August news post #2 (Patreon)

Time for our mid month news update on how things are generally going behind the scenes schedule wise for v0.20, expectations and general information, etc. :P

Starting us off, I'd like to begin with a mention from our previous news post regarding how I have a pinched nerve somewhere within my shoulder blade from work about 3 weeks ago.

I will say since then, I've gotten in with my doctor and had a cortisone shot (Sadly didn't seem to do much). Along with that, I've seen my chiropractor two more times since the 5th, roughly once each week to help adjust things enough to let things heal or what not. <.<

Pretty much to be short with it, compared to how things felt during the first news post. I was so stiff and in pain with very slight movements, the only thing that really helped in any slightest was trying to ice numb the areas and apply heat, but clearly wasn't offering much relief.

Now while I'm still dealing with some annoyances, I can be grateful that my back isn't feeling the way it was 2-3 weeks ago. I can admit something has to be still "off" because really the only issue I have now is my left arm will have a dull aching pain pulsing through it at times of the day. The grossed out part of that is my left hand er fingers are weak and shaking without much control over the whole nerve/muscle thing. (To be expected I guess considering the whole pinched nerve traveling into my arm, probably messing with my strength in the arm.)

Anyways! I wanted to start off with a little update on that situation just to let everyone know that it does seem like things are improving, just taking it's course to little by little, week by week see changes in results.

(Once again similar to the first post mention of this, I've still been writing through this during the weekdays. So it hasn't affected anything for game dev stuff.)

aaaaand speaking of bad luck? <.< Our cg artist, to clarify is two people. (MarxeDP handles the coloring phases and his buddy does the drawing.) Well MarxeDP's buddy has been pretty sick since early this month and earlier this week I found out they had a pretty bad fever with it. >.< It seems like things might be looking up for them here from the update I received today, so hopefully they'll be all good again.

Of course because of that our 5th cg scene out of 7 expected for ep 5 is just about finished, but the 6th cg scene hasn't been started yet and so right now we're roughly unsure how quickly it'll take to see the 6th cg scene finished. I'm hopeful these last few cg scenes will be done and ready for v0.20 though.

-> With the mention of v0.20, we expecting late Aug? Early Sept? Oct? Nov?

Let's hope it wouldn't take until November or even October! :P

Seriously though, right now things still seem pretty on schedule for I'd say early September before the midway point of that month. That's just a safe guess as episode 5 writing is getting closer to being done with a few events remaining to write out, then we're still hoping to tackle the quality of life changes for ep 1-4 within a good 5-7 days.

With the quality stuff, I'll be looking to tackle episode 1 for one day and see how it goes to get a better idea as it's easier to guess and assume right now just how involved the changes will take up for time.

-> Any update on the Patreon support tiers and rewards to make up for less quickly often game releases?

I haven't had much time to really figure out a solid plan yet or if it'll be needed for sure until I see how things go for schedule time wise with releasing v0.21 but I'm looking to make sure supporters feel their perks are well worth it.

The idea in mind is that if we can't release new game releases roughly every 30-40 days to just about offer a new game version each month. If those end up taking us more like 45-50+ days instead, we want to make sure supporters perks besides the game updates are well worth it on odd months.

I know the big perk of supporting at $5 tier is the game releases itself, that'll never change in terms of being the best promise. But we want to ensure the other perks are fulfilling too.

Currently the big perk for $5 tier besides game releases is finished cg/sprite/bg art previews. While $10 tier offers concept previews a few days ahead of the finished ones. I believe our $10 supporters gain access to some extra posts for cg gallery stuff and what not.

The main area we'd want to look at for adding new benefits or perks would be $5 tier and $25 tier.

$5 tier, we have no idea yet what to offer that could be seen as a nice extra perk.

$25 tier, we know isn't too exciting or probably not worth it to many right now cause what it used to be is a one time payment tier to unlock getting your own oc character added to the game. When we put that perk on pause, we only were able to offer a direct behind the scenes to writing scripts as a real perk to that tier. (Clearly not worth the $10 > $25 jump)

So with the $25 tier we might adjust for the time being, we'll add a $20 tier most likely and look into making that feel more worth it for those who really want to give a little extra support and make sure we offer some good perks with it.

(We're still unsure yet if or when the benefit/perk of your own oc character for $25 is coming back, we'll have more details by Summer of 2022. Making sure we can fit the oc's we have currently behind the scenes in the game and have room for more, etc.)

->  What's everyone on the team been doing since the previous news post?

Well knocking myself out of the way, you already know about the nerve pinch issue and writing is still going steady. :P

Uncle Artie has been up to some stuff I don't think I'm really allowed to mention out of respect, I can just say he's got some stuff going on for his next project in the works after finishing "My Catgirl Thinks She Runs The Place?!" (Engine/editing wise, he hasn't had to do anything yet.)

Lisadikaprio has recently finished the wonderful Garnet sprite, in case you've missed it in the previous weeks so far. You can check her out >>here<<. Along with that, she has a little list of sprite work to tackle within the next few months. She has some stuff going on with uni classes by the end of October, so we're trying to get most of this list done last minute. <.< (KS oc's we haven't forgotten you! We have a schedule laid out for the rest of this year into 2022)

MarxeDP has been moving along with the cg art, besides the mention above on his buddy feeling sick recently. I keep mentioning it, but ep 5 really does have a huge amount of cg art included. 7 total cg scenes expected with easily 30 variants total across all the cg art being added. Some of these have been getting previews of course, with our 5th cg scene being showed of here this week. :P

Aaaaand GUI artist!? What...!?

So back in Spring I've been on the lookout for a gui artist to tackle the finished gui, with much of the needed assets being more suited towards Ren'py engine as some of our previous gui assets don't quite work.

I've had to wait until recently to have them ready to tackle things for MA, but they're finally ready to take it on! ^^ I don't want to mention exactly who they are yet, but I believe they're pretty well known within the vn community for gui work and their own vn projects.

Anyways! The talks between us have been going on this past week and references for the visuals of the gui have been sent, so I'm excited to share with everyone some early mock up images of how the game will look with it's final look.

I originally wanted to have the gui stuff added with v0.20 because of the timing of it would be perfect with letting players start fresh while checking out the new stuff in ep 1-4 before heading into ep 5. (Because when the new gui is added, it will most likely break your saved data! >.< As old gui assets will be removed.)

What we will probably do when the new gui is added into one of the upcoming game releases, is that we'll have a save spot included that lets you jump straight to ep 5 at least. We'll be sure to let everyone know how things are affected with the new gui and old save data when we get to that point of course. Right now there's nothing to worry about with v0.20 or even possibly v0.21 considering it'll take them some time to get the gui assets all finished.

-> Anything else or is that about it?

I think that just about covers some news that comes to mind. <.< The short and sweet of it is that things are moving along still with v0.20 roughly to schedule. The uncertain being with the quality of life stuff and how much time is really needed for that, but we're aware of how bad things were regarding the delay after delay situation of v0.19 and we want to assure everyone that this isn't a repeat of that.

The only extra time needed for why v0.20 wasn't ready at the end of July or won't be ready even by the end of August, is simply the size difference.

v0.20 for comparison, episode 5 is shaping up at 35-40k word count worth of events taking place vs episode 4 that ended up being about 13-15k word count worth of events. Not to mention the average 3 cg scenes added per episode, while ep 5 has 7 cg scenes. That's all without counting any quality of life new stuff, which also has some new variants of existing cg art from ep 1-4 added. (Art already done for those)

Anyways, as always! We hope everyone has been doing well and looking forward to the conclusion of the common route and how it leads into the routes!