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[Dylan]

You guys have the word counts for each path handy?

[xaolindragon]

Since this is my first post, I feel the need to congratulate everyone at 4-Leaf Studios for finishing this masterpiece. But more importantly, I want to thank you all for producing this. This was my first VN and I'm glad it was. I will never forget my experiences with this VN.

Now onto some questions. Forgive me if they've been asked; I tried going through all the pages, but unfortunately, I don't think I can remember precisely which questions were or were not asked.

1) I can kind of understand why 4-Leaf Studio might dissolve after putting 5+ years into this making and I have read Aura's answers as to why/how 4LS was able to stick together and pull there to the very end. But I don't know how this all began. I vaguely know that it all started with a sketch in 2000, but what else was gave the spark for this massive project?

2) A question to who ever wrote Shizune's arc. I just finished Shizune's route. Not one of my favorites, but I still loved nonetheless. My question is how come Hisao couldn't salvage the situation in the bad ending? I feel like someone could have in his shoes, unless I'm reading the entire situation wrong. For comparison, with Emi's route, the reader had a chance to make it up and still end up with the good ending. Again I'm asking the main writer for Shizune: Did you feel that the situation could not be salvageable? That a second chance would not have been possible?

I hope I made my points clear as possible.

[AutisticPsycho]

1) How much did you bribe the mods in /a/ to get them stickies?
2) Any advice for people like to making their own VNs?

[McBaggin]

What would each girl dress up as for Halloween ?

[Jintor]

Any chance of a new artbook?

That might be contributable towards?

[cpl_crud]

Ugh, not going to quote 'cause tired.

To the person asking about emotions from my own writing.
I originally had a massive crush on Hanako that developed into me treating her like a daughter. That was a pretty heavy emotional attachment, but it was dissolved with the second draft. But the arrow of causality is reversed in this case (not the way you are thinking).

To the person asking about death in Bad Ends.
Originally (when I was far more weaboo) there was a lot of death in my Bad Ends. But then one day I found that having Hisao have to live with not having Hanako (after only trying to help her) would be far more sould crushing than "Oh LOL you're dead."

To the person asking about more writefaggotry:
http://cplcrud.wordpress.com
That or start reading theatre/broadcasting technical magazines.

[Aura]

Now, from what I've heard, the only Bad End in the game that ends in Hisao actually dying is Kenji's bad end in Act 1. Is there any reason that death was avoided for the other bad ends?

Obviously Kenji's bad end isn't nearly as jarring as, say, Hanako's bad end, partially due to the fact that you don't have a relationship with anyone if you've gotten Kenji's bad end. And with the given bad ends, it wouldn't be feasible to shoehorn death into them the way I see it. But I think it would have been possible to write a bad end -earlier on in the development process- that had both death and depression, no?

Or would something like that be way over the line for the tone KS tried to convey?

I'm sure we could've made ends where Hisao dies, and crud especially did play with the idea. The problem is that Hisao dying in the terms of story would always need to be an unfortunate accident, like the Act 1 bad ending is. With that, there's the risk of the chain of events becoming too contrived and illogical, and the reader immersion or emotional impact of the bad end could suffer heavily.

[Aura]

Pardon if I missed it from earlier in the thread, but are any of the writers currently working on any new projects? I would love to hear about any upcoming works (VN or not) from Suriko or Crud. (Lilly's path being my favorite with Hanako a close second.)

Not at the moment

[Aura]

You guys have the word counts for each path handy?

No, but they are something like 65 000-90 000 words each.

[Aura]

1) How much did you bribe the mods in /a/ to get them stickies? :P ;)
2) Any advice for people like to making their own VNs?

1) They were paid with not having to moderate the 4 first pages of their board filled with KS threads.
2) You probably suck, get over it and work hard to not suck.

[Aura]

What would each girl dress up as for Halloween ?

http://shimmie.katawa-shoujo.com/post/list/halloween/1

[Aura]

Any chance of a new artbook?

That might be contributable towards?

It's not out of the realm of possibility. We invite only people we know and like to contribute to them.

[Jintor]

Any chance of a new artbook?

That might be contributable towards?

It's not out of the realm of possibility. We invite only people we know and like to contribute to them.

Would you consider inviting artists from the shimmie?

*becomes increasingly transparent*

[Aura]

If it's not too personnal Aura, I wanted to know if you studied in an art school and used your personnal experience to write Rin's path ? I talked about Rin's artistic struggles with old friends I was in art school with and they were surprised how well you managed to decrypt the personal art struggles that even some of them could not explain so clearly.

Sorry if it's out of the place. :wink:

Edit : omg my english is so bad, sorry, lack of sleep.

I've never studied art, no. However, one of the fundamental themes of Rin's struggle, the difficulty of transfering of ideas from one's mind to other people, is something I'm sure pretty much all creative people experience.

[Aura]

I noticed that all the major characters in the game, as well as some minor ones, are all sort of "paired" in a complementary way, i.e. serious Shizune and bubbly Misha, outgoing Lilly and shy Hanako, and energetic Emi and laid-back Rin. I even think of plain Mutou contrasting with flamboyant Nomiya, and misogynistic Kenji contrasting with guy-friendly Miki.

My question is, was it the devs' intention to set the characters up in such a way that most, if not all of them have someone who is their polar opposite? Or did it simply turn out that way?

Yes, it's intentional. The setup is a very fundamental technique to drive our character dynamics, and it's used throughout the game. You can also see it in work in the contrast between Nomiya and Sae, Akira and Hideaki, and Kenji and Hisao (Miki is not Kenji's foil)