ShardPhoenix comments on August 2013 Media Thread - Less Wrong
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A few weeks ago I began reading the visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni, partially because I enjoyed the Higurashi anime and partially because Tuxedage said it was a mindfuck; I'm up to 3 of 8, and it's becoming clear that this VN is going to take a while, to say the least. (I've never read any visual novels before, so I was not sure what to expect.)
The cramped window and tedium of having to constantly hit the spacebar to advance lines aside (I wish I could just tell it 'my reading speed is 400WPM, please advance at that rate automatically except for dialogue'; visual novels seem to have the worst of both worlds of novels & anime, where they show as little information as a screen of an anime yet still force you to choose your own pacing without interaction being as easy as a novel where you read an entire page before needing to take any physical action), I'm enjoying it. It's an interesting mystery setup, I was able to beat the protagonist to some of the solutions which gratifies my ego, and recently it showed off the best use ever of Hempel's Raven which pleased the heck out of me.
On the downside, I happened to read ANN's review of the second volume of the manga and apparently the author Ryukishi07 remarks that most readers will be convinced that it's all supernatural and inexplicable (implying that it'll turn out to be like Higurashi, with naturalistic explanations for all the events) - which makes me angry since in the dozens of hours I've spent reading this, I was pretty sure that we were being shown all the events from third-person omniscient perspective, and one of the narrative rules of third-person omniscient is that you don't lie to the reader, and we see plenty of supernatural events from this perspective.
EDIT: final thoughts in my review
I don't know if this uses the same software as Fate, but if so, try using your scroll wheel. I find it smoother than keys or clicking.
Alas, my trackball has no scroll wheel. Sounds like it'd be hard to know when to stop, too.
The software is open-source. I had a look at it some time ago, and it's also pretty hard to understand, but modifying it to your [gwern's] specifications should be doable.
Umineko runs on Nscripter, which is closed source according to wiki. Fate/Stay Night runs on Kirikiri2, which is, indeed open source.
I'm not sure if the Umineko translation worked like the Tsukihime one, where they ported it over to the open source ONscripter, but AFAIK there is no way to change the text scroll behavior.
They did indeed port it to ONscripter, so that's the one I'm referring to.
I remember doing.. something.. to the text scroll behaviour, though not what. The source isn't that impenetrable.