- I noticed that on some routes, some of the ero content is reserved for good ends, and on others it isn't. Was this planned out much? Or were the scenes just put in where they seemed to fit the story best? (I personally kinda like the idea of not strictly planning it out, because it gets rid of the sense that it's some kind of reward. The real reward, aside from the story itself, is the concept art video and music in the credits
)- (It would be great to hear multiple opinions on this one!) Do you think the story (/stories) would have been noticeably different without the ero content? What if those bits had just been summarized with no illustration? Did you feel pressure to include ero scenes just to satisfy genre conventions? Or would it have felt unnatural/unrealistic to you not to have the characters have sex at crucial moments?
- It seems like some care was put into keeping decision points well separated from the ero content most of the time (and when you get a decision fairly shortly after the first scene with Rin, it's rather jarring, and really picks up the emotion of the moment). How deliberate was this? Was there a fear of emphasizing the eroge aspect too much vs. the story aspect by putting decisions closer, or even during the scenes? I know in certain scenes I would have appreciated the option to refuse at the start, or else (not both for the same scene; that would get irritating) stop partway through and just share a tender moment. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)
Regarding scene direction and other technical stuff:
- I've seen a few reports of typos, minor text pathing errors (like references to previous events that could have been avoided, or that could have played out differently than described), etc. Is there any point in reporting these?
- How does the eye-opening/closing effect work? Is there some kind of sprite for the lens shape or is it all procedural?
- How about the fireworks / rain / smoke? Some kind of particle system? Overlaid movies/animations? Something else?
- Some scenes have text variations that depend on questions asked earlier in the route. How does the scene library handle this? Preliminary testing suggests it sticks with whatever was the first version you saw in-game, but...
I also have route-specific questions, but I want to wait until I'm done the two remaining routes and ask them all at once.
Oh, forgot a general writing question, though: Were scene/act titles generally worked out first and used to guide the writing, or were they decided after the fact as clever summaries? I was disappointed when Hanako act 4 didn't have a "game" themed title like the first two, but I can't really imagine how it could have. Maybe "Sacrifice"? But that would only describe the good end, really...
