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/jp/ - Otaku Culture

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6510843 No.6510843 [Reply] [Original]

Internal Struggles
Making a visual novel is a battle. Here at 4LS, it often is true both literally and figuratively. We have three contesting factions that constantly get into fights with each other when trying to cooperate: writing, art and directing. That's because making a VN is a game of resource control, and the only way to not lose is to not play. A VN is essentially a collection of pieces that we usually call "assets", assembled into a whole by the magic of code. Due to it being the most "expensive" asset to produce, art is treated as the finite resource. VNs are most often built around the idea of conserving art resources, reusing them where possible and cheating when you can. Everyone has to take into account the finiteness of art when working.

Thus, the bread and butter of any VN of KS's type are Two (or more) People Talking™ and the inner monologue of the protagonist. These are cheap to visualize: character sprites, backgrounds, you're done. However, whenever anything else than one of these happens (say, two characters kissing), there is a problem that has to be solved. Every line of the game script needs to be visualized, so it's up to the director to figure out the specific solution. The director can either bypass the issue, leaving the kiss to the reader's imagination (lame), or he could try to manipulate the existing art resources to create a passable representation of a kiss (uncanny), request a piece of art of the kiss drawn by the artists (expensive), or ask the writer to consider whether the kiss is really needed (problematic).

bla bla bla

ALL HOPE IS LOST

>> No.6510847

tl;dr this thread is fail

>> No.6510846

get out ks devs

>> No.6510853

Sounds like the director needs to man up.

>> No.6510851

Those KS devs and their huge egos

>> No.6510857

The necessity of resource-conservative visualization creates interesting problems to VN writers. We have to hold back ourselves with certain kinda of narrative description and place much more emphasis on dialogue and the protagonist's "inner monologue". As an inexperienced writer, I find this constraint very challenging to maneuver around and often end up making myself, our director, our artists or all three unhappy.

Now, directing emphasizes function over intrigue. An example from the development of KS: certain alternative outfit sprites that some characters get are drawn alternate poses as well, instead of drawing the outfit over the old sprite base. This was because drawing a new pose altogether was appealing to the artists. However, it made delta fly off the handle. The entire expression/pose palette, the "language" he had accustomed to using to the communicate the atmosphere, body language and mood of the characters was now unusable when they were in the alternate outfits. Similarly, artists might like to draw pictures of scenes or events that don't necessarily need them (in the opinion of the writers or director). This is always time not spent on drawing pictures that would be needed. And of course, sometimes the artists are just asked to do the impossible.

>> No.6510863

So, it's a battle. Writers want to do all kinds of quirky stuff, but then the director who wants to do all sorts of cool things with that will request bazillion pieces of art from the artists who want to draw altogether different quirky stuff and sooner or later, someone is driven to a panic attack, cursing everyone to the ninth hell or a week of heavy drinking. Essentially, this inherently conflicting setup solves itself in accordance to the attitudes and personalities of the creators, and their willingness to cause suffering to themselves and each others. Someone has to yield, either the writer who has to kill his brainchild, the artist who has to slave away more hours, the director who has to come up with alternative visualization or all three, when visualization is bypassed. I think we, when making KS, have a fairly high standard of visual representation, that is, we try to get as much stuff visualized as humanly possible (and often more). We also have a certain setup of personalities that amplifies this, leading us to often solve our own struggles in the way we do. We rarely lower the bar of our visualization standard, and usually prefer to either alter the script or get more art assets instead.

Now, this is not the only, and in my opinion, ultimately not even a very good way to go about making a VN. As with so many other things in this project, it just is the production model we ended up with and are sticking with. I think that a more experienced, a more functional team could have a better handle on how to deal with the problems I described. Meanwhile, we make do, and grind day after day with this project. At least when one of these arguments happen, it doesn't anymore lead to a catastrophic shitstorm like it used to. What do you know, even we learn.

>> No.6510870
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6510870

More cripple sex, less talk. One of the is mute and deaf, for God's sake.

>> No.6510874
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6510874

And this is why you only have one, maybe two, writers do the plot.

>> No.6510888

Remember when KS was about masturbating to crippled girls?

>> No.6510904

text was too long. can someone summarize?

>> No.6510913
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6510913

>>6510904
We can't make up our minds because we are too many writing and making CG is a bitch.

