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Unless you've been sick or (suspiciously) indisposed, you may have realised that reddit was doing a census. Well, the results are in (with over 500 participants, you sad, sad individuals) and you can go over the results in full on the thread below. If you'd rather a short summary, I'll provide that for you guys here. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3ogp56/rvisualnovels_census_results/ Average age - 22ish. Not surprising that VNs are a young people's medium. A nasty man would tie 'age' with the need for 'pictures' and conclude something rather inappropriate, but that's not me :3 Gender breakdown - 90% males. Again not surprising, Reddit is a young man thing. Females consisted of 6% of respondents, at least half of which were also males. First VN - The vast majority experienced Katawa Shoujo first, with Fate/Stay Night and Ace Attorney a distant second and third. A cynical man would link Katawa Shoujo's tendency to be experienced first with the medium's low participation rate Path into Otakudom - Anime ranked highest, followed by vid games and manga. Don't ask me what this means, whether it's the Japanese medium you experienced first, the one which had the most influence over you, or something completely different is something I can't be bothered interpreting. I'll just press my lips together tightly and make thoughtful noises. The oldest VN you have read - Tsukihime is the oldest VN most people have read, followed by Phoenix Wright and Muv Luv, because they're mostly youngsters and will never experience the glory of 90s VNs. I grieve for them. Other VN communities you visit - Steam, VN discord (NFI), 4chan /vg, Fuwa, 4chan /jp. It should be noted that Fuwa has the largest number of lurkers, because we're all lazy here. Let's see... what else is interesting: Most important VN attributes - Story came in top, followed by writing then visuals. This means there's an awful lot of liars who took the Reddit survey. Favourite kind of dere - Dan was 1st, Kuu 2nd, Tsun third, Bambi didn't rate and I hate you all for it. Best translation - Grisaia was first, daylight 2nd and third. Favourite Western Publisher - Sekai was 1st, MG 2nd, JAST third. This is where Dovac sits in front of his monitor laughing at all the guys constantly shitting on him, then starts banging his desk with his fist, then pointing, then more fist banging, at which point he clutches his heart and tips off his chair onto the floor. A thumb will then catapult up into eyesight from below the desk giving an enthusiastic thumbs up, before slowly sinking down amidst gurgles and giggles. And there's a bunch of other stuff you can find by reading the thread.

I have finally escaped the angry hordes of Little Busters fans, and written another review. Guess what!? THIS VN IS BETTER THAN LITTLE BUSTERS TOO! Anyway, I reviewed Over the Hills and Far Away, the debut VN from WarGirl Games. Its set during the American war of 1812, so it has a very unique setting. Give the review a look here

