Public Post: Side Project

Dear patrons and non-patrons!

Most of you already know about it because of the numerous polls in the past weeks, but now I want to make the whole thing official.

There will be a side project next to Ecchi Sensei!

Before your head explodes with questions on whether it has what kind of effects on Ecchi Sensei, allow me to explain immediately that my work on the side project will have exactly 0.0000% influence on the work on Ecchi Sensei because I always work in advance. While you are playing Ecchi Sensei - Day 15-17, I already work two updates in advance, and the more time passes, the bigger that gap gets.

"But BlueCat, you retard, why don't you release immediately once you're done with an update?"

Simple, it's because Ecchi Sensei is not a one man(cat) project, but BlueCat works in a team with others. My colleagues have also got a real life and can't spend all day working on Ecchi Sensei like I do.

That's why I thought that an additional project would be positive for you and it wouldn't result in me losing any time on Ecchi Sensei.

Of course the side project won't be as elaborate on Ecchi Sensei, and it helps with my work on Ecchi Sensei because I set myself the goal of learning new things for new features and better coding.

But enough of that. In the coming weeks I will be providing you with more information on the side project, but ahead of that, allow me to explain what it's gonna be about:

Like I said, there have been a lot of polls recently. The purpose of these polls was to let my supporters have a say on what the side project should be from the very outset. I didn't do that for a lack of ideas, but because I'm a super adorable and friendly cat. *Meow*

So far we have the following:

Main Genre: Adventure & Fantasy 

Subgenres: Comedy, Supernatural, Harem, Knights and Kings, Magic, Servants, Neko, Mythical Creatures, Pervy 

Settings: Isekai/Alternate Reality, Secret Organization 

I've thought about the main story and all of it just begs for the main character to get taken away from the life he has been used to so he suddenly finds himself in a different world. There will be two different kingdoms in that world. On one hand there's a kingdom which will seem very familiar to many of you because it is a typical land full of fantasy with a diverse selection of non-human creatures, all of which live in a scenario under the banner of a human ruler which, at first sight, looks a lot like the European Middle Ages.  

The second kingdom, neighboring the first one, is strikingly similar to the Japanese Middle Ages. With one exception... the citizens of that country believe that their god is a cat, because said citizens are mostly cat people and all historical rulers are descendents of that cat god. So currently a godlike cat being is sitting on the throne, with the intention of enslaving the entire world. 

In the most recent Tier 5+ poll, the voters could decide on the main character, the game mechanics, and the focus of the game.

Here are the results:

Main Character (166 votes in total):

Matsu Matsumoto: 99

Male 1: 34

Male 2: 33

So Matsu Matsumoto won and he will be moved/pulled/relocated/whatever into the new wondrous world. Don't worry, you have the option to change his name in the side project.

Game Mechanic (149 (+12*) votes in total):

Visual Novel: 66

Sandbox: 13

Hybrid: 58

*Actually, Visual Novel would win, but one of the options in the poll was to gift your vote power to me, and thus I got 12 points that I put in "Hybrid".

Final result:

Visual Novel: 66

Sandbox: 13

Hybrid: 70

Don't worry, I keep in mind the fact that Visual Novel would have won without the additional vote power and the game will be mostly a visual novel, however there will be some sandbox elements and thus it's a mostly-visual-novel hybrid.

Regarding sandbox: If you know Ecchi Sensei or if you know me a bit, you know that I like handling things the way I think is right.

The typical "sandbox" from other games I only know from hearsay, and I do not have the intention of implementing it the way almost every developer who has sandbox elements in a game does it. But I won't go into too much detail. If you want to know more, read through my patron-only posts or wait until the side project will be released.

Game Focus(149 (+10*) votes in total):

Graphics & Animations: 17

Story & Dialogues: 76

Scripting 1-3: 20

Music and Sounds: 13

* Here I also got 10 points that I could distribute to my liking, and I put 5 each in Graphics & Animations, as well as Scripting 1-3.

Final result:

Graphics & Animations: 22

Story & Dialogues: 76

Scripting 1-3: 25

Music and Sounds: 13

I have spared no expense and effort to recruit more than 30 overpaid MIT analysts from Google and tasked them to create a highly professional and innovative pie chart for me so you can see the visualization of where my free working time gets put into the side project.

The next Tier 5+ poll will be mostly about game characters. About their quantity, ethnicity, and because polls within polls are so funny, you will also decide on gender distribution.

Okay, I've said everything and I hope you're as excited for the side project as I am. When exactly it will be worked on and how long it will take, I can't tell yet. Personally, I would like to release the first update within this year. Whether it goes according to plan depends on how capable and fast the dedicated programmer who will be recruited in the future can work, because it will be very code-intensive and I don't want to put that burden on the current Ecchi Sensei programmers, so I'll put out my feelers so the team will grow bigger soon.

If you have any questions/wishes/suggestions, feel free to post them on Discord in the relevant channels.

In case you haven't joined the server yet:

You need to write a message in the "#general" channel to receive the required "Member" permissions.

So long,

Blue