[Locked] Katawa Shoujo Developer Q & A

Well... we have read threads yes, some of them. Raide tried to keep up with all the threads posted, and to shift the useful bits out, but it proved pretty much impossible due to the gigantic volume of KS threads. Our reactions have been as varying as the threads themselves, but it's been invariably fun to read them.

People who look forward to KS to fulfill their specific disability fetishes (stump pegging hooray) are likely going to be disappointed. And while most of the suggestions are the same old indeed, every now and then there are some pretty fresh and creative ideas.

seeing that most of the highlights have been answered out of curiosity is there any chance u wish to ask us Questions ...lol i know not a big jump from what your doing now just curious if u want the players view of something or what not :)

Damn, I just came back from a night at the pub with my brother and see that this thread is already at the 150+ post level. Well, I suppose the only question that I really want to ask is this: It was mentioned that you all sort of stuck to the traditions of the genre for this project but that in future projects, you'll go further away from the tropes of visual novels. Could you mention any ideas you all currently have along those lines?

For example, a VN-type game that lets the player explore an area (like a city or village) and discover things that way, rather than the typical VN set in Japan with limited choices making several branches through a relatively preset story. You've all made such a fantastic game within the restrictions of the genre that I'd love to see what you could make when cut loose from fitting into the rather restrictive nature of the genre.

All that aside, I have to salute you/high five you (whatever you prefer) for creating Rin.

1 is unlikely, but we'll see what we do with him in the full game.

2 we won't reconsider.

3 coordination and communication, but that applies only to a project of KS's magnitude. If you write a game alone, you only have to agree with yourself. We have five writers and three editors who need to be on the same page, and the artists live in a similar situation.

4. It's hard to describe

5. Her dog was deemed unnecessary, and removed from the game.

6. Only if someone is brave enough try such things...

7 Hungarian, Lithuanian, Spanish, German, Chinese (two variations), Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Croatian, Italian and French

Seeing the way ZUN!bar posts, not to mention AoRF is the dude i suspect who's sabotaging the view of KS in /a/, people from /jp/ are obviously doing it for personal reasons, so i have to say that your point is quite wrong.

say if you take the shizune route: will you have him learn/pick up sign language to have him communicate with her at least on a base level with her without needed misha? and how entwined with misha be with the shizune route?

Yeah, he's really the representative of /jp/, isn't he?
... Nobody likes ZUN!bar. Very few agree with him.



We don't like the massive influx of people wandering in.
By "don't like" I mean "despise". Or "loathe". Or "abhor". Or whatever has considerably more weight than "hate".

hullo.

1. when the full game releases when you take kenji's route will it ultimately end up the same with nakai dieing?

2. is there a chance that there will be actual voices for this novel?

3. (looking into the distant future) are you guys gonna make more visual novels?

No, by sabotage i mean someone who's in the same level as (or is)AoRF for actually setting a bot that keeps spamming the same KS thread every few minutes, intended to attract action from either the Mods or the Wikispammer. It worked at one point which almost killed almost ALL possible good discussions in /a/.

Please let this happen.

No misha route means no happy/laughing/loud sex for me. this makes me extremely depressed. But lemme try the same question with a different approach: is there no chance of even a sex scene with misha?

Also, I have a grim feeling that Hisao may not be the only one dying in the final version, is my hunch correct?

in a small comment over KS threads on 4chan, /v/ has the best/least trolled threads, as amazing as it seems.

Well, first of all I'd choose the setting more carefully than "Japanese high school". :P

The structure of a visual novel allows so much more than a traditional book, so that's where I'd look next. Interactive storytelling does not have any well understood theory yet, so it's very hard area to explore for an amateur writer. I'd especially would like to break away from the "path/branch" line of thinking. Here's an interesting article about the subject: http://gwsig.quantumcontent.com/?p=13

Third area is presentation, but it's an area where amateur budget creates an impassable wall. Visual Novels are produced with the same mentality as animation, maximum reusability and cost saving being the priorities. This means that same sprites, camera angles, locations and characters will repeat themselves endlessly over and over. As the best example to the contrary: Littlewitch's Quartett broke radically away from the traditions of visual novel presentation with its FFD engine, with magnificent results. The game looks like an coreographed slideshow animation of a comic book with background music and voice acting. It's one of my favourite visual novels ever, but something like that would be impossible for 4LS to make.

Wait, what?

hey ash! watcha doing?