If I could give you any two pieces of advice, gentle reader, they would be: don’t eat unopened mussels, and don’t proofread anything you’ve edited. Neither will end well for you. I always scratch my head when I see a visual novel translation project with the same person listed as Editor and Proofreader. Or worse yet, Translator, Editor, and Proofreader. Or (and I know I’ve seen this at least once) Translator, TLC, Editor, and Proofreader. I’m all for DIY, but that's a disaster waiting to happen. Here’s the rule: If you’ve touched a piece of copy in any one of these roles, it’s tainted for you in all others. Sorry, that’s just how it is. These jobs are meant to be a series of checks and balances to help ensure the quality and accuracy of the content. If a single person takes on two or more of these roles, you’ve got problems. If one or more of these positions goes completely unfilled, you’ve got problems. It’s not that you wouldn’t be capable — many editors are amazing at proofreading, and tons of translators are wonderful at TLC — but once you’ve worked with the text in one capacity, your familiarity with it makes you far less effective in any other role. Our stupid, stupid brains Like so many things in life, it all comes down our stupid brains being more helpful than we want — kind of like an overeager toddler who just handed you your iPhone. In the shower. (Thank god for Applecare+.) Whenever our brains see a gap in content, they try to fill it whether we want them to or not. “Hi, I’m your brain. Hey, is there a word missing there? Can I make a fairly good guess as to what it is? Wheee! I’ll just pretend like it was there and we read it and nothing’s wrong. Now let’s go think about boobies some more! BOO-BEES! BOO-BEES!” And the more familiar your brain is with the work in question, the easier it is for it to fill in those gaps. It already knows what to expect, and it’s just waiting to jump in and save the day. Our brains must be stopped before they kill again. The easiest way to do this is, at each step of the creation and revision process, have someone ready look at the content with fresh eyes and no preconceptions. Simple as that. You wouldn't go get a second opinion from the doctor who just provided your first opinion, would you? So don’t do it here. Don't double-up on jobs, and don’t leave positions unfilled. The final product will be better for it. Yeah, yeah, I know. Easier said than done. Finding good volunteers is tough and people flake out or have RL commitments all the time. So what then? The nuclear option When I got my first job in advertising, I was an idiot. Thankfully, my first creative director was not. A highly accomplished copywriter, she’d penned dozens of the brand slogans that had littered my youth. Suffice to say, she knew her stuff. (You’d probably know her stuff too, if you saw it.) And this was one of the first things she taught me: “Never, ever proofread your own work. But if you have to ...” That’s right, she had a trick. A big red button on the wall of her brain that said, “PUSH ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.” You never want to proof your own work, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes you’ve rewritten the copy deck five minutes before the big pitch and there’s no time to send it back for proofreading. That’s where the trick comes in. Read it backwards. Start at the very last word and read your way back until you hit the first. This strips away all meaning from the text — your brain isn’t leaping in with a guess as to what comes next — so you can focus on minutiae like spelling, punctuation, repeated words, etc. This is a relatively laborious process, unfortunately, and it doesn’t scale well to an entire visual novel. But I mention it here in case you find yourself with a few lines or even a short script that needs a proofing pass and you’re the only one around to do it. .it of habit a make don’t Just. Full disclosure By the way, I’ll be the first one to admit that v1.0 of the KoiRizo English patch has typos. In my role as editor, I tried to work as cleanly as possible, but over the course of 36,000+ lines — I figure that’s gotta be at least 250,000 words — a few foxes got into the henhouse. The team didn’t have any proofreaders, and the QC process wasn’t nearly as robust as had initially been hoped. (Zakamutt touches on that here.) But you know what? For all of that, I think the launch product came out comparatively clean. I still want to drink bleach and die every time I see a typo report, of course, but that comes with the territory. And with any luck, there will be patch updates forthcoming that address some of these lingering issues. Which is good, since I’m running low on bleach. And lives.

(Important!) Talked to Nay: It'll be a solid piece of work to put the IPB 3 board up for us to scour/salvage, but I got him all the files he'll need and he said he'd make time for it within the next day or so. Once that's up, we can go in and grab all the walkthoughs and blog posts which were nuked by the upgrade.

I pirate tons of stuff and I own more than 10 VNs as well. I wouldn't say commenters are full of crap, what I do think is that the average VN player doesn't even READ more than 10 VNs outside of the big titles, so I would point that out as one of the reasons for those numbers. I have friends who say they love VNs yet they've only played Grisaia and FSN. I also wouldn't be surprised if the titles that were picked as favorites in the census were mostly voted on by people who just played that single title and think it's better than the rarest of pepes.

Please send help.

IPB4 really does make everything more efficient. The little guy is damn well trying to spread the reviews.

Dang. All sorts of dang. I'm working with Nayleen to put up a copy of the old forums into our forums test page. That'll at least let us go in and get the old data and transfer it to the new forums. Apologies, everybody, for the hiccups. I did everything I could to minimize the pain of the transition, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Came across this a bit ago. Now you know what to show people who ask "What is a waifu?". Honestly, this should be played in schools everywhere, so educational..

Confession: Completely relapsed into my old "Above all, do no homework" self. Realized that my dream of getting in a top tier university is more than likely to never happen. MIT and shit accept only like 5 people max each from this country, I don't believe that I can be that good. Funny thing. Expected to get into something top level all my life, so now it feels weird to sincerely consider stuff that's less. Almost 2 am and I've spent the last 2.5 or so hours browsing Reddit. Currently trying to balance my expectations from myself(bringing it down reasonably from Yale, MIT, etc.) and what I'm doing to bring myself up(currently an absolute bunch of fucking NOTHING except getting into a few new clubs) to said expectations. My counselor also told me that I'm putting too much pressure on myself, which drives me away from working (this is closely related to the fact that, as stated, I wouldn't consider myself completely happy if I ever failed to be successful in education). Kind of ironic (and tragic) that even though I want to major in physics/astrophysics/computer science/ computer engineering (I never see quantum physics majors so) I don't like math much. I find myself more interested in abstract concepts than any sort of measurement or calculation. (e.g. instead of orbital calculations I'd rather try to devise methods to develop artificial intelligence or try to get quantum computing working as a future career) I'm going to be a sore disappointment for all that know me. I feel like I've started to loathe myself. Escapism feels beautiful.

