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Update: Why the upcoming game isn't finished yet
🕑 Added 2020-12-09 11:33:51 +0000 UTCHey guys, this year is slowly coming to an end and I want to quickly let you know why the upcoming pony game isn't finished yet. While this may sound like bad news at first, I'm sure my plans will excite you. π
But first, the main reason the game isn't finished yet is that I'm simply still working on it. I'm still adding new pictures, dialogue and features to make this remake better than the original. Sadly, I don't have as much free time as I had planned, so everything is taking a bit longer than usual but I don't want to risk making the game worse by skipping important steps.
Apart from that, there's another, more exciting reason for the delay:
From the beginning of Pony Coinflip's production, I've been keeping an eye on 15.ai. If you don't know what that is, 15.ai is an amazing text-to-speech software for popular ficitional characters, particularly from My Little Pony. The software uses artificial intelligence from MIT and it's by far the best TTS I know. I first learned about this project in March of this year when one of my patrons, Remotely Chaotic, posted a link to it on our community Discord server.
Attached to this post, you can find two examples which I generated back in March. Sadly, since the whole project is created by one person, the website is regularly down for maintanance and updates, often for multiple months. When I first started working on the Pony Coinflip remake, 15.ai wasn't available and it still isn't today. I sent its creator "fifteen" an email but didn't receive a reply, so I accepted that I won't be able to use it for this game.
A couple days ago, I checked the website again and read this tweet by fifteen: "It's almost ready to go β just need to wrap everything up neatly in a web-friendly format." In general, they have been posting almost daily since then, which gives me hope that 15.ai will be online again very soon.
If that is the case, I definetly want to use it for the Pony Coinflip game. But since I don't know if it'll be available next week or next month, I can't promise anything. I don't want to wait much longer with the release of this game, so I might settle on some compromise like posting the early access without the voice acting and then the full release with it.
Of course, I'm also prepared to publish the game without the voice acting if 15.ai isn't usable soon. And to be honest, even if it is available, I don't know if I'll be able to implement it into the game. We'll just have to wait and see what the near future holds. π
Thanks for your patience and support! Enjoy the holidays! π
Comments
Puck
I for one am amazed by that Fluttershy voice. I hope you can make it work. But even if not, your work is pretty darn awesome without it.
