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What other content would you want to see from the visual novel community as a whole? (Not just more translations)


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I've been thinking about this and there's already a decent amount of content:

  • We have various forums to talk about VNs like here, /r/visualnovels, vndb, 4chan, Twitter etc
  • Similarly a few places provide weekly summaries of VN translation updates
  • There a few places for EVN developers to hang out, recruit, or discuss in places like /r/vns Discord #devtalk and Lemma Soft
  • We have vndb, the go to place for voting for VNs and looking up info and tags and such
  • There are a few podcast related videos that exists for VNs like Broadcast Club and Kinniku Podcast for fan-made casts and Visual Conference for a yearly discussion with people in the industry.
  • There are Lets Plays of VNs, albeit I don't how many of them are consistently active in content
  • We have discord chats and subreddits for most major series and even some discords for official companies
  • We have Visual Novel recommendation charts sorted by genres made by /r/visualnovels  and 4chan (but both could use some updating based on releases in the last year or two)
  • We have a guide of how to read Visual Novels in Japanese 
  • There are text and video reviews for most major visual novels out there (English and Japanese only) but not many that have reviewed a whole lot on one channel/location

 

However, I was wondering if you guys wanted more content related to this? To me, there's only so much translation companies/VN developers can do and visual novels could have more (consistent) content that only fans can make. I was wondering what you guys would personally want more of.

 

Don't bring up "more fan translations/translators" or "translate Visual Novel to English" because that's just a given considering what the VN community started on.

Edited by NowItsAngeTime
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Decent translation critique of at least the level shown in arunaru's danganronpa post. This will not happen because it takes time and effort and too few people can do it. I don't think a single post on this forum has ever qualified.

Some more editing blogs would be nice. Or tl blogs. Or tlediting blogs. Preferably from an elitist, meme cartel point of view so I can take them seriously.

A standalone application that can use epwing dictionaries and has hover lookup functionality. None of the many-hoops-handle-it browser method nonsense.

The current guides on how to texthook are probably pretty outdated at this point; we need an active maintainer and something we can reliably point at.

High volume EVN coverage from a person convincing enough to believe in for a primarily JVN person. Nobody has ever really hit this bar for me (ok, maybe weeaboo.nl, but it's dead), and I have some highly scored EVNs in my list.

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A centralized site/blog/forum that would discuss eroge in general, not just new ones that are coming up, but also old stuff forgotten by time. Reviews, TL quality discussions, impressions, you name it. Basically, a site that would promote VNs, but with no shittalk so that it can be taken seriously by a wider community.

...Yeah, I know it's never gonna happen (for variety of different reasons), but one can wish xD

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I would like to know more about Visual Novels industry history. I happen to have a Japanese book that kinda talks about this topic but well, it is in Japanese

エロゲー文化研究概論 増補改訂版

So that's very restrictive for people to aren't in a good level of reading in Japanese or just don't know... I don't see much people talking about older games and I would also love to know about titles that were really famous in another decades (both in the west and east) and why they were like that, who were the favorite heroines from past decades and etc...

I think that this is a part that we are lacking in English and it would be really interesting to read more about it!

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16 minutes ago, nekofuwafuwa said:

I would like to know more about Visual Novels industry history. I happen to have a Japanese book that kinda talks about this topic but well, it is in Japanese

エロゲー文化研究概論 増補改訂版

Coincidentally, I just found out about that book earlier today xD No translation, so yeah, can't read it. But from the tidbits I did get translated, it seems like the book has lots of interesting information in it. I legit didn't know some of these things.

16 minutes ago, nekofuwafuwa said:

I don't see much people talking about older games and I would also love to know about titles that were really famous in another decades (both in the west and east) and why they were like that, who were the favorite heroines from past decades and etc...

I think that this is a part that we are lacking in English and it would be really interesting to read more about it!

My earlier comment was partly spurred by the fact that back in the day, when I first joined this community, discussions on VNs were more common and longer-lasting than nowadays. Granted, we didn't have many titles translated at that time, and the official translation scene wasn't as strong as it is today, so it's only natural that things aren't the same anymore. The fact that we have so many VNs translated now and the fact that more are coming every month has one negative side to it - too many titles are vying for our attention. Discussions on new titles last short and die quickly, as soon as the new VN comes out. Nobody can follow up with what's coming out anymore, and it's no wonder I often see people surprised at "Wow, when did Aokana get announced?" and "Wait, this VN got translated?!" and similar reactions on some corners of the net. This even happens in communities like r/vns where all news get posted on any new development in the VN scene. It has become hard to follow all of this, even for those who were VN fans for a while.

