Katawa Shoujo Act 1 Preview feedback thread

[Teclo]

This might seem quite insignificant but this just really stood out to me and I feel that, unless it's intentional, you'd also want to know about it too. If it is intentional, I'll just chip in with my opinion that it doesn't seem intentional and really does seem like an error.

OK, so what am I talking about? Well just at the start of the 2nd day at school, there's the following dialogue:

[No name, i.e. narration]
Shizune looks more than a little annoyed that we only just barely managed to finish all our work on time. I'm just glad we finished it at all; it's not a contest or anything.

[Shizune]
"..."

[Misha]
"Yes it is, Hicchan!"

[Hisao]
"Impossible."

[Misha]
"Really?"

[Hisao]
"Really."

(More narration)

[Hisao]
It's not a contest, because contests are competitions over a prize. If there's no prize on the line, it's not really a contest."

How does Misha know what Hisao was thinking? She seems to have read his mind when she argues that it is a contest.

The other thing I was going to say was that whenever I do anything else on my PC, even stuff like open the Start menu, the KS music start flickering and popping. In fact, even as I write this, I get the odd pop from the music as the game runs in windowed mode in the background.

I'll post any other things I find. This goes without saying, I guess, but I'm not saying this stuff in a complaining way but rather because I like KS so much; normally I'd just think "Meh, whatever" and carry on but I typed all this shit out because I care, god damn it!

[Teclo]

Another "issue". When using a control pad (thanks for putting that in, by the way), going into the Load screen has the selection beginning on the "delete file" [X] rather than on any of the load game slots. In other words, the default action in the Load screen is to delete your first saved game. It'd be cool if it defaulted to either the Slot 1 save or to the last-saved slot. Again, just a little niggling issue, the removal of which would just add more polish to the game rather than fixing anything serious.

[Tualha]

Was just wondering, wherever did you get that horrid "crunch" sound effect that ends the "Kenji" scenario? Sounds ghastly....

[Teclo]

I've just got to the scene when Rin is introduced, "A Private Lunch", and something occurred to me -I'm not sure if there are any scenes later in Act 1 that address this - but I remember watching a programme about a person that had no arms, like Rin, and a huge part of his life was keeping his feet clean. He used them for so many things, and often had to be barefoot, that they'd get dirty quicker than yours or mine and he would use them for things where their cleanliness was important, such as eating. As such he spent a lot of his time cleaning them, usually by holding a cleansing wipe with one foot and using it to wipe the other, then swapping.

[Aura]

Rin washes her feet a lot, everytime she eats something, before and after she paints etc etc. However, like going to toilet, it's not something that gets much screentime in a story.

[anmajin]

Hello everyone, I am one of the chinese translate group member from Taiwan, and played this masterpiece for a week.

With a week's contact, I got some feelings/feed back to report down here with the "Sizune style" :


Feed back 1.
Uasually when I playing a VN produce by Japanese, what the function we used constanly is often puts into the Taskbar or(even and) dialogue box , like: fullscreen, save/load, Show image, Text history. So we won't get botter by through "Optios" frequently during our game times.
And when we are viewing the Text history, it's kind of tired to click mouse&keyboard to reach the current conversation point, then it's kind bother to use Skip mode through the Options, too.

Suggestions-
Do the fullscreen "Just for a click".
Do the current conversation warp with "Just for a click", and remind the scroll option.
Set button/quick options with common used funtions on dialogue box or Taskbar, or maybe both.


Feed back 2.
When we scroll the mouse up to view the past coversation, the scene/emotins/musics of that exact coversation are, have changed to the sentence reviewed instantly. Which is good for us to review the whole situation with the coversation exactly it is.

Suggestions-
Keep on going, pals!


Feed back 3.
When the Hisao first meet Muto, they shake their hands-which is uasuall at western countries, but hardly happened in the relationship between "sense to gakusei"(teacher&student) even they have knew each other very well in Japan.
The timing can do such "even showing behavior" would be after graduated-that their social position is quite equal enough, or just do so at a funeral to relief someone's deep sorrow-which can regard the social class.
So as in Taiwan and China, the eastern countries we living for a life time.

Suggestions-
Maybe, change the interaction between Muto and Hisao to just a nod would be pretty well.
Get knowing better of "Confucianism" that deeply effects (almost)all the eastern country for centries, even we claim we are living in 21th for the moment.


