There's some news, mostly good, but it's mostly been chugging away at renders. Have had a busy few weeks at work, but such is the case for a full time job and a hobby project. We also have a website in working order now, with (more or less) live tracking of progress. Which can be viewed here:
https://missftn.com/move-the-chains-play-sheets/
A little side warning on the site - it hasn't been optimized for mobile at all yet. It's still basically a broken mess. So, for those that can't see it, here's a screenshot:
There's also some movement in regard to translations. Maybe not in the way I wanted, but movement nonetheless. But more on that below.
As you can see by the screenshot, we're right around 1,300 renders. Which, ideally, puts us over the halfway mark. This is a very LI-centric update in getting to know the background of some of the LIs, specifically some of the ones that haven't gotten a ton of focus yet. So, if you aren't into a fair chunk of talking, then it might be a CTRL-heavy update for you.
Like I've mentioned previously, Season 1 has always been a world-building and character development focus portion of the AVN. The pace of everything is going to pick up in Season 2. From the story to the lewds. It's always been about building the antagonists and giving the main characters a foundation to create a layer of humanity in them. Whether or not that struck with many players is hard to gauge, though. Hopefully it does for some, at least.
I know a lot people want the lewds right away, but I hope building relationships can create more of a connection to characters in that way. Rather than going the way of another game that has a similar color scheme - or the many like it. Yeah, it's a harem game. But I want it to be more than just that at the same time. Anyways, pompous devs thoughts aside, moving on. . .
Speaking of lewds and animations, not much has changed on that front. As I mentioned above, this probably going to be one of the more lacking updates in regard to lewds. Just to be 100% transparent. There'll be animations and such, but some might find the number of lewd scenes lacking.
The game scenes will likely take place in Blender. This will stretch out development time a bit for Episode 5, but I think the quality of the previously mentioned stadium addon (See Play Sheet #13 here.) is worth it.
On the topic of Blender stuff. if you've seen posts on Twitter and Reddit, there's been some movement on the WWJK rework, titled Lovesong. The reason I haven't posted here is I'm not looking to spam supporters with every little detail. Once all the models are released, there'll be a longer post here with some exclusive bits of info. Possibly even an early look at the teaser.
For those that haven't followed/coming across it for the first time: Lovesong is a total rework of my first project, We Were Just Kids. This is a complete and total background project. That I work on in free time, often when I'm done with MTC for the day. It won't be getting in the way of MTC at all. You can find a bit more information here and here.
I'm trying to sprinkle in some writing in my free time, typically at lunch. But hard to get a lot done in 30-40 minutes.
I do have a main proofreader in the works, however I can always use more. I'll probably be doing a wider scale reach out as release gets closer. This would hopefully be the same people consistently.
That about covers it for the general updates. I think.
Starting with the aforementioned Translations. I've been looking for a bit, and just can't seem to find a reasonably priced Chinese Translator. The one I did find was pretty backed up. I've been told by a couple other devs that Google's Gemini Pro AI has put out some very good results. I figure between the Community correction and possibly hiring a proofreader to go said language would be enough to get a good enough translation out there. Most devs aren't willing to share their translators. It's not perfect, but it'll be better than nothing at all.
Simplified Chinese will be the first, and followed by French. We'll go from there once both of those are done.
Between the length of the game and the move to Blender for said scene, I do expect a slightly longer development time in Episode 5. To mitigate this, I'm think I'll split Episode 5 into Part 1 and Part 2 at roughly a 1000 renders each. So, instead of waiting a year for the entire update. Part of it will be out sooner and the rest of the update will happen after. Not a final choice, but something I've been thinking about. The community has my ear on this one.
I'm trying to trim a bit of fat for Episode 5 to be the final one for Season 1 (putting it at roughly 9k-10k renders total), but it's possible that there may end up being a short addition to Season 1 to close up some storylines and segue into new ones/build on existing ones for Season 2.
Episode 5 will probably have some minor UI tweaks like adding another toggle menu button to the preferences screen. But nothing major.
That's about it for this play sheet, though. Not a ton of new information, but felt there was enough to put out there. Here's some preview images right from the press. As is usual, ignore noise and such as none of these have any postwork.