Hey, everyone! Hope you've been having a good start to the new year!

I was going to wait a little longer to post a blog, but I figure it's been long enough and I ought to give an update on how things are going. I took a break for a week or two around the holidays just to relax and try to knock some stuff off of my backlog. But now we're more or less back into the swing of things, and along with that, editing of chapter one is very nearly done. I still have to edit the daily life of chapter two after that's done, but that will be far less intensive than editing chapter one has been.

For one thing, chapter two obviously isn't nearly as long as the entirety of the prologue and chapter one combined. But beyond that, I've had to mess around with a bunch of stuff for chapter one's trial. I can't recall if I mentioned in the past, but I had a beta tester mention that I should change the ordering of choices you're presented with when a statement is given in a trial (originally the objection choice was first, which wouldn't be good if your finger slipped or something). So I had to change that; along with a bunch of other little things like that. Editing a daily life segment is far easier since it's basically just... making sure the text is grammatically correct and so forth.

So now we're coming up to the hard part. Which is going to be getting back into making new content for the game. I'm sure it's going to feel weird at first, since it's been a while for me. But hopefully I'll be able to get a feel for it again pretty quickly (I did the last time development went on hiatus and I came back to write the daily life of chapter two). But more than that I'm worried about the trial of chapter two. There's one major twist that happens in the trial, but even after reading my notes I can't remember how the heck it was supposed to play out. So I've got to re-figure out how the second trial goes down. I'll probably just print out my notes and think it through while I'm at work. I was able to figure it out before, so I can (hopefully) figure it out again. I'll be figuring that out while I edit chapter two so I have it fresh in mind when I actually go to write the rest of the chapter.

There are some other little things I've been doing here and there in the meantime. None that I can mention outright except for (brace yourself) more audio editing. I listen to a lot of the songs I use in Danganronpa Team while I'm at work (because, hey, I like the music), and I realized that some songs cut off abruptly. Or there was a non-insignificant amount of silence at the beginning/ends of the songs. Or they just didn't fade out/loop in a way I was satisfied with. So I went back through everything and edited it all. All the music is now good to go and final and if I have to edit any of it again I am going to scream. But I guess that's good news. All the audio is more or less finalized. I might add some sound effects and such here and there as the need arises, but other than that it's done.

Ah, I suppose I ought to mention that two or three of the beta testers I had for Danganronpa Team dropped out (or I kicked out due to being unable to contact them in any capacity for a huge stretch of time). But they've been replaced. And I suppose it's good timing. What with the Prologue and Chapter One in particular receiving such heavy editing/revision, I'm going to hand the edited version of those chapters over to them so that they can play through and make sure everything's good to go. After that, the prologue and chapter one will be more or less finalized. There's still one final editing pass after the whole game is finished that will touch on the prologue and chapter one again, but any changes that will be made then will likely be very minor.

That's all I've got to share for now. Next time, I'll give an update on how chapter two is coming along and how things went with the prologue and chapter one's new beta.

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As an addendum to this progress report I want to mention a few things I was considering over the past month or so that are kind of up in the air and may or may not happen.

First of all: I know Danganronpa Team is coming along very slowly. Far more slowly than I would like, but there's no sense in working on the game 24/7 and burning myself out. After all, I unfortunately have a life to attend to and other things I want to do besides. I know the wait must feel rather long. It certainly does for me. So I thought of perhaps making a demo of some sort for the game.

The problem with that is I'd rather not release a significant portion of the actual game (like chapter one). So instead I could of course go the official Danganronpa route. Whip up a little mock trial and such exclusively for a demo. But I'm not comfortable with that, either, as it would detract a significant amount of time I could be spending working on the game itself.

So for the moment, I'm not seriously considering putting out a demo. But perhaps when the game is closer to being released and it's more a matter of me waiting on my beta testers I can whip a little something up. We'll see how it goes, though.

Secondly: I rather enjoy going around and looking at other Danganronpa fan games that are in the works. One thing that struck me about many of them is that a number of them have a full cast of voice actors tied to the projects before the projects even have anything to really show off. I don't really agree with that approach. I think the game should be basically done before you reach out to potential voice actors, as you're getting a little ahead of yourself otherwise. And depending on how long development takes (if the game is ever finished at all) any number of voice actors could drop out, forcing you to start from scratch. But I really have to admire the enthusiasm of the Danganronpa fandom. So of course, I got to thinking "what if Danganronpa Team has voice actors".

There are some problems with that. First of all, these are established characters with established voices. So people may prefer not to have to listen to some random people across the internet voicing them. Along with that, voice acting would severely bloat the game's file size. And of course, recording so many lines and putting them into the game would significantly increase development time.

So, I came up with an idea. Whether or not it goes anywhere is up in the air, but we'll see how things pan out.

My idea is to seriously consider adding voice acting after and only after the game is finished and released. That eliminates all of the problems above. Development time isn't hampered by it. And those who don't give a crap about voice acting could just get the original release at a much more modest file size. Along with that, I'd rather wait and see if people actually like the game before I even consider voice acting. If everyone ends up hating it, well... no real reason to even consider adding in voice acting then, is there? But if people seem to like it, it might be something worth looking into. And of course, if I did end up make a version with voice acting, you would be able to turn the voice acting on or off at any time (in case you think you might like it but end up disliking it).

So those are just two things I've been mulling over recently. Whether or not either of them come to pass is very much so up in the air, but we'll just play it by ear. For now, I'd rather focus on getting the game itself done. But if they do come to pass, hopefully they'll just be cherries on top of an already enjoyable experience for those who are interested in them.

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That's all I've got to say this time 'round. See you all in February!