Hope everyone has been doing well recently! We're just right around the corner of getting our content out and moving along once again!
Our overall plan for April to start us off and keep things simple... We're shooting for two main releases this month. First release will be v0.20 (Free & Paid) removing the whole "Part" mess out of the titles, as the free version will feature about half of the episode for the public and the paid version for supporters will feature the whole episode, wrapping up episode 5's content for good.
Later in April, we're shooting for also doing v0.21. This will include episode 1 QoL fixes and additions, along with route episode content. This means players will get the chance to personally try out our new feature that displays the protag (Male or Female) on the text box ui throughout the gameplay. Our plan with that is slowly introducing it and getting it caught up for the whole game.
I want to briefly touch on the lack of posts being made recently as well. There's a few factors as to why there hasn't been a ton of weekly posts, partly there just hasn't been a ton to share as our sprite artist is working on stuff that is a bit secretive at the moment. Our cg artists are getting back into the swing of things too, with one of them that was sort of MIA for nearly two months. I've finally heard back from them and figured out what was going on, but on the art side of things, there just hasn't been a ton to share visually.
The other aspect is more on my personal happenings in the day to day, as I've been finding myself finishing up classes for the day and by the time I end up getting my personal stuff done, project work and a bit of free time for enjoyment mixed in. Its already time for bed to start the process over the next day. ^^" So, I've been trying to juggle when to toss out some posts at times.
I'd like to personally thank everyone once again for all the support and kind words recently! The amount of funding support seen during March leading into April has not only cleared our main funding goal, but we were pretty close to our 2nd funding goal that'd help cover more costs for cg art each month or possibly sink the extra into sfx/ambience needs for the game.
We're not sure what caused the increase in funding, if its related to the female protag being introduced into the game? But we're very very grateful for everything! <3
[~Dev Plans/Story & Programming~]
As mentioned, two releases are planned this month. v0.20 (Free & Paid) is what we'll focus on first.
I have heard back from our programmer and confirmed what our status is on being ready for releasing that content. They were recently sick with a fever and just recovered from that the other day, but talking with them... We're double checking over the content on our tests and all of the finalized gui elements for the game should be functioning as intended.
The only thing we won't have ready yet for a while is the title screen. We will have a temp placeholder button on the existing title screen in order to access the cg gallery screen though! We'll be asking for a ton of feedback on how the gui functions, our main concern seems like it'll fall on the text box and if the text and layout is good overall as we want to make sure the readability is solid for players.
Behind the scenes, there is a good amount of writing lore stuff going on, much that I can't share in detail to avoid major spoilers for the game's story and personal stories for characters. But there's a lot of documents that keep track of the timeline for how events pan out throughout the game in order to make sure the storylines we're trying to tell are on point.
Its a lot of work and pre-planning, thinking about what falls in line for stuff now and how it connects into events that aren't going to be in the game until 8 months from now and making sure we're on the right path with how everything connects.
I'm personally excited for many of the storylines to reveal themselves along the way and I believe there are some unexpected qualities that players will be surprised about when it comes to the overall story about the academy and motives, mixed with learning a deeper level about characters we haven't seen in the past yet. Perhaps even... There's someone we're close to that's hiding something about themselves and those running the school, but it'll only be a matter of time before secrets unveil and add to the mystery.
[~CG art~]
MarxeDP & AjoseMP have a plan for April's work, on Ajose's side.. We're looking to tackle a good chuck of cg stuff that has been paid for on a list. I talked with them just yesterday about it and from the sounds of it, they're already in action. We'll be sharing a collection post of those previews sometime this month.
Alongside that, Ajose will also have around 2-3 brand new cg scenes they can begin working on. These are for future route episodes and so I'm not sure how to go about sharing them quite yet, when they are ready. <.< I'll most likely keep the title of those posts non-spoiler related and in bold within the title "SPOILERS" will be the first thing mentioned. Then the images won't appear first thing, that way it doesn't ruin the surprise for those that want to go in blind.
Marxe is finishing up work on two cg scenes being updated and I have to talk with them sometime before the weekend to see what else they have planned for this month and how our list of paid cg art is looking by then too.
[~Sprite art~]
Lisa has been really busy during March, working on something secretive for the project. I'm really excited about how its coming along, but it won't be until a bit later when we fully reveal that. It'll be a very hard time trying to hold back on showing it off until then, but we do have other sprite stuff to showcase before then. :P
Lisa has started updating the bg character creator tool, one of our last sprite related things that needed to be updated to showcase the new eyes and some adjustments made to the game's cast and oc characters over the course of last year. The tool itself is a .psd file that we use for development in order to simply create a number of background students to help fill in minor roles that wouldn't need fully unique sprite files gameplay wise, but still looking good and the limitations will only be noticeable if you saw 3-4 characters made with the tool next to each other.
We have a list of minor sprite work besides that in order too, some a bit spoiler related and other stuff not so much. I'm hoping April will be a big month for sprite needs, if many of those minor needs listed are done. It'd leave us with 4-5 decent sized things left as we move into May and during the Summer to possibly wrap up sprite needs for the project.ย
Previews for the bg creator tool changes will be shared this month sometime at the very least!
[~GUI~]ds-sans came out of nowhere with the fully finished cg gallery screen last month! Something I wasn't expecting to be done until this month, but that means.. We only have the title screen remaining! Its hard to say if the title screen will take more than April to complete or not, but we're pretty much about to wrap up gui needs for the project!
Expect to see a ton of these previews for the gui stuff as a big collective post before our release of v0.20.
[~Other Notes~]
Depending on how stable our funding goes through April into May... Knowing gui needs will be done and then sprite stuff by Summer. We could very easily begin work on sfx/ambience work for the project in May. We know many want sfx for sure! We've collected a list of ideas for what kind of sounds to include into the game from safe for work types that aid the game generally and of course... The more naughty sounds needed to really boost those moments. :P
We already have the config settings ready to where, if a player doesn't want sfx on. They can easily turn it off or adjust the volume of those in case its too distracting.
Ambience would help aid and fill in areas for the music, where we want music playing in the game to feel fitting to select moments without being on repeat for 10-20 minutes at a time. ^^" It's a hard balance to get sound direction just right for a game and I have even more props to those with musical/sound talent in general after having to research and figure out how to properly handle things with that. (As I'm totally not a musically or sound talented person.)
My ultimate goal would be the addition of voice talent for the game, but I already know this will greatly rely on some sort of funding campaign, similar to our Kickstarter. Except the entire purpose of the funding would be seeing if there's enough interest to cover the costs for voice over work, which is pretty expensive when we're talking about a game with 300,000+ word count or so in total by that point.
[~Ending~]
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