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How do you eat an entire whale? One bite at a time. Preferably with Cholula. How do you edit/translate/whatever a visual novel? One line at a time. Preferably with bourbon. Whether you’re a fan of the final product or not, one of the things that impresses me most about MDZ’s fan translation of Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort is that it got released, period. As in, if you were so inclined, you could download the installer right now, patch the original Japanese game, and go play the thing on your new-fangled Windows Pee-Cee. No demos, no one-route partial patches. The whole damned VN in English, finished on schedule and out there in the world. The project didn’t stall. It didn’t wind up in no-updates-in-six-months-but-we-think-they’re-still-working-on-it hell. It didn’t climb into that white panel van with Little Busters EX, never to be heard from again. The nice man was lying to you, Little Busters EX — there were no cute little puppies in the back. What were you thinking?! The KoiRizo team did nothing particularly special to make this happen. We just ate the whale one bite at a time. The rhythm method By his own account, MDZ worked very methodically on the project, spending an average of 30 minutes every day translating scripts into English. Not when he felt like it. Not when inspiration struck. Not when enough people harassed him with all-caps emails asking why the HELL hadn’t there been any progress updates on the KoiRizo tracker lately. He made it an expected part of his routine, like brushing his teeth or eating dinner. He scheduled regular translation sessions between classes or before heading out in the morning. He did a little bit. Every. Single. Day. There’s a word for that: consistency. That’s what gets things done in the real world, not 48-hour marathons every random.randint(1,6) weekends fueled by Red Bull, Hot Pockets, and intense self-loathing. Consistency keeps you from getting burned out. Consistency lets you make reasonable schedules and estimates, then stick to them. Consistency is like goddamned black magic. Over the course of the project, MDZ had consistency in spades. If he can maintain that approach to life, I have a feeling he’ll be successful at whatever he puts his mind to after college. When I came on board as an editor, I kept a somewhat similar schedule. I resolved to set aside my commuting time each workday for editing. And so for 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the evening, Monday through Friday, I’d park my butt in a train seat, break out my laptop, and just edit. Weekdays were reserved for my family. If you’re married with kids, you know there is no such thing as free time on weekends. If you’re not married and don’t have kids, please tell me what the outside world is like. I hear they came out with a PlayStation 2? That’s gotta be pretty awesome. Anyway, that’s what I ended up doing. Edit every single workday. For six months. Until it was done. (Six months? That long to edit a medium-length visual novel? Yeah, that long. KoiRizo weighs in at 36,000+ lines. Over six months, that works out to about 1,400 lines a week, or 210 lines per hour. That’s an edited line every 17 seconds or so, with most of the lines needing substantial polishing/rewriting. I have no idea what pace other VN editors work at, but I felt like this was one I could maintain over the long haul. Call it the distance runner’s lope.) Special topics in calamity physics So why all this rambling about whales and consistency? Because I just got back from vacation a few days ago and I’ve been surprised at how long it’s taken me to get my head back into the various projects I’ve been working on (or even writing this blog). And then I got to wondering how often something small like that snowballs into a stalled or even failed project. A missed day turns into a skipped week turns into a skipped month turns into a dead translation. Which then got me thinking about the coefficient of friction. It’s basic physics, which I excelled at (failing repeatedly). In layman’s terms, it’s a ratio (μ) that gives you a sense how much force two surfaces exert on each other and, therefore, how much force you need to exert to get something moving from a dead stop. Wooden block on ice? Low coefficient of friction. Wooden block on shag carpet? High coefficient of friction ... and a senseless crime against tasteful décor. Once you overcome that initial friction, it takes comparatively little force to keep an object in motion. I can easily imagine there’s a coefficient of friction between us and our work, some quantifiable level of resistance that needs be overcome before we get our asses in gear and be productive. And unlike the one in Physics 101, which is constant for any two materials, this one is different every single day. It depends on a bunch of different factors: how interested we are in our projects, how appreciated we feel, what other projects we’ve got going on at the same time, how much sleep we’ve gotten, what else is going on in our lives, whether or not the Mets are currently in the World Series, etc. Let’s call it the coefficient of slackitude. Once we get started on a project and make it part of our everyday routine, we can largely ignore this number. We’ve overcome the initial slackitude and, with moderate effort, can keep things rolling along fairly smoothly. But each time we let things coast to a stop, even for a few days, we’ve got to overcome the slackitude all over again. And since that value is variable, it might be much harder the second time around. In fact, it probably will be. Eventually, we’ll fail to do so. And our project will die. The takeaway So other than the fact that I had no business being anywhere near a physics classroom, what can we take away from my incoherent ramblings? A couple things: The easiest way to make sure your project gets finished is to stick to a regular schedule. Eat the whale a little at a time — every day if you can. Minimize the gaps. Avoid having to face off against that nasty coefficient of slackitude more than once.The easiest way to make sure your project gets started at all is to pick a time when that coefficient of slackitude is low — when you’re excited by the prospect, when you’re well-rested, when you have relatively few competing interests. When you can focus. Use that time to build your momentum, so when your interest wanes or real life intrudes — it always does and it always will — the project is so embedded in your routine that you can just ride it out.We need more finished translations in the world. So pull up a chair and eat your whale. Do it for your team. Do it for yourself. Do it for poor Little Busters EX, drugged and ball-gagged in a basement somewhere, forever wondering when it’ll finally get to see the puppies.

