Mini-update.
I have no errors during full-first-act scrpit compiling. Yaho-o...
Debug in procces.
--ħomk
Thursday, 21 May 2015
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Fat-as-mom update
> Honestly, this is indecent, they’ve found a large group of followers that support them and wait for the smallest bit of news or at least some info about them being alive.
Sorry, bro(
Okay, at last we have the news, and a lot of them. Briefly: the text is done, the mod manager is done, the BG’s, CG’s and sprites are in progress.
Amply: text
We were absent for a long time due to idling writers. Specifically, we’ve easily done the beginning and the middle of the text, but the ending has become a pain in the ass. But the inspiration has found us and the text was born. All in all it’s not bad, kind of. Now it’s up for editors to do their job. Figuratively, we have the bones and during the editing we'll add some meat on it and it’ll be cool. And after that it’s artists’, composers’ and coders’ turn. — BlackJack
Phew. At this moment there are 226 955 symbols, a half of them is in the script format, a half is not. The text itself is smaller in volume, of course. Honestly, I am surprised by what’s been going on here. How long were we silent? For four months, I think. During the three of them I have been writing the last five pages of Rika's route, while the team was on idle. Three months were spent for five pages... though I am satisfied by what came out. I’m not sure about the others, but I really am. Mayakovsky was right about dull fish flopping about. — ħomk
Amply: arts
There was a tiny problem: one of our artists has been painting with a computer mouse since he had no alternative. So we’ve made an announcement in our groups in vk.com, and several wonderful people have funded the purchase of the graphics tablet we’ve sent to our artist.
Infinite thanks to:
- Алексей Голубков
- Андрей Парамонов
- Антон Стародубцев
- Николай Хикков
- Рилос Дельмс
- Семён Лебедев
Amply: tech
First about this screenshot. Our mod mostly doesn’t alter original files; instead, players will choose which version to play. This method we can use thanks to our python-coder nini who’s made it, and it's cool, yahoo!
Technically, you can choose the new game to jump either to original imachine, or to our label. I think that it'll increase code’s flexbility: original Katawa has one group of files and the mod has the other.
As I’ve said before, we...okay, I decided to make mod manager for KS. To give myself some practice in the shell.
Manager is developed for linux. It's a GNU/GPL tar.gz-package; inside of it there’s a shell-script (#!/bin/bash). Dependencies: sed, tar, wget, perl-rename.
Windows porting is in progress, though whether it will be completed or not is a surprise.
Why .tar.gz? Because I couldn’t figure out .deb., and I couldn’t find the last package for .rpm. If someone wants to try that, then email catspaw-katawashoujo@yandex.ru
If someone wants to have fun and port it for Windows, email the address above.
What a mod manager can do
- Install/remove
- catspaw's mod
- CGainmated1227's mod
- music from Ajoura (it used to be attached to ru-lang, I have it separated from translation now, because the music’s size is several times larger than ru-lang files).
- Install/remove
- spanish language
- french language
- japanise language
- russian language
- Restore the original game
- Analyze, what is installed/removed
- Decompile all .rpyc files
- Pack/unpack data.rpa
A somewhat muddled epilogue
We'll post more now, there'll be more updates. The team has finally gotten out of session and studies hustle and is beginning to rock. And we have a new, additional artist: RaiineRand.
P.S. BlackJack has presented me a trinket with the image of Emi, a first one in my whole life :3 I couldn't be more happy.
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Что есть и что будет / What is and will be
What’s up, guys!
I`m Freon. My role as a part of a Cat’s paw mod team is writing Saki's route and creating her integrated personality. In one of my previous posts I wrote about process of Saki`s story conversion. And now - about me and all the other stuff.
«Memory tour»
ħomk: Zero of all, if we aren`t posting anything - it doesn`t mean, that we are goofing off or have disappeared completely. It means that I just have nothing to tell people that are waiting for the mod, except for «We`re working on it».
Freon: It`s difficult to fix someone else's work. Especially if it's a creative work. Initially we had two unfinished routes, five wry backgrounds, a few crooked sprites and a sea of ideas, desires and ambitions, as well as ardor, teen maximalism, graphomania, enthusiasm, and a couple of bottles of beer. Not that we needed all that for the work, but once you get locked into a serious mod developing, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
ħomk: During these... six months or so... we’ve gone through a series of writing and rewriting of the script. It is becoming better. I guess. Now we have 150K+ text characters (code not included, although everything that could be, has been rewritten into a script file). The text of the mod starts from Tuesday and continues smoothly until Sunday.
