Final Tweaks

Hello

I’ve been putting lots of hours into development the past few days trying to get this dastardly demo released. My coffee maker is getting lots of use for sure!

I have Taylor’s audio pretty much nailed down (with the glaring exception of the male voice). It sounds significantly better than the old stuff. I’ve been trying really hard to finalize the cast graphic and voice actor list but I find it to be a difficult task. As I improve one, it creates the need to improve the others that lag behind. Even if they were originally okay they now look bad by comparison so it creates an endless sliding scale. Part of me is screaming to just stop and cap it off, while another part of me just wants to keep going off into the void until I reach the realm of diminishing returns.

There is always so much to learn. That’s one of my favorite parts about being a game developer. It’s really interesting and even if you get good at some aspects there are always a dozen more to improve upon and by the time you do technology and the times have changed.

Right now I have to finish play testing the demo audio and I want to reshoot some of the earlier graphics that include outdated clothing. The last thing that annoys me about the demo is male Taylor’s voice. Fixing all three of these things is not that much work and the demo will be released as soon as that’s done.

To replace male Taylor’s voice I’ve went through hundreds of models but I couldn’t find anything exceptional. My initial solution was to do what many animated shows do: have a female voice actress do the voice for a male character. I did a lot of tests with this and the result was not great. At best it was kind of like an awkward Bart Simpson voice that sounded like a girl trying to imitate a man’s deep voice. At this point recasting it completely is probably the best choice. So I’m narrowing down a final few selections but pickings are fairly slim. I am having a similar situation with Evan’s voice.

The last thing that needs to be done for this stage is a massive fully reset play through where I test every single graphic, unlock, scene recall etc. I know for a fact there are bugs here that will need to be fixed. Little things like the scene automatically ending at the end of play, things like that. I will let patrons help with that polish phase during March.

I am trying to pick Taylor’s male voice tonight. I’ll let patrons vote if it is close. The renders I need I’ll do tomorrow. Demo coming ASAP. Thank you for your patience!