Ask!

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Eurobeatjester
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Re: Ask!

Post by Eurobeatjester »

I totally get what you're saying about only putting what you need in the script, because it isn't important if it doesn't pertain to the story.

Ironically, I understand this from a quote Bill Watterson gave about Calvin and Hobbes as to why Calvin's parents were never named in the ten+ years the comic ran. His response was that their names were unnecessary because they were only important to the comic as Calvin's Mom and Dad.

Same thing with Nurse, and the family or lack thereof from Mutou. The only relevance they have to the story is the roles they fill.

Two more questions, probably asked before, to keep the ball rolling:

Do the devs ever read any of the wonderful fanfiction this game has inspired? And if so, what are your general thoughts when reading it?
Stuff I'm currently writing: Learning To Fly: A Saki Enomoto Pseudo Route
Two Turtledoves - A Lilly/Hisao Christmas Oneshot
Blank Mage wrote:
Eurobeatjester wrote:I doubt my ability to write convincing lesbian erotica
believe in yourself
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Aura
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Re: Ask!

Post by Aura »

I generally don't read fan fiction, KS flavour or not. As far as I know, same goes for almost everyone else in 4LS, though I'm sure everyone has read at least a couple. Back in 2007-2008, I read the first 10-20 ever KS fanfics (fanfics of a work that didn't exist yet and wouldn't for several years to come!). That's my experience as far as fanfics go. Couldn't really tell what my general thoughts were, it's been such a long time.
<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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Eurobeatjester
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Re: Ask!

Post by Eurobeatjester »

Looking back, is there anything you would change about the route of the girl you've written, or would you leave everything the same?
Stuff I'm currently writing: Learning To Fly: A Saki Enomoto Pseudo Route
Two Turtledoves - A Lilly/Hisao Christmas Oneshot
Blank Mage wrote:
Eurobeatjester wrote:I doubt my ability to write convincing lesbian erotica
believe in yourself
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Aura
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Re: Ask!

Post by Aura »

Could just as well answer "everything" as "nothing", or anything in between, to the question. I don't remember having any big single issues, but I'm the type that's never content. So, if I actually would set out to change something, I'd rather just rewrite the entire thing from ground up. But I wouldn't, it is what it is.
<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
TheHivemind
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Re: Ask!

Post by TheHivemind »

Eurobeatjester wrote: Do the devs ever read any of the wonderful fanfiction this game has inspired? And if so, what are your general thoughts when reading it?
Occasionally, when the moon is full and for whatever reason I'm bored, I will randomly click around the fanfiction forum, consuming content without really thinking too hard about it, letting it wash over me like particularly strange rain.

I don't think it's all terrible, but I don't think it's all good, and for the most part I have a neutral opinion on it all. Occasionally I'll think "oh, that's a weird way to interpret the character," or "oh, I guess that works out pretty well," but mostly I come away from it all thinking "that was a thing I read" and not much more. That's not to take away from the good stuff, it's just that I always come away further convinced that I am not that interested in the setting anymore. Then I get bored and the cycle begins anew.
Eurobeatjester wrote:Looking back, is there anything you would change about the route of the girl you've written, or would you leave everything the same?
Nah, I'd leave it as-is. If I were going to change anything, it would be starting from square one and writing something completely new, because like Aura, I am so rarely content with what I've written.
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ultraman
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Re: Ask!

Post by ultraman »

The complete game has been released 3 years ago, and you started working on it almost a decade ago.
I don't know the exact number of downloads and people who tried the game and appreciate it, but it's surely huge (not talking about the number of discussions/post through the internet related to it).

1) Did you expect at the beginning that you'll have made a game so meaningful for a such large amount of people?
2) And when you were seeing the finish line just before the release, did you supposed in some way (maybe by the support/expectations on the forum) it will have caused so many reactions?

And a little spicy one (just asking, if you don't wanna answer no problem)
3) Did sometimes happened that some writer during the making of one route had a good idea/situation/dialogue, but that should have been discarded 'cause it will have been against the information provided into the already released Act1? Or to say it in other words, did you ever regretted/had problems with the release in two steps that won't have been happened if you released the entire game?

Thanks a lot for your attention (and for your answers maybe :D) and for the wonderful game experience.
Silentcook
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Re: Ask!