Feed back 4.
When entering the classroom at first time, the extra wide CG of whole class has been moveing without to fit with the respond script to those student that Hisao sees/says.

Suggestions-
Stay at the lef part of class until Hisao mentions about the right part, or, view all the class shortly then start to fit what Hisao's starting to mention.


Feed back 5.
There is a guiding tour at the first day with Sizune and Misha, but it's a little too short I think.

Suggestions-
Don't you make the tour more explicit?


Feed back 6.
Although the "saying" of Sizune is speak out by Misha actually, but it's really easy to confuse with their speaking each other at the first place.

Suggestions-
Make a spacial dialogue box for Sizune's "saying" but still shows that Misha is the one who speaks out of it.



PS.I've tried to view the report down here, but 19 pages' info is just too much to bare for me; so it maybe include some of problem that already been feed back lots of time, and when that happents, plz forgget me by my careless. m(_ _)m

[Teclo]

Feed back 1.
Uasually when I playing a VN produce by Japanese, what the function we used constanly is often puts into the Taskbar or(even and) dialogue box , like: fullscreen, save/load, Show image, Text history. So we won't get botter by through "Optios" frequently during our game times.
And when we are viewing the Text history, it's kind of tired to click mouse&keyboard to reach the current conversation point, then it's kind bother to use Skip mode through the Options, too.

You can press F to go into fullscreen mode. I'm sure there's a shortcut for "skip" too. That said, I to think it would be good if the mouse rollerball thing moved back and forwards through the conversation history while a left-click brings you right back to the current line of dialogue.

Feed back 3.
When the Hisao first meet Muto, they shake their hands-which is uasuall at western countries, but hardly happened in the relationship between "sense to gakusei"(teacher&student) even they have knew each other very well in Japan.
The timing can do such "even showing behavior" would be after graduated-that their social position is quite equal enough, or just do so at a funeral to relief someone's deep sorrow-which can regard the social class.

I have to admit, I didn't notice this but I did get the general feeling that Hisao generally acts quite American (specifically American, I don't even mean "Western" or "European" or anything).

Feed back 5.
There is a guiding tour at the first day with Sizune and Misha, but it's a little too short I think.

Suggestions-
Don't you make the tour more explicit?

I agree that the tour seems way too brief but then on the other hand, visual novels have a nasty habit of being way too verbose and just rambling on forever. Maybe they should cut down on some other extraneous dialogue and pad out the tour?

Feed back 6.
Although the "saying" of Sizune is speak out by Misha actually, but it's really easy to confuse with their speaking each other at the first place.

Suggestions-
Make a spacial dialogue box for Sizune's "saying" but still shows that Misha is the one who speaks out of it.

I 100% agree with this. At first I had no idea who was saying what and had to keep going back and checking. Even now I get a little confused sometimes. I think either having Misha say "Shizune says...", changing the font or colour of the text or even simply trying out having double speech marks and seeing what it looks like, i.e. ""What are you looking at?""

[shuchung]

From the same translation group as anmajin.

This probably has been mentioned eight-thousand times already in this thread, but I must say that at times the whole Japanese-ness of the story and characters are not very convincing. I'd suggest asking one of the native Japanese on your team to give you guys feedback on the whole culture construction, and maybe also ask them to break into a few high schools to take more photos. I understand that it's suppose to be a rich school and all, but still, it's a little bit off from what I picture a school in Japan would look like. I can't think of any at the moment, but I know there are Japanese sites that provide CG backgrounds for ADV makers. So maybe you guys can look into that, too.

Otherwise, the game is good, wonderful job. I'm just another /a/non, wishing you guys the best.

[Envy]

I don't get the whole 'It's not Japanese enough' argument. Yamaku doesn't seem like a conventional Japanese school because it's not one.

I get the feeling that these people will only be satisfied if KS reads as if it was translated from Japanese into English with a thousand 'Is that so?' and 'I guess it can't be helped!~'s inserted.

[Flamesoul32]

I don't get the whole 'It's not Japanese enough' argument. Yamaku doesn't seem like a convential Japanese school because it's not one.

I get the feeling that these people will only be satisfied if KS reads as if it was translated from Japanese into English with a thousand 'Is that so?' and 'I guess it can't be helped!~'s inserted.

I completely agree with this. Yamaku is not a normal school and shouldn't bee treated as one. Besides with all the medical and technical knowledge needed for this type of special school who says everyone is japanese?

