Buckle up, it's time for another dev report!~

I'd like to begin by apologizing, as I'm sure many are aware that we've had troubles with setting estimated dates for upcoming game update/releases and failing to deliver on said dates.

This has been a difficult subject, because I receive a large range of fans/supporters who all think we should handle things a certain way that others wouldn't agree with or vice versa. Some people want some general estimate and get upset if none is given, while others naturally get more upset when we toss out estimates and fail to deliver.

Well, I think last month, I've taken a lot of the feedback as a collective from all angles within our Discord Server to form a path forward.

That being... Moving forward, we will only mention dates within our posts or comments, if we're 100% sure that's the actual date for content being released. This means, we have the content completely ready for said date upon announcement.

We may change this outlook as we get going again and things look differently, but for the time being, we have a number of elements at play that make it difficult to pinpoint or estimate set dates.

With that out of the way, let's get into this report!~

This post will be split up into sections indicated by "[~Text~]" and the section below it, we're going to try to keep these condensed, but the main points will be outlined early on before we move into recent development team related mentions.

[~Behind The Scenes: Upcoming Content~]

{Recap: Moving process has taken its toll on me, way more than I expected and I admit, I underestimated just how mentally and physically draining the past 2-3 weeks has been. Programmer had some issues preventing them from working on v0.22 further, but they're continuing that and was hoping I'd have stuff to show today from that. No date is set for v0.22 yet, but mini news posts are planned for a week from now and again after the move. v0.23 is shaping up as a pretty big update, with much of the writing and additions involved being done.}

First up, v0.22! What's the status? What's taking so long?

The truth is, there's a mixture of things on-going that's caused delays. The biggest one is something I've mentioned before I believe, which is that I'm moving across country. This has been a very long and difficult process for many months, with a lot of mental strain and more recently, physical strain as a lot is being done on a daily basis to sort everything out.

I really don't like to openly speak too publicly of my personal life in this manner, but I've been getting 5 to 6 hours of sleep on a daily basis for multiple days in a row, which has taken its toll on me naturally. Every few days, I finally crash and get some proper sleep, but this isn't a intentional choice.

This is the result of how extremely busy I've been recently between classes, personal tasks, project work, cleaning, packing and in general preparing for the moving process as a whole. There's a lot involved with this move and to say it's been a lot is really a understatement. I plan out my daily schedule pretty smartly and even still, the result is that I don't have enough time in a given day when juggling the moving related stuff to get done still.

I know it'll sound like yet another excuse, but I'm trying to juggle everything the best I can and I think I can fully admit in the past 2-3 weeks, it's just too much to take on currently.

Once the move happens in a little over a week from now and we're settled in, things should proceed more normally. I fully intend on working ahead on the writing content, so that we keep the ball rolling after v0.22 is ready. I just have to apologize for the lack of released content naturally, but my hope is that as the drop of new content happens, it'll be met with excitement and even more so if we prove that v0.23 follows after it within a timely manner.

Our programmer had some difficulties as well recently, causing delays and there's not much I can do to speed that up. I know a mention of replacing people popped up, but even if I humor that idea, it still takes time for a new person to adjust to a different project they're not used to.

I think its easy to assume there's a one way solution to suggest, but actually putting it into practice brings with it a number of issues as well. There's pros and cons to every approach, not dismissing the idea that when backed to a corner and all other options have been exhausted, that you shouldn't proceed in some manner. But each decision made will bring with it some level of good, bad or other.

Moving along...

I've confirmed that our programmer is working on content and while I haven't received a new Github update from them yet, I should be expecting one very soon. I was honestly hoping I'd have one to showcase some updated screenshots or footage teasers for v0.22 content being worked on, anything visually to showcase.

While I don't have much to show here today with that, I will provide some in a mini update post before the move takes place and then another once I'm setup at the new location.

Behind-the-scenes... Writing content for v0.23 has been going smoothly and we're looking to make that a pretty exciting update, as that'll feature the quality of life improvements to gameplay and additions for Episode 1 & 2 together! Including the option to play through said content as male or female protagonists!

A lot of v0.23 will focus on giving more power to the players, as we're looking to provide you with changing the protagonist's names to your liking. Besides that, there's a lot more small and big player choices and gameplay elements we're working on to better the overall gameplay pacing.

While we can't make every choice super impactful in-game, we do want more of them in varying degrees. Some choices might not have their impact seen soon after choosing set choices either. There will be choices that might not seem like it'd impact X or Y later, but it'll show itself and take you by surprise! 

Overall, we want the player experience to have plenty of moments along the on-rails story to take breaks from that with fun, exciting and enjoyable aspects that reward you! Sometimes rewarding you by leaning into your unique preferences!

There's a lot to unpack with that in the near future, but we're gathering visuals to properly showcase a lot of this in action. I'm pretty excited to share a lot of that with everyone and it's been a long, long process in putting it all together and figuring out how to handle everything we want to include into the game without bloating it out of reasonable scope.

[~Team Developments~]

{Background Art Developments}

During March, we shared the recent bg art previews for how the unique dorm rooms are looking for the main cast. There was some minor things that needed touched up still, but those are being handled by another artist.

Two of these touch-ups were the addition of 2D drawn clothing added to Nova and Miki's dorms. It was pointed out that some textures looked off and light fixes are being done for those as well.

