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[Liminaut]

Seeing that Yuuko's still aiming to get into university, she's probably only about 2 to 3 years older than the main cast, most likely. (since most students are 18 or 19 by the time they graduate high school) I'd be surprised if Yuuko spent like 7 years trying to get into a university.

She could be talking about getting into grad school (which was my assumption when I played the game), so she'd be a little older -- say 4 years undergrad plus 2 years working. Starting from 18 years old on graduating high school, this puts Yuuko at 24 -- not yet a Christmas Cake.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Odd question: was Misha given hair drills as an obscure reference to one of the other omake that Raita included in Schuppen Harnische that had girls wearing drill attachments?

Raita drill girls

schuppeh70.jpg (161.12 KiB) Viewed 5206 times

[Aura]

Odd question: was Misha given hair drills as an obscure reference to one of the other omake that Raita included in Schuppen Harnische that had girls wearing drill attachments?

No.

[gullim92]

I´ve noticed an uncanny resemblance between young Lilly (the picture from Lilly´s Act 2. i supposed it was her younger version) and the young version of Alice Margatroid from Touhou Mystic Square... blue eyes, hair ribbon and everything.

Was it intended?

[Crimson]

A few questions for Nicol Armarfi.


Did any particular track of yours resonate with you more than the others during the composition process? If so, would you care to share which one and why?

What was the last track you composed for KS? Excluding the various resampling and tweaks that followed.

Finally, though a generic question and one that has been surely asked before, what do you think of the overall response to your work?

[Nicol Armarfi]

Did any particular track of yours resonate with you more than the others during the composition process? If so, would you care to share which one and why?

What was the last track you composed for KS? Excluding the various resampling and tweaks that followed.

Finally, though a generic question and one that has been surely asked before, what do you think of the overall response to your work?

There are plenty of tracks I liked more than others, off the top of my head I'd name Moment of Decision, Raindrops and Puddles and Parity. I just thought they turned out the best. I'm fairly certain the last original piece I wrote for KS was the new version of The Student Council. I wouldn't hesitate to call it a new track entirely as I only used about 10 seconds of material from the original track in the new version. I'm glad people liked KS.

[Guest Poster]

Was there ever a discussion inside the team about which aspects of Japanese culture to leave in for the sake of realism and which ones to eliminate for the sake of connecting with a largely western audience?

I noticed for example that Yamaku doesn't seem to have any shoeboxes and students wear their ordinary shoes inside the school. Most students refer to others by first name, even someone as formal as Lilly insists on being on first-name terms with Hisao during their first meeting and refers to students she's not particularly close with (like Emi and Naomi) by their first name. The teachers do use the last names of their students, although the nurse jumps back and forth a bit, referring to Hanako by her last name, but using first name basis for Hisao and Emi. (and Meiko)

[Aura]

Was there ever a discussion inside the team about which aspects of Japanese culture to leave in for the sake of realism and which ones to eliminate for the sake of connecting with a largely western audience?

I noticed for example that Yamaku doesn't seem to have any shoeboxes and students wear their ordinary shoes inside the school. Most students refer to others by first name, even someone as formal as Lilly insists on being on first-name terms with Hisao during their first meeting and refers to students she's not particularly close with (like Emi and Naomi) by their first name. The teachers do use the last names of their students, although the nurse jumps back and forth a bit, referring to Hanako by her last name, but using first name basis for Hisao and Emi. (and Meiko)

The setting was never of particular focus to us, so many things are left pretty mysterious. It was more interesting to us to write about our characters than figure out the perfect simulation of a Japanese highschool for the disabled. Even so, of course we had to solve some issues, but the only big discussions regarding that topic concerned the ways we used language in the script rather than the setting, where we tended to just wing it (to the dismay of everyone who somewhere down the line got screwed by some carefree decision made years earlier).

As for your examples, the lack of shoeboxes has nothing to do with our attitude towards culture, but it's an example of a conscious decision we made. For some of the students in Yamaku changing to indoor "shoes" would be very impractical (because they are in wheelchairs) so the practice is absent in the school. This was, as I recall, a very off the cuff decision, and probably could've gone in a number of other ways too.

The handling of names was a pretty important decision I guess? Weeaboos fight over this all the time in different contexts. We solved it with experimentation. We wrote a bunch of script with variations on how people refer to each other, and then decided on the modes that we felt read the best. Honestly, it was awkward as hell trying to use certain Japanese tropes so the more time passed, the more many of us gravitated away from them. I think I had thrown almost all of it out of the window by the later stages of scriptwriting. Later on we had to work with the Japanese translators to figure out how to get the script to sound natural in Japanese, including stuff like sorting out the pronouns everyone uses. I suspect KS might feel pretty weird for a native to read. But yeah, for sure cultural considerations were in play in the decision, but I don't think our solution is too big of a travesty. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I remember someone arguing for using honorifics because it'd allow for things like using unusual honorific for an effect, or people changing the way they call someone, signifying a change in a relationship. It's up to your personal tastes whether that (or any other option) would've been preferable.

