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Hello everyone ! The year is coming to a close and I am going on holidays in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have just released Without Within 2 onto Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/398980 This time, Vinty is flying over to Melbourne, a city I love and try to visit on a yearly basis. I have a deep love for places, and I hope I can share some of those feelings with you through this game. Details are on the store page so I will keep this short, but really guys, thank you for putting that Vinty emoticon up onto this forum and all. Seriously appreciate it. I like to act like a tough athlete, but I actually get so nervous during launch weeks, and it is your kindness that helps me get through these times. Thank you so much !

Re: Running Out of "Good" Games Won't happen. Most localization companies can't even keep pace with individual Japanese developers (just look at JAST and Nitroplus, or MangaGamer and Navel). That's not even factoring in the new partnerships that are occurring. With ~95% of VNs untranslated, running out of good VNs to translate is an odd concern. There's a lot of problems bogging down the English eroge market. Here's a few: Porn stigma: English-speaking cultures stigmatize porn. In Japan, porn sells games. In the West, it has the opposite effect, as English speakers equate presence of porn with "no other value". In addition, porn gets in the way of mainstream distribution, advertisement, and press coverage. Add to that an audience that thinks porn should be free, and you have a real market issue. Small market is small: Because of other factors, the market is limited. Because the market is small, many Japanese developers aren't interested in catering to it. As a result, we don't have a variety of good games that will appeal to different interests, which keeps the market small.Visual novels aren't games and aren't books: VNs fit into a niche between the two with no established market in the West. They're games without gameplay. They're novels with often subpar translations, or simply prose that doesn't fit established conventions and Western concepts.VNs are viewed as sexist escapist fantasies for nerds who can't get a girlfriend: This stigma turns people away, discourages open discussion and dissemination (especially offline) by those who stick around, and encourages a culture of piracy.The culture of piracy: Because of the above factors, as well as the nature of the target demographic (tech-savvy college-aged males usually with no stable income), the target audience tends to pirate rather than buy. One thing I've learned is that people are more likely to buy games if there's no free alternative available to them. Unfortunately, the VN fanbase tends to be tech-savvy, so that rarely occurs. Steam is a better target, as evidenced by the 15k or so hits on my Sakura Swim Club patch install guide (most VN fans could install the patch without a guide I'm sure).

I just created a new "All translated VNs years chart" so I thought about sheering it with all on Fuwa. Note that Nugike are excluded from a chart and only a first fully translated release is counted.

Don't sweat too much over it, what is done is done Sure. My perfect track record of getting rejected when asking girls out is still intact, at least. At least you have some kind of interaction with girls ;__; It would be nice to talk to 3D girls. Even 2D imagination waifu men need it sometimes.

It's a shame that many people can't differentiate between something being just bad and hating something on a personal level. It's not the same. I would even say that something which can trigger deep emotions like hate can't be purely bad. And School Days is certainly the emotion triggering type of visual novel.

I'm not really sure if the new has reached Fuwa's community, but a patch was made by a Beast Lair Forum user that has patched Mahoutsukai's first 5 chapters. Hopefully the news of this patch has reached CommieSubs and they can get off their butts and finish the dang thing. Link to Patch (look for the 8th post on the page): http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/34-Mahoutsukai-no-Yoru-Patch-for-Chapters-1-5-released/page226

The problem of the cut of ero content is not the porn itself. Half the point of eroges is that because they are niche 18+ products, you can do whatever the shit you want in it as long as you throw in some porn. Platforms like Steam won't allow that. You won't see SubaHibi, Saya no Uta or SayoOshi going to Steam, and it's not a question of porn (i.e. sex as masturbatory material). Cut that off and eroge loses a lot of what makes it a very particular and interesting sub-culture. And all you end up with is a medium like any other. That's a pretty opinionated point of view, but if Key VNs and Grisaias and Katawa Shoujos is all that awaits the future of the english eroge (or visual novel, whatever, it's the same thing) market, well frankly it's a bit boring. And throwing a Muv-Luv or even other really good VNs in the lot isn't gonna change my point of view.

You are presenting a false dilemma; people who play nukiges can and do also support the regular industry, you can't just exclude all people who play nukiges as irrelevant, especially not when nukiges, like it or not, fit into the visual novel story telling format, and are therefore inherently part of the same medium, but I'll expand a bit more: You are indeed able to separate regular movies from pornographic movies, I'll give you that much, but the lines become way thinner (if not invisible) when you go into VN territory, because in movies you have graphical and non graphical sexual content, a characteristic that clearly divides them and has crystal clear worldwide guidelines, whereas in VNs there's basically nothing of the sort. Sex in VNs is 99% of the times always graphical and VNs with any sort of sex always get rated 18+, the only thing "separating" them (in the West, in Japan they're all in the same shelf) is the amount of sex, but that is not enough to separate them into different mediums or industries. But even forgetting whether nukiges are VNs or not, what's really noteworthy here is that you include moege with some level of sexual content in the chart, yet refuse to put those in the "porn" medium alongside nukiges, because according to your definition, if there's enough story, it can't be considered pornographic, even if there's clearly explicit sexual content in it, and more so typically with the intent to cause arousal in the reader. You are throwing around an arbitrary definition of what pornography is when pornography has been clearly defined for years now. If you're going to separate "non-pornographic" and "pornographic" mediums, then at the very least eliminate all VNs with any explicit sexual content, otherwise you're just being biased towards nukiges exclusively and attempting to use logic to excuse your own personal disdain for them just discredits you even more. My main point is this: your chart clearly wants to represent all translated VNs, but then proceeds to exclude a big chunk of said translated VNs, a chunk that can also be quite relevant to the trends you are demonstrating in the chart, so it would be sensible to include it. In the end it comes down to semantics, you entirely refuse to accept nukiges have always been an integral part of the medium because they don't fit with your own definition of what a VN should be like, and therefore it is completely irrelevant to represent them, regardless of how much they actually weigh in. Well, it's your chart, so do as you like, but you should really be conscious that this chart misrepresents the entirey of the medium the way it is now, so I guess what I would suggest is change the title to something like "all non-nukige VNs" or something, that way at the very least you avoid discussions of this sort.

