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Tomorrow night at 10:30 PM, I'll be presenting "Getting Started with Visual Novels" at SakuraCon. On the off-chance you'll be there, come by to support me. If not, well, you can get something not wholly unlike that experience, since I just posted a video recording of my rehearsal up on youtube. Note that the video will be rather boring if you don't listen to the audio - the slides are just supporting material, not the meat of the content. Be advised: this is really intro-level material, designed to provide maximum information for people with almost no VN experience. Unless you're somewhat new to this whole VN thing, it's probably not going to teach you anything. Disclaimers done, the video is below. I'm still fiddling with editing out the cruft at the beginning and ending of the video (I'm new to this video stuff), so if you watch it right now be aware there's a few seconds at the beginning and end where nothing's happening. Edit: man, I really didn't do Comyu justice in this recording (I'm going off pretty bare-bones notes, so I say completely different stuff every time I rehearse, especially in the last section). I was just listening to an earlier recording, where I unfortunately messed up the video part or I would've uploaded it instead, where I absolutely nailed Comyu. I somehow made it natural to say "It's about not giving up on connecting with other people. And it's about doing that with a giant robot, because that's what brings people together." Hopefully when I have to do the actual thing, I'll do it right.

^ Pretty much. Thing is: I don't post a lot, I'll give you that. When I do it's mostly silly stuff or in one of the chatter threads, but mostly because I don't really have anything to contribute to one of the core sub-forums or threads. I don't develop VNs (yet), and I've read pretty much everything I wanted to read (which is not a whole lot), so there's nothing for me to talk about. I like spending time with the community members, and opt not to moderate too heavily, because that's what the moderators are there for, right? Wrong. If I went around swinging the ban-hammer I might as well call it Lucille (props to whoever gets the reference), because thing's turn bad, people used to and feel entitled to the fluffiness that is the normal moderation flow; You can get away with pretty much anything, as long as you don't bitch about it and tone it down. That's when I like to make an appearance, to remind each and one of us that some things are not okay, and while the moderating team is tripping over their own feet trying to figure out how to go about a particular issue without offending anyone, I just do. I'm here to remind people that there are other, very real people sitting in front of their computers, that you think you can talk down and feel bad about whatever happened to make you so angry that you'd probably think twice about in your everyday life to throw a tantrum like that. People would call that out, and rightfully so. I'm the priviledge check that comes ringing bells, and reminds people that some things are just not okay, and shouldn't be tolerated. When I do, things have usually gone way past sour already, so lately I've been trying to keep an eye on a few things, topics and certain people. Which is not favoritism or persecution, but just the plain reality: Some people will get people on edge, no matter what they do. I'm definitely one of them, which is why I tend to stay in the background. We're here thanks to the creators and the people who built this site, and I think it's disrespectful to feel entitled about any of it - without them, nothing would be here. Without interested and motivated people we'd probably still be torrenting VNs left and right, instead of seeing some actual quality being put out, both from established companies and indie groups. I'm fighting for them, and I think everyone who's dealt with me in the past can confirm that I do so consistently - heck, I even fought my then-girlfriend back in the day when shit hit the fan over one of the very, very rare bans, that I of all people thought was uncalled for. Anyways, and that's why I wanted bitfatround0 to back off of OriginalRen: The guy's fighting the good fight, no matter what happened to any of the files. Back off, and leave the guy be, enjoy your time on these forums or reddit, but god damn people, stop it with the entitlement. I know it's rough waiting on something you're really interested in, but it's not your place to bitch about any or no progress being made, unless it's your own project, and then you're in charge, so take matters into your own two hands. With that said, peace.

Everywhere? Even to Seattle in time for SakuraCon?!

C'mon Rooke, stay there and admit to yourself that this thread is the best idea Ren ever had.

