Katawa Shoujo Forums

Fealow wrote:What audio software did you use to compose and arrange these pieces?

I used Finale for all notation and sequencing, and I believe blue used Sibelius. I used FL studio for rendering.

Fealow wrote: Where there any particular sound banks/samples that you stuck to using or did you just grab what you needed from wherever you could find it? And if so what were they?

I'm not sure what blue used, but I used too many to count. I grabbed most of them from random google searches, but off the top of my head I can tell you I used GPO samples for most of the piano and strings, including the acoustic bass. The fret noises I added to the acoustic guitar tracks is a fret noise sample from the airfont bank.

Fealow wrote:Did you record anything live

no

Fealow wrote:did you put it all together through samples and programming/notation software?

yes

Fealow wrote:I was wondering if any level of mixing/mastering was involved before the final renders?

To this day I don't know a thing about mixing/mastering, I just play with knobs until I think it sounds good. When I was working on KS I'm fairly certain all I did was turn on some reverb.

Wondering what 4leaf studios would think about a group of coders, authors, artists adding Free DLC; as in alternate routes, maybe extended endings and the like? and if aloud what kind of ideas they would like to post.

ShadowKing wrote:Wondering what 4leaf studios would think about a group of coders, authors, artists adding Free DLC; as in alternate routes, maybe extended endings and the like? and if aloud what kind of ideas they would like to post.

Yeah as the FAQ says, we pretty expressly forbid that kind of thing.

Hello Aura, I am not worthy and so forth

Was (re)watching an interview with thehivemind recently wherein he talks of various arguments during development - in terms of the 5 routes, which plot point, scene or character in your opinion caused the most vociferous disagreements and was it something/someone that was kept in or taken out?

Also I recently found videos of the 3 beta uber-dark Hanako endings (spewing blood, train in the face and death partly by snoo-snoo) as well as the the equally grim bad Shizune ending (wherein the narrator changes to Misha). How close to final release did the total death toll drop from several to just 1? Was there a team-wide decision made to not go that dark or did the individual stories just turn out that way?

Edit: just thought of some more - was the notion of Hisao having a rival for any of the girl's affections in one of the routes ever tabled? Is the thing with Emi and the track captain a remnant of this?

And is Shizune already hot for Hisao fairly early in Act 1 (i.e. pre-festival) or is it all about getting him on the Student Council?

And finally who named the convenience store 'Aura Mart'?

HayStack44 wrote:Hello Aura, I am not worthy and so forth

Was (re)watching an interview with thehivemind recently wherein he talks of various arguments during development - in terms of the 5 routes, which plot point, scene or character in your opinion caused the most vociferous disagreements and was it something/someone that was kept in or taken out?

Man I have no idea. We went back and forth about having flash-forward endings for a while, and wound up deciding not to (and then doing one anyway), and side characters were a point of contention for a long while (art assets being a precious resource and all, a lot of nameless students or students who only showed up for a scene got cut or changed to someone else), but the only time things got so bad that I, at least, had to walk away for a while was early-ish in Emi's development when the others pointed out that I'd written myself into a corner and had failed to provide any sort of, you know, plot. Which was true, of course--one scene in particular was the worst sort of filler, hinted at a Nurse-Meiko relationship far more than anything else we kept in, and inadvertantly defused all the ghosts of conflict that had somehow managed to make it in. I was so frustrated by the backlash and, admittedly, mortified by how badly I'd bollucksed up the whole show that I stepped out for like two or three months to reassess and, with the help of Crud and Silentcook, come up with a new scenario outline that worked better (or at least I hope so).

Being one of the few North Americans on the dev team, I probably missed a lot of arguments in the chat, but that's the big one I remember. And, of course, it all worked out in the end.

Also I recently found videos of the 3 beta uber-dark Hanako endings (spewing blood, train in the face and death partly by snoo-snoo) as well as the the equally grim bad Shizune ending (wherein the narrator changes to Misha). How close to final release did the total death toll drop from several to just 1? Was there a team-wide decision made to not go that dark or did the individual stories just turn out that way?

