Care for a cup of Java?

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Ahoy!

First, a brief reminder that the deadline for applying for a position in My Little Investigations is December 31 at 11:59 PM PST. We’ll be making final decisions on positions after that time, so if you’re at all interested in applying (and we heartily do encourage you to do so), please make sure you’ve emailed your application recruitment@equestriandreamers.com by that time.

That aside, you might be wondering what we’re doing while we’re waiting for applications to come in! Well, I can assure you that one of the things we’re not doing is sitting on our thumbs. We’re hard at work getting everything ready for when the recruits come on board, and I’m finally ready to announce one of those items: My Little Investigations is being ported to Java! (Java using the 2D game library Slick, to be exact.) It had previously been written in C# using XNA, but after talking to a very helpful lady named dawnmew (who has since joined the team), I became convinced that this was definitely a good direction for the game and that it was something that should occur sooner rather than later, so it’s something that we’ve been working on during the month of December.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re on a Windows machine, it means that the status quo has been maintained – you were able to play the game before, and you’ll still be able to play it now as well. If you’re on a Mac or Linux machine, then you’re in luck, as this means that you’ll be able to play My Little Investigations after all! I had previously said that this wouldn’t be possible since the game was coded in XNA, but this port will change that, and thanks in large part to the help I’ve received from dawnmew to that end, it’s coming along very nicely. We’re just about back up at this point to the level of functionality that we had when the game was coded in XNA.

Exciting stuff, a day late for Christmas, but still in time for the holiday season. 😉 Thanks to everypony for their support thus far!

Recruitment update and YouTube channel

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Hello, all!

Couple of things to cover today. First up is an update on the recruitment for My Little Investigations. We’ve gotten a great turnout so far, so thanks so much to everyone who’s already sent in an application! That said, however, one area in particular that could really use more applications is the area of visual art – we’ve only got one application thus far for each of the dialog character artist, field character artist, and background & prop artist positions, and no applications for the cutscene artist position. I know that there’s a ton of artistic talent out there, having waded through countless amazing works of art in Equestria Daily’s Drawfriends, so I’d just like to make sure people understand that animation experience is not a requirement for any of the positions. If you have any artistic talent, I’d heartily encourage you to apply – you have nothing to lose at all! The more applications we get, the better a team we can put together, so don’t be shy!

We also definitely could use some more female voice actor applications, as well – we’ve got a number of great applications for the female roles already, but as above, the final result will be that much better the more people there are who apply.

And if you have any friends whom you know might be interested, definitely let them know, too!

Second, Equestrian Dreamers now has its own YouTube channel! You can find that right here. New videos regarding My Little Investigations will all get posted there, so if you want My Little Investigation updates without having to see my personal pony videos that are posted to my personal YouTube channel, this is for you! (I’ll still post new My Little Investigations videos to my YouTube channel as well, though, for those who are fine with the status quo.)

That’s all for now!

Welcome!

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Welcome, one and all, to the grand opening of the new website for My Little Investigations, and for the newly christened development group for the game, Equestrian Dreamers! The game was starting to outgrow its developer blog, so we figured that giving it its own website was the obvious next step.

We don’t just have a website and a new name, though – we’re also finally recruiting people who want to work on the project! It’s always better to show rather than tell, though, so head on over to the recruitment section of our website for more information, if you’re interested. We’re looking for visual artists, composers, and voice actors at the moment. If any of that sounds up your alley, have a look! The current recruitment call will accept applications until the end of December, at which point final decisions will be made.

We’ll have plenty more information on MLI to come in the weeks ahead, so we hope you’re as excited as we are for the future of the project!

Engine Demo – Confrontations

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Bada bing, bada boom, there’s a video in the room!

…Or so Zecora might say, if she were here, and in a spunky mood.

Here you go:

This is the last engine demo video, so just having this up marks quite a milestone!  We’ll have more information later regarding the next step for My Little Investigations, but for now, enjoy!

