Narcosis

Really well executed PV. Ominous and peculiar, retains quite high artistic value, as sick it may sound for Clock Up's another line-up nukige; As much as I'd wish for this game to be some really dark, denpa-themed horror/psychological thriller, there's no chance for that to happen. I doubt it will be hard into guro, since even these from Clock Up are usually nothing compared to other titles but hardcore fetishes are really not my thing. Quite a pity, since the art looks good.

If I recall there was an issue, either with the english patch or the game installer itself. It basically made the game search for the sound files in the innapropriate locations. I'd advise to install the game into the default location and use the 100% installation; I'd also advise to run the game in either XP or W95-98 compatibility mode. There used to be a workaround for the sound issue, unfortunately it's been so long I don't remember it anymore.

If you want to have fun, take it onto the IRC, TS or anywhere else. Period. Forums aren't meant for chatter; they are for constructive discussion. In that way, a lot of things that happen inside the G&C sub-forums affect the overall atmosphere on the rest of the forum; the way people get accustomed to reply or cope with various topics that appear within the discussions. I've seen a lot of threads derailing in an instant without control just because someone got way too comfortable around. What I'm writing, isn't any sort of "fear mongering". I couldn't care less for Fuwanovel, nor it's community in general; people are getting the wrong impression, if they think otherwise; yet I'm here again to simply lend a helping hand to certain people, share knowledge and have an eye on you guys. Being overly strict is as bad as being too lax, but it's always better to be more strict, rather than lax in overall. If things would be fine the way they were, no one would even create such topics in the first place.

Regarding moderation and rulesets versus random spam and thread derailing - such posts are often like those little yellow flowers, that grow on your lawn. One or two look nice and definately add to the atmosphere, but if you won't do something with them fast, soon there's going to be thousands of them growing everywhere around. Spam only attracts more spam; posts without any actual merit should be removed, since they are like cancer. I think these forums became way too lax in terms of moderation and rulesets. There's too much breeding ground for nonsense and when one does see he's allowed to post in a whimsical kind of fashion, others start to do it as well. I have nothing against "friendliness", but note that it does not always go along with being substantial on internet message boards; It's very easy to derail preety much anything. People should remember, there are no real friends in people you randomly meet over internet - only users, who share their interests. Getting overly friendly with everyone around often leads to dissaray. There's a big difference between being "open", "welcoming" and "matey", where people simply pat themselves on the back all the time. In that way, a lot of people sense that loose atmosphere and get the wrong impression they are allowed to do anything they want, while that shouldn't be the case. Forums like these should always try to remain neutral and it's the job of the moderation team to keep everything in order.

Mangagamer is. I guess that means More Anal Tyranny for everyone. If you're going and will ever stop at their booth, greet them from me as well.

I've been around here ever since Fuwanovel was even born. I lurked for ages afterwards before I resurfaced again and trust me, barely anything important changed and I doubt it ever will. Aaeru wanted to create a more newbie friendly community, dedicated towards visual novels and she kind of succeeded. Unfortunately, the sole fact of what Fuwanovel became is it's own limiting factor and nothing won't get past that without people themselves influencing some major changes within the community. Personally, I find threads like the whole G&C section, voting systems, post count and other fluff completely meaningless and distracting; I don't mind talking about certain medium related topics, like anime/manga/LN's or japanese popculture, but certain threads simply shouldn't be ever allowed to exist and get instantly purged when they surface. In fact, stuff like voting systems, membership levels etc. tend to be subjective and do everything except serving their actual purpose, not to mention they are often breeding grounds for various community-related issues and useless drama. Ask yourselves: do you like to share knowledge with others, because you feel it's the right thing to do - because you're doing it for yourselves, or because you're doing it only cause of other people around you? If it's the first one, there's no need to actually judge whether one person is more useful than another; it's actually unfair and insulting. Second choice always leads to massive circle-jerking and in the end, tends to hurt and leave deep scars within the community, changing it into something no sane person would ever want to be a part of. It's also a question whether people gather here just to feel secure and chit chat about eroge, or because actually they want to contribute something, share interesting stuff and work on visual novels, in one way or another. To be honest, Fuwanovel is the first and barely covers the second. It used to be slightly different in the beggining, but I guess that's one thing even Aeru didn't predicted; as communities grow bigger, they also tend to go more lax and lose their original goals or purpose, unless there's some sort of a control, which firmly, yet gently steers it into bright, open waters. I can't agree with statement that whole visual novel community remains toxic and elitist. Which part of it? How many of the sub-communities do you see? How many of them do you think we have? How many do you actually know? Visual novels were, are and will always remain a niche. You won't change that. It's not possible. Most propably, never. There are veterans around here as well and as much as I'd love to see vn's to flourish and become something more recognizable on the same level as - lets say - anime or manga are, I have to facepalm more often everytime when I see people trying so hard, you can sense the pain radiating from their very own pitiful existences. We arent doing anything for the internet, or people. We are always doing it for ourselves. World isn't interested in our vn's; they don't care about some shitty chinese porn games. At least, not yet so stop trying. Be more reasonable. Start working around the very own corners of the place you belong to. Perhaps, things will slowly change for the better as the time passes. They always do. It's not something you have any actual impact on, anyway. To be honest, people don't even talk that much about vn's anymore, either. Most discussions that happen are on personal, very subjective level and relate to trivial things which have no actual value, or "substance"; you rarely see anything objective and meaningful (as in, contributing) nowadays. To be honest, I'd rather wish to see Fuvanovel "less friendly", but more useful - both for people within and outside the community.

