Katawa Shoujo Forums

Before Hisao can understand her, Misha obviously would translate Shizune's words, so Misha's actress would do the talking.
After Hisao learnt to sign read, it should be subtitled to show that it was different. After all, you don't want the audience getting confused and thinking Shizune was 'cured' or something, and having her apparently talking yet no one else understanding her would also be odd.

Althamus wrote:Before Hisao can understand her, Misha obviously would translate Shizune's words, so Misha's actress would do the talking.
After Hisao learnt to sign read, it should be subtitled to show that it was different. After all, you don't want the audience getting confused and thinking Shizune was 'cured' or something, and having her apparently talking yet no one else understanding her would also be odd.

It's already subtitled, though, and I don't think anyone's advocating that the text be taken out.

It's not all that uncommon for hearing people to read sign aloud: not just someone else's signs, but even their own. Misha herself does this when others are present: even when Shizune speaks directly to her, Misha usually reads aloud. Given that she and Hisao have the same teachers, it would be quite plausible for Hisao to pick up the same habits, and thus he could voice Shizune's lines when he interprets. It does lead to an interesting question, though: Misha doesn't do anything to distinguish her words from Shizune's, but Hisao complains that it makes it hard to tell who is speaking sometimes. Might he attempt to differentiate his words from Shizune's somehow, and if so, how would he do it?

One last thing, as to the matter of Shizune's voice actress (for those rare times when her voice actually engages): because she'd have so little to do, it makes sense to have a voice actress for another character do her voice as well (though obviously steps should be taken to ensure that they still sound different). If that happens, I suggest that Lilly's voice actress be given the part. I say this because there will inevitably be some similarity between two characters voiced by the same person, so by choosing an actress such that her two characters are related by blood, this similarity would make more sense than it otherwise might.

dorne wrote:I would say that Shizune and HIsao would talk in subtitle speak.

This.

Although what I did was give Shizune a bit "Velma" voice

Seems like it's going to be a thing where either another narrator will hop in, or Hisao will mention that Shizune is signing and read the thoughts to himself in his head (an echo-like thinking voice). Thanks for the current advice all, still going to keep watching what people are posting here, though I might create another post titled something like "KS: The Audio Book?".

Yeah, that should surely stir up either some raged filled or heart squeezing interest on the internet.

It's an interesting thought... however, the way I think Shizune's voice would work is with Hisao actually saying her lines. (The game is told from Hisao's point of view. So why not have him voice her lines.). Could be a little tricky. Or you can do that in the Act 1 , and part of Act 2. At a certain point: the game can have Hisao ponder how her voice would sound if she was not deaf. You can even hear him try to match several different voices inside his head that would fit Shizune. The game would use a couple of different voice actresses to voice some of Shizune's lines. After some deliberation, Hisao would settle on a voice. (Maybe the player can even select that particular voice.) and the rest of the game would have Shizune 'talk'.

Add maybe an echoing like fileter to Shizune's so called "Voice" To keep the player reminded that "yes" Shizune is speaking in sign to Hisao.

I'm not opposed to voice acting in the game, I'd assume a toggle option for voices would be present. This way people who don't like the voices can turn it off and put their imagination to work.

With that being said...
Matching voices to the character would be difficult. The easy thing to do would be to just pick some people on the forums and see if they can voice the character while not breaking their image. But again...easier said than done. Some people are also used to Japanese voices (I am at least) so English dubbing would be tough to get used to, again...this is easier said than done and some people still might not like it but...
Can't please everyone.
I repeat, I wouldn't be opposed to voice acting being added at some point. I originally thought that I wouldn't enjoy the game as much because of the lack of voice acting, but I was wrong. The lack of voice acting doesn't make the game less enjoyable since each of the characters has a very well fleshed out with varying personalities that you can sort of imagine what their voices could be like (especially Misha...I hear Yuu[Ever 17] every time she speaks). My guess is it would be something like the charm of Tali (mass effect): You don't know what's under the helmet so you can make her face into anything you see fit.

Now, on the subject of Lily and Shizune.
I've got no arguments on why Lily should have a voice. She does speak, so from a story telling perspective it would be fine if she had a voice actress (Though I do my own mental voicing of Lily...I can't think of a voice actor to compare her to though).
As for Shizune, I actually do have a 'sort-of' stance on this.
Shizune shouldn't have a voice actor. She's a deaf-mute (I can't remember if it's clearly stated that she's also mute or if she simply refuses to talk, in which case I'd be fine with voice acting various sighs/grunts/and things that aren't actually talking), and I think her mute status is part of her charm. In the case of Misha's voice actress, she would probably change her tone/pitch to make it seem like Shizune is speaking. Though, it might also break the illusion of going after Shizune since it's Misha's voice, so I've got nothing there and can see the opposition.
It's sort of a 50/50 thing to me.

Once more, I'm not opposed to voice acting, though I think the game does a great job standing on it's own without it. So...yeah.
Either the devs eventually release a voice pack add-on or someone starts a fan voice project. Whichever comes first.
In the meantime...ALL HAIL SHIZUNE!

Thank you guys for the input. Definitely going to be a solid choice where Hisao narrates Shizune's lines, with an echoey filter, or even have him mention a few times where "Shizune signs something" or "I waited as Shizune moved her hands" pre-act-2. Gotta really emphasize an echo effect to imply that Hisao is reading Shizune's words out to the listener, but I'll this out, and post a video here possibly later this month after school has settled down xP.

As I recall, there's a line in Hisao's path where he mentions that he's imagining a voice for Shizune in his head, that's not his nor Misha's.