The problem with this argument is that it could've applied at any point in the history of VN localization. But in fact companies like JAST never did run out of good games to localize, and in fact their list of partnerships just continued to grow. The environment is actually improving due to a variety of factors: the rise of anime culture, increased attention from fansites like VNDB and fan translation groups, the opening up of Steam to VNs, the rise of Kickstarter as a platform for funding VN localization, and the gradual decay of the Japanese market (which forces developers to look at other options or die out). You're looking at one tiny little microcosm: Sekai Project's partnership with Key, and forseeing that soon SP will run out of Key games to localize or fan translations to exploit. Well yes, the low hanging fruit will be picked and then SP will have to move to harder targets. That's hardly reflective of the market as a whole. The English eroge market is in trouble, but the threat isn't lack of developer interest. The threat is that they'll ignore the nascent English eroge market and focus on Steam and Kickstarter instead (which are hostile to erotic content), causing eroge licensing opportunities to dry up. There's a very real possibility that companies will further adapt to the Western market, dropping the content types that are less appealing or offensive in Western culture: ero, especially ero involving lolis. I like VNs because of their unique Japanese traits, so if these traits get lost in translation then it hardly matters to me if the market flourishes. The market I cared about will have dried up.

Moege generally aren't something I personally go for, but I can definitely see a lot of untapped potential there. Case in point, Princess Evangile seems to have done really well for MG. The western market is probably big enough by now to sustain a few releases of that kind each year. Pretty sure someone's going to fill that gap sooner or later. There's money to be made there, after all. As far as running out of good games goes, I don't really think that's all that much of an issue, except for kickstarters. It's somewhat hard to succesfully kickstart a localization of an unknown game, even if the game is really good, moreso if the game is good but not really amazing. I do think the market is big enough to sustain a few releases per genre for a number of genres each year, though. And although the Japanese market favors moeges, it's not like that's the only kind of game released there, or the only successful kind, even. Case in point: https://twitter.com/shigeo_h/status/662615531426476033 https://twitter.com/shigeo_h/status/663283963264274432, and that game is anything but a moege. Put another way, the output per year of Japanese releases is still far greater than the output of localizations, so even given a slant towards certain genres in the original market, there's still a big enough pool to pick from so that you don't need to localize crap just to avoid running out of games to release. For that matter, while the pool of really awesome VNs may be rather small, a game doesn't have to be absolutely amazing to sell well enough to turn a profit. It just has to be good. There's many more good VNs than amazing ones. And indeed, a VN doesn't have to be good or even just decent to do well - case in point, any of the Sakura games. So all in all, I'm not worried. At the current size, we won't ever run out of games to localize. And if the market does grow further, it'll eventually be big enough to influence the decisions made by Japanese devs on what kind of game to produce - or allow devs that already produce games suited to the western market to give their games a higher budget since they can count on additional sales from this market.

Vinty is attending a calligraphy event over in Melbourne. At last, she will be able to meet Excelia, the world famous calligrapher. Determined to study and mimic her idol's every move, will Vinty end up losing her identity? Hello everyone! Thank you for being kind to Vinty in Without Within last year. Putting such a short game onto Steam was scary, but a lot of you gave WOWI a chance, and I am really thankful for that. This time around, with the script running at about 20,000 words (still short by VN standards), this sequel will run at roughly five times the length of the original. Without Within 2 will be a kinetic novel without any choices. This time around, I would rather focus on one story rather than being distracted by contrived choices like I did with the first game. WOWI2 will also be a bit of a "travel novel" as well. Throughout the game, players will find links to various videos of Melbourne Australia, which is where the story takes place. To be honest, I have this borderline fetish with places. As in, I love them almost as much as I like people. I really want to share that passion with everyone. In September, I will be flying to Melbourne for a week to film more footage. I have a booth at a convention there as well, so just trying to make the best use of my time and money. Please feel free to check out the demo: And I can really use your support on greenlight as well. Thank you for considering: The remaining details are here: http://wowi2.invertmouse.com Thank you so much everyone ! And thanks in advance to Helvetica Standard (or whoever ends up doing it) for moving this to the Original Projects section.

Everyone knows the christmas season officially begins two and a half years before christmas day. This is normal!