Both MLA and CC have nothing to do with actual amnesia or memory loss, that's why they aren't on the list.

Here's a full list of visual novels dealing with amnesia or memory loss as a more (or less) serious plot point, in quality order from highest to lowest. Mind, since VNDB voting system is a rather poor way to judge visual novels in terms of quality; "popular" does not necesarilly mean "good", either.

Cross Channel is a horrible example in terms of amnesia. Please, don't even bring it up. If you need precise knowledge, you should rather hit the proper books, than search for inspiration/answers within visual novels. most of them suck at writing anyway.

Losing memory/pseudo-amnesia is a very common character trait for most of average visual novels. At the same time it's hard to discuss anything without spoiling things. Unfortunately, most of visual novels dealing with those topics do that in a horrible kind of way, most often using it as a cheap excuse to execute some whimsical sort of story, that otherwise wouldn't make any sense. True Rememberance is the only good title which covers loss of memory in a correct manner, without making the story absurd, or silly. You shouldn't mix memory blocks with amnesia as well, since they are two completely different things.

I guess this wasn't included in the FAQ section, cause it's already outdated. Applocale was a solution only for XP/server versions of Windows, and as far as I know, although XP is still quite widely used, most users already work on W7; you don't need applocale for Vista or W7, as you can preety much change the locale on the fly, without the need to restart the system. This was preety much the basics few years ago, though. I'd like to add, that applocale still isn't a 100% workaround as it only emulates the locale for non-unicode based applications. It is a good option for those who want to properly run vn's working on unicode-based executables, but a lot of non-unicode based vn's tends to not run properly even with applocale emulation in the background. You also need to have the eastern language pack installed as well for the applocale to work.

Within the next few years, most will propably regret university didn't last whole life.

Mhm... kinky. Anyway, high five! I hope you'll enjoy your stay around.

Then I guess it is'nt anything serious except that the executable might simply have some issues with running properly on anything above XP due to coding/library incompatibilities. Anyway, if you're willing to check out another copy, I might upload it for you, just give a word. I'm also interested whether it's just a local issue, or something that has to do with the game being too old for newer versions of windows to handle.

Anyway, they got funded just a while ago. We'll see where it goes.

They aren't. Visual novels are still a lot more popular in Japan due to the sheer ammount of consumers contentrated in one tight space. Contrary to the east, vn's on the west are simply a curiosity and the ammount of illiterate people around only makes things worse. People do not read nowadays. They don't want to, and quite often don't have (or can't find) the time to read them. VN's will never become popular on the west. Even with the current rise of the story-driven games, like the TTG's productions, games fully relying on storyline remain a tiny percentage of what we have out on the market. Don't hope for the better. It requires a change in the people's hearts and their willingness to be more open to culture; it's something we can't currently expect from modern playerbase, since so far everything is going in the exact opposite direction.

