August news post #1 (Public) (Patreon)

Time again for another news post! There might be some repeating mentions for those who have followed along during July, so keep that in mind.

As we're moving into August with development, we're looking pretty solid on our schedule each week. One thing we're trying to remind everyone regarding the public release of v0.19 and supporter release of v0.20 is that the content size of v0.20 being worked on currently is pretty big.

We're talking about 35-40k word count spread out over about 9 different events that take place during episode 5. In comparison to episode 4, which was hovering around 12-13k word count just about and had about 5 different events.

So it's easy to probably see that naturally this release is pretty big and for good reason as it wraps up and sets up the idea that you're moving on from the common route or main introduction of the academy and cast into your selected route you choose.

Word count sizes can be meh to some, but it wouldn't be a big content update without cg scenes and other art coming with it now would it? :P That's why there's a total of 7 cg scenes planned for ep 5, with 4 of those finished already, 5th one in the works currently and the last two should be done just within the last week we're expecting to get the engine work done.

There's also a lot of new content coming for ep 1-4 as well in the form of quality changes, which target fixing minor grammar issues, some light writing adjustments, minor scenes added. Visuals for bg students and the bg oc characters added, new interactive choices added and new variants for existing art.

We're roughly thinking that v0.20 in total will be at least 3+ hours of content depending on if you plan on checking out the quality stuff for ep 1-4, but even episode 5 alone should be about 2 hours to get through it. If you're fully reading through everything from start to finish of ep 1-5, I'd say about 5-7 hours of content is there so far.

Anyways you all get the idea, v0.20 is going to be our biggest release yet in our history of development pretty much.

-> Awesome! So when does the next versions release? Soon?

With our schedule laid out and how writing is going during each week so far, if I keep at this pace on writing. I am thinking we'll have this ready by the very end of August, but I do want everyone to keep in mind that isn't 100% confirmed, it could take as long as early/mid September as our worst case scenario.

The only reason I warn about that is that I haven't touched the quality changes for ep 1-4 yet as episode 5 is the priority content of course. The idea in mind is that said quality changes shouldn't need a very long amount of time to get them done, could be within 1 week, but about 2 weeks max to be safe and not rush through it and have to fix stuff later.

I also have to keep in mind that Uncle Artie will need at least a week for editing and engine work. Since this release will have the extra quality stuff in mind too, I can't say for sure if he will need a little extra time with the double checking of edits made and engine additions to the existing ep 1-4 stuff in the engine already or if it should be alright within the normal week schedule for editing/engine work.

-> Why is it taking longer for new releases? Are you burnt out? Be honest!

The honest truth, 2021 has been pretty "interesting" to say the least without throwing a text wall at you all.

The early half of this year as many already know, we had tax troubles to figure out for the first time ever dealing with 1099K forms and trying to keep the IRS happy so we don't get further interruptions later on.

Delay after delay for a while because of that and well... Yeah, we're trying to move on from that point in our development troubles to say the least.

My personal most recent adventure is that on Monday while at work, I had to help move some boxes of product back to my quality station that were having issues. Sometime during this I must've lifted one of these boxes just slightly the wrong way and pulled something in my back because of it. >.<

Ice and heat treatment when possible and now today with getting in with my chiropractor. He thinks that with my recent mention this morning of having a tingling sensation traveling into my upper left arm, that it sounds like a possible pinched nerve within my upper shoulder or shoulder blade area.

So they adjusted my back and I'm hoping that'll begin to help the baby steps of improving my back issue. I will probably end up visiting my doctor here early next week if I can get in for inflammatory meds to help as well, but until then the chiropractor suggested I completely let it rest, no stretching or light exercise until next week to see how things improve based on his adjustment for my back and with the ice/heat treatment on-going.