Feed back 6.
Although the "saying" of Sizune is speak out by Misha actually, but it's really easy to confuse with their speaking each other at the first place.

Suggestions-
Make a spacial dialogue box for Sizune's "saying" but still shows that Misha is the one who speaks out of it.

I completely don't agree with this. Think about it. If you compred it to a real life conversation would you have a special color code to tell you who is saying what when it is a ll comeing in the same voice? I think the way they did the Misha and Shizune conversations was really well done. It would honestly hurt my gameing experience if such a drastic change actualy happened.

[Teclo]

I completely don't agree with this. Think about it. If you compred it to a real life conversation would you have a special color code to tell you who is saying what when it is a ll comeing in the same voice? I think the way they did the Misha and Shizune conversations was really well done. It would honestly hurt my gameing experience if such a drastic change actualy happened.

No, but in real life it'd be completely obvious from tone of voice and body language. If two people stood perfectly still in front of you, not even blinking, and didn't make a sound but rather text appeared in box beneath them, it would be confusing as fuck. That's why you take it for granted that it says the character's name above what they're saying. The problem is, it effectively says Misha over Misha's dialogue and Shizune's.

[DuaneMoody]

From the same translation group as anmajin.

This probably has been mentioned eight-thousand times already in this thread, but I must say that at times the whole Japanese-ness of the story and characters are not very convincing. I'd suggest asking one of the native Japanese on your team to give you guys feedback on the whole culture construction, and maybe also ask them to break into a few high schools to take more photos. I understand that it's suppose to be a rich school and all, but still, it's a little bit off from what I picture a school in Japan would look like. I can't think of any at the moment, but I know there are Japanese sites that provide CG backgrounds for ADV makers. So maybe you guys can look into that, too.

Otherwise, the game is good, wonderful job. I'm just another /a/non, wishing you guys the best.

I'm more interested in the game's value as it stands on its own than total cultural verisimilitude (e.g. teahouse, 7-11). Moreover the genre it's aimed at hasn't set the bar particularly high on that point either. Let's agree to disagree on this point and enjoy what a lot of people have worked hard on, and for free.

[Flamesoul32]

I completely don't agree with this. Think about it. If you compred it to a real life conversation would you have a special color code to tell you who is saying what when it is a ll comeing in the same voice? I think the way they did the Misha and Shizune conversations was really well done. It would honestly hurt my gameing experience if such a drastic change actualy happened.

No, but in real life it'd be completely obvious from tone of voice and body language. If two people stood perfectly still in front of you, not even blinking, and didn't make a sound but rather text appeared in box beneath them, it would be confusing as fuck. That's why you take it for granted that it says the character's name above what they're saying. The problem is, it effectively says Misha over Misha's dialogue and Shizune's.

I really never had a problem knowing who's words Misha was speaking and really I would see the same thing happening in real life regardless of body language. As for tone of voice we are talking about Misha. The game blatently says that her tone of voice makes Hisao confused.

You also have to take into acount that it is not Shizune's dialogue you are reading but Misha's translation of her signing.

[Aura]

Just noting that the confusion about who is talking, Misha or Shizune, is completely intentional for various reasons. I'm sure we could've come up with a more optimal solution for it that creates the effect we want while being slightly more distinguishing, but the current one works all right for us.

[Teclo]

Edit: I wrote this post before I noticed Aura's post.

Nonetheless, in literature, you're supposed to use quotation marks within quotation marks when someone is saying what someone else is saying. For example:

"And you know what he said then?" asked John.
"What?" I replied.
"He looked right into my eyes and said 'You have to use speech marks or shit gets confusing', then just walked away again."
I couldn't help but agree.

I mean, there's already the standard that no speech marks = internal thought, and already the standard that it says the character's name over their words. So you can see that labelling the text in some way is really integral to a VN. In a book you can imply who's speaking, like:

Me and my sister sat on the stairs.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"Not much..." I replied.
"Well you just look kinda depressed."
"No. I'm fine. Just leave me alone."

Obviously, leaving out the character's name in a VN would be confusing because having no name denotes narrative/internal thought and would at worst be confusing, at best seem like a mistake had been made.

Anyway, I don't mean we should always have Misha saying "... said Shizune" but at times there's really no distinction between who's saying what. I agree that things like doing different fonts or colours seems a bit OTT, but I do feel that the Hisao-Shizune-Misha exchanges could often use a bit more clarity. I guess that's the upshot of doing something original like this in a VN.