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[Liminaut]

Are there any questions you wish people would ask, but they haven't?

[cpl_crud]

How much thought and care went into designing the sex scenes? Was it obvious from the start that you would have the characters use protection? And most importantly, was it an "exciting" process? :p

I wrote this some years ago on the topic of protection:
https://cplcrud.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/on-condoms/

Honestly, I felt weird writing the sex scenes, and the one that ended up in the Hanako path was pretty much Suriko's doing...

[Suriko]

How much thought and care went into designing the sex scenes? Was it obvious from the start that you would have the characters use protection? And most importantly, was it an "exciting" process? :p

A hell of a lot of time and discussion went into how the H-scenes ended up being, from pretty much every developer. It was decided fairly early on to go for fairly soft H-scenes, and not a lot of them, but beyond that a lot of stuff was discussed as the game went on. Everyone knew how important it was to nail how they were written, as there were plenty of examples of how poorly written H-scenes can be, and none of us had any experience in writing erotic material.

The first real H-scene to get written ended up being the Lilly Hokkaido scene, so it ended up being a bit of a step into the unknown. While it wasn't perfect and had a lot of edits, I think it ended up okay. They weren't just a lot of work for the writers either, as getting the anatomy, pose work, and other stuff right meant that they were very demanding for the artists as well.

100312sidethumbs.jpg (358.99 KiB) Viewed 3866 times

Yeah. There were many more sketches that lead up to the final version of that CG, not to mention the many iterations once it was finally drawn.

In the end, I think what we ended up with turned out okay. Every character has a distinct attitude towards sex that's shown in their H-scenes, with some being romantic, others daring, and some regrettable. Every H-scene in the game was subject to a lot of scrutiny from everyone else, so what ended up in the game was pretty meticulously planned. As one might expect after all this, the process wasn't really "exciting" in the way I think you mean; both with regards to writing and drawing, sex in fiction is a challenging thing to get right, and the thought process in its creation (from drawing anatomy correctly, to writing the right atmosphere, to character interaction, etc) is very different to reading/viewing it.

That said, protection was kind of haphazard. Some developers ignored ithe whole deal as they considered it to get in the way of good narrative (such as Shizune's scenes), while others preferred to depict its usage (like Lilly and Hanako's scenes). I don't know if I'd say either approach is inherently right or wrong, but we didn't really see a problem in different scenes approaching the topic differently.

[Suriko]

Adding to the trivia questions:

It seems like the students at Yamaku are somewhat computer-challenged. Lilly, if I remember, mentions that she doesn't get along with computers very well. In Shizune's route, Hisao is helping with data entry and remarks on the poor excuse for a laptop he is working with. There is other inference from the stories. For instance, when Hisao is helping Shizune and Misha with paperwork in Hanako's ropute, he's helping with *paperwork*. It would have made a lot of sense for each class to put together a spreadsheet with a list of their reciepts, and then reporting and collating is trivial.

Was the lack of computer expertise intentional, or am I making stuff up?
If it was intentional,what was the reason for it?

The time period of the game is somewhat vaguely defined, but remember that computers in schools, especially good computers, is very recent. Yamaku was somewhat remote and conservative in its styling as well, rather than the typical posh and modern city schools depicted a lot in VNs.

[Suriko]

Well, it's obvious that a lot of script and sprites were cut/replaced by newer versions but, was this the case for some CG? Or, by the time you got them drawn it was already clear which scenes were definitely gonna be on the script and which weren't?

I might be wrong, but CGs were such a time-intensive process that I don't think we cut anything once production was well and truly underway. At the most, existing CGs were touched up or re-drawn, but that's it (also all the prototype art got tossed, because we changed artists).

This is super late but there were six CGs discarded during development.

[Kon22]

This is super late but there were six CGs discarded during development.

Oh, thanks! I find this really interesting. Not gonna ask in detail because I know I wouldn't get an answer, but are those CGs from discarded events, or simply different/failed versions of CGs that got in the game?

[Suriko]

This is super late but there were six CGs discarded during development.

Oh, thanks! I find this really interesting. Not gonna ask in detail because I know I wouldn't get an answer, but are those CGs from discarded events, or simply different/failed versions of CGs that got in the game?

Including failed versions there are two more than that.

[Aura]

Are there any questions you wish people would ask, but they haven't?

Occasionally I see really misinformed people talk about KS, I wish they'd get in this thread instead.

[azarga]

Is there a posibility that some years later the unused contend produced during development would be released?
I well understand that the answer is likely "no", since sharing something you've done and what you think lacks quality/polish/etc could be uncomfortable (at least for me it is).
But I still want to make sure I understand your view on that. Is there any point at all to keep an eye out for possible open (or limited, lol) release of unused content from different stages of KS development?

[Aura]

When I cook a dinner for my friends I don't show them the trash can either.

[azarga]

When I cook a dinner for my friends I don't show them the trash can either.

Understandable.

[Razoredge]

Well, I didn't know if this question was asked but: how did you choose the girls' disabilities? And why? ^^

[Aura]

We didn't choose them. KS is based on an image by the artist RAITA, which is also the source of the disabilities. The details, such as the extent or origin of each disability, were chosen to fit the stories we wanted to tell.

Here's an extra thing for the people who already knew that: the personalities of the girls were chosen to fit RAITA's image as well, even though it only informs them with a single expression each, and the burned girl getting a slight description. Emi is cheerful, Rin is aloof, Hanako is shy and Shizune is direct. Only Lilly is a departure from this, as her calm and friendly personality clashes with what I see is a seemingly reserved or even snobbish girl in the original image. I remember having spent a lot of time back in 2007 staring at the image and thinking about how RAITA might've imagined the girls to be like. Lilly was the hardest, I recall someone else interpreting her as a clumsy ditz (also based only on the image).

[Steinherz]

We didn't choose them. KS is based on an image by the artist RAITA, which is also the source of the disabilities. The details, such as the extent or origin of each disability, were chosen to fit the stories we wanted to tell.

Here's an extra thing for the people who already knew that: the personalities of the girls were chosen to fit RAITA's image as well, even though it only informs them with a single expression each, and the burned girl getting a slight description. Emi is cheerful, Rin is aloof, Hanako is shy and Shizune is direct. Only Lilly is a departure from this, as her calm and friendly personality clashes with what I see is a seemingly reserved or even snobbish girl in the original image. I remember having spent a lot of time back in 2007 staring at the image and thinking about how RAITA might've imagined the girls to be like. Lilly was the hardest, I recall someone else interpreting her as a clumsy ditz (also based only on the image).

And wasn't that last one was discarded because it would be too obvious/stereotypical?

[300BillionDegrees]

I don't answer that question because it's intentionally left vague and I've not seen anyone get it right yet.

By any chance would that book be Pussikaljaromaani?