Now with that recent adventure said, I am watching myself but I'm trying to write through the discomfort I'm feeling right now. Pretty much my luck seems to be pretty bad at the worst of times.. ^^" Either way, this isn't a excuse for upcoming writing issues or anything, just added troubles to the long list of stuff going on for me in 2021.

It happens to us all, we have our bad days or bad months, moments, etc.

-> I see... But what about future releases and things taking longer than 30-40 days? 2020 you used to release content monthly just about without issues.

One thing with how 2020 worked for the most part is that simply put the amount of writing has increased since then to keep in mind.

What also helped back then was this day to day format where take the example of "Day X" and it would cover 3 events during that said day. The goal for these were always to reach around 1500 word count or more, so at the least for a given "Day X" of content there would be 4500 words, but lets say even 6000 for a day.

While compared to the episode format there's more events going on and on average the word count for episodes are around 16-20k word counts.

The episode format has been more linked together in it's events also vs before where in a given "Day X" you would jump right into a event with Rachel, once it was done the next event popped you along with Miki with no real idea or connection to stuff. (It's hard to explain the feeling of it.)

That isn't the only reasoning for releases now becoming longer than before though clearly. I think or well... I would like to think that I've improved since my earlier writing days of the project and have gotten better with story telling, pacing and helping bring life to events better than before.

But I guess what I'm trying to blurt out and having issues saying it is that it might just be that new releases moving forward will take a bit longer than what we've been used to before. Not 3-4+ months of waiting mind you! ^^" But it might be that we release new content every 45-50 days roughly instead of shooting for 30-40 days.

It feels hard to guess if that's the case right now though because episode 5 and v0.20 coming soon is a huge amount of content. So naturally it's going to affect things a bit, but the idea should be that there's more content to make up for the wait of time it's taking. We shouldn't be seeing a increase of development time for less content by any means.

With all of this said and I know it's kind of scrambled information. I want to make it perfectly clear that it's possible that with v0.21 forward with the focus on routes, that the expected release schedules might be closer to how things felt before with around 30-40 day periods of new content. We'll keep everyone informed and open as possible as we progress along on new releases and get a better sense of how much time is needed for new content releases.

If by chance we find that we need more time for each content release, we'll be as clear with everyone about it and make adjustments to rewards for pricing tiers so that it feels better about supporting us during X month that didn't deliver on a new game release, while Y month delivers on it and repeats. We're open to ideas on this for rewards and stuff we can do to make supporting feel worth it aside from just the game releases.

-> What if all I want is new game releases then? I want to support but only when I know there's new content for the game as I'm not interested in preview posts or news, etc.

That's perfectly okay! I know that's the big pull for many supporting and it makes sense given we're running a game project here.

My advice is that if you really only wish to support us on the months when a new game release has released, bookmark our guide post >Here< and check back every once in a while. When we release new content for supporters, we also release the latest public version of the game too, so you'll know when a new version of the game has been released based on that.

But like I mentioned further above, it's possible this won't be a major concern. We might possibly be able to pull things off like we normally did back in 2020 with v0.21 forward, just think of it as the more time we're spending on a release. The better or more content will be coming with it from more art to writing, etc.

~Conclusion~

So this was a odd news post, tried to set it up in a bit of a Q&A style to cover recent stuff and upcoming release information.

Right now there isn't too much to bring up regarding v0.20 aside from the writing schedule still feels like it's on track roughly and things are progressing behind the scenes in a timely fashion.

As this month progresses along, we'll probably have our next news post around next weekend sometime around the middle of the month and go a bit more in detail as to how much we have left on writing, art stuff and where we're sitting on expected time frame for release by that point.

We have a good bit of behind the scenes for writing coming up this weekend, I've fallen behind on posting those since there's been a good bit of art stuff lately coming to me from our artists. :P But within the weekend and into next week, expect behind the scenes writing posts, cg scene concept previews followed by the finished previews, some new sprite art stuff still coming and more!

With that said! From all of us at Messy Studios!
We hope August will be a good month for all of you!