As part of my visual novel streaming/podcast project I announced the other day, I also wanted to announce an addition to all of the content I previously posted. If you didn't get a chance to read that thread, you can find it linked here. For those of you wondering what the addition will be, solidbatman and I want to host visual novel monthly streams discussing games we have played and the industry as a whole. Exciting news, there will be a live recorded stream tonight! Listed below are all of the details regarding the podcast episode tonight. I understand the time may be odd for some people, but we hope to see you there! Stream Time: Wednesday, October 28th @ 9:00pm CST/10:00pm EST (Thursday, October 29th @ 2:00am UTC) -> 5 hours from the time of this post going live Stream Location: http://www.hitbox.tv/originalrenfuwanovel Stream Guests: OriginalRen + solidbatman Visual Novels Discussed/Topics Covered: Games by solidbatman: Little BustersThe MenagerieOver the Hills, Far AwaySakura SpiritCursed SightGames by OriginalRen: Hoshizora no MemoriaGrisaia no Kajitsu (Covering the entire trilogy, but avoiding spoilers for the 2nd/3rd game)Sharin no KuniG-Senjou no MaouLucid9Violet HillIn addition to the games listed above, we will also be discussing how the structure of visual novels can be both positive and negative for fans. Both sides will be looked at, since I have lived in Japan and asked a few otaku about it before. Finally, we will also discuss how "true routes" affect a game and what it does to the overall story. While this is a list of topics and games, not everything will be covered and additional material may be showcased. We hope to see you there! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/u-n-envoy-calls-on-japan-to-ban-extreme-child-manga-porn Basically, hide yo lolis, hide yo shotas Personally, I think drawn content must be free. IMHO trying to ban this shit is, even though I find the content disgusting myself, nonsensical. It's freedom of expression IMHO, and I fully stand my ground on that fiction, regarding its subject matter, must be entirely free of governmental/legal regulation. This is like arguing FPS games must be banned because they feature murder or "it will give some freaks ideas to go shoot people". For fuck's sake.

So long as Saudi Arabia is the head of their human rights panel, I couldn't care less what the UN thinks about morality.

If fictional beings are legally protected against filthy perverts, then I should also be able to legally marry them provided they're of legal age, shouldn't I?

I'd definitely do 2, 4 and 7

This girl only costs $20, and you can take her home and be with her for as long as you like.

Confession: When people are sad around me, I can feel strongly and empathize with them, but can have a hard time knowing the correct thing to say to make things better. So, I may be quite awkward. It's easier if I'm close to someone, and I can just comfort them with a hug. I hope things get better for you Funya.

