Ask!

[simmr001]

My apologies.

Does anyone know of where I can find a timeline of the events that occur in game for each girl. It's for fanfic purposes and I'm wondering if their is one before I go through it with a fine tooth comb

[Aura]

My apologies.

Does anyone know of where I can find a timeline of the events that occur in game for each girl. It's for fanfic purposes and I'm wondering if their is one before I go through it with a fine tooth comb

We haven't made a public one at least. Maybe some fan has.

[SpecimenSix]

Did all of the devs have a background in programming and experience prior to the making of KS? Or was it something that some of you picked up as you went along? I ask because I'm a programmer myself working on my own game, a Castlevania style side scroller. I've always had much respect for developers of video games but especially now since I've been working on that myself and have an idea of what you all must have gone through over the course of development.

[Aura]

Did all of the devs have a background in programming and experience prior to the making of KS? Or was it something that some of you picked up as you went along? I ask because I'm a programmer myself working on my own game, a Castlevania style side scroller. I've always had much respect for developers of video games but especially now since I've been working on that myself and have an idea of what you all must have gone through over the course of development.

None of us had any. KS doesn't have much straight up programming, and what there is was picked up by delta basically from ground up.

[Cereal_Guy_Dan]

I enjoy all of the routes and appreciate all the love and work that obviously went into each of them, and am hoping that I won't offend by asking this. Has there every been any discussion; particularly within the dev group, but also in public forums and whatnot, about whether there is a "master" route in the game?

In my mind, Hanako's path makes the most sense b/c it's illustrated early on that Hisao is partial to girls with long dark hair, both have had lengthy hospital stays, are avid readers, and discover a shared love of games such as chess and billiards. Hisao was never in student council like Lilly or Shizune, he was never an artist like Rin, he was never an athlete (although he did play unorganized soccer) like Emi (her route is second ranked in my opinion b/c they have some athleticism in common and the part she plays in maintaining his health due to his condition makes a lot of sense) . All of this paired with the fact that Crud was producing while the first act was being written makes me wonder if it wasn't flavored more towards Hanako's path. Would you say there's any truth to any of this or am I just being biased towards my waifu?

Thanks for reading.

[Silentcook]

Yes, there has been plenty of discussion about this. There is no "true" or "master" route, we didn't intend to make one, we don't care about this kind of labeling, and anybody claiming to have proof that we made one by design is lying.

[HenryT]

Hello again!

I noticed people on the previous page talking about Hisao's gym clothes and P.E. and it had me wondering - Are there actually any such classes in Yamaku? Of course Hisao himself would be mostly pardoned from it and as such it wouldn't be mentioned much, but still, it's interesting to know.

Continuing on the theme of classes, what classes does Yamaku have? A couple of them are mentioned in-game (such as English and Sign-Language), but what about the others? (This may just seem like a question about classes in Japan in general )

[AsianDude]

Is anything stopping an independent group from creating Katawa Shoujo 2?
To what extent are the original assets of the game copyrighted? If so, what license is it under?
Would it be OK for a game with a similar concept to be created?

Sorry if these has been asked, but I couldn't find an answer upon a cursory search of the forums.

[Aura]

Hello again!

I noticed people on the previous page talking about Hisao's gym clothes and P.E. and it had me wondering - Are there actually any such classes in Yamaku? Of course Hisao himself would be mostly pardoned from it and as such it wouldn't be mentioned much, but still, it's interesting to know.

Continuing on the theme of classes, what classes does Yamaku have? A couple of them are mentioned in-game (such as English and Sign-Language), but what about the others? (This may just seem like a question about classes in Japan in general :D)

Sure there are PE classes. Yamaku follows the standard Japanese highschool curriculum, which has very standard subjects like math, physics, biology, chemistry, history, Japanese literature, Japanese writing, music, home econ etc etc

[Aura]

Is anything stopping an independent group from creating Katawa Shoujo 2?
To what extent are the original assets of the game copyrighted? If so, what license is it under?
Would it be OK for a game with a similar concept to be created?

Sorry if these has been asked, but I couldn't find an answer upon a cursory search of the forums.

This should be obvious, but it's against international copyright law and the KS license to create a sequel without permission. There is only one kind of copyright, and that's what the assets fall under. KS uses the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. We don't mind (nor do we have any say on) a game with a similar concept being created, in fact several are in development at the moment. However, we strictly forbid any usage of the Katawa Shoujo brand/assets/intellectual property in such without permission.

