Katawa Shoujo Forums

Act 1 · Emi · Hanako · Lilly · Rin · Shizune

Act 1:

Emi:

Hanako:

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Original Post:
I have spent much more time than I care to admit, attempting to compile an exhaustive list of the possibilities and consequences of every choice in the game. I finished every route without outside help, just an inordinate number of save files and gratuitous use of skip mode. I completed the game without walkthroughs and now, visiting the official forums for the first time, have seen quite a few walkthroughs and flowcharts floating around that are, well, just plain wrong in many cases (some are very good, don't get me wrong). I figure it's not a bad idea to put my compliation to good use and share some of what I've learned. I was originally disappointed that some decisions seem to have no impact on the rest of the story, but subtle changes to dialog and different parts of the same scenes definitely make it worth playing through different routes, and the game is much more enjoyable if you go through a few times without any extra help.

I can't decide if Emi's story is my favorite or if it's just the one that hits closest to home, but seeing as there is not a full scene flowchart available and given that it's a relatively simple one, I'll start there. Stylistically, the dim-colored decisions don't change anything, the orange ones are "danger" and the red ones are "bad." I'm using green for Emi (yellow for Lilly, purple for Hanako, red for Rin, and blue for Shizune) everywhere else. I don't know if there's an "accepted" color scheme for the girls, but this seems most natural to me.

Feedback is appreciated, especially if there are errors I may need to address.

Slick! I like the background and branding. Competition is a good thing

guest2 wrote:Slick! I like the background and branding. Competition is a good thing

Thanks! I wouldn't say I'm trying to compete, though, as much as simply trying to produce something with the best quality I can. I wanted to include the full list of scenes, in the order they appear in the in-game library. The stark white background I've seen in other charts is practically blinding in low-light, not to mention that a more colorful background is more than warranted by a game with so much personality of its own. Emi at her Emiest. I'm still undecided what artwork best captures each of the other girls...

Update: Evidently there can only be three attachments per post, so here is the second half of the set:

Lilly: Rin: Shizune:

That's a great format, but I wonder how it'll work applied to Rin's path.

uwa wrote:That's a great format, but I wonder how it'll work applied to Rin's path.

Haha yeah, I'm saving that one for later. Basically I've been starting with the order of scenes as they appear in the library, and move things up or down as necessary. Different versions of the same scene appear next to each other, and there is a definite "downward" flow through each route. It's just a question of just how convoluted the resulting flowchart will be...

geekahedron wrote:Haha yeah, I'm saving that one for later. Basically I've been starting with the order of scenes as they appear in the library, and move things up or down as necessary. Different versions of the same scene appear next to each other, and there is a definite "downward" flow through each route. It's just a question of just how convoluted the resulting flowchart will be...

Doing it that way works and doesn't duplicate too many scene for Emi or, I believe, Hanako. On Lilly's path, I think it means basically two columns for almost the entire three acts, with wrong choices sending you from the good column to the bad column (I believe there are three choices that all have to be made correctly to stay on her good path, along with a bunch of unimportant ones).

On Rin's path, however, I think you're going to end up with a dozen columns (without looking at it too closely; it might be even more). There are sets of decisions that build later menus -- every possible combination of answers to those sets of decisions will generate its own column. The sum of those decisions only changes one or two scenes (whether Hisao quits art club), but there's going to be a whole lot of boxes. I guess after that point they can all collapse back down, since none of it has an effect on the ending you get. But it's probably going to be a mess. The other option would be to treat all those choices as unimportant, then when you get the menus built by them, simply list the set of responses that keep you in art club, and those that don't, explaining that the player will never see all of them.

Act 1 would also have that issue -- something like six columns to capture every combination of the three responses (out of which you need two "right") that affect whether you can get on Shizune's path. There's less potential to simplify than Rin's path, though.

Er, sorry for all the text. But anyway, you're probably going to need to have flags (or some kind of variables) in your flowchart to reasonably portray Act 1 and Rin's path.

