November news post #1 (Public)

It's time again! That time to cover what's going on and toss out some updates!

So as many of you following along during the end of October know, we couldn't quite get v0.20 out as we hoped for Halloween. I went over it a good bit and I've been trying to get everything wrapped up for the script to pass along asap for the editing/engine phase before it's released, so once again I'm truly sorry with this.

We'll have v0.20 out this month before our Winter "break" happens for this year. During our Winter break, I've already told myself that I'm not looking to take a full on break from MA duties as I want to get some preparing work ready for the new year in order to get releases on a consistent 30-45 day release cycle schedule and get some content worked on during the "break" so that it helps get us ahead as well.

Right now my schedule is really crazy this past week because normally I only do writing or MA related stuff during the weekdays and leave the weekend open for personal time, etc. This past weekend I ignored that and decided to get more time in to get v0.20's script progress further along. I also plan on doing that this weekend too if possible, as I feel at this point it's really down to crunch time and getting it out asap as I don't want it delayed any further. >.<

I'm not trying to make a excuse for myself by mentioning this next part, but my personal day job has been really iffy here lately. I don't like to talk much about my day job to keep it private, but there's rumors and signs showing that they might be cutting everyone's work hours down or worse this month. All I know is that the company gives us 2 weeks off for the holiday season in December and it sounds like they're trying to avoid any major issues and settle things during that time before workers return to work again for the new year.

Naturally I've been doing some long thinking about my options to take in case things go south with my job as backup plans. So it has been messing with my mindset recently, as I do tend to worry a bit too much. <.<

Like I said, I don't like making excuses, but I want to be clear about things as well. I know many of you have been super patient with us this year overall and others not so much, no matter which side you sit on. I completely understand it and we do want to fix our issues in development we've had this year, but please understand that those of us working together on this project are still human too. We make use of every penny of funding put back into the project and I mean that, as good as our funding has become. It honestly isn't enough in terms of living off of it even if I didn't have to split costs towards 3-4+ other members on the team. I mainly do the project as a passion hobby project, because I love it and I think anyone would be lying if they didn't want some sort of funding out of it for their own personal pocket naturally for their work.

But as silly and over the top as it sounds, I really do enjoy working on the project and hearing everyone's comments along the way, seeing what people liked or disliked with releases and how to improve, etc. Maybe one day we'll reach funding where it can cover myself as a personal job, that'd be the dream for me, but that's still so far off in the future.

To wrap this intro up... <.< What I'm trying to say is thank you everyone for sticking with us and being very understanding this year in development. We owe it to everyone to really make 2022 a kick ass year of amazing releases and we really hope to make that a reality!

With that said... Let's jump into a few things for other news mentions shall we? ^^"

~Updated roadmap plans~

v0.20 (Episode 5) ~ November
v0.21 (QoL + Gui additions) ~ December/New year's eve
v0.22 (Episode 6 x3 girls) ~ January

So as part of the Winter break mentions earlier, while trying to prep and figure out how to get things back on track as we set sail for 2022 to release consistent releases again. I'll be working on QoL (Quality of life) content for ep 1-4 and Artie will be focused on Gui additions. This would be v0.21 and it'll be more like a odd release as it adds some improvements and some new content to older episodes to make the experience of episodes 1-5 feel polished and ideally about 95% in terms of what the finished game would look for these episodes.

This will include a good bit of content ranging from new choices, interactive moments, unlocked content based on choices/etc. There's some other plans being figured out, but I don't want to mention it quite yet to avoid over hyping it.

New cg variants added to existing cg art, along with some new cg art not seen before, sprite art for bg/oc students, etc!

Kicking off the new year, we'll have our first look at 3 lucky girl's route episode 6. Shortly after v0.20 releases, we'll host a voting poll to engage on which 3 lucky girl's will end up being setup as the first ones to see. What we think is the best option for this is to more or less see which 3 girl's are the most popular, say Miki, Erika and Nova as our random example. We'd then split those 3 most popular girls up so that one release would be Miki, Rachel, Zoey. Next release would be Erika, Juliet, Lola. (See the theme?) This way we don't front load one release every 3 months with the most popular girls for new route content and then the other months between feel less lacking in comparison.

It's going to be rough and a bit hard, but for route episodes. This feels like the best course to take that's fair and doesn't leave anyone out. We've had it suggested to take one girl and focus on their route completely until it's done and move on, but with how we release content. I doubt many would be happy with that option if we were to focus on Heather for 3-4 months straight to finish her route before choosing another girl that you might not like for a longer period of time. ^^"

That's our rough plan to head into the new year so far, trying not to overdue our expectations yet. :P

~Development behind the scenes talks~

I've already covered what I've been up to when it comes to writing for the most part, but just a tiny addition. Mainly I'm fixing up some events, but more so recently I'm getting the choices and interactive moments added into the script for episode 5. I think I should give a brief example of one of these interactive moments.

