Hello everybody, I am BlackJack, Cat's Paw's mod editor. Let's begin with the fact that I have joined the team a little bit later that it has been formed, somewhat in July, and realized that there were several things that should be altered. First of all - the organizational issues, second - our policy towards 4LS, and third - how we position our mod. The inner structure of our team is our own business, but the second and third points are to be discussed below. This post is also good for rejuvenation of this blog 'cause we've been silent for too long.
How does the idea of fan mod (that is exactly how we position it, surely not as the official expansion, by all means) creation gets born? Several people complete the game and get immersed into it by it's atmosphere, deep characters, qualitative script and the amount of overall work. And they share the same thought: "What if one tried to breathe a new spark into the game? I see a nice fan's idea over there, so why not implement it?" That is how these kind of mods begin their way. I agree that at first the team had begun their work without looking back at any restrictions or licenses. We felt at ease, probably too much, and have allowed ourselves statements that 4ls and those supporting them did not like very much. We were extremely surprised that devs were all against our mod and we got the feeling that there's a deep misunderstanding among foreign Katawa Shoujo fans and devs about what we do. The list of facts below can probably lighten the mood and reduce misunderstanding.
- We are not changing character’s natures;
- We’re not rewriting 4ls’s texts, we are integrating the events before or after some certain scenes, and we’re trying to do that as organically as possible, so that player could continue the game and complete any other route without moving to new character’s routes. We’re avoiding discrepancies within the plot;
- We’re not changing any lore behind any character, except for Hisao, who gets some new facts about his life, but that is vital for the plot;
- We’re not repainting original sprites and we’re not changing original music.;
- We’re not modifying the game, and the modification will not be distributed in a form of a complete and assembled game like “Katawa_Shoujo.exe”, but in a form of a patch that would add new, our own sprites, CG’s, texts. User downloads that file and installs it, mixing the new stuff with the one he already has. Imagine the situation: I’ve downloaded the free game and found a typo in it. I open the editor, correct that typo in script file and share the script on my website as an “edited script”. Is that really such a terrible violation of the license?; ħomk: I have to admit, that I cocked the dick, when I wrote Canwebe. Anon was right, when he talk, that mod as fileset is legal. Confess(
- We’re not trying to own or steal any of the 4ls’s intellectual property, and highly appreciate all the work they’ve done and the long path they walked, we’re giving the developers all the credits for their game.
- We’ve preferred a full-scale game modification form of a story expansion over writing a fanfic or making a video because it allows better immersion and offers much more possibilities for players.;
- ħomk: Separately, a few words for themocaw: your work was an initial push. I think, that Steel's post was a deliberate misinformation. He deliberately showed the old text, for what - you can kill me, but I dunno. Matter of fact, we`re working as programmers works: you have the blank, maybe, another's authorship, and start doing it work. From themocaw's text there is nothing left, as planned. Because we are creators of the mod.
- IMHO, the modification brings a lot of profit for the original game and it’s developers. It maintains interest for it, and is not being developed for commercial purpose. it’s development is inspired by our love for the original game and by what it teaches us, and also by our wish of “prolonging game’s life” and widening the Russian fan base. Finally, try to imagine world where fan modifications were restricted. How long would Oblibion’s or Skyrim’s fame last without fan modifications? Or remember DoTA, or Diablo II and so and so on..
- By the way, at this moment we’re not using original English texts, instead working with the Russian translation of the game made by Novellae Subs team, which is not official itself since it’s not included into the game for some reason, including Act 1 that was originally translated by Honyaku Subs who had a permission from 4ls, but has suffered major changes due to some mistranslations and so on.
We hope for your understanding. We love your work and respect it, and, I repeat, we’re not changing neither a single word that your characters say, nor a single action they make, except for main character, for obvious reasons.
It's obvious that our relationships with devs will probably never be friendly, but, maybe our work won't cause so much rejection by novel's fans that support 4ls in this matter right now.
ħomk: E-e-e, next post, I think, will be about our statistic: what we do, what we had done.