Good lord you have a chip on your shoulder for no apparent reason, bringing this shit up in every thread. Had you heard of Root Double before the Kickstarter? I sure hadn't. Root Double is far from famous, and has no particular pedigree to speak of (even I/O, with a fan translation, isn't all that highly-regarded or famous, and is the only somewhat-known VN from the developer). There was a fair bit of hype around here, presumably because influential people know about it and regard it highly, but it still had extremely little name recognition in the English VN community. Here's a useful contrast: Chusingura, despite presumably being much harder to read in Japanese than Root Double, has about twice as many votes on VNDB with roughly the same distribution. That's a pretty huge difference in terms of name recognition (and anecdotally, I'd at least heard of Chusingura before it appeared, unlike Root Double). We all saw how that game's Kickstarter went down in flames immediately. The Root Double Kickstarter was far from Sekai Project bungling some universally-acclaimed game, and it succeeded in the end; just let it go. We'll see what happens next time, but here's a bold prediction: if they try to bring over something actually famous, everything will probably go just fine. And frankly, given the following they clearly have, even if it's not already famous it'll also probably be fine. Anyway, sorry for the threadjack; I'm just getting tired of reading this same crap in every discussion thread I go to, and this time I felt obliged to shoot back. Here's a token attempt to be on-topic: the Shuffle! anime is one of my least favorite of all time, so I have zero desire to play the VN. Maybe it's better, but I'll never know. That said, that's just my opinion and clearly a lot of people actually like it, so you have my condolences on that. It is definitely a shame if it means MangaGamer is losing a partner, since I think they're the most competent licenser on the scene right now by a good margin, despite a few oddities like their sketchy-as-hell storefront, and I like to see them be successful.

So, because I'm a massive weeb, I've made some poems about VNs as the months went by. Some were made with a special purpose in mind, some were just seedlings of my warped brain. Anyways, here are some I made. "Engines of Today" From Ourai no Gahkthun "Promise" from Hoshizora no Memoria "City of Distortions" from Sekien no Inganock "Broken Pieces" from Grisaia no Kajitsu & Meikyuu "Friendship" from Majikoi Short poem collection I'll add more poems, when I get some more done

Team Down-but-not-out: we collectively killed ... something that wasn't even a person? Oh come on.

Of course, Tales of Cold Steel... *snickers at the mention of anything Digimon*

A) Nayleen takes care of the server and most of the tech stuff. He’s very important to Fuwa cause he keeps the place running. That is why he's 'admin'. B) He was also an admin a couple of years ago. C) The first page of this thread was cut from Ren’s thread in the fan translation forum, so you’re likely missing context. D) He’s had over a thousand posts, so if you don’t see him around it’s because you’re not around

Eww, a normie.

IMO it's mostly due to wrong expectations or just not the thing that people were looking for, in regards to the bashing. I mean I fucking loved Shuffle! and Ikikoi, VNs that people love to shit on a lot, why? Because I had the right expectations about them, and I was actually engaged on what they were trying to deliver, no matter how average or mindless it may seem.So I can only agree that most bashing is unwarranted, however people are entitled to have been expecting something else I suppose, I'll just never stop being the heretic that once gave Shuffle! a 9 (´・ω・`).

...no Uta. Oh wait!

I have developed a good technique for dealing with upcoming big events that I would otherwise find near-panic-inducing: 1) Every up until the day before the event, tell myself "No need to panic, I have several days left". 2) On the day before the event, tell myself "Well, it'll all be over tomorrow, so there's no point panicking about it now". To be clear, I still worry plenty (worry is good; worrying keeps you on task and doing proper preparation), but my stress doesn't go beyond that level. Most recently I applied it to getting my SakuraCon presentation done (tomorrow is the big day, so I'm on phase 2 now), but it was also pretty successful for making me not worry overly much about interviews as well, when I was doing that a few weeks ago.

Anything that isn't moe/charage or nukige I'm fine with it, that said I do hope someone grabbed chusingura preferably MG.

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines yesterday; what happened to this AI is really pretty much identical to letting 4chan raise a child.

Great write up so far Dergonu. I was super curious to see where this was going to go, and I'm satisfied. #Team Down, is going down...

Because anime never intends to be good on its own except when it's an original story. In every other case it's promo for the source material. Anime is not supposed to be good or even being an adequate adaptation. It's about motivating you to buy the original game/novel/manga. Or, if you already read the source, to see your favorite scenes animated because in this case it's just fanservice for people who already know the story.

Yeah, that's what I meant. But mmk, no worries if you don't.

