SWORD OF SYMPHONY - Dev Summary - April 2023

Hi again guys!

Hope you're all well and content with yourselves :)

Overall, April was fairly productive, despite me having to do a lot of logistical work for the game's development - particularly the preparation prior to hiring the game's first voice actors and other related legal stuff; which did slow down the pace of development a little more than I would've preferred this month. Nonetheless, it's a good thing that most of that aforementioned logistical work won't have to be repeated, hence making much of the game's near-future development much smoother.

Hiring the first voice actors...

The creative decision to have Sword Of Symphony use voice acting wasn't always part of my plan; I initially wasn't going to have the game use speech at all and instead use music as the sole storytelling device. However, as I was writing the game's full story back in Summer 2021, that idea came into conflict with another *better* idea regarding the role music plays in the game's world. Though instead of scrapping the idea, I actually ended up deciding to modify it; hence, I do still plan to use music as a storytelling device in the game, but in other ways, which you'll eventually see soon.

Nonetheless, after that point, I knew I would eventually hire voice actors for the game - which I finally started doing for the first few character roles for Sword Of Symphony on the 17th April. Even though this has now been the 9th time I've hosted auditions for my projects (if you count my 'Purpose' project), I was still pleasantly surprised by the large number of audition submissions I received and enjoyed hearing all the different vocal interpretations of the character/s I put out auditions for. With that being said, I'd once again like to use this opportunity to thank every voice actor who auditioned (if you're reading this) for taking an interest in the project! You all possess great artistry!

I've already begun animating using the recordings from the voice actor/s I've selected and it'll never cease to satisfy me hearing the characters I've designed, modelled and animated gain the ability to speak.

(If you're a mid tier patron or above, you can hear snippets of this in the behind-the-scenes channel of my community discord with the animation I'm doing for it).

Another *new* character added...

I've modelled, designed and animated another new character for Sword Of Symphony!

All I can reveal at the moment is that his design is inspired by a very exceptional human-being I had the pleasure of acquainting myself with and I've had ideas of making a character based on his characteristics & attributes ever since. So far, he's down to voice the character, which I'm very excited about!

Almost finished first cutscene's 1st part...

Even though the logistics I mentioned slowed things down a bit last month, I'm still glad I managed to *almost* reach my goal to finish the first part of the first cutscene (there are 3 parts), which lets me know that under normal circumstances, I would've achieved the goal easily with no problems, which also gives me confidence that now much of that is over, all my monthly goals in the future will get reached as planned.

For obvious spoiler reasons, I cannot discuss what is in the first part of the cutscene, but I can say that I'm very much looking forward to animating the second part of it, as that contains the "musically-creative" part I mentioned in March's dev summary. As of now, with the addition of the new voice recordings, the first cutscene is coming along very nicely!

(You can see progress updates on this in the behind-the-scenes channel of my community discord as a mid tier patron or above).

Goals for May 2023 & Conclusion...

I WILL finish the first part of this cutscene this month - no ifs, no buts, I've said it here first, you guys are my witnesses. "May" means it "may" absolutely happen. I'm going to also attempt to get a very large portion of the second part done too, so I can make up for the lost time doing the logistics, but if I can at least get up to the middle of the 2nd part by the middle of May, I'll be a very happy solo-dev.

Thank you everyone for embarking on this journey with me. This month has reminded me of a sentence I say to myself sometimes - "Don't find excuses to quit, find excuses to stay on track."

The game is afoot lads!

Until we meet again in the next update! :)

- Stephen