(Not spoilers, completely made up for the sake of a example. :P)

Let's say Miki wants to have a little mock battle with you while dressed up as a magical girl. You agree and during the events, choices pop up in how to react or handle yourself during this.

"Miki shoots a power beam directly towards you, thinking quickly on your feet, you..."

>Take cover below the wall.
>Dodge roll into the nearby bushes.
>Use Erika as a human shield.

These seem like normal choices and in a way they are, but think of interactive moments being more like a chain of choices together in playing out certain events. In this case a mock battle with Miki, so you'll feel as if you have more control over what actions to take and how the outcome is effected based on choices along the way.

Another example of interactive moments will take it's form in lighter events like maybe while hanging out in Miki's room. You can choose to snoop around and examine a handful of different items or things in her room, maybe they'll offer a little more insight to Miki as a character for the more hardcore fans, but you won't feel left out by not knowing some details if you choose not to as well.

Okay... <.< My mentions out of the way...

Lisa, in case you aren't aware is our sprite artist and in the recent months. I've been having her finish up the last major sprite requests for the project as a whole and I'm happy to say she's finished. ^^

The recent previews of the sprite creator tool expansion pack being one of the last things, but I'm going to share a little preview of the last thing this weekend. :P

Now what I mean by Lisa being done with stuff, is that there isn't plans for anymore major sprite art being added to MA moving forward. This covers stuff like... New character sprites, adjustments/reworking of designs, tools or big stuff. I do have some very minor additions still planned and spread out.

For example...

Those of you who recall over a year ago, when we had old builds of the game making mentions of Brandon in Lola's route being pushed into dressing up as a girl, crossdressing. Well... We don't need it for a bit of time still before it'll pop up in the game, but the minor addition of his sprite getting a dress outfit and wig layer with light makeup being one example. Pretty much, very minor and rare additions moving forward as we have everything pretty much done. Once in a rare while, we'll have a new clothing outfit.

With this in mind, we still have 7 Kickstarter OC's to be finished for sprite stuff. These are being focused on during 2022 and more or less, Lisa will be able to sit back and enjoy herself more so in development moving forward with a much more relaxed schedule. (She deserves it, can't thank her enough for the amazing amount of sprite art provided to the project in the past 2 years. <3 )

Over on the CG art side, MarxeDP and his friend have been pretty quiet since providing the Halloween artwork for us. <.<

They're actually handling another commission piece for someone. :P But the timing is perfect right now. What we can expect though for this month is that some wet visuals are being improved for existing art and upcoming art for ep 5. They're also working on the Summer Festival artwork that was planned for Summer, but uhh... Well... ^^" Other stuff took priority at the time.

Depending on how things pan out this month after those, it could lead to a new cg scene being done for a older episode or Miki's Dream. But what is more likely to keep cg art up to date, is that we'll have them work on the first cg art planned for episode 6 for one of the girl's.

If all goes well in timing, we want to deliver one final bonus art piece to end this year and it'd feature Lola. Then for 2022, we won't be doing holiday bonus wallpaper/art stuff. Instead, we'll do little promotional celebration artworks for big milestones like in September, once we hit our 3rd anniversary milestone in development.

If all goes well this month and December, we should have all the cg art ready before January's release to kick start the year and try to keep cg art updated so it's caught up with our quicker release schedule planned.

In the music world, ComposerJF provided me a preview for the comedy track back in late October, but there was some adjustment mentions to make about it. I have a good feeling said adjustments will make it very fitting and work well for MA's more silly moments, so I hope to have a preview of that track put out for you all sometime this month. (This track won't make it in v0.20)

Lastly, Gui stuff. I shared a tiny mock up that was very early and isn't anywhere near final looking back in October. (We talked about portrait ideas and suggestions too.)

I haven't heard or seen anything from the gui artist since late October, but I'm looking to check in on them here soon. I know they're pretty busy recently and so I've been holding out and not trying to rush anything, but I do want to see if it'd be possible to get the assets together before too far into December.

With the portrait mentions, we're probably going to need to see some more mock up previews to see what feels right overall. With or without the portrait window stuff. The idea that sounds the most useful to me if we do go with the portrait window stuff is that we'd only use it for Brandon's expressions or well... In the case of Miki's Dream we'd see Miki's expressions since we're in her pov.

The only issue with this idea is that it's been brought up that many might want to self insert as the protag more so and by seeing his expressions in this way. It'll go against this? Our solution for this would be adding a gui option/setting to turn it on/off. That way it's the best of both worlds. (This seems possible, but I'd have to check with Artie and also continue chatting with the gui artist to figure our best option overall for this is.)

~Ending statements~

Yet another looooooong news post... <.< Hopefully you made it through!

We'll have plenty of posts put out this month to cover stuff and try to engage with everyone the best we can. So we hope to get the releases out here quicker than possible as we are very excited to share the content with everyone as well!

With that said, I hope you all have a good November!
From all of us at Messy Studios!