All work and no play...

Hi everyone and thank you for joining me for today's public update.

Supporters, I'm sorry about the lack of radio contact recently. I've been flat out at IRL work where an emergency has occupied all my attention for just over a week. Not that there'd be a great lot to report. Early development of Charity Begins at School proceeds nicely, the writing is well underway as is some of the preparatory work on some new generic images. As we move ahead, you're likely to see more and more classroom conversation scenes rendered in full even when everyone is fully clothed and not doing anything sexy. It's all intended to increase the immersion and give a more VN-like feel, which hopefully it will.

I will also be shortly unveiling my plan to overhaul the school day and take a massive bite out of the repetitiveness problem. A small but significant change to the algorithm will allow the player to focus in much more on the active quest, with lesson events taking a smaller role when there's something more interesting happening. More on that once plans are finalised, but the intention is to have it rolled out in 0.11 so that Charity Begins at School can be the first quest to benefit from it.

On then to the poll results from two weeks ago. Over 100 of you were kind enough to share your thoughts on Rise of Poppy and while this game is one-and-done, the data is still useful, both for Missy and for other such games I might make in the future.

32 people, somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of respondents thought the game was perfect. While a slight drop from Jess's relationship quest, this is still very flattering and in line with what we've seen in the past. Thank you ^^

The fanbase was split nearly down the middle on whether you'd prefer me to spend my time on projects like this or focus it all on the main game. Of course, there's no way to please both camps, so my compromise will likely be to keep doing what I've been doing - mostly work on the main game, release one of these every 1-2 years.

I'm going to be completely honest with you, this one was a test of how realistic people's expectations are. And over 80% of people's expectations are indeed reasonable, which is good.

If you checked the top box because your answer is "I want these games to be bigger even if that means they take 6 months to make with no progress on the main game in the meantime," then fair enough. But otherwise, understand that I'm only one person working part time on this. Rise of Poppy was made in about 3 weeks, and is the size of a medium length quest in Missy. I worked flat out on it to have it ready before Christmas. It doesn't get any more efficient than this until I retire!

A pleasing set of results here, I'm glad to see that the new arrivals captured the imaginations of most players. Big interest in seeing Celine and Isabelle again, with respectable showings for everyone else too. The good news is that every single one of these girls has content planned for Missy, and following a snap poll on Discord in which it was also established that a majority of players also now feel either somewhat or very invested in Poppy's relationship with Isabelle, I am delighted to announce that this subplot will return in the concluding part of Poppy's story (working titled Popularpocalypse,) in which the player will have some say over how things end up between them.

 Celine meanwhile will be appearing in the next part of the strip club progression, (you may recall that this is what became of her after high school.) Has her experience at the hands of Poppy changed her? Hopefully not.

Sheryl and Charlotte are still fifth years at Saint Alancia's and while they are now more focused on their studies and have largely hung up their ribbons, you can't take the bad girl out of the girl completely, and so will torment our girl in a way that I hope you will find new and fun in an upcoming new progression arc. Erin is of course in medical school now and we will see her (and the rest of the medical students) when we return to the hospital in the future. Kaitlyn is now Poppy's girlfriend and although mostly seen in the pub or hung from a display column these days, surely still has a part to play in our story.

I wanted to round off today's check-in with a word about the upcoming changes in Discord's policy regarding NSFW servers. If you are not a member of the Saint Alancia's Discord and have no interest in being, then this won't interest you, have a great week.

I have been following developments with this carefully as a decision will need to be taken regarding what, if anything, should be done in response. If they were to push ahead with mandatory ID verification/facial recognition for all users, then the status quo would not be an option as I am not personally prepared to take this step. I've verified my ID to Patreon, Subscribestar and Itch, because these companies handle money for me and I get that money laundering laws are a thing, but I am not in the habit of showing my papers to anyone who arrogates to themselves the right to ask. No law is compelling Discord to do this.

The good news, however, is that this may never be a problem. If the platform's algo classifies me as an adult, without my having to prove it, then I can continue to administer the NSFW parts of the server. If not, then options ranging from removing the NSFW parts of the server to migrating to an alternate platform will be on the table, but I'll consult on this at the time. For now, the policy remains one of wait and see.

Until next time!

Trinian