Ask!

[NekoDude]

Would there be any chance of any additions to Katawa Shoujo OST in, say, some future versions? I mean, if the musical devs who worked on this project are still working on some new music, or if you had a new dev for OSTs-

well, whatever, you got the point. Is there any chance that future versions will include any extra BGM by any chance? Maybe even slightest?

No, sorry. At the moment, I'm the only musician left around here and I don't have any reason to supplement the KS soundtrack; for one, introducing a new music track into the game would require it to be written in. Someone would have to go into the game and program it in, and then go through the entire game script and figure out what to do with it. It's an incredible amount of effort for such a small addition to the overall experience. Second, I have no reason to remake the existing tracks, since I already did that during development. The only reason the new Red Velvet was put into the game was because we weren't happy with the quality of the saxophone sound we used in the original, and someone just happened to record a live version on their own and hand it to us on a platter. I might be interested in remixing or arranging some of the music from KS for a separate album sometime in the future, but currently I have no plans.

I'd be up to recording specific parts if you are so inclined -- namely any woodwinds, trumpet, flugelhorn, and trombone.

[Erenussocrates]

This might sound stupid, but I guess the link in download section directs us to Katawa Shoujo 1.0, or am I mistaken? Where should we download a new full version of Katawa Shoujo?

[RdnLS]

Would there be any chance of any additions to Katawa Shoujo OST in, say, some future versions? I mean, if the musical devs who worked on this project are still working on some new music, or if you had a new dev for OSTs-

well, whatever, you got the point. Is there any chance that future versions will include any extra BGM by any chance? Maybe even slightest?

No, sorry. At the moment, I'm the only musician left around here and I don't have any reason to supplement the KS soundtrack; for one, introducing a new music track into the game would require it to be written in. Someone would have to go into the game and program it in, and then go through the entire game script and figure out what to do with it. It's an incredible amount of effort for such a small addition to the overall experience. Second, I have no reason to remake the existing tracks, since I already did that during development. The only reason the new Red Velvet was put into the game was because we weren't happy with the quality of the saxophone sound we used in the original, and someone just happened to record a live version on their own and hand it to us on a platter. I might be interested in remixing or arranging some of the music from KS for a separate album sometime in the future, but currently I have no plans.

Your piano compositions and arrangements on your YT channel are pretty amazing though. I've downloaded quite a bit from your site and I feel like some would fit in KS or could fit in a soundtrack for animes, games, or visual novels.

[Silentcook]

This might sound stupid, but I guess the link in download section directs us to Katawa Shoujo 1.0, or am I mistaken? Where should we download a new full version of Katawa Shoujo?

You are mistaken. The links in the downloads section of our website all point to KS 1.1, we have stopped supporting 1.0. The Act 1 demo is frozen at v5, since we are not going to touch that any more now that the full game is available.

[Leaty]

So, I'm replaying Emi's route right now, and I noticed this exchange during "Lunch and Science":

Emi: "Thinking of joining, Hisao?"
Hisao: "What? Nah, I've already decided to join a club."
Emi: "Really? Which one?"
Hisao: "Well, it's not really much of a club to be honest..."
Emi: "Oh, you joined the tea club?"

Is Emi teasingly referring to Lilly and Hanako, or is there actually a Tea club at Yamaku?

[Silentcook]

We didn't particularly flesh this bit out, but Emi's not being ironic or sarcastic here. So yeah, there's a tea club at Yamaku... which apparently doesn't do very well.

[Oddball]

Tea Ceremony Club is actually a fairly common club to see in Japanese schools.

[TheHivemind]

We didn't particularly flesh this bit out, but Emi's not being ironic or sarcastic here. So yeah, there's a tea club at Yamaku... which apparently doesn't do very well.

What's that? Something on Emi's route that I mentioned once and never went further into, possibly because I forgot about it?

Sounds par for the course, really.

[Lianam]

We didn't particularly flesh this bit out, but Emi's not being ironic or sarcastic here. So yeah, there's a tea club at Yamaku... which apparently doesn't do very well.

What's that? Something on Emi's route that I mentioned once and never went further into, possibly because I forgot about it?

Sounds par for the course, really.

You were probably spending too much time researching the shed scene to remember going further into it...

[inthewind]

What's that? Something on Emi's route that I mentioned once and never went further into, possibly because I forgot about it?

Sounds par for the course, really.

That's okay, from what I hear we are never, never doing that again.

[TheVUP]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before (too lazy to read all 218 pages).

Here's the question: I want to know who did what and what else.

As far as I know (as written below the avatar), Suriko did Lilly Writer, Hanako Co-Writer and Producer.
Other than that, I know (from soundtrack album) Nicol Armarfi provides most of the musics.
Sure there's credits the member position but don't specify what exactly they do.

Also, for this matter:

All the artists have worked on every path, but Kamifish is the main artist for Rin.

Can it be assumed that Kamifish is Rin Artist then?

So... I think, if you don't mind, please tell me (or us).