LISTS LISTS LISTS LISTS LISTS LISTS LISTS LISTS Some people like to read VNs as soon as humanly possible. Some like to just preview the translations to come. Sometimes a translation is abandoned part way through, never to finish. Whatever reason they may have, many like to read partial translations. Plenty of VNs make this easy due to their route-based structure. You can often get a complete story even if there are only one or two routes available. However, despite there being a resource to list all VNs completely translated, there is none to list those that are only partially translated. This list will encompass both translations currently in progress and those that are not. It will NOT, however, cover the current progress of in-translation projects, it will only tell you how much is available in its released partial patch. If you want to keep up to date of all translations currently in progress, please follow the VNTS updates arranged by Tay and I, and follow the VNTL-Moon update aggregator. Note: This post will not cover interface or machine translations. There needs to be at least some manual translation of the story text. When possible, I will try to link to the project pages, but sometimes those are no longer available. In-progress translations (These are patches for VNs with currently active projects that wish to release a complete translation eventually) Amagami (patch links, copy and paste them from the page) - Translates the first day (project page) Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- (patch link) - Translates the prologue. Clover Day's (patch link) - Translates the common route only. Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai (patch link) - Translates the Kana, Ureshino, and Shirasaki normal routes. (project page) Dracu-riot! (patch link) - Translates Elina, Azusa, Rio, Nicola, and half of Miu's route, 90% total translation. (Old project dead, new project here) Hara Kano!! (patch link) - Translates everything except the Hiyo h-scenes, which is being translated by another person. Hinomaru (patch link) - Translates most of Hina's route. Irotoridori no Sekai (patch link) - Translates the prologue only. (There is another older partial patch covering the same content from a different long-dead translation project here) Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura Doki (licensed) - Translates the Mio and Konami routes. Little Busters ME/EX (licensed) - Takes the completed regular Little Busters translation and makes it compatible with ME/EX, does not translate any of the new stuff. Mahoutsukai no Yoru (patch link/torrent mirror) - Demo translation (old project dead, new project here) Majo Koi Nikki (patch link) - Translates the free trial. Monmusu Quest! Paradox RPG (patch link) - Translates the demo content. Musumaker (patch link) - 15%/common route patch. Muv-Luv Altered Fable (patch link) - Translates Sumika, Meiya and Kashiwagi routes. Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles Vol.2 (patch link) - Translates The Day After 01 only. Sharin no Kuni, Yuukyuu no Shounenshoujo (licensed) - Translates the Houzuki route only, nothing else. (it's also the only part that matters) Licensed by Frontwing, patch removed. Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi (patch link) - Translates the common route. Sumaga (licensed) Translated the Spica route and half of the Garnet route. Patch is unavailable due to the game being licensed. JAST claims to be releasing it this year. Sweet Pool (patch link) - "Chaotically" translates the whole game, only half of it is edited, none of it is TLCed/QCed. (final, fixed patch is almost done) Tenshin Ranman (licensed) - Translates the prologue. Project homepage is down, patch was lost. SP license makes this moot. To Heart 2 XRated (patch link) - 100% translation, but still in an unfinished beta due to having unedited routes. Witch's Garden (patch link) - Translate the prologue. Wonderful Everyday - Discontinuous Existence(SubaHibi) (licensed) - A "leaked" patch translated around 80% of the game but it has since been licensed and the patch removed. Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na (patch link) - Translates every route, but most lack editing or QC, some text in CGs are untranslated. Note: requires the original partial patch to work. Yosuga no Sora (patch link) - Translates the Sora and Kazuha routes. Abandoned/Dropped/Stalled translations (these are patches for VNs with projects that are either in limbo or outright dead. You are unlikely to ever get a more comprehensive translation) 11eyes -Tsumi to Batsu to Aganai no Shoujo- (patch link) - Translates the web trial. 3days ~Til Death Do Us Part~ (patch link) - Short trial. Aiyoku no Eustia (patch link) - Translates to the end of the Fione story. Akai Ito (PS2) (patch link) - Translates Yumei route and part of Uzuki's route. Akatsuki no Goei (patch link) - Translates the common route only. (old project dead, new project here - update: both projects dead??) ALICE=ALICE (patch link) - Demo translation. Amairo＊Islenauts (patch link) - Prologue teaser. Anonono (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website -atled- (patch link) - Preview patch Battle Flyer Itsuki (link LOST) - Translates the first 21% of the game. If anyone knows where to find the patch, please PM me. Chaos;Head Noah (patch link) - Translates the common route. IOS version only. Concerto Note (patch link) - Translates the prologue only. Daiteikoku (patch link) - Translates 35% of the story. Da Capo Plus Communication (patch link) - Translates Kotori, Alice, Tamaki, and Kanae routes. <- Some of these aren't in the MangaGamer release. Dance Of The Shrine Maidens (patch link) - Demo translation. Devils Devel Concept (patch link) - Translates 20% of the game. NOTE: A more complete 25% patch was made but is unavailable. If anyone knows where to find it, please PM me. Divi-Dead (patch link) - An abandoned retranslation effort, translates the first day of the story. dote up a cat (patch link) - Translates Umi and Nami's chapters. Final Examination Kujira (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Fortune Arterial (patch link) - Translates Kiriha, Kanade, and Shino routes. (old project dead, new project here - update: double dead??) Gore Screaming Show (patch link) - Translates the prologue and Day 1. Hakarena Heart (patch link) - Trial translation. Hani Hani ~Operation Sanctuary~ (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Hara Min!! ~Saimin Nakadashi Kozukuri Sengen~ (patch link) - Rough prologue patch. Haramasete Seiryuu-kun (link LOST) - Partial patch v0.3.5 Zansho Translation Haratsuma Nurse!! (patch link) - Translates common route Haru no Ashioto (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Hatsukoi (patch link) - Translates Anzu and Yusumi routes. Himekishi Lilia (link LOST) - Preview patch translation website Izanai (patch link) - Trial translation. Jooubachi no Oubou (patch link) - Trial translation. Kichiku Megane (patch LOST) - Translates common route. If anyone knows where to find the patch, please PM me. Knight & Princess (patch link) - Translates pretty much just the prologue. Kono Mama ja, Ane to SEX Shite Shimau!? (patch link) - Translates to the end of Day 11, includes 7 of Ayame's scenes out of 11. Koisuru Otome to Shugo no Tate (patch link) - Translates Yukino and Ren routes. (old project dead, new project here) Lamento -Beyond the Void- (patch link) - Teaser patch Lamune (patch link/h-scene patch) - Translates the Nanami route. H-scenes are untranslated, download the other patch as well to translate them. Lilith-Izm03 (patch link) - Translates 63% of the game. NOTE: A more complete 75% patch was made but is unavailable. If anyone knows where to find it, please PM me. M&M Enchanting Magic & Sweet Charms (link LOST) - Demo V2 patch translation website Maison de M (patch link) - 9.16% translated. Majipuri -Wonder Cradle- (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Masked Torturer (patch link) - 29% translated Mizuiro (patch link / menu patch) - Translates the Hiyori route. Morenatsu. (patch link) - Translates... several routes. I don't know which. Mother/Daughter Lesson (patch link) - 80% translated. Osu Mesu Time Slip! (patch link) - Translates the prologue and "master route". Oyako Rankan (patch link) - Prologue patch. Polyphonica (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Popotan Po! (patch link) - Mystery patch. How much does it translate? Who knows! Princess Lover (link LOST) - ANOTHER mystery patch! Isn't the sense of discovery this brings thrilling? Wait, it's not, because we can't find the danged thing to start with. translation website Prison Battleship 2 Complete Edition (patch link) - 45% translated. Pure Pure (patch link) - Translates Chapter 1. Rance Quest (patch link) - Demo translation. Ratirica (patch link) - Trial translation. Re：BIRTHDAY SONG (patch link) - Trial translation. Real Imouto ga Iru (patch link) - Translated Demo Sacred Plume (link LOST) - 20% translated. If anyone knows where to find the patch, please PM me. Sakura Sakura (patch link) - Trial translation. Sanarara R (patch link) - 15/103 scripts translated. Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica - Memories White (patch link) - Trial translation. Shirotsume Souwa -Episode of the Clovers- (patch link) - Translates Chapter 1. Shuukaku no Juunigatsu ~Fuyu~ (link LOST) - Trial version translation website Step -Our relationship, step by step- (patch link) - Trial translation. The Space Between ~White Labyrinth~ (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Thief and TROLL (patch link) - Story is 100% translated, many h-scenes are untranslated. Thief & Sword (patch link) - Translates Shalt's route. True Tears (link LOST/torrent no longer seeded) - Demo translation translation website Un：BIRTHDAY SONG (patch link) - Trial translation Under the Moon (patch link) - Trial translation. Xross Scramble (patch link) - Leaves the "Baldr Force Re-Action" portion untranslated. Yaminabe Aries ~Asu e no Chousenjou~ (link LOST) - Translates the "Tail Tale" story, about a third of the game. If anyone knows where to find it, please PM me. Your Diary (patch link) - Translates the prologue. If any of these patch links appear dead, let me know and I will try to update them. Is there something you know about that isn't listed? Let me know about that, too! Remember to brush your teeth before going to bed and don't do drugs. Shoutout to Arrakis for being a huge help and finding a lot of stuff.