It's worth mentioning, that my idea (of not altering the original scenes) has failed. The story itself forces us to integrate the mod’s text into the existing plot. For example, we slightly changed the scene of Hisao meeting Lilly, and now Hisao mentions Rika in their dialogue. And there also will be a new background for school’s corridors. That alteration is made for several reasons, and one of them is the story line. It is mentioned that Hanako steps on the squares of a certain color, but there were no squares there. We noticed it and thought: why not fix that? And it also would be nice to go HD, but let’s leave that for now.
Freon: As Saki's and Rika's routes are being written by three different authors, it's difficult to smoothly integrate their stories. Of course, cooperation is good, but it's also very difficult to coordinate. Sometimes there were three or four different versions of the one scene simultaneously, which created a horrible confusion and butthurt. But we enjoy the process nonetheless. Recently the major changes in the story have occurred. We were joined by a new author, who offered us a new vision of the story, from the very beginning to the very end. Because of that we have to rewrite some parts of text. Thus we have delayed the date of release. And what also caused us to delay it, was the absence of productive artists.
«Multimedia»
ħomk: About the music: we don’t wanna add all of our good stuff into the first act. Well, maybe there'll be main themes of the heroines, but I can’t promise anything. We’ll see how everything comes out.Graphics. It's still complicated. Our neat authors are doing their job, but slowly, because a) there are not enough of them; b) it's difficult. I think that the BG’s and CG’s could be called the greatest bumps on the road. Sprites, for example, are ready, and those, that are not, could be completed within a week tops (according to cometodaddycome). Oh, and a wonderful artist has joined us recently, picrelated.
«Distant future»
Freon: I don't know neither our, nor mod’s fate. Perhaps we'll be shut down by 4ls's guile, and we'll abandon the mod or postpone the development for better times. Or we'll release mod, but only the first act. Or release the complete version. I don’t really know. But what I do know is the fact that for now we are not going to give up and are working hard on our offspring. When will we lift the veil? ASAP.
«P.S.»
ħomk: And I have an idea to make a package (.exe-file for Windows), that will sort out, which Katawa-related games/files user has installed and will add/remove mods on command.Right now there are original KatawaShoujo, ru-patch, CGainmated1227's patch, HD-patch, and soon there will be (or not) alpha, ru-version of it, and, finally, our mod. User is going to get insane in the process of installing everything.I would like to simplify this procedure. Procedure of installing, not going insane. But it’s going to happen in a distant future, when either our mod or alpha versions are be released. That’s it...
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
Проблеск света в пучине недопонимания / Glimpse of light in the abyss of misunderstanding
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.
Saturday, 6 September 2014
I wanna CHAOS - Ajoura
Greetings, viewers.
In the light of recent events you may think we had gone underground. But the situation is still under control, the work is in progress, and that's why we want to tell you something important. Well, by "we" I mean myself, the team's composer, the one snarking in comments.
Oh, I nearly forgot to introduce myself. Ajoura, nice to meet you.
What shall I tell you? Looks like my colleagues already cleared all the matters for you, and I don't actually want to repeat their words. That's why let's get to business - let me show you demo versions of my pieces written specially for Saki and Rika, one for a person. Disclaimer: These are demo versions made only using computer. Later they'll be remade using real-life instruments, final release might also be totally unrecognizable.
For some reason Saki immediately was well-received by her root writer, and even our pernickety editor rated it good. And for me it was a nice opportunity to test-drive my new Ondes Martenot soundbank. Such a good instrument, but nearly impossible to find in real life. That's why we'll just use samples and be happy.
Rika had been remade two times exactly. At first she appeared as creepy and dark as a grim reaper, so our editor asked me to rebuild her. Even now he sees something unfinished in her, but it is also a signal reminding about the need to polish and finish the demo-version. Which is exactly what we need.
You may have noticed that my pieces are written in style not like NicolArmarfi's (who is an original KS composer, by the way) That's because before starting to make music for mod I've already established some iconic style gimmicks, which I need to develop and keep afloat. That's why Saki and Rika's themes are made in a less romantic and more minimal style.
This is basically all I can tell you about the music for mod, Stay tuned, wait for fresh news, and remember: kind glances of yours make Saki and Rika smile.
As well as me. :D
Tuesday, 2 September 2014
Dev Logs: Second Encounter/Дневники разработчиков: Второе пришествие
Good news everyone! Team editor, Steel, is back on the groove!
