I want to make a Visual Novel but can't even come up with

>>16346749
It's like 90% writing go fucking ask /lit/ what the hell man.

>>16346749

Understand that it's mostly script writing and very little programming. Compared to basically any other kind of game, you're really writing a program to read someone a book.

You'll probably find it a lot easier if you treat the script writing like an essay or something.... outline, rough drafts, editing, etc.


it'll eventually make sense and fall into place but unless you can really separate the writing from the programming, or be able to make up your story as you code it, thinking about it in tradition game development terms won't be super helpful...

>>16346778
For that matter, you'd likely not be doing any programming at all. There are already VN frameworks out there; all you need to do is provide the story and art. And like other anon said, a visual novel is 90% novel. Approach it as such.

>>16346775
>>16346778
Writing the story isn't the issue. I'm a good writer. I just can't come up with an idea for one what-so-ever.

>>16346806
And how is that not a problem with your own creative writing?

>>16346806
>>16346749
Some dude is raised by wolves, but the pack of wolves are humanoid. The story is about him finding his place in the pack and you get to chose from several females routes. The lowest female in the pack, the runt child of the alpha female, the alpha female herself, or some middleground childhood friend/sister type character child of the wolf who took you in.

>>16347285
Some of us aren't furries.

>>16346806
You're not.

>I want to make a Visual Novel but can't even come up with a basic plotline.

Congratualations, you've got the makings of an up and coming OELVN author! Don't let go of your dream!

You can always steal plot from some story in writefag threads.

Who cares about the plot?

Moeges are just cute girls doing cute things anyway. All you need is a good artist and as many ecchi jokes as you can fit in a single 10 hour experience. You can come up with any kind of flimsy narrative as justification for the setting.

>>16346749
try reading nekopara or sakura something it might get you an idea of what EOP seek

>>16351440
sounds like a season plot of the Benny Hill show

>>16346806
Go to /r/WritingPrompts/ and practice. Every day.

>>16346806
But Anon, you don't need to come up with ideas. There are plenty around.

You should be copying shamelessly what you like. This is more controversial here than how it is in Japan. See database animals.

The question is, why don't you feel like copying those authors you love?

Do you think you aren't good enough?

Are you afraid that you don't understand it enough to change it and keeping it functional?

Why do you feel like you should be unique?

>>16346806
So you're saying you know how to prose but you don't have anything of substance to say? Just write a poststructuralist fragmented narrative that's totally incoherent and keeps jumping all over the place. . . with qt anime girls! The otaku level of people studying social sciences who eat that shit up is desturbingly high, so It'll sell like hotcakes.

>>16346790
Are there any open source CG elements if I wanted to make one but am not an artist, or should I just go to exh and grab cgrips and cobble them together?

>>16352028
Elements as in characters, backgrounds, props or what?

>>16352153
Characters and backgrounds, I dont know what props are but I guess those too.

File: anime_character_generator__oll_by_kagamine_kun-d34qqmq.jpg (142KB, 900x527px) Image search: [Google]

142KB, 900x527px

>>16352291
For backgrounds I'd just get pics of real life and give them some effect/filter. Like make them look watercolor or something. For characters use http://khmix.sakura.ne.jp/download.shtml

There's also an English version of the anime character creator, just look up NRGSoft Anime Character Creator for other versions.

>>16352028
>Are there any open source CG elements if I wanted to make one but am not an artist

Serious question: why are you trying to make a VN if you can't write or draw?

>>16352013
This post makes me wish James Joyce lived long enough to write an eroge

>>16354802
I can write, but I can't draw.

>>16354533
Thank you, I remember this generator.

>>16355042
Dont worry.

Sca-Ji exists

>>16355533
Prove it.

Show writing samples

>>16346749
>harder than making a real game
>literally the same except without even having to think about including engaging gameplay that isn't broken

>>16359245
>writing a book is easier than making a game
orangesandapples.png

>>16346749
Because as opposed to coding a fun game with interesting gameplay, you have to write a book here. Not only that, it's a book that has music, illustrations, different routes and choices.

With the risk of sounding pretentious I'd say it's actually harder to do one of these than write a book, since writing a book is just that - the writing - with a VN you have a shitload of aspects to take care of.

Find a buddy that can help you.

I want to make a VN but can't draw cute girls OR cute boys.

>>16355042
the letters to nora are enough

>>16359625
different routes and choices aren't mandatory, plenty of successful VNs don't have any player choice at all beyond whether to keep reading

>>16359632
That's true actually, but my point still stands as I don't really know what OP is thinking.

>>16346749
Yoko Taro usually begins with the ending of his story when he wants to write something, and he just makes his way up there somehow after he figures out exactly how the story ends.

Some other people create a universe where it's a bit easier for them to write a story since they know the limitations (sometimes).

And then the absolute masochist starts at the beginning, which is by far the hardest way to go about it since you probably don't have a set goal.

The way I usually do it is I think of a couple of events that I'd like to put on paper, and I link them with characters and supporting events, think like tomato plant, where the tomatoes are the events and the stalk, branches and roots support them all.

Then again if you like more erratic or eccentric storytelling you could begin at the very middle and have the plot surrounded by mystery or something.

There's a lot of choice, so that might be overwhelming, but if you start jotting down something you might just hit gold, I know some people wait for inspiration but in the rare case that it never hits you might as well keep yourself busy by nicking at the wall.

File: 1460148784250.jpg (506KB, 1408x1589px) Image search: [Google]

506KB, 1408x1589px

>>16347502
What kind of fag doesn't want to fuck wolf chicks?

>>16360170
A normal one.

>>16360170
Y'know. Sometimes I try to ignore it, but I just can't deal with the preposterous properties of whatever that shirt is made of. Like, it would have to be tailored with ridiculous boob-sacks to fit like that.

Cute girl though.

western vn fans are really shit. i cant believe people still talk about KS like it was the best game ever made. Seriously, just fuck the story. Make cute anime girls and get a good artist then write a shitty slice of life with lots of sexual misunderstandings and you will make bank. Weebs on steam buy anything no matter how shitty it is.

Nekopara is pretty much mainstream now even though its generic nukige thats not even worth its price.

>>16359627
>the letters to nora are enough
Imagine if they were interactive though

すみません

You are presented with two options
1. I-its fine
2. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night.

I started typing in Japanese but now that I think about it it would have to be written in English. Or at least just the options

>>16360228
fucking normalfags

>>16360387
Which is better, or if you want to think that way, what is worse, Nekopara or KS?

>>16360599
Both are shit. Read SubaHibi.

>>16360615
Which one is more shit though. I don't give a fuck about SubaHibi.

>>16360599
KS is worse. Atleast Nekopara was made by an established artist. KS is literal meme shit and was tossed around between so many different people during development that it was a massive trainwreck. But fans don't actually care about quality, they only care about memes and waifus.

>>16347502
Kemonomimi isn't furry, newfriend.

>>16360763
KS actually gets some points in my book for being a locally bred meme-tier trainwreck though. mediocre bad is the worst kind of bad.

>>16352013
It has to at least have coherent themes and characters for anyone to want to analyze it.

>>16360787
If you didn't have a personality at all you wouldn't be able to write good prose in the first place, which means that cohesion of some kind will be present in your text no matter what you do. Your own way of perceiving the world around you, your views on life and your feelings about the characters you are bringing to life just naturally seep into your writing.

>>16360763
>Atleast Nekopara was made by an established artist.
What did Raita think of KS anyway, since the characters were based off some shit he drew?

There's an idea for OP, take some characters that exist but don't actually have shit about them and make a VN about that.

>>16360599
KS is worse because the fact that its lauded as a 'good OELVN' despite bringing nothing new to the form places a limit on the medium in the West. Its like people are so satisfied that this is what they can achieve and keep reccomending it to everyone as though its the pinnacle of the medium. On the other hand, Japan has already branched out to all kinds of genres and writing styles.

Beyond Juniper's Knot, Asphyxia, and maybe some of Christine Love (for the way she blends system into story), the OELVN landscape is a wasteland full of derivative romance games or bishie fantasy games

>>16351440
Nasu pls

>>16360986
>the OELVN landscape is a wasteland full of derivative romance games or bishie fantasy games
But that sounds like the OJLVN scene too.

>>16361101
At the very least, the JVN landscape has models to look up to, to see the light above the trash. You have people like Liar Soft or Rail Soft or KeroQ who are forever willing to be weird.

In this forum post on reccomended games to learn from, KS is the first example given

https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=41417

This is simply a lack of imagination due to a lack of models to follow.

it is true that the OELVN is mostly generic romance. Some games like sunrider are pretty interesting though even though it copies from a bunch of other series. As an OELVN it wasnt absolutely terrible.

>>16361166
>This is simply a lack of imagination due to a lack of models to follow.
So you're saying KS is the best example of a western VN but people only follow it because it's the best example they have, so they shouldn't follow it and make better games and then use those as examples?

>>16361539
Not him, but you're being obtuse. It's not that people shouldn't "follow the best example they have", the problem is that people praising KS don't even realize how low they are setting the bar.
Even if they succeeded in making an OELVN slightly better than KS, it would still be worse than a below average JVN.

>>16361719
>the problem is that people praising KS don't even realize how low they are setting the bar. Even if they succeeded in making an OELVN slightly better than KS, it would still be worse than a below average JVN.
Soooo... they shouldn't follow it and make better games and then use those as examples?

Or what are you saying? Are you saying western VNs can never be as good as Japanese ones?

>>16361733
A big problem with OELVNs is that they try to be japanese and ultimately fail. Most of them are just weeb fantasies that really don't carry anything unique. Why OELVNS do bring the most boring and overused parts in the genre like highschool romance? Especially a JAPANESE highschool. They are ultimately low effort products.

I can understand their passion, but shit is still shit no matter how much glitter you throw on it.

Although I think the BIGGEST problem with them are production values. Even the commercial ones use free assets like bgs and music. Also the overall art is pretty shit. Every OELVN I have ever played just feels like it was made in somebodies basement as a project of passion.

>>16361763
Because a good chunk of the demographic that buys VNs wishes they were a Japanese high school student. Not a real one, of course, that would suck shit. It's one of the things you really can't get anywhere else.

A good comparison of indie jap vs western devs for visual novels would be the fault series and sunrider.

They were both made by indie developers and both had a kickstarter. The disparity in quality is quite staggering. Sunrider even got MORE money on kickstarter than fault.

I just don't think the talent is there at all for the west to even compete.

>>16361763
Basically no one who likes VNs likes them in spite of them being Japanese. It's like saying people who make western "manga" are guilty of trying to be Japanese. Now, they don't have to be set in Japan, because Japanese VNs aren't always, but expecting some unique expression of western culture in a western VN might be too much to ask.

>Why OELVNS do bring the most boring and overused parts in the genre like highschool romance?
Because >>16361777

>Although I think the BIGGEST problem with them are production values.
I dunno, lots of old but loved Jap VNs look like shit. Lots of Jap VNs look like shit anyway, but for some reason Deviantart tier Japanese stuff gets ignored. I guarantee you can find Japanese VNs as shitty as the shittiest western ones though.

>Every OELVN I have ever played just feels like it was made in somebodies basement as a project of passion.
You probably shouldn't judge doujin games against professional ones. Are there even any professional, not just commercial but something that could be said to be made by people with experience, VNs? Well there are probably things that would be called VNs that aren't thought of as such because they aren't Japanese inspired. It's not like a storybook with sound and pictures is "novel" concept.

Finally
>Most of them are just weeb fantasies that really don't carry anything unique.
What's wrong with this, anyway? If the west only wanted to make uncensored nukige, would that be a problem? Should they be majority chuuni adventures? Deep mystery plots with deeper lore? Copy a handful of games that you in particular liked?