Alongside sharing these previews, our bg artist has been working on two updates to existing bg's last month. Both are pretty much ready, except one is just waiting on a 2D texture for a sign. These bg's would be the courtyard and festival courtyard!

We'll be sharing previews of these two bg's during April!~

While we're still waiting on this month's funding to fully process, we suspect that bg art will take a backseat for April once we're done with the above. The priority on work is shifting elsewhere and we're getting caught up on paying for what's recently completed. Expect bg art to resume during May.

{CG Art Developments}

Last month Marxe made good progress on two cg scenes! Both are related to episode 5 content.

One of these can't be brought up due to spoilers for upcoming content, but that one is finished and it was updating the old artstyle for the existing cg scene, while including new variants. The other one is nearly done, which is a updated cg of Bridget in the gaming club. That also includes new variants and I can speak more openly with that one.

During the gaming club, the protagonist ends up with Bridget trying to use her powers to distract him from beating her in a video game! When all else seems to be failing, she resorts to the ultimate attack... Using her diaper! Animation frames for Bridget's messing outcome have been upgraded, along with brand new animations for a wetting outcome!

This will depend on player preferences prior to facing against Bridget.

While Marxe has been finishing up work on that during last month, we've received word that Ajose's city has been without power again recently. >.< (He's from Venezuela.) Which explains his recent MIA status since late February.

Funding from this month will most likely go towards providing Marxe with another cg scene for him to work on during April, since he can't proceed with some of the other paid work that's split between him and Ajose sadly.

{Sprite Art Developments}

Last month, we shared previews for Miki's favorite cutesy mascot duo Fizzy & Fuzzy, two adorable magical foxes that are featured in her dorm room as bedding and posters merch! Those textures added to the bg were done by her, but we also saw previews for the magic duo in general too!

Continuing the theme, we later shared previews of more merch that Miki owns in the form of a new underwear set and outfit she owns to be featured in-game! Although.. Rumor has it, Pembroke Academy has created some Fizzy & Fuzzy themed diapers, but hey! It's just a rumor right? ..Right?

Perhaps we'll see soon enough!~

While much of last month's work was focused on the mascot duo textures, reference material and Miki's outfit. Lisa did begin work on textures that'll be featured in the festival courtyard bg preview we have planned for April, which is nearly finished!

I suspect with our funding for this month, we'll begin to see two sprite characters being worked on. One was already in the works, but due to spoilers we can't say much about them yet. The other character has some spoilers involved as well, so it might be an awkward month as these previews with more spoiler heavy content are put off until closer to when they appear in-game.

{Chibi CG Art Developments}

We sadly didn't have much progress done during last month on chibi related work, but I did get some previews for the first chibi cg scene that's coming along and it features the female protagonist Blythe!

So, I'll be sharing some early concept previews of that during April!~

I'm currently awaiting to hear from Bandy and see how to proceed with work on chibi art needs for April, but they have at least 3 chibi cg scenes paid for to work on, along with some chibi sticker/emoji's. So, we might put more priority of this month's funding towards a different area and let her catch up on paid work for a bit.

{GUI Art Developments}

We're very close to wrapping up the GUI needs for the game! During March, they finished the Student Files screen and elements related to that. This screen will let players look through pages of the game's cast, read up their information, see their visuals and outfits, etc!

Besides completing that, they're now working on the DLC Episodes screen and elements! We sorted out the details for how to proceed on that screen visually, so I suspect we could see that finished up this month or into May.

Once that's wrapped up, we'll keep in close touch with ds-san in case there's little elements of UI stuff we need, but this should completely finish what we need for the game when it comes to GUI work.

{SFX & Music Developments}

Finally, ending things with music and sfx!

We had a little break for them during February, so last month we proceeded forward with having them work on a new music track and previews for how that's coming along were provided a little over a week ago!

I suspect that'll probably be finished up very soon and then we'll begin working on having them look over the Episode 1 & 2 QoL content as a whole to create sfx to match up with the visual moments that feel most impactful or important.

The current music track being worked on is supposed to fit as a background track for the dorm room locations, but it's one variant out of three being done.

As mentioned, with the QoL content coming along behind-the-scenes, we want to have much of that ready in ideal shape. So, we'll put some of the funding from April towards that and hope to share some preview footage examples of it in action with our overview of QoL additions and improvements!~

[~Development Report Conclusion~]

That's it for yet another dev report! Once again, I can't express how sorry I am with things recently. I understand the frustration involved and I hope we can avoid that as much as possible moving forward with our approach to not estimating dates until we have content completely ready without any doubt, then set the dates.

But just in general besides that, I know things hasn't been smooth for a while and really without opening up with a lot of personal happenings involving this moving process.. It's difficult to paint a picture of how greatly I underestimated the process. >.<

I tried to explain generally as much as I can, but even if I was comfortable sharing every private detail involved. It'd honestly be a very lengthy post and I wouldn't know how to properly word it all in order without rambling... Just know that it's been very difficult and I say that not as a excuse for the shortcomings of the project recently, just generally, it's been difficult personally for me with everything involved for this move and there's a lot of emotions attached with it, besides the mental and physical strain.

Pushing that aside, I'll be sorting out posts and setting a few of those on a schedule for them to automatically post for me during the awkward period of the move and getting settled in. Expect two posts during next week, probably set for Tuesday and Thursday!

[~Disclaimers & Project Information~]

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