Yeah, there probably isn't any way around it, and I probably wouldn't want multiple instances of those scenes that always occur but never change anything.I need a better way to represent variable decision trees (Lunch Evolution Theory, In Her Own Image, etc). My current diagrams for those are, predictably, quite a mess, or at least seem to have much more redundancy than I would like. I still want the flow to go downward, though, so in lieu of flags and variables I'm playing around with colored/styled lines to follow. It still portends a bit of complication, but I'm enjoying unraveling these charts almost as much as unraveling the mysteries as I first read the stories.

Edit: As an example, I'm uploading a second version of Emi's chart, using the color of the arrow to represent the flow rather than columns of boxes. The result is even more linear than before, but easy to follow I hope? Just follow the same line out of every scene box as you entered it with. Rin's arc becomes a piece of cake with this method. I think I'll tackle Act 1 next, since it has the most wacky variables, and the girls' arcs are just plug'n'chug after that.

Edit: All attachments moved to first post in thread

geekahedron wrote:Edit: As an example, I'm uploading a second version of Emi's chart, using the color of the arrow to represent the flow rather than columns of boxes. The result is even more linear than before, but easy to follow I hope? Just follow the same line out of every scene box as you entered it with. Rin's arc becomes a piece of cake with this method. I think I'll tackle Act 1 next, since it has the most wacky variables, and the girls' arcs are just plug'n'chug after that.

That chart has a serious disadvantage: You can't see as much of Emi! Seriously, though, that's an interesting solution. It seems like instead of a shitload of boxes in Rin's path you'll have a shitload of colors, but it'll be interesting to see how it comes out.

Great looking flowchart, definitively wins for anything aesthetics.

Nice work. The only suggestion I have is to make it more explicit which scene begins each act.

Thanks for the feedback, guys! I've started putting together act 1 with the colored arrows, and I am definitely liking how it's working out... but it is very, very not colorblind friendly! I'm trying to make the various colored arrows line up, though, so they can be followed visually without having to rely on the colors, hopefully.

I'm also realizing that the library order of scenes simply doesn't make sense for the normal flow, so I'm probably going to abandon that idea to prevent a lot of "leapfrogging" and maybe go back to two columns in cases like, for example, "Meet Cute" and "Short Sharp Shock" which are two versions of the same event. The superseding goal is still to make the chart easy to read, and I quite pleased with how it is turning out.

I can probably add some kind of horizontal rule to mark the lines between the acts better, would that help? The act names were admittedly a bit of an afterthought so I'm sure there is a better way to include them than I have here.

So, here's a rough draft of Act 1's flowchart, laid out using colors instead of flags or variables! Like I said before, it's not very colorblind friendly, but otherwise I think it's hopefully pretty straightforward to follow. Just keep tracing the same colored line from scene to scene, and follow each decision straight down to your new color.

Each scene appears exactly once, although I had to deviate a little from the library order for the sake of sanity. This gives the chart a consistent downward flow, and also means that if you are attempting to find a certain scene or choose a certain girl, you can effectively follow the colored arrows backwards to see the decisions made to reach any point on the page.

The colors of the scenes doesn't have any impact on the flow, those are purely aesthetic, corresponding roughly to the girls they deal with. Similarly, the lines show the colors of the girl(s) you are favoring on each given path.

I've also added functional bands to delineate the prologue and the first act, which doesn't matter a whole lot in this chart, but the same idea can be used to separate acts in the charts for the individual girls. I didn't spend a lot of time hunting down the perfect background graphic, just picked something generic for now that doesn't include any of the main characters (to avoid appearances of favoritism).

Again, feedback and suggestions are very appreciated!

Edit: The image is a little too wide to preview nicely within the post, but you should be able to open http://ks.renai.us/download/file.php?id=2916 to view the entire thing.
Final edit: All attachments moved to first post in thread

Here's an updated version of Emi's chart using separate fields and backgrounds for each act. I rather like the overall effect.

Edit: All attachments moved to first post in thread

Did anyone find the harem ending?
http://rule34-data-000.paheal.net/_imag ... amichi.png
It doesn't exist but there are some nice artists to show what would happen

I find the sheer number of lanes and arrows in the Act 1 chart to be pretty confusing and hard to follow, but maybe that's just me. It works well in the Emi one, since there isn't as much going on. I don't have any good suggestions for how else you should do Act 1, though.