Edited by Infernoplex
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Better tutorials on hacking/repacking VN archive files, and decompiling/recompiling script files. That's easily the most esoteric thing I've ever tried to research. This is the best set of articles I can find:

https://hackernoon.com/reverse-engineering-visual-novels-101-d0bc3bf7ab8

https://hackernoon.com/reverse-engineering-visual-novels-101-part-2-9258f547262a

and even they assume /a lot/ of prerequisite knowledge that I just don't have, and they don't really explain the thought process behind figuring out how to pick these files apart.

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VN hacking is only understood by a select few. If you ever need to do a project for a random VN you picked up, you must go and ask for tools from those select few. Sadly, no one of them really sat down to write and explain the process of what they are doing, and the articles you linked are probably the closest thing to VN hacking tutorial that we ever got. You're either left in their mercy, or the tools were already publicly available by someone who made universal tools for the said engine that VN uses.

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36 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

Coincidentally, I just found out about that book earlier today xD No translation, so yeah, can't read it. But from the tidbits I did get translated, it seems like the book has lots of interesting information in it. I legit didn't know some of these things.

What a coincidence, hehe. :wafuu:

It would be really awesome if people decided to translate these things for more persons be able to read them. I can read a little bit of Japanese, but I am in no way fluent and still need a lot of help with dictionaries and all.

If you someday become really good at reading JPN, you can also check those books. Although I have not yet purchased them and can't say for sure that they are good!

超エロゲー  or 超エロゲー ハードコア (I'm not sure if hardcore is just an revised edition with more content or a complete different book... Still have to research more!)

ぼくたちのギャルゲークロニクル

I'm kinda lost too in the releases, but that's more because of myself, since I let too many games on my backlog and let a lot of games to buy later...

Also, I miss sites like the old Fuwanovel that could list all the current releases and fan translations with images... Of course, we have VNDB and new Fuwanovel, but the VNDB design it's kinda hard on my eyes with the small letters and long texts. And I it seems like the new Fuwanovel website is outdated? I'm not sure. That's just my impression without any evidence or whatever so.

 But anyway, in my previous comment I meant more in a way that I am really curious to know what kind of characters people in the 80's, 90's and 00's liked and why, y' know?

Edited by nekofuwafuwa
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9 minutes ago, nekofuwafuwa said:

But anyway, in my previous comment I meant more in a way that I am really curious to know what kind of characters people in the 80's, 90's and 00's liked and why, y' know? :sachi:

Yeah, that'd be an interesting discussion. I have a few ideas what my answers would be for the early 00s, and maybe for 90s. Anyway, thank you for the book recommendations. Can't say I will ever understand Japanese good enough to read them, but I may check them out later regardless of that. Interestingly, there are some English-written books on VNs out there, but I don't know how good they are. Like this one for example: https://www.amazon.com/Anime-Visual-Novel-Narrative-Crossroads/dp/0786444274

I think I've seen maybe one or two more books like that one. As I said, I don't know how good they are or how well do they cover the matter. I assume the JP ones are more informative since they come from the JP perspective and their views on the eroge industry.

19 minutes ago, nekofuwafuwa said:

Also, I miss sites like the old Fuwanovel that could list all the current releases and fan translations with images... Of course, we have VNDB and new Fuwanovel, but the VNDB design it's kinda hard on my eyes with the small letters and long texts. And I it seems like the new Fuwanovel website is outdated? I'm not sure. That's just my impression without any evidence or whatever so.

Fuwanovel is just a shell of its former self now. And yeah, I think the new website is outdated. Haven't checked it in ages since I only come here on the forums.

17 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

There was some more content on hacking (as well as tl) on insani's now-dead blog, archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20080910044341/http://sekai.insani.org/

Thanks, Zaka. At least a bit more for me to check. VN hacking tutorials are pretty scarce overall...

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2 hours ago, Zakamutt said:

Decent translation critique of at least the level shown in arunaru's danganronpa post. This will not happen because it takes time and effort and too few people can do it. I don't think a single post on this forum has ever qualified.

