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Top 10 countries for the main site (data point: yesterday, 5.1k visits): USA - 28.3% Canada - 6% Indonesia - 5.6% UK - 4.7% Philippines - 4.2% Germany - 4.1% Brazil - 3.8% Australia - 3.7% France - 3.3% Vietnam - 2.3% ========== Top 10 countries for the forums (data point: yesterday, 10.2k visits): USA - 27.8% Canada - 5.4% Indonesia - 5.4% UK - 4.9% Philippines - 3.9% Germany - 3.8% France - 3.2% Australia - 3.1% Brazil - 3% Russian Federation - 2.9% Source: Our internal analytics. Was happy when I saw the reviews blog pick up some steam as well, up to >200 views, from sitting just below 100.

I seriously don't get the 'shinji is a pussy' """argument""". I must have missed the rule that says all protagonists must be manly and iron-willed. For a 14 year old kid with parental issues and severe social anxiety, going through all the shit that happens to him in the series, I'd say he's faring pretty damn well. My troll theory is that since one of the messages of Evangelion is to "tell otakus to open up to the world" (to simplify), people hate Shinji because they see themselves in him

So I had my senior prom last Friday. I posted these on Twitter, so I might as well put them here.

Please note that I also changed the way we track contries to be more reliable sometime last week, so US numbers will probably go down; Before it used to track browser languages, now it properly tracks countries -- all browsers with an English language set would get counted for US, now it doesn't anymore. Give it another 2 weeks for us to have more reliable data.

*Thanks XReaper and hsmsful!* *Before I get into this post I have a question. It was brought to my attention that people would like demos to give feedback on. I'm not working with free artists right now and my skills are not where I would like them to be. Would you guys mind if I post prototypes without art or would you rather have a more finished product?* Alright, so here is the information on character classes in Magnificent. No, you don't get to pick your character class. Maybe if I made another game in the faaaaaaaaaar future. Anyway It's similar to FSN, You'll be able to view the classes of each character and compare them to each other. In the story characters are chosen for a certain class based on their ablities and how they approach fighting, ranks and parameters can change based on choices and actions made in the story. Most of this was shamelessly ripped from FSN, but I added my little twist. How will this play into the novel? I'm not fully sure but I have a couple of ideas. Character Classes -Blaster/Ranger (Lasers-energy/Vapor blasts or projectiles, far combat) -Powerhouse(Tank, power, speed and endurance) -Tactician(Battle Intelligence) -Infiltrator (Stealth) -Warrior (Well-rounded fighter) -Mentalist (Psychic or Mentally Intelligent) -Rouge(Speedsters or stealthy warriors/scrappers) -Mage(External Vapor to control elements) -Elemental(Internal Vapor to control elements) -Gadgeteer(Building technology for battle) Ranks & Stats From strongest to weakest EX,SS,S,A,B,C,D,E,F *EX = Unquantifiable *SS = 200 *S = 150 *A = 100 *B = 90 *C = 80 *D = 70 *E = 60 *F = 50/0 Parameter Rules: -9 Main ranks, 6 normal, 3 special. -EX rank is unquantifiable and in a league of its own, powerful to the extent of rendering comparisons meaningless. -2 different modifiers that can be applied to ranks, + and - -For every plus there is a 10 point increase. +(10), ++(20), +++(30), ++++(40) - minus modifier indicates a rank which has a number that is not reliably stable, technically qualifying for that rank, but not quite reaching the rank in terms of power or ability and possibly being even closer to the next rank down -Parameter can have up to four plus modifiers, can only have one minus modifier. Stats: Each has a parameter. -Attack (How much regular attack power one has) -Agility (Quickness and speed of one's reaction or reflexes) -Endurance (Stamina, how long one can maintain exertion) -Vapor/Ki/Spirit (How much Internal Vapor one holds) -Magic Affinity/Potential (How much External Vapor one can absorb or manipulate) -Luck (Quality of one's luck) -Defense (How much damage or punishment one can take) -Wisdom( How wise and intelligent one is) Overall Rank- Character rank decided by overall abilities and parameters. (Can be EX to F) -Average humans would be F rank Class Skills- Skills delegated to each class, everyone of a certain class usually has these skills.(1-2 only) Personal Skills- Skills delegated to one particular person. Ultimate Technique - A character's strongest skill. A personal skill that is rank S or above automatically gets this title. Alignments: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral Lawful,Evil Neutral Evil,Chaotic Evil Average Parameters: Parameters of certain classes based off averages noted by Academy. Characters may have higher or lower stats depending on their personal situation and experiences.

