Katawa Shoujo Forums

Enough with the good news, here's some stuff you don't care about.

http://katawashoujo.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... -done.html

Implementing a new custom feature into the engine is not good news. You heard it here first.

Personally while I don't like to roll back and re-choose after making a deliberate choice, sometimes VNs give me two choices that seem totally the same when written down, but lead to very different story paths (I can only imagine that the writer was imagining the phrases to have very different tones of voice, which of course doesn't come across without the protagonist being voiced) -- in these cases I love rollback for giving me the option of reading both paths and figuring out what the writer meant for each before continuing, without the fiddlyness of saving and reloading multiple times.

If you take care to make the intention of each option clear, then I have no problem with readback-only mode :3

;__; that isn't a reward

So where the hell is rollback-tan?

I personally prefer readback over rollback anyway.

Superior function is superior. Congratulations on accomplishing this!

Interesting blog post, You are basically telling us about a particular limitation of the engine and how you overcame it. That reminds me that Ren'Py is actually the component of KS that will perhaps live longer than the actual game. I have so many questions to the authors that I tend to forget considering this.
In that case, is it improper to ask whether you would release the technical details of this modification of the normal Ren'Py engine for future aspiring 'Visual Novelists' to use?

In fact, I believe a technical documentation of the game would be interesting to see, not only to give justified credit to the programming or the conducting of the soundtrack, but also to give incentive to people who are interested in following in your footsteps and might aim to surpass what Katawa Shoujo wants to be, or to deter overly enthusiastic people from pestering you about how to craft a Visual Novel.

;-;

I'm rather moved. Thanks so much for putting so much thought into making KS as great an experience as it can possible be.

Deimos wrote: In that case, is it improper to ask whether you would release the technical details of this modification of the normal Ren'Py engine for future aspiring 'Visual Novelists' to use?

[22:42:19] <@Delta_Kurshiva> man that blog post was all about how you have to think up your own shit and get it done
[22:42:34] <@Aura> perhaps you can tell him that
[22:43:01] <@Delta_Kurshiva> and the bigger problem is that KS' code isn't designed to be reusable
[22:43:21] <@Delta_Kurshiva> all the extensions depend on each other, you'd have a hell of a time separating them out
[22:43:42] <@Delta_Kurshiva> and THEN you'd have engine extensions for RP6.10, which is two versions out of date right now.
[22:45:21] <@Delta_Kurshiva> tl;dr you'd have to read, understand and recreate anyway, and if you're willing and able to do that you'd be better off brewing your own.

Basically you can ask me for hints on how I managed to do something in a general way, but if I just put that stuff up for download people would not be able to get it to run easily anyway and would bugger me with even more questions.

delta wrote:

Deimos wrote: In that case, is it improper to ask whether you would release the technical details of this modification of the normal Ren'Py engine for future aspiring 'Visual Novelists' to use?

[...]

Basically you can ask me for hints on how I managed to do something in a general way, but if I just put that stuff up for download people would not be able to get it to run easily anyway and would bugger me with even more questions.

I see, blame me for being a total philistine in the technical arts if that question was somewhat naïve. But thank you for answering it anyway!

When I first played act one, I was annoyed that I couldn't rollback to pick the alternative choice. I thought that was a technical limitation of the Ren'Py. Now that I read the blog post, I know better, both concerning the reason for that limitation, and that the limitation is actually a good thing for reader experience. The part about "save scumming" reminded me of all the times I constantly reloaded the level in various games, trying to beat it from the save point, when I was better off restarting from the beginning.

I wonder how the new rollback changes user experience. A quirk of the old method was that it seemed like a technical limitation; it's plausible that Ren'Py was unable to rollback to a special state. Depending on how the choice screen looks in the new rollback, it may be more obvious that the creators purposefully chose to disallow "branching off" during rollback. For example, if during rollback the reader selected choice is highlighted, and the alternatives grayed out, then it would be more obvious. An alternative that would look more innocent is to have the choice screen look exactly the same during rollback as it does normally, except that the choice buttons are inactive. Doing it this way, it's plausible that the developers left the Ren'Py engine untouched, but it has the disadvantage of not being clear about which choice was made.

Damn the accepted be different row row fight the power!

I dislike the rollback function, due to it ruining immersion. If I make a decision I expect that it will provoke consequences both positive and negative. Though giving others the option to choose their play style is likely a wise idea.

loved the way reading old text worked in KS and double love the idea of being able to go back before decisions without them undoing.


so, ah, good job guy.