It's been a quiet, uh... *Checks calendar* week or so since our last post! ^^" Today's will be pretty short and sweet.

As many of you might be aware of by now, we announced that our first update was coming on the 25th of August. This would've worked out best for myself, since there's a lot of prep work that goes into releasing new content behind the scenes. Besides the content itself being ready, as silly as it might sound to some. It does take many hours to get the correct files hosted up online and prepare the posts with the correct links, ideally without running into major issues from rushing that process.

In the past, when I have tried to rush these steps. I have to correct multiple posts across all the websites we share not just our supporter exclusive releases with, but the public releases as well. (Hence why sometimes in the past, I've split the supporter & public releases up by a day to focus on one without having to spend more time on both at once.)

Overall, there's a lot of mentally keeping tabs on things with the releases when those days arrive. My main priority is to avoid rushing these steps and realizing shortly after, that there's a major issue that needs addressed, resulting in having to fix stuff in the engine last minute and re-host new links, fix all the posts with the updated links, etc. :S

With that said, let's get back on track.

Everything was looking solid for the release of this update yesterday, but while we were in the middle of getting stuff sorted out for it. My house lost power, along with about 600 other homes in our area. (Probably due to the intense heat?) This was around 7pm CST and it wasn't until around close to 10pm CST when power was restored.

I tried to update everyone in the Discord server from my phone, letting everyone know that even by the time power is restored. I'd have to delay the release, because I have classes in the morning.

While everything has been good so far today *Knock on wood* We're still sorting out some stuff from yesterday amongst the team in regards to the update. I don't say this lightly given our track record and it pains me to be open and honest about this, but I would like to push this update out for this upcoming weekend, ideally by Friday afternoon as soon as I wrap up my classes for the day and before my personal weekend begins.

I really don't want to do that, but with everything going on during the weekdays ahead. We're already sorting out the stuff we need to, that way come Friday, it's without a doubt up and out to everyone.

So, August 30th is our date for the update. I know some will understand, while others will roll their eyes and however you choose to approach this news is up to you. I just hope that a few more days of waiting isn't the end of the world. Our following update after this one is already being handled to avoid these issues as we awkwardly off the bumpy road and back to smooth sailing for our updates in general.

We'll post some teaser screenshots from the update this week, starting tomorrow and everyday leading up to Friday's release. We'll be doing this to hype up both our supporter content that's brand new and our public version of the game that'll feature the current Bridget scene in-game that has been supporter exclusive for a while.

Once again, we're deeply sorry for the inconvenience. Deep down, my hope is that despite how you feel about this news, upon seeing the new content... It'll make everything right as we continue our new approach to delivering content on a more steady basis. <3 

Once again, sorry for the awkward timing of this post! ^^" Starting in September, we'll have our development report featured in the first week of every new month, then news posts will follow those through the month to keep everyone up-to-date.

Let's try to keep this development report short, as many of you are eagerly waiting for actual exciting news.

If you missed the announcement last month, the short version is that moving forward with the project. We're taking a smaller bite-sized update/release approach. New content every month, but expectations on how much content is delivered will be smaller than the past, but more stable and steady content flowing along.

If you missed this announcement, you can read it in full below for free.
https://subscribestar.adult/posts/1327411

Within that post, we highlighted that we'll be delivering 3 updates that wrap up the rest of episode 5 as a whole. The naming of these are confusing, so for simplicity sake... We'll just refer to them as "Update 1, update 2, update 3"

[~Release Date Confirmed!~]

Which dives into the main meat of what everyone has been waiting for! Update 1 is set to release by August 25th. We're giving it a tiny bit of extra time to be 150% sure that our following release "Update 2" is ready soon after that without any delay.

While we don't feel comfortable setting a date for update 2 yet, we should have a date announced for that before update 1 releases.

We want to get these 3 updates out asap just as much as everyone following along wants to enjoy them, but we're being very careful not to give anyone the wrong impression unless we know without a doubt that said update is ready.

Thank you once again to everyone who has been more than patient with us leading up to this point forward. We hope that our new approach is a great improvement than how things have been looking in the recent past. Stay tuned for any future news posts, as those will announce when update 2 & 3 has a confirmed date.

[~Team updates~]

It'll be pretty light on team updates this time around, as this month has mainly been focused on getting all the content put together and ready for releases. Which I think many won't be too upset about the lack of team updates in exchange for new content to play sooner. <3

SFX & Ambient Music

August has put a halt on sfx work, since we were under on funding for the month. It already looks like September should allow us to continue though, so no extreme worries there.

We'll be very excited to share and showcase how some of these sfx's sound with the update release. We've also went back through the earlier episode 5 content and added some of those in at fitting moments as well!

Earlier content will receive sound effects when we tackle the quality of life fixes being made to episode 1, 2, etc.

CG Art

Since early July, we've been totally in the dark as to what is going on with Ajose. All we know is that he is located in Venezuela and so you can make the connections with what was going on over there in past weeks or still on-going. Nothing is confirmed yet, if any of that has to do with him going silent. It could be a number of reasons and so for now, all we can do is speculate.

Neither Marxe or I can get in touch with him, so we're crossing our fingers that everything is okay.

For the time being, we have plenty of cg art to last us for many months worth of content and so there's no worries about the art with the project at this time. We are keeping in mind what our next step is, in case we simply don't hear back from him as time moves forward.

Until then, all far future cg art is completely halted as Marxe typically covers the coloring and background phases of cg scenes.