 

I actually had a lot of fun reading this. The dude went line by line with screen shots and basically had to not only re translate but compare and explain how the current tl falls short. He likely took hours. For just the prologue.

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11 minutes ago, bakauchuujin said:

Maybe some parts of a forum dedicated to different niches, like a Moege corner, mystery corner, nukige corner etc. I think it would be nice to be able to just have these areas to just talk about different genres of VNs.

If the forum was bigger - why not? But with such a few active posters as we have now, probably there would be nobody to talk to in those corners...

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21 minutes ago, adamstan said:

If the forum was bigger - why not? But with such a few active posters as we have now, probably there would be nobody to talk to in those corners...

On the other hand, less posters mean discussion are less likely to get buried by numerous comments like reddit.

Edited by ztrepzilius
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I'd like to see less of a divide between EVNs and JVNs. The thing is, I can understand why someone would have a preference for one or the other--the JVNs that get translated into English tend to have higher production values but also tend to be more expensive as a result; EVNs are more accessible (to English speakers) but have a much wider spectrum of quality (since, by and large, we don't get the worst JVNs). JVNs also tend to be longer than EVNs, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference. But I think that dismissing a VN solely because of the language it was originally written in is just plain silly.

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4 hours ago, lunaterra said:

I'd like to see less of a divide between EVNs and JVNs. The thing is, I can understand why someone would have a preference for one or the other--the JVNs that get translated into English tend to have higher production values but also tend to be more expensive as a result; EVNs are more accessible (to English speakers) but have a much wider spectrum of quality (since, by and large, we don't get the worst JVNs). JVNs also tend to be longer than EVNs, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference. But I think that dismissing a VN solely because of the language it was originally written in is just plain silly.

I agree that dismissing solely because of the original language would be silly. However - it's not only language and production values that separate them. I can speak only for myself, but currently I'm interested in VNs as a part of japanese pop-culture, together with anime, music etc - not as much in the medium/genre itself. So while I'm not completely dismissing EVNs, I'm just not attracted to them that much. Of course, many EVN developers try to imitate JVNs, but most of the times results are cringeworthy - with Katawa Shoujo being noble exception (and guess what - this EVN is in the top of my list, with the score of 8.5, just below KEY classics ;)).

So - it's not that I totally dismiss EVNs - I just tend to prefer JVNs, and my backlog is already horribly long...

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16 hours ago, Zakamutt said:

High volume EVN coverage from a person convincing enough to believe in for a primarily JVN person. Nobody has ever really hit this bar for me (ok, maybe weeaboo.nl, but it's dead), and I have some highly scored EVNs in my list.

Wouldn't that be @Plk_Lesiak ?

When I want to find a good EVN or info about it, I always look up his/her VNDB list ;)

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40 minutes ago, AustriaVNFan said:

Wouldn't that be @Plk_Lesiak ?

When I want to find a good EVN or info about it, I always look up his/her VNDB list ;)

Well, he talked about credible ones. I review Sakura games and defend DDLC. :meguface:

21 minutes ago, phantomJS said:

:pogchamp::isla::nokia::gasp:............

Maybe I should delete the gender declarations from my accounts? It would add to the mystery. Or rather confusion created by my intelligible nickname. :P

---------

And to add something to the main topic, I'm quite satisfied with the content community creates. I think I'll agree with Zaka that I'd love to see a more in-depth critique of VN translations. All we get now are cyclical flamewars fueled by 4chan understanding of how JP-ENG translation should look like.

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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I would like to see some form of centralized review/impressions aggregator both for Japanese and English releases. There some here and there but do to the nature it easy to miss them. It would be ideal to have these reviews in one place and under one umbrella with the same standards for every review but imagine that would be impossible, but an aggregator would be a great first step.

Those impressions/reviews would be more helpful now than ever since there are more english releases then ever before, so I am sure more people need to make decisions on what to read next.

Translation critique could also be interesting, but I would expect them to be rare occasion.

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1 hour ago, alpacaman said:

I'd love to see some more in-depth critique and analysis of VNs in general, be it about themes in certain titles, storytelling techniques, common tropes and genres, and so on. 

This. Reviews or analysis of single VNs are fine, but I would love to see more in-depth articles about VNs as a medium.

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