Ask!

[Shadowyeclipse]

Someone else asked me pretty much the same question, so I hope you won't mind if I repeat much the same things I said then.

I have mixed feelings about our fans, our fandom, and the concept of "fandom" in general, now that we have some of those focusing on us.

First, understand that the huge splash made by KS was completely unexpected. I mean, get some praise in the VN scene, sure. Gain a small niche following of fans, okay. Make the news for a week or so, we should be so lucky. What actually happened went a tad beyond this.

With that out of the way, I have read too many comments on how KS changed somebody's life to feel entirely comfortable with that.

I didn't participate in KS with the intent of changing people's lives. I participated in KS with the intent of making an enjoyable visual novel. So, on the one hand it's great to find out that our work became such an inspiration to so many people, but on the other, I feel some responsibility for the changes we seem to have wrought. And those are a little too far-reaching for my personal comfort.

Also, fans can be scary as well as wonderful. No surprise, since the term has its roots in "fanatism", but finding out the crazy things some people will do is still unsettling. Luckily, the heartwarming things balance that out.

Mostly.

True.

I can see where you are coming from here. Do you ever wish you had just never made Katawa Shoujo, if only to avoid all of this publicity (Good and bad)?

But on the "Changing lives" topic, why would you feel any responsibility? Either you should feel happy that someone changed something about themselves for the better, or don't blame yourself for any change. How someone interprets the VN is of no fault to the creator(s).

[Aura]

1. When do you expect the DDL will work for the full version? :)

2. When will the latest artbook be released as a digital copy?

3. To Silentcook: Who's your favorite of the girls, and the characters in general? :)

1. When someone donates us the bandwidth to host it. So could be tomorrow, could be never.
2. After Winter Comiket probably.

[Silentcook]

3. To Silentcook: Who's your favorite of the girls, and the characters in general?

Emi.

I can see where you are coming from here. Do you ever wish you had just never made Katawa Shoujo, if only to avoid all of this publicity (Good and bad)?

No. I don't do regret in the first place. As long as we're talking about the publicity, so far it's been quite bearable.

But on the "Changing lives" topic, why would you feel any responsibility? Either you should feel happy that someone changed something about themselves for the better, or don't blame yourself for any change. How someone interprets the VN is of no fault to the creator(s).

This may or may not be true, but while I have no duty, I feel a sense of duty regardless. It's just the way I am. Not that I've lost any sleep over this.

[TheHivemind]

3. To Silentcook: Who's your favorite of the girls, and the characters in general?

Emi.

Yessss I win.

[Suriko]

God, that's scary to look at for some reason.

Scary, and fascinating. It's interesting to take a glance into the technical, behind-the-scenes stuff. There's some handy formats and conventions in there too, if anyone intends to make a VN of their own (though you could probably find that in a million and one other sources, seeing it applied in a context as familiar as KS amplifies their informativeness somewhat).

I'd caution against seeing anything from that far back as being informative beyond the history of KS. Everything from that far back was only relevant to Grid1+, and not at all applicable to the full game. Grid1+ also had the problem of being a little bit shit.

We basically ditched those ways of organisation because they don't work. Grid1+ was a disaster in many different ways, many of which come down to not really knowing how to manage a project.

[TheHivemind]

1. When do you expect the DDL will work for the full version?

1. When someone donates us the bandwidth to host it. So could be tomorrow, could be never.

Why not put it up on archive.org and make links to it? It's free.

They have old copies of the internet. Here's this forum like it was back in Oct 14, 2007:
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140057 ... .renai.us/

Ah, those (weren't) the days...

Just after the initial move, if I'm not too mistaken. I don't really remember the dates that well.

[nixlheimr]

Hello. First of all, thank you for creating this wonderful piece of work. I first heard of KS a few years back, but i only completed it some two weeks ago so i'm kinda new to this. Anyway, enough of that.

My question is about Natsume and Naomi. I'm so curious as to how the idea of them as romantic friends/girlfriends started. Is there some story about how that idea came about? And if you don't mind sharing the story, I'd be very happy to be able to read about it.

Also (I apologize if this was asked before), what's the best or most memorable experience you've had while working on KS?

[cpl_crud]

Hello. First of all, thank you for creating this wonderful piece of work. I first heard of KS a few years back, but i only completed it some two weeks ago so i'm kinda new to this. Anyway, enough of that.


