Final post of March! (Mini-News) (Patreon)

This month flew by way too quickly! >.< I'll try to be pretty brief compared to our normal news posts which are walls of text.

If you haven't read about it in one of our previous posts this month, we were off to a great start in writing during the first week of March. Then things quickly fell apart, as I'm working behind the scenes to ensure the project's tax filing situation is handled correctly.

To put it briefly, we're expected to pay in for taxes like many other self employers who receive 1099-K forms here in the states. (Not sure how things work outside the US exactly.) Between all our sources of income that flowed into our team in 2020, since we did run a ks campaign in fall. We're roughly looking at paying in $3000+ USD in taxes. (Without expenses/deductions)

Clearly I'm looking into the expenses and deductions, working with tax & accounting professionals in person to figure out what can be tallied off of what we earned towards things that'll bring down the amount we're expected to pay in.

I won't get too much into all of this beyond these mentions, but there's an issue between Patreon vs Paypal causing a double reporting of what we really earned in 2020 to make things more of a mess. The main thing is that 2020 was our first full year working on the project to have to deal with taxes in the following year (now), so while things are a pain right now. I'm setting up and fixing some issues to make next year's tax season a breeze in comparison.

Either way, that's been a on-going off and on thing this month to print things off, swing by the tax & account place and sit down with them, explaining everything and it's still on-going. My hope is that we're just about done or at least enough where I can sit back if they have everything needed from me to finish it off.

That way April can return back to normal and get a good hold of things for MA when releasing new content again. (Once again sorry with how things have been this year so far.)

-Moving on-

Right now our expected solid targeted goal for v0.19 (episode 4) is to release it by mid April. (April 7-15th area.)

I have about 75-80% of the episode written, of which I'm doing what I can this week into the weekend to hopefully wrap it all up on writing during this weekend. Then I'll pass the writing script off for editing, into engine programming and just to be safe. That'll be 5-7 days process, putting us roughly around April 8-10th area, of which we'd test it out and if it's ready, we'll for sure make a post with a 12-24 hour heads up before release. ^^

Our cg artist is a tiny bit behind, but this is mainly due to the stop and go effect of the writing during March. Right now they have 2 more cg scenes in the works for ep 4, which I'd say be on the look out for previews of those early April leading up to the release.

-Some early news of new features/stuff coming to MA during April-

We had a good kicking off to start this year with the chibi art and splash screens fully looking nice like they do, which was one of my main goals this year for polishing up MA as we go along.

My other goal is to polish up and overhaul the GUI, keeping it's cutesy and maybe pastel tones around, but giving the game a bit more of a school setting feeling within the interfaces. (Like opening up the settings menu would show that it's a notebook, with some doodles around it, etc.) Stuff like that.

That is still coming, but it's pushed back towards being added to the game until Summer right now.

Now one other goal I wanted to begin tackling this year is adding more music tracks to MA, possibly add sound effects as we go along. I am happy to say that I've found a composer who I believe will be able to deliver on some music that we can still use in the game.

I don't want to mention the composer's name yet until we actually fully confirm everything and get started, but I've been looking around for a few months now off and on, listening to different composers work's and I can strongly say that this one seems like a solid fit for what we'd need.

The goal is to see how our funding/budget looks in early April after tax % cuts and funding set aside for the others working on the project, but I'd like to shoot for getting our first track made by them going in April.

We have a few ideas for the first track, but the area it would be heard in is exclusively within Miki's Dream. Either (A) We add a fitting final encounter track that suits the battle. (B) We add a track that is the general theme heard while roaming around the castle. (C) We add a track that acts as the general battle theme for normal encounters.

Anyways, this post is getting a bit too long. >.< We have some exciting news and things going on in the background that we'd like to share more with you all in April, along with our very fun v0.19 (episode 4) content. We hope to see many of you return in April, but we'd also understand if you wish not to. If you're on the fence and waiting for the exclusive game content, maybe keep a reminder for April 10-15th to check back in with our page and see if we're getting ready to release it.

Otherwise! From all of us at Messy Studios!
We once again thank you for supporting us in March, hope to see everyone next month! ^^