Ask!

[Freya]

How did you guys/gals decide who wrote what path?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Is the Yamaku mascot still a fish?

[Rivan]

Back with some more questions:

1) Earlier in time you devs mentioned that KS at one point had rape scenes. What ultimately resulted in those scenes getting deleted? Too controversial perhaps?

2) I guess it's safe to assume that rape would've always resulted to a bad end?

I've cleared this up before, and even if someone has already answered this, I would like to do so again.

There was a scene where Hanako was heavily medicated. During the course of the scene she asked HIsao to take advantage of her, which he did. This, of course, was a bad end.

I'm not entirely sure why it was in there. Originally there weren't many H-scenes in the Hanako path (IIRC none in the "Good" path), and so there was a bit of pressure to put more into the story. This was just one place that fit with the narrative, although once I posted it the other devs (wisely) pointed out that it was akin to rape.

So yes, there was the equivalent of a date-rape scene in the original draft, but it was included more to boost the H-scene count rather than any desire to satisfy the sickos that want to see rape in their porn.

... Why did you feel pressured to boost the H-Scene count? I mean, I know we're supposedly playing an eroge, but given the voices of the fans many felt the game could've done quite easily with little to none of them. So, unless you wanted to, in which case there's little pressure, there wouldn't be much reason to include additional ones.



Do you people check the email you provided here (http://katawashoujo.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... eased.html) often? I wrote a letter of appreciation along with some questions a few days ago. I am worried my email might've never reached you, but given new news on the blog, it is quite possible it just got lost somewhere along the flood of e-mails.

[Sheth]

Were you guys rushing to release the game on January 4th ?

[Guest]

Hey Aura, what kind of music does Rin like?

[McBaggin]

Love you guys

Did someone submit the Parity Jam song or was this something you guys came up with?

[Zahlman]

Regarding the ero scenes (whoo, people can't stop talking about them, eh?)

- I noticed that on some routes, some of the ero content is reserved for good ends, and on others it isn't. Was this planned out much? Or were the scenes just put in where they seemed to fit the story best? (I personally kinda like the idea of not strictly planning it out, because it gets rid of the sense that it's some kind of reward. The real reward, aside from the story itself, is the concept art video and music in the credits )

- (It would be great to hear multiple opinions on this one!) Do you think the story (/stories) would have been noticeably different without the ero content? What if those bits had just been summarized with no illustration? Did you feel pressure to include ero scenes just to satisfy genre conventions? Or would it have felt unnatural/unrealistic to you not to have the characters have sex at crucial moments?

- It seems like some care was put into keeping decision points well separated from the ero content most of the time (and when you get a decision fairly shortly after the first scene with Rin, it's rather jarring, and really picks up the emotion of the moment). How deliberate was this? Was there a fear of emphasizing the eroge aspect too much vs. the story aspect by putting decisions closer, or even during the scenes? I know in certain scenes I would have appreciated the option to refuse at the start, or else (not both for the same scene; that would get irritating) stop partway through and just share a tender moment. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)

Regarding scene direction and other technical stuff:

- I've seen a few reports of typos, minor text pathing errors (like references to previous events that could have been avoided, or that could have played out differently than described), etc. Is there any point in reporting these?

- How does the eye-opening/closing effect work? Is there some kind of sprite for the lens shape or is it all procedural?

- How about the fireworks / rain / smoke? Some kind of particle system? Overlaid movies/animations? Something else?

- Some scenes have text variations that depend on questions asked earlier in the route. How does the scene library handle this? Preliminary testing suggests it sticks with whatever was the first version you saw in-game, but...

I also have route-specific questions, but I want to wait until I'm done the two remaining routes and ask them all at once.

Oh, forgot a general writing question, though: Were scene/act titles generally worked out first and used to guide the writing, or were they decided after the fact as clever summaries? I was disappointed when Hanako act 4 didn't have a "game" themed title like the first two, but I can't really imagine how it could have. Maybe "Sacrifice"? But that would only describe the good end, really...

[Dylan]

Aura/Hivemind- Lots of lines are shared in "Target Audience" in both Emi and Rin routes. Who wrote what?

[Errorname]

I've played through both Emi's and Lilly's route, and in both of them I really enjoyed every scene involving Mutou (especially in Emi's route), as he really reminded me of past teachers I had which convinced me that I wanted to go into the sciences.

1. How did you guys come up with him?
2. Did he have any particular writer assigned to him, or was he more or less an extra character every writer was told to work with?

[Lunar Archivist]

Is there any way I can offer assistance, however small, to the German translation team should they require it? I worked as a video game localization tester for five years, so I was just curious. Thanks!

[delta]

Regarding scene direction and other technical stuff:

- I've seen a few reports of typos, minor text pathing errors (like references to previous events that could have been avoided, or that could have played out differently than described), etc. Is there any point in reporting these?

Sure, why not.

- How does the eye-opening/closing effect work? Is there some kind of sprite for the lens shape or is it all procedural?

ImageDissolve

- How about the fireworks / rain / smoke? Some kind of particle system? Overlaid movies/animations? Something else?

anim.SMAnimation

- Some scenes have text variations that depend on questions asked earlier in the route. How does the scene library handle this? Preliminary testing suggests it sticks with whatever was the first version you saw in-game, but...

The replay has predetermined fixed content if the branching depends on choices outside the scene, and it's generally the option that has the most text or is the most positive. If it would differ in more than just a handful of lines, it will be different scenes anyway.

[Aura]

How did you guys/gals decide who wrote what path?

Everyone picked a path they thought they'd like to write. A22 and crud both wanted Hanako, but crud "won" in the end. Hivemind got to choose last, when Emi was the only choice left.

[Aura]

Is the Yamaku mascot still a fish?

Sure why not.

[Aura]

Hey Aura, what kind of music does Rin like?

Dunno. I've seen it being heavily debated before. For some reason people always attribute some really obscure hipster music genres to her.

[cpl_crud]

... Why did you feel pressured to boost the H-Scene count? I mean, I know we're supposedly playing an eroge, but given the voices of the fans many felt the game could've done quite easily with little to none of them. So, unless you wanted to, in which case there's little pressure, there wouldn't be much reason to include additional ones.

Because 0 scenes would have meant that someone would have hunted me down and killed me.

At the time there was still a fairly big push to make sure that we "Stayed true" to the original H-game concept, and that required the sex scenes. I didn't really want to put them in there; they just felt out of place. So I went back and found some places for them to go. I think my subconscious rebellion was to make the main H-scene a bad end as opposed to a good one.

I think most of us can agree that having sex (as opposed to the more family friendly "making love") doesn't always mean good things, so a bad sex scene in a bad end path seemed to fit better to me...