Astra - Monthly Update (March 2022) (Patreon)

Hello Patrons,

Hope everyone is having a great March so far! Firstly, I just wanted to thank everyone for their patience regarding this update. It has been an adventurous month to say the least and I wanted to capture all the proper information before relaying it over to you guys.

So with that being said, let's get started!

WRITING

The reality is writing has been going a bit slow for a bit now and we grabbed a second writer to help out. That hasn't seen a return on time yet and we've actually had to direct some writing effort away to get them up to speed this month. I am still hoping they can on-ramp soon to start helping the process along.

The one part that I refuse to compromise on is the writing. Astral Ascension is a tall order since the game is more intricately woven. Some of our other games we could leverage memes and 4th walls in abundance however over here, we have to be more selective. All that is to say is that it is taking extra time because the quality benchmark is set higher. It has been a more rigorous approval process for what makes it through to the scripting which consequentially means spending more time/effort on any given scene.

With that being said, we have to get the ball rolling on writing and compromising quality isn't an option... so what does that mean? I co-wrote ACE Academy and Crystalline back in the day but just did content review for KAS and Ethereal Enigma. If it comes to it, I'll dust off my feather pen and be a writer again for Astral Ascension if need be!

TL;DR

CHARACTER ART

The Sunimu wrapped up the last of episode 3 CGs here which you can check out here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-exotic-cgs-63999185 

He is now working on a fresh batch of new CGs for episode 4 and one of them is available for preview here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-luna-park-63999321 

With all the Live2D work and backlogged CGs completed, we have returned to a more consistent posting of WIP CGs and that trend will continue!

BACKGROUND ART

Couple of nature ones and a facility corridor! BGs are coming along at a healthy pace and nothing abnormal to report on this front.

ANIMATION

All the in-game Live2D model was shared here as a WIP:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-live2d-in-64172445 

Feedback so far has been  great and we got a couple of helpful notes to polish with. Once this is done, that should tackle all the animation needs for the time being. ;^)

PROGRAMMING

We ran into a lot of Live2D technical problems that kept creeping up every time we went to do scene designing. The positive note is all that has been taken care of, we've imported all the BGs for the first three episodes and have over 20 (40 including variant) music tracks to work with.

The Narrative Designer has been assigned the first three episodes to make with everything but SFX and voice over. He is currently estimating the workload which I will let you guys know where it'll land us for a possible release time range.

AUDIO

The legendary Eric requested some personal time off for March so the music realm is about the same as it was since the last update. He is returning on the upcoming Monday and will be ramping up to full steam again going into April! Hopefully we'll get two tracks done for then.

That is everything for the update! I just really want to thank you guys for your support and patience. We've had a pretty smooth development cycle but a lot of pieces came together in March and not everything fit as expected. March was a lot about putting out fires and making sure things aligned which we got (most!) of it figured out.

On the writing side, I will be giving it about another week before I buckle down and do the writing myself since at this point Astral Ascension seems to have a particular vision that Katie and I have conceptualized and it is proving hard for an external writer to grasp. Since it would be difficult for Katie to write all of it in a reasonable amount of time, and compromising on quality isn't an option, me writing would be the best solution.

Thanks again for your continued support! As always, feel free to share your thoughts below. :^)

Cheers,