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The Modernisation Question - and Christmas Eva MZ reveal!
🕑 Added 2022-03-18 11:18:12 +0000 UTC
Hello, everyone! I hope you're well. I have some big news today, so please take time to read through today's article carefully, as I have an important question to ask you all. As I mentioned earlier, I have been working on something new, so for those of you not active in the Discord chat, it's time to reveal the master plan (mistress plan?) and ask for your blessing to go ahead with it. I would like to upgrade the game to the new RPG Maker MZ engine. A demonstration of this can be downloaded at the end of this piece.
What do the different versions mean?
For those of you who don't know, Missy is built using the RPG Maker VX Ace engine. This was released in 2011 and is now considered quite old technology. It has no mouse support, Mac, Android or iOS options and is graphically dated. The newest iteration of the engine, MZ was released in 2020 and when I bought my copy, I was impressed with its capabilities, and its much greater stability than its predecessor MV, which I avoided using for Missy as it kept crashing.
Why now?
So hang on, Trin, I hear you say. If MZ was released in 2020, why wasn't Missy made with it from day 1? Well, because day 1 of development was 6 months before the release of MZ. At that time, a huge amount of work had already gone into the game, and I did not have the skills or knowledge to convert the game back then. Now, I believe I do. Because Missy is getting bigger with each release, and the bigger the game is, the more work it is to convert, I believe it's now or never.
So what's the catch?
I want to be completely candid about what the downside of me doing this would be so that you can make an informed decision. The biggest is the delay it will cause. This will not be a small project. Scripts need to be changed, new versions of some need to be found, as MZ uses a different programming language to VX Ace, all images need to be re-rendered, even the sprites need to be redone as everything is a different size. Development on 0.5 would immediately pause until it is done as there is no point continuing to make the old version. I believe this will add at least a month to the development time of 0.5 without adding any more new content than that which is already going in.
The second, smaller, but still worth mentioning downside is that you will not be able to migrate your saves. As I mentioned, the language is different and creating a save import utility to work between two systems I did not design is simply above my paygrade. You'll have to start a new playthrough.
Finally, I can't imagine it being a big problem, but the file size will more than double.
So what's the good news?
Well, with that out of the way, the rest is all good news! The reasons for doing this are to bring the game into the 2020's, make everything look and feel better and create something future-proof. So let's take a look at the benefits.
A new, modern feel
The first thing you will notice is a larger, brighter and nicer-looking game experience. Everything is bigger and more crisp on screen. As you can see, the new sprites, which I've already designed, are even cuter than their previous incarnations
And that's not all. With a new engine comes the chance to improve the resolution. Remember I mentioned I'd have to re-render all the images and the file size would increase? Well that's because all the pictures would be much bigger and clearer!
Actually this much bigger! The old image file size was 650x500px - the new one comes in at over 3 times that, a whopping 1200x800px! These are much better quality images showing the girls' sexy misadventures more clearly than ever before.
And even the face graphics on the dialogue would be much clearer and cleaner. Again, as you can see, I've already created some.
New features
You would now be able to play Missy with your mouse, or even on your phone! Mac, Android and iOS are all supported in the new engine, which will hopefully bring swathes of new students into our community! Oh, and that annoying problem where the grey box remains after you hide the dialogue when you're seeing Missy's thoughts? Gone! The new version removes everything.
Proof-of-concept
Now, you may still be thinking that you can't really judge whether you think doing this is worth pausing development of the new content for at least a month. That's fine. I'm not asking you to do so on the basis of this article alone, because I've made you a playable demonstration - using Christmas Eva. All of this game's code, images and sprites have been upgraded (and all of these can also be used for the main game, meaning some of the work is already done!) Download, take a look at it and see what you think. Then don't forget to come back here and cast your vote. In a week's time, I'll assess the results of the poll and make a decision based on the strength of feeling it conveys. Votes will be weighted, with Prefects counting as 2 and Council members as 3.
Christmas Eva MZ Download Links (Updated to fix missing file bug)
Windows Version
Mac OS Version
̶A̶n̶d̶r̶o̶i̶d̶/̶i̶O̶S̶ ̶V̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶ - Now building
Christmas Eva MZ is considered to be in it's supporter-only phase. I'll release it to the general public later, so please don't share it.
I am happy to answer any questions you may have about this initiative, you can comment below, post in Discord or PM me on either. I hope that my work on Christmas Eva has persuaded you that this is worth doing, and the positive response I received in the Discord chat when I first floated it has me believing that there is an appetite for this. Over to you, my friends!
Trinian
ps: One last thing, I don't have a Mac and being over 30, tend to only use my phone to make phone calls, so I haven't tested the non-Windows versions. If you encounter any problems using these, please let me know!
Comments
Trinian
This has actually been the focus of my work over the last 24 hours. It's true that VXA has been around for 11 years and MZ for 2, so obviously there's going to be more, but I've just discovered a mod that makes MV plugins work with MZ, so that massively increases my options. Even without it though, I've been finding stuff easily enough. There's plenty out there, and since I'm not trying to make RPGM do anything it's not really designed to do, I think the benefits outweigh the costs.
Hnnah
I've heard that one of the biggest benefits of using VX is that there's tons of community plugins that let you do cool stuff. So it's possible that MZ, being newer, might actually be a bit more limiting in some ways.
Trinian
Yeah weirdly, thats all RPGM default stuff, so I'll have to see if there's some scripts around that fix it. I guess the built-in auto-dash might be conflicting with my dash script from VXA, which might explain the ramming-speed character movement!
Trinian
Yeah it's totally possible. Might be a bit hard to do seamlessly though, things like gallery unlocking and certain one-time events might not work properly.
Aruna
This looks great! This already feels so much nicer (especially the screen size, fullscreening the tiny game window for VXAce games is just pain on higher resolution monitors 😅). Only things that were notably off in this test were the sprinting speed (you fucking ZOOM haha) and when clicking through dialogue, once you click for the last time it will also then move your character to where you clicked on the screen instead of only closing the dialogue, but obviously it was a test and things will be ironed out, just figured I should point them out :)
Marsdriver
I have no idea if this would be feasible, but do you think it would be possible to have the player make choices at the start of the new version to skip ahead to where they were? Like picking what chapter to start on, and how the Bad Girls questline resolved. Might help take the sting out of having to start over if saves can't be converted. Thanks for everything you do!
Trinian
Thanks for the vote of confidence ^^ And I'd likewise not attempt this if I thought there was a danger it'd never get done. I'm sure there will be some wrinkles (I've spent a good few hours today sorting out a replacement for the quest system and haven't found the right one yet,) but the whole reason for doing Eva first was as much to show myself it could be done.
Nikolas Ambross
I wholeheartedly support your initiative. If you weren't as punctual and hard-working as you are, I wouldn't. Others who try significant conversions like this end up in perpetual limbo with a "project" that never materializes. Good luck! I hope it goes smoothly for you. Missy is a great project and will only get better.