There were a tonne more than that. Went through all of them though and added all the names. Narration lines are left nameless, since it seemed a bit weird to list them as "Narration." Same download link as before, so try downloading again.

good to know you guys are chill enough with your cousins to fantasize. i hate my cousins, get away from me >:c

Eww, tentacle rape.

Dude, I would fucking love to be there and have a chat with you afterwards, but the ocean is big n stuff. All the best

They do, but it's an annoying format that's pretty difficult to automatically extract without putting a bunch of time in to map out the format, which I don't think I want to do... :x

What is it you want from them? Just the text?

Checks out

You know what this feels like? Winning!

I wouldn't mind having sex with my little sister

Oh... DO TELL

Thank you. I was trying to do that originally, but then I started to realize that I just don't know everyone super well, and because of that, the people who don't get their own personality might feel it's unfair or something. It might seem to them like I put more effort into the characters that I know well, which is not what I want, so it turned out this way. Hopefully its still enjoyable

I might have forgotten to inform my team that the RNG gods are currently displeased with me. But I am sure that that in no way contributed to this outcome.

Chapter 1 has been released! You can read it here: Don't care about my awesome horrible writing? Scroll down to the bottom to see who died this week! (Note that outside context, certain deaths might not make sense though.)

I am free bois ~~ rip Flut Flut 6th grade reject gl w. SC presentation Fred I refuse to believe Tiag's personality train is the same as me irl. Fite me

If this means MG and Navel have broken things off I'll gladly be another of the few to consider it bad news. Soul Link I found to be an enjoyable little scifi story and Shuffle! I'm willing to defend as being good for a simple moege. It's no classic, but I was entertained. Still, I can't help but wonder about this announcement. I mean nothing in it seems to hint at things turning sour between the two companies, and isn't it a little strange that only these two are going away and the FDs which have kind of an important connection to one of them are staying? Not to mention both of these games have expanded editions, one of which has been heavily requested, plus both of these expanded releases did originally start out as nonero console ports, and there's still this hint from not too long ago... Could I be grasping at straws here? Sure, but I can't help but be a bit suspicious

Some feedback: You should include specific slides from the fuwa forums, reddit's buying guide, VNDB's homepage, steam etc. to give your audience some idea how they look like, it would match while you're taking your time explaining instead of just having the general slide for each. You might even be able to point out specific locations if you have a mouse cursor or pointer to work with. Might be extra work though

In a way I'm relieved that they at least made a clean cut now. So potential fan translaters at least won't keep away from their titles anymore, just because they respect a partnership that was actually long gone. And maybe that makes them an interesting partner for Sekai Project now. I would gladly back a Kickstarter if it would be for Oretsuba or Tsuriotsu.

Aight one more midterm gogogo then its time to finally PARTY12#$%&*

goodbye "俺たちに翼はないunder the innocent sky". Seems you didn't have wings or hopes to get translated either

I still defend Shuffle due to it being one of the first eroge I've ever played and the title that made me discover and appreciate MangaGamer. It's bland, generic and cliché, but it delivers what it wants to deliver decently. Call it a cookie cutter eroge if you will, you know exactly what you're getting, but if you're into it then it's not bad. I think a lot of the bashing it gets is too unwarranted. There's way worse VNs out there, like Ikikoi. Also Shuffle Essence+ made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable with the amount of content it added, but now that's never getting translated.

Navel never had its best VNs translated anyway.

From a PR perspective, clearly a total failure. From a research perspective, though, this was probably a success beyond their wildest dreams. When they get over what was undoubtedly a rather harrowing experience, I bet the people who built this are going to realize they now have a mountain of useful research data and tons of ideas for techniques to properly use that research data.

We here at Igrasil Studio are so happy that we've reached nearly 10,000 dollars within the week! You guys are the best! Thanks for your support and kind words in the last 6 days. We're going to share some concept sketches from our special beach episodes (which will be made once we get the proper stretch goals done.) If you're fans of Aki or Kaoru, you're in for a treat with this update! Thanks for reading and stay awesome everyone! Also for those you forgot, please support our Thunderclap: http://thndr.me/ApiHgn