I have seen so many users saying "I can make a visual novel with [name_engine] , its so better than [name_engine_2] because [name_reason]." Yet they forgotten that there are always bad things in a engine, you could fall for paying such engine to only discover that it has no way to make that dream game. This is why why i'm listing well known vn engines and their cons, I hope the guide will help you pick the right engine for you not the company. renpy - One of the most known engine in the world (i'm not kidding), it uses python language to make vn. It's being updated as much as it can and also people have been able to make rpg from it. The main reason people choose this over any other engine is due to the freedom to add anything, learning python takes a while but most people have the novels stay in dating sims or storyline. Another key reason it's used is due to the fact that it can make windows, linux, mac, android, and IOS, which is very great advantage for anyone wanting to build games in a certain area or so. Finally it can be use for commercial and non-commercial use, however the art is not free but that is another topic itself. tyranobuilder - The main problem with this engine is the price but if you willing to overlook that it offers almost the same has renpy. HTML is the reason people have buy the game, however there have been problems with the HTML from not being able to click anything to buttons not working. It claims to be the fastest VN maker but that is something the user has to figure out. If you are able to code 2 scenes in renpy under 30 minutes thats fast progress, tyranobuilder is drag&drop meaning you have to waste 50% of your progress to clicking on a button. lastly tyranobuilder script language is javascript, almost no indie developer even dare use javascript, the reason is due to the fact it was never built for games. It's the main reason why tyranobuilder games lag campre to any other engine in this list. Also the maker of tyranobuilder fail to understand that it was Processing.js that make games work better in javascript not ECMAScript. Novelty- its the same idea of tyranobuilder but it was first built way before tyranobuilder, also its free so there is no reason to even buy tyranobuilder other than the HTML that lags. Novelty use C++ and java to script the language, this is a huge advantage since you can use this language to get jobs faster in the world and people from unity will hire you for just knowing how to code a vn in C++. As far as i understand, the main reason no one goes there is because its only windows OS which limits everyone who is not windows. Belle - Another VN engine that works like tyranobuilder, one big difference is that it's free. If you looking for tyranobuilder alternative for its HTML, this will be the one (again it was build first). Another advantage is that it really does run well in HTML but the bad news is that it only builds HTML which is the only thing it can build the game. Unity plugin: Fungus - Now i dont know much about this engine (reading things off google), it does seem like it another no code engine. what really makes this one different from all other engines that i list is its ability to run animated sprites, unity build (standard build, no consoles included), and the script is whatever unity has right now. Since this is Unity you will face these problems, Poor graphics quality as compared to Unreal Engine, Unfriendly User-Interface (even if you download the plug-in you will still have a bad time on it), and lastly dependent of unity, if their web browser stops working you have to wait for them to fix it, if unity discover a hack bug you have to update, if they going to upgrade you have to upgrade. Cloudnovel- A website browser to make VN, the reason i put this one so low is because it does a poor job to help developers. You'll find that there is no scripting language so you cant really do anything new with it. Another thing is that you cant use it outside their website so it stays in cloudnovel with no way to gain money. The drag&drop has pages that you must click and wait for the website to load your pictures, music and your gameplay. Lastly on why it makes such a bad vn maker is due to the fact that its only in english, sure it might be possible that someone might do it without reading but most of the great stuff is in english writing and in english videos. Thats everything, I didnt add GM because its design to build platform games not VN, construct is way too basic gaming that offers unneeded elements in VN, RPG maker is only build for RPG, adding long dialog will not help in a rpg (only the boss does that) 80% of the game is fighting not learning about the story. I hope this little insight of what each vn engine offers and what doesn't offer will help you. If you have any questions post here or want to ask why [engine_name] is not added it's because i can't post all of them.

So the rumors of Australia being stuck in 2002 were true...

The pyramid quotes are.... bad/funny. They get so huge and cluttered. I'm a little boy on the inside

Confession: I fucking hate the new quoting system. xD

All the dank memes on the internet do not emanate as much dominance as this lady does.

Wait...so ur not a retard anymore??? -Always thought Egypt were in middle east not in Africa -eating/drinking soup with a straw. -Tried my sister's bra -Munching on a pencil -Munching on a pen I miss my childhood...

Tfw fictional beings have more rights than you. I don't even.

