Zalor

I should have probably been a little more vague with my claim. My real issue is how many VN devs seem to feel pressure to include choices "because that's just what you do in a VN". Having choices just because its an industry standard can detract from the merits of a plotge. For instance, I think Higurashi and Umineko would have been compromised a lot if they had choices. The writing and story is so gripping choices would have been distracting, since the main reason I am reading those stories is to find out what happens. Not because I want to influence what happens. Then there are other plotge which do have choices, and usually for those I find the choices add little to the experience. But I'll grant you that there are some that manage to utilize it well. I never got into Fate, but the bad endings in G-Senjou no Maou were interesting since they showed you just how morally bankrupt the MC could become.

Literally me. But to give a more serious reply since I really like this thread and haven't been this entertained by a forum post for a while, I'll throw in my two-cents. I am in large agreement with media theorist Marshall Mcluhan. In particular I think he is correct that new mediums never have a solid identity early on, and therefore end up taking on the identity of mediums that came before them. Take photography as an example. When it was new, it defined itself according to painting, in particular it was focused on capturing the reality that painting had before been tasked to capture. Essentially defining itself with the content of the medium it is replacing. And then years later with different creative people experimenting outside of those limitations, you start getting interesting photos which play around with the assumed conventions, like the photographs by Man Ray. Okay, so why does this matter for VNs. Well as you mentioned Ace Attorney is a Japanese adventure game, which is its own thing. I think this video does a good job explaining why JPN Adventure games and VNs are different: The Origins of Visual Novels. Assuming that perspective, then you can look at VNs as an evolutionary branch of the Japanese adventure game genre. And because new mediums tend to absorb the content of their parent medium, it makes sense that VNs often have a lot in common with Japanese adventure games. My biggest stance, is that I think choices tend to work against most VNs. Now this might be because I am a cursed Storycuck, but generally for me choices break my immersion. I don't care about interacting with the story, if I did I would be playing a game. I want to experience the author's vision, much like when reading a book. So when I get invested in a scene, and I feel like my consciousness is absorbed in the story, and then a choice tree presents itself to me, my immersion is broken. I am no longer an audience member enjoying the show, now I am a participant. This is why I have always defined VNs as multi-sensory novels. Like a novel, they are a narrative-prose base experience. Get rid of the visuals and audio, and you would still know what is going on. Get rid of the writing but include the audio and visuals, and you lost the core substance. TL;DR- I don't see Ace Attorney games as VNs.

That's quite understandable, re-porting is a huge pain in the ass. Especially when you've been working with a specific engine for so long. So I understand where you're coming from.

Just curious, why did you got with Nscripter? Renpy seems to be the industry standard for EVNs and it has Windows, Mac and Linux (as well as mobile) support.

