Katawa Shoujo Forums

McBaggin wrote:Do you guys feel like all of your KS work is finished or that you are okay with what you have released ?

I think KS is all right.

Rivin wrote: What do you think the hardest stage/part of making a VN is?
It feels like that organizing and getting everyone to compromise their ideas to get on a basic path we all could agree upon was more difficult than the writing, art design, and coding we've completed thus far. Do you guys feel the same way looking back?

Organizing people can be hard or easy, it completely depends on the people. Having to fight over whose ideas are the best is poison. We avoided it by giving everyone a massive amount of autonomy over their own work. That way the arguments and discussions remained on the intellectual level (mostly).

Hardest part for us was communication. KS was a massive project being made by a ton of people scattered around the world. We just could not reliably keep track of everything or keep everyone in the loop. To do that, we'd have needed 1-2 "supervisors" that would've only dealt with inter-team communication and/or force everyone to use significant amounts of time in the project bureaucracy, which would've cut into the actual working time (but on the other hand, also increased our efficiency).

Jintor wrote:

Aura wrote:

Jintor wrote:Any chance of a new artbook?

That might be contributable towards?

It's not out of the realm of possibility. We invite only people we know and like to contribute to them.

Would you consider inviting artists from the shimmie?

*becomes increasingly transparent*

Well yeah, a very prominent fanartist might very well get invited.

Suriko wrote:the Mechwarrior series

You ever play MWLL? I'd love to thank you by blowing your ass up sometime

How did some of the art from the final game get out early (you could spot some of it on /a/, for example)? Was it deliberate?

Question to any of the writers. Though I understand that your free time was mainly working on the project, as a writer myself must know; During development, or whilst planning out or writing scenes, did you ever get any ideas or inspiration for stories not related to KS?

Why did you change the original uniforms from the coloured RAITA design to the Grid1 green uniforms and then back again with further releases?

I list here and here some observations I made while playing through the Emi route which I think indicate that Emi was intended to be the "natural" route that players go through first. I also point out some of the negative consequences that Emi's Act 1 presentation had on her reception up until release.

What are the thoughts of the development team on these points?

Nagatoyuuki wrote:Question to any of the writers. Though I understand that your free time was mainly working on the project, as a writer myself must know; During development, or whilst planning out or writing scenes, did you ever get any ideas or inspiration for stories not related to KS?

Sure, we thought up and even wrote plenty of other stuff.

scott1and wrote:Why did you change the original uniforms from the coloured RAITA design to the Grid1 green uniforms and then back again with further releases?

Lead artist at the time wanted to design a new uniform. After he quit we reverted back to RAITA's design.

Caesius wrote:I list here and here some observations I made while playing through the Emi route which I think indicate that Emi was intended to be the "natural" route that players go through first. I also point out some of the negative consequences that Emi's Act 1 presentation had on her reception up until release.

What are the thoughts of the development team on these points?

The design of Act 1 was that unless you chased after Hanako/Lilly/Shizune, you'd probably end up with Emi. It doesn't mean that we meant players to read it first, however. The stories are not dependent on each other, they can be read in any order.
There's a very obvious correlation between characters with big, emotional endings in Act 1 (Shizune, Rin) getting more popularity than ones without (Emi). In the full game it doesn't matter (and we obviously always worked with the full game in mind), but Emi fans and to a lesser extent, fans of Lilly and Hanako too were disappointed that their favourite characters didn't get as epic Act 1 ending as Shizune did.

Aura wrote:

Nagatoyuuki wrote:Question to any of the writers. Though I understand that your free time was mainly working on the project, as a writer myself must know; During development, or whilst planning out or writing scenes, did you ever get any ideas or inspiration for stories not related to KS?

Sure, we thought up and even wrote plenty of other stuff.

Did you ever feel that you wrote said stuff because you wanted to get your mind of KS for a while? Or as an embellishment on your understanding of your characters or motives?

Aura wrote:The design of Act 1 was that unless you chased after Hanako/Lilly/Shizune, you'd probably end up with Emi. It doesn't mean that we meant players to read it first, however. The stories are not dependent on each other, they can be read in any order.

There is, however, the issue of the letter from Iwanako. Someone who has read through one of the other routes before getting on Emi's is likely to have a very different reaction to Hisao throwing away the letter. Was this considered?

scott1and wrote:Why did you change the original uniforms from the coloured RAITA design to the Grid1 green uniforms and then back again with further releases?

You have any examples of this?

A question to Nichol, which BGM is each cutscene's piano arrangement based on? I know Shizune's is The Student Council, and Hanako's is Puddles and Raindrops, but I can't put my finger on Lilly's or Rin's. Another thing I'd like to know is if there's full versions of of these arrangements.