zoom909

Nope, it's Neon Genesis Evangelion. Nothing can match it for insane levels of devotion (in Japan and everywhere else) for a "just OK" show

This 'problem' cracked me up :-) Well, as far as a solution goes, first check that you're playing the VN in real time. For example, if the next H scene happens t amount of time in the future, then you'll have to wait for t amount of time to continue playing.

I still apply the Fansubbers Code as a general rule of thumb. When the title is going to be officially localized/sold in your area/language, it's time to buy. BTW, in manga, at least, I am proud(?) to be 100% compliant with IP law. All of my manga collection is genuine.

Okay, here's my take FWIW: 1. I only read VNs w/ romantic emphasis, but, they dont' have to have H. Have to obtain that suspension of disbelief that gives me the feeling of falling in love with one of the heroines, that's for sure. But H, I don't really miss the H if it's not there; anyway that's a different type of feeling altogether, and you don't need a VN to get it. Right? All I have to do is point my browser at one of those moe-booru sites...or watch the latest ecchi-anime...or whatever. 2. I don't necessarily mind sex scenes. I'm not like "There MUST NOT BE any H scenes." Still, VN scenes tend to be awfully explicit, sometimes even too tedious. I usually end up skipping at least part of the descriptive writing. 3. I agree that some VNs seem to know where to put H scenes, and others seem to interrupt the story with them. I usually end up skipping some for that reason too. Ex: Da Capo 4. Some of these girls I simply do not find sexy, so the H scenes become meaningless. I might find them cute, like wanting to give them a big hug. But I will end up skipping H for that reason as well. Ex: Nanatsuiro Drops, Kanon, etc. 5. What turns me off worse than explicit scenes is the many-faceted perversion. Like the kind you can see in the Tags on VNDB. Things which I'm afraid are rather difficult to explain away by the "sex scenes in VNs are just a beautiful expression of love" theory. Oh, maybe this one technically belongs in another topic: "Corruption of human sexuality. Really necessary?" That problem is harder to fix by just skipping over scenes. Basically it just means I avoid that game.

Dodonpachi SaiDaiOuJou finally arrived by the slowest shipping method. I like the 360 "story mode". You're blasting enemies and dodging incoming fire furiously, and meanwhile two girls are on the screen just blithely chatting away...

Got Mai on YoakeMaeYoriRuriIroNa. Now on Estel-san. I think I may have some trouble with this one...all the other girls seemed very agreeable... Looks like she'd rather be doing anything other than talking to me...

the artist is the same one as http://vndb.org/v6393 Sakura-Iro Quartet

like getting a tooth extracted at the dentist?

Seems like the ones I've read just change something like "What are you doing, Ken-chan" (written) to just "What are you doing" (spoken), I hardly even notice

If it's one of those ones where player character appears on the screen...it's ok to voice him If not...don't, it's unnatural to have a disembodied voice Heck, I voice the player character myself sometimes...good JP practice. Somewhat related, I like the VNs where you can make the characters name up yourself

The last thing I finished was Nemu's route on D.C. The protagonist made me feel lazier than in the anime, somehow. Now I'm playing Mai's route on Yoake. I already got Feena and Natsuki. Man no one can call you lazy in that game. I found myself painting fences, pulling up weeds, waiting on tables, walking dogs... More than that, I got to eat some darn fine meals. D.C. I was eating stuff like school food and instant ramen. Here you get deluxe Italian food, great Asian home cooking, etc.

Few questions: 1. If they don't use the replacement .exe, the only thing missing is the improved font, is that right? 2. I'm curious what's the problem specifically with applocale vs windows' own Language for Non-Unicode Programs? I always use the latter anyway since I'm constantly playing JP games... I know the windows setting automatically installs the JP fonts for you the 1st time you set it. Does applocale not do that? 3. Do you want me to reference this patch from my regular web site or not? If yes, then can I link to this dropbox or do I need to DL it to a different URL first?

How about taking hiragana lessons from Mai.

I think Luch's guess is as good as any. Especially since they only said "it's not working." Does that mean, won't play, or, won't save? OK, well, I tried something just now. I delete every file from the savedata folder. And the game still started up and worked. And then I could still save my game. I looked in the savedata folder, and the game and written brand new files there. I tried this on Miku #3, but I think the 1st game is the same engine. So if all else fails, delete everything in the savedata folder.

Just FYI on http://zoom909.blogspot.com I did a post on my Japanese learning experiences. I tried to keep it brief... Ki ga muitara, zehi mi ni itte kudasai :-)

Don't you see a conflict here?

Yeah, the tutorial's definitely not perfect, I guess (it's kind of a hard thing to write a guide for), but the thread seems to be serving its purpose...to give people the general idea of what they might need to know, and what's involved, if they're interested...

You can actually learn and remember kanji in that database style, w/o the reinforcement of reading practice?? If you can, you automatically earn rank "S" in Japanese language ability, if not rank "ZZZ"

Kana phonology is regular. And there is no meaning for individual kana. Only sounds. Kanji phonology is irregular. And each kanji has meaning. Spoken words can be written with either kanji, or kana, or both. Maybe that is the hardest part to understand...?

yeah I guess you can't just sprinkle a bunch of print statements in the middle of assembly code...well, I suppose that's why someone made a debugger :-) I figure the whole "running the debugger to find out how the game loads and parses its data" is needed in the worst-case scenario, when nothing is known about the engine at all. But, there's also the times where you can use one of those magical extraction programs like they have on TLWiki like CRASS, if you're lucky and the game uses an engine that someone already debugged.

Seems like that method is for people that don't know any real Japanese yet at all. If you already know the core spoken language, the traditional method of learning the characters might work faster for you than the Heisig method.

Yeah, doggone it, it's the same one all right :-) Explains why I could've sworn I'd seen it somewhere, yet I didn't think it was on the forums...

http://proger.i-forge.net/Stage_Once_-_a_Visual_Novel_hacking_tutorial/IPD I posted it b/c, sure one can try to learn Japanese if you're geared toward languages...OTOH if more into the tech side of things, maybe someone could try to learn hacking instead. Of course you could always Google for things like Win32 API x86 assembly language x86 debugger C/C++ programming (or whatever language you're interested in) And don't forget that the source code for To Heart 2 has been published

Do you have any fansub VHSs that you got by mail? That's how I got my 1st VHS fansub of the Macross Movie DYRL, which I dearly wanted to see because I was a fan of Robotech. Somebody copied the LD onto the tape and manually added fansubs. That's why I don't have a MAL yet, it seems like when I looked at it there was no way to import anything, you just had to keep clicking on things one at a time to add it, right?

Basically I only play retro games I was on Pochi & Nyaa for some time, and now I've finished going through SMB3 again. There is a new shooter called Dodonpachi Saidaioujou that just came out for the 360, I might have to see about that In the meantime I'm just playing things on MAME randomly. I played this really old Zelda-style game called Venture. If I were to ever play another RPG again, that Atelier Rorona game looks like it'd be at the top of my list. But I don't have time for both VNs and RPGs, I think.