Jokes aside, regarding gamedev - for artists, musicans and sound engineers - there's a lot of various places to search for; certain lead developers usually have their networks of contacts; aside from people they might have worked together in the past, it's good to know the industry as well. Not always, but quite often - they have a number of specified artists they'd like to work with. It's easier to hire a freelancer, than "acquire" someone, who you'd like to work with on a more than a single project. Those who barely got off the ground, have a lot of different places to start. Certain services like DeviantArt or Pixiv even have their own boards, where artists post their employment offers. For music and SFX - Bandcamp and SoundCloud. The demoscene is a hidden gem of it's own, with a variety of different sites, modarchive.com being one of the most popular. Those are the formal ways. Informal ways include lurking throughout the message boards, posted above. Both of them require a lot of work and messaging. A lot of people has issues with gathering members, especially those who already work professionally, because they are often unable to forward a polite and adequate query; they aren't able to sell their dreams and interest people. THIS might prove useful to them (although it's an article regarding communication with artists, it works nearly the same way for everyone else; learn to sell your ideas to other people in an appropriate manner). While any form of actual employment is an important factor, a lot of devs often seek to work on projects they see interesting as well; people rarely work on things they don't like and it's important to have that in mind as well, when recruiting.

Might as well join in on the fun.

Yeah, agree with GetterEmperor, Sengoku Rance is most likely the most famous of the series, a great turn based RPG, with great story. The art is really good, (no voice unfortunetly). The game can be pretty hard at some moments, but that is more thrilling that way. And for the original post, bunny black 2 and 3 are on their way to be translated. Since the first one wasn't the main target first, but he decided to translate the first one, to have a " complete " story.

In my experience, I actually got addicted to reading -after- playing visual novels. There is a study that says people who read many visual novels tend to develop speed-reading (read faster) and have better text analyzing skills. This is so true. When I first played a visual novel, i didnt like it much. I would rather watch anime because it would give me more content in less time, and because I would just listen (and thus get less tired and bored than when I was reading). However, when I actually got used to reading visual novels and had fun with then, I began having a taste for reading. At first it was tiring to read, but now I was listening and reading (so when I got tired of so much text, characters would appear and start speaking, so listening to them would be the -break- between the novel side of it, as voice-acting with tachi-e resembles anime). After finishing some VNs, I realized my reading speed improved. Part of it was because I was bored of fillers (which made me develop a technique of text skimming to avoid the boredom but still retain content), and had a lot of curiosity (I wanted to know "whats next" so soon I found myself reading in auto-mode in full speed). After some time, I realized I was too used to some character styles and voices, and i found myself cutting some voices and having enough pleasure just reading the text (which was waay faster). After that evolution, I got more and more into light novels (something I could not stand to read more than 1 hour a day), reading them voraciously. Getting used to raw text and not having to wait for character voices, nowadays I even click a lot in VNs because even in auto-mode it gets slow (mainly when you can sense what the next lines are going to be). So what I can say from my experience is that, VNs are a great middle-point between anime (audio-visual) and novels (text-only), and transformed me from a formerly 100% visual person to a bookworm. After reading some studies, I believe many high-school students here in Japan have been experiencing the same (starting with gyaru-ge for fun, and end up reading light novels spontaneously). So Visual Novels are great to connect both mediums and you can feel how much you can improve as a reader.

I always claim bullshit on these claims, as throughout most of human history we were hunter gatherers and didn't even have writing. And even if you exclude that and only take into account the generations that existed after writing was invented. The majority of the world was illiterate for the longest time. Even if people are generally reading less than 2 generations ago, we still beat most other generations since at least most of us are literate. I remember this once came up in an episode of Lucky Star, and I would have to agree with Konata's counterpoint. She argued that these claims rarely acknowledge the fact that most people do spend a tremendous amount of time reading online. Be it through social media, blog/forum posts, articles, etc. So even if most people aren't reading books, we are still reading quite a bit. Regarding VNs, I think they are fantastic tool to get people back into reading fiction. Most people who do read fiction, read it because it is entertaining and interesting to them. But to be perfectly honest, TV dramas, movies, anime, video games, etc are far more entertaining for most people because they involve more senses. Visual Novels are a medium that rely on prose writing, but also incorporate music and visuals much like anime and video games. So the people who get bored with regular books, could probably find entertainment in a VN.

Enjoy the Nightmare fuel. Always watching.

Well, obviously that's why h-scenes exist .

The only magazine I'd subscribe to......... If I can be bothered.

By "minor wall-of-text", he means "17-page dissertation". And that was just the introduction. The details were confidential.

Indeed, and if everyone spent their time learning Japanese instead of bugging TL Projects then there'd be no need for them in the first place.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/63848-light-novels-arrive-in-the-u-s-again.html http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/ToRead.pdf Studies have shown that youth spend far less time reading than previous generations. There are many reasons for the causes of this phenomenon. Let's focus on the effects, specifically the effects in relation to visual novels and the western community. Visual novels rely heavily on language, many of which have higher word counts than the average ink-on-paper novel. I feel that this discourages westerners who are already weary of reading. I began considering this after looking at the extreme limited niche market for light novels published in English. The writing style for many light novels appeals to the intended Japanese audience. "According to Japan’s Publishing Science Institute, light novels accounted for approximately 23.5% of the country’s general paperback sales in 2011" I included that statistic to demonstrate that reading is not an issue for eastern culture, thus visual novels are also seeing continuing success. My question for you is: How can we expect visual novels to become a well known medium in the west when less people in general find pleasure in reading?

