It is really tiring having to correct you every time you try to make these claims. Below are all of the public messages from BlueCat dating back to December 31 of last year. It's only 4 messages, and if you want to criticize BC for only making 4 statements in that time you have every right to do so, but (spoiler alert) at no point in any of the messages do the words "on hold" or "abandoned" appear.
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From the December 31, 2020 Patreon post:
Hello guys!
With a lot of sorrow we have to announce that we didn't manage to achieve our goal of releasing Month 1 this year. A few members of the team are struggling with severe health problems, causing delays everywhere.
2020 is all about the stupid corona crisis and we can only hope that things will get better.
I hope you will be understanding. I can't force my sick employees to work (at least not yet... *evil mad scientist laugh*).
Anyway. We promise to be better and we're confident that our work will be much faster in 2021 and we will get back to our usual schedule and provide you with regular big updates.
With this in mind, the Ecchi Sensei team wishes you a happy new year.
See you next year!
From Blue's post in this thread on January 2, 2021:
Here are some facts about my game:
Ecchi Sensei IS already the longest and biggest Visual Novel of all time. Means no other dev so far reached the same or larger amount of images, coding, and dialogues. Not here and not somewhere else.
I also hired more people to work on the project than average game developers from this site with the same income. Means I summary receive much less for more work I do than others.
Also about "milking": I already created almost two completely new updates after the month 1 merge. The current available Day release of Ecchi Sensei is day 20-21. I already created the images + coding + dialogues for Day 22+23 update and all images for Day 24-26 update and currently working on coding and dialogues while my coders and manager, who also works as proofreader and translator are busy with the merge of all previous released Ecchi Sensei updates.
I don't care how other game companies or dev groups work. I'm not a copycat sneaking around other games and steal code or ideas or something. I always follow my own order in case of creation, coding, dialogues, releases and management.
Since Ecchi Sensei is a so big project since the beginning of the creation process in my mind over 2 years ago, the week 1 merge and month 1 merge are extremely necessary for my future plans.
Everyone in my team was inexperienced in creating a Visual Novel but also everyone learns with every new release new tricks and a Day 8 release used different coding than a Day 10+11 release. Now we combine all of our wisdom to the entire game, started with day 1.
But it is not just a ordinary merge like that with bug fixing and putting all together. We also become multilingual by adding german and hopefully also french to the month 1 merge. Plus we say goodbye to hardcoding stuff and code almost everything by our own to drastically reduce the overall size for the month 1 merge, PLUS it also benefits for the upcoming merges. Instead of taking 300 hardcoded core images for features with us for every single update, we redcue the amount of by 90% which means hundrets of megabyte no longer need to be downloaded for each update.
About the Daz/Illusion discussion:
Some people like Pepsi, others drink Coke. You prefer Xbox? Some believe Playstation is better. I for myself decided to choose Illusion and instead of like 99,999% of all other devs who also prefer Illusion over Daz, I not decided for Honey Select which comes with an overwhelming large modder Community. I took "PlayHome" because for me, it looks better. It also means I need to create my own mods and maps and I need to fuck up with SketchUp and Unity which I really hate but I do it because this game is my passion and I like what I do.
It is up to you to decide if I'm a milker or not. But running out of ideas? Bitch please... I have not many skills, but being creative is my strongest. I'm able to create stories and dialogues in any kind of situation.
For those who are interested to know: Here is how I start a new update:
So first of all, the whole game concept and elementary story elements already decided in may 2018. When I begin with an new update I open my notepad++ and firstly decide who's in the cast of the new update which takes like 5 minutes. After that I write for another 5-10 minutes what happens in the update or what should happen. Then I take a few hours for pickung clothing and makeup for the next few days and after that I start creativ the images. After the over 1500+ images are done (yes, that many images and more I create for every single update) I prepare the coding stuff to get ready for the dialogues in Atom. I open the first image made at my second screen and I just start writing and while I write, the dialogues just flew into my mind.
So I never run out of Ideas. It is exactly the opposite. I unfortunately have too many ideas and I always want to put more into every single update but It always needs to come to an end so I need to deal with that problem.
I know. It sucks hard waiting so long for a merge which also comes with no new updates. But It never was planned to release Week 4 in Month 1 merge because the first ingame day was not July 1. No, it was July 13. So in the middle of the month. Month 2 will get four weeks. Almost the whole August and from there on every new month comes with four weeks. But, not every month means a new merge.
If you think you're upset or angry or whatever because of the long time to wait for the month 1 release, you have no idea how we dislike merging. For me, merging is like cleaning public toilets with my tongue. I mean yes, some people may like cleaning public toilets with there tongue. Heck, there is no kinkshare from my side. But I really dislike it and I love creating new content and share the new content with the many people who like the game. But the week 1 and month 1 are required.
