MessyAcademy
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April news post #2
🕑 Added 2021-04-15 16:47:36 +0000 UTCEveryone's Spring going good so far? It's been getting really nice out the past 2 weeks here in the Midwest, it's been a struggle trying to enjoy the nice days and still get plenty done related for the project.
Let's jump into what most of you probably wish to know out of this and that's "When is v0.19 (Episode 4) releasing?".
Right now we're a little bit beyond and hoping to make up for it in May, where the intention is to have v0.20 release in that month very soon after v0.19 has been out for 3-4 weeks tops.
We're thinking v0.19 should be ready early next week! Mainly we're going to be focusing on the editing/engine stuff here this weekend and then our last cg art piece for ep 4 is in the early sketch process, but our artist is working quickly to ensure it's done right towards the end of the engine stuff being finished up.
That way we can toss the last cg stuff in, lightly test and make sure it functions right and release it! ^^
I've been keeping track and v0.19 has been our longest wait for content to be released yet, going on about 2 months since v0.18 released in mid February. >.< Clearly this is something we're not proud of, regardless of little issues popping up behind the scenes related with tax situations.
So we hope to prove ourselves in May by releasing v0.20 by mid or late May, roughly 30-35 days between releases and get a hold on that moving through the year.
~Sprite, cg & bg art related news~
[Sprite art]
Lisadikaprio is working on some very uhh... Secretive stuff right now for MA. <.< Some stuff that won't end up being previewed due to how spoiler related it is to MA's story events. I will say this... We'll be seeing this stuff in-game probably around Fall with our rough schedule in mind for how far we'll be on content.
In the mean time, just know that it isn't something to bring concern towards it. Said art won't cause any major issues for people.
With that said, she's working on the secretive stuff now and up next will end up being a special tool that we'll be using behind the scenes to help create lesser background characters for the game that don't quite get much screen time, like Lexi for example. This should help give a more complete student body feeling to the game at times. (Keep in mind, some scenes with mentions of other students around will probably still exclude showing others if there's no real need to.)
So April-May for Lisa is a bit busy, it's unclear yet how quick these will be done as she's in the busy months of college before Summer right now. The goal is that late May or June, she'll be shifting sprite art focus on the KS oc's for the rest of the year.
[CG art]
MaxreDP is finishing up ep 4 cg art, which I must say for this episode it's been wonderful seeing the visuals coming together with that.
Episode 4 actually will feature a new visual for how messy diapers look, so once the episode is released. Sometime shortly afterwards, we'll do a voting poll to see if everyone prefers the new visual for messy diapers or the older visual. (Depending on the feedback, we'll apply the new visuals for messy diapers to older cg art.)
We're thinking that Episode 5 in May will probably have 3 cg scenes and sometime before they begin work on those after finishing ep 4 related ones. We'll end up having them focus on some very light adjustment stuff for extra improvements to older cg art. (Mainly extra expressions on ones that make good use of it.)
[BG art]
It's been almost a year now since our bg artist has been finished, but I'd like to reach out to her and on a very low priority in terms of funding. We might have her tackle a new bg piece here or there every 2-3 months.
The idea right now would be to have her add a few additional Miki's Dream related ones.
~Music~
Regarding our new composer. I'd like to announce that our new composer joining us on the team moving forward is ComposterJF!
We'll be sharing a very early sample listening from them coming up this weekend. That'll give a good idea on what to roughly expect from them as we move along this year with getting new music added to the game.
With said new music, it should be pointed out that costs and funding towards this is considered. I made a deal with the composer that they can focus on our tracks as lower priority vs higher demand stuff they're receiving from other projects. Which also helps cut the costs down and split payments up among months, so that 1 new track can end up being paid off in 2 months and much more relaxed, based around our funding.
The idea with the new music is to fill the gap for what's missing, but there might be some tracks that end up being retired from our previous composer. (At least retired from hearing them in MA.) Since our deal with the previous composer was worked out to own the rights to the tracks currently in MA. We can use them for future projects or decide how to go about that.
I know that the main theme heard in the trailer video that we made for our KS launch and is heard on the title screen will end up being retired. There's a few reasons for this... The first one is that some of you might've heard something similar in the melody a bit? <.< I was made aware how similar to sounds to an already known song and I feel like it would be best to not have something that feels like it was copied or what not.
The other reason is that there's complaints of launching the game and having ears blown out by the very loud main theme track. Even if that isn't the case, the above issue is our main concern and so we'll see a new, fitting main theme created that fits for MA in the soon future. :P
There is plans to look over some other tracks and figure out if they fit MA's over all sound direction music wise and feel wise with the visuals/setting, etc. The main thing to take from all of this is that already existing tracks regardless if they stay or become retired from MA, we'll probably end up hearing them in other projects in the future.
~Closing~
In closing, we're at the half way point of April! So hopefully our release on v0.19 will be here by next week and we can begin work right away into v0.20!
It'll be both interesting and also fun to work on Episode 5, because the events lead up to and end with you being able to choose your focused route episodes to move into afterwards! ^^
With the route episodes, we'll have to play fair with our focuses each month since we clearly won't be able to complete all 9 girl's Episode 6 stuff which is unique for them all. The idea with these will be to choose 2-3 girls, more if possible and get their episode done in say June, then for July we'll focus on a few more and move on like that for content.
Anyways! Hope everyone is excited to see what events are taking place in Episode 4 and just who we'll see show up! ^^
