Monthly Report: May 2022

Good timezone, everyone! Andy here, bringing you monthly report from May 2022!

I'll start with a small news: After Class is four years old! Crazy! It literally felt like yesterday for me when I started this project as a hobby slash school project.   

Working on After Class has been a great learning experience for me, there are A LOT of ups and (especially) downs I've experienced throughout the years (and that's probably why it's one of the slower project funded through Patreon)

I'm thankful for all the support you guys have given to me and the team, especially people who have been supporting since day 1 and my team who's been pulling some of my weight LOL.

Here's what's new in Patreon version (and public version when it's out.):

[EDIT] 0.9.11 Update:

• New transitions for title screen.

Two new transitions have been added into the game, before and after the logo of After Class appears.

• Changes to save/load screen.

Save/load screen has been edited. The ability to name your saves has been revoked. Instead, it shows your current version as of your save and total playtime of that save. 

Please keep in mind that the playtime counter is a little bit different than your usual game. Due to how renpy get the play time works, it's a bit wonky: it only counts outside of any menus, and rollbacks also reverse the time played. But I hope it'll be helpful, somehow. (And yes I know chapter names haven't been updated.)

• Added "after load" notice toggle.

You can now disable the notice after loading a game, but please at least see it once if you haven't.

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• Lars Day 9 - Patreon | Anders Episode - Public

The highlight of this update, obviously. There's nothing much to say about it without getting into spoiler territory, so enjoy when you get to it! It's packed with intrigue, good music vibes, and confusion.

• New splash screen.

A temporary splash scene to celebrate After Class' 4th Anniversary. It should have no importance in the game, but thought I'd put it there. It's going to be animated at some point and should be gone at the start of Day 10 update, just like some other temporary features.

• New click to start scene.

While this artwork is part of the 4th anniversary update, it's going to stay here for a while until the story progresses for more relevancy. Currently, it's only a static scene with some randomly-generated particle effect. But I'll animate it sometime later once I'm able to...just going to figure out if I want to use Live2D, video or native renpy transformation, we'll see.

• New title screen and title music.

The title screen itself isn't exactly new, but it's included in previous hotfix. What's changed is that there's a new music for the title screen. Did you know you can change the title screen music if you head to music gallery? Although it's not a permanent change, just that one time after you played it.

• New gallery viewer feature.

While this is not a revolutionary feature, it's also important for some people (when the time comes -wink-) so it's included in this update. I've tried adding more navigation feature and also tried making it pretty, but renpy knows how to be difficult for no reason at all so this is what we'll have for a while (this is not because I don't know how to code, yep, not at all.)

• New gallery navigation.

I'm not sure if there are people who check BG Gallery (and read this post in its entirety), but I've changed the navigation for BG Gallery. I might add the same feature for music gallery to filter it based on composers, but it's not a priority right now. QoL updates will come later on. I need to focus finishing Day 9 update first.

• New character sprites.

Ahh, Hendrik. He's got a face now. I haven't implemented expressions to him (due to the lack of time on my end) so that's the most we'll get for now. But hey! More reason to revisit Gil Episode~

• Temporary screens.

This is not a very tactful move, but some people just really ignore (or forget) when I say some of the features and assets in this game are still being worked on. So that screen will blast your face whenever you load a game file.

• BIG PACK TIER: Daikitei / Ren.  

He's the only one who hasn't appear in the game, despite his files been there for months. But fret no more, he's finally in the game, and will appear a lot more in the future, along with the other big pack characters. (Our protagonist represents us, he knows we all are staring.)

• Choices indicator.

Due to the nature of this game, some things I can't really explain without spoilering, breaking the flow of the story the way it should be enjoyed. But choice indicator has received a minor (and helpful update.) If you turn it on, some one-time choices will appear in red text, and if you turn it off, it'll go back white. The screen needs to be updated manually by the users, though. So you have to roll back once to see the change. This is still in early phase, so expect it breaking some stuff. Oh, also, the new main characters have their own favor point indicator now (the lil thing that appears when you gain the hidden favor point.)

• UI Fix and update

Thanks to some UI changes, a lot of things are broken. So I'm starting to roll out fixes little by little. This time, I'm more focusing toward fixing the alignment of the side images. It'll be updated in the future (with more poses and expressions for Walter), but this is what we'll have until we're done with character sprites backlog.

• New Backgrounds

It won't be a new update without new backgrounds from Vui and/or Wyne! This time, we don't have screenshots to show, but it's already in game, some of them are still being coded in, so please be patient!

• New Music

We currently use royalty-free music with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so crediting with link is required. But then again, some of them have an entirely different usage policy, so it's not listed in credit. If you need links to the music used, the about page is where you want to go. It's not complete yet, but we'll update in the future.

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What to expect in polished version: Since we're out of time to actually polish things in Lars Day 9 update (I need to roll out updates for all patrons within 4 days), there's not much we can do. But once we finally hit the next polished update, you can expect:

• Hendrik's expression in Gil Episode. (DONE)
• Lars' previous days touchups (expressions, typo fix, story adjustments to get rid of inconsistencies, etc.)
• Slightly title screen update. (DONE)
• Updated BG and Music gallery items.
• Wilfred character sprites. (DONE)
• Adding options to remove the screen after loading. (DONE)
• Warning about prohibited scene.

...and more

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What's next?

Some of you might be wondering if we have any schedule or anything equivalent... Yes, we do, actually. But it's hard to stick to the schedule. We're all busy people outside of being a part of TBD. Some of us are a parent, have a 9-5 job, work more than one job, etc. That's why I can't promise anything and make a concrete development roadmap. 

Also, if things go well, here's what's going to happen within the next updates in 2022:

• In-game event artworks.
• New character sprites.
• Side images update.
• Title screen animation.
• Gallery update.
• Expressions for older side characters.
• Day 9 completion.
• Unlocking developers' note.
• Original Soundtracks.*
• Character sprites resizing.
• Game data reduction.
• Character sprites backlog clearing.
• Original backgrounds backlog completion.

...And more to come.

* I'm not sure about original soundtracks since I don't know any composers who can compose musical pieces with the same mood with what we have right now. There are a few that I'm looking at right now, but I'm very hesitant because I have no idea how commissioning a musical piece work and also how to speak with them in Japanese. But I'll keep looking.

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Link to Lars Day 9 (0.9.10) update: 

Cuddly Bears and up [UPDATED]  |  Quiet Bulls DL link inbox  |  Playful Lion | 0.9.11 Page 

You need to be linked to itch.io (and a patron) to access the links.

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Thanks for reading!