Hi all. I have returned to Fuwa after a year of absence so I thought about saying hi. I see a lot of changes have been made while I was away. In past year I had thought couple of times of coming back but wasn't sure about it, and then I stumbled across this Video "All we have on Fuwanovel" or something like that this morning and that was what made me decide to come back. I left fuwanovel because of difference of opinion in witch a VNs fan-base and Fuwa was moving at a moment and back then I thought I will never come back, for some time I searched for other otaku oriented forums but I didn't find anything where I could hang around as most ware eater highly toxic communities or full of otaku newbies who go "Naruto is the best anime ever". After that I had just give up and quietly enjoyed otaku life without being part of any online or offline community. From time to time when searching for info on VNs I would stable across Fuwa posts and every time I would remember that despite my differences with a more numbered fan-base of VNs Fuwa was and is up till today my best online community experience I had. Noting significant really changed much for me in time I was away, other then that I am into Shoujo-AI more then ever, that my tolerance for lewd things in otaku community had drooped more then ever and that a year or so with practically no real discussions online or offline made me into even more of an eccentric then i was.Oh and yea my Japanese skills have incensed a lot, enough to watch some raw anime that don't use difficult Japanese without missing anything, true my reading skills are still very low. I still don't know if I come back to stay or if I am just visiting true I doubt I will be as active as I was back in a day. Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!