I was missing this blogs, glad to have them back

As much as I want to believe that I'm pretty sure being virgin becomes a bigger and bigger "there's something wrong with me" flag as the person ages. If someone says they're a virgin at 30 your first thought will probably be "why?" not "that's kinda romantic" I should probably stop derailing now >.>

DeepBlue, Thanks for the interest on Eternal Maria. Standby for a reply from James. XReaper, You're really kicking butt spreading the word. I guess you already the honorable mention we gave you on Twitter Producer MOKA-san is most genki about this. Also this tweet has several screenshots (SFW and NSFW) from the game you should check out. Some are ones you've seen before, but I was surprised to see some of the much naughtier ones, too.

If you're really lucky, you can ascend into Steve's realm and only use your brain.

a fan made there own zelda maker , any one else gonna try it out? im start try it out tomorrow, ill see whats like and try to make my own levels. http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/23/fan-creates-the-legend-of-zelda-maker-avaialble-for-download?ref=yfp http://www.mediafire.com/download/63rs83988s89sxp/Zelda+Maker+Alpha+.01.zip

I apologize in advance for being unable to derail this one into oblivion. But I really have something better else to do at 5 AM You guys should try to advance quickly on your topics. After all, snails and salt don't go well with each other

2005, not 2002. Let's not make it worse than it actually is ...

I'm stil trying to figure out how to do that

Can I join this club too?

Grisaia: Fate stay night:

I know exactly how you feel :< I just can't start talking to people without a good reason for it. Unfortunately when people "like" something here it's usually because it's really funny or silly, not because it's correct or useful. I guess "unfortunately" might be the wrong word because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten so many likes.

I don't know why I am writing here, honestly. Confession: Whenever I see someone here talk about a difficulty in their life, I just feel like being near them and comforting them, which I then feel bad about, because I fear it is a masked sense of pity and I hate that. Confession 2: I respect the fact that people might not be interested or just prefer to keep to themselves, but seeing people here with whom I could be able to be with IRL and ease the loneliness, and thinking that they don't want to makes me feel even worse about having near to no friends. Confession 3: I wish I could make friends here, but even on the Internet I'm too scared to make a first move and feel anxious because I might make myself look stupid and embarass myself. Confession 4: I'm too shy to go the Fuwa TS for the reasons mentioned above.

They're supporting countries in several way where real childeren are forced into marriage and are raped without the majority cares about it but they want japan to ban fictional drawings which harm nobody excepting my mouse when I skip the scenes. *shakes head* Politicians.................

That Suzu peeing scene in Ayakashibito was also... Yeah

Yume Miru Kusuri pretty much sums up my school life lol. The no-girl end btw :^)

The choice structure sounds very interesting. You're right that the majority of games have clear options for "good" or "bad" choices and that the duality of the choice structure doesn't suit reality. A good counter-example is Fate Stay/night, which I still consider one of the best VNs ever made primarily for the number of choices and how truly different the various outcomes are that can be attained. There are very few (if any) outcomes that are purely "good" or "bad" and many choices in the game lead directly to sacrificing something in order to gain something else. If you are able to create a choice structure anywhere near that level, it will certainly be a noteworthy achievement. Best of luck with it. Well, I hope the choice structure is done in a way that will suit many people. I never wanted it to feel like I was punishing the player for choosing certain options, but obviously some decisions turn out better than others, just because that's how life is But that still doesn't mean that choosing a different option will lock you out of achieving a result, it just means that result will be different or will lead to something else unexpected. Thank you so much for commenting! - @Black Sands Entertainment - Thanks! I tried to create characters as people. The Seasonal Kingdom (where the story is set) is a diverse one, so there are very different cultures and people. - Update I've finally managed to finish a love interest sprite! Yay! They are taking a looooong time, but that's because they have so many expressions, arm poses, heads, etc. It'll be worth it in the end. Here is Gretchen! I'm pleased how she came out. I wanted her to be attractive (obviously!), but not conventionally so. I'll be working on Fell next, so hopefully will be able to put him later this week or next week. When I've finished all the love interest sprites, I will update the main post with their new art, as it's quite different to what is up there at the moment. - As for the script, it's coming along well. Haven't written much more to it than the last update, but have gone through editing it quite a bit, so it reads much smoother. My plan is to finish the sprites, code them in up to the point I've done, then work on the next chunk of art and writing!

it's like saying incest porn will make people want to rape their siblings.

