State of the Remaster

Right up front, I want to thank everybody who left votes and comments in the polls. I got a lot of great feedback, and remastering more than 20 hours of game is a lot of work, so it's nice having a bit of chatter to look back on. Those polls will remain open for posterity, so while the main polling process is complete, Patrons are welcome to go back and leave any additional thoughts (and votes) if you happen to have them.

I had originally wanted to have a test build ready to go out off the back of the April Fool's build like last year, but there was just too much work to get done. Had I cut corners and rushed through things I could've had the test build ready for today, but for both my sanity and the overall quality of the game, I felt it was better to slow down, take my time, and give it my best over just getting it done. A test build should still be ready for next Friday for VIPs, and I still plan to make it available for lower tiers as a special remaster launch countdown.

To give dates to everything, that means the remaster test build will release to VIPs on Friday, April 14. That test build, along with a log of fixes (so you know what's broken; things won't actually be fixed until full release) will go to Supporters on April 21st, and an updated log plus the test build will go out to the Gratitude tier on April 28th.

This does mean that the remaster's full release will likely be delayed to the first week in May (specifically, Friday, May 5th) for Patrons, which I'm not particularly jazzed about. But again, for both my sanity and for the betterment of the game, it feels like the best course of action. As for when the remaster will go public - at the same time the next build goes out to Patrons (roughly a month later), just like I've been doing.

That's the less fun news done. Since I don't have much tangible game content to share, I did want to take the time to share some features and changes. I'm pretty excited about a lot of these.

First is all the stuff that was available in Arrival's remaster - the Task List, the Estate Info screen, the updated Save screen, and all the extra engine features. 

The Task List is something I'm incredibly glad I have. Not only does it (finally!) let me put in a proper quest log, it allows me to check quest progress inside events. This means a bunch of things I used to need to rely on global switches or variables for in order check progress can now be done just by telling the game to look at your quest log. There haven't been many changes around this so far, but I do still use it in a few places to make the back-end work a little better than it used to. Going forward, it'll let me do all sorts of things, like have characters comment on which quests you've started or open and close certain options based on which objectives you've completed. I want Act 2 to be less linear and have multiple solutions for each section, up to and including leaving to do something else first, so this is amazing to be able to do.

The Estate Info screen, while it was a nightmare to create (each entry is custom-built, and there are more than 200 entries so far) does let me clean up the inventory a lot while still displaying information I couldn't show before due to a lack of space for it (while also keeping that information out of the way; it won't intrude on anyone's experience if you don't care about it). In addition to the fun flavor stuff, like being able to see a picture of the Maid in her entry, there's a ton of practical information there as well. You can see which equipment categories your Maids are willing to use, how much your shop Contracts give you each supply cycle (both in silcrow and supplies), and region maps to refer to if you forget where an Estate or village is.

The new Save Screen doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel, but it does let me display some additional visuals that I appreciate having. Each map group now has an image associated with it, and your current party will be displayed using their portraits rather than their sprites, along with a few other bits of information that weren't there before.

The extra engine features I've talked a lot about before, but just to call out those that people have mentioned in the past - increased game resolution, dynamic window size, native mouse and game pad support, native text skip, and better plugin support for any other features I want to add to the game.

Speaking of more plugins, there is still more I want to share - animations, more menu options, additional setting options, external linking, and a couple other QoL features I think you'll appreciate.

First, animations. These originally weren't present in the game for a few reasons - the software I was using didn't include a way to export video without jumping through several hoops, all of my poses were custom and would've been a nightmare to animate while jumping through those hoops, I plain and simple didn't have the skills or knowledge to make animations, and (most importantly) RPG Maker can't display video and text boxes at the same time. All of this has now been fixed - newer software versions, learned skills, and a plugin to support playing and looping video while showing text. If you're happy to hear this, thank my Patrons - they're the ones that voted for it.

For the additional menu and settings options, there are a couple common sense things that... apparently aren't so common. So in addition to Estate Info replacing the old Maid Info screen, I've also added a Load Game option (games couldn't be loaded without first returning to the title screen without this) to the main menu, and for the Options screen, Instant Text can be toggled on and off (it defaults to on), and keyboard controls and game pad controls can both be completely remapped (up to and including having multiple keys/buttons do the same thing).

External linking is something that only really matters to me, but it does make me much easier to find, given that my game has been uploaded in several places that I didn't put it. I'm hoping it'll matter more to you in the near future, as it also allows me to collaborate with other developers. All of the "empty" book cases scattered throughout the many libraries in the game are now able to contain "books" for other games, and if you find yourself interested in playing those games, I can create links that send you to them.

The QoL features are largely pretty subtle (like instant text and a few changes to how battles start - they're not really meant to be noticed), but one that I think will be most appreciated is the ability to hide the text box with the push of a button. And you can rebind that button to be whatever you want on both keyboard and game pad. Want to stop reading and just look at what's on the screen? Now you can.

Speaking of features, that's the last thing I want to share today - the overhauled in-game features.

Like Formation. I don't like having the greyed out option visible in the menu all the time, and while I haven't found a good plugin that's compatible with RPG Maker MZ, I have at least been able to hide the option when it's not available. It still works the same way it did in the VX Ace version otherwise.

I still need to give the Homing Stone a bit more attention than I have, but the new version of the engine supports more choices (6 instead of 4) which allows be to build out certain infrastructure - like fast travel - more than I was able to previously. This will be most noticeable with Teely, but in general, it'll be even easier to get around (for example, you can now go directly to the Deep Wilds instead of needing to walk through another section of the wilds first). This will matter more in Act 2, as repairing your own headstone becomes more viable and I'm able to unlock more features through the Homing Stone, but it's still something that makes my life easier and the game better.

I'll end on Emily's shop. Needing to build out all of the shop Contracts for Estate Info entries due to the way that plugin works gave me an opportunity to look at some of the decisions I made with the economy and my future plans for it. So I made two big changes: all shop Contracts now provide more items as you purchase more Contracts (this previously only applied to consumable item Contracts), and shop Contracts can now be sold. It was a lot more work to set up than I wanted it to be, and there doesn't seem to be a plugin that does exactly what I need it to that would support these changes, but it allows for a lot of freedom and flexibility that I wanted in the original version but couldn't manage due to some limitation or another. Now, if you want to get 30 Feather Dusters next cycle and 0 after that, you can. If you want to fill your inventory and try to micro-manage your supplies so that you're as close to 99 as possible without wasting items like a minigame, you can do that. If all you want to do is buy one of everything so you make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, you can do that - now with the added bonus of not needing to reload an old save if you accidentally buy more than one of the same Contract. The only thing stopping you is your available silcrow.

This is a huge post, but Maids & Masters has become a surprisingly huge game (at least in terms of content; I genuinely didn't intend to make it as long as it is), and the remaster is a huge amount of work. As much as I've covered here, there's still so much more that's changed or will be changing, like needing to upscale old assets to fit the new resolution (which is still ongoing), re-rendering and re-writing old scenes (also ongoing), reworking dialogue and events (some of which are pretty big changes), and so much more yet to come.

I can't wait to get the remastered version of Maids & Masters into your hands.