>>16360472
You know what'd be interesting? A VN for people who know some or are learning Japanese that only shows words/grammar at your level in kana/kanji and everything else in English. (Probably not as practical as one that just shows both languages, though.)

>>16361733
>Soooo... they shouldn't follow it and make better games and then use those as examples?
>Or what are you saying? Are you saying western VNs can never be as good as Japanese ones?
What I'm saying is, it's a problem to believe KS is the best there is and not aim higher. The original point was that KS is worse than nekopara, because people praising KS as the best there is has effectively crippled the OELVN scene, so to speak.
If people in the west only aim to be as good as KS, it is unlikely they will ever create something that could be considered good.

>>16361852
Someone make an Anki VN

>>16361888
So I mean, you're saying they should forget about KS and (aim to) make games that are better than it. How's that being obtuse? Although what makes something better than KS? If it's just art, writing, and direction, is it okay if the plot is similar?

>it is unlikely they will ever create something that could be considered good.
Good by who, you? The current western OELVN community? The Japanese(made) VN community? The translated Steam VN community? I mean speaking for myself, I'm a snob who dislikes them just on the basis of them being western.

>>16361922
>So I mean, you're saying they should forget about KS and (aim to) make games that are better than it. How's that being obtuse?
The obtuseness was in missing the original point on why KS is worse than nekopara, which said nothing about what western developers should or should not do.

>Although what makes something better than KS? If it's just art, writing, and direction, is it okay if the plot is similar?
Well yes, if something has better art, writing, and direction, they would be better than KS... But the point is that aside from being an OELVN, as a VN, KS did nothing interesting and is at best average. It's not something to look up to.

>Good by who, you?
As a reply to
>>16361733
>Are you saying western VNs can never be as good as Japanese ones?

>>16361733
VNs don't exist in a vacuum you know. There's this thing called Literature. There's also this thing called Movies and Art. Some guy made an indie VN about Hieronymus Bosch.

Poetry was the same. No one was able to really perceive what a robust free verse would look like until Walt Whitman came into the picture. Similarly, Citizen Kane led to people being able to perceive new methods of cinematography in deep focus. Evangelion is seminal because it shook the core of what was possible for Anime (whether it was due to the budget or not doesn't matter). But the problem is that there are also those times when people are too over-memed on a certain work to be able to see beyond. That's why Herman Melville & Van Gogh suffered during their time. The current OELVN community is full of bad memes. No one will be able to realize its true potential until they break out of the ghetto. The only way to crush the tirade of bad memes is wave after wave of groundbreaking art - like major movements like the Impressionists, or the Surrealists.

Currently, the only work in English that is kind of like that would probably be Forest, and maybe the Steampunk Trilogy. Problem is Forest was too weird, and thus an outlier. Steampunk suffers from bad translation and the poetics is lost in English. Cross Channel was tarnished by the translation. Muv Luv is viewed as too big budget for indie goals. Himawari suffers from a slow early game pace that sets a certain barrier - but it's proof of what a doujin creator can do if he puts effort into it.

Hopefully, SubaHibi, with its esoteric references, maximal use of the medium, plain weirdness, extremely deviant hentai, and amazing story can pull off an Eva and inspire loads of bad rip-offs and, later, good homages, and break the meme-barrier that exists in current OELVN.

>>16361852
I'm sure the grammar portion would fuck up though. Japan goes backwards while English goes forwards. And both have too core grammar differences that you can't mesh them up and have something that makes sense.

If you want to learn grammar from VNs, just open both the English translation and the Japanese one at the same time.

>>16361922
How about something that has literary merit? Yeah, I know that's considered pretentious for some reason, but let's just forget about that for a minute. Vns and indiegames are mediums that have an amazing potential for an individual to create something unique, since the creators aren't neing held back by the requirements of outside funding and the restraints of corporate interests that come with that.

I get why people mindlessly copy the formulas they see in japanese vns. It's because following pre-established patterns is easy, and people are afraid of embarassing themselves by doing something different and failing miserably - you've already seen the structure of your average harem dating sim a few dozen times, so you know what yorks and what doesn't -, but it's still baffling to me that this has been going on for so long without people getting tired of it.

>>16362837
I see you also recognize the power of memes. I like you anon.

>>16362876
The sad thing is, as seen by the Western Superhero Comics Bloc, memes take a long time to kill. Compared to Manga (which had a Genius like Tezuka early on who made works in every genre) and European Comics, that industry is only now slowly opening up to various other types of art.

It feels too sad that Grisaia can provide hours of immersion and story entertainment and it only takes up one-half of the production cost and considerably less manpower of one episode of Game of Thrones, yet no one is utilizing this medium. Then again, you need the scenario writer to help you achieve that.

>>16362890
As I see it we could have a second wind if VNs were to take off on the western market with a revolutionary title. Memes can be very persistent in a closed system, but in the moment when that systems opens up, which is to say when a lot of newcomers are introduced to it, there's a chance to turn that systems entire structure on its head.

>>16362870
>It's because following pre-established patterns is easy
Surely, it can't be because they like games about school life or whatever and not deep themes. They're just ignorant to what they have yet to experience.

I understand you and >>16362837 want more games you like, but you may have to accept that the games that get made might get made because that's what the creators enjoy making. What's wrong with liking the same thing all the time?

File: this-is-water.jpg (92KB, 600x673px) Image search: [Google]

92KB, 600x673px

>>16362993
>What's wrong with liking the same thing all the time?
It's not "wrong", but it is self-defeating. We change ourselves through the things we experience and the meaning we assign to those experiences, and we are always telling the story of our own life. Stories have the power to transform us. When you find the right story you're a different person by the time you finish reading it. At that point you are ready to move on and "act out" that change so to speak. If you keep retreading that same path over and over again, trying to relive that experience, it will lose that transformative power. You just keep coming back for your shot of catharthis.

Now you might respond by saying "it's just entertainment, stop taking it so seriously.", but that's backwards. You are reducing storytelling to entertainment by not taking it seriously enough.

>>16363110
>Now you might respond by saying "it's just entertainment, stop taking it so seriously".
Nah, I'm still going with "that's just, like, your opinion, man."

I don't get why the group of people that wants a new kamige doesn't just come together and write up idea for a new kamige.

Besides that, even if they made some game that was so great it changed the face of western VNs forever, there's no reason it wouldn't fall back into the typical same old thing if that's what the audience wanted. I mean for all the amazing anime there is, people would still rather watch another Ghibli movie about lolis and forests.

>>16362993
>What's wrong with liking the same thing all the time?
Nothing. It's just you're liking fappy girls and not school life plots. In porn plot doesn't matter. Thats why you have ho problem with same plot over and over, not getting bored or annoyed. Because you just don't care about stories at all. And this guy >>16363110 wrongly assumes you do because of projecting himself on you.

>>16363152
>I mean for all the amazing anime there is, people would still rather watch another Ghibli movie about lolis and forests.

Sure, you're right about that. Innovation isn't something you do once, it's an ongoing process. A single kamige isn't enough to transform an entire industry under normal circumstances. Its innovative features will simply seep into the established formulas and transform them ever so slightly. My hope is more along the lines of: "If a transformative work comes along at the right time it will make other creatives see the potential of the medium and want to contribute to it, and form a community around the medium." It makes a huge difference whether writers see themselves are egomanics trying to appeal to a market so they can get their day in the limelight, or a community of creatives trying to arrive at new horizons together.

>>16363231
Bruh, this is not a matter of projection. The heroes journey is real. People have been assigning meaning to stories and projecting that meaning onto their lives since they've become sentient.

File: 1394055050163.png (34KB, 200x275px) Image search: [Google]

34KB, 200x275px

>>16363264
>Bruh, this is not a matter of projection.
>People have been assigning meaning to stories and projecting that meaning onto their lives since they've become sentient.

You know what I'm trying to say.

>>16362870
Everybody wants to write a great book, but nobody writes great books, because the vast majority of people who try to write great books fail to write anything decent, and then they have to go back to washing dishes while trying to craft the next masterpiece.

The average person who writes VNs is not qualified to write real literature. The people who can write real literature are trying to get books published that will be taken seriously rather than something that will be dashed out on Steam and reviewed by people trying to make fun of it. Is there cool shit you can do with the VN medium? Yeah, you can, there's lots of shit you can do that you can't do in books - but it's not magical transformative shit, and most of Japan's "great" VNs are branching voiced picture books because it turns out that what really matters is the writing.

>>16363491
>Yeah, you can, there's lots of shit you can do that you can't do in books
I made the mistake of thinking seriously about this, and you can actually make a choose your own adventure book with moving pop-up images and a thing in the back that plays music. What is it that a strict VN can do that a book can't?

I say strict VN to mean VNs where you just read stuff and make choices, as opposed to VNs that are game based, like Utawarerumono and Romanesque. Although I have choose your own adventure books that had combat with stats and dice rolls and shit.

>>16346806
>I'm a good writer. I just can't come up with an idea for one what-so-ever.

Someone fell hard for the prose over substance memery of highschool english class.

It's not Also Sprach Zarathustra, it's fucking chinese 2dimensional choose your own adventure.

Look at Nasu, shitty fucking prose (yes I can evaluate the quality of prose in Japanese you EOP) but engaging characters (this is the most important part) and a somewhat coherent plot make it enjoyable.

KS would probably be a better example of what you are looking for, again, mediocre prose, fucking paper thin plot, but, wait for it, engaging and interesting characters.

Just write what you want to write, I don't believe you are actually incapable of coming up with an idea, i just think that you don't believe your idea is good enough.

File: 1482093062328.jpg (29KB, 720x529px) Image search: [Google]

29KB, 720x529px

>>16364717
I've actually been looking through some of my OLD writing promt / plot device nonsense I wrote fucking forever ago, if you want I can post some of it. None of it is Nobel prize winning shit but I will at least give some of it my seal of approval, and you are absolutely free to take it, leave it, adapt it, do whatever and not credit me because shit's never going to get written anyway.

but really, it's way more fun to write what you want and not what you think is appealing and/or marketable. And if you're not having fun you're doing it wrong.

>>16364717
>Nasu
>engaging characters
Are we talking about the same guy? I thought F:SN was absolutely horrendous, so I never bothered reading any of his other works . Did he actually improve?

File: 1399935993369.jpg (70KB, 1280x720px) Image search: [Google]

70KB, 1280x720px

>>16364765
>Did he actually improve?
No, he's pretty divisive. You either like it or you don't, personally I find the character development rather well done and enjoyable, and the motivations and interactions either realistic or engaging depending on the scene.

File: 1424394596401.png (431KB, 522x503px) Image search: [Google]

431KB, 522x503px

>>16364760
>but I will at least give some of it my seal of approval,
But holy fuck some of it is terrible, shits' over a decade old in some spots.

What is this feeling of deep nostalgia for better times when I was happier, mixed with unbearable cringe and the desire to burn the whole damn thing and forget about it?

>>16361719
>it would still be worse than a below average JVN

The average JVN is DokiDokiNekomimi Sister Maid.
I agree that 99% of OELVNs are shit but a big amount of JVNs is too; it's just that you'll never run into them.

Also, KS isn't even that bad. It definitely isn't good, but it's 7/10-ish. While I completely understand hating popular but mediocre things, there is nothing to be gained from trashing KS that bad.

>>16364781
Oh, alright then.

I think I get where fatefags are coming from. Fate is the entry point to visual novels for a lot of people, and it does a great job of showing what the medium is capable of. Seeing a whole world of branching paths and intereconnected stories with recurring characters unfold before your eyes might enchant readers to the point that they're willing to overlook the pacing problems and inconsistencies in character motivation that ruined it for me.

Similarly, reading Clannad was a fucking magical experience for me simply because I'd exclusively watched mainstream tv shows and mainstream movies in the years before, so it opened up a new world for me. If I read it now I believe I wouldn't give a damn about it, but in its own time I think it deserves the spot it still has in my heart.

