Darklord Rooke

@DarburyYeah, it took about a month ... mainly cause I kept getting distracted. Gone Home could very well contain visual novel storytelling, TBH I haven't played it. I looked it up and couldn't find any screens where the narrative was delivered by the text, so it looked like a pure adventure game. But sure, if narration of the story is partially (or wholly) delivered in the form of an epistolary novel then I was definitely wrong. You certainly have a case that it is some form of VN. (A lot of people have a 'length' requirement on the text in relation to gameplay, so if reading the text doesn't take a certain number of hours or if it doesn't contain a certain amount of words uninterrupted by gameplay, then they won't consider it. But I find that definition useful only if there's a separate category for shorter works, like in the book world we have novel, novelette, short story and so on. Because VNs don't have these other categories, I find this qualifier a tad useless. Stories aren't devalued because of their size - I'm sure we all remember the rumour of Hemingway's 6 word story. So I don't believe story events in games should be devalued solely because of their size related to gameplay. So some people might say you're not reading in Gone Home for a significant enough length of time vs exploration, but that's VERY subjective and I don't think it should be disqualified on that basis alone.) I split kinetic and visual novels because I come from an interactive storytelling background (i.e. RPGs) and interactive storytelling is like the 'defining characteristic' of what RPGs are, and what CRPGs should be in the future. It's a bit of bias on my behalf It's a very old term, I suppose xD

I often enjoy reading your posts - they're usually insightful

I made a definition a very long time ago (more than a year now) to try and do exactly that. If I recall correctly, it still had a few problems. Interactive storytelling describes the process of telling a story that is created out of the actions of the player, moment to moment, decision by decision, scene by scene. Interactive storytelling is when the narrative can be influenced by the users, either through gameplay decisions/actions, or decisions emanating from the story (from Crawford.) The above definition makes it clear that Visual Novels, famous for their “routes” and divergent stories, are clear examples of interactive storytelling. And yet with Mass Effect and the Walking Dead examples of interactive storytelling, not all interactive stories are Visual Novels. Visual Novels are more specific and are clearly a sub-genre of the Interactive Storytelling form. It is also clear that the genre of Visual Novels describes STORYTELLING techniques, and not gameplay (because “pure” visual novels have no gameplay.) This is important, because it indicates that a “visual novel” is a tag (term) denoting a storytelling technique, and not a gameplay style. And because storytelling tags and gameplay tags are different, they can co-exist alongside one another. So Visual Novels don’t have to “compete” with tags like RPG or Adventure. So what is a Visual Novel? All “Visual Novels” have 3 things. 1) They are novels and should be written as such. Therefore they must rely on the text to partially narrate events to the reader (whether that is description of physical events or internal monologue.) 2) They present choices to the user through the narrative (or dialogue,) these choices allow the user to affect the story. This is different to allowing the user to affect the narrative through gameplay decisions 3) They contain images which depict the setting of each scene of the story. If a game has only VN storytelling techniques, then it is a Visual Novel. If the gameplay is also an attraction, then it's a game which contains VN storytelling techniques. This does not make it any less of a VN, it means that it has gameplay accompanying the VN storytelling. Interactive Fiction is another subgenre of the Interactive Storytelling form. These games differ from those of its sister genre (Visual Novels) by not including background images depicting the setting of each scene the text is currently describing. They can either be all text, or include flavour images which don’t depict the entire scene, but help add flavour to the text. Kinetic Novels are almost identical to the definition of a Visual Novel except there is no way for the user to affect the story through narrative or dialogue choices. Because of this Kinetic Novels are not a part of the Interactive Story genre despite sharing a great many similarities to Visual Novels. Dating sims are not VNs. They are sim games which may or may not contain VN (or KN) storytelling. So something like "True Love" would be a dating sim with VN storytelling. Games like Persona contain dating sim gameplay, but no VN storytelling. This is because 'sim' is a tag denoting gameplay, and has nothing to do with the storytelling techniques within (if it has any storytelling.) Most adventure games people usually identified as VNs are most likely adventure games with Kinetic Novel storytelling (no decisions in the story to branch narrative.)

