February Development Report! (Patreon)

Before diving into this. I recently and openly shared some personal stuff going on, among the development issues and history to be more transparent with the whole ordeal. This was within the MA discord and touched on in another post, but I'd like to begin February with sharing this to all of our fans out there.

Then we'll get into details for February as a whole, if you've read what was posted within the discord server recently. You may skip down to "[~Expectations for February!~]"

[~Personal & Development Troubles!~]

As many of you might be aware by now. We've been in quite a rut with development on the project for a while. It seems like things would move one step forward, two steps back throughout this period with some stuff being out of my control, while other things were more within my control.

(My intent isn't to put anyone on blast, just simply explaining our development history. Mainly it stems from my own faults and I can accept that fully.)

Starting back at the very start of 2022, Artie had decided to step down from programming for some personal reasons at the time. We found a new programmer to take over in his place, but we had to get them caught up on the project as a whole and ease them into the process we've grown accustomed to, expectations from each other, duties, etc. 

Things didn't feel like it was going to work out with the new programmer after giving them from roughly February to May/June and getting a good reading on how everything would flow together. To keep it short, it felt like it simply wasn't the right expectations that had been agreed on upfront and it left me with the impression that this wasn't going to be a long term solution.

So around June, I want to say.. Artie had reached back out about the position being open and I accepted since our history working together had been super solid in expectations on one another, etc.

Around this same time, I believe I just came down with my first case of covid that knocked me out for a good 2 weeks. It was around this time that, so much time had passed since the original draft/script for episode 5 was written up and after looking through it.. I wasn't exactly happy with the level of quality presented for the script, realizing there were some gameplay elements that needed to be mixed in and wanting to ease the oc's into the story in their own fitting ways within this episode.

(This was because prior to this, the episodes were starting to move away from offering any real gameplay choices as well. Something that we received feedback on greatly with the prior episode 4, wanting to ensure there's a solid pacing with choices that are a mix between meaningful and fun choices, with more informative choices to add to character, world setting details.)

So, I decided to start fixing up the original script, hence the slow delays around that time even with Artie back onboard. This was my fault, not his. I know some may disagree with messing with the script like that, instead of just putting what was there into the engine. But it'd only cause even more work for us later down the road, we don't try to rush out new content poorly, not nearly finalized or bug ridden, etc. Getting these episodes in correctly the first time is our goal, we want these episodes to be about 90% finalized.

That means, what you see for episode 5 is pretty much the finalized version of the game during that episode. The extra 10% is there for minor additions upon a final look through in the future at the very end of development.

While working on these fixes and rewriting of scenes even, it wouldn't be much longer before I came down with covid again within late July? I recall it being near August because I was also dealing with some personal issues and stress beyond getting sick again.

With that in mind, while I was sick. I was out of commission and it gave me time to think over some personal stuff going on.. I had decided I'd put my two weeks notice in for my day job in order to pursue college courses full-time instead of working a job.

(This only worked out because I live with my older Brother and his gf, who agreed on some conditions in allowing me to continue staying with them that was more than fair and it'd help with my personal issues/stress at the time.)

Because of this.. I did take a good month away from MA in order to sort everything out, getting into the habit of a different habit for my daily schedule and how that'd conflict with writing for MA and managing things, besides the personal stuff.

Once that was sorted out, we were going into early or mid September once everything was settled. I jumped back into where I left off with the writing scripts for the content and what little had been rewritten before getting sick and everything up to this point. This of course took some time to get back into the swing of things naturally and getting in the right mindset.

Now besides this... Our biggest issue with development after we swapped to Ren'py as our engine is honestly.. The common route for MA. (Episodes 1-5)

Each of these episodes are easily 16,000-22,000 word count. I wanted to fit as much into the common route episodes for good reason, hence the higher word count in scripts.. But this also meant it'd take even longer to get through these scripts.

(In comparison, before the Ren'py engine swap. A single "day" = "episode" of content was at best 4500 word count for better or worse in some people's views, sure. I'd argue many have noticed a better quality in pacing and character development though.)

I started to realize these episodes were a bit too much to tackle by the end of episode 3 and when working on episode 4 more so. We couldn't realistically push a episode of content out to our liking in the shorter time frames we had in the past by this point. Each game project handles updates differently for what they consider a "update". I've seen many games that do update often, but typically the amount of content or what is really offered as a whole isn't much.

The problem with this, is that MA is very story heavy compared to other ab/dl games.

That isn't to say other games have less meaningful stories or characters, interesting world settings. It's just that MA has multiple layers going on for it's branching stories to be pieced together, as the project moves along further into these stories. It might even surprise many that a ab/dl game would go in certain directions with the story-telling and themes behind character's personal issues. We care deeply about the story, it just so happens to be that there's also going to be plenty of fanservice and adult moments paced throughout this story.

(I'll let you decide which is the bonus, the story or the diapered content.)

To wrap this up.. The episodes for new content are becoming too huge and the only logical thing we could do in MA's case as a game project to be on par with some other games that provide smaller updates, is to for example.. Split episode 5 into multiple release/updates, each one coming quickly enough, but we'd be talking 4000-5000 word count. Which is the first 2 scenes of episode 5, out of a total of 10 scenes in the episode. 

(We're not doing that, just to clarify.)

The problem is that looking at prior episodes, this wouldn't go over well would it? Imagine playing episode 1 and shortly after Brandon and the guys arrive, meet John and get caught up about the academy and Brandon is led to the classroom. We simply put a "To be continued" screen once Brandon had reached the classroom. Then the following update would cover the events of the classroom, hanging out with Erika and possibly stretching the Nurse intro into there before that content is wrapped up with a "To be continued", etc.

