Katawa Shoujo Forums

Csihar wrote:Wouldn't it be great if Brown ended up getting Haruhi'd by KS? And by great I mean hilarious.

I think one of the sororities at Brown needs to put up a copy of Rin's mural on the appropriate wall as a prank.

Aura wrote:The closest to something sketchy are the ones from Brown, and only if the campus is private property (I don't remember if it is, and in fact our photographer might've even asked for authorization when he took the photos. He's a polite dude.)

It's private, but US copyright law [17 U.S.C. 120 (a)] "The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place."

The only other "iffy" part of KS would be if Raita didn't give his OK, but that's been given as far as I can tell.

Speaking of copyright Aura, the devs seems pretty cool with fan-made KS-inspired works, is a flash-based platform game OK? I wouldn't be using any of the art or music from KS, but all the non-Raita characters and all the names are copyrighted by 4LS.

As Aura already pointed out, the only backgrounds of any possible concern are the ones taken in Brown University. Since the campus is most likely private property, you would need to get permission to use pictures taken of the interior. Still, I doubt there will be much fuss from Brown.

So I saw this article on Japanator about a remake of an (apparently classic) eroge called White Album, which features something they call "squishy sprites." Basically, the sprites are still basically all stationary poses like in most VNs, but somebody figured out how to make them move in small, organic ways that make them look a lot more convincing than usual. It's pretty impressive actually, once the initial weirdness wears off.

I'm sure it would be impossible to do in Katawa Shoujo (between the time involved, technical expertise, platform, etc. etc.), but damn, wouldn't it be cool if KS got remade to look like that someday? Not to mention that similar quality voicework would be pretty awesome too.

(I was going to make this its own topic, but hopefully this thread is a slightly better place for it... maybe.)

Csihar wrote:So I saw this article on Japanator about a remake of an (apparently classic) eroge called White Album, which features something they call "squishy sprites." Basically, the sprites are still basically all stationary poses like in most VNs, but somebody figured out how to make them move in small, organic ways that make them look a lot more convincing than usual. It's pretty impressive actually, once the initial weirdness wears off.

I'm sure it would be impossible to do in Katawa Shoujo (between the time involved, technical expertise, platform, etc. etc.), but damn, wouldn't it be cool if KS got remade to look like that someday? Not to mention that similar quality voicework would be pretty awesome too.

(I was going to make this its own topic, but hopefully this thread is a slightly better place for it... maybe.)

I like the design. Probably not the best for KS but I think it has a great future in the VN industry. It will take some time to adjust but I think it would be an easy transition. Not something that would make it big in fan produced VNs because of the complexity but professional VNs could be quick to take this up.

This effect's been done before in various forms, most often in H CGs but also in sprites.

It really sucks.

The movements tend not to look very natural at all (the video in the link doesn't look much better than the official clips did on the main site, and the effect would just get worse on a bigger screen), the movement distracts from reading the text, and it also means at least some of the artistic quality inherent in still sprites and CGs has to be sacrificed. Also, the characters are given some amount of motion (breathing, expressions, hair sway), but not others that would be natural in a conversation or scene (whole-body movement, head turning, etc), which gives an overall very stilted feeling to interaction. Probably a shitty example to use, but School Mate's VN portion comes to mind - the characters actually have a much greater variety of movement to this being entirely 3D models, but still make things look more awkward than just using stills. It's just a bad inbetween point between artsy stills and scene-conveying animation, so I was pretty disappointed when they added this effect to WA's remake in all.

But of course, this is all subjective.

yea its a stupid gimmick that doesnt make the artwork any better
if you want movement go watch an animu

Csihar wrote:So I saw this article on Japanator about a remake of an (apparently classic) eroge called White Album, which features something they call "squishy sprites." Basically, the sprites are still basically all stationary poses like in most VNs, but somebody figured out how to make them move in small, organic ways that make them look a lot more convincing than usual. It's pretty impressive actually, once the initial weirdness wears off.

