News 10.05.2024
Greetings, wizards and witches!
One more development cycle is finished which means it’s time to have a look at the current status of the development, including the recent work and the plans for the near future. Let’s go!
But first, the art-preview (available in the following news post). This time it’s a preview of one of the scenes with miniatures in the upcoming side quest in 0.11B featuring the new girl, Hannah Abbot.
Next, let’s quickly overview the recent happenings in the Innocent Witches development.
To begin with, we’ve released the update for the latest versions of the game (0.10.7-beta-fix1 and 0.11-alpha-fix1) that focuses on the bugs reported by the players, plus a bunch of quality-of-life improvements and various fixes. As a bonus, the saves from the original release (0.10.7-beta and 0.11-alpha) work in this update. If you haven’t yet you can check the update in detail here -
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The second major part of the work went into a more organizational aspect of the development. Prior to the latest release we’ve been planning to dedicate some time for two major tasks.
First, clean up the trello board with the tasks for the artists. In order to manage the tasks (not only for the artists) and make the work overall more enjoyable and efficient we’re using the kanban board. However, as it often happens, without proper maintenance the board gets filled with tasks that after some time become less and less relevant. Plus, due to limited resources, some tasks have to have higher priority over the others, which makes them again pile up in the backlog. The usual practice that helps prevent such things from happening is to review the backlog semi-regularly and get rid of the tasks that are not relevant anymore to keep the whole board clean and manageable. In our case, due to lack of time and constant work with other tasks we couldn’t do that. However, we’ve decided to do it no matter what after wrapping up the release as it just had to be done. As a result, we now have a reorganized and much more clean board with as minimal clutter as possible without compromising the efficiency.
We’ve looked at every card on our previous kanban board and carefully reviewed its relevance. The main criteria for keeping the card was its potential for the game based on the time spent on implementing it. For example, we had a card with the task of adding different seasons of the year to the game. While such stuff is very cool to have, it requires a tremendous amount of art time to implement. Therefore, this card has been left out for now.
Overall, this procedure will help reduce the strain on the artists, as well as help to keep things clean and relevant without bloat and dead cards.
The second task is to review the existing content and create an overview for it. This is a bigger task that is not yet finished which consists of going through all the existing art assets and putting them into a sort of a catalog. During the years of the development we’ve amassed a considerable amount of art, starting from smaller pieces like icons and miniatures, all the way to the clothing pieces for characters and fullscreen scenes. However, the art was stored in different places and it was not easy to get a hold of everything that we have at the moment, which in turn hindered the ability to reintegrate it more easily.
To fix this it was decided to dedicate some time and collect all the existing art, and then put it into one place. The main goal here is to allow the people working on new events to have a much easier overview over the existing art, and effectively integrate this unused art into their ideas, or to use this art as an inspiration for new events.
As a result, we’ll have three catalogs with the art assets:
- The art that is currently a part of the events from the old plot. This includes the existing quests and all the art that is used in them.
- The art that is ready for integration but which is not yet used in any event. This is mostly regarding the art that was created for events that didn’t make it into the game, and other various assets.
- The art that exists in the PSDs and game files, but is not used. This part is most time consuming, as there are multiple art pieces that are only present inside the files, or as game files. The overview for these is most essential, as it’s the hardest part to reach for people who do not directly work with the game code and files.
The work on this task continues, with the two of three catalogs ready at this moment.
Now let’s look at the status for 0.11B and 0.12A. While working on the tasks described above, the other part of the team is developing the main content for 0.11B and 0.12A.
- The texts for the side quest are finished and are getting translated/edited. The art for this quest is currently being drawn, with a couple of tasks already finished.
- The Potions Classroom event is also being actively worked on. At this point we’re wrapping up the interface part for the whole event and coming close for implementation in the code, and creating the events with the students. Here’s a work-in-progress screenshot for the current version of the interface for the event:
Since the event will be introduced in several parts, the first part will be aimed at establishing the ground for the upcoming events. During this stage we’ll add the simplified version of the final interface so that it’s less overwhelming with details, and during the next part this interface will be gradually expanded representing the natural progression of the event itself.
- Apart from that once the cataloging for the unused art is finished the work will start on adding the Live2D animations that are ready for insertion. First, we’ll insert the stuff in… khm, for Minerva. Then, the scene with the Elf-maid in the latest release. Finally, there will be a minor update of the short scene with the mysterious stranger at the lake.
Once that is done we’ll share the details about what’s coming next. The work continues and we’re now steadily moving toward the 0.11B release this summer.
Finally, let’s vote! After the recent release we’ve traditionally held a round of voting regarding the content of the update to get an overall feeling of our players regarding the update. This time we want to ask you, our dear supporters, directly regarding the 0.11A update in order to see and evaluate the feedback from the backers who support the development. Please let us know your opinion about the most recent addition to the Innocent Witches story that was introduced in 0.11A (if you’ve already played it of course). Did you like the direction the story is taking? How do you feel regarding the pacing in this chapter? How about the content itself, did it feel too restrictive, or was it the other way around? Please vote or leave a comment below, your feedback regarding this will be directly sent to the scenario team so that they can evaluate their plans for the future story.
- The story was interesting and I liked how the events played out. Now I want more!
- The new chapter was OK. The events were a bit too dragged out, but overall it was enjoyable enough.
- I didn’t like the new chapter. The events were spread out between the prefects which made it worse.
- I haven’t yet played 0.11A.
- I don’t care.
- I want to see the results.
That’ll be all for today, folks! We greatly appreciate you staying around and continuing to support the development by donating and leaving feedback. Thank you!
We’ll meet again soon with more news and previews. Until then, stay safe and have fun!
Peace✌
Your,
Sad crabs.