November news post #3

As we approach the end of November, I have a few announcements to make. It won't really mean anything until we head into the new year, but I hope everyone will see just how much we care and hope to turn things around for 2022! <3

To begin, I want to announce that v0.20 will be out in the early half of December! Before the 15th at the very latest, confirmed and done! I know it's still a bit of a wait, but I've been trying to ensure the choices and options in episode 5 is a taste of what's to come moving forward into the routes, offering quite a bit of extra content!

Now the biggest news part of this announcement is that normally we take December off for Winter break and return back to development work within the first week of the new year. This is what we did in 2020 and we had planned to do this for this December too, but with the delayed v0.20 release and in general with how 2021 has turned out. I decided after some long thought, that for this December. I will not be taking any time off from MA development after all!

This does mean that my writing schedule will still exclude Saturdays and Sundays, along with maybe wishing to take Xmas eve off from writing. But it'll be normal writing schedule throughout December for me, that way I can have more time to fully prepare and help shape 2022's development release cycles ahead of time and really stick it to pushing out new content every 30-40 days!

I have about 2 weeks of my day job left before our company's Winter break begins. (Thanks to my saved up paid time off as well to start it early, etc.) So really for a good chuck of December, I'll have plenty of time to really hammer down on MA content that's expected heading straight into 2022. I should still be able to take a day or two to relax each week regardless, but I don't want to slow down the momentum from v0.20's release date.

I'm very excited and hope that even though we're still going to need to wait a tiny bit until v0.20 is out and ready than expected, that there is big work planned on my part during December to make up for it and we can only hope to prove this as the releases begin in 2022 as well! Once again, a huge heart filled thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone of you for being patience and understanding! <3 ^^

While I personally will be getting ahead on writing content for MA in December after all. Some of the others on the team will be taking their break, so for example Lisa is confirmed to be taking the time off and so we can't expect any sprite updates/news until the new year. We're still waiting to hear what MarxeDP and his buddy are doing for cg art wise, but I have confirmed that ComposerJF will work during December and it sounds like Artie is on board too! ^^

Anyways! That's the big announcements regarding v0.20 release date set for December 15th at the very latest. (Might be out sooner, we'll keep everyone informed a full day ahead of time.) Along with the news of myself continuing to keep MA content moving forward during our normal Winter break.

~Personal mentions~

Thank you for the birthday wishes on discord and everything about 2 weeks ago! Same goes for Lisa's birthday that was just recently on the 26th. I can't quite speak for Lisa, but I hope she had a great birthday weekend!

I ended up super busy between my own birthday and all the Thanksgiving plans that were set in stone.. <.< My Brother and his gf decided to order a good amount of Japanese snacks, which is something we kind of normally do each year around this time for fun. Last year was a bunch of snacks from the UK for example. (Let me know if there's some super awesome snacks I need to try from your country! :P )

So yeah! They decided to get me a bunch of different stuff like pocky flavors, odd chip flavors, mochi, chocolates and so, so much more.. ^^" Honestly it'll probably last me about 2 months since I try not to eat a whole ton of snacks if I can help myself.

We went out that weekend for sushi since I couldn't resist this awesome sushi place a good hour from us. All you can eat for around $25 and so many options, one of my favorite appetizers has to be the takoyaki. (Probably cause I've seen it in anime and just seems like one of the more unique things that's harder to see on menu's at other sushi places around here.)

Overall my birthday was good! But then the following day we had plans to meet up with our Grandparents at their house for a mix of early Thanksgiving and Xmas. They normally head down to Florida for the Winter season, so we celebrate those with them early on before they leave and that was good to see my close cousins since it's been a while. But then later for actual Thanksgiving, we briefly went out to this fancy place to eat that my parents had reserved a table for us ahead of time.

To say the least, once Thanksgiving was done and over with. I felt like I could finally get a break, but not like any of the plans and celebrating wasn't fun. :P

More or less it's just been busy thanks to all of that lately, but mixed with the day job and trying to squeeze time in for myself. ^^" Lately my go to relax, me time thing to do has been playing Animal Crossing on my Switch. I'm not too far along in the game, just finished building my first bridge and slowly making progress little by little. It's mainly been my game to play half an hour before I plan on passing out since it's so chill and laid back, it really helps get me into the mood to fall asleep once I turn it off.

~Development behind the scenes talks~

I don't think too much has been going on here compared to the last news post. <.< Will probably be slow as not much will be going on in December besides the writing side of stuff for MA mainly.

Let's see...

Lisa won't be touching sprite stuff until Jan 2022. Plans with that is tackling the KS oc characters.

MarxeDP and AjoseMp seem to be nearly done with the Summer Festival wallpaper, once that's finished and posted up here. They're going to do some visual improvements to how the wet diapers look in cg art, trying to make it feel a bit better and some previews to compare the changes of those will come early on in December.

ComposerJF is currently working on a more sad/emotional track now and that should be done sometime late December based on my rough guesses. No behind the scenes early preview has been sent to me yet, but I am excited to hear how it'll turn out. I find that kind of music in media to be oddly appealing, probably because of the emotional draw to it and depending on what's going on with hearing said tracks too. ^^"

Gui artist managed to provide me with the finished Messy Studios team logo, which I'll be sharing a preview mock up of how that looks here within the next day or two before November is finished. Said team logo will be seen when launching the game before it reaches the title screen and we'll probably see it's graphics added to certain social sites we run. Hopefully it'll give a sense of what quality we're hoping for with the gui elements to come!

Artie is going to take on the v0.20 editing, engine transfer and play testing here shortly. Then during December he's going to help out with the quality of life changes being applied to episodes 1-4 while I get ahead on route episode writing for the new year.

~Ending statements~

Things are slowing down in a sense right now, but hopefully everyone will be happy with the results of how episode 5 turns out and during December, I'll be looking to put out more polls and also find some fun engaging things for us to engage with supporters/fans more often. ^^

One random idea I had that'd be fun to try out sometime is not so related to MA, but for those with Nintendo Switch's to put together some online matches for games together for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or other games.

Of course I'd like to dig around and figure out some more MA related engaging stuff we can do with the community though, so be on the look out for some of that stuff in December!

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and in general November!
From all of us at Messy Studios!