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[KeiichiO]

On topic, to anyone, what is your current occupation?

I flip burgers.

I'm so sorry.

[BlackWaltzTheThird]

what type of programming would be the most useful to learn?

Just going by how you've said this, I'd say you have a long way to go. Start by leaning what programming is. Then learn what constructs are used in programming. Then start learning a language. Something easy like C# might be a good one.

[Aura]

What would you recommend for communication on a project of this scale? Skype, IRC, email, forums? A combination of those?

Second, how much did musicians, authors, and artists give feedback to the people in the other areas?

How did you make sure that you didn't fall behind or slow down? Did you set deadlines or something?

How many fields (art, writing, music, coding, etc.) did the typical member work in?

Which field consumed the most resources?

Final question: I'm not planning to launch into this project for about another year, at the earliest. Until then, what type of programming would be the most useful to learn?

Whatever works for communication. It's very much up to personal preferences.

The feedback depended on each individual person's own initiative. Some were more involved, and gave lots, some barely any.

Deadlines and the like fundamentally don't work for a project like KS was because there are no consequences for missing them. We didn't make sure we didn't fall behind or slow down, because that couldn't be done.

Almost everyone had only one creative job.

What do you mean "resources"? The only resource we had was time, and the most time-intensive bit to produce was either art or script.

I don't know much about programming but sounds like you know even less. I have no idea what your project is either. If you want to make a visual novel with Ren'Py, like KS is, you'll need to learn Python (not strictly necessary even, just learning the ren'py scripting language gets you somewhere). If you want to use some other engine, or program your own, you'll need to learn whatever language is appropriate.

[Crow]

Thanks. And you're both correct: I have very little experience with any sort of code. Gotta start somewhere though, eh?

All right, thanks for the answers, Aura. See you around.

[FeroxAnima]

what type of programming would be the most useful to learn?

Just going by how you've said this, I'd say you have a long way to go. Start by leaning what programming is. Then learn what constructs are used in programming. Then start learning a language. Something easy like C# might be a good one.

Agreed, except for the C# part - it might be easier but I think starting with a more... basic language, like C, would be better. In C# lots of stuff happen "behind the scenes" in pre-made functions and stuff, meaning you might not get the basics behind them well enough (unlike in C, where you'd be forced to write them yourself).
Just my opinion though (And I'm a 16-years-old newbie so you may want to ignore me.)

OT:
I was wondering about this for a while and I figured I might as well see if you have some good advice for me xP
I like writing in my free time. I have lots and lots of ideas; thing is, I'm always getting stuck in that cycle:
I get a certain idea I really like > I start pouring my thoughts on paper > I start the actual writing > I give up on the idea because of one of many reasons (for example, I feel like it limits my imagination, or that it was way too ambitious, which I didn't realize before I started the actual writing).
So I've got lots and lots of shelved stuff, and basically no completed stuff.
I'm just not sure if when I feel like that I should really just forget the idea.
I mean, at first it seemed rather obvious to me that I should; if I don't anymore feel as excited about the idea, what reason do I have to stick to it?
But with time I realized that I'm never as excited about the idea as I was at first, and that if I keep dumping ideas because of that I may never get a complete work
So my question is this: do you think I should just dump such ideas and wait until I find one I'm really sure of, or instead try to keep moving forward with them?

I'm sorry, my self-expression abilities get even worse when I'm using English due to flawed grammar and limited vocabulary xP (plus I'm really tired but can't fall asleep D:)
I hope I was clear enough.
Also sorry if the question is silly or bothersome

[Cereal_Guy_Dan]

Are any of the devs/team members/ etc. working on anything, or is this the end as far as projects for everyone? Suppose this has been asked a million times but... doesn't hurt to ask, eh?

Some are, yes. For example, we are working on and releasing a small KS-related thing in August. For bigger announcements you'll have to probably wait.

Was the "small KS-related thing" the Kawa Soft artbook? I just want to know if I should keep hoping for "Hanako - The Phoenix Saga" to drop this month.