If you’re the image editor for a VN translation, you’ll probably spend at least half your time setting English type. Lots of it. (The other half will be spent laboriously retouching out all the Japanese text you’re about to replace.) Sounds simple on the surface, right? Any pixel monkey can copy/paste from a translation document. But there’s a lot more to good typesetting than just clicking with text tool and banging away on the keyboard. Just like good prose, there’s a certain rhythm to good type. A practiced designer will make numerous small adjustments along the way that allow the to reader glide effortlessly through whatever’s being said. Reading good type should be like driving on a well-paved road. And the one thing all good display type has in common: someone took the time to kern it. The Basics of Kerning I won’t go into a detailed discussion of kerning here — the terminology, the history, the fact that it sounds like something you’d have to pay an escort extra for. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, there are lots of sites out there for you to read. Better yet, buy yourself The Elements of Typographic Style, the best book about type you could ever hope to own. Call it an early Christmas present to yourself. For our purposes, it’s enough to say that kerning means to adjust the empty space between any two adjacent characters, either bringing them closer together or pushing them father apart. And why would you want to do that? Otherwise, you’ll have gaps and crashes in your type that’ll make things feel ever so slightly off. To illustrate, I browsed over to a free font site and downloaded a typeface at random. (There’s a very good reason I did this, rather than using some industry-standard font like Helvetica or Times Roman. I’ll get to that in a minute.) Downloading, downloading … done! Okay, let’s set some type. Here we have a few words set in Font X — name redacted to protect the innocent. At first glance, everything seems fine. But then you look closer and start noticing little things. Like what are these weird gaps between the first two letters of some words? Some are almost as wide as the full space between words. And hey, what about these letters over here that are more or less crashing into each other? That can’t be good, right? Nope. These are problems. They need to be fixed. Kerning Pairs The reason I picked a free font is because most professional typefaces (aka, “ones you pay a lot of money for”) are designed to avoid the majority of such issues. Once a typographer has crafted all the characters for a font, he or she will then spend countless hours specifying “kerning pairs” for it — basically, instructions on how close each letter should sit next to every other letter. (Here’s how close A should be to B, here’s how close A should be to b, etc.) While some letter pairings may look good at default spacing, others will need to pull tighter or push father out to look right. Professional fonts will often contain hundreds of these kerning pairs. It’s mind-numbing work that takes far more time than most amateur typographers are willing to put into a freebie font project. That work still needs to get done, however, but now it’s on your shoulders instead. And, since most fan translation projects use free fonts for budgetary reasons, odds are you’ll have a whole lot of mess to clean up. Congratulations! Thankfully, once you’ve learned how, it’s pretty easy stuff. I work in Photoshop, so I’ll be showing its kerning interface here. If you use another program, it likely has something similar. Here’s Photoshop’s character palette, with the kerning field highlighted: The "0" you see there means there’s no kerning currently being applied to the characters on either side of your text cursor. Make this number negative, and the two letters will start pulling closer together. Make it positive, and they’ll start pushing farther apart. (Photoshop measures this in units 1/1000 ems, but that’s bar trivia you don’t really need to remember. Just know that in most cases, you’ll be entering numbers in the range of -100 to +100.) You can see the results of some sample values below. In Photoshop, you also have the option of “Metrics” (apply whatever kerning pairs the typographer included in the font, if any) or “Optical” (let Photoshop guess what looks good, basically). Play around to get a feel for things, then advance your cursor through your type, letter pair by letter pair, and adjust this value until the two letters are the right distance apart. Rinse and repeat. And what’s the “right” distance? The one that looks right, of course. It’s a subjective thing, and this is where practice and design experience come into play. Like The Sands Through The Hourglass One of the first art directors I worked under offered me this analogy, which I’ve always rather liked: Imagine the negative space between letters as vases lined up in a row. They’re all different shapes, these vases, but you want each to be able to hold an equal amount of sand (or M&Ms or whatever). Kern until your vases all look like they could all hold the same amount. This is an imprecise rule, of course, and you’ll often want to make your “vases” bigger or smaller for visual effect, but it gives a beginner a good baseline approach. So let’s take that approach here. Let’s go through, fix all the obvious gaps and crashes we noted earlier, then make smaller adjustments to even out the text overall. (We call this giving the type an even “color.”) After some quick fiddling, we end up with something like this before and after: It’s subtle, but the "after" type just feels nicer overall. And if your text is a UI element that some poor reader will spend countless hours staring at, you want to make sure it’s as nice as you can manage. Because the longer you spend with something, the more obvious and annoying its flaws become. (Said every roommate ever.) The good news is you don’t need to do this everywhere. It’d be insanity to kern entire sentences or paragraphs of text, especially since the effect is barely perceptible at those point sizes. You only really need to worry about kerning display type — things like buttons, headlines, title screens, etc. If your type is over 16pt, it probably needs to be kerned. The good news is, as you learn the keyboard shortcuts for your particular application/platform, you’ll be able to breeze through a piece of type in a matter of seconds. In fact, a lot of designers find sitting down and kerning type to be mindlessly relaxing, like knitting or playing Minesweeper or making fun of the animations in Fallout 4. Mind Your Gaps So that’s kerning in a nutshell kernel. It’s the absolute easiest way to step up your type game, and it’s quick enough that there’s no reason not to do it. As a bonus, there’s a fun little online game out there to let you practice your kerning skills in hypothetical situations and compare them to a professional designer’s solution. It’s a fun way to kill some time at work while you boost your skills.

I wanted to make this thread to discuss some negatives and positives about the visual novel market around the world. While my post only focuses on the negatives, I encourage positive discussion as well. I have listed some major points below addressing what I believe are problems in the western market for PC games and what this means in the possible future. 1. Lack of Moege Localization - I don't think it's a huge surprise to a lot of people that fans tend to enjoy cute slice-of-life romance novels with some comedy thrown into the mix. While this isn't true for every fan, I would say that at least 50% of visual novel players in the west and currently in Japan (as shown by Getchu's sale numbers each month) enjoy moege. The problem here is that western developers are not translating these novels due to a lack of getting licensing rights. I believe there are a lot of reasons for this (one of those reasons being stated in a thread located here), and because of this I think there will be a point in the distant future when visual novels reach a peak and companies in the west run out of material to work with. 2. Running Out of "Good" Games - This point is a little bit arbitrary because I can't really define what a "good" visual novel is, however I can safely say that there are certain games which the community feels are excellent reads. To give you an example, ask any English reader of visual novels what games they have played and which ones they enjoyed the most. Chances are they will all have very similar answers. While there is nothing necessarily wrong in enjoying games everyone else agrees is good, there is a problem for localization companies that comes from this idea. Let me provide you with an example of how good games will eventually reach a peak and how I believe this will affect the market in the west as a whole. Let's use the well known company Key. Most visual novel fans strongly agree that they make great games as shown by their ratings and popularity outside of the VN market. Now imagine this: what happens when and if all of the Key games become localized? Companies will no longer have games to translate from them, and as such, there won't be any more Key games in the future. In other words, there will come a time when "good" games have all been translated and localized, and when that point comes in the distant future, what do companies do then? This idea brings me to my next point. 3. Company Release Dates - Companies like Key cannot afford to release a game every year like most visual novel groups that produce moege can (i.e. = Lump of Sugar or Pulltop). While I can't specifically say what the major reason behind all of this is, there are some reasons I am sure you as a reader can deduce. 4. Japanese Priorities Set Visual Novel Localization - The Japanese PC game market is highly dominated by moege romance novels and nukige. This can be shown through Getchu's top sale numbers for visual novels each month (i.e. = Clover Day's additional h-scenes a year ago), as well as the extensive amount of advertising that is plastered in Akihabara for these types of games. The last Friday of the month is known as "release day" in Japan, where most of the big companies sell their games. Because Japan itself is the country all of these visual novels are being made in, translators (whether professional or not) are stuck with the content the country provides. If you are a professional translator, this poses a challenge (see point #1 above), and if you are a fan translator, you might be stuck doing a project for a type of game you aren't interested in yourself. In the end, I worry for the market simply due to the fact that Japan is and currently has been dominated by moege and nukige. While I enjoy the former style of games, not everyone likes them. I feel our viewpoints of what we want to have and what we expect to have as fans coordinate too well, and as such this causes an issue. We want good visual novels to be translated, and therefore we expect it to happen, ignoring all of the factors that may prevent this. Japan itself controls the visual novel market, and so long as we continue enjoying the genre, we are subject to enjoy what they continue to produce. What are your thoughts on the matter? I look forward to reading your responses!

