Zodai

Anyone remember where the change theme button is? I can't find it ><;;

From a development perspective, it can help if you have money, but once you decide to do it getting voice acting that is more helpful than harmful requires exponentially increasing costs, and this gets even higher with longer games. Personally, this is money and time better spent making the writing better in and of itself, and rewriting text becomes even more difficult once you have voice acting to go along with it. Most of the time it's simply too infeasible a route to take, though it's easier if the project is a port or remaster of sorts. (Umineko's PS3 version, for example.) Logical conclusions state that the best conclusion is to try to get the writers to put the voice through in the text - this certainly isn't an easy task, but it's preferable to hiring a cast of voice actors for each individual character. That, and you need strong writers to make something like a VN work to begin with, so if you've done things right this is less of an issue.

Anyone who doesn't bet has no reason to allow the others to gain an advantage. Anyone who does bet is obviously going to cooperate to put the other 'groups' behind. The only way to work around that is to place a full bet on yourself and attempt to gain victory through that. But that would require a reply post after every other one, in order to secure victory. It's quite literally a roulette at that point, because we'll have three people counter-posting for a single one. It'll be mayhem, far too much to accurately claim a solo victory.

I have my doubts about that route, sadly.

Hm...the mindgames on this set will be difficult. By my calculations, we should have about...seven hours before the limit is up for betting. I'll see what I can do. There should be a strategy to this, but I can't find it. Keep looking.

VITA is in a rough spot at the moment, I'm personally along the 'almost dead' department. The number of games is a lot fewer than say, the 3DS. That said, for those in the anime/JRPG fan department the exclusives pull right into our core interests. Personally even P4G alone is enough to justify a purchase if you have the money to shell out, just don't be expecting as many new releases as the other consoles. Extra Credits actually did a video on it, so it might be good to check out. The system has enough localizations of Japanese games to make it a justifiable purchase for the anime market but if you're looking for something with a good flow of releases you'll have to look elsewhere. It's not very cost-effective but there's enough to be interested in. Also has some PSP titles on the PSN that you can pick up as well.

I'm going to object to the participation model in terms of games, as they completely ignore the mechanical aspect of games, though seeing as how the man died in 1980 I suppose that's to be expected. Games, in their nature as an interactive medium, require more participation than other media. While the gaps are indeed filled - books require the audience to interpret the scene in their own mind as opposed to it being handed to them, the games have that participation in that the path to be taken must be chosen by the player, as opposed to the participation being in the drawing of the map itself, where the destination has already been pre-fulfilled by the author of the work. Therefore, games would actually be on the coldest length of that bar, whereas its piece at the hottest is more attributed to something like television or movies. Though this in itself is a severe generalization, as the amount of participation required for any medium depends on the work itself. It's like saying your average moege requires the same amount of concentration as say, Umineko of Dies Irae. It depends far too much on the work itself to be accurate. That said, this leads to the result being-- Hot <<<<<<< Television, Books, Visual Novels, Games >>>>>>>>> Cold As opposed to the key described above.

While I'm a bit busy at the moment, and thus can't give the topic the full attention it deserves, at its core I think the answer lies somewhere between what we've seen from Novels and Games. On one hand, they're games with enough of a text emphasis to engage in the same strengths that novels have - modern games, for all their budgets, can only appeal to Visual and Sound senses, aside from the mechanics themselves, to transport the player to the world. Books on the other hand, while they lack mechanics in the way games do, can transport a number of senses - the cold texture of a wall, the smell of a bakery, or the thundering of an explosion shattering the ground beneath, and a cold shrill creeps through your spine like a demonic claw reaching out to your soul. With sufficient writing expertise, these can be much effective in delivering on a feeling than standard game graphics can, as language itself is much stronger at transferring those particular senses than modern systems, as those only focus on visual and sound transference. This is what makes them different than say, Mass Effect or The Walking Dead, as the use of text allows them to approach a scenes interpretation from every level of the human body, appealing directly to the mind itself and crafting a strong enough illusion to place the character in the world, rather than relying on simply the visuals and sound to create that illusion. On the other hand, while strong descriptions can more than make up for all the AAA graphics and sound design money can buy, doing this incorrectly can often result in a weakness rather than a strength. Depending on the pace of the scene, spending too much time on description can make the story slow to a crawl. Games are stronger in this respect, since they can appeal to both the visual, audio, and mechanics at once, whereas text can appeal to all but only one at a time, though this can be improved and blended together with skilled writing. VNs have this easier than traditional novels, though the text is still the primary source of interaction with the audience. Often when this occurs, writing steers more directly towards a characters emotions and describing what's necessary in order to keep the pace of the scene flowing. Appealing to the reader/player's emotions is something games can have an advantage in, as they're interacting more directly with the person on-screen than VNs are, even if you include the concept of choice, but it isn't something impossible in either case. There are other points to bring up, but that's the only one I'm approaching at the moment.