[Aura]

Are any of the devs/team members/ etc. working on anything, or is this the end as far as projects for everyone? Suppose this has been asked a million times but... doesn't hurt to ask, eh?

Some are, yes. For example, we are working on and releasing a small KS-related thing in August. For bigger announcements you'll have to probably wait.

Was the "small KS-related thing" the Kawa Soft artbook? I just want to know if I should keep hoping for "Hanako - The Phoenix Saga" to drop this month.

No. It was Imperfect Spectrum. We had basically nothing to do with the book kawa soft made.

[Aura]

OT:
I was wondering about this for a while and I figured I might as well see if you have some good advice for me xP
I like writing in my free time. I have lots and lots of ideas; thing is, I'm always getting stuck in that cycle:
I get a certain idea I really like > I start pouring my thoughts on paper > I start the actual writing > I give up on the idea because of one of many reasons (for example, I feel like it limits my imagination, or that it was way too ambitious, which I didn't realize before I started the actual writing).
So I've got lots and lots of shelved stuff, and basically no completed stuff.
I'm just not sure if when I feel like that I should really just forget the idea.
I mean, at first it seemed rather obvious to me that I should; if I don't anymore feel as excited about the idea, what reason do I have to stick to it?
But with time I realized that I'm never as excited about the idea as I was at first, and that if I keep dumping ideas because of that I may never get a complete work :P
So my question is this: do you think I should just dump such ideas and wait until I find one I'm really sure of, or instead try to keep moving forward with them?

I'm sorry, my self-expression abilities get even worse when I'm using English due to flawed grammar and limited vocabulary xP (plus I'm really tired but can't fall asleep D:)
I hope I was clear enough.
Also sorry if the question is silly or bothersome :oops:

I dunno, this happens a lot to me too. Abandoning ideas that seem to be good at first, or not being able to get anywhere with something. It's not all that easy to determine whether an idea (good or bad) will turn out to be a good story, so just picking one and going forward with it is what I do. If you keep waiting for a perfect idea, you'll end up never actually writing anything.

[FeroxAnima]

I dunno, this happens a lot to me too. Abandoning ideas that seem to be good at first, or not being able to get anywhere with something. It's not all that easy to determine whether an idea (good or bad) will turn out to be a good story, so just picking one and going forward with it is what I do. If you keep waiting for a perfect idea, you'll end up never actually writing anything.

Thank you That's a helpful answer.
Also, knowing it's not an uncommon situation makes it simpler for me to see this as just another obstacle to pass.

Edit:
I had another question -
How did it work, when one of the girls had made an appearance in another girl's route?
For example, when Rin appears in Emi's route. Did you (I'm assuming Aura will answer this xD) write her dialog for Hivemind, with his directions? Or he wrote it himself, with yours?
My question is basically whether each girl's respective writer was the one writing all her dialog in all the routes, and if not, then how did you... coordinate it properly, so that every girl remained true to the personality her writer's intended for her to have?

[TheHivemind]

I mean, at first it seemed rather obvious to me that I should; if I don't anymore feel as excited about the idea, what reason do I have to stick to it?
But with time I realized that I'm never as excited about the idea as I was at first, and that if I keep dumping ideas because of that I may never get a complete work
So my question is this: do you think I should just dump such ideas and wait until I find one I'm really sure of, or instead try to keep moving forward with them?

My advice is to start small. Whenever we get good ideas (or ideas we think are good, anyway) it's always tempting to start crafting the sort of epic storyline that will make Men Weep, which is...impractical. Consider, for example, the millions of tumblr accounts, each with an artist talking endlessly about their SUPER GREAT COMIC that they will TOTALLY START WORKING ON ANY TIME NOW, FOR REAL, once they get all the background fleshed out. This is how I used to operate for the longest time, and it never did anything but bring me grief. Halfway in (or not even halfway in) I'd get tired of the idea and, having no tangible evidence to indicate whether or not I'd been wasting my time, just scrap the damn thing, adding it to the pile of failures (and you'll have a pile of those, obviously, because nobody gets it right the first, second, or even third time).

