Katawa Shoujo Forums

Valjean Lafitte wrote:Here's a question for Hivemind and Suriko: did the two of you ever discuss having Miki appear in Emi's route? It just seems like such a shame that Yamaku's fastest and second fastest never share any screen time.

It's entirely likely we discussed it at some point, but we'd conceived (originally) of only having certain girls link with other girls (Hanako/Lily, Emi/Rin, Shizune... kind of in all of them in some capacity), so by the time we would've thought about adding something with the two it probably was too much of a hassle. I don't remember for sure, but I'd wager that is how it went down.

That or I was just too fuckin' lazy to do it.

Pretty sure a big reason was because Miki was added very late in development.

How exactly did Four Leaf Studios structure itself when it was making Katawa Shoujo?

Asking for a bunch of friends.

D0lan wrote:I am willing to wait after hearing Red Velvet with a real sax(SOUNDGASM!!!).

There is actually a real sax version out there from one of the localisations, I think. Look around the forum, there should be somewhere around here.

I could be wrong in some regard but I have two different versions of the track.

D0lan wrote:Hey Devs!



CplCrud- I have also read through your blog during my search of anything KS related, and I really loved your KS fan fics(Runner's afternoon, Final Finale)! And after realising how good you are at writing, I subscribed to your blog and read through Daydream, Run and Arctic Gale up to chapter 26. I have enjoyed all your work very much!
I understand that you have quit the 4LS team before the game was finished, and that the paths you wrote for Hanako were never used in the final release. How do you feel about that?
Also are you going to make Arctic Gale into a paperback book? I would love to have a hard copy.

Hi, and thanks for the feedback.

On the topic of leaving the project, yes, I feel that I probably should have stuck around (despite the impossibility of it at the time). It was weird reading the Hanako path. It was like going back to your parent's place after living away for a few years. Familiar, but you cant really tell what parts were uniquely yours and what parts were from after you moved out. When I left there was a basic structure of the final path, and I like to think that some of the parts I really liked, like the bad end, were mostly retained. On the other hand, I think that it was Aura that once said that my "weaboo spirit was totally infused in the game" so I feel that I left quite a lot of influence on the final product.


Onto Arctic Gale, I'm actually debating a paperback release at the moment. The whole aim, of course, is for me to have "publish a novel" checked off my bucket list. To me, that means an actual, physical book. So I'm thinking about looking into some self-publishing sites or maybe just doing a short run. The digital route is, of course, the easiest way, but doing things simply because it is the easy way isn't really my thing...
In any case, the digital edition will be fairly low in price so hopefully it won't be a barrier to buying both.

So keep an eye on my blog; I'm really only waiting on the cover art and the final couple of changes from the editors.... I'm hoping for a late Feb release (if digital).

cpl_crud wrote:So keep an eye on my blog; I'm really only waiting on the cover art and the final couple of changes from the editors.... I'm hoping for a late Feb release (if digital).

What is the process of getting your own work published?

ArcCain wrote:

cpl_crud wrote:So keep an eye on my blog; I'm really only waiting on the cover art and the final couple of changes from the editors.... I'm hoping for a late Feb release (if digital).

What is the process of getting your own work published?

There are a number of processes, and obviously I haven't gone through all of them yet!

Instead of gumming up this forum with unrelated stuff, maybe I'll make a page about it on my blog. I would suggest that the most important thing though is to get yourself informed about the publishing industry in general, and also Copyright law.

There is a really good textbook that I got in my Master's program: Music Business:
http://simpsons.com.au/online-resources/music-business/

It's written by a pair of lawyers that pretty much set up the music law business in Sydney. It's good because it covers the basics of contract and copyright law with a specific focus on the recording industry (which shares a lot of common ground with written publishing). I think it is like the basic level armour to people ripping you off. It also means that you can read something like the Amazon T&Cs and know what they mean. There are also a bunch of template contracts in there that you can use if you do get into pretty much any type of arrangement.

And I suppose another thing I am doing is setting my expectations low. Publishing is really a high-luck environment, so for every successful novel there are about a thousand that fade into obscurity. In some ways I feel that I used up the majority of luck on KS...

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble here so once I get through the process I'll put up some learnings on the Blog as a Page so that you can find it then.

Cheers

That sounds like a interesting read, I'll be looking forward to it.

Representative wrote:How exactly did Four Leaf Studios structure itself when it was making Katawa Shoujo?

Asking for a bunch of friends.

