July news post #2 (Patreon)

Happy Friday everyone! ^^ By the time this goes out, I'll be nearly done with my work week and looking forward to the weekend!

But before that, it's long overdue for a general update on stuff since our last July news post.

First off, update 0.13 is still planned and on schedule for releasing on July 30th. So no changes there, for those who have recently became supporters this month and are new to our patreon page. Thank you for the support and we hope to see you around in the recent months if possible, but I understand it's a odd time right now with world events.

So please do what benefits you the most. <3 Let's jump right into some updated information about this month, since our last news post.

~Update 0.13 content planned~

This month is still releasing the main girl's 1st of 6 route parts. We will have a warning in the game for those interested in the side girls for now to let everyone be aware that even if they unlock a side girl, as their girlfriend on day 19. Update 0.13 will only have the main girl's stuff for now.

We normally do 2-3 new days worth of content per update, but with how the rest of the game plays out. The typical day to day system is very much still there, it just functions differently. So below is a small context map to help visualize this.

Day 19 (choose girlfriend) > girlfriend route part 1 > chart below > girlfriend route part 2 > repeat.

Monday: Girlfriend day
Tuesday: Classroom day
Wednesday: Open map day
Thursday: Girlfriend day
Friday: Classroom day

What is "Girlfriend day" ? - Imagine how each day is split into 3 sections, each section has a focus on select characters and their day to day events seen at the academy. These girlfriend days are much like a section, if expanded in word count and spread out through the day instead of say, seeing Nova and hanging out in the morning. You'd be hanging out with her off and on during said day. These will of course focus on your girlfriend and can be slice of life general stuff or ranging from drama, things impacted by the route parts and general academy story, so on.

What is "Classroom day" ? - These take over as the classroom sections, but instead it's seen as a day. Honestly these aren't really different compared to a section that focuses on classroom periods during days 1-19. The main difference is that there's more interaction with what the player can do during these days, an example of this being if there's time to study. You can choose from options who to study with, but there will be other things. At times, these will also function as general academy story focus.

What is "Open map day" ? - These are a more open roam approach to the game, this is where players will make their mileage with affection for other girls. Players will be given 9 choices, where girls are located and doing different predetermined events for the day and you can go hang out with them. Let's take hanging out with Miki as one example, we might find her hanging out at the pool area swimming around for a while. The player can hang out and enjoy their time with her, as they head out to go get changed. Miki seems to be carelessly following you towards to locker room. If this happens, you can either cheat on your girlfriend or you can go the friendship path. One will offer more erotic moments and sex acts seen, while the other will try doing the pure girlfriend focus in the game and let you spend extra time with Miki doing other fun stuff instead.

With that out of the way, how are we handling new content moving forward now that things are going to be like the chart flow above?

We're going to do a little testing with this and first engage with our supporters what you guys feel we should do. Mainly first off, before we try anything odd. We will have at least every girl's 1st route part added to the game, from there it's up to all of you to be vocal about it.

Our idea going forward is once the 1st route parts for all girls are in the game. We'll try our very best to split our focuses on new content trying to cover all the girls equally as possible. This does mean that the time of waiting between any of the girl's route part 1 to their route part 2 is going to increase heavily. But on the plus side, as a collective. All the girls would roughly have their route part 2 release at the same time.

On the flip side to this idea, is to pick one or two girls that are most popular. Focus on those two for say 2-3 months or completely finish their routes with all the in between stuff seen on the chart above. The downside to that is that fans of X or Y girls wouldn't see any new content for them for possibly a long time. Which isn't intended, but sadly with how many characters there is and how things are playing out for the rest of the game. We want to make sure we engage with everyone about this option first and really consider if it's worth it.

Otherwise the first idea is our goal as of right now on how to handle new content updates moving forward as of right now.

With that said, below is what we're expecting for content in update 0.13.

-Main girl's 1st route parts added.
-Last 3 bg's added. (it was 4, but one of the planned bg's didn't feel as if it would be needed in the game.)
-New sprite outfits. (4-5 in total expected. 3 of 5 finished as of this post.)
-New accident choices. (days 1-19, there will be moments where Brandon has the urge to use his diaper and while it will be a simple yes or no choice for now. In the future, we plan to have this be part of a mini game instead for these moments.)
-New music added. (2 new tracks added. Finished and ready.)
-Video trailer. (while not being added to the game, it will be on the patreon, youtube and kickstarter and other sites.)

Below is content we had planned or is still possible, but as of right now they're lower on the priority list.

