May news post final (Patreon)

#3 news post here.

Let's try to keep this news post short ;P

(1) Sprite updates!

If you haven't been keeping up with the news feed Rachel has been receiving updates to her sprite and recently her final design for her sprite is complete!

With that said, update 0.11 which releases on May 30th will feature Rachel's final sprite design, along with Nova and Erika's which were done in April. But not added to the engine in time until now.

Heather is in progress and is expected to be ready for update 0.12 on June 29th, but I would personally like to add her into the game via hotfix for update 0.11. But I doubt it will happen sadly.

(2) Cg scenes!


Cg scenes is receiving a new change, as our new artist is taking over and so we'll have them focus on pumping out a consistent amount of new cg scenes per month starting with update 0.11.

I know in the past months, our cg scenes haven't been very consistent due to funding with our old cg artist. But we should expect at least 3 new cg scenes per monthly update, if not more depending on the content of the scenes. Some cg scenes that are easier, might allow for more to be done, while more complex ones might take more time, etc.

To sum it up, we currently requested 5 cg scenes for May. 2 of 5 are done with the rest expected to hopefully be finished before or on the 30th. Even if these are late, I'll roll them out in a hotfix for update 0.11.

(3) Bg art!

Sadly in April we requested 5 new bg art pieces, which only 2 of those 5 were done for the previous update. Our artist had computer issues to handle and while everything is fine yet again now, it still set us back a little.

So update 0.11 has those 3 bg's from April ready. Club room, Diaper training room, Courtyard/garden.

On top of this, once I heard things were okay again in May for requests to begin once again. I decided to at least get 2 new bg's requested for May to not toss too much at them right after their computer issues were fixed. Needless to say those 2 new bg's are also done now!

So on top of the three mentioned above, there is also Roof top and Classroom bg art! In total update 0.11 will have 5 new bg's added.

(4) Writing/engine content.

May was a interesting month, as we had issues with the game exporting with update 0.10 at the end of April. Causing a delay and many issues with it, I knew that something had to be done about this now rather than held off.

So during May I decided I was going to fix up the engine, make the game file size lower and future proof to allow exporting with ease and just general fixing of the game. The game file size you might notice is 1.13GB with update 0.10, but once you download update 0.11 you'll notice it should be roughly 250MB instead.

The jump in file size going up from here on out will be very, very small compared to how things were progressing before.

A lot of time and work went into going through days 1-15 in the engine to fix up images, make new expressions and compress images, make sure there's no broken images and that things are working right. Dialogue had some changes that are minor from days 1-7, to help touch things up earlier in the game and not feel so simple compared to more recent updates.

Sadly with the mentioned work, it meant that I had to cut a new day of content out of the dev process for update 0.11. Which means the update will offer days 16 & 17, instead of 3 new days like updates have been like.

While it is only 2 new days of content, day 17 alone in size before the choices is nearly as big as 1 day in itself. With each of the six choices, it makes it feel like 2 days in 1. Day 17's events have been a long time coming and major events for the game in a sense, it's meant to be the starting point of something new and mixes up things a bit for the rest of the game not only story wise, but gameplay wise with how routes begin soon after.

In short I see day 17 as a ending to the game in a sense if there were 3 parts of the game, this should be seen as the first major ending story arc of the new life at the academy. Before things lead further down the road, I'm interested to see how everyone will react to these events. Days 18 & 19 are very much seen as a in between, more of a calm after the storm that will lead into the next chapter of the game's story and events.

(5) Kickstarter?

The plan for the kickstarter originally is to launch it around mid June, but this was before corona came around and I notice many other projects are still launching kickstarters during everything with success. I would at least like to do a poll in June to engage with everyone supporters, followers, fans, etc.

Mainly to check if everyone has plans to support the kickstarter, while doing patreon, maybe not? Reasons for support or not supporting, trying to mainly make sure that we don't launch at a bad timing and force some of you to lose out on supporting, given everyone is handling these times in the world differently right now.

The plan as of right now, is to possibly launch the kickstarter at the very end of June right after releasing update 0.12 on June 29th. But this is a temp holder date and I will try to be vocal about the actual launch date through June, I simply wish to ensure the poll does it's job and supplies me with enough details first to make sure the kickstarter launch is great for everyone. <3