Ecchi Sensei - What happens next? Ep. 2

"What happens next" - Episode 2:

Ecchi Sensei, and the journey continues...

We are reaching the end of the first ingame week and I bet that it was the longest week in your life - and in my life, too ^^

But in the future, it won't take as long until a week is over. But more on that later...

The first ingame days, including Day 6 where we are now, have left a good overall impression of what the game is supposed to look like. Unfortunately there have also been a few setbacks for my programmer who has unfortunately been the cause of many bugs in the game.

The smartphone app only worked partially, it had to get taken out of the game completely in Day 5 and it's getting a complete and fundamental rework again.

The Ecchi Counter was an idea to show the player when the next lewd scene shows up so you can look forward to it.

But unfortunately the Ecchi Counter has also suffered from brokenness, and because it takes an extremely high amount of time to work with it, this feature will be removed from the game completely. I think that's really sad because it was a nice gimmick. But instead of putting in 10 hours per update for the Ecchi Counter, I prefer investing that time in other, more useful things.

The save/load function isn't exactly amazing either and the current implementation is definitely not like the way I wanted it to be.

With the Week 1 release, there will be a new save/load mechanism which will make it much easier for you to load your existing saves into new updates.

The character development is great so far. The longer you play, the more evident it is how different they are. With some of them, you are already starting to see what goals and intentions they have, how their personalities seem to be from the point of view of the MC, and how their personalities actually are (from their own point of view).

Some characters you get to see frequently, if not even daily. The current characters in the game are listed here in 4 different priority tiers:

❀ Priority 1: Always main character status

Fuyu, Himiko, Kaede, Mao, Saki

❀ Priority 2: Main character status (with possible up/downgrades)

Aki, Becky, Evelynn, Hitomi, Itsumi, Kotori, Marlies, Masae, Mika, Minako, Neko, Rikka, Sakura, Satomi, Satsune, Shina, Sloth-Chan, Tomoe, Waifu, young Waifu

❀ Priority 3: Important side characters (with possible up/downgrades)

Chiaki, Christa, Crazy Nurse, Hana, Haruka, Ina, Karin, Keiko, Mama bear, Mizuki, Momo, Nanami, Naoko, Rin, Suzuka, Tanami, Tara, Taru

❀ Priority 4: Side characters (with possible upgrades)

Akina, Arisa, DJane, Gabby, Ilyia, Kasumi, Michiko, Nao, Yasmine, Yamamoto-sensei 

Characters in the first two priority tiers will have three or more "character routes". Character routes are almost completely independent from one another and they have very little influence on the general routes that you can take in the game. To put it simple: 

Ecchi Sensei will have many many many routes. Some will have a bit of overlap, others contain completely new stories. But towards the end, all routes will be connected close to the main route. The one true harem route. Thanks to the special character routes, you will be able to define who ends up in your harem and who doesn't.

You can have all characters in your harem or just a few of them. Of course there will be other main routes as well, ones that don't lead you directly to the harem land. That's how you can always make the important decisions and set out on your path.

By the way, the first character route for a character has already existed since Day 4. It's about Fuyu and the scene at the school rooftop. If you're too rough to her and your mind is dark, then you can go on the corruption route.

Starting with Week 1, your mind no longer has to be dark to choose this route.

Other than the many improvements (dialogues starting with Day 4, improved graphics with every update since Day 2), the end of Day 5 gave us the first animation that sets the new standard for animations. Before that, I have experimented a lot, and with only mediocre success. But thanks to the Lewdmas Special as well as the Lewd Year Special, I have improved the new method to create animations and they got me to the level of knowledge where I am now.

The method that I use to create animations looks like this: I create a lot of single images and combine them using Ren'py and write code to display them sequentially at a high speed. The result is the finished animation. But Ren'py has caused some problems with this because the game can crash when too many pictures are played too quickly and, depending on the computer, there can be incredibly long delays to load the animation. That's why I had to experiment a lot to find out that a single animation must not have much more than 30 images to run without causing issues. Another difficulty was setting the beginning and the end just right so that you don't see a visible loop effect.

Thanks to this and my new compression method, single animations can be reduced to a few megabytes, saving a lot of space. There's also the possibility of transforming the images into videos and compressing them as .webm which saves around 50% of space but I'll only start using this method once the animation folder reaches a size of over 500 MB, and there will be a lot of time until we get to that point.