Where's the cg/text? It seems the game is either missing some files, or the file pathnames are incorrect and the game isn't able to access all the assets properly. My copy was from a different source and I had it running under XP SP3, without any issues. Not sure what are you doing wrong, but it might have something to do with the game simply being way too outdated to work properly on W7/w8; a lot of older games do not seem to work properly on these systems. I could upload my copy along with the patch onto my server, if you want to give it a try. Not sure if it'll help, but it's always worth checking out.

It's not about engines, it's about execution. Japanese devs typically lack the "firepower" needed to pull off such games; vn gamedev has much more in common with dojin scene, that any AAA development. Besides they wouldn't even have to reach for AAA, but wilingness is the problem here. After all, it's easier to create another cheap moege, than try to work on something they don't have the slightest clue about, and thus, propably fail at it in the end. Don't forget, that their current situation on market does not allow them to make mistakes, unless they want to stay afloat. Eitherway, this is a really good topic. I'm glad people are actually interested discussing such things and there's not much left I could add myself, since Clephas wrote preety much everything I had in mind, haha.

It's good. I only hope you won't get bored, though. Otherwise you should get hooked. NGNL is getting really good and honestly enjoyable. At such times you wish the whole series to already be finished and available for a single session.

The avarage life standards in Japan are much higher than in any of the european countries, that's why even if it's relatively high for an average student over there to fork off money for a vn, prices are still considered acceptable. Unfortunately, those high life standards also mean higher financial demands, that's why prices for visual novels remain quite high as well. It is a vicous cycle indeed, but there's not much that can be done in current case. Market oversaturation is a natural process - it's quite easy to produce vn's, since they don't require high budget and a large team to develop. Most of the current big companies that are self-sufficient enough to stay afloat started as dojin circles or amateur groups back in the past. The real issue with vn's is their jamming; because of their notorious past, vn's became something of an underground thing and that limits both their approachability and possibilities for devs to reach out to a lot more consumers with the exact same mindset. The whole market is a self-restricting organism, crammed into a very tight space that's slowly reaching it's upper limits. They remain mainly otaku-pandering products to ensure a steady flow of money and at the same time, completely neglect the outside world and with a reason; most of standard consumers weren't ever interested that much in vn's and that's justified, when most of them only heard of visual novels as eroge or nukige (since those typically make the most noise around). In the end, the whole market is dependable mostly on japanese otakus who produce and consume everything by themselves; the limit has been reached, though. That market is already unable to sustain a large number, it already produces more than it is able to consume. A lot of companies went down in the last few years and even high quality does not seem to be a helpful factor (yes, Littlewitch - I'm talking about you) in that case, preety much on the contrary - it's better to churn out cheap moege/nukige, rather than producing games with high quality value; only few are able to do that, and do it fast enough to ensure some sort of a success. It's hard to understand, why Japanese haven't yet opened towards western market; I guess the language barier is propably one of the most notorious issues in case of a heavy text-oriented kinds of games, visual novels precisely are; They are propably afraid as well. Eitherway, we'll be witnessing a lot of changes in the upcoming years. Japanese devs slowly seem to get aware of the issues as well; I only hope they will be able to make another move, just as the one in the past, that lead them to create vn's for the very first time.

From my viewpoint, the dev team does not deserve the money they are getting; a lot more projects with a broader scope and depth were realized without any sort of third party financial help. If they have gotten so far, why would they suddenly need money now? I am also one of the people, who believe they could make it a lot better; provided the money they are getting, rather than creating a story based on events and characters looking like they'd just been made up by an anime-struck grade schooler.

Yeah, Chaika seems to progress in a decent way. The story seems consistent, though It will propably need a lot more time to evolve into something more comprehensible as an anime adaptation. It actually makes me want to pick up the LN's.

Black Bullet is slowly stopping to make any sense.

It's only a dōjin vn, calm your tits. I was talking about a professional production with high quality value, not an amateur work that simply uses Kancolle girls as a bait.

I still have it on my HDD (including both the working game, it's image and patches), even though I finished it years ago. I'm not sure about the Fuwanovel's version, but if it really doesn't work, I could upload mine to my server, so Aaeru could replace the files with a working copy.