manager will check the amazon link). We do want to get our own storage space and our own servers at some point, but that will be when we manage to get some money with Joilly.     8°) I feel it is really restrictive to be only able to work on Joilly if i'm connected to the Internet. Are you really not going to make it accessible offline? Okay, so far, it's clear that not being able to work on your VN offline is somehow a hindrance. I guess I'm talking from my own experience as a user of the engine for my own project, but I really believe there are both pro and con :
 
Pros :
- It's accessible on any device that can connect to internet, so if ever you're on another computer than your principal one, or even on your touchpad, or your smartphone, you can still work on your VN. (It's not optimized yet for smartphones though, but hopefully it will one day be)
- If ever you have a hard drive failure, you won't lose any of your work.
- If you ever need / want to split the work (I agree with you that this is more useful for bigger projects where there is a lot of script), it's totally possible to share the workload, granted that all the people working on this follow a detailed enough script concerning animations and such. And the simplicity of the engine make it so that anyone can actually work on the engine without any specific knowledge required about programming.
- It's way easier to submit to every other member some preview of what you created on the engine to see if they are happy with it.
 
Cons :
- You cannot access your work if you don't have access to the internet. I can't argue with that, but we have some reasons for actually preferring this for the moment over offline access to the engine.
  Of course, all of this is still debatable, and in the end it still comes down to the sensibility of the user and about what he values the most when doing a project like this.
But coming back as to why it's really preferable for us to have a solely online accessible engine (for the moment), this is mostly because we don't want Joilly to be only an engine (as, let's say, ren'py). As I explained previously, we want Joilly to be 3 things : an engine easy of use for creators, a catalog of VN directly playable on the site, and a community for English Visual Novels. If we offer the possibility for the user to work on the engine offline, we have no way to control if the creator will release his VN on Joilly, (and at the beginning, most creators won't actually have any interest to release their work on Joilly) which will prevent us from getting a consequent catalog of VN, and which will prevent us from getting a community.
 
 
9°) So there are actually restrictions for the use of Joilly's engine?
So, yeah, we are offering our engine for free for the creators. But we do want to get something out of it, and the only restriction we have is that you need to publish your VN on Joilly in order to help it grow. We cannot control this if we offer the possibility for the creators to work offline on it. However, that doesn't mean we will never consider it, we do realize that it's both safer and more pratical for the user to be able to work offline AND online. But it would have to be when Joilly is already popular and attractive enough so that creators will want to publish their VN on Joilly in order to get exposure (so basically when we have a sufficient enough community).
    So that's all for the moment! Don't hesitate to play the demo, and to give us any feedback on it by posting on this thread!   And thanks for your time reading this!      

So I was interested in knowing how much has translation of VNs increased with time and I had done some research and now I decided to make a chart and to share it here so everyone can see. (Only fully translated VNs are included in a chart, nukiges aren't included in a chart).
 

And here are separated charts for fan-translated and officially localized VNs (VNs that ware fan-translated and later localized aren't included in localized chart)
 
 

I don't see much reason to make the Recommendations forum into a subforum. As mentioned above, there's the minor problem that newcomers won't immediately see it, while I'm sure recommendations would be a popular interest for people who've just joined. Besides, the board already says "Visual Novels Discussion", so there's no flaw in terms of organization. I don't find it problematic that there would be too many forums, either; I've seen community forums with proportionately lower activity and more forums, and they're equally prosperous.

So I'm a bit behind the times. It looks like automated text hooking and translation is much better these days and some games may actually be readable.
Looks like there are a bunch of tools and guides out there I just don't know which one is best and most compatible.
 
Here is what I've found:
AGTH
ITH
Visual novel reader
 
Are visual novel reader and AGTH two tools to be used together or two that do the same thing?
 
Anyway, sorry for being a bit clueless on all of this just want to know what the best most up to date thing to use would be.

You should check out Swan Song and maybe Corpse Party

To answer the topic question. Enough people find big eyebrows moe for the archetype to still be profitable and thus justify its existence.

It was a long time ago, but from memory, here is how it happened. I was studying digital media in university and wanted to develop a digital graphic novel thing (I had no idea what VNs were at the time) for a project. After some research, I realized oh, such a medium already exists. I downloaded a bunch of recently translated titles for research purposes. It just so happens that my first game was Narcissu, and that remains my favorite all time VN .

If you want my advice I'm currently reading Haruka Kanata and the text is easier than with the charage I tried before. It is unhookable, however - a weird engine or something, ITH just doesn't read it properly - so it's only recommended if you're drawn to the game.

A lot of yuri games have voiced protagonists, so you could start with those.  
Any Sono Hanabira game
Hitori / Futari no Qualia
Lilium x Triangle
 
I also recommend MeltyMoment & Lover Able. Both are pretty much straight charage.

Now where was that lossless BGM thing I made...
 
aah. Split archive, in 2014???