The individual updates have also been getting a lot bigger since Day 4. Whoever is now hoping that Day 7 will be bigger than Day 6 will be disappointed, unfortunately.

In Day 7, our MC is going to take an off day of peace and quiet with his family and focus on the persons inside his house. Thus, this also includes Fuyu and Sloth-chan.

The MC will actually be able to do that suspended student interview and thanks to Fuyu we will get to meet two new characters - Fuyu's bodyguards who are everything but happy about the fact that she just snuck away out of her room in the middle of the night. Around noon, Mika is going to visit us as planned. Together with Saki and Himiko, she will drive to the AniCon.

In that time, MC is going to train Mao, and some other things that I am not going to delve into now are going to happen as well.

Then it's time for dinner with the principal where we also get to meet the Minister of Education (Tanami's husband; you will be able to skip) and we'll get to spend some time with Satomi. Also, we will get to know a few new T8 Patron creations and see existing T8 Patron chars on the way there and back.

Then things are going to get a little colorful and we'll get to see our Waifu again who is working hard in Tokyo and missing her "Anata", and there will also be a Past Time episode which begins where the Day 5 episode ended (before MC and Waifu became a couple). The Valentine's Day Past Time episode happened a bit further in the future.

And that's how Day 7 is going to end and where we start working on "Week 1" which is a giant project where you can use the poll to decide how big the scope is.

Many things are getting deleted, changed, and/or newly created. Also, we will see new features that I have been wanting to have in the game since Day 2.

The work on Week 1 is going to be very transparent for the most part and there will be weekly progress updates so you are always up to date on what we're working on and what has been done.

But how do we continue? What happens after Week 1?

❀ Plans for the future:

The game gets faster. Much faster! Instead of having 1 Day per update, Days 8+9 will be released together after Week 1, followed by Days 10+11, and 12+13+14 with the third update.

After the second ingame week, it's going to get faster again and single updates can then contain an entire week. The upper limit is set to 2 weeks per update.

What effect is this going to have on the game?

The game itself is going to have more action but there will be no lack of long and constructive talks. Some everyday things simply will no longer be shown as frequently, such as walking to the bathroom or the daily preparations to go to school. You will also have more opportunities to gain insights in the psyche of several different characters because occasionally you will be able to see events from the perspective of others.

The game itself is also going to focus more on individual needs. Until the evening of every day, everything is as usual. But afterwards, you can decide what you want to do and you will be able to do that in almost every evening. Why, you ask? Easy... So far, Ecchi Sensei consists of over 50 female characters, and the plan is to have up to 100. But the problem with all of that is that not every player likes every character.

Some people like Fuyu, hate Tomoe, and love Christa. Others hate/love everyone equally and others just want to spend time with the family and stay at home. That's why you are going to be able to decide absolutely freely who you want to spend more time with.

The basic concept of how exactly this is going to happen is already set. The details are still being worked on. But it's not going to become a typical sandbox / dating sim game. The focus stays where it's been before, just with the difference that the evenings look different. These evenings shape the character routes as I mentioned earlier, but they won't shape the main routes as much.

That means that, no matter what you do in those evenings, it mostly has an effect on just this one person (or several persons) and doesn't create 10000 different routes in the "main game" so that you'll need to have 500000 different saves.

Achieving these things is going to be a huge challenge for me, but I'm gladly willing to bring it on to make the game more interactive. I don't know yet whether there is going to be a town map. But there will definitely be graphical (and not text-based) methods of choosing how to spend the evenings.

If the feedback we'll receive after Week 2 regarding the interactive evenings is overwhelmingly good, we will consider making the game even more interactive to give you even more freedom in your actions.

And now I am going to give you a broad overview of what to expect in Week 2. Many spoilers are ahead!

If you wish to avoid spoilers, stop reading now.

So long and thanks for reading,

Blue

❀ Days 8+9 (Monday and Tuesday)

The new week begins and the MC has to make a decision regarding the suspended students. The first mock exam is also on the agenda (Day 12) and we need to start determining the individual strengths and weaknesses of the students. Neko has also finally given us the list that we've been waiting for so long and we are also going to get into the Neko club soon.