So I've watched plenty of anime and read plenty of manga in the past years and I've started to notice a trend that has been developing in the course of all those years. When I began watching anime, in terms of romance anime, I was always hyped to see the protagonist with the main love interest, maybe because I was naive and just liked thinking "aw they like each other they should be together". But after a few hundred anime watched, I often now start off despising main love interests and always end up turning to the love rivals, even the ones I know have 0 chance of getting with the main character. And it's begun to pain me in the sense that nowadays most of the heroines I like and find interesting are never the main romantic interest and I can never bring myself to like the actual main interest most of the time. I always feel like the main interest is now plagued with tropes that make them appealling to the general public but to me they just feel like carbon copies, like hollow shells that have little personality and character depth, and I've started to become tired of a lot of the heroines I now see as main interests in the genre which makes for watching a lot of anime with romantic plots quite the painful task sometimes. Of course this is not to say I can't like all main heroines, there's always exceptions, but the majority really follows the trend. I feel like, while I genuinely usually only try to look at a character's personality, I can't help but notice that a lot of times rivals, just because they are rivals, or are characters with less chances to get with the MC, genuinely become more interesting to me based on their position in the story. This is also a major reason I've turned to VNs, so all my love for non main heroines can be fulfilled (at least in most cases). Does anyone feel this way? Do you find yourself liking the main heroine or the side heroines more?

Don't know what i was thinking but for some reason spearhead was in my mind.

Same page. C'mon man..

First worthwhile accomplishment in ages.

Must be those 12 year old French girls who like anime.

I actually kinda liked this game. I just finished it about a week ago. H-version, of course. I then went back and played Sunrider, and enjoyed it as well. So many easter eggs/references in Sunrider Academy from the original Sunrider. >_> Well, I enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty fun. I'm not really into stat management or anything like that, but even still, I managed to finish it. Ava best girl. Can't wait for Sunrider 2.

Ask Mr.Meogii to make you one Edit: http://forums.fuwanovel.net/index.php?/topic/5883-signatures/

The avatar is Reinhardt Heydrich, one of the antagonists from Dies Irae, the most famous untranslated chuunige VN. It is also famous as being untranslatable. You should know that pretty much just the interface has been translated for Soukoku and Zero, at least that was the case the last time I checked. I don't know where the Zero tl project is on it right now.

Yeah came up the same way for me. Wonder if it's somewhere out there, maybe on the deepweb or something. Either way, I already obtained it by making a contract with a certain magical creature, I thank you all for your assistance.

The series starts off a bit slow and boring, but that's just to introduce some of the important characters. Start from the beginning. Things pick up in the third game. Currently only 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.1, 4.2, KR, and SR are translated. 5D and 6 should be out sometime soon.

I also recommend Kamidori, it is pretty good, having played it myself( never even got to finish a single route depiste like 50+ hours of grind), but you play Bunny black, so I assume that grind does not bother you since bunny black has grinding too

Or as I like to call it: Wasted Potential-The Video Game

For a more serious, less-rapey turn, Ikusa Megami Zero, Soukoku no Arterial, or Kamidori (for translated) are superb, good, and ok in that order, lol.

Yay. Now's my turn! :9 Since I'm a designer my pic has to look all posh:

play the short ones first, planetarian and narcissu and then swan song! all of them (this 3) are utsuge not nakige so maybe they dont fit on what you want to read right now.

Well ONE is literally the only actual nakige on the list iirc (maybe eden* qualifies?) Other than those the quality picks out of these would be narcissu (utsuge, depression rather than catharsis), Planetarian (not sure if utsuge or nakige), Swan Song (post-apocalyptic, dark), and Hoshizora no Memoria I'd say. I'd recommend... Planetarian>eden*>narcissu>Hoshizora no Memoria, all the first three are short

What are those 2 other scary looking creatures? 3D world is a weird place

I recommend School Days for the indecisive.

I'll never forget the time when my mom borrowed my laptop for about two hours when I had the icon for Eroge! by Clockup sitting on my desktop. She didn't find it, which is good, because I'm not going to be the one who explains what that game is to the woman who raised me.

Just got to Kotori's first H-scene and this happens.

I played some PixelJunk Shooter with my little brother. I just randomly picked it from my countless humble bundle games because it had co-op, but it's actually pretty fun game. The puzzle and shooting elements are simple but solid, and it's great for playing around. Most of the fun came from trying to use the environment to kill each other in order to snatch all the collectibles. I don't consider myself very good older brother, but from time to time it's nice to play with him because he's always super exited about it. When he's old enough I'm definitely going to corrupt him with visual novels.

Shoji Meguro is the best VG composer of all time. Have you tried the Reincarnation album?

my god what an awesome ost persona 4 has

I... uh... got nothing to answer to that... (´ ・ω・`)

I bet you played Huniepop for the voices only. Anyway, I'm planning to look into this as well, since people have been telling me it's good. I'll be the judge of that.

I'm obviously not gonna dive in as TL-er here, too, but I can probably do TLC without murdering myself.

Why not? I'll join the fun! Me Me playing on a gig

Since people were somewhat confused as to who I was in the last photo. http://imgur.com/a/R6Uvs#0