Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Maids & Masters (& A Release Date for v0.13)

It has been a very busy work week, and it'll continue to be very busy, but for different reasons.


First, the Maids & Masters news I put up there in the title. There's still some time to give feedback on it for VIP Patrons (and if you happen to be a VIP Patron and haven't played it yet, the final conclusion is excluded, so you have a chance to solve the mystery yourself before the answer appears as a requirement of progression), but as has been the trend so far, the test build went out last Friday, so the full release will be this Friday, November 10th. Having playtested the different endings (one where Phoebe does all the work if you've asked her to do all the work, and two more based on whether you collected the majority of the clues or not), I find the ending quite satisfying, especially if you paid attention and are able to make all the right choices in the "low clues" ending.


The update was actually story-complete a couple days ago,  but these Act 2 updates are taking a little extra background work that makes having an update ready to release take a lot more time than it used to. For example, as of writing this, Vicky still doesn't have her Love Shack content, and neither she or the new mother may have it ready in time for Friday. I only just finished (and still have to test) the new shop content, there's the cult segments to worry about now (though that was finished for this update yesterday), adding in the ways to obtain the new trophies after the segment is complete is much more complicated (and that still needs doing for Roich, even though it should still be possible to obtain the trophy), and that's still before all the usual playtesting and bugfixing. Development did go much more smoothly than it has in recent months, which has made a huge difference in the amount of work I've been able to do, but there's still a lot left. I'm doing my best to avoid needing to do another v0.X.1 update so I can get the main story done faster, but it might be necessary eventually anyway (because I really need to find time to design and implement the affection quests, and there's still lots of little random Estate events I want to make). We'll find out as we get closer to v0.16.


For now, I have different reasons to be busy in that I'll be hosting some friends from out of town for about a week. This actually starts before Friday, so some parts of the release schedule may not happen entirely on schedule, but I'll be doing my best to find time to make it all happen as it usually does. This hopefully won't affect my posting schedule, either, but since I won't have a lot of time to work while they're here, I may not have much to share next week. Though if all goes well, I may have a nice surprise to share next week. That has not been going so well, so I have my doubts, but a friend put an idea in my head and now I can't stop myself from working on it once I've hit the end of my work day for MnM. I love the idea and it incorporates a lot of mechanics I've been wanting to try to make work, but it's also very different from the RPGs I've been making and learning to make all of that function is difficult. Regardless, the dev poll for v0.14 will still go up the following Friday, with the results going up the Friday after that.


I do also have some outside work that I really need to check in on. That's gone neglected for a lot longer than I'd have liked it to, so I need to find some time to give to that. I think we'll wrap things up there, though. I don't want to give away all of my secrets.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Most Recent Update

Maids & Masters (& More Progress on v0.19)