Ask!

A forum for general discussion of the game: Open to all punters


Zoram
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Re: Ask!

Post by Zoram »

By the way Aura. I make my compliments for the April's Fool character of Saki. She really struck me because not only she has the same disability as a friend of mine, or something very similar (I'll have to check better later but, isn't her illness also known as "Friedrich's Ataxia"?), she even looks like an animesque version of her a decade ago! Like Saki, she also likes art and wanted to be an artist if it wasn't for the illness. Anyway, this girl is also one of the greatest people I've ever known, living her life as best as she can. Even if you stated that Saki was very simple to create, almost "throwaway", thanks for her, because she reminds me that I know a wonderful person from whom I should take example.
Morello
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Re: Ask!

Post by Morello »

Did you guys expected that kinda of feedback? I mean, almost everybody really loving the game and even some people that are changing their lives after the experience. Or the game getting in a Top 10 by user reviews.
TheHivemind
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Re: Ask!

Post by TheHivemind »

Morello wrote:Did you guys expected that kinda of feedback? I mean, almost everybody really loving the game and even some people that are changing their lives after the experience. Or the game getting in a Top 10 by user reviews.
We expected that people would like the game--I, at least, did not expect the game to be quite this popular.
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cpl_crud
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Re: Ask!

Post by cpl_crud »

TheHivemind wrote:
Morello wrote:Did you guys expected that kinda of feedback? I mean, almost everybody really loving the game and even some people that are changing their lives after the experience. Or the game getting in a Top 10 by user reviews.
We expected that people would like the game--I, at least, did not expect the game to be quite this popular.

You mean Poplar, Emi.
My Novel - Now available The Zemlya Conspiracy
Blog: http://cplcrud.WordPress.com

------
<Suriko> Crud would be patting Hanako's head
<Suriko> In a non-creepy fatherly way
<NicolArmarfi> crud is trying to dress hanako up like miku and attempting to get her to pose for him in headphones and he burns money
Guest

Re: Ask!

Post by Guest »

Some of you visited 4chan before, have you visited recently ?

There are KS threads, they seem popular, lots of people just talk about feels, there are trolls too sadly. But I have seen quite a few posts where it seems KS really effected people. I know you guys know people are effected, but I think you would be suprised if you saw some of the posts I have seen.
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cpl_crud
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Re: Ask!

Post by cpl_crud »

Guest wrote:Some of you visited 4chan before, have you visited recently ?

There are KS threads, they seem popular, lots of people just talk about feels, there are trolls too sadly. But I have seen quite a few posts where it seems KS really effected people. I know you guys know people are effected, but I think you would be suprised if you saw some of the posts I have seen.

I think you mean affected, but I suppose you aren't technically wrong there. It's always a fine line between the two. I think becuase we didn't directly take action agianst the people it has to be affected, no effected.

We often get cut-up images of the various posts on the IRC channel, and they seem to have an overwhelming number of good things to say about us. Feels good.

And there are always trolls; that's part of the internet.
My Novel - Now available The Zemlya Conspiracy
Blog: http://cplcrud.WordPress.com

------
<Suriko> Crud would be patting Hanako's head
<Suriko> In a non-creepy fatherly way
<NicolArmarfi> crud is trying to dress hanako up like miku and attempting to get her to pose for him in headphones and he burns money
Yotsuyasan

Re: Ask!

Post by Yotsuyasan »

cpl_crud wrote:
Rivan wrote: ... Why did you feel pressured to boost the H-Scene count? I mean, I know we're supposedly playing an eroge, but given the voices of the fans many felt the game could've done quite easily with little to none of them. So, unless you wanted to, in which case there's little pressure, there wouldn't be much reason to include additional ones.

Because 0 scenes would have meant that someone would have hunted me down and killed me.

At the time there was still a fairly big push to make sure that we "Stayed true" to the original H-game concept, and that required the sex scenes. I didn't really want to put them in there; they just felt out of place. So I went back and found some places for them to go. I think my subconscious rebellion was to make the main H-scene a bad end as opposed to a good one.

I think most of us can agree that having sex (as opposed to the more family friendly "making love") doesn't always mean good things, so a bad sex scene in a bad end path seemed to fit better to me...
I apologize in advance if this is talked about more later in the thread. (I only started reading it a little while ago, and am a scant 39 of 73 pages in!) I thought I might comment a bit on this, though, as while overall I did like Hanako's path, it did also really agrivate me in a few ways.

Anyway... beware massive spoilers for Hanako's route!

I was actually really pissed off at the reason Hanako slept with Hisao. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it was unrealistic of her to think that such a thing might be a good idea. (Even if it wasn't!) But unlike most of the other h-scenes in the game, this one definitely felt wrong when it was happening. Yet, unlike other "wrong feeling" ones, as it was happening I was unsure why it felt wrong. Then, when Hanako explained to Hisao why she slept with him, it all made sense.

It really pissed me off, and made me loose a tiny bit of respect (and gain a tiny bit of pity) for Hanako, that she slept with Hasio not because she wanted to, but because she thought he needed her to. I was happy again when they had their conversation, cleared the air, and found happyness together. But still, the route to get there seemed a bit hallow.

Later, I finished playing the route to Hanako's bad end. Even though it was very heart wrenching, I had a lot more respect for Hanako after it. She got pissed. She expressed why. It made sense. And Hisao, dispite his good intentions, deserved it.

I kind of wish that, rather then sleeping with him, the good path actually contained a similar scene. Maybe Hisao started to realize he was treating Hanako wrong and tried to treat her more like a person rather then a thing needing protection, but there was so much president that it still left the anger in Hanako needing an outlet. When the anger finally came, however, since Hisao had been trying to improve in his attitude towards her, there had been enough progress that rather then her shutting him out completely, this is what lead to them having the important conversation clearing the air between them before they could continue and deepen their relationship. (And then, so as to keep those wanting h-scenes happy, I suppose we could have had an example of them "deepening their relationship" before cutting to the credits.)

