Progress update - January (Patreon)

Hello everyone, today I bring you guys a progress update detailing what I have to do for the upcoming release.

Initially, the plan was to release the update in 2 parts, first v0.4.5 with Lena and Emily's scenes, and then v0.5 with Mia and Kana's scenes. But since these updates take place in a non-linear section, after a small introduction, I could release the scenes individually (mini updates) and then join everything together with a larger scene at the end. Splitting the updates would allow me to add small scenes of other girls in between.

So, the release scheme of this mini-updates would be like this:

• V0.4.1 : Initial scene + Class + Lena's scene + Extra scene
• V0.4.3 : Emily's Scene + Extra scene
• V0.4.3 : Mia's scene + Extra scene.
• And so on, if necessary.

Then, when I already have the scenes I want in that explorable part, I can wrap up the update with a more complex scene, which would be:

• V0.5: Final scene.

I think releasing it outright as v0.5 and splitting it into pieces is essentially the same in terms of development time, but this way it would help me to release some pressure between updates, although personally, I would prefer people to play v0.5 directly as it is a story with a beginning and an end. I'll talk about release dates later in the post.

Update v0.4.1 roadmap

Don't be scared by the amount of things that are at 0%, as for the 3d modeling of the environment, once it's finished, it's a pretty fast process. I'm trying to use the rendering filters within lumion to do the backgrounds, so I'll probably have to redraw very few things.
And once the writing is done, the CGs will also progress faster, but v0.4.1 is the one that will take the longest of these updates, and it's for 3 reasons:

• I have to prepare the initial scenes and assets that will be used during the mini-updates that compose v0.5, once v0.4.1 is finished the others will be faster.
• I have exams in February, I failed the December exams and this is my last chance to take them, otherwise, I think I could finish this update much earlier.
• I have to learn how to use Spine Pro to do the animations for Lena's scene. As there is a learning curve with every new program, it will probably take me longer with Lena's scene as it is the first one (more on this below).
  
  

New software

I am planning to change the program I use to animate, I will switch from After effects to Spine pro. I've been thinking about this for a long time, AE has many limitations (for the kind of animations I want to do), and Spine pro is an industry standard for exqueletical animations, but I never made the change because the license is very expensive (300$+ usd), now that the income has gone up I can afford it. I thought about doing the animations in Live2d, which is cheaper, but that is a very specialized program for streamers, and its support for unity is very limited.

Speaking of Unity... during black friday, I bought the Naninovel addon, to be able to make visual novels in Unity way easier. I have no plans to make a port at the moment, but since I'm going to learn to use Spine pro, which is compatible with Unity, I thought it would be a good purchase for the future. In unity, I would have direct control over the animations (which would weigh a lot less), and I could make them interactive and customizable in engine.

I believe that as a developer, learning to use Spine Pro and Unity can be very useful in the future, but for now, you will only see the impact on the animations, which I want to take to the next level.

Extra scenes

The extra scenes are optional, I'm not sure if I'm going to do them, depends if I end up delaying or not. They are much smaller and less complex scenes that I can make in addition to the main scenes, and including them in the mini-updates would make them more worthy of being played.

For now, there are only these 2, I think that Ruri's scene is easier to do, so I will probably include it with v0.4.1 if I do it, although Laura's scene is important to start expanding her character beyond a simple comic relief, and also you were supposed to get the magnetic screwdriver through her (necessary for this update).

The gallery also depends on the time, I will probably include it in v0.4.2.

RELEASE DATES

As I have said above, V0.4.1 will take the most time, so the estimated dates would be as follows:

V0.4.1 - Late February, early March.

V0.4.2 - Early April.

V0.4.3 - Early May

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V0.5 - Early July (the final update is bigger, that's why it takes 2 months)

If there is anything you didn't understand about the new release structure, or if you don't agree with it, please let me know. That's all for now, I'm going back to work/study, bye!

PS: Happy New Year!