I am sorry if it sounded rude, tis was not my intention - I don't know how I could have phrased it better.
For the past hours I've tried making the WSL work then trying out the Cygwin. In spite of my best efforts and heavy reliance on various guides I found, I did not manage to even correctly run anything.
I wish I could at least read the story some way or another. :/
No offense taken, pardon me if I made it sound like I did.
I'm sadly not more knowledgable than those guides either – for instance, I'm sure you've tried this for the WSL thing as it's the first guide I found on the matter.
From the reports I have seen so far, VirtualBox ought to "just work"™ with most issues regarding Guix on VirtualBox being really minor like not being able to fullscreen the VM (that shouldn't matter as long as you can reserve 1280x720 for the game window). There are even some guides on setting it up (technically the latter is a Vagrantfile + deco, but it should help you set it up either way), though I can't guarantee for quality as they use ancient versions of Guix or at least ancient language.
There seems to also exist QEMU for Windows, which sounds like a reasonable idea because QEMU images for Guix exist, but getting from there to "ooh, I can finally play the game" is perhaps even harder.
Note that with both of those you'll likely take a performance hit, but it shouldn't be so bad as to make the novel unplayable.
As far as "reading the story" is concerned, you do have the full source code, so if all else fails, you can at least read the dialogue from there. I don't think a transcript would be particularly useful, but if you feel differently, do not hesitate to suggest so.
This is quite the pickle for me. I intend on making a video showcasing all of this Jam's gaymes, and I can't record the material if I can't play the game.
When you said I at least have the source code, I got struck by this idea: I could totally make a 'recreation' of the story in the form of a 'video animation', and luckily this VN is a short and sweet one.
So that's what I did. While editing the video I made sure to match the intended portraits' expressions and done lots of dialogue copy-pasting. Only the assets within the game's files were used. (except the dialogue box, which I already used in my previous TH Game Jam showcase video, so it's really convenient)
This (unlisted) video I made should allow non-Linux users to at least experience the story and (maybe?) allow them to cast their ratings. And I get to make a showcase video that's not incomplete.
Please tell me if I got things wrong so I can correct them when I showcase this game in my future video.
EDIT: oops, comment is too long and the video is hidden behind the "View rest". Do you allow me to post a new comment with only this video (and short comment)
I see you've taken some creative liberties with the character placements but I won't fault you for those. One thing to note, is that in the original Reimu is a bit closer to Sanae and rendered behind her (it's supposed to create the illusion of them cuddling, I hope one can guess from the screenshot just how close friends they're supposed to be), whereas your video has them… h-hand-h-holding. T-that's l-lewd.
The font choices seem somewhat weird and arbitrary. It's one font to indicate who's speaking, plus one font per speaker. If you're doing different fonts per speaker, I'd also do it for the speaker bubble, but use a thicker weight. E.g. write Sanae in Sanae's curly font, but with "bold" added to the attributes. This might be a bit difficult with Alice, whose normal font is already bold to begin with but I'm sure you'll find something.
At around 7 minutes, "Marisa" and "Alice" overlap in the speaker bubble. That's probably an error ;)
I don't think I've seen anything else, but I've only given it one or two watches – significantly less than I did for my own source code after which I still found typos.
As far as making a video about this game and publishing it on platforms such as YouTube is concerned, you are (mostly) free to do as you please, but bear in mind that the source code itself as well as the assets prohibit commercial reuse. In other words, try your best to make Youtube put no ads onto the video (this is not to imply that there are currently ads placed on it, just to remind you to not let YouTube place any on them). I'd also welcome it if your video title reflected that it was a fan animation, but that's no hard requirement.
TL;DR:
As far as starting a new comment chain to reach more people is concerned: Feel free to do so, but make sure to keep it civil (I trust you to do the right thing).
My thanks for your reply. I'll take your notes into account.
About the font things, well the reason behind them is to emulate the characters' voices. I figured that names aren't part of the speech so they're left in this 'universal' font. Or you could alternatively take it as the narrator's font, who says who's speaking.
And as for the commercial reuse, well yeah I understand it's a legitimate and big concern. Youtube is really wack on this side, they can put ads even on non YT-partner channels if their bots find something. Even so I will try my best to meet the non-commercial use requirement.