Umineko is #3 on the "best translation" list, absolute top fuckin' kek right there. Also 33%: "As long as I can follow the VN, I'll accept plenty of errors." This is why we can't have nice things.

This is me beign fabulous somwhere in the Moscow

Can't we just open donations for rains/Cyr meetings?

Who cares what people think? In fact you might even get complimented. I have a winter jacket thats suppose to resemble Akatsuki cloak worn in Naruto series and I got it in 1 of the anime conventions I went to and I get some nerdy guys tell me that it's awesome.

I promise the red stuff on my arms is jam mixture.

Set sail on the romantic adventure of the season! “True Lover’s Knot” follows the story of Emma, a London-based tech genius, as she and her best friend, Lucas, take to the high seas in a luxurious cruise that will change their lives forever! DOWNLOAD AND PLAY NOW ON http://store.steampowered.com/app/416630/ WATCH OFFICIAL GAME TRAILER HERE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZZ2SpEiPMA. This “romantic comedy” Visual Novel will truly delight its readers featuring: An interesting and highly entertaining storyline.A fun and addictive match-3 mini game.Beautiful, high-end anime characters.Funny and light hearted dialogue.Witty romantic comedy in the style of classics like “Notting Hill”, “Sweet Home Alabama” & “Made of Honor”Light and pleasant feel and ambiance resembling animes like “Marmalade Boy”, “Cardcaptor Sakura”, “Whisper of the Heart” & “The Cat Returns”.Groovy jazz, lounge, reggae and RnB soundtrack. Treat yourself to that cruise holiday you always dreamed of by embarking on “True Lover’s Knot” Contacts: Website ► SapphireDragonProductions.com Facebook page ► Facebook.com Twitter page ► Twitter.com Dev Blog ► Blog.SapphireDragonProductions.com

Nosebleed tho I'm probably one of those noobs you're referring to, since I've only played 20-ish VN's myself

Along with things like Rewrite, Muv Luv, and Fate Stay Night. Granted nothing other than Grisaia got many votes, but people vote for that solely because they hear everyone say it is.

IT'S HAPPENING (again)

Hard to call those people visual novel players, to be honest. Playing with an RC plane doesn't make you a pilot, neither holding a rifle makes you a sniper. With that kind of attitude, it's hard to treat the results as firm; majority of so called "vn players" usually do not even scratch the surface and it's kind of... sad.

Tsukihime? hahahaha. My first VNs were Seasons of Sakura, True Love, Nocturnal Illusion, Runaway City...... ..............................now I feel old....oh yeah! and paradise heights and...

Alright everyone, this thread has been extensively cleaned up in a last attempt to do something wtih it. I understand many of you have several life experiences related to bullying; however, the main focus of this thread is still VNs and how bullying is portrayed in the medium. While correlating it with reality by giving concrete examples is something to be expected from a topic like this, I do want to re-state that this is not meant to be a discussion about people's own experiences with bullying. If you must give an example from your own personal life, please do correlate it with the topic at hand rather than just stating your story for the sake of sharing it. I don't mean to belittle anyone's experiences, but this thread is not the correct place for such discussions, and it's especially not the place for needless flaming wars on the topic of bullying either. So with that out of the way, if you still want to discuss bullying in VNs, feel free to post, and please be civil with each other. If it turns out like last time again, there won't be a second re-opening.

Is it just me or did you screw up the hyperlink for the donate button? Not like I was going to use it.. Misclicked and nothing happened. Good job nay!

it's fine not to mention it on kickstarter but if their facebook/twitter is blantantly ignoring questions and comments regarding the 18+ version when a good portion of your fanbase wants to know, then youre kinda like "Eh? Are they gonna deliver it or not?" Last time I checked Facebook and Twitter dont have strict laws like kickstarter and it's fine to mention it as long as youre not showing genitals or inappropriate visual content or anything.