We divided the work so that everyone had a very clearly defined area of responsibility. So each route was written by a single writer and each character was primarily illustrated by a single artist. Everyone was able to work as independently as they liked, but also had the responsibility of organizing their work, keep others updated and coordinate with others as necessary.

Then we had a couple of leadership/management roles. The head writer tried to keep some semblance of coherence to the script, head editor bossed the editing team around, the producers dealt with general issues and the director figured out what assets were required. None of this was strictly hierarchical, at at times felt more ceremonial than anything.

That's the general idea. There's more to it, but that'd be a long writeup. If you're asking because you'd like to model your own development team after 4LS, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. We did things the way we did partly because of some of the weird qualities of the KS project and partly because we were really inexperienced. This way had plenty of negative effects, but on the upside we managed to finish and release KS partially thanks to it.

Was it hard to find members that sticked around for the whole project? I'm guessing a lot of people misjudged the amount of work a VN could take, and not all of them decided to stay. This is specially true if you take into account that you didn't sell the game and that, as far as I know, no money was put into the making of the game. Artists and such are usually pretty strict about only taking comissions and doing paid work, so I would guess having people start working and leaving shortly after wasn't a rare occurrence.

In the same vein, did you think involving less people in a project like that (less than a writer and artist per route + other roles) would have been more helpful?

Sorry if I'm touching themes already covered.

Kon22 wrote:Was it hard to find members that sticked around for the whole project? I'm guessing a lot of people misjudged the amount of work a VN could take, and not all of them decided to stay. This is specially true if you take into account that you didn't sell the game and that, as far as I know, no money was put into the making of the game. Artists and such are usually pretty strict about only taking comissions and doing paid work, so I would guess having people start working and leaving shortly after wasn't a rare occurrence.

In the same vein, did you think involving less people in a project like that (less than a writer and artist per route + other roles) would have been more helpful?

Sorry if I'm touching themes already covered.

Sure. It took over a year to gather all the members that formed the final KS project team, with many joining and quitting in between. KS is an incredible outlier in the world of creative volunteer projects on the Internet, only a tiny minority ever get released, much less those of KS's scale and scope.

Less people leads to more consistent results at the cost of increased workload. It's not directly "helpful" as such, it's a tradeoff. I think for KS, going about it the way we did was fine, considering the volunteer amateur nature of the project. KS is horribly inconsistent as a result, but I don't mind that. For a different kind of project, maybe different kind of thing would be better.

Hello.

Question for Suriko, if he is still around: Lilly is my favorite. The Waifu, so to speak. You know,"She is the first woman I have ever felt connected with! Notice me Senpai! Lilly PLS!" Yada yada yada. Loved it; however, there have always been something that has bothered me in her Arc:

There is one scene where Hisao and Lilly are walking on school grounds (Act 4?) and run into ya boy Kenji where Lilly takes a tumble after Kenji pulls her down to the ground and she has a small outburst of rage. I don't think it was ever answered or discussed on why she went loose for a second after that fall. Was it because of the emotional stress? Because there are those points where the relation is shaky or she is stressed about the thought of moving to Scotland again, but I was never sure of the cause. It seemed out of no where and out of character to me, atleast. Of course, it was meant to be "out of character" so I'm not saying it was bad writing or anything at all. I'm just curious on why it happen.

Thanks for the help! I, like everyone else here, have a spot in my heart that Katawa Shoujo will always reside. It changed me for the better, and I'm glad I shown KS.

A bit of a weird question but I hope you understand, (doesn't have to do with KS);

There are a few things in the story that you guys have neither confirmed or denied, as well as some things you've preferred to be wage on. Do you think that it is important for stories to leave some stuff open ended/unspecified and how is "open endedness" best used in your opinion? Any books or games etc, that you can point to?

It's not important or necessary to have loose ends or unanswered questions. Sometimes it can be detrimental. It all depends on the style and type of the story and of course. execution. An example of an well known unanswered question I like is the one that the movie "Inception" poses during its final seconds. There's been lots of discussion about it and a variety of reactions (some people really hate it), but ultimately it doesn't matter for the story itself that the question is unanswered. Lots of classic Russian literature employs this nicely too, such as many short stories by Chekov and for example Brothers Karamazov, which really leaves a lot of threads loose.

A completely separate issue is subtext, which is important in any literature that's for more advanced readers than 9 year olds.

To bad for me, I suck at adding subtext. I am too blunt as a person, I do like thinking/talking about it though.