Umineko is a beast of a work that I've been putting off for many years now, probably around a decade. I first learned about it after watching the Higurashi anime back in 2010. At first I stayed away because I wasn't a fan of Ryukishi07's sausage-finger art. However these days it seems that most common ports of Umineko utilize updated art. But, that still left one other huge factor for why I was so intimidated by Umineko for so long. The estimated reading time of both the Question and Answer arcs is around 150 hours. That's a huge time commitment, and I am not a particularly patient or fast reader. If a book doesn't grab my interest within the first couple of chapters I feel no remorse in dropping it. And I apply that same rule to everything I read or watch. So works that have slow starts but supposedly “get better, I promise it gets way better if you continue with it!”, are works I generally avoid. But hey, Subahibi proved to be exceptional and I had a hunch that Umineko would prove to be as well. Essentially the whole coronavirus lockdown presented me with a rare opportunity to finally tackle Umineko. My last semester of Uni got delayed by over a month, and I figured if ever in my life I would have time to read Umineko it would be now. So I purchased the Steam releases of the Question and Answer arcs and installed the voice patch. Which by the way was a slight pain in the ass to do, since the voice-patch is banned in Japan for some copyright protection reasons. However using a VPN managed to solve that problem. To date I've read the first 5 episodes of Umineko including their associated tea party chapters. Which according to Steam clocks me in at 88 hours (I wasn't kidding about being a slow reader). I admire the balls it took for Ryukishi07 to literally take the most cliched premise of a “dark and stormy night in an isolated mansion” mystery setup, and to turn that premise so much on its head that my attention is wrapped entirely in the web of the narrative he has setup. And without being pretentious about it, Umineko makes it clear that the mystery genre, and literature in general, is something that Ryukishi07 holds dear to his heart. It is very much a love letter to the mystery genre, while also being a complete deconstruction of it. More than that though, it isn't just the plot which is masterly crafted, but what makes it standout is that it truly fleshes out its entire cast. Characters aren't just there to be pieces in a puzzle to solve, even if at first they may all seem to be fairly generic. Gradually as the layers peel, you will see the facade in much of the interactions between the family and all the conflicting and complex motives various characters hold beneath the surface. And above all, they are all sympathetic despite being quite flawed. If I had to pick one character in particular that was surprisingly much more complex then I anticipated, it would be the 9 year old Maria. I fully expected her to be a simple little kid character, who was there mostly to just be cute or maybe to be used for cheap tragedy. No, far from it. Even Maria has complex motives of her own that reach surprising levels of depth. And so if even the initial impression of a 9 year old can be deceptive, I think we can easily imagine that being true for the rest of the cast as well. What I found consistently very impressive about the work, is that as I mentioned previously I am not a patient reader. I hate it when stories have segments of seemingly dull character interactions to establish build up. This usually gets me in an irritated mood where I think, “This better be building up to something great, because I'm in no mood to settle for good.” And invariably, every single time so far that Umineko ordered for my extended patience, it was rewarded well beyond my expectations. A story that I initially found off putting precisely because of its length, is now a story I don't want to end. The irony, huh.

You have Battler as your avatar right? Given what you said, what did you think about Ange and her subplot in Umineko? (Also I only finished the question arcs so far, so please avoid any details that come up during the answer arcs)

Literally my thoughts on childhood friend routes as well.

Going to agree with Clephas here generally, but I'll add my two cents. When it comes to any work of fiction that focuses on a particular time period/setting, they tend to be best when they are really well researched. If you focus the story less on being a dating sim and more on the mystery of German/Nazi research, not only would it be potentially more interesting. But it could mitigate some political backlash. Specifically if you avoid any sort of moralizing of Nazi characters, and display careful and meticulous research into the horrors of their research (might want to look into this guy as well as his associates a bit), you could avoid most pitfalls in public opinion and still tell an interesting story.

Although this is about Nothing & Nowhere you've ended up convincing me to read Lynne! To be honest I haven't heard of it before, but I'm a sucker for good psychological horror, and I actually really like the artistic design of it based off of the vndb sample photos.

Hey Darren, thank you so much for doing this. One of the most difficult aspects of deving a VN is that it isn't just writing/scripting, but visuals and music play a huge role as well. But especially for smaller teams or individuals starting out, getting all the required assets can be quite difficult. So free quality music helps a lot!

I agree with that, but because this is involving other companies if one of them is more conservative, this could easily drag the other ones down by having to compromise. Since my understanding is that this is a join venture between all of them. Which likely means that if any big disagreements come up it would easily result in compromise, and defaulting to conventional business practices. But again, this is all just speculation on my part.

So I'm kind of late to this news, but both VNs look genuinely promising. On that front I am very optimistic. As for the business side of things with this strange policy towards Europe, well this sounds like just the kind of bullshit I would expect from Japanese companies. Its not just xenophobia, the boomers who are in charge of most Japanese companies are hardly ever business savvy, and this is in large part because in most Japanese companies you don't get promoted on merit but rather seniority. I don't know the specifics of the companies involved here, but the phenomenon I mentioned is just broadly speaking a major issue I've noticed in how Japanese business culture functions.

Hey, welcome to the forums! Yeah, Muv Luv Alternative is a really popular one, never read it myself yet though. What other VNs do you really like?

I think I said this way back earlier in this thread a couple of years ago, and I still mean it just as much now, but its great to have somebody such as yourself producing and uploading free, quality, royalty free music for VN developers to use. I hate how a lot of software these days take advantage of subscription models. Hope my modest donation helps a bit.