UPDATES: Yangyang Mobile and The Letter are now on social media! You can check out the links and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr for more updates: The Letter's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thelettervn Yangyang Mobile's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/yangyangmobile Twitter: https://twitter.com/yangyangmobile Tumblr: yangyangmobile.tumblr.com We also have a giveaway going on our social media accounts, to support the game's Kickstarter campaign. Check each out, to see rules and prizes. Keep on smiling! We're on KICKSTARTER! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yangyangmobile/the-letter-2 If you liked our demo (links on the Kickstarter page), please help support our campaign by spreading the word out! Thank you so much! We're on Steam Greenlight! If you like our game's concept, please consider voting yes on our Greenlight page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=536452448

@deep blue, you can follow them also via facebook, as they post almost the same stuff there + plus the aforementioned twitter content.

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply my message and show me all those behind the scene pics I'm a sucker for good dramas and this one looks really interesting. I don't use twitter but I do use facebook so I will follow eternal maria there and wait for any news about a release date. Sorry for derailing this thread so much , I also wanna say that this is how a company should treat their public and do business in general. Nothing but respect for you guys, if I wasn't sure of backing or not Kyuuketsu well I'm not anymore. A pleasure talking to both of you guys James and Jon (sorry if someone else replied to any of the messages ) and best of luck with both projects! がんばってよ

Agreed. Ironically the anime was much better because it just condensed down the little bit of the story that actually did have progress which is why I've recommended it. Those parts have delicious suggestiveness in them. The manga has the worst progression ever beyond what was portrayed in the anime - that being "none", followed with the least satisfying "ending" in history.

Hi DeepBlue, Thanks for asking about Eternal Maria. For me personally, this leads into a very meaningful story. I could credit where I am today to the director of this film. We met over 7 years ago, living together in a share house when I first came to Japan. My Japanese was terrible and his English wasn`t much better, but we both became friends because our background is in the film industry. We ended up working together to make chakuero videos and from there he saved enough money to shoot Eternal Maria. It was great fun working with the talent, and very cool to watch AV girls doing drama style movie acting. That`s a very quick version of course, but I don`t want to go on for too long or hijack the thread lol... and right now I better focus on making "Libra" a success for everyone! Thanks for your support on that too. I`ll make sure our twitter updates when the movie is available and in the meantime, enjoy a couple of behind the scenes photos ^^ Cheers, James

She is my waifu too looool but yes i agree with you, i don't always like tsenderes who resort to extreme violence lol i mean she is a female she is supposed to be 'feminine', i don't mind tsunderes who verbally harass the mc but within limits of course. umm i think i am the same way, if the tsundere likes the main character she should show her dere side, i don't like the arrogant ones who keep the tsundere act indefinitely.

confession: I now feel like an asshole after reading this and thinking about my recent complaints about life Confession: I wasn't expecting anyone to think like this. I've always thought that my life is incredibly easier and relatively painless compared to the lives of those around me. My biggest problem is merely concentration issues. I'm so much better off than anyone else I know that I often feel ashamed for not using opportunities given to me to their fullest potential. Example: I was talking about the death of my cousin (who I didn't know very closely) to a few acquaintances. This one very energetic and cheerful girl calmly said "Oh, she died on the 23rd? Funny thing, that was a sad day for me too. It was the first anniversary of my best friend's death." Stuff like this puts my complaints and problems in perspective. I've never found my own problems to be severe (I think I'm just overly sensitive to problems because I lived a carefree, sheltered life for the most part). I find it interesting that now someone feels that way about me. Makes me consider that maybe I was overly dramatizing my problems in the previous post. Confession 2: Forgot where I heard this (might be Danganronpa 2) but this off-hand remark really resonated with me: "People never really understand each other. They only pretend to understand, and pretend to be understood".