You could've just read the FAQ to find this out.

[Jobriq]

Sure there are PE classes. Yamaku follows the standard Japanese highschool curriculum, which has very standard subjects like math, physics, biology, chemistry, history, Japanese literature, Japanese writing, music, home econ etc etc

I assume there would be different teachers for different classes? Sometimes it seems like Hisao's in elementary school because most of the school scenes have Mutou as the teacher so I guess it would be during homeroom or science classes. Or maybe Mutou teaches everything because he's a genius

[Merloficus]

Or maybe Mutou teaches everything because he's a genius

Only if all the subjects they saw consisted of either math- or scienceclasses

But that actualy raised a question with me, Mutou is referred to as their homeroom teacher. But what does this mean?
Is it that he's the one the students can go to when they have problems? The teacher that represents that class?
It's probably a specific term i guess.

But then what is 'homeroom' Jobriq mentioned? is it a class they follow?

[Aura]

Sure there are PE classes. Yamaku follows the standard Japanese highschool curriculum, which has very standard subjects like math, physics, biology, chemistry, history, Japanese literature, Japanese writing, music, home econ etc etc

I assume there would be different teachers for different classes? Sometimes it seems like Hisao's in elementary school because most of the school scenes have Mutou as the teacher so I guess it would be during homeroom or science classes. Or maybe Mutou teaches everything because he's a genius :!:

Each subject has its own teacher.

[Aura]

Or maybe Mutou teaches everything because he's a genius :!:

Only if all the subjects they saw consisted of either math- or scienceclasses :lol:

But that actualy raised a question with me, Mutou is referred to as their homeroom teacher. But what does this mean?
Is it that he's the one the students can go to when they have problems? The teacher that represents that class?
It's probably a specific term i guess.

But then what is 'homeroom' Jobriq mentioned? is it a class they follow?

Homeroom is a class for dealing with administrative things, the everyday life of school that doesn't directly tie in with studying and so on. It's usually the first or the last class of the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeroom

[TheComicIsDead]

Excuse me, cpl_crud. I PM'd you. I wanted to make sure you got it.

Given that the CC licence has never been tested in court I wouldn't stress too hard...

By you coming here and asking something like "Hey can I do X"? you are effectively applying for (and being granted) a licence.

It's not that I'm worried about the devs getting mad, rather, I'd like to avoid the appearance of being cavalier about copyright. For my day job I sometimes get involved in copyright disputes, and it would be (at minimum) very awkward to get caught with license-violating stuff in my video uploads or website.

I understand this is probably an edge case that the dev team would not care much about, but making their stance on music derivatives legally clear would be very helpful to me, so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

I would also be interested to read a bit more into the actual terms around a "derivative" work. In Australia it is legal to make a cover of a song, so long as the Copyright provisions and Moral Rights of the original author are maintained.

So a cover/transcription may not actually count as a "Derivative"; because you are doing something that is essentially the same. A Derivative work would have to be a new Work (as defined in the Berne convention) that was substantially based on the original work.

I can't speak for Australian law, but in the US, there's a fairly strict set of rules about what sorts of derivative works can be created without getting explicit permission, and anything that isn't exactly the original work is derivative. So I could post [4ls]_katawa_shoujo_enigmatic_box_of_sound_[503ACD68].zip without infringing, but a transcription of Nocturne would infringe, and definitely so would a recorded performance (which would be a new Work).

Actually, the UCC stuff and the Rome convention in the US has largely bee superseded by the adoption of the Berne convention; this is why you don't need to put the (c) logo on anything anymore.

And a performance is not a work. The sound recording is not a Work, but a Copyright Material Other Than a Work, and this is where you get a lot of the "freedoms" that you saw above.

The old Rome/UCC combo in the states actually offered less protection; for example the song "Blue Suede Shoes" was not written by Elvis. The original composer had a car accident after delivering the score. He had intended to record it, but Elvis recorded a "cover" of the work, and when the original singer/songwriter recorded the same song it was considered a cover...

He was made damn rich in royalties however...


Anyway, back to the point, I don't really think there would be an issue, but you should ask the specific musician for the piece that you want to deal with. Once you have their permission then that is that. The owner of the Copyright (which is still all of the original Authors of 4LS) can give out as many licences as they would like.