I'm sure it would be impossible to do in Katawa Shoujo (between the time involved, technical expertise, platform, etc. etc.), but damn, wouldn't it be cool if KS got remade to look like that someday? Not to mention that similar quality voicework would be pretty awesome too.

(I was going to make this its own topic, but hopefully this thread is a slightly better place for it... maybe.)

Realistic breast physics?!

uguu~

Caesius wrote: Realistic breast physics?!

uguu~

Wait...so breast really don't bounce like that?!?

It looks cool in that video but I can imagine getting sick of that effect really fast. The talking mouths I could live with but the jiggling and hair rustling just kind've looks thrown in like they're half assing their way out of actually animating the sprites completely.

Yeah, now that I've seen it a couple times it does have a bit too much of an "uncanny valley" effect, and I can definitely see it distracting from the text. Still, with a bit more refinement I can see that sort of thing making animation at least a bit more feasible for VNs than it is today - but then again, if the characters were fully animated and voiced it wouldn't really be a VN at all so much as just a choose your own adventure anime. VNs remind me more of Japanese light novels, where most of the focus is on the text rather than the art, which has more of a complimentary role, and I think that's a good thing... at least in theory.

I think I subconsciously just still want to see Shizune's boobs jiggle when she signs.

Csihar wrote:Yeah, now that I've seen it a couple times it does have a bit too much of an "uncanny valley" effect, and I can definitely see it distracting from the text. Still, with a bit more refinement I can see that sort of thing making animation at least a bit more feasible for VNs than it is today - but then again, if the characters were fully animated and voiced it wouldn't really be a VN at all so much as just a choose your own adventure anime. VNs remind me more of Japanese light novels, where most of the focus is on the text rather than the art, which has more of a complimentary role, and I think that's a good thing... at least in theory.

I think I subconsciously just still want to see Shizune's boobs jiggle when she signs.

School/Summer/Cross Days did this. Full animation with choice points.

It's horrible because it would require a budget of $Texas to pull off properly, leaving aside the insane amount of time required to simply produce all the animation clips required, and even then looks inferior to stills. The aforementioned games have very poor quality animation as a result, and the art quality (shading and character detail, for the most part) just can't measure up to stills.

this linked thing looks like pretty high-budget VN. I count this as a step closer to "good" but not a thing that would overthrow static sprites. But for me at least 50% of these effects suck. The boobs were nice, sometimes the lips were fine. But that's just about it.
I'd play this thing tough. I wonder after how long I would be fed up with the effects.

I don't think that this kind of animation is the future of VNs. It's like saying that supercars are the future of automobiles.
Or is it more like saying that sync-sound movies are the future of silent movies, which actually was the case? I'm not sure.

However, Animation is not really an innovative idea, it's just something that you can do if your budget is big enough.

You would notice that even in animes they don't really 'sway', so the squishy effect is actually VN-unique. It IS weird.

Honestly saying the eye blinking and lip movements are fine (I would absolutely enjoy it for a musical VN) but I dislike the swaying... not even in real life I see people 'bounce' that way. It's unnatural and unnecessary and yeah, you might as well make it an anime with some real movements instead.

I also notice that it might be popular with VNs that promote cuteness but could be bad for serious ones.

Seiken no Iganock will SUCK big time if these effects were put on the VNs, so this will never, ever be a universal effect. I think most people that enjoy VNs has an eye more on the art rather than the movement.

EDIT: On the other hand I wouldn't mind if they have animated scenery.

Panty Supervisor wrote:I don't think that this kind of animation is the future of VNs. It's like saying that supercars are the future of automobiles.

No, it's like saying that Honda Civics with aftermarket huge spoilers and fartcans are the future of automobiles. Sprite + background is cheap no matter what, and if you throw a ton of effects at it like WA PS3 does it's still cheap and uncanny as fuck on top of it.