Post by Silentcook »

1) Hell no. :shock:
2) HELL no. :shock:
Shattering your dreams since '94. I also fought COVID in '20 and '21, and all I got was this lousy forum sig.

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ultraman
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Re: Ask!

Post by ultraman »

Silentcook wrote:1) Hell no. :shock:
2) HELL no. :shock:
Whoa, THIS is a fast answer :D, thanks a lot.

Another little one, also this on the same topic: Did you expect when you released the game (or even before) it will be a forum so active still in 2015 and probably for more years, and to still log in to discuss and answer?

I really like the web and its opportunities but being an "old user" sometimes I feel a depressing transience sensation by looking some sites and/or pages I was visiting years ago and now practically dead (or no more reachable), I know it's kinda nostalgic but it still impress me.
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Aura
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Re: Ask!

Post by Aura »

ultraman wrote:3) Did sometimes happened that some writer during the making of one route had a good idea/situation/dialogue, but that should have been discarded 'cause it will have been against the information provided into the already released Act1? Or to say it in other words, did you ever regretted/had problems with the release in two steps that won't have been happened if you released the entire game?
Don't think anything like that ever happened, or if it did it wasn't a big deal. We had drafted a significant part of the script by the time Act 1 was released, and planned the rest.

As for the longevity of the fan community, I didn't particularly think about it. It's not really that unusual, fan communities of many other works display similar resilience to getting "burned out". Of course, KS getting an amazing fan community was very unexpected.
<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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ultraman
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Re: Ask!

Post by ultraman »

Aura wrote:
ultraman wrote:3) Did sometimes happened that some writer during the making of one route had a good idea/situation/dialogue, but that should have been discarded 'cause it will have been against the information provided into the already released Act1? Or to say it in other words, did you ever regretted/had problems with the release in two steps that won't have been happened if you released the entire game?
Don't think anything like that ever happened, or if it did it wasn't a big deal. We had drafted a significant part of the script by the time Act 1 was released, and planned the rest.

As for the longevity of the fan community, I didn't particularly think about it. It's not really that unusual, fan communities of many other works display similar resilience to getting "burned out". Of course, KS getting an amazing fan community was very unexpected.
Thanks a lot also for your answer, and another time really THANK YOU ALL for the awesome game you created.
TheHivemind
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Re: Ask!

Post by TheHivemind »

Silentcook wrote:1) Hell no. :shock:
2) HELL no. :shock:
What he said.

As for 3) Like Aura said, we had outlines for how everything was going to go before we even got Act I written, I think (or close to it). We took our sweet time putting out Act I specifically to avoid that sort of thing. If something big had come up, we would've probably changed Act I in the final release--for example, we considered at one point adding some more to the end of Emi's Act I arc, but decided it wouldn't add enough to the game to really make it worth the effort it would take to go and make the changes.
Notguest
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Re: Ask!

Post by Notguest »

I noticed that a scene was added to Hanako's ending in the final act 1, so I guess technically you did change it (not counting stuff like clarifying the I'm fine choice).
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ultraman
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Re: Ask!

Post by ultraman »

Hi all, it's always me (after in these days I red all the thread, I hope I'm not going to ask something I didn't noticed it already had answered). So here we go ! :D (And obviously, if I made a question you don't wanna answer ignore it).