You're right. Probably a recommendation only for transcribing. It goes against the modern advice given for writing such scenes, and I don't believe it should be the recommendation for translating such scenes either (with one exception related to stylistic accuracy which I'll list below.) The common recommendation for writing weird accents (and talking with your mouth full qualifies) is less is more. In other words, include enough written clues to get the concept of 'something in her mouth' across without actually mimicking what it sounds like. Dialogue 'imitates' real life, it doesn't copy it. There are exceptions to the rule, but those are the common guidelines. The reason this is recommended, is because if you accurately write down what it sounds like when people talk with something in their mouth, then you're quite right the reader will have trouble reading it. Anything which jerks the reader out of the reading experience is considered dangerous, and that includes writing sentences full of 'shtahf' instead of 'stop'. Writing is different to voice acting, in voice acting they may strive for 'realism' but that doesn't come across well in the writing world. For example, with Diana Gabaldon's Outlander the Scottish accents are delightfully understated: However, back in the 19th Century it was the vogue to accurately replicate every phonetic difference in accents and everything else. So you got bullshit like this: Writers don't often do that any more, writing's changed in the past 150 years. In fact, phonetically replicating accents (stuff down throat qualifies) is often on the list of writing 'do nots': http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/most-common-mistakes-dos-and-donts-of/ I really wouldn't recommend translators or editors stick something down their throat and try and phonetically replicate shit. Unless that's what they did in the Japanese and you want a super accurate representation, at which point I'd roll my eyes at the original H-scene writing.

Pants :3

Question: If you're trying to prove the viability of the H visual novel market, why are you including sale figures from the 'all age' editions? In fact, why are you demonstrating how STRONGLY the all age versions of Fate sell? EDIT: I would've thought you'd just disguise those figures, or gloss over them. It's what I would have done *shrugs*

Two words: Gyakuten Saiban. Why VNDB, why? https://vndb.org/v711 TBH, Gone Home fits comfortably in adventure -> adventure having a combination of exploration, puzzles, and a story. If you're going to call this a VN, you'd be calling most adventure games VNs like 'The Walking Dead' ... and Phoenix Wright.

Meru retweeted it, and I'm currently stalking following (which means the same thing, really) her on Twitter.

A lot of android to PC ports are starting to happen by Dogenzaka Lab. They released Pub Encounter on the 13th of April this year (which I'm told is kinda creepy,), Men of Yoshiwara - Ohgiya on the 20th of April this year, which has just been reviewed (not to be confused with Men of Yoshiwara - Kikuya, the prequel you don't really need to read,) Destinty's Princess: A War Story, a love story on the 6th of April 2016, and My Secret Pets on the 11th of May 2016. This doesn't venture into the scary mobile scene, where you have Voltage and their 30 or more otome novels (well technically it is, because Dogenzaka are just porting stuff I believe) http://koi-game.voltage.co.jp/en/lineup/novel.html

Release date, 4th of June. Dungeon crawling mechanics, good art, shiny boobs. The RPG mechanics (like balance) are untested and suspect. Price: ... erm, it doesn't say on Steam. Fuwareview please! Yes, I made this topic. You're all welcome :3

Lifted directly from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/4lwz70/a_bunch_of_vn_translators_on_twitter_such_as/ I caught 1 of those tweets but missed the rest of them. Personally I'm hoping for something with gameplay, but that's just me. And yes, I just copied the post wholesale. Yes, that's the second time I've done that today. Yes, I'm a lazy, lazy man. No, I'm beyond caring. Yes, I WOULD like some cookies, thank you for offering.

They lifted character summaries and the story summary straight from a fan site without accreditation and without asking for permission. They since said they have gotten their own team to offer a unique translation, but it looks to have only been edited (and paraphrased,) and not retranslated. This example of a non-translation doesn’t bode well for a company who has never translated anything before. It makes me question whether they actually have any in-house translators, or whether they intend to use the money they raise on kickstarter (yes, they’re going to kickstart/crowdfund) to go hunting for one.

There's been some real dodgy attempts at localisation start-ups recently and one of the worst attempts is by E2, who's bringing across the Taisho x Alice series for otome fans. Anybody interested in a summary of this mess should read the excellent article here: https://figurativelyspeaking.me/2016/05/31/taisho-x-alice-to-be-localized/ (image from linked page)

Nice review! I hadn't realised Hanabira/HanakoGames was making this. I'm a fan of this sort of stuff (sims/RPGs with story,) so I'll definitely be giving this a go when I'm free.