thanks alot for sharing the faq with us & again, i´m personally very fond of the way you keep on interacting with the masses, almost always responding to questions btw concerns immediately, even to quite negative critism like you previously did on the steam thread of yours in a quite funny way. another big plus for me, was the confirmation of an uncensor patch shortly after announcing the whole project, even before the kickstarter, without beating around the bush. therefore wishing you the very best for your future endeavours, be it the xero partnership, or any other stuff like supporting mangakas by publishing the works of theirs etc. did my best to create as many threads in various german-, hungarian-, srpski-speaking forums & so on to promote your cause of becoming an ero-loving stronghold, due to threating adult content with the needed respect it definitely deserves. sadly you shouldnt have posted that little ks-link for the chibi board game, as i´m now considered utterly broke and me beeing able to back again for libra may take afew days longer, because of recovering financially first - which leads to sincerely praying all the awesome goodies wont be already gone by then. nevertheless wish you the best & gambare! edit: the discovery of you also beeing another berserk-fanatic is a real great one - lets hope miura stays healthy, so there wont be any forced hiatus in the nearer future again.

That's insulting, I dated my left hand for 5 years.

In my opinion? No. I mean don't get me wrong, it's great, but it's definitely not as great as everyone makes it out to be. In my opinion it's less the act of sex itself, and more the feeling of being connected to someone on that level that is enjoyable. But everyone has different preferences I suppose. Some people are total sex addicts, others could care less. Personally, I could probably go without having sex again for the rest of my life and be okay with it, though that's just how I feel at the moment and it could easily change as I grow older.

Deep Blue, I like your avatar! Berserk is probably my favorite manga. Enjoyed the anime, too. - (Jon, Internet Lackey) Berserk is fucking amazing, and Gatsu is probably my fav character you sir have good taste. I know this has nothing to do with the novel but Eternal Maria looks really good, seems like it's going out on 2016( on dvd i guess) any other information about that you can give me?

Tsujidou-san no Junai Road, so fun. Umm... red haired heroines... what have I read recently that had a red haired heroine. I mean, what are we defining as red hair? Dark red hair? Or are we allowing more dark pinkish looks as well? Most recent one I remember was Kumihama Yuki from Renai Phrase. Though that's more of a dark pink look than a red, in my opinion.

Confession: I decided to come back a little earlier than planned. Turns out taking a break from Fuwa hasn't given me what I hoped it would. Considering how the number of people irl I can relate with, I started feeling a little bit lonely. I have managed to reconnect with a few people on FB, but they're mostly gamers that I met online. So I'm just about doing the same thing there as I was here, but with even fewer people. My irl friends have either moved away or won't respond to my messages. Kinda blows. So yep, I'm back! I have at least made a little bit of progress, in that I have a few job applications in and I'm starting to sleep a little better. Turns out it's actually a lot easier to sleep when you wake up before sunrise. I started drinking decaf sleeping coffee too (it works really well). But in spite of all my efforts to de-stress myself, I still can't seem to get it together. My psychologist decided that I need to start getting therapy treatment for my depression and anxiety issues, so hopefully that helps to get things going along. I feel at home coming back here. It just felt like something was missing from my life and I couldn't feel right no matter what I tried. That said, it does feel a little awkward not having Gravity Green, but I'm sure I'll get over that... Maybe. Either way, it's good to be back. Just in time to wish Flutterz a happy birthday too! Holy crap, has it really been a year already? I remember doing this for your last one. o.o

Hey guys, it's been a while since we mentioned it but we're finally re-launching the Player Mentors Program! Our goal here is to connect newcomers to experienced players who can help you find games you might enjoy, chat about the ones you've read so far, and above all else: be a friend to you. The program is open to both experienced players and newcomers, but I'd like to say something to the later group. To you who's new to VNs and has absolutely no clue about what to read next or has no one to talk about VNs with, we're here for you. We have all been in your shoes at some point, everyone started out as clueless as you are right now, and this project is aimed to make this road easier for you. Maybe you're too shy to make a thread asking something, or maybe you're afraid of your doubt being "dumb" and people trolling you, and that's absolutely normal. Your interaction with your mentor will always happen privately, there'll be no one reading your talks aside from the two of you. Interested? Contact me. I'm the person responsible for coordinating the program, the bridge between you, Tay, and the mentors. You can either send me an e-mail or PM me here on the forums. E-mail: [email protected] page: Link (Just press the message button)Make the subject “Player Mentor Program”If you have any other questions, feel free to ask them in the comments!

any game that has ethnic characters, i will support.