Fred the Barber

I would say, don't worry about hosting until you have a game to host. For now, focus on breaking down the problem into small achievable goals, order them reasonably (hosting/distribution would probably not even have made it to my list of things to worry about, if I were making a VN), and then tackle them one by one. Assuming you aren't already an expert at making games, the guidance to use Ren'py is very good advice. Ren'py is free for you to use, and it will get you quickly situated into a place where you mostly worry about the aspects of a VN that are fun (both as a player and as a creator): - script - art - music Speaking as someone with no experience but who's put some thought into what it would take, you should probably start by briefly working through some Ren'py tutorials so you can figure out how to organize your own "assets" within that framework, and then once you've got the gist of that, go to town on the creative side of things.

I'll probably get Dancing All Night, not because I expect it to be good, but because throwing money at Persona games is just an ingrained habit at this point. For all the various money-grab-spinoffs they've been making, Arena and Ultimax had somewhat interesting stories, but as was mentioned above, they had near-zero character development (some for the newly-added characters, but it's hard to get that attached to them...). Persona Q has at least been a bit more fun because it really embraces its purpose: it's purely a vehicle to let you spend more time with the characters you like. Assuming you actually do like the P3 and P4 cast enough, it does a good job of that. On the topic of the P5 trailer, it looked really good to me, but I am a little worried that the most exciting parts of the trailer for me were the music (Shoji Meguro really is great at what he does) and the very stylized menus. Hopefully we'll see a bigger cast of main characters emerge in an upcoming trailer; these guys look fun, but Persona games are all about the group dynamics.

I guess technically it was Pokémon, though I only connected that with this "anime" thing many years later. My more intentional "first anime" was several years later, when a friend handed me his home-made VHS recordings of Cowboy Bebop, taken back when it was running on Cartoon Network. Still a great way to get started

I got really into Rune Factory 4 for a week or so (maybe sunk 10 or 12 hours into it?), but drifted on to something else after that. It was a lot of fun, but: 1) I never really got a feel for the action/combat part of the game 2) There's so much to do in the game that, however I spend my day, I felt like I was probably missing out on something I should be doing I also didn't get far enough with it to do any of the romance stuff, which probably would have gotten me more interested. Oh well. Right now I have a backlog of ~ 6 portable games, between the DS and Vita, so I probably won't ever get back to Rune Factory 4, but if there's a new game in the series, I'll probably add it to that backlog

I settled on Muv-Luv for my next VN. It only took me an hour or so to get it installed, which, given all the threads I found for various installation woes with it, I consider to be a huge success!

It sounds more like a keyboard problem to me, actually, since you say the mouse is moving specifically between the options, which would usually happen if you pressed the keyboard up/down keys. Assuming it's not a laptop, maybe try disconnecting/reconnecting the keyboard. If that doesn't help, have you tried rebooting the computer yet (yes, people make fun of this suggestion, but it really does solve most problems)?

Thanks guys! I'll probably hold out for the Sekai Project release of the Grisaia trilogy (I'm trying to support officially-licensed releases wherever possible...), but Sharin no Kuni and Hoshizora no Memoria both look interesting and have been added to my queue, making my "what's next" decision even tougher

Handle: Fred the Barber Positions you can fill: Editor, Proofreader Types of projects (VNs) preferred: nakige, romance, drama, chuunige Availability: Occupied (Majo Koi Nikki) VNs most interested in producing an ftl for: White Album 2 Motivation for joining in on FTL: Someone's gotta do it. Conditions: Not interested in anything particularly dark, nor overly fluffy moege unless it's particularly charming

Oh, and I forgot something! I'm a professional software developer and have poked around the Ren'py documentation enough to know that I could handle those projects easily, so if anybody needs a programmer for a project that's using Ren'py (and that I find interesting ), feel free to hit me up. I'll certainly take a little bit of time to ramp up on using the software for a real project, but I'm a good engineer; I'll get good at it quickly with the proper motivation.

"I'm new here, so please take good care of me!" How was that? No good? Ok, I'll try again. I started reading VNs a little less than a year ago, when I finished watching the Little Busters! anime dub, realized I would have to wait an indeterminate amount for Refrain to be dubbed, and decided I couldn't wait. Instead of going for the subbed Refrain, I went straight to the VN, and I'm glad I did, since it was absolutely wonderful and is probably still my favorite VN. In the process, I also found this website, and only recently found that there's a great community here! I apparently don't read through VNs very quickly, so I've only read a few others since Little Busters!: Rewrite, Kanon (detecting a pattern here, right?), World End Economica Episode 1 (c-c-c-combo breaker!), and most recently If My Heart Had Wings (which I'm about halfway through now in terms of heroine routes completed). I'm looking to start something new to alternate playing with If My Heart Had Wings, so I don't start to feel tired of the style, and I'm currently picking between (these are pretty arbitrarily-chosen) Cross Channel, Muv Luv (the original, with the intention of playing the later games afterwards), and Steins;Gate (though I've already seen the anime). I'm open to any "must-play" recommendations otherwise, though! Presence of H-scenes is a negative for me, but not a huge negative; mainly I just want a compelling story, an attractive/unique setting, and a good mix of emotions. Also (bear with me just a bit longer), if anybody is looking to fill roles for a project, either translation or OELVN, I do at least have some time and excellent proof-reading skills which I'd be happy to contribute to a team in need. I also have a tiny tiny grasp of spoken Japanese (which makes the often-terrible translation of If My Heart Had Wings all the more painful...), so I might make a good beta tester for a translation of a voiced project, maybe? And that's it! Thanks for your time, and I look forward to chatting with you all about our shared appreciation for Visual Novels!