Sprite Art

Lisa has officially finished the secretive thing for us in the past week and we can't say much more without the risk of spoiling it. We'll fully unzip our lips in the first week of September with our 5th year anniversary post, so we hope everyone looks forward to that!

If you're a $5+ supporter, you've probably seen our recent support character named Juni. We had a ton of fun putting her together for overall design and outfits, but sadly I can't say too much openly here about her. >.<

We're continuing to work on some other stuff behind the scenes that can't be talked about yet, but as we head into September, we'll switch gears and have two exciting support characters that should surprise many with their additions. One more than the other, if you've paid attention to learn that one of them technically no longer exists during the current timeline of MA.

GUI Art

I've received a nice update from ds-sans in the past week, majorly as part of the "Extras" screen accessed from the title screen. There is going to be a in-game yearbook that can be accessed and it'll feature all the characters from students to staff/teachers, along with outsiders of the school.

When clicked on one of these character portraits in the yearbook, it'll pop a window up that'll showcase the character's sprite in full, along with their bios details. Some information within their bios for history might be [redacted] at first until you reach certain parts of the game's story for good reason, but we hope it'll be a nice addition to the "Extras" section for those who gush over more in-depth details about their favorite characters and everything!

[~Conclusion~]

The release date is most likely the big highlight for many and we totally without a doubt understand! It's just the start to our new approach in delivering content in a more realistic manner that fits the teams personal life schedules and we hope the steady flow of content per month will be leaps above how things have felt in recent months by a long shot!

Once again, I can't thank everyone for being more than patient and understanding. When our schedule allows for it, we'll attempt to sneak in one or two fun bonuses each year moving forward as a extra showcase of our thanks to everyone despite everything. <3

If this is your first time joining along and you enjoy the project, please do consider supporting us on Subscribestar if you aren't already! We strive to provide exclusive posts every week, ranging from news, art previews, voting polls and many more benefits as a supporter at the low cost of our $5 tier, which features exclusive game updates before they reach the general public!

Keep yourself informed and updated on development by following Subscribestar notifications or bookmarking our >Guide Post< You can also continue to keep updated through our Itch.io page or Twitter as well!

Be alert! The only websites that are officially ran by myself (Princess Bridget) and Messy Studios working on development of Messy Academy are from the following list below. Any place otherwise is unofficial and they might be impersonating us for their own gain. Avoid payments/donating to other sources as it won't be helping fund further development into our game!

>Subscribestar<
>Pixiv Fanbox<
>Kickstarter<
>Twitter<
>Itch.io<
>Pixiv<

(You can also find our official posts/account on these sites, but due to their nature we won't include links directly.)
>F95zone< (Username: Messy Studios)
>omorashi< (Username: Bridget1999)
>tapatalk< (Username: Messy Studios)

Be alert! The one and only official Discord server for following the Messy Studios team development is this one. >>Discord<< If you've come across any other server impersonating us, be sure to report your findings with me directly and steer other's interested in our video game project away from possibly scam attempts.

~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~

 

Hi there everyone! To start off August, we'll be doing things a bit different this month and it'll be back to normal as we hit September. Our typical development report each month is normally the first thing we do at the beginning of a new month, but we'll actually be delaying that until the middle of this month.

Before we get into some news highlights, if you missed our development report about 2 weeks ago. Please, please go read through it. I know it's a long post, but it details how we're handling development for the project from now into the future and we wanted to be very transparent with everyone in expectations on how that will work.

(Link to our Development Report mentioned.)
https://subscribestar.adult/posts/1327411

If you really can't read through that post, the TLDR version is this: Starting with August forward, we're delivering monthly bite-sized game releases/updates that work much better with our team's schedules and being much more realistic about what we can deliver upon from month to month. August will be the odd month out, with 3 mini updates released to wrap up episode 5's content, but September will be our first month that begins the whole one update per month cycle.

Now, with that out of the way. Let's highlight what's planned for this month without a ton of text walls to read through. ^^"

{Vacation & Classes & Releases!}

August is going to begin a bit awkward for myself, as we're going away on a mini vacation this week for a couple days. Then, following that... My college classes begin again next Monday. Development is still being worked on even while I'm gone for a few days, but we won't have any updates on anything until I return home.

Despite classes starting up, we'll be providing a official release date by next week for what we're calling "update 1" as that should be ready very quickly after the announcement. Then shortly after "update 1" releases, we'll provide the release date for "update 2" set for August still and roll these out as timely as possible to fit everything into this month.

"update 3" should be within August alongside the other updates, but we'll keep everyone informed as update 2 hits on our timing/schedule. Otherwise, ideally "update 3" would hit instantly with September at the worst case scenario.

September will bring one update, which will be titled simply "v0.21" and expectations on what that consists of, is a route episode and we're going to try fitting in at least episode 1's QoL fixes. Which brings our female protagonist Blythe into the game officially, knowing there's many waiting to have the option and also see quality improvements as well. A little something for everyone with that update in September between route content and QoL additions.

{5th Year Anniversary!}

September 6th 2019 marks the date when we first began our awkward journey into game development for Messy Academy and to celebrate the milestone year, we have some very special things to share with everyone on that date!

Besides what we already have planned to share for that date, we'd love to hear from all our fans, supporters or followers if there's any questions you have towards our team that you'd like answered as part of a Q&A section of our anniversary post. These questions can be directly related to the game development, or directed towards our team with being curious about any given aspect: artist, writing, editing, programming, etc related questions. It can even be silly questions directly towards characters within MA.