Ask!

[cpl_crud]

It makes me wonder how companies like Disney protect and maintain their properties for decades.

By periodically telling people NO FUCK OFF WE'RE NOT DEAD THAT IS NOT ABANDONWARE MOVE ALONG YOU WANKERS, how else? >:3

The Disney Corporation wrote the script for this so the copyright is ours until The Disney Corporation has been dead for 70 years

[shadow5]

I tried searching but couldn’t find the answer to this:
In Lilly’s route, when does she find out that Hisao had a heart attack chasing her down? When he first comes to in the hospital, the music box isn’t there. Neither the second time. But the third time he comes to it slowly fades in (nice touch btw, kills me every time).

My guess is that she didn’t hear him at the airport and boarded and then someone notified her what had happened, and she came back. However, the story does mention that she’s turned slightly so, I’m not certain if she was stopped before she boarded or not.

[rishihanda988]

i know the conditions right now but is there any chance that the ks team will ever do a fan meet up?, or even just be attend a convention where fans can meet them, also is there a place where we can get physical copies of artbooks or a physical copy of the game and will the ks team ever work on a new game,i know there won't be anything related to ks and i understand the reasoning but what about a completely new game. There is just a 4ls feel that ks had that no other visual novels does, you can pass it out as it's backstory but there was just a different vibe to the work of 4ls.

[Silentcook]

I recall some of us being present, on and off, at Comiket for artbook releases. That's also the only place where you could pick up actual physical copies of those. Me, drop me a line and I'll see if I can find time for a meet - but you'll have to travel to Northern Italy, bring your own mask, and I won't be shaking hands.

We never published physical copies of the game. If I remember correctly, some of the translation teams burned promotional CDs with their language spliced in, but that's no different from you doing it yourself. In fact, I think some enterprising individuals (AKA forum denizens) made their own covers and sleeves for fun and put them here, somewhere in the Fan Works section.

As for the "4LS feel", well, thank you very much... but reforming the exact same team would require extensive masochism, at the very least, so you'd better not hold out hope for that. Several of us are still puttering with the VN medium in some form or another, and we still keep more or less in touch. I have done some editing for [REDACTED] on [CLASSIFIED INFORMATION], [DELETED] on [DATA UNAVAILABLE] and [CENSORED] on [LOLNO] over the years, for example, so you might want to follow the exploits of individual members of 4LS as about your best bet.

[cpl_crud]

I can second this.
Hir and I usually hold a table at Comiket (the Japanese convention), but since we've moved onto other works it's now under the name Lucid A96 (which is our new circle name so as not to confuse it with 4LS). I know that Weee and Ge-b have also had tables there.

You best bet is to go to https://twitter.com/fourleafstudios on Twitter.
That account follows all the devs that have a Twitter account - most of us will post there if we're going to be at a convention or similar.

I know that Suriko did a stream the other week of a game that had a lot of 4LS devs involved.

There is also this post that I did some years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/katawashoujo/c ... _now_post/
Most of which is still relevant.

[TheHivemind]

Weirdly enough I just recently agreed to dip like, a single toe back into VN writing, but only because

1. It's an extremely small contribution
2. I know the guy doing it, and he knows I am awful at deadlines so he already knows what he's getting into
3. The request is interesting to me, personally, and will allow me to get extremely on my bullshit

As for conventions, I at least wasn't a fan of big crowds before all this shit went down and I certainly am not a fan now. Crud remains the only dev to ever see me in person, unless I've walked by another dev in like a crowd without realizing it at some point. I don't think so, though.

[ArcCain]

Was it ever stated where Yamaku was supposed to be located or is it left to an ambiguous rural area? I believe Crud mentioned something somewhere about Shirakawa-go being a source of inspiration.

[Silentcook]

Yamaku is a fictional location. It's not just nowhere, it's actually nowhere in several places at once, even within the framework of the VN, because of some plot impossibilities. Those are entirely my fault, due to not trying to slap the writers hard enough.

Anyway.

The VN backgrounds come from various locations, including but not limited to: the location of the fictional Hinamizawa village from Higurashi in Japan (if that's not too meta for you), Brown University in the USA, and even one place in Italy that literally no longer exists as depicted.

The inspiration comes from the fictional Hinamizawa village from Higurashi (again) and Sendai city, if I remember correctly, both in Japan... plus wherever our collective diseased imaginations picked up stuff from.

The actual fictional location, as I said, is in two or more places at once in a not-too-small area in Japan, in the approximate general neighborhood of Tochigi or southern Fukushima prefectures. This is due to mentions of Saitama and Hokkaido in the VN, and times of travel thereof.

[cpl_crud]

Was it ever stated where Yamaku was supposed to be located or is it left to an ambiguous rural area? I believe Crud mentioned something somewhere about Shirakawa-go being a source of inspiration.

It was supposed to be on the site of Sendai Castle and some of the backgrounds are from that area, but as Cook mentioned there are a lot of places that just don't make sense in that context.

But if you were planning a pilgrimage I would say hit up Brown University and Sendai Castle and you're pretty much set.

[ArcCain]

Now that you mention it. I've seen recordings from Sendai Castle. Thought they looked a little familiar.