And then there were two

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So, a bit of an update for the folks following this project.  In a previous post, I mentioned that there were three gameplay elements still to be implemented that were unique to My Little Investigations.  The second of those three has been in progress, but we now see why I wanted to managed expectations: after wrangling both with the logistics and with the core motivation for this gameplay feature, and after having discussed the matter with ZeusAssassin, I’ve decided that the best course of action is just to can it.  The reason for this is just that it was difficult to see how it could be structured in an organized yet efficient manner, and that I fundamentally felt that it wasn’t going to materially improve the gameplay experience for the player.

I’m a bit disappointed, since at its initial inception this feature seemed like an improvement, but the more I implemented it, the more I got the sense for why Ace Attorney never bothered with it.  Don’t worry, though – I can assure you that the project definitely is better off and more streamlined without it, and that the remaining element still to be implemented is most certainly rock-solid in my mind and will definitely make the final cut.  So we’ll still have both that and the partner system to give this game its own personal flair.

More details after the break for those interested.

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Engine Demo – Partners

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As the Joker might say, “And here… we… go.”

The next engine demo is up, this time demonstrating – drumroll please – partners!  This is something that people have been asking about for quite some time, so I’m happy to finally be able to talk about it.  Hopefully people like it.  It would suck if people didn’t. 😛

Anyway, without further ado, I’ll let the video do the rest of the talking:

Still in progress

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So!

I haven’t been posting here for a while.  This was for a variety of reasons, and I first want to assure people that one of those reasons is most assuredly not that I’m getting bored or tired of this project.  I was away for a weekend, then I had company over for a week, and I obviously wouldn’t have been a very good host to work on a project while they were here, and then I had some long days at work – I’m a software engineer, so naturally a long day of programming at work will sometimes make me not want to do more programming when I come home.  And then I had more company over last weekend too.

That said, all of that has now passed, and the project is now well underway again.  Which brings me to another reason why I haven’t made any posts yet like usual: the territory we’re now getting into for this game.  The gameplay aspects of this game that are borrowed from Ace Attorney Investigations (or other sources) are now all implemented.  Boom.  Done.  But that doesn’t mean that the gameplay itself is completely implemented, on account of the fact that we also have some brand new gameplay elements specifically designed for this game (three, to be exact) that ZeusAssassin and I have been cooking up that have still yet to be implemented.

Why is this a reason why no posts have been made?  Well, the reason there is basically just expectation control – since the designs of these gameplay features are still potentially in flux, I don’t want to post screenshots or something similar and then find out that I’ll need to change them.  Promising something that you don’t deliver is way worse than not promising something.  So I’ve been holding these closer to the chest than previous gameplay features I’ve been implementing.

That said, however, one of those three gameplay features is well underway now, and hopefully should be ready in a few days’ time.  Watch this space!

Engine demo – Locations

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IT’S FINALLY HERE!

This video took way longer than I had expected it would take, but it’s finally ready to be shown.  This time, we’re looking at locations, and all the things associated with them.  A full explanation may be found in the video, so I’ll just post it:

For those curious, a full explanation of the items found in this video appears after the break.

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Behind the Scenes – Structure and Cutscenes

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Huh boy.  Location implementation is taking much longer than I was expecting it to – every time I implement something I realize I need to implement something else too before I’ll be satisfied enough to record another demo video.  Already I’ve got locations themselves implemented along with transitions between them, initiation of conversations with characters in locations, cutscenes, and environment examination, but I’ve still got more to do.  On the plus side, this is going to be a pretty huge update when it finally goes live.  Hopefully you folks can wait a little while longer.

While we wait, though, since the last blog entry was pretty well-received, I thought I’d write another one, this time dealing with game structure and cutscenes.  …But first, more screenshots!  Just for fun.

Much more after the break!

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Behind the Scenes – Storage/Loading

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There are quite a few things in the underlying infrastructure of video games that are caught in a bit of an unfortunate predicament: the only time someone actually even notices them is when they were designed poorly. The field of content storage and loading in video games is definitely one of those areas. So, while you wait for me to finish implementing locations in the game (it’s coming along, I promise), I thought I’d talk a little bit about it for your interest’s sake.

Discussion after the break, for those who are interested.

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