Wait, we killed someone in the final version? I don't remember that happening.

It's inaccurate to label the Hanako endings as "beta" because they were scrapped years before the final product. Same goes for Shizune. Discussion of the paths sort of led to deciding that going full on killing sprees was... a little too melodramatic, even for a game that has not one, but TWO scenes involving breaking down in front of graveyards/accident scenes.

Edit: just thought of some more - was the notion of Hisao having a rival for any of the girl's affections in one of the routes ever tabled? Is the thing with Emi and the track captain a remnant of this?

The track captain was always gay. He was an excuse for Hisao to doubt his abilities to get up in Emi's sugar pie walls--Hisao's insecurity was going to be a larger plot point initially, but it got phased out because entire scenes of Hisao hemming and hawing are, as it turns out, super fucking boring to read.

And is Shizune already hot for Hisao fairly early in Act 1 (i.e. pre-festival) or is it all about getting him on the Student Council?

All the ladies want to ride Hisao like a Harley down a stretch of bad road from day one, except for Rin.

And finally who named the convenience store 'Aura Mart'?

Delta, I think? I'm probably wrong.

HayStack44 wrote:And finally who named the convenience store 'Aura Mart'? :wink:

Iirc A22. I tried to get everyone to stop using that but it apparently was too funny.

TheHivemind wrote: Being one of the few North Americans on the dev team, I probably missed a lot of arguments in the chat?

Oh right. And theres me assuming that it was mostly North Americans.

While you're here Hive, got a Emi-route specific one - I've seen people talk about her route and complain that Hisao is a complete doofus for not piecing together what happened to Emi's dad. My interpretation is he at least partially figured it out before he gets to the graveyard and it's just the style of KS that there no "OMG so *thats* what it was" moment in Hisao's internal monologue (see also: the realisation Misha is a Daughter of Sappho). He has he figured some of it out before the aforesaid scene or is he that dozy?

TheHivemind wrote:Wait, we killed someone in the final version? I don't remember that happening.

Manly picnic ending raises the bodycount to 1

TheHivemind wrote:It's inaccurate to label the Hanako endings as "beta" because they were scrapped years before the final product. Same goes for Shizune.

Ah well you can blame the person who's put the vids on YT as such for that - so these are post-Grid1 but pre-beta then?

TheHivemind wrote:All the ladies want to ride Hisao like a Harley down a stretch of bad road from day one, except for Rin.

Damn that boy's got a fair old quantity of what I believe the young people call 'swag'

HayStack44 wrote:

TheHivemind wrote:It's inaccurate to label the Hanako endings as "beta" because they were scrapped years before the final product. Same goes for Shizune.

Ah well you can blame the person who's put the vids on YT as such for that - so these are post-Grid1 but pre-beta then?

Gonna stop you here and tell you to refrain from talking about the illegally leaked alpha on our front yard, as the forum rules say.

Hanako mentions "worse things" happening to her in middle school, that she doesn't get into with Hisao.

Just how bad were those "worse things"? I'm assuming pretty bad, but are we talking "garden variety" physical bullying, or are we talking worse?

(If it's as bad as I suspect, it makes Hanako's H-scene even squickier, I think.)

HayStack44 wrote: While you're here Hive, got a Emi-route specific one - I've seen people talk about her route and complain that Hisao is a complete doofus for not piecing together what happened to Emi's dad. My interpretation is he at least partially figured it out before he gets to the graveyard and it's just the style of KS that there no "OMG so *thats* what it was" moment in Hisao's internal monologue (see also: the realisation Misha is a Daughter of Sappho). He has he figured some of it out before the aforesaid scene or is he that dozy?

