January news post #3 (Final) (Delayed!) (Patreon)

I know our amount of posts made this month has dropped quite a bit as I've been extremely busy with the release situation. Ideally one thing I want to do this year to keep the amount of bloat down on how often we post, is to do simply that. ^^"

This year we're going to try and limit what we post down to about 2, sometimes 3 posts per week. On average we'll expect around 8-10 posts made in a given month, which of course ranges from news posts, art previews, behind the scenes, voting polls and more soon.

Ideally the goal is to limit the amount of posts made, but ensure the quality of the posts and what they offer are increased. So for art previews for example, we might have a more fuller experience showing off all the progress with a given cg scene from start to finish.

(In case anyone was wondering why the lack of posts made this month. ^^")

Moving on!

I'll get right into the major point of this post about v0.20 and the plans revolving around that.

Earlier this month I was given the warning that Artie (Our programmer) was going to step down and leave the project. Since the start of this month, I decided to split up the priority of stuff needed to get done behind the scenes and laid it all out, but I under estimated exactly how busy this month would be between work picking up after the holidays and trying to get a number of things done in time.

One major aspect of course was finding a new programmer, which thankfully is all sorted out for the most part. Currently Artie and them are discussing some engine related tips or tricks before Artie makes his official leave after Jan 31st, that way the new programmer coming on-board is fully prepared. But I had expected to get much of this stuff done within the first half of January and ended up mainly getting most of it done just last weekend.

The second major aspect that was pushed further back while trying to get the first stuff settled was that instead of having around 2 weeks for Artie to get through the engine work as I had hoped for episode 5, I ended up having about a week and then I ran into wasting two days of time on some personal ordeal with my older brother's car breaking down a couple hours away from home, driving back and forth to get him and then the following day to hopefully get him back to his car and pray that it would start up again.

By the time I had started getting the script's finishing touches moving along this past few days, I realized just how little time Artie had left with the team.

So I asked him, open and honestly and not anything to do with this being his fault by any means.. But seeing how little time was left, I wanted to check if he could manage to tackle everything day by day into this weekend before he's fully done with MA. (Even though I had a feeling it'd be asking too much given his personal issues and reasoning for wishing to depart from the project in the first place, on top of already being so awesome to stick around for this month so I could at the very least get another programmer up to speed on their work loads for the rest of the project.)

Simply put, Artie felt that given how little time there was left, that it'd be honestly better to have the new programmer take over instead for v0.20. Which I can't blame Artie for, if anything it's my fault fully for under estimating how much time I would need to get everything done without other distractions or issues that popped up out of the blue. >.<

Now ideally in a perfect world, I'd of course want to provide v0.20 on Jan 31st, which is what I was shooting for this month. But there's some things that are a bit out of my hands and it's simply, take the punches while dodging at times. Development can vary completely based on a number of factors, some run into issues less than others, some run into too many issues and never see their project finished fully, etc.

What I'm trying to get across is that I'm trying my best with what I can do, while life continues to throw curve balls at me in my personal life, project management or other. I will fully admit and agree from the bottom of my heart that v0.20 should've been released long ago ideally, as it has been so long since v0.19 came out, but I'm still trying my best to push through everything and deliver not only v0.20, but also v0.21 still targeted for mid March and then v0.22 by early May, etc!

Before anyone gets upset by this news, I do want to make it clear... Anyone who has supported us at the $5 tier once during 2021 or this month will receive a direct message from me the very minute that v0.20 is released, with downloads for it. Even if you are not an active supporter in February coming up.

It won't stop there, as I have plans to give back to the community and supporters as we move forward to make up for our shortcomings in 2021. But I beg of you, please bare with me during this awkward team situation transitioning and trying to make it right to each and everyone of you in the process!

~v0.20 delay details and future!~

To explain further from above, Artie is leaving the team after Jan 31st. Which means that there is absolutely, no way that he would be able to finish all the engine work for v0.20, even if he had started already before he agreed to make his leave.

Which means, the new programmer is going to begin taking the script files and starting their work on getting v0.20 ready for all of you asap! Given I told them, they wouldn't be expected to really begin work until mid February, under such short notice to now change that plan and have them quickly adapt to help with v0.20 being ready right away, it's going to take us a little bit...

Since this is a very awkward starting point for the programmer to begin with, I honestly can't speak for them this early into working with them to give a rough estimate for how quick they can get everything into the engine and provide me with a test version. If it takes them about 5-7 days to get everything into the engine, we could be looking at v0.20 being ready on Feb 5th or 7th.

Again.. I have not been able to experience and work alongside this new programmer yet, so I can't fully confirm it being done on that given date. I do want to keep everyone informed asap on updates about the situation and will provide those later this week, with our news post in February. By then I should be able to fully confirm or have a better idea of exactly when v0.20 is dropping on everyone with a 2 day heads up before it's release.

Now even with this delay in mind, while they're working on getting the content of v0.20 into the game engine this week. I'll be starting to tackle the writing scripts for v0.21 content, making sure that content is fully ready to release right on time with mid March, uninterrupted by any of this mess. Followed by v0.22 being out by early May.

One thing to note about the 45 day release cycle is that starting with v0.21 forward. What content is planned ahead or not seen, mentioned even yet. I will tell you all that behind the scenes we'll have content stored up and spread out evenly through the year, even during our scheduled Winter break in December's. (What I mean is that the content for v0.21 might all be finished and ready by the start of March, but even if it's not released asap. We're already moving ahead behind the scenes to get v0.22 content done long before it's ideal release date.)

Now clearly, if we end up with too much of a stockpile of content ready for release, we'll include extra content in releases while maintaining enough of a buffer in case we need it for our planned December months or if something comes up, our promises on content for the future won't be halted or delayed at all.

~Extra mentions about cg art~

This isn't quite impactful or has much to do with v0.20, but it is a very real concern for v0.21 content being planned already.

I haven't said much about this manner, but since early January, our cg artist. Which consists of two buddies, one who draws and the other does the coloring. Ajosemp being the drawing one came down with something and his buddy MarxeDP has let me know that he believes it could very well be covid.

I've been trying to keep up with MarxeDP about the situation and keeping his buddy in my thoughts, trying to check in and let him know that it's important for him to rest, take it easy and not worry right this moment about MA art requests until he's feeling okay again.

I have not heard from MarxeDP in about a week now, which only makes me a bit more worried than I was before. I'm hoping I'll hear from him very soon and nothing else will come of this, but with how long it's been going on for this month. I figured it was time to make a mention of it, because naturally it not only would affect cg art progress for v0.21 content being ready by mid March, but naturally being concerned about our good buddy Ajosemp on the team and his health during this.

~Wrap up~

I know by sharing this news, it'll bring with it unwarranted hate, possibly support, I'll even admit most likely warranted hate or disappointment. I understand many of you have been waiting for a long time for this content, which is why it's really hard for me when I share this kind of news. All I can really say that I haven't already, is that I'm sorry for the awkward transitioning situation going on with our team currently...

I standby my promises for giving back to the community this year forward and I also standby strongly with making the releases for MA steady, fulfilling and fun to play again! There's much in store for v0.21 onward and we hope that after our bumpy transition with getting v0.20 out within the next week or two ideally. We'll begin to prove ourselves once again and deliver greatly!

~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~