Also (I apologize if this was asked before), what's the best or most memorable experience you've had while working on KS?

For me it was probably going to Sendai to take photos (some of which became backgrounds), and then using that setting in my head when describing the layout of the school and town.

For those of you that are interested, if you go to the ruins of the old Sendai Castle, that's where I imagined that Yamaku was situated. From there it's a leisurely stroll down the hill to a couple of museums and a couple of small shops, or a short bus ride into the city...

[Aura]

Hello. First of all, thank you for creating this wonderful piece of work. I first heard of KS a few years back, but i only completed it some two weeks ago so i'm kinda new to this. Anyway, enough of that.

My question is about Natsume and Naomi. I'm so curious as to how the idea of them as romantic friends/girlfriends started. Is there some story about how that idea came about? And if you don't mind sharing the story, I'd be very happy to be able to read about it.

Well er, the girls are moeifications of two real-life people, and their special relationship is a play on the love of the anime series Maria-sama ga Miteru of their models as well as the relationship between them

Also (I apologize if this was asked before), what's the best or most memorable experience you've had while working on KS?

Honestly, I'm not sure if I can raise any single event clearly above others. If I have to name something I think the release of Act 1 might be it for me. It was the first touch we had the insane popularity of KS, the first time we revealed our hand and a lot of other firsts. It directly lead to getting to know some cool people, our regular participation in Comiket, a huge morale boost for working on the rest of KS and whatnot.

[Rikabro]

Mighty cool of Suriko and Delta to spend a bit of time in KSG tonight. Thanks for that, you guys.

Anyways, there were a few holdover questions that I was interested in knowing the answer to so I figured I'd dump them here so they can be answered whenever.

1. How much more are you willing to say about this:

"The other project (which will be 4LS) is wholly classified. There wont be another game with every 4LS developer behind it though."

2. Delta mentioned that he was particularly proud of his role in the visual directing of the project, but wasn't very specific. But he generally doesn't seem to get a lot of credit for his role in the game. What are some of his ideas and choices that had a significant impact on the finished product?

3. Another thing Suriko mentioned was that some characters were wholly the artists' creations, and gave Hideaki as an example. Are there other characters whose personalities were secondary to their art design?

4. What about Lilly's parents? Was there anything about them you had wanted to include in the route but cut? Who they were, their jobs? According to Shimmie lore, Lilly's mother is named Karla. Did she have a maiden name? Did Mr. Satou have a first name?

Hope you guys are having a good holiday season. Keep it real, and thanks again for the visit.

[TheHivemind]

Mighty cool of Suriko and Delta to spend a bit of time in KSG tonight. Thanks for that, you guys.

Anyways, there were a few holdover questions that I was interested in knowing the answer to so I figured I'd dump them here so they can be answered whenever.

1. How much more are you willing to say about this:

"The other project (which will be 4LS) is wholly classified. There wont be another game with every 4LS developer behind it though."

2. Delta mentioned that he was particularly proud of his role in the visual directing of the project, but wasn't very specific. But he generally doesn't seem to get a lot of credit for his role in the game. What are some of his ideas and choices that had a significant impact on the finished product?

3. Another thing Suriko mentioned was that some characters were wholly the artists' creations, and gave Hideaki as an example. Are there other characters whose personalities were secondary to their art design?

4. What about Lilly's parents? Was there anything about them you had wanted to include in the route but cut? Who they were, their jobs? According to Shimmie lore, Lilly's mother is named Karla. Did she have a maiden name? Did Mr. Satou have a first name?

Hope you guys are having a good holiday season. Keep it real, and thanks again for the visit.

I don't have answers for all of these, but:

1. Classified means classified, dude! Nothing else to say on this (this is easy for me to say 'cause I'm not involved).

2. I've mentioned this before, but Delta is pretty much responsible for the Misha safety valve in Emi's path--after wisely pointing out that it was a bit unfair to have the whole thing hinge on one decision. Using Misha as the safety valve was also partially his idea, because we'd been joking about something similar and I decided to try to sneak it in. As for the visual direction, basically anything that looked cool was his doing--the rain effects, the fireworks, the little sprite twitches (like Emi trying to wheel into the track shed)--all that cool stuff was his doing, and mostly a result of him doing battle with a somewhat recalcitrant game engine.