>> No.6510927

more Misha

>> No.6510933

>>6510913

More CG = More fapping to crippled girls then
I fail to see the problem

>The artists are bitching tho-

Kick the whiny fagnuts off of the team then and get new ones. Problem solved,it's nothing short of their fault if they can't do the expected workload.

>> No.6510937

>>6510933
>get new ones

Do you know how incredibly hard it is to find dedicated artists?

>> No.6510938

>>6510927
NSFW

http://shimmie.katawa-shoujo.com/post/view/1879

>> No.6510939

>leaving the kiss to the reader's imagination (lame)

Oh no you didn't...

>> No.6510957

This wouldn't happen if Misha got a route.

>> No.6510965
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6510965

>>6510937
This. Starting CG all over again from scratch is a very baaaaaad idea.

>>6510939
What? I think the writer had a point there. You just don't leave that sort of thing out. See picture.

>> No.6510966

>>6510957

But she does.
Remember Shizune is just a delusion.

>> No.6510984
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6510984

>>6510965
No kiss left behind.

>> No.6510990

>>6510937

At first I was going to say "Well fuck them,they arent paying them to bitch"

But then I remembered they're doing this for free.

And then I realized how silly my argument sounded.


And then I remembered why this project is going to fail.

>> No.6510991

Who gives a fuck, KS is not even a 4chan related project anymore. For all Iknow it's just some ridiculous OLEVN with pretty artwork.

tldr Get out KS devs.

>> No.6510998
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6510998

Relationship development moments should have CG too, particularly important ones, that is.

>>6510991
anon is legion!!!! XD

>> No.6511003
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6511003

>>6510998
lol

>> No.6511009

>>6510998
Sorry if you like reading shitty OLEVNs, most of us actually enjoy better stuff. Go back to animesuki or whatever place the current devs came from. I'm sure they will appreciate your efforts way more than we do.

>> No.6511027

This is why you have to do everything yourself, and why it's a bad idea to have a bunch of people full of themselves to work together.

>> No.6511029

>>6511009
That was not my point. My point was that you are acting like a meme spewing /a/ fucktard. It is understandable if you dislike something, because hey, I hate FSN and sequels, but don't feel the need to rub it on people's faces.

I was just statin that things like character interaction should have CG done. Not promoting KS or anything else. Did you not see my picture? Not that you would recognize it anyway.

>> No.6511052

Get out KS devs.

>> No.6511059

This thread is bad.

>> No.6511089

I support KS because I support OELVNs.

I'd like to actually read something where the writing isn't shit for once.

>> No.6511120

Original English Language Visual Novel. The stigma of bad writing hangs over this. Does this mean all of them are terrible? Of course not.

Allow me to remind you that back in the day, when eroges were a very fresh idea, writing was shit, and was not better than badly drawn porn with linear inane stories. It took nearly a decade before anybody even tried to write anything decent. Or hell, something that did not suck. Take a look at japans Jast's series, Tenchi-tachi no Gogo. By nowadays standards, it is CRAP, but it set the path for eroges of today and moe/harem anime and manga.

OLEVN need some time to mature. And get good writers behind them. Writing a compeling story without being cliche is harder than you might imagine.

>> No.6511125

>>6511089
Then KS isn't for you

>> No.6511137

Hey! It's OP bumping his shitty thread!

>> No.6511145

herp

>> No.6511148

derp

>> No.6511163

>>6511029
But you see, being a KS dev or not, you do need to get out. I posted on the original KS threads, even before the sticky was made, helped with ideas and whatnots. It was actually very excited about this project, way more than you are.

However, this project is no longer related to us. It's, as I said, just something done by a bunch of faggots from animesuki or whatever. I played Act 1, I'll say it had pretty art for sure. But that's it.

Honestly I don't even know why people here don't rage at the sight of KS.

Get out KS devs.

>> No.6511187

>>KS devs being babbys instead of working

When they started 3+ years ago they should have made all their staff members take up drawing as a hobby. They would have the skills necessary to produce all the art they wanted by now.

>> No.6511481

>>6511163
Good lord. Are you pulling the oldfag card on me? I was in /a/ when moot just made 4chan. It was I who translated the fucking Raita page that you see rolling around.

>>6511187
Actually, it's been over 4 years since the new people took over. I think the whole deal is nearly 5 years old, if you count the first and second group who started this thing.

