=0.3 Update Update #2= (Patreon)

Whew. What a weekend.

The next version of EC:A (0.3) is shaping up to be a little different. That's what I'm posting this Monday... what is going to be and feel different.

The first two releases are heavy on story, a little light on any romance (especially 0.1d), and setting the backdrop for the remainder of the game.

This next update is different. There's a few scenes that are quite short, but are there to set up later scenes. Others are short because players may decide to not pursue certain girls. Others still may be totally unavailable because of those same choices.

On the flip side, there are a couple scenes in 0.3 that are LONG. I spent this weekend working on them and getting them into at least release-able position. After re-testing the really long one this morning, I realized it took me 30-35 minutes to go through the long version.

By the end of 0.3, there's going to be several new places to visit or at least be ready to visit at the beginning of 0.4. Not wanting to ruin anything just yet, but if you haven't seen the posts in Discord, something like 20 new animations are going into 0.3 in various forms. You won't be able to access all 20 right away, but as time goes on, they'll get put back in other options when you revisit areas/people.

That brings me to the sandboxes. Everyone's got a different definition of what a sandbox is in a VN. What they will be in EC:A will allow the player to visit characters, gain some information (maybe required for certain scenes/events not tied to the main storyline), learn a touch of lore and backstory, and, of course, have little romps in bed.

By the end of 0.3, I'm hoping to have the sandboxes set up for Genny, Cali, the goblin girl, and Lerran. They won't have any content, save for the placeholders that are there for, say, visiting the goblin girl in the bedroom. The reason why is the next thing I'm going to lay out.

Animations! I won't go into the boring details of learning how to do custom animations in Koikatsu, save for... I am learning how to do custom animations in Koikatsu. Some of them in 0.3 are really basic. I still have quite a lot to learn, but I did notice significant improvement between when I started doing them this update to where I ended up. When I get significantly better with animations, I am likely to go back and redo the "bad" animations with better ones. Going by how the releases are coming out, it'd probably be done somewhere around a 0.6 or 0.7 release.

So... last thing is where the next update is planned out in my head. I've actually gotten a couple of scenes in the pre-write stage, but I'm thinking the next release after 0.3 will be an 0.3.1 version with functioning sandboxes put in and (new) beginning animations available for those that have unlocked them and some other minor content and "quality of game" improvements. Given how fast things tend to go, a very general release date would likely be around October 15th.

Then expect 0.4 to be out in December, 2022, and be fairly large.

I'll be posting some preview content here and on Discord for 0.3 in the coming week.