So what I do now, and it started with the nascent idea for my current (stalled, and I appreciate the irony there) project, is I take a page out of game development's book, and I create a vertical slice, so to speak. A short story (or scene, or issue--whatever end delivery system you're using to tell your story) that, without bothering to introduce the world, characters, or even their relationships to one another, uses the idea you had. It could be from some part you kind of want to do later on. It could also be a one-off that has fuck-all to do with your BIG EPIC STORYLINE and is just an excuse to have the characters run around on some unrelated narrative--it literally doesn't matter. The point is to create a little window into whatever world it is you happen to have set up (after we decided to scrap Emi's path and put together something new, I sat down and wrote something not entirely unlike the bad end and something not entirely unlike the graveyard scene, for example, which was enough to convince me that the greater outline we'd made would be decent enough to release to people. In the case of the Vanquisher, it was a script for an issue which, upon further review, I don't even LIKE that much, but having done a full 25 page script that had the characters interacting was enough to convince me that it was worth pursuing the idea. Whether or not that will ever bear fruit is another matter, almost solely based on how much time and money I can afford to spend making it happen). It is an exercise that I've grown fond of, and might help you to finally get what seems like a good idea off the ground. I always find having a clear endpoint that is not tens of thousands of words down the line helps a hell of a lot with getting motivated to finish something.

Once you have that "vertical slice" complete, you will have a better idea of whether or not the idea seriously has legs. I can tell you right now some of your ideas that you think are good are actually shitty, and once you put them down on paper you will see the truth of that.

Anyway, you could give that a shot. It has helped me immensely, and certainly it is always nice to discover, sometimes, that the great idea you had actually works best as nothing more than a 5k word short. It can be frustrating as hell to have a lot of ideas that you can't seem to get down on paper, so it's always good to put as much stuff in the "complete" or at least the "well christ I tried" column as possible. Write and write and write and write and eventually you'll finish a longer thing which people might even enjoy.

I had another question -
How did it work, when one of the girls had made an appearance in another girl's route?
For example, when Rin appears in Emi's route. Did you (I'm assuming Aura will answer this xD) write her dialog for Hivemind, with his directions? Or he wrote it himself, with yours?
My question is basically whether each girl's respective writer was the one writing all her dialog in all the routes, and if not, then how did you... coordinate it properly, so that every girl remained true to the personality her writer's intended for her to have?

The writer of the path would write his own version of the character, hewing as closely as possible to what that character's path writer had established. Then, during the review process, we would offer feedback on the scene, change the odd line of dialog here or there. I personally don't recall having to change much beyond shortening some of Emi's lines when she showed up elsewhere. It was very rare that serious characterization problems ocurred--mostly it was "oh she wouldn't say that word, it's too formal a phrasing for her" or things of that nature. Careful planning. In the case of the track scene (which was an event that happened across multiple paths), I wrote my version, provided a few suggestions for how it might play out differently on Rin's path, and turned the whole thing over to Aura.

[FeroxAnima]

My advice is to start small. Whenever we get good ideas (or ideas we think are good, anyway) it's always tempting to start crafting the sort of epic storyline that will make Men Weep, which is...impractical. Consider, for example, the millions of tumblr accounts, each with an artist talking endlessly about their SUPER GREAT COMIC that they will TOTALLY START WORKING ON ANY TIME NOW, FOR REAL, once they get all the background fleshed out. This is how I used to operate for the longest time, and it never did anything but bring me grief. Halfway in (or not even halfway in) I'd get tired of the idea and, having no tangible evidence to indicate whether or not I'd been wasting my time, just scrap the damn thing, adding it to the pile of failures (and you'll have a pile of those, obviously, because nobody gets it right the first, second, or even third time).