It feels like if they are caught mentioning about 18+ version, that they would be killed on the spot. Not sure if they are trying to hide something or embarrassed to say anything... Always been wary of SP like this...

Best OP: "Tokyo Ravens - X-Encounter" Best ED: "Aldnoah Zero - aLIEz"

As long as we can get avatars and possibly message editing on the IPB chat, that'd be my preferred one.

I don't think there has been a fan made one. Pretty sure you can install a walkthrough when installing the game, though i'm not sure if it's translated or not. I could be wrong though, as I dropped the game pretty early on and forgot most of what I did.

Well, just finished Kaede's route so i guess i have a bit more insight.

or the unluckiest~

Yeah, trust me — I desperately wish there were days I could get away with that. But in my line of work, if I screw up, it ends up appearing on TVs, magazines, monitors, and/or billboards across the country. Nothing like a multimillion-dollar cock-up to put a damper on your weekend plans ... and an end to your career. Call it a hazard of the profession, but I'm now a firm believer in multi-layered editing and proofing. That's awesome! I think I just found the title for my memoirs.

I haven't minded the long common routes from the visual novels that I have played so far. I enjoyed both Rewrite's and Little Buster's common routes a lot. I didn't really mind them being there too much when going through other heroines routes because I could easily use skip mode to get past what I had already read.

I'm such a stickler for perfection when it comes to writing some piece of literature or analysis. I would proofread my own stuff daily until I get it all right. And if I do miss something, there is no need to worry as I don't plan to post any of that online for people to read (too embarrassed). I believe the term you're looking for is Productive Laziness. Our minds are lazy by nature avoiding unnecessary work but in smart way. It can't be helped, this is our default mind after all. And it's actually one of our biggest strength as sentient beings.

I do all of my own proofreading. Seems to work out. I'm not a very efficient writer though.

Can confirm the above. I may not be qualified for any of the positions, but I've checked Translations before and in the wise words of my current employer: "Your virgin eyes do miracles for spotting the nonsense that slipped through the cracks."

Hello, I believe our writer has the talent to live up to the expectations, even though his style might be very different than what we are used to in eastern Visual Novels. As for the quality checking, we do have someone tagged for it. Even though I did give him the role of "Graphic Designer", Kia is one of the most important members in our team, working as a GUI Designer, Animator, Lead Coder, Quality/Style Checker and provides a lot of experience and councels to my leadership. Although, I must admit we did not look for any editor and/or proofreader as of now as we don't really need any yet. We are mostly focusing on working out the art style and GUI since most of the demo script is already done as well as a short part of what comes after it (Around 20% of the script 1st draft has been done so far). Due to recent bugs and the forums update, a big part of the original thread has been deleted, so I will have to wait a bit if it is possible to get it back. We did finish working on our True Heroine design, but I won't be posting her yet. Now that all of our characters designs have been done, we are starting to go through a huge Quality Checking phase to ensure every character do share the same style and also remove obvious flaws in the drawing. We are also planning on mixing some details to make the art style more unique which is a bit hard to do, but we believe it is always worth to take more time to improve the quality of our game. As for the backgrounds, more sketches have been done, but nothing good enough to share. I did want to ask everyone who would feel like being interested in the project if one would be interested in speedpaintings from our artists? I do know our character artist has the ability do produce some. If we do receive a positive answer, we will most likely plan several ones when it comes to drawing the Main Menu pictures (5 in total).

Deardrops is quite likely the worst VN I have ever played. Wait, scratch that. EVERYTHING from Overdrive is quite possible the worst VNs I have ever played. With the exception of Dengeki Stryker, Overdrive titles are terrible. It's like watching 30+ hour low budget, soap opera episodes.

Mare-channnnn

You're saying you don't like the character in the logo?

Thank you for to like my post and I like your post very much. I wish I could see you anime since your anime hear very cool ut and I like the prognanist to.

Considering how well NTY!! (No, Thank You!! for the uninformed) and COoT (Coming Out on Top for the uninformed) have sold, I don't think that's the issue. I mean, how many people do you know like trap BL games? I'm sure you can find trap lovers and then there's fujos and legit homos who would throw themselves at a BL game. Sekai Project just chose poorly.

Holy shit the red box in chat is now in every theme, someone make it stop or I'll have a stroke here.

