100 posts already. Man. I guess it isn't really that big of a deal, but it feels like a milestone.
If you've been following Maids & Masters long enough (or if you've gone back through the thread on F95) you might've heard me say that MnM was made in VX Ace instead of a newer RPGM engine because it was all I had available. You might've also heard me say that MnM would get ported over to MZ once I had that engine available. Well, that engine has been available to me for a while now. It's what I've made the demos for Love/Loss and Redemption Harem in, and it's what Love Life! REM Cycle is being made in. So why isn't MnM in MZ yet? It's complicated. I'm not going to list out a bunch of excuses though. Instead, we're going to have a special announcement.
Act 2 of Maids & Masters will be in MZ.
This means a few things. Lots of new features, like the engine having native adjustable screen size, built-in text skip and mouse support, and the wider variety of plugin support from the RPG Maker community. It also means there's a lot of work for me to do in terms of resizing images, additional playtesting to assure the game functions without the plugins it currently uses, finding new plugins to replace the features that MnM will otherwise loose and adding new features (like re-bindable keys), and so on.
So, what will happen to MnM in VX Ace? v0.8.1 goes out to Patrons this Friday, that hasn't changed. v0.9 is still planned for December. After that is 2023, when I had originally announced work on Act 2 will begin. There's a few extra stipulations on that now.
The existing VX Ace version of MnM is still missing some parts. Most notably, the Love Shack and the additional 'missable' trophies being added to Big Dick's. Once those are put in place, there will be some additional testing and fixing, and then the VX Ace version will be released as Maids & Masters: Act 1. Once that is complete, I also want to bring Arrival up to snuff. Get rid of the placeholder assets, remaster it in MZ, and make the save able to transfer properly into the main game. Somewhere in this time frame, I also want to finish REM Cycle. After all of these things are complete and released, then work on Act 2 will begin in earnest. This means it may not be until a few months into 2023 that Act 2 actually starts releasing, rather than being available right away in January. This might change and Act 2 will be available sooner than I'm anticipating, but I can't guarantee that right now.
What this doesn't mean for MnM is a "sequel." The entirety of Act 1 will still be available in the MZ version. I'm taking steps to make sure existing players don't need to completely start over and will hopefully be able to use their saves in the MZ version of the game. I don't know yet if that will actually be possible, but I am trying. Failing that, I'll at least put in some kind of time skip, so if you've already played through Act 1 you won't need to play through again unless you want to.
As one last closing note - this wouldn't be possible if it weren't for my Patrons. It's taken me a while to get to this point, but I wouldn't be here at all without that support. If you want me to keep making upgrades like this - new engines, new assets, and more - I would greatly appreciate it if you considered supporting me.
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