It didn't play out that way... and I do still enjoy the story as it was told. But... well... it does leave me with some regrets for how things played out between me (as the player character) and her. Ah, well...


Sorry for the lack of a question. Just some of the other comments in this thread had me thinking on this whole thing that had been in the back of my mind, and I needed to express it. If Hanako's writers care to comment on my comments, I'd certainly welcome that. However, I shan't hold expectations of it.
Guest111

Re: Ask!

Post by Guest111 »

Just out of curiosity. How was the female reception of this game? I know the male reception was positive and really made most players think or at least become introspective temporarily.
Guest

Re: Ask!

Post by Guest »

cpl_crud wrote:
Guest wrote:Some of you visited 4chan before, have you visited recently ?

There are KS threads, they seem popular, lots of people just talk about feels, there are trolls too sadly. But I have seen quite a few posts where it seems KS really effected people. I know you guys know people are effected, but I think you would be suprised if you saw some of the posts I have seen.

I think you mean affected, but I suppose you aren't technically wrong there. It's always a fine line between the two. I think becuase we didn't directly take action agianst the people it has to be affected, no effected.

We often get cut-up images of the various posts on the IRC channel, and they seem to have an overwhelming number of good things to say about us. Feels good.

And there are always trolls; that's part of the internet.
I always got affected and effected mixed up. So just kept using effected all the time isntead.

Whats the IRC ? I clicked after reading this, but firefox cant open it. But yeah some of that stuff you can see is really touching. Even if some of them can be depressing.

True, just suprising how much time some people are willing to devote/waste, in the hopes of annoying some random people.
Guest93

Re: Ask!

Post by Guest93 »

Guest111 wrote:Just out of curiosity. How was the female reception of this game? I know the male reception was positive and really made most players think or at least become introspective temporarily.
I don't know any other females who play the game, but I certainly liked it. The writing and the art was good and yeah, it did make me think about a lot of things.
VanDeaM
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Re: Ask!

Post by VanDeaM »

I was just wondering have any of the Writers have played Indie game "To The Moon" yet? If so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it's story.
Personally I thought it was a very touching and sincere. It's story and themes hit home with me in many ways and even got me (a grown man) to cry.
Right now it's my Favorite game of 2012.
Neon Vanguard
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Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:44 am

Re: Ask!

Post by Neon Vanguard »

Good afternoon.

So, some questions to ask. Hope you don't mind.

1. What was the average wordcount per route, including act one? All I know is that it's over 10,000 words, as Cpl_Crud mentioned in his blog.

2. The answer will vary from person to person, but what seemed to be the most difficult aspect of creating a VN? The art, writing, music? Or simply communication, given the time differences?

3. This question depends on each writer, too. Was there much of a desire to make Hisao his own character, or were you more interested in keeping him slightly open-ended, so that the player would be able to relate to him more? I always found it odd how rarely he reflected on his past life. Not in the sense of his happy happy fun fun life before four months in the hospital, I mean like his early childhood. He hardly even mentions his parents, as much as they piss him off.

4. Aura, you mentioned in a blog post that the team approached the VN with some unrealistic expectations at first. What kind of expectations were these, exactly? About the time required to build it, the quality of the product... ?
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anarki
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Re: Ask!

Post by anarki »

Third round, still hoping for an answer!

Are there plans for a script/support for unofficial translations?

(Yes I've read the translator topic, I'd like to know if there were any unpublished development in this topic)
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Aura
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Re: Ask!

Post by Aura »

Neon Vanguard wrote:Good afternoon.

So, some questions to ask. Hope you don't mind.

1. What was the average wordcount per route, including act one? All I know is that it's over 10,000 words, as Cpl_Crud mentioned in his blog.

2. The answer will vary from person to person, but what seemed to be the most difficult aspect of creating a VN? The art, writing, music? Or simply communication, given the time differences?

3. This question depends on each writer, too. Was there much of a desire to make Hisao his own character, or were you more interested in keeping him slightly open-ended, so that the player would be able to relate to him more? I always found it odd how rarely he reflected on his past life. Not in the sense of his happy happy fun fun life before four months in the hospital, I mean like his early childhood. He hardly even mentions his parents, as much as they piss him off.

4. Aura, you mentioned in a blog post that the team approached the VN with some unrealistic expectations at first. What kind of expectations were these, exactly? About the time required to build it, the quality of the product... ?
1. including act 1, ~140 000 words. Act 1 readthrough is about 65k words and the routes themselves are about the same length. The entire game is something like 480 000 words iirc.
2. For us, overall probably it was organization. As a writer, I can't really judge how challenging the artists found their job, but writing is pretty god damn hard.
3. We wanted to make Hisao more than just a proxy for the player, but could probably have worked even more on that than we did.
4. KS was way too big undertaking for a group of people who had no prior experience nor had never worked together before.
<Aura> would you squeeze a warm PVC bottle between your thighs and call it "manaka-chan"
<Suriko> I would do it if it wouldn't be so hard to explain to my parents
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Aura
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Re: Ask!

Post by Aura »

anarki wrote:Third round, still hoping for an answer!

Are there plans for a script/support for unofficial translations?

(Yes I've read the translator topic, I'd like to know if there were any unpublished development in this topic)
We are still thinking about how we want to go about that. It's not a simple decision because the consequences will be so far-reaching.
<Aura> would you squeeze a warm PVC bottle between your thighs and call it "manaka-chan"
<Suriko> I would do it if it wouldn't be so hard to explain to my parents
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