Gladly, our foundaition will get strong enough after month 1 which means no big merge is required for a very long time. The next big merge I plan is in the year 2023. So over the next two years we focus on producing new content like we did before.
The decrease in supporters is also a thing. Ecchi Sensei is my first project and I never thought it gets that big by supporters. But it really helps out. So I was able to hire people. Especially Latecomer, my project manager who also works as main translator is very important. My english is very basic and without his help the game would never get these kind of nice dialogues. So yes, money is of course important. But I never decided to create Ecchi Sensei for moneys sake. It just helps to produce more content and increase quality of the content.
They more we grow, they more I invest in helpful hands. So with your support I'm able to increase the amount of the team to hire new modders for more and better looking clothings, maps and object. Or to add a new language for the game. Pay my composer for new calming classical piano background music etc.
And when I reach a specific amount of monthly supportance I just starty my own company and hire more people which work on Ecchi Sensei, but also on other projects I'd like to realize.
Ecchi Sensei is my baby, but it is just the beginning. I hope most people like to follow me on our journey.
So long,
Blue
From the February 14, 2020 Patreon post:
My dear patient supporters.
First of all, I apologize for the long o'holding silence. With the discontinuation of the weekly status reports, we were certain at the time that Month 1 would be released shortly afterwards, but as time has taught us, unfortunately this was not the case.
From a technical point of view there wasn't any setbacks, but in terms of personnel. The state of health of some of my employees has largely deteriorated to such an extent that work on Month 1 was not completely stopped, but slowed down considerably and it was therefore impossible to present a new release date.
Unfortunately, we are not a multimillion dollar corporation that can simply cope with setbacks if a few employees are absent. Everyone who works on Ecchi Sensei, with the exception of me, does it on a part-time basis. Nevertheless, my employees have defined roles and areas of responsibility that cannot be transferred to others. In certain areas I could look for a replacement, but the replacement would first have to be familiarized with the very complex topic. For core tasks, which e.g. Latecomer occupies, it's absolutely unthinkable to get a temporary replacement on board.
Long story short, and this might sound like a cheap excuse to some, but rest assured - We still have an urgent need to continue Ecchi Sensei.
I am very aware of the displeasure of many, and I read again and again from pessimist's and people who've got no idea that Ecchi Sensei has been canceled, or that the dev got no drive anymore and blah. Screw that! My entire team and I are excited to continue with Ecchi Sensei and even if my arm fell off, I would continue.
Once again in plain text: To our regret, Ecchi Sensei Month 1 is very late, but none of us is even thinking about discontinuing the project.
All Tier 7+ Patrons among you, who already have access to future updates in the form images I've created for the updates after Month 1: Day 22 + 23, as well as day 24-26 know that I have already done preparatory work in order to be able to fully start after Month 1.
I assure you that as soon as we're absolutely sure that we have a release date to announce, we will let you know immediately.
I hope this sign of life will calm your minds and that you're going to be patient with us a little longer. You can decide whether it was worth the wait or not. But we won't give up. That much is certain.
With this in mind, I wish everyone in love a happy Valentine's Day and everyone else a good start into the new week.
Stay healthy and if you meet people who claim Ecchi Sensei will be canceled, you can tell them the following from me:
"BlueCat said that people like you... *insert a swear word* and *insert another swear word*. Also, you are... *insert insult* so *insert swear word* and *insult the mother of the person*. ALL HAIL BLUECAT! Peace."
Uhm. Yes. So, I'll keep you posted and a little note to all my Patrons:
In
You must be registered to see the links
, you can reach me any time. There is also a channel called #gitlab-notification. There you can see that we regularly exchange data within the team and that we are constantly progressing the project.
So long,
Blue
From the April 11, 2021 Patreon post:
Hello folks! It's that time again!
Time for a new status report and something has changed positively. As you should all know by now, one of my team members suffers from serious health problems and began a treatment as an inpatient a few weeks ago. It seems that the first improvements were now apparent, and he was able to work a little more than before.
This work led to the fact that we were able to make greater progress again and gradually step closer and closer towards the final product of Ecchi Sensei - Month 1. At this point, however, I don't want to come across as overly optimistic.
Yes, we have achieved a lot in the last few days and things are now progressing much faster than before, but the state of health of the said employee is still anything but good. Nevertheless, I am very optimistic about one point and that is when it comes to the fact that we will soon find our way back to our old strengths and that we will be able to publish big updates quickly and as usual for you.
Another positive news to address is the integration of all previous Ecchi Sensei releases into one large all-encompassing version. This happened with almost no error messages. (There were around 2000 merge conflicts, which were resolved independently thanks to our good preparatory work.)
When there is any news again, we will of course inform you about it immediately. But until then I can only tell you that we will continue to work hard to deliver a good final product as quickly as possible and that you will soon be able to immerse yourself in the world as Matsu Matsumoto again to meet your daily duties.
So long,
Blue
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