First and the most important piece of news: beta version of first act of our mod is coming soon! And I mean - very, very soon. But I'd like to warn you that we've created a couple of different versions of first act and not yet decided which one shall we use. That's why in beta version you may see some scenes that may not present in final release.
We know how you want to learn anything about our future mod, and we shall grant your wish.
This is a piece of text from the version of first act, which will (probably) appear in beta version. You could call it pre-alpha. We intentionally left old versions of sprites in this video, everything is already polished and finished - it's just for history, as we can say.
And last but not least: 4ls have finally got us. Yes, that's how it really goes. 4ls really oppose our mod development. Recently our artist was forced to delete some of her works from DeviantArt because of 4ls complaint. It did not surprise to me, but without any conversation such aggressive movements are absolutely unacceptable. I had a better opinion on them. That's why Ajoura, Freon and I are ready for a conversation and offer 4ls to discuss all the claims in Skype with their representative. We also have a professional translator on our side, who, I suppose, will help us to bring our differences to compromise.
Saturday, 30 August 2014
Stuff1
Sup, guys.
We started to look into our pre-release first act and realized that we have over 100+ pages of text.
Well, that's all what we want to say, whatever. We're alive and keep working.
That's all folks.
We started to look into our pre-release first act and realized that we have over 100+ pages of text.
Well, that's all what we want to say, whatever. We're alive and keep working.
That's all folks.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
Come to me
Good day, dear reader.
Since i am, cometodaddycome, the only artist of our project I have the honor to cover all sides of the artistic component of our mod.
Along with the development of the plot the characters appearance changes as well: their drawing, body structures, color selection, etc. I think it’s time to finally officially explain about changing Rika’s hair color and making smaller Saki’s breasts than in the original artwork.
When I was just invited to the project there was only one Rika draft and cute ħomk’s sprites.
I didn’t ask why Rika’s hair became dark-blue because nobody was even bothering about this in the beginning. Then I thought that maybe it’s for the best because the less resemblance to 4ls characters, the more changes are made and therefore it’s more original! But with increasing publicity about the mod and because of some controversial comments, we had to conduct a survey, where most of the people decided that we should follow the canon. We didn’t disappoint those people so we took into account their wishes. Rika became with white hair again but we’ve decided to leave eye color neutral – almost brown, because the question of her albinism is still open.
Speaking of Saki, I want to say that her appearance was changed as well: haircut became much longer, breast size was decreased (in fact, it’s an aesthetics question – she just looks better this way, as some of the developers think so), eye color was changed, but only for a short moment.
Summing up I shouldn’t forget to mention that even though sprites are steadily being created, backgrounds and CGs are not, because we couldn’t find appropriate artists for that task and of course because I forgot how to draw pictures with a background about 7 years ago. So we would really use some help from an animator, who would create videos for each route. But the problem is that our mod doesn’t have a completed first act, so we don’t have a translated version, only a Russian one. This is why we may need some people with a good knowledge of Russian, so they’ll understand what’s what. If such people are still there, they know where to write:
- catspaw-katawashoujo@yandex.ru
- cometodaddycome.deviantart.com
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Что нам стоит рут построить?/Where there's a will, there's a way
Sup, fellas, its ħomk and Freon here — authors of Rika’s and Saki’s routes respectively.
When you find something new on the Internet, first thing that comes to mind is “and what’s it about?” I’ll try to answer this question about our mod.
First of all, why Saki and Rika?
ħomk:
Basically, because they have a fan base, and it’s a sin not to use it. Those characters are familiar to the players… well, in one degree or another. They have fanfics written about them (Rika, Saki, both), they have appearance, story, anyway, they have a start.
There’s a downside as well: how much Cat’s Paw may deviate from original characters? As a result of intense debates the solution was made: leave the characters as they were created by 4ls. Saki is a cheerful girl with spinocerebellar ataxia; Rika looks in my opinion as an impudent, but mindful girl with a bad heart. We don’t have a consensus about her albinism yet; however her appearance will be preserved.
There’s a downside as well: how much Cat’s Paw may deviate from original characters? As a result of intense debates the solution was made: leave the characters as they were created by 4ls. Saki is a cheerful girl with spinocerebellar ataxia; Rika looks in my opinion as an impudent, but mindful girl with a bad heart. We don’t have a consensus about her albinism yet; however her appearance will be preserved.