>>16361763
>Every OELVN I have ever played just feels like it was made in somebodies basement as a project of passion.
So do Higurashi and Tsukihime and those are both very good. I don't really think that alone is enough to doom a VN.

>>16361763
>Every OELVN I have ever played just feels like it was made in somebodies basement as a project of passion.

>Notes From Underground
>De Profundis

How is that even a criticism? It accurately describes some of the best literature.

>>16364846
I don't really see the problems with character motivations in F/SN, to be honest. Care to elaborate?

For pacing I kind of get it, but I just happen to like the pacing in F/SN. I can see why you wouldn't like it, but that's just a matter of taste; the pacing is clearly deliberate.

Personally I really liked F/SN (competes with Tsukihime for being my favourite VN) and it definitely wasn't my first. Then again, I also really like Nasu's style of writing, which is what turns most people off.

File: cantwakeup.jpg (69KB, 364x366px) Image search: [Google]

69KB, 364x366px

>>16364851
You're right, what dooms a lot of OELVN dev teams is that they spend all of their energy on trying to appear professional, while story and characters aren't thought out nearly well enough.

Ryukishi was a social worker at one point, and clearly he thought a lot about social dynamics, the difficulties people have with trusting eachother, what it means to love, how relationships fall apart, etc.. He has a good enough understanding of those concepts to be able to turn them into themes for his stories.

>>16364898
Saber and Shirous relationship is the most obvious example imo. Shirous ideal is the hero who saves everyone, a hero that preserves their own humanity. Sabers ideal throughout life is to be the perfect king, a hero that sacrifices their humanity for the greater good. This is the ideal Kiritsugu was pursuing throughout his lifetime as well, the ideal he ultimately rejected at the end of the last holy grail war, which ties in directly to Shirous past.
"Sacrificing one village to save ten" is the ideal Shirou is supposed to DIRECTLY OPPOSE thematically, so his reaction to learning about Sabers past at the end of Fate, his nonchalant acceptance of it, is breaking with his character on a fundamental level. To me it felt like Nasu was just dragging his characters along like puppets at this point to make the ending conform with his draft, rather than allowing it to develop dynamically. He just forced the story into the shape he wanted it to be, eventhough it went against everything the characters he created stood for.

The ero scenes in the Saber route are another example of a writer who has zero respect for their characters integrity. Like, for christs sake, I get that you didn't want to write these, but forcing your characters into this situation with a plot device isn't erotic in the slightest, it's just sad and disgusting. Stop with the bullshit and learn to write fucking romance for crying out loud. I find the thought of making your characters behave in ways that they normally wouldn't absolutely repelling.

Sorry about the rant.

>>16365060
>is breaking with his character on a fundamental level.
Shirou's beliefs change drastically depending on the route

Fate = save as many people as possible
UBW = save everyone
HF = save the people in front of me

>>16365070
Are you sure you aren't just rationalizing the problem away? Fate is the first route you have to play, so my impression of Shirou wasn't coloured by the other routes at that point, and it was pretty clear to me that his ideal was "not sacrificing anyone to achieve your goals" in that route.

>>16365085
>and it was pretty clear to me that his ideal was "not sacrificing anyone to achieve your goals" in that route.

Yeah, but he develops throughout each route. That's how he starts off in the beginning of each route, but UBW is the only route where he doesn't compromise in some way.

Which, along with Rin and the EMIYA ost, is why it is the best route.

UBW>HF>Fate

>>16365095
Sure, I'll gladly admit that UBW is better, and in any case I'm not going to shit on the entirety of F:SN just to make a point. I've already given my strongest example of character motivations not being in line with their actions, so if you understand where I'm coming from but still disagree with my conclusion, then clearly we just care about different things in our stories.

File: 1475297499629.png (75KB, 211x173px) Image search: [Google]

75KB, 211x173px

>>16365135
>so if you understand where I'm coming from but still disagree with my conclusion, then clearly we just care about different things in our stories.

Not even going to address the possibility of your analysis being incorrect? That, son, is a facile argument.

File: 1385548060050.jpg (28KB, 429x399px) Image search: [Google]

28KB, 429x399px

>>16365144
Well, before you ask me to make that concession it'd be nice if you could try to give me a convincing argument as to how and where I might be mistaken.

>>16365194
>as to how and where I might be mistaken.
>how
Didn't read good
>where
The part where Shirou's ideals change throughout the course of every route. Yes, the end of Fate contradicts the BEGINNING of Fate, but that isn't an error in writing, it's character development. I don't want to go full weeb CSI and boot up fate to get screens, but this is kind of a key point to the series and the differentiation between routes. It's not all about which girl's vagoo gets the ponos.

>>16365060
Shirou's ideal applies to himself. He thinks for himself that the way he should live is to "have his cake and eat it too" and save everyone. It's not like he necessarily would disapprove of Saber's life because of this, just like he doesn't disapprove of Kiritsugu.
Also, as the other anon remarked, Shirou's character develops as the route goes on. The main plot point of F/SN is that Shirou wants to have his cake and eat it, and the three routes take this in different directions. In Fate, he sees that he can't save everyone, so he decides to save as many people as possible, which is more in line with Saber (and Kiritsugu for that matter). In UBW, he sees that he can't save everyone, but he decides that just trying is good enough; he won't give up his ideal. In HF, he abandons his ideal and decides to just save those close to him. So in that sense, it makes perfect sense that he would accept Saber's past.

Saber's first H-scene is pretty indefensible, but I feel like that is kind of a cherry pick; the other H scenes aren't that bad, honestly. You have to kind of keep up the suspension of disbelief on the plot device, though. Also, you have to get over the fact that Nasu is kind of rapey.

>>16365207
>>16365262
Shirou doesn't succeed in saving everyone in Fate, and he learns to accept that, but he never abandons the conviction that a hero shouldn't sacrifice others to achieve their goal. Can you really make yourself believe that Shirou is okay with seeing Saber burning villages left and right, fighting a pointless war? Keep in mind that he not only accepts this, but actually tells her he respects her and that she was a great king after he sees the destruction she caused in flashback land. And don't tell me he just did it to comfort her. He was having inner monologues about it any everything.

>Shirou's ideal applies to himself.
>It's not like he necessarily would disapprove of Saber's life because of this, just like he doesn't disapprove of Kiritsugu.
He seems to project his ideals onto others when it suits him. He hates Kotomine because he's similar to him, both of them doing crazy shit because they're looking for atonement, so why not apply the same standard to Saber?

>>16365389
I'll be honest with you, it's been a while since I read the Fate route and I'd have to reread the ending to really make an argument here because frankly I don't remember it that well at all.

File: 1424024055181.jpg (86KB, 500x706px) Image search: [Google]

86KB, 500x706px

>>16365393
Alright, have a good night.

>>16363669
>What is that a strict VN can do that a book can't?
Voice is a very expressive medium, for starters. Also, as software, they're capable of making the reader experience things in "real-time" - books have a harder time of this and have to rely on stuff like ending the page in the middle of something and revealing the bombshell after the reader turns the page (which they do).

After that there's a bunch of gimmick stuff like having mismatches between voice / writing, changing things slightly the second time around without telling the reader, having routes affect each other in unexpected ways, and fourth-wall breaking, but none of that is really important.

Even so if you want to do something great you either need to have great ideas or great writing. Preferably both, but enough of one can make up for a lack of the other.

>>16363152
>I don't get why the group of people that wants a new kamige doesn't just come together and write up an idea for a new kamige

There is almost no foundation for that anywhere but Japan. A work like Muramasa, for example, was a truly miraculous work that had an author who had a ridiculously vast knowledge of everything from minute fighting details to insane analyses of Japanese history and politics, and he had the backing of a massively well-off company like Nitro+ as long as 5 years to come up with his script.

A scenario like that can't just be thought up. When Kubrick was planning his Napoleon movie, he spent days pouring over maps of Napoleons battles as well as about a hundred other books - just so that he could get the battles choreographed properly.

>>16363491
Not true. Text + Audio + Visuals is a really new thing that people haven't realized the full potential of because. It hasn't really appeared in anything else other than comic books (Text + Art) and video games. For ages, literary text was pure, and even the play form had limitations. A play can't be more than a hundred pages or you'll need actors willing to go for several hours straight. On the other hand, a Visual Novel can have the experience of audio + textual readability.

A Visual Novel like Forest would never work in a pure text format because its hallucinogenic nature comes from the way the animation occurs in conjunction with the text. You hear one voice speaking something different from the text on screen and all the weird shit happening, and it just feels really really off. Some parts of SubaHibi are definitely text only, because they use strange textual-pictorial shit that makes a book like House of Leaves read like a bitch, but works perfectly okay in Visual Novels. A person that tries to separate the components of a work is bound for failure - and that's why overall directors are needed.

>>16367267
I also forgot to add how important the act of clicking is compared to reading pages. The ability to control the text given to the player per click is one of the elements that a writer who really knows his stuff can utilize to his full advantage. There's a secret kind of poetic rhythm that people like Romeo and Narahara can pull off in some scenes.

There's this fight scene in the prologue of Muramasa, for example, that is suddenly condensed into this really beautiful and elegant Haiku-esque form - with old Japanese shamisen music in the background. And this is contrasted with the history lesson scenes which are full of exposition. Any poet would know that splitting a line has effects on the rhythm of reading.

>>16363152
>there's no reason it wouldn't fall back into the typical same old thing

It 100% will fall into the same old thing. That's how it works. It'll fall into the same old thing, and, even worse, there will be 'scholars' trying to dissect it into all sorts of weird schools like feminist theory or queer theory. But, I like this quote from El-P:

Only faggots make shit up just to get famous
So when I finally blew up I remained sick
Earning respect in ghettos and 'burbs for word placement
Back when the independent scene remained faceless
We were the only crew who promised your ass we'd take it
Mold it, shape it, living outside the matrix
Hold it, make it, more than miniature major labels
Hold it sacred, living it for the culture
Told ya plainly, protected it from the vultures
That's why I always get respect from true soldiers
While half of the critics claim it every year: "Hip hop's over."
FUCK YOU, hip hop just started
It's funny how the most nostalgic cats are the ones who were never part of it
But true veterans'll give dap to those who started it
Then humbly move the fuck on and come with that new retarded shit
New slang, new thought, new sound
Who's heart you thought you had?
You clown, you don't, you drown
I won't dumb it down, I'm dumbing now for these rounds
I'm a live mothefucker plus I'm gunning for clowns
You're a mime motherfucker, don't be coming for pounds
So you can break out of that invisible box, you're not down

>>16362993
My favorite ones are the ones who started that young rap about
Comic books, spaceships, and Obi-Quan one
And even though they were soft they had fun
But they couldn't break out the frame of the town they came from
Some of these faggots used to send me their demos
I'm keeping their puppy styles in the Company Flow kennels
But since they had no identity from the start
They started to resent the scene when they couldn't become a part
They've been failing for years and call themselves Vets, that's bold
Motherfucker, you're not a Vet you're just old

File: 65203.jpg (40KB, 100x100px) Image search: [Google]

40KB, 100x100px

>>16359632

Well, the fact remains the same that if you write a book, you stop there. If you write a VN you have to write a book then additional work when a book is already done.

Obv. you are unlikely to do as much writing for a VN as an average book, but that's a very drastic variation and could be 10% as much work or 10x as much work. If for the sake of argument, a book is 300 pages, you could write 100 or write that 300 pages for several characters then additional stuff per path or whatnot.

Odds are it will be in between.

Plot out a rough outline, on paper, with points of divergence till you have a tree, figure out where some things reconnect, see how many endings that nets you. Then dial that in to the amount of effort you want to spend. I'd try probably 3 endings as a reachable goal for a first outing. Assuming you want a game like experience not a simple picture book.

