November news post #2 (Patreon)

It's about midway through November, so it's right on time for another news post update! This will be a bit on the shorter side as a head up!

General update news regarding v0.20 and if you saw the previous news post, I've mentioned some personal day job issues/concerns and thoughts about what I might have to do regarding some of that stuff. I'd like to say that for the time being the day job situation is at least somewhat stable until after Winter break. So I'm still going to be giving myself some long thoughts about my day job and what I really want to do moving into the new year based around what our company does.

V0.20 I know is feeling like a broken record, but we're shaping up the last bit of stuff and trying to fit a little tiny bit of extra stuff in while we have the chance, but that shouldn't add more than a day of work on said release. I still don't have a exact date to give everyone yet as I don't want to give a estimate, only for it to fall through on a off chance. <.< It's safe to say that with December, we take that month off for Winter break as a dev team. So that should give a hint towards v0.20 if you catch what I'm saying.

Once again, I'm not happy with myself for how things have turned out overall this year on release schedules. So I'd like to once again let everyone know how sorry I am about that, we'd like to make it up to everyone throughout 2022 with our plans in the work towards 30-45 day release cycles, along with a few bonuses to give back to everyone in some way possible in 2022. Thank you everyone for being understanding or putting up with us. <3

With that mentioned, today also marks my birthday.. <.< I don't believe I've mentioned it before in the past 2 years during development, simply because I sort of feel awkward about bringing attention to myself like that. (Silly I know. >.<) But I have plans set aside to celebrate after Friday for that with close family, so I'm a little pumped up for that and just in general it feels needed with stuff going on lately. ^^"

~Updated roadmap plans~ (Hasn't changed)

v0.20 (Episode 5) ~ November
v0.21 (QoL + Gui additions) ~ December/New year's eve
v0.22 (Episode 6 x3 girls) ~ January

Shortly after v0.20 releases, we'll host a poll to engage and see which girls are the most popular. This will be the best timing for doing so, as not to spoil anything major. But episode 5 marks the end of the common route and so we'll be moving into direct story with the cast on their own for the most part moving forward into 2022.

Ideally by the end of episode 5, you should have a pretty good idea and impression of the characters to choose which one you'd like to follow with for the rest of the game. Of course it should be noted, this isn't a fixed thing for good. For example, you can create a save slot that's at the end of episode 5 when a choice pops up that'll be clear as day what it's about and that way, as we add new route episodes for each character. You can always select that save slot and go down another route episode path with it's own save slot.

Pretty much just make good use of your save slots! :P

~Development behind the scenes talks~

Besides wrapping things up and getting v0.20 out as quickly and as bug free as possible...

Lisa's pretty much on her Winter break from dev work until Jan 2022, but once she starts up again. She will be tackling the 7 Kickstarter OC's throughout the year, starting with the 2 main OC's, followed by the side/support OC's. (Order is based on date of supporting Kickstarter.)

MarxeDP and AjoseMp have been working on the Summer Festival wallpaper for us heading into November and still moving along with it currently. Once again moving into 2022, we'll no longer do bonus wallpaper stuff. Instead we'll do little promotional/celebration art pieces and those will be at best a once a year or twice a year thing. (Sorry to those who liked our holiday wallpapers >.<) Simply put, it's a bit too much extra work and while we enjoy them, we also want to make sure we set the priority on cg art even more so when things get more steady into 2022.

Besides the wallpaper above, which should be done before the end of this month. There will also be some visual adjustments made to wet diaper visuals on existing art. (These might not make it in for v0.20, if not. We'll for sure have these included with the quality of life update.)

Plans for December for our cg artists will mainly cover the future route episode 6 stuff so it's planned a bit ahead of time for release when it comes time for that. As expected for the most part, with route episodes focusing more on a select character. We can expect cg art moving forward to mainly return to seeing one character featured, rather than 2-3 like more recently. We will of course still have some fitting moments that'll feature more during routes when it's needed and makes the most sense.

ComposterJF as we can see a few days ago has finished up our next track for MA, focusing on the comedy/silly moments. :P We hope you all enjoy how that track sounds and looking forward to hearing how well it pairs up with in-game moments here shortly! The next track is underway and for that one, it'll be focusing more on sad/emotional moments. I can't wait to hear how that'll turn out little by little in progress throughout this month and into next month! ^^ (That might be it for tracks this year, but more or less we should probably expect 1-2 new tracks per released update moving into 2022.)

The gui artist has been pretty busy with a ton on their plate and I can totally relate right now more than any other time during the MA project development. ^^" I'm giving them a ton of slack, as I don't want the finalized gui elements to turn out rushed and not professionally done. There might be a very good chance that our expected quality of life update for MA we work on during December in our Winter break period won't include the final gui elements if they're not ready by mid December. (If that's the case, we'll have to include them in v0.22 expected for January.)

But I do have some good news and will be sharing a preview look at the Messy Studios team logo that's finished up! :P Be on the lookout for that here in another day or two, once I get a moment to put together a small mock up image to properly display it. I'm very happy with how the logo looks though and think it'll fit generally across the board for all and future projects we create as a team.

Artie will be taking on the editing process here shortly and once that happens, I'll be the first one to let everyone know the exact date expected for v0.20's release!

~Ending statements~

Tried keeping it brief this time around, but just the right amount of info as well!

Hopefully everyone's November and upcoming Thanksgiving here soon enough will go well! Things will continue to be pretty busy in the next 2 weeks, but once again. I have to thank everyone greatly for being so understanding and calm about everything as a whole. We hope to make amends as we head throughout 2022 with a day and night difference in releases.

For now, we hope everyone is doing well!
From all of us at Messy Studios!