September news post #1 (Public) (Patreon)

Let's kick off September with our first news post of the month! ^^ First off, thank you to everyone who decided to stick with us and support us once again and any newcomers discovering us for the first time!

Before we jump into development discussion, I'd like to cover some other news quick.

~Removal of v0.14 downloads?!~

We removed the v0.14 downloads hosted on itch.io and on Patreon in our guide post, about us section, etc.

Don't worry! v0.14 downloads are still around, but we made a special public post to contain those downloads in one place and said post has a link in the guide post to access these downloads still, just a bit more hidden from newcomers.

First impressions are very important and so with having episodes 1-5 nearly polished here soon, we'd prefer newcomers seeing the Ren'py engine version of the game. V0.14 running off of Tyranobuilder engine can be seen as a old development build of the game that isn't going to be how the game proceeds in development anymore. (Besides old events from before still returning and being improved on with wonderful cg art and new events altogether, plus choices and variables still coming soon to rival the old developmental version of the game.)

Check this post out for more details on v0.14 if you need more details. This is where you'll go to download v0.14 from now on as we try to move fully away from old versions in the spotlight and showcase what our best quality, most recent versions are for impressions of the project.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/messy-academy-v0-55732815

~Personal life mentions~

If you've been keeping up since last month, I had a minor back injury while at work. The short summary is, it's a pinched nerve within my upper shoulder area and around my shoulder blade.

Thankfully since then, I've been going to my chiropractor and trying to ensure I do everything in my power to improve the issue. I'd say I'm about 95-97% back to normal now thankfully. The only issues remaining is mostly my left arm has muscle spasms at times and feels electric randomly too.

Not exactly back to normal, but little by little it'll be fully good again. ^^ The first week when my back was really stiff and hard to do much, was probably the only time it affected MA development as it was harder to focus on writing for long periods of time without needing to get up and move around often. (Can be tough keeping your focus when writing if you're moving away from your screen often like that. ^^" )

~v0.20 details~

Okay, the news everyone is really here for!

Development on v0.20 seems to be on track still, I'll be honest about one thing though. The original plans to have the quality of life stuff for episodes 1-4 included, might be a bit of a stretch.

We recently took a day or two to look over episode 1's script and it might not be as quick as I originally thought to make adjustments and fix up stuff. I know episode 1 has the most adjusting needed for some fixes and such, so other episodes might not be as much of a time investment. We're just trying to be clear that as of right now, our main priority for v0.20 is episode 5 and we're going to try our best to get some quality changes included with that.

Episode 5 wise, we're around the 75% finish mark on writing give or take. Some events still need a second pass through to see what might need fixed up a bit more, but it feels like our schedule will have stuff ready by the end of this month for v0.20.

Our cg artist has just finished our 6th cg scene for episode 5 and so we'll be sharing previews of that during this weekend. They're moving onto the 7th cg scene and then we have to decide if we want a 8th and final cg scene for episode 5 or not.

Sprite art wise, I've seen some very early work in progress previews of some stuff that I hope to share with you all here later this month. We're trying to get some of the last stuff needed to be done before the end of October for sprite art, as Lisa is a bit unsure how busy her time will be from November until next Spring. (Anyone on KS still waiting for oc's we still have you all in mind and will get those moving along starting in November we hope. Thank you for being very patient with us, sometimes our plans and timing of things get pushed around a bit. Joys of development. ^^")

I should be seeing some concept previews of the finalized gui elements being made currently this month. Those will be shared with you all as well and we're thinking if they're finished this month or even early next month. We might be looking at v0.21 having the finalized gui added to the game.

Thank you everyone for being patient while we get v0.20 ready, we promise the wait for this update will be well worth it with the mass amount of cg art, new sprite/characters being seen in the episode and massive amount of events seen within episode 5.

We're still figuring out what to do moving forward after v0.20 releases, if our release schedule for new content on average takes a bit longer than we used to deliver during 2020. We'd like to take some time during our December holiday break to fix and improve Patreon tiers and rewards/perks so that it feels better for those months where we can't offer game content right away without rushing it out unfinished.

~Ending statements~

For now we hope everyone has been enjoying the previews on the art and behind the scenes, etc. We're hopeful that many of you are getting a bit excited to see just what is the context behind some of these cg scenes being shared. :P

I think it's safe to say without spoilers, that Episode 5 has the most fan service events to date and oddly enough not every event is meant to be super fan servicey either! <.< But cg art wise and stuff going on, it should appeal greatly to those looking for increased fan service. ^^

Until our next news post around mid September!
Messy Studios thanks you all once again for continued support!