I like both, but you need a better story to keep people on the hook for a whole VN that's entirely story with no interaction, of course. Also ask yourself, if you can't draw, why bother? Just write a book. What other reason is there for this to be a VN if you are not artistic or working with an artist already? And why not a comic or light novel?

Worst case, you make a game-VN and halfass it with just placeholder pics and make it all work from a writing/choice standpoint. Then you can refine it from there once you have the bones in place.

>>16361719

Delusional weeabo detected.

>>16367512
Not that poster, but KS is really really mediocre. Not even so bad its good, but just mediocre. Of course, the average JVN would still be overwhelmingly bad because of their nukige output - but an average for a VN that isn't just focused on providing porn would be something like early Key (e.g. Air or Kannon).

A work that stands on the level of the average non-porn JVN would probably be those written by ebi-hime or Christine Love. But don't fool yourself into thinking that KS is anywhere near anything of standard. The ending of the Lilly route literally had a running to the airport scene right out of a thousand bad dramas. If I wanted to see that I would just watch J-Dramas or K-Dramas - such as Crying Out Love At The Center of the World, which also had a running to the airport sick scene.

>>16367502
Comics and Light Novels simply do not have the same level of immersion. I underestimated how powerful Sound + Text was until I read VNs. Also you underestimate how difficult paneling can be. With a VN, a certain amount of character assets (BG + a few sprites) can last you hours provided you have writing. In comics, you have to draw and arrange panels and proportion the text to the images properly.

Light Novels aren't really as good on the providing picture beats part.

>>16367319
>It'll fall into the same old thing, and, even worse, there will be 'scholars' trying to dissect it into all sorts of weird schools like feminist theory or queer theory.
Literary theory has always had its problems andyes, presently we are dealing with the problems you are describing, focusing way too hard on representing different schools of thought alongside eachother for the sake of provinding all kinds of questionable "diverse" perspectives. But. You're not going to stop that from happening by hiding in a corner and trying to keep your medium obscure. Imo we can at least make scholars question the way they analyze by presenting them with works that their methods fail to do justice and pointing out where and why their criticism falls short.

So if you have a story you want to tell, don't let your fear of critics tearing it apart stop you. Great works of art have the power to change the way criticism works. The rise of the novel completely turned criticsm on its head in Germany, and the same thing can happen again.

Those really are some nice lyrics though.

>>16367683
Yea, I'm not talking about closing off Art. Great Art always rises above the criticism. I was telling that poster that it is a 100% definite truth that any spurt of art in any medium will always regress back to the mainstream, and once those creative fluids dry up, then interpretation will fill the gap. That's a fact of any medium. On the other hand, we are probably at a point in history where books about books are greatly outbalancing actual books, and writers are more concerned about writing for other writers.

>>16363669
>What is it that a strict VN can do that a book can't?
One controlling reading speed; if you want to see a VN that does this pretty well, see Higurashi; sometimes it has these little pauses before displaying the next line and they're used to great dramatic effect.
I also don't think that having music in a choose your own adventure book would be viable. You could in theory, but in practice I don't see a 50 hour adventure book with a rich OST and 100 choices in it happening.

>>16367608
>but an average for a VN that isn't just focused on providing porn would be something like early Key (e.g. Air or Kannon).
This is pretty deluded, desu. There's tons of mediocre moege that you just aren't seeing because nobody is talking about them and they're made by a company nobody is talking about and they're never getting translated. There's a huge selection bias on the VNs we actually talk about.

Also, I find it very odd that you start out by saying medicore (and adjective which means "of only average quality; not very good") and then proceed to say KS isn't anywhere near average.
In my opinion, it is slightly below average for the VNs we actually read, and probably above average if you consider all non-nukige.

>>16367948
Eh, all that doesn't really matter. I think what we're trying to say is simply that KS, which is held up as one of the milestones for EOLVNs doesn't even come close to being able to compete with highly regarded VN titles. The majority of the EOLVN community just doesn't seem to know what good writing looks like.

File: laugh.jpg (25KB, 228x285px) Image search: [Google]

25KB, 228x285px

>>16367997
>I think what we're trying to say is simply that KS, which is held up as one of the milestones for EOLVNs doesn't even come close to being able to compete with highly regarded VN titles

You understand this is basically saying "a good doujin game doesn't even come close to being able to compete with an AAA corporate VN".
Pic related, should you retort with Tsukihime or Higurashi or something.

Also, if you try to strip away everything else and judge VNs solely on writing, then they pale in comparison to good books.

>>16370040
>Also, if you try to strip away everything else and judge VNs solely on writing, then they pale in comparison to good books.
To be honest? Not really. Of course there's many good books that outclass pretty much all VNs, but especially if you take into account how many more books than VNs there are, VNs measure up pretty well.

>>16370040
>doujin games not worth AAA
>pale in comparison to good books

Studio Beast games, G.O. games, and Romeo's early work which had a crappy interface like C+C.

And the combined monster of SubaHibi and Sakura no Uta beats many good works out there, even when based purely on writing. As well as Muramasa and Mareni.

>>16367608

Your flaw in thinking is that you imagine the "average" or "standard" Japanese VN is higher quality than KS. They sure as fuck aren't. They are an ocean of lukewarm crap with islands of good ones and a few gems. KS is simply one of the lukewarm. This is not saying KS is great, just that your average VN is crap, plain and simple. There is no cultural increase in quality involved in this.

Kinda like how weebs think original moonspeak voiceovers are just better than dubs because dubs suck when in reality, the original voice actors already sucked just as much. Most Japanese voice actors are shit. There are some true gems to be found in English anime dubs (obviously outrageous, Japan-tier amount of English shit also).

But a lot of this is sample size. In some weird future where there are 10,000 English VNs, the Japanese ones will not remotely come on on top as any kind of baseline for quality. Westerners just haven't even tried and until there are a few hundred out there, any discussion to the contrary is invalid and just rose-tinted Japan-fetishism.

This is like when weebs find out that their favorite anime was actually animated in Korea by the same hands as Korra :)

>>16367724

An unimaginable amount of great art is superceded and essentially ovewritten bu shit art that's more popular. It's horrific but factual that we'll never know how much great art was lost to the ages while lesser stuff flourished. There are a million reasons why but for a good current example see: every recent art exhibit. Shit comes out on top VERY OFTEN and the majority of great stuff will never see the light of day.

>>16367645
>Comics and Light Novels simply do not have the same level of immersion
>Light Novels aren't really as good on the providing picture beats part

Thats not really true. For example I vastly prefer 戦記ファンタジ in my LNs. The VNs just don't have and probably can't have that level of detail in describing certain battles and tactics not to mention other aspects of those types of series.
I find their desciptions much more clear and easier to imagine compared to some CG with vague explanation but I guess it depends on the author and the series.

>>16371800
>Kinda like how weebs think original moonspeak voiceovers are just better than dubs because dubs suck when in reality, the original voice actors already sucked just as much. Most Japanese voice actors are shit.

Yeah, no. Even if they were shit, they're shit because you don't like the voices they do, not because they're literally amateurs pulled from the streets to voice shit they don't care about at all with no passion whatsoever. There are cases where certain things are good or even better in English but they are rare or big movies. The entirety of the usual cast of English "professional" anime tv series voice actors is mediocre at best, and the actors themselves lack the vocal range to make more than 2 character voice types.

>>16371872
>The VNs just don't have and probably can't have that level of detail in describing certain battles and tactics
>What is Muramasa

戦記ファンタジ isn't a thing that is specific to LNs though. If a VN had that writing then it would be more immersive than an LN that had that writing.

>>16371808
Thankfully we're past the Library of Alexandria or Burning of Books type scenarios where there aren't enough stuff in print so the book vanishes if its destroyed. Even then, fragments of the memes from those original works exist in the works of others who quote it - like some of those lost Greek plays.

Great Art has the greatest meme quality since it'll be remembered for life by a person who is open to its influence. Thanks to info-tech + population, great memes can perpetuate better than shit memes which are individually ephemeral. Although many good works are lost, there's a higher chance for absolute shit works to be lost. Who remembers any of the pulp that came out during the Victorian times amidst Charles Dickens?

>>16371800
I never said that it couldn't happen. I merely said that KS being set as a baseline is shit. It suffers from the founder's syndrome of being one of the first large projects of its type, and thus the meme must die as fast as it came. Japan got over that meme, and it has many models to follow, so it has the meme advantage. Just take a look at the types of works that appeared after Meteor released Kusarihime – which is known by people from Nasu to Romeo Tanaka as influential on the scene:

2002: Kusarihime
2003: Cross Channel
2004: FSN
2005: Saihate no Ima
2005: Swan Song
2006: Muv Luv Alternative
2006: Itsuka, Todoku, Ano Sora ni.
2006: Kikaijikake no Eve -Dea Ex Machina-
2007: Dies Irae
2007: Himawari
2008: OreTsuba
2008: Kagerou Touryuuki
2009: Muramasa
2009: Baldr Sky 1
2010: SubaHibi
2010: White Album 2
2011: Aiyoku no Eustia
2012: JQV
2015: Sakura no Uta

These are some VNs of varying quality, but all of them go above the average, and I put quite a range of different writers here. Romeo himself wrote in an interview that the time which he was working in was a moment when the industry itself was extremely open to ideas.

You don’t see this kind of output over here because there aren’t any of those dominoes and structure set in place yet. An environment with a lot of fresh ideas and games to be inspired by, and the economic setting for these ideas to flourish. And related to the generation of new ideas comes from burying older and worse works. Even when I go to Kickstarter pages, you can get a glance from the writing that these projects aren’t focused at all on the basic element on writing. The writing is clunky and it merely serves to push forward the information and lame Anime stereotypes. Dischan may have been one of those outliers.

Just go over here and look:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=visual+novel

Crowdfunding is slower in Japan than in the US, so indies should be flourishing by now, but the level of the projects are embarrassing. The writing is mostly FictionPress quality.

>>16371954
>Thankfully we're past the Library of Alexandria or Burning of Books type scenarios where there aren't enough stuff in print so the book vanishes if its destroyed.

There's something like that with small sites on the internet. No-name artists blogs, sites on old webhosts, sites with stuff people don't tolerate anymore, lots of stuff lost to time.

File: 1.jpg (164KB, 952x1400px) Image search: [Google]

164KB, 952x1400px

When's the west gonna start making high quality loli porn VNs? That one shitty German one or whatever looked like moldy shit.

>>16372132
UAB is actually one of the most impressive western VNs out there if you're willing to look past the questionable stuff. The writing is entertaining, there's moving sprites, a good amount of cg and it even has some minigames and point and click sections.

>>16372117
To provide an example of this, I recently found an archive of the blog of the guy who reprogrammed 4chans script back in 04.
http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Everything_Shii_Knows.html
On that site there's a segment dealing with the origins of "the church of latter day yukkuris", which apparently went into great detail on the subject. Went, because I haven't been able to find that part of the site archived anywhere.

In any case, I'm just using this as an excuse to link to the site. Some of the things Shii has written on there are actually pretty insightful, and he even has an bibliography of Michel Endes writings which made me feel like I'd found a kindred spirit.

>>16372148
>questionable stuff
Lolis aren't questionable, lolis are hot. When's there going to be a western game with actually fappable loli content?

>>16346749
It's pretty simple if you use Novelty.

Make a nukige and it wouldn't matter how bad at writing you are. Art, on the other hand, most be excellent no matter what genre you're making. If the art sucks, there's no point in making it a visual novel.

>>16372292
Higurashi
Umineko

>>16371800
>Kinda like how weebs think original moonspeak voiceovers are just better than dubs because dubs suck when in reality, the original voice actors already sucked just as much.
I agree with the rest of your post but this is just plain wrong. Japanese voice actors do pretty good work and are paid accordingly (they're among the best paid people in the industry) - it's a reasonably prestigious career. Western voice actors are paid shit, perform terribly and probably hate their job.

