Roadmap (revised!)

I know I said I'd be posting more updates, but I figured my time was best spent working on the damn game and the good news is, you'll DEFINITELY be getting something to play before the month is out. I'm aiming to get the first private test build out to share with you all by the weekend (most likely at midnight GMT on Sunday, lol, although I promise I'll aim for earlier if I can!).

I've been going so hard on getting the underlying systems in the game as polished and scaleable (there's that term again) as I can, meaning future development will be quicker and smoother going forward. I know, I know, I said that last time, but honestly, I'm going to go utterly insane if I don't just get this damn game finished and out, so I've been working hard on keeping myself accountable, building in ways I can avoid feature creep and any other pitfalls, and making sure I see it through, this time around. No engine switching, no "oh actually I rewrote the entire codebase" etc etc from hereon in.

So with that in mind, I'm gonna share the final revised roadmap I've put together, although before I do, let me explain why even that seems to have changed since the last post, and hopefully you can follow along with my logic!

I'm assuming you've all played the previous version (Version 0.4.1), right? The version with the Heather route, all the way up to the Games? The version with the totally unnecessary rhythm game built into it, that took me about 2 weeks of unnecessary extra work to put together (what did I say about 'feature creep'!)?!

So, if you have played that version, you'll know that there's still so much empty space surrounding the main Heather quest. There's some very generic lectures, some repetitive dreams, some shops and a nightclub you can kind of visit, but it all feels ... well, empty?

Well, stay tuned, because I'm about to explain how I'm going to go about fixing all that and make the game hopefully a lot more feature rich and fun to play!

It might surprise you to learn (!), that despite the utterly chaotic way I've been approaching the game development side of things (up until now), the story elements have actually been given an awful lot of thought and planning. I have a clear plan of how the elements should be drip-fed, with the world of the game opening up, the more you play and explore.

Here's a couple of examples:

- The event that happens on the Saturday of week one (when you receive the money from your folks). Its no random occurance that that happens a week into the game, just as you've probably felt like you've exhausted exploring the campus. It opens up the whole second area to explore (the city), along with the ability to buy a whole bunch of stuff.

- The way you slowly get feminized. Again, just as you might be feel like you've explored everything, once you reach a certain checkpoint in your feminization, a whole new set of girly options open up to you. Characters react differently to you en femme, new choices appear, etc.

I've got this whole plan of how the game will keep 'opening up' again, the more experience you acquire and the more feminine you slowly become, only to put that all into place in one go is SUCH a lot of freaking work, it would take me months and months, with nothing much to share with you all in the meantime, except as a frustrating buggy mess that would spoil the finished experience.

So here's what I'm proposing:

I'll be releasing it in 'chunks' - chunks that correspond to the game's 'chapters'. Again, if you've played already then you'll kind of know how this works from the Heather route, but to recap and propose how this will work going forward, these will be:

Prologue: your first day and night on campus

Chapter 1: your first week on campus, the games try out, and your first full set of tasks from either mistress you choose (Heather or Jennifer)

Chapter 2: the city opens up, the second week of lectures, all necessary Amy content, all corresponding Heather and Jennifer content

etc!

As you'll know, I already have pretty much all the Heather content written (up to the games), so in each of these updates, I'll be adding in the corresponding Jennifer route, and trust me, these are gonna be so much fun, basically focussing on all the 'seedier' elements in the city - the shady alley (I wonder what happens there!), the adult book store, etc - as well as making sure that everything else is fully in place too. Meaning, when we hit Chapter 2 and the city opens up, I wont release it until all the shops are stocked, the night club is up and running (and has at least a few possibilities for random hook-ups), and all campus content is similarly fun, so new jobs, new lecture events, the works.

I hope all this makes as much sense to you as it does in my head! I'm basically saying that instead of releasing yet another half-complete version with some parts missing, I'm going to be drip-feeding it in much more fun-to-play chunks.

On top of that, if you're a $3 or $5 subscriber, I'll also be sharing a 'Game So Far' build that you can fool around with, bugs, loose ends and all (although play at your own discretion lol).

TL;DR

So, to recap, by the end of this month, I'll be sharing the Prologue as a private, patreon-only test build for you all, and if you're anything other than a $1 subscriber, I'll also share a buggy 'Game so far' so you can see how far I've gotten and fool around with the rest.

I'll also be making the following infographic public on the front page, which shows the full revised roadmap plan I have, with the shedule of private/public releases ...

As you'll see if you got to the end of this huge-ass image, by the time we hit v0.5.7, then that's the time I'm gonna allow myself to start fucking around with the code again (aka any more optimizing that needs to be done), potentially working on the character images (I'm thinking maybe Midjourney or perhaps hiring an artist to do some 2d character sheets, in order to generate some variety and make them 'move' and react during conversations, while still keeping the characters looking familiar), and also working on a mobile build and maybe some translations. 

But until then, it's content, content, content.

Buckle in, it's gonna be fun!

Dana x