This is why we can't have nice things.

Yes huge part of VN fan base are only perverts who are into noting other then porn but those are not real fans of VNs and are the biggest disease for a otaku community. And no meter how much of people like those crawls their way into Otakuism the fact that Otakuism isn't about that won't change no meter how much you try to make it seem like it is all about that. Nukige are not really VNs they are just porn no meter how much you don't like it that is how it is. You call yourself a fan? Pfft, you make me laugh. Here's the cold hard truth: You're actually an anti-fan of the whole VN community. True fans can see all dimensions of visual novels and read several different genres from both sides of the opposite spectrum including the ecchi/sex scenes even if they are a sub-element or a central theme of it. Seeing that you hate the sexual dimensions of it so much, you're at the bottom of the pole at being a "true" visual novel fan. Visual novels aren't just reading words, probing plots and characters. It's suppose to be a medium to satisfy our fetishes and other things we usually don't digest from a regular book or movie. Maybe to you perverts that is how it seems but that is not what an otakuism is about. In fact quite the opposite otakuism is a very pure media and shit like porn and sex most definitely have no place in it. And between someone like me who dedicated his life to otakuism and someone like you who is only into porn witch is not even part of otakuism I think it is clear who is a true fan. Okami, say whatever you'd like about your opinions on porn, I really don't care about that; you are entitled to your own opinions. However, don't speak on behalf of otaku when you are being selfish and refuse to acknowledge anyone's opinion on anything. By saying that you know what they represent, you are completely disgracing them. Hell, even I can't speak on their behalf. Are you Japanese? No. Do you live in Japan? No. Have you ever actually spoken to an otaku from the country? No. Do that, and you'll soon realize that your opinions are not always logical.

I agree that you should add everything when making statistics, but everything that belongs in it. Porn is a completely different media that should not be labeled together with the non-porn media. Would you honestly count person who only watches porn as a movies fan? That is the same thing, people who are only into VNs for Nukiges and H-scenes are not really VN fans they are just fans of porn. Porn industry is also completely different from movie industry so if you ware to include both in chart what you would be doing is combine 2 industries not representing one as a whole. To be completely fair, the word "nukige" is an internet term that I am almost certain does not exist in Japan. If I asked one of the many fans while standing in line for a visual novel release for some good nukige recommendations, I guarantee they would have no idea what that term means. To Japanese people, PC games are PC games. Regardless of the genre, it's a market that focuses fantasies and story telling. About 90% of those stories involve porn. Based on your argument, you're saying that anything that contains porn should no longer be considered a visual novel, essentially meaning you are speaking for the entire country by calling them porn fans. While unfortunately a lot of VNs contain porn it is question of whatever or not those as a whole can be consider porn. I did say that people who are into VNs for Nukige and H-scenes are noting more then porn fans and how could you even be called differently if you are only into porn. And the fact that they do contain porn is the fact that shows us how terrible fan base for our media is. If you're not going to include all translated VNs, then don't call the chart "All Translated VNs", because then the name is wrong and misleading. Saying that nukige VNs aren't VNs is like saying that porn flicks aren't part of the film medium. Whether you like it or not, porn is filmed, and nukige VNs are VNs. Just because porn flicks aren't sold at your local movie store doesn't mean that they aren't movies (n. a story or event recorded by a camera as a set of moving images; a motion picture.), which they actually are. If you don't want to make statistics about nukige, fine, but it's incredibly irritating for you to mislabel something just because you don't like the part you're ignoring. If you don't want to include them, then just don't make the chart, or label it properly. It's really not that hard. I really don't get why you always have to bring up your vendetta against porn. Just about everyone already knows about it, and I can assure you, most of us really don't care. It is actually possible to keep your opinions about porn to yourself and not repeat them over and over again ad infinitum. No meter how much you like flapping porn is just porn it is and never will be anything more then that, and just because you want it to sound pritier and call your self a VN fan or movie fan that doesn't change facts that what you are into is only porn and not movies or VNs. just because you don't like to hear the truth and there are many people who are like you doesn't change that truth. And I newer really start doing those discussions on my own it's you people who have a need to go out of you way to defend things you like and to try to make them seem as something more then they are. Rather then being angry for me spiking the truth if you can why not try giving a reasonable argument of why should porn be counted as something that it is not, I have given mine on why it shouldn't even true it is something that should not even be questioned in a first place. I guess the countless arguments people kept giving you and keep giving you now mean nothing to you. I suppose 20+ people all arguing against your beliefs in the past year or so is enough to say that you are the only person who has given valid points and that everyone else is an idiot. You're back for a single day Okami, and you already manage to start this crap again. Simply amazing.

The EOCS and its reaction to the Rapelay incident is just one of many barriers facing the English eroge market. That particular barrier is pretty easy to circumvent: strip out the ero content before releasing the game in the West. And companies might end up doing exactly that! Pulltop was the first, followed by Tenco and Debonosu. Pulltop clearly gave up on the English eroge market, since they used to work with JAST. Tenco is connected to Littlewitch, who also worked with JAST. Debonosu rejected an overture from Sekai Project. Evidence suggests these companies haven't just ignored the English eroge market. They've likely outright rejected it. The English VN market has grown by just about any metric one can imagine over the past 15 years, and I expect the trend will continue. Unless your focus is eroge (like mine), I see little reason for concern. While you're reacting to new information (to you), this problem you've encountered is nothing new. It's been dogging the industry ever since the Rapelay incident 7 years ago. The market has continued to grow despite it, which shows that the market forces driving growth are actually pretty powerful.

