sanahtlig

Let me get this straight... You want to sell this game. But you don't want to pay the person editing it? You're also dismissing the work of editing as "just spell-checking". You should consider how you're pitching this, I think. Maybe you should say, "Hey, I've made this great game and I'm looking for people that want to test and help me improve it. You'll be the first to get to play it!"

Strictly speaking, I've finished 1 short story. And that was for a writing class. Which is now part of a larger work. So...0? As for feedback, I'm happy to provide feedback on your work if you provide feedback on mine. Specifically, the work in progress in my signature.

I'm often surprised that the finished product turned out as well as it did. I always have this nagging feeling in my mind that past accomplishments were either the result of good fortune or that I was more capable / motivated back then. I'm very pessimistic by nature, so I'm always expecting poor outcomes.

I'm often surprised how my writing turns out. Poland had a standing army. They were completely unprepared for the speed and scale of the German invasion, just as Belgium and France were later. No one, including their allies Britain and France, thought they would fall so quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland#Polish_defence_plan

Everyone with finite time has to choose their VNs somehow. Directly or indirectly, you're being influenced by others' opinions unless all you do is browse VNs you've never heard of on a site that carries a large variety of VNs with no bias to any in particular. Without the subjective opinion of others, it's quite difficult to distinguish misleading marketing of an unappealing title from a title that will genuinely interest you, especially if your experience with VNs is limited. Metascores simplify the process of gauging the reaction of others. They simplify the process of ranking VNs of a given type. With 10,000+ VNs to choose from, a score ranking is a pretty good place to start looking for titles that might interest you. Looking at a new brand you've never tried, a score ranking gives you an idea which title would be the best one to start with. While a review or demo might be the tool you use to make a final decision, scores are a quick way to take a list of 10,000 and whittle it down to a few dozen that might be worth your time to investigate further.

I've seen people on the localization forums say they're interested in short games with H-content because they're working age with families, busy, and don't have much time for anything else.

I'm inclined to believe the definition of gamer in that survey included people who play Facebook and mobile games (which aren't relevant to this discussion) I remember looking into it before and not being able to determine how they defined "gamer", which of course makes all the difference.

I think there's a simpler explanation. Men are more likely to be gamers. Macs aren't gaming machines (at least without a lot of extra work / expense).

You can rest assured that Mangagamer is continually searching for new nukige licensing opportunities, especially after the success of Imouto Paradise and Eroge!. As for nukige being popular...I mean, they didn't need to survey people to find out that nukige sell. They have sales data, which is a far more valid measurement.

I generally rate VNs by my enjoyment of them when I played them, as well as how they compare to similar titles. 7 is typically the base-level for a game I expect to like. If the game is one of the best in its class, I'll give it an 8, or if it's one of the best games I've ever played, a 9. If the game has significant flaws that detracted from enjoyment, it gets a 6. I gave an NTR nukige a 4 because it didn't even bother to develop the jealousy factor between sex scenes (and there were scenes that occurred with basically no context), which is the whole point of NTR. I find I'm harder on genres I like, since I've seen so many good titles of that type, so this tends to balance out my genre bias. I didn't start scoring til I'd played 50-100 VNs, so I haven't noticed any significant changes in my opinion over time. When I'm comparing scores, I generally compare within genre. For example: RPGs, NTR. VNDB scores are usually only reliable for English-translated titles, so for untranslated titles I use Erogamescape.

Both of you missed a pretty important line:

Simplicity is elegance. Imagine a scenario, then imagine the most likely causes that would bring this result to fruition. Then consider why the end result was predestined, yet doesn't appear so to your readers.

You might want to consider why this is such a "special" day in Dave's life. He's had superpowers for a long time, yet this string of climatic events happens only now. Why? Answering that question is the key to transitioning from an unlikely children's fantasy to a more realized tale that might actually take place if such superpowers actually existed. That's what I term a "realized" or consistent setting. You should also consider why a word would be such a strange trigger. Everything that happens should have an underlying basis in the world you've built. Just my own idea, but the trigger concept makes a little more sense if he's a human-developed bioweapon rather than an alien. But why would a human bioweapon be walking free? More questions...

If you want feedback on the plot (sooner rather than later) I'd suggest outlining your concept from start to finish and presenting a basic scenario. As it is now the technical issues are obfuscating the story you're trying to tell. I'm not sure how old you are or if English is your native language. You might want to consider seeking feedback from your peers, as they might be more lenient in judging your work. As you asked for tips to improve your work, I'm just going to keep picking until I see something that looks professional.

That looks better. A lot better actually. I can actually follow now and I don't have the urge to skim through as fast as possible. You should also mention that they're on the way to school in the first few sentences. Next you need to fix the grammar. Every dialogue segment should end with punctuation. Another example is this:

I was reading Mangagamer's ask.fm page and this comment amused me:

The number one problem I'm noticing is that you don't start a new paragraph when a new person speaks. That's a standard cue for readers that lets them know that the person speaking has changed. The second problem that leaves me disoriented is that I have no idea where the story is taking place or why the characters are there until the third paragraph. You'll notice in movies and anime that whenever a scene changes, they'll give a couple of zoomed out images showing that the characters are standing in a building in such and such area to reorient viewers. If you take a look at Memory's Wounds, you'll see that I orient readers to the immediate setting in the first paragraph of both Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.

Give Saya's Song a try. It's short, cheap, and very well written. Take a look at School Days (and the sequel Shiny Days) if you're interested in something animated.

Duel Savior from Giga is also pretty good.

Thanks for the support! I probably won't be cranking out 24 pages at a time like I did to start with, but my goal is to get through a week of story time every week of real time (with at least one substantial update every week). I'm beginning to realize that accomplishing my outline may take more writing/time/scene-length than I originally anticipated. I had a list of major events in my mind from the get-go which I felt like I could fly through relatively quickly, but then when I fleshed them out they ended up being a bit more substantial than planned, especially as I get new ideas and think of how to evenly balance events throughout the available timeline. The upside to this is that I don't have a deadline and this story can be however long I want it to be. So I'll continue generating ideas and fitting them in with the goal of crafting every scene to show something important about the characters. I do actually have to graduate at some point, so I may fall behind if that eats into my free time.

Are you using the dashboard view? Use the filters in the green header bar to change the view. The default is Dashboard (which isn't very good). http://forums.fuwanovel.net/index.php?/blogs/ Edit: I noticed you're right: The read full entry option seems to serve no purpose. Sounds like a technical oversight. The VN translation status entry just covers the entire screen. I think maybe the greater problem is the lack of entry truncation rather than the dashboard view, which simply keeps the translation status thread out of sight.

Some people enjoy walking the line without crossing it, and actually find that more stimulating. One of my major criticisms of nukige is that they tend to just be porn slideshows without proper buildup of sexual tension. i just don't find that very interesting.

Nekopara is professional quality and actually pretty well-rated on both VNDB and EGS. Seems like the sort of game Sakura Spirit wanted to be. Its popularity is probably deserved. When people ask for recommendations, I try to nudge them towards higher quality titles of the same type. If someone showed interest in a title like Sakura Spirits, I wouldn't have a problem saying, "If you want to buy this, don't. Buy this instead."

That wraps up my posts for the weekend. Anyone looking forward to the next installment?