Fair enough.

That's...quite far up the scale, Suika. Interesting to see I'm the same as Lino, though.

I got INFP-A, described as "The Mediator." So it's close to Down's above, supposedly. Though that last A is only 5% above neutral. http://puu.sh/howhr/f6774bdc5b.png These would be the specific percentages.

The question in that end lies with whether or not the ending needs to be changed from actual history. You could have a fictional protagonist struggling with killing people in the war, but not actually change the ending of the story. If that's within the boundaries set, at least.

Fair enough, in that case it should be 'technically' possible. Is the Umitweak patch set up in different sections, such as one patch for art, one for the voices, etc? Does it have something to do with the translation patch itself that might not work w/o being on ADV? Something with the engine, maybe the text itself? Maybe?

Personally I got used to it after a while. The game switches back to NVL for longer stretches of text (CHECKFINISHEDCHECKFINISHEDCHECKFINISHEDCHECKFINISHEDFINISHEDFINISHEDFINISHEDFINISHED) if I remember correctly, though. Does anyone know if the original Chiru version was in NVL or did that swap to ADV pre-PS3 port in and of itself?

Depends on how you define educational, as what you come up with may vary depending on the teacher's viewpoint. Theoretically anything can be 'educational' as the 'message' of the story can often be learned from, whatever it is. However, if the teacher is describing educational as 'within the texts and knowledge required to succeed in the modern school system' there isn't much you can do with that, as most of today's schooling is related to high grades than actual learning, at least in my opinion. An examination of human morals? Two protagonists, one who shuns the sins of society while blind to his own, and another who blames himself for the death of a sibling and wants to prevent the other from hurting people. Set them in conflict. Make one of them a chuuni, the other relatively normal. Something political. A sci-fi set in space, where a group of people debate whether or not to go to war against a small, less-developed society in the same solar system. Something about the responsibility that comes with being a leader and how a wrong choice can cost people their lives. Merge it in with whatever existing political system you choose and you've got something that can teach politics. Technically. Get a stronger definition of what education is set as, though. Find a topic that would work strongly in a conflict. If you go for economics as mentioned above, you can write a story of a man who brings an entire kingdom down in pursuit of monetary gain, manipulating the market in ways that are more or less illegal, much like a modern retelling of the South Sea Company, See if you can find a topic that works, and set a heavy conflict around it. Good luck.

http://puu.sh/hniDM/e4d01354c3.png I'll go with seven points.

What happens if Solidbatman gets over 21 on his draw, if that's even possible? Does it mean that everybody wins since he broke or nobody wins since the cap for regular players is 21?

Are we supposed to bet before we draw the cards, or after? I'm unclear as to the rules of this game. Do we do our draw, then place the bet depending on how likely our draw is to be higher than whatever Solidbatman gets?

Umineko No Naku Koro Ni. Aside from that, I've heard Ever17 is kind of crazy, as is Muv-Luv and Cross Channel.

3, 44, 2, 26, 37

Seven points on number Four.

I think Extra Credits touched on this once.

Fair enough. Part of me feels like there's more to it than just 'horny people being horny' and that there might be something more that we're missing here. There are some fundamental questions that probably need some answering here. If we assume that it's the sex appeal alone that causes the sales, is it possible to release an OELVN with 'similar' levels of fanservice that still has high-quality writing, thus achieving satisfaction both in the mass market sex game type and the base VN audience? Is this path just a different way of going about the path 18+ VNs as a whole have ended up on? In that instead of just sex scenes the fanservice is more spread out but never goes into nudity or 18+ territory, which may be the case in Sakura games. If it is, in fact, not the sex appeal that causes Sakura games to be successful, then what is it? If there's some fundamental concept that the rest of the OELVN devs haven't picked up on, something that very likely goes right over the heads of the core VN audience? Is this something that can be implemented successfully into core VN development without sacrificing the aspects that made VNs strong to begin with, as opposed to just turning into what appears to be a pile of shit to those strong in the genre? I mean, we spend so much time harping on how shit these games are, but is there anything we might be missing? Is there anything we might be missing? If we ask the people who buy them why they buy them, will we find something we hadn't picked up on before?