I agree that you should add everything when making statistics, but everything that belongs in it. Porn is a completely different media that should not be labeled together with the non-porn media. Would you honestly count person who only watches porn as a movies fan? That is the same thing, people who are only into VNs for Nukiges and H-scenes are not really VN fans they are just fans of porn. Porn industry is also completely different from movie industry so if you ware to include both in chart what you would be doing is combine 2 industries not representing one as a whole. To be completely fair, the word "nukige" is an internet term that I am almost certain does not exist in Japan. If I asked one of the many fans there for some good nukige recommendations, I guarantee they would have no idea what that term means. To Japanese people, PC games are PC games. Regardless of the genre, it's a market that focuses on made up fantasies and story telling. About 90% of those stories involve porn. Based on your argument, you're saying that anything that contains porn should no longer be considered a visual novel, essentially meaning that you are speaking for the entire country of Japan who started this genre by saying that they are not true VN fans. As someone who calls himself an otaku, it seems rather ironic that you have the right to judge those who understand what it means to be one more than you do.

I agree that you should add everything when making statistics, but everything that belongs in it. Porn is a completely different media that should not be labeled together with the non-porn media. Would you honestly count person who only watches porn as a movies fan? That is the same thing, people who are only into VNs for Nukiges and H-scenes are not really VN fans they are just fans of porn. Porn industry is also completely different from movie industry so if you ware to include both in chart what you would be doing is combine 2 industries not representing one as a whole.

This is the latest VN I've played for the VN of the Month... and it is going to be a little while before I can get back to VNs, because of the release of Fallout 4 and my need to balance my gaming addiction with work and school. The VN below is a standard charage with very little in the way of twists to its design, but it is a good example of a charage done right. I honestly think people who like that moege sub-genre will enjoy Unlucky, though I think anyone translating it would probably want to puke sand about halfway through each of the heroine paths due to the endless ichaicha.

I lost my hope in western community so many times that I stopped caring...

Taking yourself out of your comfort zone is a double edged sword. It can either give you the fortune you desire, or it can fall apart and make you upset. As long as you continue to not make change in your life, nothing in your life will ever change unless you get lucky. But if there's one thing I've learned over time is that miracles are too rare to be relied on. If you want to succeed in life, you need to make goals for yourself and stick to them. Make a plan to meet your goals. If your plan doesn't work, change the plan, don't change your goals. Ambitious goals require a lot of time to meet them; you're never gonna amount to anything if all you do is change your mind. Make sure that what you pursue in life is the best possible course of action for you to take. If you're not sure what you want to do, think very long and hard about it. Thanks to the internet, you have nearly unlimited access to resources so that you can help you think about your life's ambition. Take your time to learn this; think about how much you can achieve over the course of your lifetime if you simply invest a few days, a week, or even a month of research into deciding on your goals. The potential is tremendous! Another thing you need to be careful of is letting your emotions get the better of you. By nature, human beings are very emotional. It can drive us to overcome physical limitations, inspire creativity, and to live by more than just practical means. At the same time, it can also create fear and depression. We let ourselves get overwhelmed by such emotions and fall into a state of laziness. Overcoming negative emotion is not an easy process, but in order for you to proceed with your goals, you need to learn to conquer your emotions and not let them take control of you. But if you find that you can't do it through your own efforts, seek help. In order to be able to overcome tough obstacles on your own, you need to be tough, and you need to be disciplined. The mind is a very complex thing, and not everyone is capable of being strong. In many cases, however, collective effort can accomplish so much more than individual effort. If you need encouragement to do what you need to do, find a friend who is willing to do it. Getting treatment from a mental health specialist can work wonders for improving your state of mind.

To quote from an article Sanahtlig did not too long ago on the subject, "Japanese companies don't care what you want, and neither do localization companies. They want profits, and releasing titles people want is often unfeasible or unprofitable. Time to learn Japanese." This topic is about the VN market around the world, and yet there would virtually be no VN market if it weren't for the Japanese. Meaning all other VN markets are pretty much dependent on the Japanese, since very little quality VNs get produced anywhere else. A reliance on another country for your own market isn't healthy and will lead to little growth. Imagine if only one country wrote and published novels, global literature would be so limited! And that is essentially what the VN market is like. In order for the western market to really expand, we need to produce good VN's, not just translate them. And ironically enough, most of what gets translated isn't even good, lol. So long as the market is this dependent on Japan, learning Japanese really is the best option.

Keep yourself strong if you can. Find something to anchor yourself to that you can be proud of. Writing, drawing, an art you can excel at or a hobby you can immerse yourself in, preferably both. From there you can keep yourself improving and push through when things go sour. I hope to see you succeed in the coming years. I have faith in you.

And that's why there are so few translated ones that I like. Such a shame. Anyway, Libra's plot should have no problem with this.

Deep Blue, We were wondering if you (or anyone else) may have come across fan-translations of XERO's VN's, their sub-brands, in the past. Thanks! As for Light, Vermillion -Bind of Blood- looks sassy a h***! nope, nothing from xero's or their sub companies is translated, at least nothing that I know of.

As far as I know, there is none. Just not too appealing to general players I guess (since the company focuses a lot on moege/semi-nukige, and Western players seem to care about plot-focused ones more)

Hard to say since I haven't finished all the routes yet. But so far it's ell--Chan(since I'm a sucker for lolis).

anything from light would be good, just saying and there isn't a single vn from them translated not even fan-translated.