>>16372012
>https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=visual+novel
>first thing
>"Scary Visual Novel" is a game focused on expanding on the unnerving aspects of human psychology and mindsets while creating theories.
It sounds like someone is pitching their shitty startup to me.

>>16372292
>If the art sucks, there's no point in making it a visual novel.
Better go tell them that Higurashi, Umineko, Tsukihime, Narcissu et al. never should've been made

>>16372292
You can technically make a VN without art.

>>16362837
>Hopefully, SubaHibi, with its esoteric references, maximal use of the medium, plain weirdness, extremely deviant hentai, and amazing story can pull off an Eva and inspire loads of bad rip-offs and, later, good homages, and break the meme-barrier that exists in current OELVN.
Look, I enjoyed Subahibi just as much as anyone else here, but that ain't happening. Subahibi is more like a FLCL in terms of positioning. If there ever was an English translated equivalent of Eva, it was probably MLA.

>>16371800
Delusional EOP dubfag who thinks in-between slave jobs = animated in. New low for /jp/.

>>16371800
>This is like when weebs find out that their favorite anime was actually animated in Korea by the same hands as Korra :)
I guess in-between animation is now the exact same thing as key animation, character design, directing etc.
Stop being an idiot, everybody knows that anime studios subcontract to other Asian countries (fun fact: this includes Chinese prisoners).

>>16372400
I think more important in Eva was its thematic replicability. It hardened the Sekai-kei genre after all, leading to works in multiple mediums from Iriya no Sora to Yoko Taro video games. MLA is large and thorough, but as a military mecha SF there isn't anything particularly zeitgeist defining about it.

What I like about SubaHibi is how it deals the end blow to that style of story, while opening up into something else. The ending of SubaHibi feels like a full-stop to all the pent up otaku shit that Anno opened up. Sakura no Uta feels like the beginning of what could come after.

Of course, you're probably right in that I don't think people will recognize exactly what these two games combined represents for the age until much much later.

>>16361852
I know we are all on edge because of the influx of another new general but you don't need to assume everybody typing in broken Japanese is illiterate. I'm just very lazy at typing in a language I never communicate in.

>>16373420
I think you're misunderstanding that anon. It doesn't seem like he meant any harm, it seems to me like he would genuinely be interested in that (he might even be learning Japanese himself, or at least be interested in it)!
You don't have to take everything so personal, anon. This is /jp/, we're all taking it easy here.

>>16346749
A guy wants to fuck his neighbor and childhood qt friend, but is insecure about his small penis. Then a fertility goddess blesses him dick magic that can satisfy any woman. He's so happy to have an adequate boner, he rushes home to tell his stepsister about it, who promptly knocks him to the floor and fucks him silly. Now he has to decide which relationship to pursue. Best ending is he gets both of them.

That was easy. Just get an erection and let the ideas flow out of your dickbrain. Don't look at a doujin with a plot, don't watch porn. If nothing pops then maybe look at a single image with no context. Fantasize, who is she? how did we get here? what happens after we fuck?

If it's not ero you can do the same thing. Just pick character and setting archetypes and a few abstract plot points (tvtropes, put some on paper strips, pull from hat if you are starved for plot), which beg questions that lead to further details. For example, male ordinary high school student protagonists on a quest to avenge his father's death. What was he doing when he was killed? Who killed him? What was the killer's motive? Will some of this info be hidden from the reader for a twist? Ie act 2 ends with a revelation his father was building a doomsday device or other morally questionable work that suddenly repaints the narrative. Do this for each trope. I've heard professional writer do something like this, and as a result they can't enjoy any dramatic works because they see and hear only the tropes.

>>16373554
I'm a professional writer and professor of Creative Writing and this is actually not bad advice.

Fuck the Hero's Journey.

>>16373554
>step
dropped

>>16346749
I've written one, only a few people have read it though.

Why do you want to write if you don't have anything to communicate in the first place?

Figure out what you want to say to the world and then make a story out of it.

>>16346749
People are dropping dead for seemingly no reason, they are completely healthy.
Some high schoolers eventually find the connection between the dead people
they all died immediately after they achieved their greatest ambition.
high schoolers contemplate the NATURE of THINGS as they have to decide what's more important: their dreams or their lives

there's an idea

Pick which girl bento you eat

>>16374455
Does it have deep deep caterpillar-to-butterfly symbolism? (or some other bug that is an adult for a short while)

What happens if their greatest ambition is to live? What if it's to get pregnant? Do they die right after sex with the MC, after they know they've become pregnant, or at the moment the zygote starts dividing even if they don't know it?

>>16374455
For literary cred, quote Faust, and you'll be able to enter the Kamige pantheon with SubaHibi and Dies Irae:

If the swift moment I entreat:
Tarry a while! You are so fair!
Then forge the shackles to my feet,
Then I will gladly perish there!
Then let them toll the passing-bell,
Then of your servitude be free,
The clock may stop, its hands fall still,
And time be over then for me!

Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schön!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!
Dann mag die Totenglocke schallen,
Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei,
Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen,
Es sei die Zeit für mich vorbei!

>>16375391
Anything German really. People find alternate meaning in the weirdest shit taken out of context

Uberm Sternzelt Richtet Gott, wie wir Gerichtet

>Above the stars judges, as we have judged
>note that, for you Highschool German speakers, haben is omitted because germany and fuck you it's poety

Sounds super cool and ominous, and grand master Anno used it, but it's from fucking Ode to Joy and has basically nothing to do with whatever it is implied to have things to do with, i.e. Selee and instrumentality and shit.

But hey, it sounds cool and that is what matters.

Moral of the story is find random shit in German and just fucking beat that into the reader's head and they'll find meaning in it. Bonus points for Gott.

File: 1376419383664.jpg (121KB, 325x322px) Image search: [Google]

121KB, 325x322px

>>16375422
Just to prove my point

Er schwebt ganz, ganz hoch am Himmel – Gnade ihm Gott, wenn er abs

Keine Frage

SMOOTH OPERATOOOOOOOR

Er hat Augen wie ein Engel, aber sein Herz ist eiskalt.

Rammstein VN when?

File: Beito.png (88KB, 800x600px) Image search: [Google]

88KB, 800x600px

>>16346749

I've written a complete, 300-page novel. One of my friends is trying to sell me on the idea of turning it into a VN because he thinks the themes are well suited to a VN. Should I do it? He's an artist and said he'd help me, but I'd still need to find a musician.

>>16380705
I think it only makes sense to convert a novel to VN if you have something special you want to convey with art, audio, and programming that couldn't be found in the book.

What's your novel about?

>>16380723
It's about a society of rabbit people who disguise themselves as humans and live among them, and a moon rabbit who comes down to earth to talk peace with a group of them. It goes poorly, and a local human guy finds her dying in the street.

The themes are the importance of community, the dangers of substance abuse and what things hopeless people do when they don't have much reason to live. It takes pretty heavy inspiration from, you guessed it, Touhou and related moon folklore.

You might have seen me post in the original content thread some time ago.

>>16380735
I feel like I would want to read that if it was done in the artistic and fairytale-like Liar-Soft style

>>16380821
Well the writing itself is very artsy at points, I'll admit.

In the story, it's so easy for the rabbits to blend in with humans because they naturally have a hallucinogenic effect on them. It's not obvious right away to the reader, but the narrator is often unreliable because he's seeing things that aren't really there.

This combines with the culture of drug abuse that the protagonist lives in. Soon he finds himself in a world of illusion. What's real? What isn't? To many people, the distinction isn't important, just whatever is most comforting to them at the time.

The main reason I think turning it into a VN would be fun or interesting is because the visual aspect would help[ a lot with illustrating hallucinations, helping to paint a picture for the viewer of just what the protag is seeing.

>>16380839
Would the VN have ero?

>>16380840
I don't... know yet.

In the current version of the novel, there is no ero. But the protagonist absolutely has impure thoughts about the heroine, the lunar emissary, including a nightmare where she violently rapes him. Keyword violent, ripping into his skin and such.

I was considering a scene where you can choose to have sex with her, but it would result in a bad end.

>>16380839
If your artist is good, go for it. It sounds like it would be a lot better than any other OELVN out there anyway.

>>16380886
Alright, I'll talk with him about it. Thanks for the encouragement.

In terms of difficulty from easiest to difficult for a write fan starting with easiest
Coming up with a plot
Writing out the plot
Editing your plot so it doesn't look like a /lit/ reject
Putting your game out there
So far this is the easy part
Coding your game with placeholders
Finding a half decent musician
Finding a non-tumblr artist with rates that won't put you out on the street
Now comes the difficult part
Having the ability to keep both the musician and the artist motivated because they will FUCKING BAIL ON YOU AT THE FIRST SIGNHUFJFNFHDDHDHDKGGKKVGRRRFRRREEEEEEEE
Paying them is like an existential crisis. You ask yourself
>why am I paying these chumps for this half assed job
But you're too deep already so you pay up
Finding market to target your game to and keeping the little entitled fucktards happy. That means giving your game out for cheap because everyone knows that making a VN is easy and cheap, so Rev up that 1.99$ price

Turn back now Jay. The VN industry will bleed you dry

>>16381648
>That means giving your game out for cheap because everyone knows that making a VN is easy and cheap

You're literally coding a program to read a text file to me. Your costs should be nearly entirely filling whatever roles of art, music, and voice you can't do yourself.

>>16381947
Because the months, if not more than that, spent writing, coding, editing, proofing, coordinating the team, marketing, beta-testing time invested should be done for free right? Fuck off.

I'll give you a text file with 200 000 words for free.

>>16382027
If all you want to do is write, just write anovel with branching routes. Someone can turn it into a VN later or it can stand on its own.

>>16381947
Assigning value to something just because there was a ton of money pumped into it is delusional, and this "get more for your buck" attitude is shockingly prevasive in our society. So what if it "only" takes a person pen and paper and a year worth of their time to write to write a novel? If that novel is well executed it's still a more engaging experience than your average AAA movie or videogame, so it should be worth more than them to you.

>>16382027
And even you as a writer are trapped in the same mentality. Even if you spent your whole life writing this thing, so what? Ultimately the only thing that matters is whether you've created something that people will want to read.

>>16382041
>If all you want to do is write, just write anovel with branching routes

Never said I wanted to just write. I want to create VN's, because the imagery, music and writing all complement each other giving an experience that a novel can never give. And I'm saying that asking to only reward 2/3 people on the team is very backwards.

>>16382044
>Ultimately the only thing that matters is whether you've created something that people will want to read.
Which is why I spend time on it, carefully picking topics and editing my writing, which is what I believe some writers in this industry don't bother doing.

Sorry. I'm just annoyed at the mentality.

>>16382080
How's your progress?

Will it be better than SubaHibi + Sakura no Uta?

>>16382087
That'll be for anyone who buys it to judge. I've put my heart and soul in to it, as well as my frustrations, so I hope it makes for an interesting read and gets people thinking a little.
Since I've said some bad things about my team, I'll refrain from saying which VN we're working on. Don't want to give them any excuse to stop working.

>>16382087
Eh, I'm happy about any writer who's willing to give VNs a serious shot. I tried making one by myself last year and gave up halfway because of how much work just drawing backgrounds and sprites turned out to be.

>>16382080
>>16382044
>>16382041
It's a funny double standard.

Both the musician and the artist expect to be paid for their trouble. But the writer/coder, who is the core of the project, is almost seen as volunteer work.

No, it's more than that. It's like you should feel privileged that you get to write it, so you shouldn't expect reimbursement.

>>16382102
Can't wait to pirate it and call it shit kidding

>>16382114
Well it's not a one man job. Of course it was a ton of work. Most VNs you've read were designed by a team of people. Very few are all written, illustrated, and scored by the same guy.