Its funny because when I read the part you quoted I felt like it was mostly in line with my point, although I admit there were some bits that seemingly contradict my point. But I'll go with the watching a playthrough on youtube example. Here is why I think its cool, going with the quote you provided: Although a Lets play is more streamlined, it is precisely because the consumption is more passive that makes it cooler because the information conveyed is in a more low definition way. When watching a lets play we aren't paying so much attention to the games its self and all the high definition visual and audio assests that went into the games as much as you are watching to see the comparatively low definition reactions of somebody. And in either way, even if we disagree on the technical term this falls under, it seems we are both in agreement that this is a more passive form of entertainment. And that's really the point I'm concerned with. It also seems that you agree that VNs are more immersive, which is the main point I want to get at. I know it might seem obvious to most VN veterans that they are an immersive medium, but I think its an important ground point to establish when thinking about the question "what are the appeal of VNs?"

Personally I've pretty much given up hope on the next era of great VNs coming from Japan for precisely all the reasons you mentioned. I feel like there is market potential in the English language sphere, but as I see it, it is a market that doesn't know it exists yet. Kind of like how movies were just dumb carnival entertainment in the early days, but then later on became a serious art form. The Japanese market is overly committed to the carnival entertainment of nukige and stories that are filled with tropes. EVNs don't have that problem from a marketing standpoint, but in practice many similar mistakes are made. Especially EVNs which try to mimic Japanese VNs too much. That's part of the reason I made this post (and may continue to expand on my theory with additional posts), because I think once we (VN fans and developers) understand what the fundamental appeal of a VN is at its core, then people will start taking them to a new direction that at least attempts to actualize that potential more. Meaning most people don't know what a particular medium truly really is (in this case VNs), or rather they don't recognize its true potential until after it has gotten a decent chance to age a bit. Mcluhan describes my point much better in this minute long clip here: (link). In regards to that clip, I think the "old content" that VNs are influenced too much by is their evolution from video games/text adventure porn games from the late 80s early 90s.

I see what your saying but that's not exactly it. For instance literature was a textbook example of a hot medium according to Mcluhan himself, and reading can be quite abstract; such as symbolic poetry, experimental novels, etc. And considering that Finnegans Wake was one of hits favorite novels, he was definitely aware of how abstract literature could get. That's why for simplicity's sake I explained it as hot mediums demand more of your focus and cooler media allow you to approach things more casually. Since that seems to be the way he more consistently uses it. Lol same. I wish I spent even half the time I do watching Youtube instead reading VNs and books. But Youtube is just so easy when you want to relax and passively distract yourself.

Firstly, by “Hot” I mean purely in the Mcluhanistic sense of the word. Though I think we all acknowledge that VNs can be a very “hot” medium in the erotic sense as well. But seriously speaking, VNs are a hot, highly intensive medium; and this is precisely why I see so much artistic potential in them even if relatively few as of yet have fully capitalized on this potential. To provide a brief definition of hot and cold media I think the simplest explanation is the more immersive a medium is the more hot it is. The less immersive, and the more causal the experience of it is, the more cool it is. Reality TV is probably the best example of cold media. You can enjoy an episode of Terrace House or Jersery Shore or whatever (insert reality TV show) while paying relatively little attention to it. In fact dumb television's appeal is precisely because you can passively enjoy it while watching it with friends and family. Honestly this is why I think most Japanese TV (I'm intentionally exuding anime here) is so bad, but that's probably a rant for another time. Hotter media require more focus and attention from the participant. The best example of this would be literature. While reading a book, you need to pay sole focus to the words. And so this involves a hyper concentration. Hence it is high intensity, thus hot (seriously I didn't come up with these terms, famed academic Marshal Mcluhan did half a century ago). So then why do I do think, and more importantly why do I boldly claim that VNs are fundamentally a hot medium. Well, because for the best VNs and and the most memorable experiences VNs induce, we are highly involved in the moment. Practically there ourselves. And this is because the combination of text, audio, and visuals create a sensory experience which practically places us in the fictional scenes that are being depicted. It's the same reason why Lets Plays of Visual Novels just don't feel right to most VN fans. At least not as a first time experience to a particular VN. Because the first time you experience a particular VN it is a deeply intimate experience. I mean sure there are kusuge which are probably more fun to play with friends or in a live stream then they are to read individually. But then again they are called kusuge for a reason. Precisely because they aren't good, and more specifically don't conform to the medium's strengths. So where am I going with this? I don't exactly know. Maybe to start a discussion about VNs as a medium of their own; which I think they are. That is to say I think they exist in a separate category from video games. Though I acknowledge there can be VNs with gameplay. I think a “VN with gameplay” is very different from a “game”. And I suspect most gamers would also agree. Anyway, its in my nature to make bold claims when I believe something. But if you disagree with me I'd be happy to discuss it with you. More then anything I like to create conversation about concepts which interest me. And if you agree with me, well I'll be happy to know I'm not alone.