So what I do now, and it started with the nascent idea for my current (stalled, and I appreciate the irony there) project, is I take a page out of game development's book, and I create a vertical slice, so to speak. A short story (or scene, or issue--whatever end delivery system you're using to tell your story) that, without bothering to introduce the world, characters, or even their relationships to one another, uses the idea you had. It could be from some part you kind of want to do later on. It could also be a one-off that has fuck-all to do with your BIG EPIC STORYLINE and is just an excuse to have the characters run around on some unrelated narrative--it literally doesn't matter. The point is to create a little window into whatever world it is you happen to have set up (after we decided to scrap Emi's path and put together something new, I sat down and wrote something not entirely unlike the bad end and something not entirely unlike the graveyard scene, for example, which was enough to convince me that the greater outline we'd made would be decent enough to release to people. In the case of the Vanquisher, it was a script for an issue which, upon further review, I don't even LIKE that much, but having done a full 25 page script that had the characters interacting was enough to convince me that it was worth pursuing the idea. Whether or not that will ever bear fruit is another matter, almost solely based on how much time and money I can afford to spend making it happen). It is an exercise that I've grown fond of, and might help you to finally get what seems like a good idea off the ground. I always find having a clear endpoint that is not tens of thousands of words down the line helps a hell of a lot with getting motivated to finish something.

Once you have that "vertical slice" complete, you will have a better idea of whether or not the idea seriously has legs. I can tell you right now some of your ideas that you think are good are actually shitty, and once you put them down on paper you will see the truth of that.

Anyway, you could give that a shot. It has helped me immensely, and certainly it is always nice to discover, sometimes, that the great idea you had actually works best as nothing more than a 5k word short. It can be frustrating as hell to have a lot of ideas that you can't seem to get down on paper, so it's always good to put as much stuff in the "complete" or at least the "well christ I tried" column as possible. Write and write and write and write and eventually you'll finish a longer thing which people might even enjoy.

That's an amazing piece of advice...
I was thinking of doing something such as this but was holding myself back, as I figured it would be sort of... "impulsive" (sorry, my lame English vocabulary strikes again - I just can't think of a fitting word), like I'm sort of rushing for the part I was waiting the most to write.
But now that you say it like that... It's a really good idea. xP
(And I also realized now that if I'm waiting to write a specific scene, I'll probably be unconsciously rushing through the rest of the story... Plus it would be really disappointing if it ends up not working out )
I have some stuff in mind that would be great for such a vertical slice.
I'm going to spend some time experimenting with that today.
Thanks, that was really motivating

The writer of the path would write his own version of the character, hewing as closely as possible to what that character's path writer had established. Then, during the review process, we would offer feedback on the scene, change the odd line of dialog here or there. I personally don't recall having to change much beyond shortening some of Emi's lines when she showed up elsewhere. It was very rare that serious characterization problems ocurred--mostly it was "oh she wouldn't say that word, it's too formal a phrasing for her" or things of that nature. Careful planning. In the case of the track scene (which was an event that happened across multiple paths), I wrote my version, provided a few suggestions for how it might play out differently on Rin's path, and turned the whole thing over to Aura.

I see. Cool
Thanks for the answer!!

[Comrade]

Someone probably already asked this, but I'll go ahead anyway.
I've heard about the "grimdark beta" thing several times, but i don't know anything about it, can someone explain?

[Aura]

Calling it a "grimdark beta" is wrong as it's not grimdark nor beta. Someone (we don't know who, or how) illegitimately got access to some of our internal files and decided the best thing to do would be to make them available to others. Obviously that's a gigantic asshole move to do. Iirc it's a script version from some years ago, called "grimdark" because there are some dramatic events not extant in the actual game, and beta because people don't know what that means.

Discussing it is forbidden here, and results in immediate ban.

[KeiichiO]

Discussing it is forbidden here, and results in immediate ban.

Wow. Harsh.

Anywho, is it ever explained where Shizune's mother is? I don't remember a reference of her in the VN. Then again, it's been months since I've touched the thing. I hardly remember anything that isn't Hanako or Emi's route.

[Shail]

I've heard this mentioned before and wanted to get it cleared up: In regards to the Shizune route(I can hear people groaning already..), did something happen with it? I heard that the original writer for the Shizune arc left at somepoint and the arc was taken over by someone who hated her? Can I get a yay or a nay on this? If it's been asked before then I apologize, the prospect of searching through 200 pages of something other than a fan fic sounds depressing to me. Now... 200 pages of- nvm