You get the idea I hope.. We want to provide the episode in full for pure enjoyment and make the experience well worth it as a whole. 

With that said, what's changing majorly after the release of episode 5.. Is that we're entering route episodes at that point. These route episodes are finer condensed into being about 6,000-8,000 word count with a focus more on a single character mainly. Our ideal goal is shooting for 2-3 of these per monthly release. But even if we fall behind on a given route episode, due to the nature of that content in comparison to these larger common episodes 1-5.. It's setup in a better fashion so we could simply release 2 finished route episodes and it wouldn't sour the experience.

We're almost there with episode 5's content, I had thought January for sure after the holiday madness. But it's feeling more like a February release wholeheartedly. Take that with a big grain of salt if needed, I totally get it. 

The overall takeaway is that with this release, with what was explained for route episodes. We'll be able to provide monthly content without any delays in mind. That's our ideal way of getting things back on track again for this year and into 2024.

To conclude this long explanation... There's some personal stuff below.

I've been recently dealing with some health related issues that are improving, but it isn't super serious if handled correctly. It's just been irritating and awkward to deal with lately, but with recently getting checked up with my doctor. They provided me with a different treatment route and just within the two days of doing that, I can see a huge difference!

Besides that, I am also struggling with some family related issues that some may relate to, other's might not. If you have a stubborn family member that's controlling, you may relate.

I won't get too into that as there's too much personal mentions involved, but I'll just say that it's something that feels like the rest of my family is in a awkward position with little to no voice in the matter. Which is super frustrating and like arguing with a brick wall.

My point in even lightly bringing up these personal mentions is that I think it's too often that some people tend to forget I, myself or everyone involved on the team aren't just working on game development full-time. We're just like many of you out there dealing with the struggles and issues tossed at us in our daily personal lives, while trying to also do indie development.

I hope this has helped shed some light about everything and all I can say is to hang tight, but I'd understand if some fans/supporters need to take a step back to see how things unfold this month and into the future. That's completely okay!

This is very much a huge passion project to me and I want to see it through to the end no matter what, we had our awkward period of development issues. But it's time to move forward and improve ourselves this year onward.

Still have some huge posts that are exciting news for the project to be shared later into February and into March. I've been looking forward to those for a while and biting my tongue on spilling anything about those. :X

(Finally! If you made it through that, treat yourself to a small reading break. Stretch, grab a drink, snack, etc. You deserve it!)

[~Expectations for February!~]

The schedule has been set with our pacing of what is needed to be tackled for episode 5 during February. Even if we put a little into it during the weekdays, each day and it turns out we're not ready until the very end of the month. So be it!

The important thing is just getting it out in general, sooner of course would be better. But please understand we don't have a exact date set for within February yet. All I can say is that with where we sit behind the scenes in development, it is a February release.

Which brings me to another talking point as a whole... Release dates.

Moving forward, once episode 5 is released. We will no longer give estimated release dates, no estimated month, day or exact time, etc. What we will do is once we are 100% sure of ourselves and have the content in a 75% finished state or more. ..

Then and only then, will we announce publicly a confirmed release date, along with the exact time expected for the release to be out on that day.

(We understand some fans/supporters are curious and have the right to know even a estimated guess to when new content is coming. But this has only hurt the project more than it has done good. The only estimated guess you'll be left with after the release of episode 5 is that we'll be shooting for new content each month, providing something new for our monthly supporters and fans.)

[~Messy Studios Team~]

[~CG art~]

MarxeDP and AjoseMp are still working on some unannounced stuff for us. We'll possibly have our next cg scene to show off for February, but most of the art previews for February will lean in the favor of Lisa's sprite art being shown off.

If you missed our previous cg art related previews back in December, you can check those out below! (Supporters $5-10+ tier to view.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cg-concept-v0-23-75722663 (Erika ep 6 concept)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cg-finished-v0-75924389 (Erika ep 6 finished)

[~Sprite art~]

Lisa has been a wrecking ball with plowing through sprite stuff during January! She was able to finish one of the KS oc's named Adriana, which was posted just 2 days ago and a link to view that character's preview post will be below..

We have just two more KS oc's remaining, with early rough sketch previews provided for both. Our next one in the works is Sharon (oc) and then for March, it'll be Tomo (oc). That'll wrap up our oc reward characters from the KS campaign.

As we move into February, we already have some preview additions for Garnet to show off this week/weekend coming up and later the Sharon preview should be out, along with some other stuff this month.

If you missed our previous sprite related previews in January, you can check those out below! (Supporters $5+ tier to view.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/sprite-preview-77977811 (Adriana oc preview)

[~Music~]

ComposerJF has been working on our next track, another slice of life vibe piece of music. It should be very soon when we share our finished preview of that track based on history of the other tracks. :P

Then we'll dive into more character themes for a while!

If you missed our previous music preview in January, you can check that out below! (Free to view/listen.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/music-preview-76860977

[~Gui~]

Chatting with Ds-sans in the past week, I think it's safe to say we'll continue receiving new gui screens and assets from them into the future. But it's very uncertain to give any clear estimates.

It sounds like the next gui asset is the Yes/No related screen assets, with possibly the route selection screen being worked on after that.

(This means there's a high chance we'll see a placeholder route selection screen between v0.20 and v0.21's releases.)

~Ending~

I know that was a lot to go through... ^^" You deserve a break from my walls of text, so I'll leave it simple here.

Keep yourself informed and updated on development by following Patreon notifications or bookmarking our brand new >Guide Post< for 2023. You can also continue to keep updated through our Itch.io page or Twitter as well!

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>Patreon<
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(You can also find our official posts/account on these sites, but due to their nature we won't include links directly.)
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~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~