I'm going to have to completely agree with Clephas. Too many choices in a shorter VN (hell even in many longer VNs as well) can be a big distraction; and ultimately ruin the experience. The fundamental question I feel every VN developer should consider when working on a project is: "Is my VN a book (with audio and visuals), or is it more of a game?" If you want your VN to be more along the lines of a game, then choices matter more. And production should be focused on making those choices and consequences fun. Seemingly meaningless choices are always a bad thing. If your biggest priority is story and characters, then I would recommend thinking of your VN as a book with visuals and audio. Here choices aren't so significant and actually often can be a big distraction. Not to say it has to be a kinetic novel, but you should really only stick to major choices that have a significant impact on the story (basically Option 1). If you haven't read Saya no Uta already, I would recommend reading it because it only had 1 - 3 choices, but each were significant and had major consequences. And that's what a story and character focused visual novel should aim to do when they do utilize choices.

Yeah, and again I was just spitting out an idea despite knowing how unfeasible seeming it is. The core problem with any of these solutions however is that Fuwa has always been mostly a communal hub for VN fans/hobbiests. To change it into something almost professional (like becoming a liscencer) would be changing fuwa in a big way. And I'm not sure who would do it considering that leadership in Fuwa seems to be kind of quiet. And this gets back to the other key problem, Fuwa need revitalized leadership.

That's actually the main reason why I never change my avatar lol. That and it just feels weird to change it at this point.

I've been practically half-dead on these forums myself since 2015. I remember you though, if that means anything. Nice to have another oldtimer return. It looks like your like me, you can't leave this place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhSW9vDTRyY

Since I joined this site my activity has always been pretty sporadic, and I don't know too much about what was going on post 2016. But I think Fuwanovel never really recovered from its withdrawal from hosting Torrents. I don't think it was a coincidence that the most active years of Fuwa was when torrents were hosted which brought an influx of new users. It seemed 2015 by in large was pretty active, but I think it was mostly from the momentum of the previous years. I know one of the main goals after torrents were taken down was to make Fuwanovel a hub for information, but I think @Plk_Lesiak is correct in pointing out that by in large Reddit fills that purpose. I suppose I do have one possible suggestion. Since hosting VNs was what made Fuwa popular to begin with, why don't we do that again? But this time not with illegal torrents, but as an actual VN publisher/licenceser. I know that'll be a lot of work and probably won't happen, but its the only way I can picture Fuwanovel gaining relevancy again. And given that Fuwanovel does still have somewhat of a significant presence in the VN community, if someone were willing to put that much work I think Fuwanovel could make it as a publisher. But again, this is just me spitting out my 2 cents.

I've been an on again off again ROM hacker since I was 12. Mostly focused on the GBA Fire Emblem games, but recently I sunk a lot of time editing Pokemon Red. It's fun to get to know games you love on an intimate level (like looking at how they are actually coded), and editing them. You can personalize them that way. Unfortunately I only have time to work on hacks when I literally have nothing else going on in my life. During the first part of the shutdown I was working on a pokemon red hack where I replaced pokemon with memes. Here is also a short video I did of the rival fight

You just reminded me that I need to read the Silver Case. I heard good things about it before, but never heard it compared to Serial Experiments Lain, which is one of my favorite anime. When I have the time I'll have to check it out (but I'm midway through Umineko right now so it might take a while lol) I agree, I think True Remembrance is another good VN for people unexposed to the medium. Especially if they want something more on the comfy side.