>> No.6511496

summary: guys it's not our fault there are only two event cgs per character sex included, it's the other guys fault. Really.

>> No.6511523
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6511523

Every day until it is removed.

>> No.6511531

>>6510843
>>6510857
>>6510863


See kids? This is why independent projects that employ more than two people just plain don't work.

You see without someone providing funding you can't have someone who has enough status to be pulling the strings, so you have no leadership and no one can truly give the project direction. You need a boss who has the presence and the leverage to give orders, people may not like him but he is an essential part of any creative project.

When all involved are of "equal" status (with some hierarchy based on skill) you get squabbles and fights. The "director" can tell everyone to behave or get this done by a deadline or whatever but if he can't threaten people with losing a daily wage he may as well be pissing in the wind.

>> No.6511571
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6511571

>>6510991
>pretty artwork
Honestly, I think it's pretty low-tier, even for an amateur work. Just look at this CG for instance, there's a million things wrong with it.

I think the reasons KS is popular are these:
1) clever marketing: it was overhyped, then downhyped right before release
2) it's a generic school romance VN of some length that has the reputation of being made by 4chan, which along with the worthless gimmick of disability makes it sound more special than it really is

>> No.6511616

>>6511571
In other words, your average eroge fare.

>> No.6513733

So this won't get released anytime soon, right?

>> No.6513766

>>6513733
Always bet on 4LS.

>> No.6513820

>>6511163
Because we're not bitter that a project that we failed man up and work on to the end turned out better and more well liked then anything you could come up with.

>> No.6513822

>>6513733
End of this year or early next year

>> No.6513837

>>6513822
Absofuckinglutely ridiculous.
Doujin circles crank these things out twice a year for Comiket, and 4LS has been working on this for I don't even remember how long now.
I'M SO SICK AND TIRED OF ACT 1

>> No.6513858

Cirno Racing and Otome Function will both come out before KS.

>> No.6513861

that's because dev teams who get things done know how to shut the fuck up and do it
seriously, if you're on a team, you listen to your leads
also helps if you have things like deadlines
WE NEED TO GET IT DONE BY _______

>> No.6513871

I think this project shows us how creative the internet can be, yet what troubles that brings with you. Getting a long with a large group of other people over a long time, especially if they're from all over the world, always brings difficulties.

I'm looking forward to KS as much for the story as to see how far such a project can go.

>> No.6513881

>>6513837
I heard from Raide that most of the artists are underageban fangirls. Of course they will have drama with a bunch of PMS gaiafags doing the arts.

>> No.6513951

>Doujin circles crank these things out twice a year for Comiket

There are a LOT of Doujin circles, you have no idea how long it takes on average to make a game.

Also, stuff at comiket is SOLD. Money is a powerful incentive to buckle down and get something done. When a project is just something you do in your free time for fun, then naturally it's going to be slower.

>> No.6513992

It's quite depressing how much /jp/ despises this VN for no reason.

They're actually crafting something that isn't generic Western garbage (and all the problems that come with it), and instead of embracing it as something that could give light to the genre for the better for worse, they shrug it off as standard fare.

>> No.6514016

>>6513881
Raide is a good artist!

>>6513992
That's what you said about this game 3+ years ago Anon.

>> No.6514018
File: 159 KB, 440x435, Marseille.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6514018

>>6514016
>ZUN!bar

>> No.6514019

>>6513951
>you have no idea how long it takes on average to make a game
Dohoho, are you so sure?
honestly, I'm not aware of how long it takes to make a VN, but I'm very intimately acquainted with how long it takes to make a video game in general.


>Money is a powerful incentive
Doujin circles generally start out making either a loss or breaking even. It's only after they get popular that money starts to roll in.

>> No.6514027

>>6514018
Dat Marseille.

But I'm going to bed now. Good night Anon.

>> No.6514048

>>6513992
We WANT to like it, that's the problem. Nothing would give us greater pleasure than to have a game that lives up to the original premise and the demo certainly fulfilled that.

It's just that the longer things go on, the more it seems like some kind of lumbering Frankenstein's monster, with everyone adding parts and taking away other parts, so rather than being something coherent, it'll be something where it's obvious that you can see the stitches holding it together, either in the difference in artwork, or how different characters are handled by different writers.

In the end, we worry that the most disabled girl of all will be a schizophrenic offspring of all their efforts.

>>
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