Katawa Shoujo Forums

Thespian wrote:Maybe if you just print out (or have someone do it for you) every single screen in the game, number the pages and add the "If A, go to page XX, if B, go to page XX" at the interaction points, bind it and there you go, portable KS book!

As a format-shift that could theoretically work, but again, fair use is about use, not copying: you could make one book, no more*, and you could not give the book to anyone**. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card, and while it covers a lot of common-sense things, by it's not some loosey-goosey do-what-you-want-as-long-as-there's-no-money grand enabler of piracy that many people claim it is.

If you want to port the game, you have to get permission from 4LS. They probably won't give it to you, but them's the breaks.

(*): You could make another book if the first was destroyed, but only then: at any given time, there must be only one book of your making.
(**): Theoretically you could give the book to someone, if you either gave them every other copy of the game you had at the same time, or else destroyed what you didn't give to them: you could keep nothing for yourself. The recipient would not be allowed to make another copy of the book; they could format-shift it into some other medium, but this would be bound by the same rules as the book. The whole thing would be a huge hassle, and certainly not a practical loophole in the license.

WorldlyWiseman wrote:A KS pop-up book, complete with a tiny soundtrack player like the ones inside of expensive holiday cards, would be kickin' rad.

From a practical standpoint, I think you'd have to go more like one of those tiny press-to-play things you see in some children's books that have a bunch of different sound effects. Otherwise you'd need a whole bunch of soundtrack players, and each page would have to pull the tab on just the right one, and that would be a total nightmare to bind and produce.

Although...hmmm...

I wonder if it's against the devs' wishes to create a sort of guide for porting KS onto other platforms...

I mean, it totally wouldn't be "The Official Katawa Shoujo for iOS"! and it doesn't even need to be specific to KS either. Like...

What if people made a port of the Ren'py engine that can play KS into lots of platforms, and also published guides about how they would go about using it to port KS...

Would that be against the devs' wishes? Helping people port KS but not actually doing it for them?

Nekken wrote:This doesn't mean that RenPSP couldn't put in some additional effort to actually run KS -if screenshots are any indication the demo sort of runs, but only sort of- but it does mean that they're doing some additional work for no other reason than to run KS. That's where they may run afoul of the 4LS license.

Well, here's a few screenshots I did, although through Lua Player 0.20 for Windows (because my PSP Fat can't do the entire KS script on RenPSP)

(Intro Scene, not video due to lack of functionality)

(The "drugs list " in the prologue, also not moving due to lack of functionality)

(The Act 1 video, also not moving for... well yeah.)

(Since Lua Player doesn't have Bold, Italics, or Strikethrough, the guy who ported this just called Misha as "Not Shizune")

(Also, porter guy shortened the choices so they fit the box)

Other than that, he also has this disclaimer before the script begins


...but that's just the guy who ported KS. The developer is a different egg altogether. If you do a background check on the history of RenPSP, you'll find that a guy named 'lolbot' from the 'iichan eroge team' singlehandedly developed the Lua Player app for Euphoria 8. The guy who ported KS has his contact details printed on the KS script:


I say RenPSP is not aimed to run KS, but Ren'Py-like scripts in general. Have your say, I dunno.