-New cg scene added. (we have one from June that is meant to be seen during day 17's event. We actually have a early sketch preview of this and showcased it already on our patreon. But we can't say for sure if this will be ready for update 0.13, it's out of my hands personally. As I can only ask the artist for updates and wait patently. )

-Classroom choices. (options during classroom sections to help give them a more school feel to them. Some additional added text and dialogue to help these out as well.)

-Adjustments in writing made to days 1-5. (this has been on our list for a while, as we're much aware of some issues in how writing feels in the early days of the game. These won't be 100% rewritten, but rather adjustments be it small expanding or making the pacing of moments feel a bit better, or fixing up text or dialogue that sounds odd when reading it. It's possible that this could go beyond days 1-5 in the future, but we know that the mentioned days are the oldest content in the game and so we feel fixing these up as a small goal for now is good. )

~Kickstarter news~

We hope to have a new preview page that makes adjustments to our existing preview page for supporters to view, by this weekend. I'm in the middle of juggling writing to stay ahead of schedule for the month and making some of these updates to the kickstarter page.

This next preview for the kickstarter page should be roughly 90% of what the finished page will look like during launch. We'll take suggestions and feedback in the short time after a 2nd preview page is shared with everyone, as after that. We'll have to prepare to send it in for reviewing by kickstarter so that it's ready to launch on the expected July 31st-August 1st timeline.

We recently showed off the character standees rewards, aside from Heather and Rachel. Which I don't physically own. But the other characters are done and quality of these can be seen to the best of my camera. <.< (sorry)

For our physical poster and digital wallpaper reward. We wish to share exactly what material the poster will be made of, how it's processed, etc. We won't have a poster in our hands to showcase by the time the launch happens. But the planned art for the poster is the cg scene that has a early sketch preview on our page. The one I mentioned a little bit above in this post that takes place during day 17, featuring the main girls.

~I am a $25 supporter~

In case you are one of our $25 supporters or were recently and still waiting to have your oc background character finished. I'd like to briefly mention that starting in August right away, possibly before then.

Our sprite artist will be caught up on outfit requests for the game for quite some time, I have a total of 4 oc background characters lined up and we'll tackle them by who became a $25 supporter first. (Longest ones in waiting) I'll personally reach out to each of you with early sketch preview of your oc character to ensure they're looking as expected, before having the sprite artist move along with finishing them.

Once they are finished, we will showcase sprite previews for these characters on patreon. We do have special requests made too, for those who want to keep the visuals a complete surprise for themselves, but don't mind them being shown off. (we'll let you know before we plan on sharing an art preview, so it won't be seen by mistake.)

~Conclusion~

July really flew by and it's not even over yet, it feels like my months are getting shorter and shorter as this odd year passes us by.

I feel like MA has made a lot of progress as we went into this year. I believe we had up to update 0.05 before the reboot happened in December 2019. It's hard to believe that all the major sprites for the game are done, now bg's will be wrapped up this month too.

We started out with nothing more than 3d models for placeholders, badly done 3d background placeholders for a while until we used some 2d placeholder stuff. But it all rode on the game's writing and how things came off in the engine for it, along with the promise of consistent updates each month that we've tried to balance along with our normal lives.

We saw the game receive it's GUI elements added, while nothing too flashy. It gave the game a more progressed feeling of coming along.

While we have had troubles with cg art, as we did go through a risky switch from one artist to another. I still keep in touch with l4no-shiro on discord from time to time, checking how he's doing. The main thing was that I felt the cg art wasn't what I had envisioned for the game, plus the pricing per scene. It sealed the deal to take a risk and while I do wish things will pick up quicker for new cg art. <.<

All I have to go off of, is that they were recently sick and busy during the time. The early sketch I shared a few days back is the exact day I received it from them after waiting since June. So I hope everyone trusts that I want more cg art seen, it's just a matter of hoping things will pick up and get the ball rolling again come August.

Music is our recently tackled aspect for this year and if all goes well with funding and possibly kickstarter helping out. We're expected to have all the music, 14 tracks to be exact completed before the end of this year. We have 3 in total that are paid off and done. August we'd like to shoot for 3-4 tracks paid off, bringing the completed number up to 6-7 done.

Depending on how the funding goes and once music is tackled more or less, we might possibly see the mini game and more programming functions added to the game or worked on in Q4 of 2020.

Either way, hope you all have an awesome weekend enjoying yourselves. Personal things I'll be doing aside from writing route stuff. I hope to get some time to finish up "Your lie in April" and put some focus on "Food wars", as I'm really enjoying both of those anime series. But I'm pretty bad for starting too many series before finishing them, so trying to better myself on that.