I realize that my last post is a bit silly sounding, normally you would assume nothing is happening in the absence of any proof of it happening, rather than the opposite. And I don't begrudge anyone for thinking that way. The one thing we have to go off of is the remark they made during AX or Otakon this year (I forget which) which heavily implied that they want to continue releasing 18+ versions of the games that have them via Denpasoft. For some reason they can't say this outright. But I'm naive and hopelessly optimistic at the strangest things and this is one of those things, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and will be running under the assumption that we'll get an 18+ release of g-senjou. And of Tenshin Ranman, Wagahigh, Chrono Clock, and everything else. Because ultimately the return is very likely to outweigh the cost of doing so, so why not? They've also been talking about expanding staff in order to promote and support the Denpasoft side of their business better, something they wouldn't do if they were going to give up on it. If you want to be pessimistic about it, that's okay too. I think I'll stop harping on people for being so until they establish a better track record. We'll see starting with this release, I suppose. edit: Also I support the all-ages conversion of any and all VNs for Steam release. Hell, I'd even support that phony all-ages version of Euphoria if it was real. Expanding the market is a positive thing. And it's not like it diminishes the 18+ side at all, either, considering the record sales MangaGamer has been seeing on their own site after going big on Steam.

"If you can't win what's gambled, you'll go crazy." - Mad Tex

Finished H2O -Footprints in the Sand- What an unsettling mix of carefree comedy and harsh story it was. Loved it though. The plot, characters and music were pretty nice (the ED song is damn good), but probably the best thing about this VN is the art. I picked it because I liked how Ikikoi did some things like the protagonist with a face in many CGs and while I certainly was disappointed on that front, I still loved it. Dem >15 CGs with sunset in the background. the atmosphere. Don't have anything to rant about this time, except for how much of a moege kusoge the side story Root after and another is. Out of curiosity I went to see the anime, was greatly disappointed several times over the first two episodes and dropped it before it distorted my experience any further. If I didn't have the game to compare to, however, I might have loved it. Hayami best girl.

How much I enjoy a long common route naturally depends on the quality of the visual novel. As long as I don't find a visual novel boring, I much prefer a long common route to a shorter one. A long common route gives more time to world building, character building, and makes for a more organic segue into the character specific routes (or at least generally speaking). If I had to pick one over the other, I guess I would say I would prefer a game to have a long common route as opposed to a short one. Ultimately, you can always use the skip function or load a save after all. I enjoyed Grisaia's common route in particular. The humor never fell flat and each scene developed my impression/interest of Mihama Academy's student body. This might sound strange, but I was actually a bit bummed when the common route concluded.

Grisaia no Kajitsu Licensed by Sekai Project Summary Mihama Academy - on the surface, a closed learning environment established to nurture students who find themselves at odds with the world around them; in actuality, an orchard-cum-prison built to preserve fruit that has fallen too far from its tree. Whatever the circumstances behind its establishment, Mihama Academy is at present home to five female students, all with their own reasons for "enrollment." For better or worse, each girl has established a routine obliging of her current situation; life moves at an idle, yet accommodating pace within the walls of Mihama. Yet with the arrival of the institute's first male student, the nearly preposterously opaque Kazami Yuuji, the students at Mihama begin to fall out of step with their predetermined rhythms. Will Yuuji prove to be the element the girls around him needed to take hold of their lives once more, or will the weight of their pasts prove too steep a wall to overcome? And in the first place, just who is Kazami Yuuji? While the true nature of the "job" he is wont to alight to at the most haphazard of moments remains shrouded in secrecy, one thing is for certain - his encroachment upon the quiet orchard known as Mihama Academy will prove itself momentous in one way or another. And of course, one cannot discount the possibility that perhaps Yuuji himself carries the weightiest past of any of the students... Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order The game has a similar structure to G-Senjou no Maou in that its plot branches into a heroine's route at certain choices, although each of them is valid in its own as there's no true end. After entering a heroine's route the choices boil down to a single one for good/bad end. Following the flow of the story and entering each route as soon as you encounter them would lead to the following order: Makina -> Amane -> Sachi -> Michiru -> Yumiko. That said, Route Guideline Amane Good End Bad End Makina Good End Bad End Michiru Good End Bad End Sachi Good End Bad End Yumiko Good End Bad End Attribution A mysterious source. Aaeru formatted the original version of this post. It has since been updated and reworked several times by various staff members and admins.