MessyAcademy
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August news post #1
🕑 Added 2020-08-03 04:26:47 +0000 UTCAnother new moth, brings with it a news post to get a rough idea of our goals for planned content to bring everyone with update 0.14. Thank you to all of you who decided to stick around for support into August and those of you who are new, big welcome!
First off to begin in case you haven't seen the post the other day about it. Starting with update 0.14 we're changing our release dates for new game updates, instead of having new updates release at the end of the month and fight against 24-48 hours to release things if there's issues at minute. We're going to shoot for new game releases in the first week of each new month, so that it'll help in case of the worse on the dev side.
With update 0.14 the rough release goal is September 4th-7th. Content for the game will begin to get a little odd for what is offered in each update, purely due to routes and content that isn't exactly X girl's route parts but still used as part of day to day progress in a sense.
Let jump into it.
(1) Update 0.14 content
September 4th-7th shall bring the side girl's route part 1 of 3 total for them. Instead of the 6 parts like the main girls, of course this is intended given just how many characters there is in the game for main girls alone. But we'd like to see if the demand is enough to expand the side girl's routes at a point once the base game is nearly finished. (their route storylines will still feel complete, just a bit more opened in the sense)
That will be the big bulk of content for the update planned that's the big stuff or more interesting? We will try to see how much time we have in August and possibly do two plans for additional content focus.
(1) - Fixing up days 1 & 2, bringing them more up to terms with how route part 1 writing is like, adjustments to dialogue and pacing, scene setting up, etc. (not really changing the events themselves, but rather lightly expanding and trying to make dialogue feel more natural, along with giving a better impression of the game to new players trying it who are curious.)
(2) - Adding in some other addition content from our list, a decent bit of which is expanding on what is in days 1-19. Things like diaper accidents for players, classroom sections getting more interaction, etc.
Below is a rough idea of some stuff we're hoping to shoot for with update 0.14
-Side girl's 1st part of route storylines added.
-Bg variants (stormy/rainy weather for 4-5 bg's)
-Cg scenes? (scroll down, I'll explain)
-OC background character sprites (3-4 lined up to be worked on currently)
-New music? (scroll down, I'll explain)
CG scenes: right now I hate to admit it, but we're having some delays and issues regarding new cg art... The funding for at least 3+ cg scenes is there currently based on our average funding support in the past 3 months. But to keep it short, our artist has been working on the current cg scene requested since I requested it at the start of June and the last update I had from them so far is that coloring was in progress, would be done before July 30th. Yet here we are without it, so I'd like to hope it's just the nature of the scene being requested causing it to take longer than normal. But it really puts cg art supply vs demand in a odd spot, as we're looking to keep cg scene art consistent in style with how the sprites look. So we could possibly hire another cg artist soon to help speed things along, but my biggest concern with that is to make sure the art style difference between cg artists aren't vastly different to make it distracting or feel out of place in the game.
New music: We are still doing good on the official MA music tracks being worked on, our producer is ahead on requests and has about 6 tracks of 14 done. With us currently having 3 paid off and with this month's funding, we hope to pay off the other 3 unpaid ones so we're caught up on payments. If we can pay for 3 new tracks a month we'll have all the tracks done by Oct roughly. We're holding off on actually adding the new music into the game right now until we have a couple of the more general track themes done first. We'll still share previews to listen to for these new tracks, but the reason we're not adding the new music update to update right now comes down to engine work vs time spent/wasted.
Not to make it sound bad, it's purely if we added 2-3 new tracks and they're "sad theme" "comedy theme" and "mystery theme" there will be days that need "tension theme" or "sexual tension theme" etc. So the way the engine is laid out, to put it simply. I could try going through the days 1-19+ and find comedy moments or sad moments, etc and add those in from where they start to where it would cut off into another theme. But when new music beyond that is added, I still have to go through and do the same thing checking and reading through days 1-19+ and it seems like it'd be a better time management for dev work to simply hold off and have most of the general tracks needed, then do it.
(2) Kickstarter launch news!
So clearly those of you who have been around a bit, know about our kickstarter launch happening or was supposed to launch on August 1st. Clearly this didn't happen and everything is ready to go for the launch, we're just waiting on the video trailer to be ready to help really give it our best shot on their site.
Right now we're purely guessing, but I'll do a weekly news post or more posts than that to let everyone know the updates on our kickstarter related news for when we're expecting to launch it. That way we can give a good heads up for those interested in backing it.
Mainly the funding from the kickstarter will be to help majorly cover the cg art costs, wither that means having to hire another cg artist or what not to do everything and split the load of scenes. (one doing select themes of scenes and the other doing a different type of themes) Then other funding from it will ideally help finish off music costs by then to be complete and get some programming help hired on for the two mini games to be added as part of the game's overall system. (one being diaper accidents for players)
Our goal for kickstarter is to reach $4000 to mainly cover the base game for what is needed majorly still, of course more will go towards further content that's possible to see.
(3) Further route details (no spoilers)
With the main girl's route part 1's released, we're hoping that many of you have noticed a bump in writing quality for how things are handled. There is room for some adjusting much like there is with the game overall, with the whole work in progress thing. We of course have goals to make sure the writing, visuals and everything is polished and pretty professional as we can and at later dates in the future of next year. We'll most likely hire a few testers and proofreaders, extra hands on help to ensure things for the first half of the game is as polished as we want it. Then do the same with the 2nd half of the game (when routes begin to end of game)
With the main girl part 1's for the six girls, our word count average was about 4500-5500 range per girl. Roughly at the least 27,000 word count in total for just the main girl's 1st route parts.
We can expect the 4500-5500 word count length and trying to ensure quality and what is going on is interesting, fun, sexy and so forth for what the side girl's routes focus on.
How will the side girl's work since they have a total of 3 route parts vs the main girl's who have 6 route parts?
They'll naturally have a smaller length route clearly, but expect some light skipping of days seen from their route part 1 to weekday days to route part 2, etc.
-Conclusion-
With that all said and done, our first news post for August is wrapped up! While it will be a bit of a wait before we see another update to try and match or top update 0.13, update 0.14 will complete the game having at least the start of each girl's routes there for new players coming along and not having to worry about. "Hey, what gives? I went with Nova as my girlfriend and it didn't do anything?" (if we didn't have at least the route part 1's all in.)
We'll continue to try warning new players and existing players what new content is added with the routes so that if we end up having updates that have to split up focus, like choosing to work on Nova, Erika and Miki stuff for one update and Rachel, Heather and Juliet in another. We can let everyone know, this or that is seen in Nova's route or Juliet, etc.
Sadly and happily bg art for the base game was wrapped up in update 0.14, aside from 4-5 weather variants needed. So it'll be a while after we show off those weather versions before we have any new bg art previewed or needed.
With that said, funding will be freed up to help cover the more expensive music costs now for the next 2-3 months and get that finished up in October is our early goal. So far 2020 has been a strange year in the world news, but MA progress wise. It's been a great year of progress, at some point I'd like to supply everyone with some of our earliest updates of the game just for the fun of comparing how much has really changed since January 2020.
Anyways, once again thank you all for supporting us and we'll have plenty for you all to see about the upcoming update's content and kickstarter related stuff! ^^