It is easy to read a narrative and, being familiar with the general sorts of tropes associated, know exactly what happened to Emi's dad from the word go. Having Hisao not pick up on it right away is half because he's kind of self-absorbed and hasn't put a lot of thought into the question, half me being deliberately obtuse because it amused me at the time to have him miss out on what is a pretty obvious trope.

Plus while writing I kept open the possibility of changing her father's fate to imprisonment or rehab or something you know, not dead (again, for my own amusement) but it would have at the least required more art assets for more one-off scenes than seemed wise. So the more obvious, less resource-intensive option was chosen. Follow Emi after dinner though and you'll see that Hisao has a pretty good idea of what's going on, even if he hasn't narrated it to you.

bhtooefr wrote:Hanako mentions "worse things" happening to her in middle school, that she doesn't get into with Hisao.

Just how bad were those "worse things"? I'm assuming pretty bad, but are we talking "garden variety" physical bullying, or are we talking worse?

(If it's as bad as I suspect, it makes Hanako's H-scene even squickier, I think.)

Someone did a poo in her locker. It was a big deal.

So a bunch of mostly unrelated questions. I recently noticed the shopkeep of Othello's Antiques wears a white collared shirt and greenish slacks, the same colors used at Yamaku. Was his sprite to be used for something relating to Yamaku at one point, or are the colors a coincidence? Or... was he originally a Yamaku student?

More generally speaking, the choice of "NPC" sprites seems to me arbitrary at first glance, as only a few NPCs (i.e said shopkeep) were blessed with sprites and others not, despite none of them appearing for more than two scenes. So I apologize if this question is too open-ended but, assuming it wasn't arbitrary, what was the direction taken with "NPC" sprites?

While I'm at it, I've been meaning to ask this one for a while: What database or website did 4LS use to host and collaborate on KS? Is it common among indie devs or did you guys just wing it?

P.S.: Relevant to the previous posts. How did "Gimme the chocolate, Hisao!" even start, anyway? I haven't lurked that long and I was never really bothered to look into... that. You understand.

1) Coincidence.

2) Mostly a combo of artists' darlings and directing choices by delta I don't fully understand myself, so I'll let someone else field this one.

3) We used Redmine for quite a while, then we had to switch to Trac. The forums are the other "website" we collaborated on. No idea about their popularity with other indie devs.

4) Some random person just woke up one day, fired up MS paint and dropped that on the Internet. Then everybody else ran with it. Good luck figuring anything more, I still have no idea why Yuukoplant myself, for example.

Oddball wrote:Tea Ceremony Club is actually a fairly common club to see in Japanese schools.

As are other traditional things like Flower Arrangement. However, they are occasionally abused by people who want to look like they are in a club, but don't want to put in the effort of actually learning a sport or similar...

Aura wrote:

Heatth wrote:

Suriko wrote:Also, the brothers thing is a mistake - Jigoro's wife (Mayoi) is Lilly's father's (Hiroyuki) sister.

This begs the question: Are you planning on releasing a patch fixing such script errors? Aside from that line, I've heard Hisao acts as he have never been on Shanghai in Emi's route, even if he had visited the place already with Shizune and Misha in Act 1.

We haven't decided.

Silentcook wrote:The gender reference in "Little Wing" is was wrong. Fixed for future releases.

So, has the brothers thing been fixed for future releases as well?

Because there's some very strange headcanon I have that works better with it NOT being fixed, and explains several things about Jigoro and with the Hakamichi and Satou families. And it actually makes Jigoro a sympathetic character. I'm not requesting that you keep it the same, but rather wondering if I should let go of my headcanon.

Mind you, there's explanations other than my headcanon that would work with the error being canon despite the differing last names, and are less strange. (One of the brothers being born out of wedlock, for instance, or them being half-brothers.)

bhtooefr wrote:So, has the brothers thing been fixed for future releases as well?

Yes, it has been fixed. It OUGHT to have been fixed in time for the FR release, but... the less said about that, the better.