Love, often confused with lust, is when you care as much (or more) about the other person as you do about yourself. You pay attention to the other person, you take an interest in the other person, you prioritise their well being higher than the ability to watch the weekend footy match in peace. Their habits will irritate you but you endure them because they are important to you. Lust, often confused with love, is when all you care about is pleasuring your penis (or female equivalent.) You pay little attention to the other person, don’t take an interest in the other person, and prioritise your entertainment and comfort over their well being. Their habits will irritate you which will lead to you seriously considering ending the relationship because there are many ways to pleasure your penis (or female equivalent) that don’t involve putting up with annoyances. Love at first sight is a lie, while lust at first sight often takes place. That lust can often develop into love, but when it doesn’t these relationships will often fail. The strength of a love lies in its ability to withstand conflict yada yada, etc etc, and so on and so forth.

I'm pretty excited about that project, it looks very promising. Eager to reading your thoughts on it

Same. Gave up after that.

It is an argument artists, authors, developers should pay close attention to. The world is full of stories about such people getting screwed over because of who they trusted, or what they signed. Who else is going to look out for you if it's not yourself? They signed an unknown entity as a publisher. As in, they signed an unknown entity to be someone that has an intimidating amount of control over their product. Why would you? And one last thing. I'm going to have to, once again, question the need of a publisher. If all they're going to do is publish the game on Steam, something which is infinitely easier than it was a few years ago, and that's the sole basis of 'splitting things 3 ways' and giving him any sort of control, the I don't think that's a good business decision. I'd advise spending the couple of hundred bucks to apply for Steam Greenlight yourself and invest in a marketer instead. Publishers control distribution, so if you're just plonking it on Steam you don't need a Publisher.

Total War: Warhammer is the fastest selling Total War game, selling half a million copies on the first day. That's half a million people forgetting why it's best to stay away from Total War games for at least a couple of months after release. May God have mercy on their souls. Otherwise this game is a must buy -> Total War + Warhammer ... what could possibly go wrong? :S

I'll second Littleshogun's and Clephas' suggestions. This is because Sengoku Rance is actually a turn based strategy game with RPG elements, it's not a classic SRPG and actually SRPGs tend to play VERY differently.

Approximately 400 million Myspace passwords have been stolen and up for sale. Most of them probably obsolete … like the people still using Myspace (ahahaha.) The most important things to take away from this are: If you still use MySpace, change your password. Then change it once a fortnight for the foreseeable future. Why? Because Myspace uses a very out of date and weak encryption method revealing they don’t take security seriously. They use a weak algorithm and don’t salt passwords. (Bats should give them a call.) Lastly Social media continues to suck. I mean why people. Why? http://motherboard.vice.com/read/427-million-myspace-passwords-emails-data-breach

Just in case people have missed it, Decay's given a wonderful interview with Sekai Project which you can find here - http://blog.fuwanovel.net/2016/05/interview-with-sekai-project/ Here's a few of the mindblowing statements that can be found within: So make sure to check it out, people! Personally my favourite part was Audi suggesting EVN developers stop setting their VNs in Japan :3

It becomes a little easier once you realise (only if you watch the video) that the comments he's talking about directly precede that screenshot. Therefore, if you move his reaction to her comments to directly after her comments (that is, to the beginning of the sentence,) he no longer has to specify that his reaction is to her comments (what else could it be? If it's anything else, it would likely need to be specified.) It becomes implied. So instead of 'her comments let me down a little bit' -> 'My spirits fall a little', 'I'm a little dispirited/deflated' etc. You could put 'I feel a little deflated', but the 'feel' isn't really necessary in first person. Could use dispirited instead of deflated, but deflated is more juvenile and means the same thing (the losing of enthusiasm.) "I'm a little deflated. I haven't been thrilled about the outing, but it's like hearing bad reviews" etc etc EDIT: You could still use 'down' or 'disappointed' if you want. "I'm a little down/disappointed. I haven't been thrilled about the outing, but it's like hearing bad reviews" etc etc

I agree with this. HOWEVER @Aizen-Sama, double check the lines which are too long and make sure you have eradicated needless redundancies. Also make sure you can't reduce the number of words by replacing weak words with a stronger word (e.g. 'one of my friends' -> 'a friend', or a weak verb with adverb with a stronger verb.) It's a natural thing to be incredibly inefficient in language use, so double check you aren't needlessly taking up space by adding words that serve no purpose. You could also shift some text to the next screen in certain circumstances, with a little rearranging. You might not be comfortable with that, though. Actually, could you paste a couple of those long sentences here. I'm curious

Doesn't look like XP or Vista, so it should be Windows 7 (aka the last good version of Windows, may it last forever.)