1) How was difficult (and how much time did it took) to obtain a final coherence between the routes, or you proceeded to constantly check the script to avoid big continuity mistakes?
2) About the beta testing, how did you proceed? Did you give to the beta testers whom didn't were into writing the routes a (more or less) complete version of the game, or did you provided them partial outtakes from the routes to experience them? I red in more than one post from Aura that you reviewed countless times the scripts of the game to check it so I assume you did the biggest part of beta testing, but I'm just curious on how all the process worked
2b) Did never happened that you received a positive feedback from the beta testers on something you weren't so sure to include and after this you decided to keep in, or that you received good feedbacks on something you decided/had to erase from the final release despite his first reception?
3) Have you experienced situations in which one of the route writers had a much different style compared to the others in such situations like the lenght of the route, or the involvement of the "other 4 girls", or side characters, and you had to try to balance the situations to avoid a non homogeneus development of the routes?
4) (more or less) What percentage of the writing you did for a route ended in it, and what percentage were discarded?
5) During the first stages of works, what did you expect on the lenght of the final release of the game? Shorter, longer, about the same it ended... ?
6) Did it happened that some of you had a valid idea for a path that after being developed had to be discarded due to his medical inaccuracy? (If I correctly understood, your medical guide was my fellow countryman silentcook who had to clarify if there were that kind of mistakes )
7) Did you ever chosen to remove a well-explained fact from the game to let it become a mistery for the players (i.e. like Kenji's Mistery Box, or the rumored love story between Kenji and Yuuko, or the real reason of Hisao's fall during the manly picnic, or the name of the Nurse, or the discussion between Hanako and Lilly in the Lilly's route)? I'm not asking obviously the answers, just wanna know if they were always have been misteries or not for you.
8 ) Did never happened you had an idea so great but also so dumb/fool at the same time (i.e. don't know, something like: Kenji was right, and all main girls WERE feminist agents put into Yamaku only to corrupt the poor Hisao) you have to discard it?
9) (sorry to quote a message from page 99, but I have to...)
cpl_crud wrote: ...
The original story did have some "darker" moments, but I thought that were justified by the story.

However, in my lust to create a Grimdark kind of story, I lost the plot a little and made both the "Bad" route and the exit from that route into a "Good" route untenable. Also, it clashed drastically with the rest of the game. I think a lot of my drive came from a short story that I wrote on the old Invision boards, where Hanako uses a broken mirror to kill Rin, Hisao and herself.

There were a couple of attempts to save it; one involved the entire Hanako route being "Bad," - the only way to get a "Good" ending was to go through Lilly's route, which would then have a second Hanako path embedded into it.

This was written entirely, but the actual gameplay implications were impossible. You had to get at least one Hanako "Bad" ending to unlock the choices in LIlly's path to lead to the "Good" endings... it was practically impossible.

So, after much prodestation, the entire concept was scrapped and replaced with a much more believable path, which formed the basis of the path that is in the final game
...
First of all: whoa, as an Hanako fan (if I survived, and I'm not so sure I could, the first impact with the bad ending, that almost shocked me also with the final release of KS) I would have been as surprised as happy to see a similar thing in the routes of Lilly and Hanako (if necessary also with outcomes like the manly picnic if a player tried as a jerk only to pursue both the girls).
Is this the only case in which you had setted too high the bar of technical implications of the game and you have to scrap an entire route (or so)? And after such a fact (or similar ones) did you changed your way of planning the schedule of the development of the game?

Thanks really A LOT for your attention, see ya

EDIT: Forgot two questions, now I hope that's all :D
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Aura
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Re: Ask!

Post by Aura »

1) We didn't try very hard to make the routes fit together, and as a result they are pretty inconsistent and/or disjointed.
2) Testing process goes like this: A) We build a release candidate. This is a complete version of the product that will get released if no faults are found. B) it is tested repeatedly and all faults that are found get fixed. Then go back to A and repeat until a version that passes testing without faults is reached.
2b) Beta testing is meant for logic, tech and quality checking. The high level content is locked in by the time the testing begins.
3) As per the answer to 1, we didn't mind the stylistic differences an awful lot. We experimented with some methods of bringing cohesion but they didn't work well so we decided we'd rather write the way we want. Any cohesion there is between the writers was created by talking a lot about KS, and aligning our mindsets that way.
4) I wrote maybe slightly under double the words that the final Rin story ended up being. It's below average for KS; for instance Hanako's route was redrafted by a factor of 400% or more, approximately.
5) The same.
6) No. Medical issues never really are a focus in the story.
7) Sort of.
8) Probably.
9) That really wasn't structurally impossible (though a headache), it was ditched for other reasons.
<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
TeaRunner
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Re: Ask!

Post by TeaRunner »

Hey, I was wondering how the game will run on future versions of windows, like the upcoming Windows 10, and so forth? If it'll need patching to run or something? This game changed my life in quite a bit of ways, and I wouldn't want to lose it to something as simple as a windows update. Sorry if I format my post wrong/its been asked before, I rarely ever post on forums and I couldn't find the answer when I looked earlier.

Thanks, for everything! :wink:
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