Freon:
I had to create Saki almost from scratch. And I probably wouldn’t have accomplished this without my comrade Steel. Initially we had a fanfic on our hands that developed the 4ls idea further to almost complete first act. But in process of creating Saki only things that were left: scraps in form of prepositions and punctuation marks. Saki’s behavior had to be completely rewritten, and with it all the text was slaughtered.
ħomk:
Third girl, that we’re planning to add as well, is still a mystery to me. Steel and Freon are doing something with her, but don’t show anything. Oh well, it’s going to be a surprise even for me.
And another question pops up immediately: good, stories and girls behaviors are preserved. And what with the style of the mod? Could I understand that I'm playing Katawa Shoujo?
Tell you the truth: I don’t know. Let’s sort it out.
-
Music:
Our beautiful composer has written an entirely new part of the music for Rika and I think it’s fitting to the novel awesomely good. It’s a bit more complicated with Saki, and I can’t promise anything but yeah, I would like to see new quality compositions. I think Cat’s Paw will support me on this. -
Graphics:
It turned out that it’s extremely difficult to find an artist, and apparently the graphical part would require the most time. Anyway, appearance of the mod would match with the original. Someday. -
Storylines structure:
Well, no comments here yet, here’s why. I have a couple of ideas about making the gameplay more natural and diverse; I’ll lay them down in future posts. Need some time to think them over. -
Story:
I’m aware of a huge base of fanfics, I’ve read some of them and going to read some more. But routes are going to follow a new story and there are several reasons for this.First and main reason: I don’t think you can just pick other people’s ideas, compile them together and show as your own creation. However, I think it’s valid to observe plot twists of other authors, maybe even seek for cooperation. For example, first act grew out from themocaw’s fanfic , heavily changed, but still following his story somehow.Second, equally important reason: readers are familiar with existing works. Third: creation is a process of self-expression rather than creation of work. And I like to work. -
Dates:
By the end of summer – beginning of autumn we’re going to release a mod for the first act, probably with some unimportant bugs. I wouldn’t suggest waiting for main storyline though. Why? We don’t have enough experience in game developing, even for such genre as visual novel. Work will go for a long time, and let the full release of mod be a surprise or some unrealizable process, rather than pointless and empty promises like “wait a little more”.
And something else. It was a pleasant surprise for the whole team that artwork of our artist spread out through the forums. Thank you guys, I guess. Therefore we’ll delight you more with arts than posts in blog.
By the way, if everything goes well, soon there will be music.
Saturday, 28 June 2014
Can we be? - ħomk
Well, Steel has introduced himself, so I'll keep it up, but more briefly.
It's me writing this because the whole mod is my fault. In some sense it’s an excuse to 4LS for our creativity.
I decided to discourse about the legality of Cat`s Paw`s being.
Katawa Shoujo registered under a non-free license CC BY-SA-ND.
First of all, I do pay big attention to licensing. Free (and not really) programs are making my life better and easier, and I respect the author’s right to choose a license of his own liking. But there are a number of cases where this particular violation has an excuse.
Okay, so where and what did I violate. CC BY-SA-ND license says that KatawaShoujo can distribute on three conditions: Attribution (BY), under the same license (SA) and without any changes (ND).
Creating the routes of Rika and Saki is a violation against the last condition. I admit it: mod changes the game, if we speak about the letter of the law, so it is.
But, I’ve decided to violate it, and here’s why.
The point of CC ND is that if every regular citizen will edit Picasso, there will be no Picasso left in the long run. Art expresses personal feelings of the author and it’s awfully bad for somebody else to change them: they’re personal.
A perfect illustration here would be Howard Roark. He has forbidden making changes in his own blueprints not because those changes were bad, but because these were his blueprints.
Let’s get back on the point. The whole mod for Rika/Saki is another branch that’s connected to main plot only at one point: the Thursday. Overall, all of my editing relates to the code, which of course is not a personal feeling and I think that licensing of the code under CC *-ND-* doesn’t correspond to the spirit of the license.
I didn’t edit the text. I didn’t change the lines, I just created a single point and everything else is just a consequence.
As an example of rude violation of the license I can suggest a mod from CGainmated1227 which completely rewrites the story semantically and linguistically. In my opinion that’s a direct violation of the license and dude, that’s a shame.
And my only violation as a result of this view of CC BY-SA-ND is to create a single branch point in the plot. I think I can accept such a sin.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)