MessyAcademy
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V0.20 Hype post #1
🕑 Added 2022-05-12 05:53:40 +0000 UTC[As the headline picture suggests, there might be possible spoilers related to episode 5 content coming with v0.20's release of the game. We're keeping some surprises from fans, but if you prefer a blind playthrough, you may wish to avoid going any further with this post.]
It's been a long time coming and we hope the hype will be well worth the wait! Before any images for hype, I'd like to bring up some facts with episode 5 development wise...
Episode 5 to date is our largest episode and I highly doubt we'll see another episode this jam packed with not only over 20,000 word count included, among many choices that'll impact outcomes and have some meaningful results from them, but also the sheer amount of cg art in a single episode hasn't reached this amount before!
This episode marks the end of the common route, which simply put.. It means moving forward with the rest of the game. You'll be directly focused on route content revolved around a certain girl of your choice. Think of the rest of the game as building your relationship with this girl and further focus on the main academy story unfolding as episode 5 really kicks things into high gear!
Now, before I bore anyone with more text... ^^" Let's jump into some visual hype!
Lola is a key star in episode 5, while we've seen her briefly pop up as a tease in episode 4. It'll be fully displayed in episode 5 for learning just who this Lola girl is exactly. Some of you might already have a decent idea of this character from our old releases before the Ren'py engine swap, but there should be little surprises to learn about her even for old time fans. :P
One thing that has been a plus in our awkward development leading to this point, is that originally Lola wasn't going to have this much detail put into her cosplay outfits. Mainly having the wigs and eye color contacts to really sell the character being cosplayed. Of course we could've added these in at a later date, but this is one perk to the delay of said content.
Inspiration that really helped with this visual addition for Lola's outfits came from "My Dress-up Darling" anime series, mainly just with picking up some general ideas about the world of cosplay that I sadly lack a ton of knowledge in, which led to more digging around and learning more about from that. I don't try to directly take what I see in other media forms, so don't expect Lola as a character to act like someone completely different. ^^"
Trying not to spoil too much... But we can clearly see that Lola is still very forward, perhaps a little too forward. :P
Episode 5 will kick things off pretty quickly and with the pacing of the scenes and context. It should keep everyone fully engrossed and before you know it, it'll be over without feeling like there's moments that drag on for far too long we hope!
This cg scene was originally finished back in mid 2021 I believe, but of course the wig and eye color was different before. Here it matches her new sprite additions and we can get some ideas tossed around for what is going on, but I'll leave the guessing up to you amazing fans. :P
Imagine having your parents walk in during this situation! "Are you winning son?"
While we'll have to wait a tad bit longer to learn the answers of just who is "winning" in this situation. :P We can see that Bridget will appear in episode 5 and as promised in episode 4 when briefly chatting with her, it'd seem that maybe Brandon took her up on that offer to check out the gaming club after all.
I only want to share the default variant for this scene, but there's quite a bit for this one and to generate some hype around it... There's a little bit of animation to be seen in-game during it!
I think the less I say about this one the better.
Funny little mention with this cg scene, back when it was being created and sharing it with Artie. He thought it'd be okay to reveal the goods for Juliet with the context of this cg scene, but sadly I decided against that idea. ^^" I guess my line of thought was a mix of teasing and also keeping Juliet feeling "pure". (Least for the time being anyways... <.< )
Naturally we haven't seen too much of Juliet since her introduction in episode 3 and so I really want to give a good sense of her character, now that we have a decent idea of her. We can focus on seeing more about her before choosing if you'd like to learn even more about her possibly by the end of episode 5.
There's someone we have yet to meet that we'll be seeing really soon! That's all I can say for now, but hopefully this brief highlights for episode 5 are enough to generate some hype as we count the days down! ^^
Artist credits as always goes to Lisa for any sprite art, MarxeDP and AjoseMp for any cg art seen!
Comments
Thanks for the detailed reply! ^^ Some pretty good ideas mentioned and some of these things will probably be considered along the way. :P I won't confirm anything set in stone exactly yet, but for the time being to test things out development schedule wise. We'll try out the 45 day release cycle to see how that generally feels for the team. (See if any required work can be tackled during that given time and if it's too stressful or if it feels okay.) Of course if we try that out for a release or two here in the summer months and it doesn't seem to be working. We'll be sure to announce any changes to how we'll handle releases from there. Very excited for the content coming out! ^^
Been more than a year since Chapter 4😳, lol. I'm just glad to see you finally managed to get things worked out. But perhaps this is a better way to do releases? Instead of trying to set some estimated release date that you may or may not be able to follow through on, perhaps a 6 month to yearly release schedule would work better for you? Minecraft, for example, generally gets a major update once per year, so maybe that would work best for you in terms of chapter releases as well? This way, you have plenty of time to work on things, without piling on needless amounts of stress. And if a bugfix or patch is needed; or you simply want to add a bit of bonus content (be they minigames, side stories, a player library function [where you can listen to the game's music files, view CG images you've previously unlocked in-game, look at the profiles of the game's characters {initially only Brandon's profile would be available, with subsequent character interactions unlocking more character profiles, starting, of course, with Nathan and Joey}], etc.), you can add that whenever you want without having to worry about it disrupting your progress on the next major update? Anyways, have a great day. Looking forward to Chapter 5😎👍