3. Mutou was a pretty art-design-first sort of creation. I wanted him to look more like David Tennant (he kept the long coat, anyway), but his personality was kind of built off of the fact that he looked kinda grumpy all the time. I don't remember much about Nomiya's creation, but I'm pretty sure his creep/annoying-as-fuck factor got turned up after we saw what they'd drawn him as.

As for the fourth question, I have no idea. Lilly's parents weren't something I ever got involved in the discussion of.

[Suriko]

Question 1: Absolutely nothing. No comment.

As for Lilly: Her parent's jobs are briefly mentioned during the bath scene in Hokkaido if I'm remembering right. Her mother has no maiden name decided on, and her father's first name is Hiroyuki. She also used to have two twin young sisters way back (Leanne and Adrianne), but they were cut before ever being written in.

[Aura]

Some stuff delta did:
- The entire user interface. The beige colour scheme and the textures and borders you are familiar with are his doing.
- The original opening movie, of which the current one is just an animated version.
- The implementation of all visual effects, and the concept of many of them. In particular, the scene with Rin sleeping in classroom, the spinning CG when Hisao and Rin are smoking, Emi's track scene and the scene with Shizune on the rooftop with fireworks are some examples that come to mind.
- The sprite direction! This is one of the "invisible" things in a VN production. Compare how the sprites are presented in KS vs [generic_OELVN]. There's literally a method, or style, that delta does, guided by principles derived from movie directing. Same goes for CG direction.
- He won't forgive if I don't mention this: He drew a CG for KS! The crayon drawing of child Hanako is his handiwork.
- He was the "fifth Beatle" of the writing team, frequently taking part in story discussions. His vehement objections prevented many tragic abominations of writing ideas from staying in the game (none of which I want to talk about, lest shameful memories resurface)

I read a (possibly not serious) post in the thread you're talking about, positing something like "delta's contribution is inconsequential because it's not directly related to the feels KS delivered". That's laughable. Writers of the caliber of me, Suriko or anyone in 4LS are dime a dozen and artists of the quality of our staff art team are not uncommon either. However, I am pretty confident that the number of people who could even approach doing what delta did for KS is negligible. The specific combination of his visual directing prowess, sense of storytelling, graphic design skill, willingness to learn to code and drive to go the distance is something I've not seen any other individual possess. Sure, 4LS is much stronger than the sum of its parts, KS would've been different had even one of us been absent or replaced, and all of us did so much more than what our simple job descriptions state, but the fact remains had delta been assasinated mid-project, we would've had to recruit three to five people to do his job.

[Josh_Mac]

I have a question just kinda for whoever was in charge as far as accountability goes.

Reading the archived version of the forum (I hope you guys don't mind; considering it wasn't removed I assume it's not an issue), I notice you guys set a lot of "arbitrary deadlines" and such. Were these literally just like "hey let's have such-and-such done by X date," or was there some penalty for not meeting the deadlines? I ask because I'm in a similar situation, with a group of people working non-profit on a similar project. However, there's not really any motivator to make people meet deadlines, save personal drive, and I'm curious how you guys made sure everyone was on top of things.

Thanks in advance!

[Suriko]

I have a question just kinda for whoever was in charge as far as accountability goes.

Reading the archived version of the forum (I hope you guys don't mind; considering it wasn't removed I assume it's not an issue), I notice you guys set a lot of "arbitrary deadlines" and such. Were these literally just like "hey let's have such-and-such done by X date," or was there some penalty for not meeting the deadlines? I ask because I'm in a similar situation, with a group of people working non-profit on a similar project. However, there's not really any motivator to make people meet deadlines, save personal drive, and I'm curious how you guys made sure everyone was on top of things.

Thanks in advance!

Deadlines don't work. We toyed with a few ideas during the development of KS, but nothing stuck and we pretty much gave up on artificial motivators by the time there were a couple of years left.

In the end, there are only three things that'll motivate a developer - personal motivation that's up to themselves, a paycheck, or standing behind them with a gun. KS was free, and to my knowledge at least didn't end up with weaponry pointed at anyone to work (even if a few developers would dearly have liked to book a flight and done so for some), so that leaves option 1. Over the years, we developed a sense of duty to each other to pull through, and between many of us there was also a sense of friendship, and that's what got most to do their stuff.

Find a talented developer, make sure they're someone you can at least tolerate working beside, and hope they have the internal motivation to work. That's all you can do, and is also why the vast majority of free projects fail.