>>16382117
Because it's easy to delude yourself into thinking that writing is something anyone can do. while people quickly realize that they don't know how to draw or compose when they get some brilliant idea, download some crappy program and go at it without any prior knowledge.
This leads to people acting like the writer who gets to work on a project should feel happy for being given a chance, while at the same time having an almost magical conception of what being an artist means.

>>16382117
It's not a double standard. If the writer or programmer is the one main one making it, he should expect to pay people well for doing what he wants and not what they want, as they have no personal investment in his project. If the leader was the musician, then the programmer would be one of the ones expected to be an extra cost. Ignoring the time is money bullshit, it doesn't cost anything beyond supply costs to program, write, or draw.(yourself, rather than have others do it for you). Music might cost more if you need a studio or something, similar to if you have voices. If I spent the next month programming out something, it'd cost the same as if I spent that time playing video games or staring at my wall. However, if I need someone to provide something I cannot do, then that cuts into their own wall-staring time.

>>16382125
Ya, I figured that I could pull a Ryukishi, but I guess I was thinking a little too highly of myself.

>>16382117
That's probably because the technical barriers of music and art are probably more plain to see (training instrument + learning anatomy and whatnot), and really it's hard to say whether they're considered 'lesser' to the writer or not, because there are some VNs out there where the art and music are so tied into the writing that you can't separate the forms and critique them one by one.

People have this idea that anyone can write, and so they don't understand how truly great writing works. A writer needs to have amazing information condensation abilities, the capability to sense the cadence behind the prose, the ability to structure everything without inconsistencies (or, make those inconsistencies thematically make sense), and have a diversity of elements to maintain interest in the text. And even if the writer manages to achieve all of these, the people themselves may not have the ability to parse what makes it so powerful, as compared to music or art. This state of affairs will probably continue until some shift in consciousness or something.

>>16382142
So all VN's should only charge just enough to cover the expenses for everything except for the one who took on the project? He should be happy that his project is actually released?

>>16382151
If you learn how to plunder the public domain, it might work.

>>16382151
Even R07 had the help of his brother and later his whole family.

>>16382142
It's a matter of providing a service to people and wanting to be paid for it. In this case, the service is writing a story.
Of course you can't expect people to buy your thing *just* because you made it, but that's the hope.

>>16382152
>>16382138
Writing is a subtle art, and, yes, I think it does carry this idea that it's so easy that anyone can do it, simply because you can easily put words on a page by typing them out.

But ask the common person to write even a short story. Most people are woefully inexperienced in what makes something interesting to read, or even in the literary rules and functions that make something readable.

I don't know, I'm a writer myself and maybe I'm just jerking myself off here, but writing something *good* is just as hard as making a great piece of drawn art, I think.

>>16382170
The lackluster treatment towards writers is probably because this is a budding industry that is still attached to ideas of VNs being about the moe girls and cool fight scenes. In Japan, on the other hand, there are probably more avenues for writers to be respected. Especially people like Romeo Tanaka or Masada.

The only way to break that mold, I feel, is simply to write a work where the writing itself cannot be ignored. I don't think, for example, that if a person offered a job to someone relatively famous in the Western scene like Christine Love, they'd have the balls to ask her to do it for free or for a lower cost. A similar case would happen if they went up to Stephen King or Dan Brown.

https://vndb.org/v20182

https://mega.nz/#!o5dz0BbT!mP29Lx2y6Pxil9LnD7uIf6dLuDOz9qQ9ls2uuGej5no

Read my VN /jp/

>>16382195
sure thing bae

>>16382155
No, the person who originally wanted to make the VN should get over himself and stop feeling so self important. If they have a story, they can just write a book, and they need to understand that wanting that proto-book to become a VN but not being able to do the art, programming, and/or music themselves makes them one step above being just an idea guy. The people who have to be dragged away from what they are doing to work on some project for some idea guy+1 need incentive to work on the project, and as such they're expected costs when you say something is expensive.

It's not that they're the only ones worth paying, it's that they're the only expenses you actually have if you're not actually a company and paying yourself for your time. If you could do it all yourself, it wouldn't cost shit.

It's not that the writer and programmer should feel blessed to get to work on it, it's that they're usually the idea guy+1 who started the project. An artist/musician who started the project would be in the same situation, paying some guys to write out and edit his amazing idea for a story that he can't quite express himself.

You can charge whatever you want, but your costs are just hiring help to do the parts of your idea that you cannot do. It'd be different if you were a group of friends or whatever in a circle with different skills and were all invested in the project as a group idea. As it is, a writer/programmer feeling contempt for having to pay others to help him and like his existence is taken for granted is sort of like a boss being angry his employees expect to be paid.

>>16382170
If you're making something just to sell it rather than because you wanted to make it and hope it sell, you probably don't even have much investment in it yourself. You feel under appreciated because you see yourself as a fellow slave to the idea instead of the idea guy.

>But ask the common person to write even a short story.
I'd rather ask the writers to try writing a short story --for someone else.--

>>16382191
Which is why there aren't that many good writers in the western VN industry because the entry barrier to be get hired as the main writer (if you're not doing your own project) is to have experience under your belt, so as a beginner you're stuck writing secondary routes with pre-planned plotpoints, characters etc. You're essentially putting down someone else's thoughts on the paper like a monkey, and you're asked to do this for peanuts if not for free. And if you ask for something more, be sure that there's 10 other writers waiting in line to get some experience under their belt for free (most with absolutely no experience thinking that writing 50k is easy peasy).

You can see why a writer would get discouraged under these conditions. Too much inexperienced competition. I got lucky in this regard having experience in writing novels, but I couldn't imagine going through this stupid VN ecosystem.

>>16382228
>I'd rather ask the writers to try writing a short story --for someone else.--
and BTW, your target audience is not "someone else" in this case. I mean according to the standards of the idea guy+1 artist or programmer.

>>16382228
>Idea guy +1
The very notion of an idea guy is someone who comes up with "ideas" but does very little of the actual work on a project.

The writer/programmer does a non-trivial amount of the project's work. The art or music is not 'more important.' This is really all I'm trying to say.

Your argument is that whoever started the project has an ego about their work because it was their idea. I don't see why that matters, beyond the fact that they have to find a way to get an artist and musician on board. An idea always starts somewhere, and it's not like he's immune to input from other people on the team.

In fact I'd be shocked to hear about a VN where the story didn't end up changing because people other than the writer had suggestions or characters they wanted added.

>>16382246
If you already have a story written up and you're approaching me to help you make it a VN, what exactly are you doing from here on?

>>16382228
>As it is, a writer/programmer feeling contempt for having to pay others to help him and like his existence is taken for granted is sort of like a boss being angry his employees expect to be paid.

Who said, there's contempt to pay others? As long as everyone's doing their job, I don't mind paying reasonably.

My point is simply this:
I will price my VN in such a way that if I manage to pay for all my expenses, I hope to get something out of it just like the artist and the musician. Why? Because just like them, I put a lot of effort in to it.

>>16382251

If you're the artist, I'm doing coding music, marketing, beta testing, making sure you do your job.

Essentially anything that you're not doing.

>>16382251
Something you discover as a writer when you show your work to others is that your work is never actually done.

Editing is a nearly endless process. There may be suggestions from the other members on the team of how the story could improved. There may be preferential suggestions.

You assume that the writing/coding work is 100% done by the time the writer looks for help, but how realistic is that? Writing a full script is months to a year of work. You'd probably go see if anyone could help you by then.

File: 1482097816606.png (255KB, 640x360px) Image search: [Google]

255KB, 640x360px

>shit like 50 shades of grey sells for gorillion moneys

Sometimes I wonder whether good writing is needed at all and that all the time I spent studying literature was wasted time.

>>16382261
>There may be suggestions from the other members on the team of how the story could improved. There may be preferential suggestions.
That's sort of sounding like you expect the people you hired to help you write too, making you do even less.

>You assume that the writing/coding work is 100% done by the time the writer looks for help
In that case yeah, but that's not the real point. The point is about a project leader hiring people to do stuff they can't take care of themselves. Even if it's not done by then, it would be done regardless of the help of the others. My opinion is just that the project creator is less valuable than the people without whom he'd just have an unfinished game.

>>16382258
For example you. You aren't just the writer in this case. Along with the original like of argument, you could nearly make and release the game yourself so your costs are minimal. For the second argument, if you want art to complete your game, you have to understand the artist is bringing art to complete your game. You aren't bringing anything to the artist but work that needs to be compensated.

>>16382288
>Sometimes I wonder whether good writing is needed at all
It's not. Just make nukige, or forgo that and just make CG sets.

>>16382291
>That's sort of sounding like you expect the people you hired to help you write too, making you do even less.

Have you never made anything in your life? When you make a piece of art, or write something, or code something, or make music, you then ask people for suggestions.

Sometimes the suggestion is "it's fucking garbage, change it."

Plus I imagine in a group project like a VN, other members of the team would want to leave their mark on the writing somehow.

I'm not saying that the writer would want other people to help him do his job, too, I'm saying that they'd want him to do even more work to please his team members.

>>16382288
It's not needed from a commercial standpoint, but that doesn't make it pointless. Again, there's more to creative work than dollars and recognition.

>>16382288
>50 shades of grey is one of the best selling novels of our time
>Twilight's following is bigger than anything you'll ever make
>Song of Ice and Fire, an endlessly droning literary mess that may never be finished, is now a cultural icon

Truly, this is the path of suffering.

>>16382314
>there's more to creative work than dollars and recognition.
Dollars yes, but recognition?
What's more important than having others appreciate your work? You can write something for yourself and your friends/family and be happy with that, but by what merit can you say that you made something great other than getting others to read it?

At the end of the day, what matters is that you made something people will want to read.

>>16382324
Smart marketing and smart audience targeting is more important than good writing if you want to reach large audiences

>>16382313
>Have you never made anything in your life?
Not for selling, no. Constructive criticism is one thing, but I've never really asked people for suggestions that wasn't blatantly asking them for ideas when I was out of ideas or indecisive. I have that "too many cooks spoils the soup" kinda of ideology anyway.

>Plus I imagine in a group project like a VN, other members of the team would want to leave their mark on the writing somehow.
I imagine that in close knit circles, but I can't see an artist you hired, for example, wanting to leave any impression besides inserting their own OCs into your story. I mean a good writer would make it fit, but it would irk me personally and I'd treat it as part of the artists' conditions for helping me with art. Is it normal for people to become committal to something like that without being one of the main developers of the idea?

>I'm saying that they'd want him to do even more work to please his team members.
Well I mean if they can read his story and tell him to change it, can the artist in turn give them programming advice, advice on drawing the character that isn't just something like "she's off model", or help musicians improve the tunes? The problem is that from a boss pov, it's criticism instead of helping, while they're helping you. Like I said though, if it's a team that was together as a team it's different because it's something they're doing together, but just needing someone to come on and do something you cant and needing to pay them to motivate them to do it doesn't really sound like a "team" so much as just hiring someone.

I guess it's like your idea is more a guy showing someone their writing and the artist/musician liking it, wanting to help, and then becoming a team. If the artist is the one designing the characters, then yeah you could give them input that wasn't criticism.
I view it as a guy who can't do art just hiring someone to draw up a few backgrounds and characters and essentially just making sure they do it correctly.

File: unknown_artifact.jpg (67KB, 800x600px) Image search: [Google]

67KB, 800x600px

>>16382324
I mean seeking recognition in the sense of writing with the goal of becoming famous, and structuring your work around reaching that goal.

This kind of attitude will prevent you from ever creating anything that is meaningful to the people who view it. Out of the millions of people who have read 50 shades of gray, how many have seen it as anything more than a fad? How many actually tried to understand it, and did they get anything out of it, did it create a world worthy of being understood?