I'm imagining that in the beginning of her arc, Shizune speaks using Misha or Hisao's voice, but as Hisao masters sign language and grows closer, she starts to use a "new" voice that represents how Hisao imagines her voice to sound.

It should all have reverb and echo filters to make it clear that it's not an actual voice. . . and the filters get less and less obvious as time goes on and Hisao starts to master sign language.

I applaud the idea of making the contents of this game accessible to the visually impaired.
However, as a computer programmer, I must say that the approach of adding voice acting to KS
will be so hard as to be infeasible. We would have to find around 10 voice actors who would be willing
to record their voices for thousands of lines. Also, it's technically very hard to add screen reading to
renpy based games, since they are based on pygame a n ultimately SDL, which, as a game programming
library, does not give access to the texts that appear on the screen (they're just pixels drawn to SDL, not real
texts that could be send to or though a a screen reader).

That's why I think the most realistic approach would be to do a full remake, with the same texts,
(and more) but as text-based interactive fiction, which are accessible to the visually impaired
because a screen reader or braille reader can easily access such a game. Also I think we should ask
the opinion of some people are actually visually impaired so we can get their view on what are their
needs and preferred solutions.

It may sound rude, but the first person to come to my mind is the author of emacspeak,
a visually impaired programmer. http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/
He might be the person we should contact to find out what would be the best course of action.

Kind Regards,

B.

PS: this anti-spam question is hard for me to answer, since I'm "color blind". That is, I can see all colors, but differently from how other people see them, so it's hard for me to name colors correctly. Especially what is purple or blue to you is may look gray or black to me. Which was the case for this question, her hair looks just black to me, or what I'd call black. :p It's ironic to see how you easy it is to give difficulties to people with disabilities, even if it's only a slight one like mine.

Not rude at all B, I'm actually am seeing why people use forums now, I wonder why I haven't joined more of them sooner.

That said, I like that interesting emacspeak program and I'll investigate on how people would like to address this. As far as a complete remake goes, probably not happening. But I do like whats said here, and it does strengthen the resolve to keep quality high and make sure lots of thought is put into this.

I'm also a bit thought provoked for you since you're colorblind (I happen to know a few other people who are too) and it does seem to make an obvious difference in the experience both in life and through the game, but I'm sure it would not affect the ultimate message of life/the game.

Zettovyker

I'm glad to see you're considering all of this well.

Also, I'm not asking you or anyone else to write a remake. As I said before, I'm a computer programmer, and *if* there is enough interest, *I* would gladly like to reprogram this, using the existing dialogs (preferably with permission of course, but if not, at least respecting the license), for whatever interactive fiction engine is most accessible to the visually impaired. Or alternatively I could develop a text-only version of Renpy to run the game on, depending on what looks like the least work and is most useful to the target audience.

I don't know if there is any message to life a s a whole, I doubt it. And no, it does not change the message of the game to me. But yes, altered color vision does mean I have a life experience that is different from others. But that's how it is for everyone. are there pany people whose life experience is completely or even largely the same? I doubt that too. Furthermore, color experience is quite subjective, and I think it is not only different for biological reasons, but also for cultural and personal reasons. Like how the Japanese call a "green" traffic light "blue".

However, come to think of it, the reason that I'm volunteering to help here is that I find it too cruelly ironic: now, we have a great where a visually impaired person plays an important role, but that can't be played by visually impaired people. It's a bit like, but actually far more worse than kind of irony I encountered myself in answering the anti-spam question.

Kind Regards,

B.

Beoran wrote:I applaud the idea of making the contents of this game accessible to the visually impaired.
However, as a computer programmer, I must say that the approach of adding voice acting to KS
will be so hard as to be infeasible. We would have to find around 10 voice actors who would be willing
to record their voices for thousands of lines. Also, it's technically very hard to add screen reading to
renpy based games, since they are based on pygame a n ultimately SDL, which, as a game programming
library, does not give access to the texts that appear on the screen (they're just pixels drawn to SDL, not real
texts that could be send to or though a a screen reader).

Just wondering from a purely technical perspective: if the game engine is drawing the text as pixels/sprites/images (don't know the correct term to use here) on the screen in a way that thwarts a screenreader, it must still be getting the information of what to draw from somewhere... the files containing the dialogue.

It would probably be hard but that would be what a screenreader would need to somehow be fed information from.

Something that receives that information as it's being read from the game files and sent to be displayed, and outputs it in a second way to the screenreader.

(NB: I am not a programmer, as you can see)

Actually, something interesting popped up on another forum I'm posting to:

Does anyone know anyone blind? Cause I'd like to know how they access technology and how they like going about reading and listening to audio books (if they do.)

It's a bit counter-intuitive to say that someone blind is actually posting to the forums, but the chance does exist I suppose! In any case, if you could ask them how they get around on the internet, if they've adapted to the world of touch screen interfaces, and how they'd feel about a choice-based audio book, I'd appreciate it.

Metalangel,

Well, yes, the text of the dialog is in the Renpy engine's game files of the game's distrbution. It would be possible to "get it out", but that would involve making a text-only version of Renpy which is accesible to screen readers and braille rules. Which is one of the options I discussed. Of course it would be even easier if we were allowed to get the Renpy (python) sources of the dialogues themselves.

Zettovyker, I like your idea,and I'm afraid I can't be of much help. Perhaps we'l havet o resort on contacting such people whose e-mail address or blog we can find "out of the blue", so to speak.

Kind regards,

B.

Her "words" could be spoken by hiseo could read it out like "shizune said"