March News post #3 (Patreon)

Our final news post for March is here! I'm trying to condense these posts a little bit better and straight to the topics focus, etc. ^^" Generally seems like it's best overall with that method.

Let's dive into things! ^^

~What's next for Development?~

I still have to chat with Madi (Our programmer) to get a rough idea of their schedule and expectations laid out before me. But my plan is to move forward with v0.20 of course, finally!

I have hopes that with the experience done in the past month from Madi, that they have a better understanding of our team and development overall. Which should help them greatly when it comes to tackling v0.20 content and seeing how they handle fresh new content that's more typical to expect from us moving forward again.

I'd like to have v0.20 out by April 30th, but this is my personal goal and of course this isn't confirmed yet, but I'll have a better understanding of what Madi expects as we head into the first week of April most likely.

v0.20 content will mainly consist of episode 5, which is needless to say quite different compared to episode 4 content. It's the biggest episode in terms of word count and scenes alone, with over 40 total cg art variants to be seen.

This is the priority focus, but if there is a tiny bit of time left over. I'd like to include a few minor adjustments for episode 4 content. This being pretty simple with a visual change to Lola for how she shows up in episode 4 and very tiny changes made to dialogue in that rooftop moment regarding her. Very minor changes.

Mentioned Lola stuff will make sense with our sprite art preview by next week and shouldn't be a huge spoiler related post. (Don't worry, Lola's sprite isn't being redone or anything major. Just some little outfit additions that affect her on some scenes.)

Overall, my personal goals leading into summer, is to have v0.20 ready and out by April 30th. v0.21 out by May 31st and keep that energy moving along, but after v0.21 you might expect us to begin our 45 day release schedule. I simply want to get these next two releases out in around 30 days or less to make up for our awkward start of 2022, that way as we progress into the 2nd half of this year, it'll feel like we did a good amount of progress.

~Personal Life mentions!~

Now that v0.19.5 is out. I've felt pretty good, but I know we're not out of rough waters yet! I have taken a hold of my personal schedule once again.

This consists of working my day job Mon-Fri, when I get home I spend 2-3 hours of my free time towards writing the scripts for MA. Ideally I shoot for a goal of 1000 words within that period of time minimum, but sometimes there's better days than others. :P This at least ensures that around 5000 words are written up in a week and in result, within a month, we have around 20,000 words done.

That number being pretty solid for what is normally expected for episode content roughly. Route episodes will change a bit, as the goal is to keep route episodes feeling around 8000-12,000 word count. Overall, writing is moving along still and is currently ahead of programming for once in development. ^^"

Then on my weekends, I try to not focus much on MA, not that I dislike the time spent focused around the project. But just generally needing to have 2 days where I can freely take a breather, focus on my personal hobbies/interests so I don't get too overwhelmed with MA.

Lately, I've been catching up on a ton of anime series that's been on my watch list for a while. Those include...

Anohana: I've seen this one back in 2020, but I was surprised to hear my older brother hasn't seen it before. So we had a chance to go through the series together, along with his girlfriend recently. We ended up finishing it in 2 nights..  ^^" I think it still holds up pretty good personally, one of my favorites even if it's pretty sad with it's theme.

Nagi No Asukara: I'm only 3-4 episodes in, but I'm liking this one so far! I really love the music, but I'm trying very hard to avoid spoiling anything when looking up music for the show or checking out art that's been created.

My-Dress Up Darling: This series I think is coming to a end this weekend, but it's been one of those shows that feels like it pulls you along into the next episode pretty well. Kind of hard to explain.. ^^" It's been difficult watching this, because it reminds me of Lola in some ways and of course the biggest trouble being not to directly copy things from other forms of media. I do think it's helped open up some more insight into minor cosplay details that I sadly don't know a whole lot about personally.

Besides anime, I've lightly played a bit of Switch recently with Mario Kart 8. Which actually makes me think about putting together a little community event one of these upcoming weekends for a few hours to have anyone in the discord come tag along and play online for a bit. :P

Single player games, I've been slowly making some progress with Atelier Sophie 2 since I remember playing the first one and beating it long ago. Just one of those comfy games to play and relax with. ^^

~Development Team!~

[~CG art~]

CG art should be moving along again!

MarxeDP has confirmed he has his new graphic card replacement and his friend AjoseMp is starting progress as well. I can't say we'll see some wip cg art before the end of this month, unless he makes some massive progress in the next week.

But April should have some good cg art previews to make up for it!

MarxeDP has suggested to help speed up cg art being done, that we test another friend of his who draws. So currently I've tasked their friend with a test commission to see just how closely they can mimic the existing artstyle seen in previous cg art. Even if they can't draw diapers like Ajose is able to, he mentioned that Ajose can take what progress is done from the other artist and add certain aspects to it if needed.

I'll have to see how this test goes, but I hope to have good news with this as we head into April. This would help speed up cg art as 2 artists can tackle the drawing phases of cg art, with MarxeDP doing the bg's and coloring phases of said art.

[~Sprite art~]

Lisa has provided me with some sprite additions being worked on this month! They are Lola related, but that's all I can say right now. :X

Things have been pretty tough on her recently, not to speak too personally on her behalf out of respect, but some of you might be aware that Lisa is Russian and from Ukraine. I think it goes without saying any further, that what's going on in her country is depressing and heart breaking. I can only imagine being in her spot and dealing with that.

But I do want to stress that she is safe, along with family and friends as far as I'm aware thankfully.

But due to what's going on, it's been a slow month naturally and understandably. Hence she's working on smaller sprite additions for this month and possibly next month to give her more time to herself. If you'd like to share support or even just hang out, Lisa streams on twitch sometimes with drawing, games and other hobbies! You might even catch me over there once in a rare moment. :P

https://www.twitch.tv/lisadikaprio

[~Chibi Art~]

Narukkod has provided me with early wip's for some of the last chibi art I requested earlier this month. I'm pretty happy with how they're looking so far! We'll probably see some early concept wip's of these shared later this week!

I don't think this will be the last, last of chibi art that MA receives, but it's not going to be major stuff in the future. At most maybe additional outfits, but I think the chibi art is just a nice bonus for the game and as such, it's of course a lower priority. It just so happened that I had a bit of extra money out of pocket in February and March to get these done. ^^

[~Music~]

ComposerJF managed to finish up Miki's Theme this month! I'm super happy with how it turned out! ^^ I think it really fits her character and will help her moments stick out a bit better when hyping them up.

The next track should begin in April, which will be Nova's Theme! I hope we can get this one ready in time before v0.21 is ready as it'll be a perfect time to get to hear Nova's Theme in her first route episode!

[~Gui~]

Ds-sans has briefly chatted with me not too long ago, nothing related to gui plans or what news is there for that stuff.. ^^"

But I'm hoping we can get a screen done here and there, getting through the rest of the assets before summer hits.

~Ending Notes~

So much for "Condensed" news posts... ^^" Sorry...

I also wanted to address with v0.19.5 that we're thankful for the reports on Mac and Android not working quite as expected like before! This is something we're looking into, as we want to have things sorted out for v0.20 more so on these.

I suspect it has something to do with the process our new programmer has exported these builds causinng issues, but sadly I'll have to wait and see. I've reached out to them and it takes a bit of back and forth over a few days to fully discuss everything out and then testing, etc. So hopefully later this week, I can have these builds working more ideal for everyone.

The main thing is taking this energy with v0.19.5 and pushing forward into v0.20 into April!

~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~