>>16382359
Yeah, you're thinking of it from a position where the project lead is 'the boss' and everyone he works with are employees. I guess I had more of an idea like it was a group project with multiple engaged people.

I mean, isn't that how good art is made?

>>16382361
Oh, well in that case, don't worry.
My novel is terribly personal, filled with my own beliefs, likes and grievances. I never once while writing it considered what a focus group might say.

Read many books/novels and steal from others. Sometimes, even great novels have basic plot lines, for example:
Saya No Uta - anyone can make up a story like that
Tsukihime - still not so complex
Steins;Gate, Higurashi - pretty good, but you can make harder twists.

>>16382922
>Read many books/novels and steal from others.
You mean what literally everyone does?
There's no such thing as true originality. Everyone borrows from what they've read, seen and experienced.

I'm not trying to disagree with you, though. The key to being a good author is to read, a lot.

>>16382941
Just as important is experience writing. You can read all you want but if you've never written anything, you're going to suck

>>16382941
>no such thing as true originality
Depends on how you define true originality. Whenever an artist is able to arrange the pieces that already exist in an extraordinary new way, the people who see that creation will see new pieces in it, pieces that transcend the ones they evolved from. Art, just like evolution, doesn't make leaps, but it's always changing into something new.

>>16383010
Originality as a completely new idea that nobody has thought of before. Humans have been around for thousands of years, every thought you've ever had has been thought by someone else before.

But you're right. Arranging the pieces in an original way is how art evolves.

>>16383039
Every idea is a complex of ideas that form a more or less cohesive whole, and "thinking" is a rearranging of these meta-concepts into other meta-concepts. So yes, new thoughts are born all the time. Shakespeare created a new concept of love, Dali a new concept of art, and I'd argue that platforms like 4chan have "evolved" our concept of anonymity to the point where it can be called something new as well. Dialectics is all about ideas transforming into something other than themselves while still remaining themselves.

I get what you mean though.

>>16382228
I think there are different kinds of group compositions and scenarios everywhere where the burden on the various members and expectations are completely different.

>No, the person who originally wanted to make the VN should get over himself and stop feeling so self important. If they have a story, they can just write a book, and they need to understand that wanting that proto-book to become a VN but not being able to do the art, programming, and/or music themselves makes them one step above being just an idea guy. The people who have to be dragged away from what they are doing to work on some project for some idea guy+1 need incentive to work on the project, and as such they're expected costs when you say something is expensive.

You seem to be talking about the case where the writer wants to make his own doujin passion project, in which case, yes, he will probably take on the role of project leader as well.

But if you’ve watched the anime Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu, written by the famous VN writer Romeo Tanaka, their reason for creating a game was completely different from that kind of passion project. The producer who planned the project had the express desire to make a game that would break into the market, rather than making the game she wanted to write, and she wasn’t the one who had the ideas for the story. She created the team from finding the best members to fit each role, and for the story ideas they had group brainstorm sessions. You can see the roles involved over here, and in this case she was the Director/Ducer, not the scenario writer:

https://frogkun.com/2015/10/29/romeo-tanakas-new-visual-novel-shoujo-tachi-wa-kouya-wo-mezasu-an-insider-look-at-the-visual-novel-industry/

>>16382117
If you own the project, you do the bitchwork. The VN was made because you wanted ~your story~ to be told. You are the one deciding what art has to be drawn and what music are needed. The artists and musicians did not get creative input into the characters they're drawing or the scenes they're composing for. They are bitch workers.

If I composed a massive soundtrack and thought "I'd like someone to write 50,000 words to accompany my magum opus" and then moaned and bitched about how I had to push and whine and nag at my lazy fucking writer not producing 50,000 words for me for free as fast as I would like, I would sound like a retard also.

In an actual company, of course, everyone is getting paid, because the people working on the project are professionals, and you don't have to deal with this shit.

>>16382230
>to have experience under your belt

The problem is that there really are tons and tons of writers out there who believe that they have the ‘skills’ but they’re actually full of shit. This is why scriptwriters suffer in Hollywood. There are probably those few genuinely good geniuses who have gotten the bad end of the stick, but there are also tons and tons of bad scripts out there. But a really good director always understands the importance of the script.

Since, for Art & Music, the effect is visceral and direct, you don’t have that problem. On the other hand, with writing, if you don’t have the actual text in front of you, people won’t be able to see what you’re capable of. And in many cases, to get the idea of your skills, they have to go through the entire script and understand what is good or bad on a narrative level. That requires them to have an idea of what makes a good story in the first place. And if you start off on the level of ideas without a full script, then the other people on the project won’t know what your level is, as opposed to if a musician plays a song or if an artist draws a piece.

> You're essentially putting down someone else's thoughts on the paper like a monkey, and you're asked to do this for peanuts if not for free

The way to get over this is simply to be the best writer out there. Romeo Tanaka was a freelance writer, writing for others, from the very start. Yet he is known as the best writer in the Japanese industry simply because even when he has to follow the client’s brief, his writing style is so singular and powerful that he wraps the viewer in no matter what. In the end, he was allowed to do whatever the heck he wanted in Cross Channel and Saihate no Ima. He even went to work on Rewrite.

A really good writer will always have the means to shift something that isn’t his own project into his favour.

> You can see why a writer would get discouraged under these conditions. Too much inexperienced competition. I got lucky in this regard having experience in writing novels, but I couldn't imagine going through this stupid VN ecosystem.

I think this is the point where having role models in the industry really comes in handy. I feel less discouraged working in the industry, for example, after coming in contact with a work like SubaHibi, since the singular effect of that Visual Novel was so powerful that it let me understand why people keep on working in the first place. Many writers in the industry said they were inspired by the appearance of this Visual Novel called Kusarihime on the scene, which broke the boundaries and showed them what they could really achieve

Too bad there aren’t many of these in the English scene in the first place. If only a few more were translated, people would understand what is really possible.

>>16382324
>recognition

Gainax had to sell hentai games for years before they finally had the resources to come up with Evangelion. It just so happened that it was both something that was created out of passion, and it also happened to hit on some kind of nerve within the culture, so it became famous as well.

But that kind of thing is really a one in a million chance deal. The writer can only hope to provide the best conception of his own vision without expecting recognition. Thinking about recognition is important, but if you write with too much attachment to recognition in mind, you probably won't be able to focus on the writing. Writing is a push and pull between creator and audience.

>>16382359
>I imagine that in close knit circles, but I can't see an artist you hired, for example, wanting to leave any impression besides inserting their own OCs into your story. I mean a good writer would make it fit, but it would irk me personally and I'd treat it as part of the artists' conditions for helping me with art. Is it normal for people to become committal to something like that without being one of the main developers of the idea?

To go back to Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu, there was one scene where this exact thing happened, and a single member tailored with the work of everyone else because she had the skills to do so. This really pissed all of them off. But that was because she did it of her own accord without telling any of the other members in the circle. On the other hand, normally the work was split with each person having their own role, but coming together during brainstorming sessions for any criticism or input.

I think if you have a very clear idea of what kind of game you want to create, and you’re certain of how everything should fit in a single vision, it’s important to set boundaries for what the other people can and cannot do.

If you’re a genius like Kubrick on the other hand, then you probably know better than everyone else exactly what you want to do, and you’d be willing to torture your team just to attain artistic perfection.

>>16383979
Is it wise, then, to put all your energy into making something that *you* would want to read or see, as opposed to what you think others will like?
Or is that too insular and egotistical?

I've heard the saying that all writers are narcissists, because in order to write you must first believe that you have anything worth saying in the first place.

>>16384009
It's always a bit of both. Shakespeare wrote many of his plays with his actors speech patterns in mind, but he also had his own original conception of the story. But there are those that know exactly what they want so clearly in mind that they can bull-doze over everyone else, although that would simply require a genius sense of understanding. Kubrick could do things like force his actors and actresses to go through 100 retakes until they were psychologically tense, just to get that kind of reaction - because he could see exactly how that would help his vision.

If you're already at that level though, you probably won't be looking for advice on an imageboard, and you'd already be trying whatever means necessary to get your work out there.

>>16383102
>Shakespeare created a new concept of love
I'm not the guy you were talking to, but that's a bit of an outrageous statement, given that most of Shakespeare's themes came from classical counterparts (Romeo and Juliet is from Ovid, although he didn't come up with it either, A Comedy of Errors is an adaptation of Plautus' Menaechmi, etc.).

And I don't know jack about Dali, but the concept of anonymous communication goes back through usenet, BBS and shortwave to newspapers and people leaving postcards in bottles. The only thing I can think you might be referring to by "evolved" is the project chanology-style "We are all Anonymous", except they got that from a film made in 1960 about a slave revolt in 73 BC.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you'll have to be more convincing than that.

>>16384048
Well Impressionism or Surrealism certainly wasn't on people's minds until they came along in the first place. Neither was Whitman's conception of free verse.

And, in terms of Visual Novels, I don't think anything of the likes of SubaHibi and Sakura no Uta has ever existed before in Art. Even though both are works that draw from a lot of pre-existing things, the way they arrange these familiar things in the form of a single work is goes beyond anything out there and really re-energizes your conception of the genres they steal from.

>>16360170
Thats not furry fuckwad, do you see fur? NO

>>16384058
You've taken a rather difficult position: claiming that a thing did not exist at all until a particular time. I've always understood the art movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s and such to be a direct result of the development of the camera. Artists were no longer necessary to capture things exactly as they were, so they could focus on things as they weren't. That doesn't mean that humans weren't interested in surreal or bizarre imagery before.

For example, a quick google search gets me an article from a Cleveland art gallery exhibiting definitely surrealistic art from the 17th, 15th, and 12th centuries in the Arabic world, (something about an island of Waq-Waq), which makes perfect sense: religions prohibitions there had similar effects to the camera in the western world, and what-do-you-know, we get surreal pictures of goats' heads in bloom and trees growing human torsos.

This seems to be getting completely irrelevant to the thread, so I'll stop, but I think you're underestimating the scarcity of skilled labor in the past, and making the false conclusion of "If they didn't do X, it must be because they didn't know X". When the population of all of Europe is about 70mil, society doesn't really need impressionists, but it could use a few portrait painters.

>>16383992
>Kubrick
Please don't tell me you're serious, baka

>>16384070
Are you retarded?

File: furry scale.jpg (81KB, 720x560px) Image search: [Google]

81KB, 720x560px

>>16384436
Are you?

>>16384610
No, but it seems you are.

Where does >>16360170 say that image is furry? Where does >>16347285 say anything about furries? >>16347502 is the only one who mentioned furries and they meant it in the "anything with animal parts is furry" sense.

>>16384710
>anthro wolves
>not fur
fucking moron

>>16384934
You can get banned for posting furries on 4chan
You can't get banned for posting kemonomimi on 4chan
Therefore, kemonomimi are not furries

>>16384949
THAT WAS MY FUCKING POINT IN THE FIRST PLACE

>>16384610
1 4 and 5 are okay in my book

>>16384934
>anthro
You're the only one that said that.

>>16384214
I used Kubrick as the example because he's most well known for being completely focused on his vision, as opposed to someone would could be more loose like Cassavetes. Also he is still undeniably an exceptional film-maker.

>>16384156
Im talking about Dali specifically. His vision of Surrealism hardened it into something else because of his amazing output of several thousand paintings, as well as his hyper-realism. Surrealism as conjunction of images is one thing, but Dali Surrealism and Magritte Surrealism are so distinct that people find it hard to escape from their influence even till now.Why do so many contemporary Surrealists still have that kind of orange or blue desert/sky landscape that is prevalent in both painters?

Arguably you can link it to Bosch, but Bosch didn't master the realist vein the same way the movement that appeared in the 20th century did.

