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.

Probably someday I will stop experimenting and go full canon, but in the process of developing you really want to change something, add something from yourself, and not just follow the tutorials of 4ls artists. Yet I’ve learnt something so my work would be more fitting in Katawa’s surroundings.

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:
  1. catspaw-katawashoujo@yandex.ru
  2. 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.

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.
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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
 

Sup fellas, ħomk here. Pickrandom, btw.

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.

Sunday, 22 June 2014

Developer`s blog: First blood/Дневники разработчиков: Первая кровь
 

Sup!
We’re starting to post some news from workshop of mod for Katawa Shoujo in format of developer diaries. And I’ll begin to lay down my thoughts here first, as the team’s editor.

But let’s get acquainted first.
But I bet you’re not interested in this story of my sickness, don’t you, Anon? All right, let’s get to the point.

After I begun working on very raw text that it was back then, I noted several things for myself (and they were approved by other team members later) that I didn’t like in Katawa Shoujo.
  1. Linearity and obviousness of passing
    After completing such novella as “Maji de Watashi ni koishinisanai” Katawa Shoujo seems straight and easy as cake, with the most “difficult” route of Shizune with just one particular choice! It’s just my opinion, of course, but a good ending must be a result of some work and uneasy choices, not just a choice between zero and one. Player should think hard beforehand, if this accidental word would backfire at him later. Good ending should be a gift to player who passed the game, not just a tick at “Extra” menu. And when the player gets neutral or bad ending he shouldn’t just load up the save and try opposite options of what he did before, he should sit down and think “What does she want in the first place?” This mutual return of the player and the heroine gives that fuzzy feeling after a successful pass.
  2. Cropping of the stories.
    It’s not a secret that Katawa Shoujo wasn’t that happy and cheerful in the first place, but it contained some crazy shit with Misha’s death, Hanako setting her own house on fire and Nurse having pedophile kinks. After release all of that hardcore was cut out and the story was roughly glued up. You can notice it the most in Hanako’s route where the whole act was torn out. Personally, I was missing this harsh reality and the team agrees with me I think. Of course, this reality was exaggerated but since we’ve started to play a game about disabled girls with lots of drama, it should pull up to the end of the story no matter what.
  3. Segregation of the routes.
    When you get on a route with one of the girls you start to see only her with her friend, others just disappear from the universe. It was sort of explained with the fact that routes were written by different people, but in beta on which I laid my hands recently, there was no such thing. Why did they cut it out? No answer to that. Anyway, excluding other characters in my opinion wasn’t the right choice.
I’ve decided to set myself the task to fix those points, perhaps not all of them, perhaps I’ll add or remove something else, but in any case I’ll do my best to follow it all through.

And now some specific info. Currently there’re three characters being drawn, and you already know two of them: Saki and Rika. And you can see the draft of the third one at our last screenshot in previous post. We didn’t think up with a name for her, so she’s called by a temporary name of Assym-chan.

Don’t lose the blog, we still have lots of thoughts in mind and the time is catastrophically short , so maybe in a short time I’ll make up some more pasta for you.

To be continued, text was written by Steel, the editor of team Cat’s Paw.

Longpost/Длиннопост
 

I hate non-free licence.

Here was pick about our mod, and it`s delete from here now. You can find it in popular imagebords or in cache Google.
Well, 4ls didn`t ask me to delete this; I just don`t want to get 4ls any occasion to fuck me up.

-- ħomk

Friday, 20 June 2014

Greetings/Приветствия
 

Welcome friends, our first post!

We are Cat`s Paw, about six months ago we were inspired by the visual novel Katawa Shoujo and decided to create a mod involving the beautiful and fan-fiction favorites Rika and Saki. We will be making modification routes for each character as you play them directly in Katawa Shoujo. We don't have a full description of what were doing so far, but as of now, we are making routes for Katawa Shoujo, so be prepared to feel.

This blog will show the progress for the mod and how everything will come into motion.


Please email us if you have any questions catspaw-katawashoujo@yandex.ru