April news post #3 (mini news) (Patreon)

Hi everyone! ^^ This post for news post #2.

I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that update 0.10 should be on schedule. I'd love to say it's ahead of schedule, but there is quite a bit of stuff I personally would like to get done before this update happens and even before the end of May.

Below is a few things that I'm looking to push for in April and May.
(1) The first thing is a bit of a wild goal, but I want Charlotte, Rosa, Allie. Joey and Nathan sprites added into update 0.10. This is due to a few reasons, one being to look nice before kickstarter launch in June, but also with the changes to Erika and Nova's designs. Those alone will require me to go back through all the sections for them and create/replace expressions, etc.

So the goal is to have Erika and Nova's sprites new designs added into update 0.11 (May's update). Depending on if Rachel or Heather, possibly both are done in May. I would like to have them added into the engine too, but it might be too much to handle while juggling other content to add.

I will say this now, in update 0.10. I did not add the new designs for Erika or Nova even for their day 13, 14, 15 content. This is intended for not only how odd it might look to newcomers between updates to see their current sprites and then suddenly after day 12, they changed randomly in visuals. Instead of doing it all at once in a single update. I'm sorry ahead of time.

(2) The second thing that I would like done for update 0.10, but it's not as important as the new sprites added is to go back through the existing content. Remove "placeholder cg screens" and adjust them to show sprites and expression work done to help reflect what is going on, rather than a static screen that doesn't help much either.

This change should hopefully be good for everyone, it is also to help the game in the future. As I've brought it up before, we'll begin focusing purely on "important" cg scenes for the game and sadly many of these scenes that have placeholder screens aren't "important" in the sense. That doesn't mean we don't wish to come back to many of these and add cg scenes, we'll be doing that in the future. As to how far into the future? Sadly it'll be many months, as we have quite a lot to get done before then and add supply vs demand. We can only push out as many scenes as our artist will be able to physically handle of course.

(3) The third thing which is kind of a behind the scenes issue, but as many of you might've noticed if you pay good attention to the game's sprites. There's a lot of expressions that's seen, A lot... Honestly, it's a bit excessive in terms of how many there is because I wanted to make each section very, very hand crafted in terms of trying to display expressions to change very often and subtly to fit their mood and dialogue, etc.

Just to help paint a picture, Erika for example for just her "school uniform" sprite has 15 "sad" expressions created between her sections. That's just "sad" without even touching her "crying" "Anger" etc. Needless to say there's a lot, when I say excessive. That is no understatement!

This does mean that in May, I would like to take a good look at sprite expressions and slim down very greatly on these. Imagine how other visual novel games have, let's say 25 expressions? I'll slim it down so that the expressions should feel unique to their characters and still cover expressions needed, again think of other vn games as that'll be the goal. Sadly trying to handcraft each section with uniquely created expressions purely for that section and doing it again for other sections, not only takes a lot of dev time away from other stuff. But it's just too ambitious even for high budget visual novel games from big companies.

Of course there is still many outfits and things like that nature for Messy Academy, these won't go away. Again this is all just trying to slim expressions down to a set amount and focus on hand crafting them to fit each character very uniquely instead of having 80+ or more for one character...

(4) This is another behind the scenes, but based on feedback and we'll continue to take in feedback on it. It seems that many people enjoy the challenge of unlocking dialogue, outcomes, scenes, etc. I've been trying to make the game naturally feel as if it guides and holds your hand during week 1 (days 1-5). You can lose stats, but there aren't a lot of choice that say, choose X and you gain 2 affection with Erika. But in return you lose 2 affection with Miki.

I think we're pretty good on this, but I do feel like there's room to adjust some stat gains and minus from choices mainly between days 6-10. I know some of you enjoy trying to keep two or three characters affection high up together to see more content, this will be kept in mind still. But there is also "how much should we show, should this reward be only for those who purely are focusing on Heather? Or can they have some wiggle room?"

Before anyone who wants harem stuff freaks out, this won't remove or change how MA handles the harem feeling in the game and work towards that ending path.


-Conclusion-

To wrap things up, aside from the normal content that's expected with each update. April and May will try to do much of the above, but some of this might lead into June as well.

I don't intend to cut any new days for content in favor for the above stuff, but I do want the above done too.

I will try to balance both getting new content and the above concerns done. New content added in updates will come over me working on the above. So for update 0.10 for example, I will have days 13, 14 & 15 all done and polished up, bug freed (hopefully) before I even begin to touch the other stuff.

What I'm trying to say, is that the next few months will be quite busy for the project. But hopefully everyone understands what we're doing behind the scenes a bit better.