Thanks for the answers and thanks for the GREAT game you made (I think you should definitely make a sequel though :)).

[Aura]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before (too lazy to read all 218 pages).

Here's the question: I want to know who did what and what else.

As far as I know (as written below the avatar), Suriko did Lilly Writer, Hanako Co-Writer and Producer.
Other than that, I know (from soundtrack album) Nicol Armarfi provides most of the musics.
Sure there's credits the member position but don't specify what exactly they do.

I won't and can't list everything everyone did, but I can give a rough picture. On our website the following people are credited for their work on KS:

Writing

Anonymous22 - Shizune's story. 22 also wrote about a third of Act 1.
Aura - Rin's story. I also wrote around a third of Act 1. The rest of act 1 was split more or less evenly between the other writers. I was also the "head writer", which meant that I wrote the scenario for Act 1 and whenever any of the other writers had a problem they could talk with me about it and if we had a quarrel, my opinion was most often correct.
cpl_crud - Hanako's story. He was also the guy who essentially founded 4LS, and was the producer from 2007 to 2010-11ish. Being a producer in 4LS means that you're kind of like a totem pole. The responsibilities are sparse, vague, mostly ceremonial and quite uncomfortable, but everyone depends on your existence on a weird emotional level even if you just stand there.
Suriko - Lilly's story and parts of Hanako route. Producer after crud.
TheHivemind - Emi's story.

Editing

Kagami - editor
Losstarot - editor
Silentcook - boss editor. SC did a vast majority of editing work.

Music

Blue123
NicolArmarfi

Art

Art is very hard to define because the artists collaborated so much. It's not rare to find images that have been worked on by 3-4 artists in the game

gebyy-terar - Side character design and art (Nurse, Mutou and Kenji)
Kamifish - Rin and Misha character artist
moekki - Shizune character artist and Emi sprite artist
Pimmy - Emi CG artist
weee - Hanako character artist
Raide - Lilly character artist

Additional Art

climatic - Rin's in-story paintings and various cut-in illustrations
Doomfest - the background image for the classroom CG in Act 1 (it was done with 3D modeling, which none of the staff artists was that great with so they recruited "outside consultation")
yujovi - Yujovi took many of the source photographs for the game backgrounds.

FMV Animation

Mike Inel

Directing

delta - visuals direction, sound direction, music direction, special effects, user interface design, opening and ending movie
Raide - music direction
yujovi - music direction

Engineering

delta - general engineering (I don't want to use "coding" because there's not very much of that), scripting, release engineering, development infrastructure, media

[Fealow]

Hello there, first of all I'd like to thank you all for KS and all the wonderful things it's made me feel (albeit sadness and anxiety creeping up on me more than enough times) I've played through Hanako's, Emi's and Lilly's stories so far and have not yet ventured back to to get all of their endings, just taking it as it comes. Still though I am enjoying the stories thoroughly, so thank you!

My questions however are directed at the composers/music producers. I was intently captured by your compositions and was very glad to find the "Jukebox" in the extras menu. I am however rather curious about the instrument samples used for the project as well a few other things.

What audio software did you use to compose and arrange these pieces?

Where there any particular sound banks/samples that you stuck to using or did you just grab what you needed from wherever you could find it? And if so what were they? (The orchestral samples are surprisingly pleasant!)

Did you record anything live for the songs or did you put it all together through samples and programming/notation software? (The main reason I ask this is that your acoustic guitar fret noises are very convincing in their sound and timing)

I'm already quite aware of your wonderful and clever arrangements just through my ears, but I was wondering if any level of mixing/mastering was involved before the final renders? Or did your arrangements just let everything fall into place with just a few tweaks of the faders with a little reverb here and there? Or did you find you had to dig in deep with some of the tracks and pull out the EQ, compression and automation?

Thanks, I look forward to hearing back from you.

[Nicol Armarfi]

What audio software did you use to compose and arrange these pieces?

I used Finale for all notation and sequencing, and I believe blue used Sibelius. I used FL studio for rendering.

Where there any particular sound banks/samples that you stuck to using or did you just grab what you needed from wherever you could find it? And if so what were they?

I'm not sure what blue used, but I used too many to count. I grabbed most of them from random google searches, but off the top of my head I can tell you I used GPO samples for most of the piano and strings, including the acoustic bass. The fret noises I added to the acoustic guitar tracks is a fret noise sample from the airfont bank.

Did you record anything live

no

did you put it all together through samples and programming/notation software?

yes

I was wondering if any level of mixing/mastering was involved before the final renders?

To this day I don't know a thing about mixing/mastering, I just play with knobs until I think it sounds good. When I was working on KS I'm fairly certain all I did was turn on some reverb.

[Fealow]

Thank you for the reply Nicol, that was some nice insight.

The reason I asked all those questions is because I'm actually a mixing engineer myself and liked your "mixes". Considering you just told me you know little about mixing it goes to show how good your arrangement/composition skills are. The better the arrangement is the less mixing you require to obtain a good end result.

Nice job man!