Katawa Shoujo Forums

First time I heard of that project...
The last post in their dev blog is from two years ago, and from it's contents I think it's safe to assume that the project is as dead as Hisao after the Deep End...

Kon22 wrote:Questions of the sort have already been asked, but if you'll humor me: what would you say was the team's biggest misconception about the task of creating a visual novel of such a size? Do you think the development time would have been significantly shorter if you had had a better idea of the scope of the project/how to organize it?

Yes, if the same people were to make it again then the development time would be less. But the point is that we needed that time to learn, so if you brought a bunch of amateurs together again it would take that long.


My personal biggest misconception was the complexity of game design. The grid concept was a terrible idea, but I didn't know that. Also how difficult it is to have communicate clearly across time zones and cultures.

It was also interesting to learn how VN writing differs from prose, how artists work, and how different people react to things like deadlines.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "grid concept" and what the alternative would have been?
A static novel?

Mirage_GSM wrote:Can you elaborate on what you mean by "grid concept" and what the alternative would have been?
A static novel?

Le sigh.

I originally thought that there could be 5 "rows" in Act 1

In each row you would meet one girl (column).


So there would be 25 "intro" scenes.


But the problem is that you needed to hit every column once, and doing so would block that column for the rest of the act.

I originally thought "hey, these things happen chronologically, so one day you meet Hanako in class, the next you meet Lilly"


But a branching story just doesn't work like that (unless it is crazy generic) - which is what I had to learn the hard way.


This led into me (and maybe the team - although I think they knew much more than I did) learning about choice management, game "flags" and forcing the user on certain paths...

cpl_crud wrote:

Mirage_GSM wrote:Can you elaborate on what you mean by "grid concept" and what the alternative would have been?
A static novel?

Le sigh.

I originally thought that there could be 5 "rows" in Act 1

In each row you would meet one girl (column).


So there would be 25 "intro" scenes.


But the problem is that you needed to hit every column once, and doing so would block that column for the rest of the act.

Ah! Not so much static as... gridlocked.

It would be nice, Crud, to see official posts about different projects on the 4LS/KS blog.

ArcCain wrote:It would be nice, Crud, to see official posts about different projects on the 4LS/KS blog.

I'm thinking about doing an updated "Stalkers Guide" (after asking around) so I'll pass that to Aura for posting.

I was also thinking it might be nice to have the "official" 4Ls blog be more of an aggregator for everyone's public blogs but I haven't taken any steps to do so

Good time of day!
I'd like to ask you some [stupid] questions.
0. Music.
0.1. Would you make the "Prototypes" available as a dl-able archive somewhen?
0.2. Would you release the lossless edition of "Enigmatic Box of Sound" [and "Prototypes"] (no matter, if as a free dl or for some price) somewhen? I know, хотеть не вредно. But вредно не хотеть.
1. Artbooks.
1.1. Would you make the landscape-oriented versions of "Beauty and Strangeness" and "The Soft Hour"? Of course, дарёному коню, and so on, but it's a little jarring when the picture is splitted right in two.
I tried searching this thread for these questions \ something like them, but no luck. So, I beg your pardon if it all was discussed before, maybe it's me being banned by search engines.
Hope, I didn't insult you.
Thanks in advance and best wishes!

0.1, 0.2, 1.1: unlikely. Members of 4LS are more interested in making new stuff than redoing previous releases.

Silentcook, thanks a lot for your answer!
Many luck to all of you with your new projects, then!

UPD: Reading random threads here I've suddenly found the format discussion in the OST release one. I sincerely beg your pardon for bringing back what has been already discussed.

Will the writers and artists who worked on Hanako's route ever apologize for what they did to her?

Bringr wrote:Will the writers and artists who worked on Hanako's route ever apologize for what they did to her?

what

Bringr wrote:Will the writers and artists who worked on Hanako's route ever apologize for what they did to her?

Whatever you're trying to ask, I'm willing to bet the answer is "no."

What kind of music does Hanako Ikezawa like?

dedsec wrote:What kind of music does Hanako Ikezawa like?

I should know this...

What I'm thinking is "Music without edges" - in that nothing too jumpy. So I'm thinking classical, soft rock, and probably also generic J-pop (low energy).