Picasso definitely drew from African painting, but his conception of his take on it is also, keeping to a primal cartoonic form but also using cubist techniques to skew the image in ways that primitive artists could not conceive of, generating meaning. His kiss + face is one example, but my favorite is the Mandolin and Guitar, where he hides a face inside a picture of instruments, but uses the color to blend a variety of possible readings to it. These techniques have probably appeared before, but he granted them meaning through a specific arrangement and structure.

All these are new ideas that shifted the images and associations you get from a type of movement. By right, Surrealism should be a movement about free imagination, but nobody can help but think of Dali & Magritte when they create Surrealist works. Similarly, impressionism may have had bits and pieces stemming from the Orient, but the cypress fire that Van Gogh drew was a singular new form of expression hardened into art. Free verse probably existed before, but not the robust ecstatic cadences of Whitman. Its hard to equate previous attempts to new ones simply because they 'juxtapose bizzare imagery', but Dali was all about the How.

>>16383979
>Gainax had to sell hentai games for years before they finally had the resources to come up with Evangelion.

Are you on the drugs?

Gainax, as of yet not even a thing, started with the Daicon IV opening, made literally the most iconic piece of fan animation, everyone involved then got gud, made Nadia, made Gunbuster, THEN made Evangelion.

Evangelion didn't fucking come out of nowhere, Gainax was already super successful and composed of some of the best members of the industry before production even started.

>>16386183
Well maybe years is a bit of a stretch, but they couldn't stay afloat without profits from their adult games. It made them quite a bundle

http://www.zimmerit.moe/secret-history-of-gainax/

>>16386089
All you're doing is listing things that you think are impressive. This doesn't convince me that any of this “wasn't on people's minds”, or that these people/movements have somehow given society new concepts. Just because you admire Whitman and use many adjectives to describe him doesn't prove to me that he created a previously-unknown concept (whether that concept is "free verse" or "some particular refinement of free verse"). It only tells me that you admire Whitman.

Statements like
>he granted them meaning
>All these are new ideas
>the cypress fire that Van Gogh drew was a singular new form of expression
>the robust ecstatic cadences of Whitman [did not exist before him]

require both evidence and clarification. Let's take the one about Van Gogh. What, in specific, verifiable terms, makes his painting a "new form of expression"? (And why is the word "singular" there? Are you emphasizing that he did not create multiple new forms of expression?) Is it a the width or length of brush strokes? Is it the subject matter or arrangement? Is it the use of a specific color to represent a specific object? Is it a method of calculating perspective? Is it the medium of delivery?

Second, for each of these particulars, how are you sure that they are new, and not simply improvements on older attempts? What brushes did Van Gogh use, and how did they compare to contemporary and previous construction? What sources of paint did he have? Did he have access to different (or simply greater quantities of) colors than his predecessors? What were his living circumstances? How did finances constrain his art, and how does this compare to contemporaries and previous? Was he in a society which made it significantly easier for the works of (relatively) unknown, deceased artists to be re-evaluated?

These are the questions you need to answer in order to support your argument. If the answer to any of the above is "Van Gogh was in circumstances which were somehow distinct to those from past generations", then perhaps those previous generations also thought about (and perhaps attempted) the same things Van Gogh did, and are not remembered for it. As I've mentioned, a plausible theory is that the rise of photography caused critics and the public to have less need of photorealistic painting. It is also worth noting that the development of tubed paint and cheap, portable easels lowered the barriers of entry for painters, allowing more experimentation with lower risk.

It is entirely reasonable to think that all throughout history, artists have considered the same sorts of concepts as Van Gogh did, but were hampered by societal needs and primitive technology to the point where we do not know of their results. None of this conflicts with Van Gogh's work being impressive, so saying that you find it impressive is irrelevant.

>>16386833
But we're talking about fan made quality shit, and your example of a company that had to pander to an audience for money before they could make what they wanted is literally the worst possible example.

The first thing "gainax" ever did was Daicon IV, which is the absolute prime example of making what you want to make and doing a good job.

>>16361793
Sunrider was kinda cool though

>>16361793
Frankly, looking around at western VNs in development on Itch and Kickstarter, the bar of quality seems very VERY low. Only a couple of games stand out as having anything approaching quality, especially when it comes to quality of writing.

To use a common, past example, KS is, to anyone who is familiar with the medium, a very average, middling VN that didn't do anything special or unusual. Yet when it came out, it made a huge stir because the average westerner was unfamiliar with a VN that was at all worth reading.

Honestly, I worry about my own project. I think the writing is of decent quality, but I worry my art won't be anywhere approaching professional quality.

From what I've seen of /jp/'s artists, they're all super mediocre (which is honestly pretty good when you consider that the average artist on the internet is hot garbage) and for some reason I don't have confidence that any of you are gonna write the next SubaHibi.

>>16393371
At risk of sounding like an uncultured swine, what makes SubaHibi so special?

>>16393458
It's the only VN that they're paying him to market.
There's 17 mentions of SubaHibi in this thread

>>16393350
Don't aim to be professional then. Just aim to be a doujin VN.

I've been trying to write my own novel about mecha, but I was thinking it would work better as a VN ala Muv Luv.

But I know it would take a LOT of work, hiring mecha designers, cg artists, and all that jazz.

>>16382161
This. I found a lot of good stuff on orangefreesounds, soundbible and soundcloud. Any other sites with quality public domain music or sound effects yall can recommend?

File: 1364607013787.png (1MB, 1400x1400px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1400x1400px

>>16395092
Nope, just your mom's anus

>>16395118
Cirno is a bully!

>>16385610
>but the pack of wolves are humanoid
fucking moron

>>16395801
>humanoid = anthro
not even that guy but you're the fucking moron here anon

>>16393350
Don't worry. Go take a look at the art for the first version of Himawari, or even Cross Channel.

>>16389188
Either way, you can't exactly compare whatever that came before to the Eva boom. And afterwards Anno was dragged into the controversy & vanished for years. Great recognition + individual vision is a rare balance to achieve.

>>16393491
If SubaHibi needed to be marketed, people wouldnt spam a thread that isnt even a VN general.

This thread is pretty interesting jp, keep it up!
While you're at it why not help the op out and vote your favourite vn genres are so that the poor deer's not lost. Yes, deer.
https://strawpoll.de/3bs4x37

I just took a look at /vn/. What the fuck is wrong with those people?

File: 18948667.jpg (26KB, 400x562px) Image search: [Google]

26KB, 400x562px

>>16346749
>You guys have any experience in making VNs?

Me and some people had an idea of Yume Nikki VN set in high school and made some sprites.

Yeah, what the fuck were we thinking?

>>16397792
>RTSge
What?

File: 1443062559682.jpg (26KB, 274x321px) Image search: [Google]

26KB, 274x321px

Have /jp/ ever tried making an VN?

>>16407002
The VNs I'm aware that /jp/ has been partially involved in creating are Katawa Shoujo, Dandelion Girl, and Homuha Project.

If /jp/'s going to start on anything first it should be a writing project so that we can figure out who's the next Shakespeare and who's just blowing smoke out of their ass.

>>16407198
You forgot Rita, Please Respond and also Mugen's shitty things

>>16407198
As an /ic/fag I'd love to do a collab with people from different boards.

Given that the main thing that leads to failure with these kinds of projects is attention span, the easiest, safest and most fun thing to shoot for would be a short story collection with some kind of common theme.
People can write something up in a couple of days, post it, and if it gets enough positive feedback someone will draw sprites of the characters, musicians can compose something that fits the mood of a particular scene in that story they find moving, and before you know it we'd have a shortstory with a finished script, character sprites and some music.

Of course there's still the midterm challenge of filling in the gaps and the longterm one of repeating that cycle until we get a decent length VN out of it, but as long as we approach it one shortstory at a time there should always be enough fresh content to keep things interesting.

I am writing a VN/dating simulator type thing but the only way I know how to write now is in expanded shitpost form. So all the characters just talk like they're shitposting each other. Except the player character, who only ironically shitposts.

I've written about 20000 words of it so I guess I'm halfway to a short novel. There's still not really a plot though. You just go to school and randomly have events where you try to outshitpost some other girl.

>>16365060
>I get that you didn't want to write these, but forcing your characters into this situation with a plot device isn't erotic in the slightest
Not gonna lie, that scene was actually a pretty memorable fap for me in the wee hours of the morning after the 36+ hours of uninterrupted plot (with voices) that it took to make it there without any breaks for sleeping.

Some simple, very good reasons why Japanese highschool romance keeps holding the lion's share of the total VN production are these: uniforms and tight locations.

Whenever you look at a character's sprite set, you should consider that every alternate outfit adds a multiplier to the development cost and/or effort. The traditional, quirky school uniforms look nice and give a chance to hook people in with something newish - not so new it risks turning them off, but different enough to spark interest.

It goes similarly with backgrounds. When half or more of the action is going to happen around the same half-dozen locations, the savings in production are immense.

Before you go "what the fuck, that's fucking lazy", I assure you that it's not. The amount of bloat you get otherwise is hardly worth it. There's a line of diminishing returns in total filesize, cost and effort that becomes very hard to cross. If you're thinking commercially, prospective profit just doubles these considerations.

A good alternative scenario would involve military people on some sort of ship, for example. Japanese highschool romance just has the significant advantage of being a safer bet since it's easier to get into.

>>16417520
You're right about the whole limiting the setting to few locations, but as the history of theatre shows you can do a lot more with limited locations than what vns have tried so far.

There's amazing synergy between the mystery genre and the limitations you've described, which Umineko, Ace Attorney and similar titles do a brilliant job of using, and yet mystery titles are still a rare treat as far as vns go. All you need are a couple of crime scenes and a few possible culprits and possibly the detectives sidekick and their agency and you have a complete world.

The same is true for political drama. The plot takes place in one big agency where various players are trying to influence some political event in their favour. Shaw's Joan of Arc doesn't show any battles, it takes place in two royal courts and a legal one and it's a solid 10/10. Macbeth has an intro segment on a battlefield and witches making prophecies in some unknown location, but 90% of the action takes place in Macbeths castle.

Hell, you could turn Platos Republic into a pretty okay visual novel if you had a SINGLE illustration of the city and its various actors coming into existence as the character converse in the foreground. The limits of the medium are way more forgiving than you are making them out to be. So yes, people who default to a school setting because of bloat really are lazy - intellectually lazy that is.

Make a visual novel about characters playing a game or in a game. Theres still huge audiences for this sort of thing. I might do it myself.

>>16418884
>The SAO of VNs
Horrible idea. It probably won't be good, and it definitely wouldn't sell well.

>>16417397
If you could make it funny, it could be like a romantic comedy where everyone is assholes to one another, but it's all done in good-natured comradery, and the characters regularly try to out-do one another with bad puns and pranks.

Have one girl be such a meta-shitposter that she thinks you're pulling a prank on her by trying to date her, and having no idea how to romantically connect with another person except roasting them.

>>16419597
I wouldnt sell it. Id sell like the 3rd visual novel i actually prpduced not the first couple.

Also it wouldnt be SAO and it wouldnt necessarilly have to be a VRMMO it could Be free up to the developers creativity

>>16419736
Sorry, I just get a kneejerk reaction because I'm tired of the whole "people stuck in an MMO" trope... my bad

VNs are novels, not games.

>>16417397
Add in a murder mystery and you have the next When They Cry.

>>16420118
>VNs are novels, not games.
Tht's a good problem. They should put games in VNs. Like Utawarerumuno or Romanesque or something. Wasn't Hunniepop kind of successful? Though I don't know if that was a VN or just a dating sim since I didn't play it.

>>16420456
Huniepop was a Bejeweled clone inside a dating sim. Calling it a VN is doing a disservice to the genre.

A good example of a game-VN is something like Kamidori Alchemy Meister.