Bueno

This is why you all should be following our VNTS updates, we had this posted weeks ago!

You're talking about an industry which can only survive because it's financed by horny teenagers. There is no other entertainment in this world which is as true to the carnal desires of its audience as animu is. Newsflash: Most animu and visual novels are smut. Everything else is the exception. Stop lying to yourself. You misspelled "fap base".

Hory shet. Muv-Luv looks like gundam shiz. Amazing! I'mma play that. Cool, thanks for the recommend. Its my favorite visual novel so I hope you enjoy it, just remember to read it in order, as in the original Muv-Luv first and then Alternative. The original consists of two visual novels in one, the first one is called Extra and the second Unlimited, read them in order for maximum feels, tears, blood, sweat and especially pain. Awesome! Thanks for the heads-up. Btw...by "blood", you mean metaphorically or at least not THAT gory for a VN, right? Since I don't really like those types in my VN--still, looks promising!

from what I've seen the average score is the same on vndb and erogame at least it is on the vns i've played, even if there are bots and trolls voting that wont affect the general average score, if it is 6 for example it would tend to go to lets say 5.5 and 6.5 but again the average will stay the same, that is if the vn have a minimum number of votes and not just few (you need at least 10-20 votes) but then again with just a few you can't really reflect how people think on that vn in particular so it wont matter anyway. Lets take this crappy vn Sukui no Serenade https://vndb.org/v16895 21 votes total, average 6.18 (decent) http://erogamescape.dyndns.org/~ap2/ero/toukei_kaiseki/game.php?game=21676#ad 中央値63so in both of them 6 seems to be the general average give or take. muv luv alt vndb average 9.29 (excellent) ero 中央値93 Katawa shoujo vndb 6481 votes average 7.87 (good) Ero with 21 votes only still same score 中央値78 you cannot trick statistics

I suppose your friend is such an authority on VNs that his opinion should be accepted as fact? It's a polarizing game. A lot of people hate it, and a lot of people love it. I wouldn't listen to just one side and come to a conclusion. Anyone who thinks School Days is the worst VN they've played... hasn't played very many VNs I'm guessing.

ok, for anyone interested on playing second novel kanojo no natsu (one route is written by tanaka romeo and it's about suicide so how can you not want to read this novel ) using vnr works perfectly

You will find the legitimate price of H games to be quite high by western standards, when you are fortunate enough to even find a Japanese company that will take your money and supply you with the product. Sometimes Amazon.co.jp will allow you to buy new products sold by Amazon outside of Japan, other times they will not. You can try dlsite.com to see if they happen to have a title you want, or take a look at auctions.yahoo.co.jp to see if you can find a used copy at a price that won't break the bank after paying a proxy bidding company to bid on it for you and ship it to you. If you don't mind a download, you can also try purchasing directly from the publisher's website. That is typically the cheapest way to get a game legitimately when you are not in Japan. Unfortunately, the link at VNDB leads to a domain that certainly isn't being used by a Japanese game company so that may not help you a whole lot. If you happen to know what the new URL is, I'd suggest looking for a way to buy it there.

This. Only VN I highly admire for having many choices that impact the story. Most VNs nowadays have these pointless choices that only change 1-2 dialogues and dont affect any of the endings and I absolutely hate those because it's a lazy way of adding more content by the devs. =P

Last week, we posted a big update on the game, with some new character designs and stuff. It also has a bit of info our other game, Highway Blossoms, which I should get around to making a thread for... Hope you'll check it out; you can see it on our blog here!

While there is no certain way of measuring fan-base I think that VNs and Anime fan-base did increase quite a lot in last few years, also taking into consideration drop of western gaming quality and quantity in recent years this seems as exactly the right time to introduce something new and increase of translated JRPGs on PC and their successes on steam seem to be proving that. Also Otakuism tends to have a most extreme and loyal fan-base with makes it highly sustainable.

It gives the mods something to do, which in turn makes them happy. In fact if every member of the forum made at least 1 double post today, they'll be so ecstatic there'll be tears of joy and much singing.

I'm not surprised, Sekai Project was no longer useful to Winged Cloud after Sakura Spirit. They have their own brand, now. But I'm incredibly uninterested in Winged's public whingefest. Considering how they've treated their workers in the past, and the disdain they showed their Guardian Spell patreons, I really have no sympathy for them.

Oh my good lord what have I done? Welcome back.

It doesn't help - as I said in a different place - that Erogamescape has an even bigger problem with troll and bot voting than vndb.

it was a logical consequence of when i first started becoming socially arkward, resulting in me becoming socially arkward the more... edit: sega saturn - dyoukusei

Literally anything Okami posted

にゃにゃにゃにゃ～ >Be me 18 >I loved Nya so much that I heard and said it all the time >I pray to the Nya goddesses every night thanking them for all the catgirls I fap to everyday >My dad hears me and calls me a faggot >I knew he was just jealous of me having catgirls >So I called him a filthy doggirl lover >He slaps me with his makeshift dog paw and sends me back to sleep >I'm crying now and my face hurts >I lay in bed and it's really cold >A warmth is moving towards me >I feel something touch me >It's a Futanari Nya Goddess >I'm so happy >She whispers in my ear "I'll give you all the Nya you want" >She grabs me with her cat-like powerful hands and puts me on my hands and knees >I'm ready >I spread my ass cheeks for the Futanari Nya Goddess >She penetrates my catgirl loving butthole >It hurts so much but I do it for Nya >I can feel my ass tearing apart >I push against her delicate flesh >I want to please Nya >She nyas with an orgasmic tone and fills my butt with futa semen >My dad walks in >The Nya Goddess looks him straight in the eye and says "Catgirls dominate everyone" >She vanishes into thin air >Nya is love, Nya is life