Also we will be supervising different clubs in this week (announced in Day 5). Thus we will supervise the volleyball club as usual and play other ball games with the girls besides volleyball. When we'll be in the dojo, we're also going to know what the ranking looks like and who the weakest fighters are. Surprise, Mao is on last place. Our goal is going to be getting her to the top, but we're also training Rikka alongside her... 

We are also going to have the talk with Satsune that we've been wanting to have in Day 6 already, to get advice on how to help Aki achieve her dream of becoming an idol. In return, we are going to help Satsune become a proper housewife, making Kaede very happy in the process.

Our Waifu, who is still in Tokyo, is missing us so much that she neglects her work a little and starts to make mistakes, which the organizers don't like at all.

Then there's also the problem with Kotori, our wife's sister. But neither Kotori is aware that Waifu is her sister, nor is Waifu aware about Kotori.

Our MC needs to make a decision regarding this and he's asking a person in his family that he got to spend a little more time with recently for help.

❀ Days 10+11 (Wednesday and Thursday)

From Waifu we're learning that she can't keep it up for much longer and that she really wants to come home. But thanks to MC's motivating words, the organizer no longer has anything to complain about because Waifu is focusing on work more.

But the organizer has let her know that she should be staying there for longer because her designs got so much positive feedback. Kotori got some news as well. A burst water pipe! Her dorm room is completely flooded and MC has got an idea!

In the meantime we've learned more from Itsumi about her club. On Wednesday, our MC is going to supervise the science club and talk to Christa a little more, and Himiko is overjoyed.

On Thursday we finally get to see the swimming club for the first time and that's where we get to talk to Hana.

But what happened to Crazy Nurse? We paid her a visit on Day 8 and gained access to her laboratory where she is doing top secret research. She isn't calling us Mr. Rapist anymore and she seems to have lost interest in us. We need to investigate that.

Speaking of investigating. Kaede and Nanami are part of the disciplinary committee and together with the MC they're trying to find out who is putting obscene messages on the walls.

We also need to get a casting for Aki by the weekend and Chiaki, feeling threatened by Saki because Becky now strongly prefers to spend time with Saki rather than with her, is becoming a serious threat for the MC.

The next crisis follows soon because the students from Day 1 who have bullied Mao on Day 2 are now going to react in a different way depending on your decisions. That could lead to some poblems that don't have easy or diplomatic solutions.

❀ Days 12+13+14 (Friday to Sunday)

On Friday, it's time for the mock exam. Our MC has tried his best to prepare his students. Let's see how they will do. Afterwards we are going to have a discussion with the principal again and we are going to report to her how the week with the rotating club supervisors went and what could be changed. On Friday we're spending our club time with the disciplinary committee and we're going to celebrate a big milestone because we've caught one or several culprits.

Saturday is going to be less stressful than that. We can visit new workshops and get to see a few new faces again. But now it's time that we are going to meet people who aren't exactly our biggest fans. We already know most of the girls who have been looking forward to meet us from the very beginning. But those who aren't premium members of our fanclub have been in the background so far. Of course there are also those who are a little shy and simply didn't have the courage to talk to us. But many people are not going to start liking us immediately like the others did. 

Sunday is another calm day for us and we can relax for the most part again. But there are still some things that we need to do, such as clearing up the situation with Fuyu's mother for example. She was supposed to marry the other guy today after all....

That was a broad overview over the coming updates. But there is one more thing I want to tell you....

There has been a general spoiler plan for the first 100 ingame days that has existed practically forever (a few already know about it). The biggest spoiler is a very elaborate spoiler that is going to span several characters and events and it's going to be a really tough one.

The beginning has already been made in Day 2 when Mao decided to talk to us again. Kotori and Waifu are involved as well and thanks to the Past Time episodes, we also get to learn why both the MC and Waifu ran away from home and never looked back.

Mao is secretly doing her own research and she's going to shed light on quite a few mysteries. We get to see events more often from her perspective and learn some shocking things. About the Yakuza, Fuyu, Fuyu's mother, as well as Mama bear, Hitomi, Waifu's parents, and more, for example.

Ah, by the way... The MC has already made a decision regarding the suspended students. But more on that in the next episode of "What happens next".

Thank you for reading and thank you for your support. Without you I wouldn't be able to work on Ecchi Sensei with so much motivation.

So long,

Blue