There are lots of places in KS where even a western person whose knowledge of Japanese culture comes from anime feels an uncanny glitch in the Matrix (and I'll note that though we didn't have a native "cultural advisor", we did have a couple of people who were quite familiar with the country). We're fine with that, it's the cost that came with some of the decisions we made. In the end it comes to down to this: we knew we couldn't pull off the authentic thing anyway and it wasn't in our interests to try to do so, so it was better to optimize for what we thought would provide the best reading experience. This is why the setting is a kind of a cardboard facade. Of course, in retrospect I think many of us feel we should've paid a lot more attention to how we dealt the setting, if for nothing else, at least to estabilish a strong internal logic that could've supported the stories a bit better.

[Aura]

I´ve noticed an uncanny resemblance between young Lilly (the picture from Lilly´s Act 2. i supposed it was her younger version) and the young version of Alice Margatroid from Touhou Mystic Square... blue eyes, hair ribbon and everything.

Was it intended?

Doubt it.

[claumax]

Why did you guys decided to name your group 4LS?
Do you regret anything during the time the game was being made? like not being able to finish something, or not feeling confortable with something, etc.
Did you tought the game would be this popular?

[Aura]

Why did you guys decided to name your group 4LS?
Do you regret anything during the time the game was being made? like not being able to finish something, or not feeling confortable with something, etc.
Did you tought the game would be this popular?

The studio name is a reference to the birthplace of KS project, 4chan aka Yotsuba (4 Leaves) Channel.
We probably regretted most things. We made a lot of bad decisions and some of us are beings made of at least 99% regret.
We absolutely did not think KS would be anywhere this popular.

[Kon22]

I know this is a hard question to answer but, given ideal conditions (That being the right amount of people working in the game, not having trouble with you guys living in different countries, and you guys knowing exactly what the game was going to look like from the beggining, etc), how much time do you think this project would take? Like I said, it's a hard question, so it's okay if you can't answer xD

[Aura]

I know this is a hard question to answer but, given ideal conditions (That being the right amount of people working in the game, not having trouble with you guys living in different countries, and you guys knowing exactly what the game was going to look like from the beggining, etc), how much time do you think this project would take? Like I said, it's a hard question, so it's okay if you can't answer xD

I've before guesstimated that we probably could make a VN of KS's scope in around two years if nothing went wrong, everyone could put in constant, productive hours and we were about as good as we are now. Less if it was our actual job. It's notable though that "nothing goes wrong" is idealistic even beyond ideal conditions.

For comparison, we made Act 1 and whatever else of the full game was done at the time of A1 release in a bit over two years, and that was with us being terrible at making visual novels, a lot of things going wrong, 4LS not being actually formed until 5 months into the project and over half of the team joining the studio around 8-12 months after we started.

[Eoleo]

Hey, huge fan like everyone else, a truly moving and inspiring story! Happily seeding with you guys on the torrent.

My question is for Nicol, or anyone else who can answer; What was your experience in composing when the project started? And it all sounds like midi, so did you use something like EWQLSOG or Garritan's?

Finally, (just wondering of course) did you buy the software (the DAW, plug-ins, etc) or did you get a hold of it through other means?

Thanks for your time

[bhtooefr]

So, a fair amount of stuff has put Yamaku in/near Sendai, including some timeline-related deduction, and some word of author (I know that's not canon, but then that's what we get in this thread).

Shizune's route, in Force Feedback, says that the Hakamichi residence is in Saitama, roughly 2 hours by train, 4 hours by car away from Sendai based on Google Maps. In United Nations, they do take a train to get there in her route. Lilly and Akira are there. They say they'll be going away for a while. Based on Hanako (Beginning of the End) and Lilly's (Bon Voyage) routes, where a taxi was taken to the airport with no stop at the Hakamichi residence (it being a long ride), as well as Akira saying she'll be getting rid of her car, this is a much more permanent "a while" (although Lilly does reappear, which has been mentioned as an error) - the job offer was made after the first trip to Scotland (Context). So, United Nations takes place after (well, probably during as well) Farewell.

Now, here's where the problems creep in.

Hisao swung by the Hakamichi residence on the way to chasing Lilly and Akira to the airport, and did this by taxi (so, really, not practical if Yamaku's near Sendai), in False Cadence. Canonically HALF the speed of train, although if the train schedule didn't line up... That said, it was quite a long time for him to get to the Hakamichi residence.

And, the background for the airport in Bon Voyage and False Cadence is the same it seems (just different lighting).

First question: Is the background meant as "generic airport", or a specific airport?

Second question: Should Hisao's method of transport to the Hakamichi residence in Lilly's route be more in line with the distance that has otherwise been portrayed (including in Shizune's route) between Yamaku and Saitama? Could he even have AFFORDED a 4 hour taxi ride, unless Akira slipped a bunch of cash in his wallet expecting him to do that? Because I'm guessing that ain't cheap in Japan (just a guess, though).