MessyAcademy
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May news post #2
🕑 Added 2020-05-12 06:31:22 +0000 UTCIn case you haven't seen the first post, check it out here. (warning long read) and also make sure to update yourself with this post here that expands on some news for bg/cg stuff.
So the writing is nearly wrapped up at this point for the month, as mentioned it will be a shorter amount of content this month (only day 16 & 17 added). Which ends the festival arc, but day 17 can be considered as a big event similar to how day 5 section 3 is like, but a bit bigger.
The only reason of course for the lack of an extra day this month is that I'm only one person trying to tackle the writing, engine work and also getting the kickstarter put up. But there's also managing of things as a team, not to try and make up excuses. It's very easy to assume how little content might take to do vs how much time is actually put into things.
But the major thing for this month is fixing up engine issues so that things can be future proof for the updates until the end of the project.
What do I mean by future proof the engine?
Pretty much, the file size of the project is waaay too huge and this is sadly my fault. But it's going to require me to need some proper time to take care of compressing images without losing major quality or any at all, given how big the files are by default. This is happening because without it, as many of you might've noticed. The game takes longer to boot up compared to earlier releases, this is because of two things.
One being the file size, but it's unsure if that's the only reason. The other being that instead of the normal exporting method, I had to manually export the game files to make the zip files with update 0.10. Which I think has it's own extra issues to deal with, so the main idea is to lower the file size of the game by 3 times it's 1gb+ size. It should be possible to get it around 150MB if done right. With no huge leap in file sizes for future updates if I do everything right.
This will require compressing of images like sprites, possibly cg scenes, bg's (all of which I'll double check their quality to make sure things still look very nice even after compressed for the game.) But there was also a plan to cut down on expressions for sprites, as Erika for a example.. Has easily 100+ expressions just for her school uniform sprite. (to sum it up, I wanted to really hand craft each section to make the expression work look smooth. But it ended up not really doing much good and in the end is hurting things majorly.)
So! Each character will instead have about 20-24 expressions that are unique for their moods, personality, etc. Think of how other vn's handle things, as it'll just be like that. You can even take notice of this in update 0.10, if you pay attention to Joey and Nathan, Charlotte or Rosa & Allie. As their expressions are set between 20-24 already.
Without making this a huge hard to read post.. >.< Below is a bit behind the scenes look at my work flow for each day for May. (considering I can't work my normal 40+ hour a week job currently again until next month possibly due to the corona stuff.)
May 13th - Create new expressions for characters (everyone except the mentioned ones above)
May 14th - Compressing sprite, cg and bg images, replacing their old ones in engine and ensuring they work, etc.
May 15-20th - Bulk engine fixing. This covers replacing and adjusting old content with the new images. Making sure sections are still working right and looking good, fixing up some minor writing dialogue issues that have been brought up to us, etc. (this is the major bulk of time needed to fix things and might even be undermining what amount of time it might take me.)
May 21st - Fix day 10 section 2 & 3 crashing issue. Along with some adjusting in writing dialogue for day 10 section 2 for Heather. (there's a crashing problem if you use skip to jump through the mentioned sections, it seems a bit random why it's happening. But I believe I have a fix for it. Will do testing to make sure it works through a X amount of passes without crashing.)
May 22nd - Fix day 5 section 3. (This is a small task for the day, most likely will make use of doing other stuff here as well. The fixing is removing the John punishment where he has X girl give him a blowjob, as it not only seems to be too much given the context for the scene. But also considering cg work for something optional like that, where many people won't wish to bother. We're talking at least $200 in scenes that a very small amount might wish to see, that could be put to good use in other areas that is more generally good for everyone.)
May 23-24th - Fix old cg placeholder areas. (Screens that show Miki's face, I'd like to remove these and instead, have sprites seen on the screen to play out events taking place. Not as a permanent thing, but it's better than seeing a static screen of nothing and reading text with that visual.) (this is a lower priority for May's list of stuff to get done, if there's time it'll be done, but it might not get around to being done until June.)
May 25-28th - This is set aside as putting the day 16 & 17 writing into the engine, setting up the visuals, components, etc. Pretty general engine stuff to get done for the new content being added, but don't get the wrong idea. It normally doesn't take me such a short amount of time to do this with updates, I'll be pushing myself hard by this point to get it done.
May 29th - Polish, testing and getting the game exported into it's zip files. Anything needed before release will be in this day.
May 30th - Release of update 0.11. (at midnight cst time) (I failed to take notice that April's release with update 0.10 came out on the final day of April. So moving forward, I'd like to give everyone about 48 hours before the next month to download new releases from patreon before they decide to take away any viewing of posts from you guys, etc.)
It might not seem like the mentioned stuff above could take up a lot of time, but trust me. It's going to eat up those days as if it was nothing, sadly I think some people don't quite see just how much work it takes vs the content delivered sometimes unless you try doing something like this yourself and of course everyone is different. :P
I know that if I were to hire a writer or someone to fully tackle all programming for me, it could easily allow for extra content each month. But also the down side to that is that while I generally toss my earnings right into the project towards art, a new writer or programmer coming onto the team won't want to give up their %. meaning while general game content for writing/engine stuff speeds up, our funding takes a cut towards extra art in each update.
Plus there's a sense of at least wishing not to pass the writing off to someone else at this point, programming could be one thing to be open towards. But I'm sure it's really easy to notice that the way things are making sense for the world, character building and events now could easily become mismatched and small subtle things, could easily fall off between a new writer.
Sorry for the little side rant with all of this, but please do keep in mind. I don't wish to make updates small in size or take long. But please do consider seeing things from our view, take a look at a few other projects who have small teams. Each team is different and some out there that I notice don't offer a lot in a given month vs what we do, which is fine. Everyone has their pros and cons with any given project, I'm just asking that everyone please tries to understand that we're trying our hardest and that we're people with a life outside of our project work.
(sorry for the side rant, explaining >.< )
Anyways! The main point of this news post was to mainly cover some behind the scenes for what I'll be spending my own personal time doing for the engine stuff, in case anyone wonders what's going on. (May 4-12th has been writing for day 16 & 17)
Just a small summary for update 0.11 based on updated information! Below is a guess at what I have confirmed for new content so far in May.
-Days 16 & 17 added.
-Rachel, Nova and Erika new designs added. (sprites. Heather isn't a 100% confirmed yet)
-Club room bg art added (day, sunset, night versions)
-Diaper training room bg art added (day, sunset, night versions)
-Courtyard garden bg art added (day, sunset, night versions)
-Cg art added. (day 5 section 3 punishment scenes with spanking/messing. Miki, Nova, Erika, Juliet, Rachel. With Heather to be added in June.) (this isn't 100%, only Miki scene is done right now. Others mentioned are what the artist has mentioned being able to get done before the end of May, take it as a maybe for now.)
-New expressions added, new outfits added.
(side notes: waiting to hear about updates on bg artist and their computer issues before they accept any new bg request not mentioned above. 9-10 bg's in total are left. )
