Take as long as you need to finish! I ended up here precisely because of ManlyBadassHero, and honestly I'm against launching the game by chapter which could cause the problem mentioned in the other post. Take Your Boyfriend as an example, he got into trouble with the character's voice actor and delayed everything and to this day the game isn't complete. Work at your pace and always take care of yourself.
Yeaaah, I really wanna avoid that pitfall ever happening again if possible, haha. I know sometimes it’s unavoidable, and in this case it kind of was initially because this is the only project I’ve ever made where I didn’t actually pick the voice actors myself! That was because it was a big rush to make the original self-contained story within a 1-month jam timeframe though, and my friend was doing me a massive favour at the time by casting and directing the VAs he found.
At the time, I knew I wanted to massively expand on the project, but I was also very aware of the fact that wouldn’t be a possibility for probably years since I wouldn’t be able to afford voice acting outside of the jam for all the characters I eventually hoped to add. So I sort of thought to myself, right, let’s just focus on getting this segment done for the jam, and the rest is a challenge for the future x3 I didn’t really even think anyone would play the game, haha. So I kinda figured I had forever to gradually raise funds and work on the project over years.
Manly somehow found the jam verison of the game a loooong time after it was originally released, and as soon as the video went out, it was like my page just exploded xD I was extremely confused because all I could see were massive spikes in my itch analytics and I had no idea why until someone told me x3 So yeah, I couldn’t really believe it at first and I was super hyped about it, but then it kinda hit me that suddenly people were seeing my rough little self-contained jam game and I panicked because it didn’t represent what I wanted to do with the project as a whole.
That’s why I tried to make the new demo as quickly as I could, in the hope that anyone checking out the project cos of Manly might realise that the version Manly played was a very basic, bite-sized bit of what I hoped would be a much larger project. I don’t think the new demo does a great job of showing the full extent of what I hope to do with the game, but it’s better than the original jam version at least I guess.
I didn’t know that about the Your Boyfriend creator :o I remember seeing posts and stuff about a demo for the game, but I didn’t really follow it closely because it wasn’t my cup of tea. That’s a shame it got stuck in development hell like that though >.<
But yeah, I definitely don’t wanna run into any problems with VA again because it would be a huge waste of time and money to get only parts of the story recorded only to find the VAs can’t continue with the rest in the future :(
With Castoria's VA for example, she’s not got any links and is credited with a false name because my voice director friend who cast her said she wasn’t comfortable with the steamier lines and stuff, which is totally fair enough, but had I been in charge of casting, I would never have cast someone who wasn’t comfortable with the content in the first place >.< And then yeah, the voice director and I have grown apart as time has passed and we don’t even really speak now, which is a shame. I guess money is partly why, which makes it suck even more :( But I'm glad that he's at least been able to move on and up with his career and get paid properly to do stuff rather than just helping out people like me who can't afford to pay a proper wage x3
As much as it sucks to have to recast, at least it’s only a small portion of the content I guess! And getting all of the writing finished first means whoever is cast in the future should be able to complete the entire route script :3
I always wonder if things might have worked out differently if Manly happened to find and play the game closer to when it was initially released for the jam! I think it was partly because the gap between the original release and the attention it later got possibly made things more complicated, haha. But regardless, the game will eventually be finished so I suppose it doesn’t matter :D
If I had a different brain and found it easier to switch between stuff, I’d probably have been able to progress faster with DD by now x3 but because I had it in my head that I was gonna be doing X, Y, and Z first, it’s like when I tried to deviate from that, it didn’t really work because every time I tried to work on DD, I had all the other stuff in the back of my mind haunting me x3 I think now that I’ve finally decided on a proper schedule and to get CiQ finished and released as I’d always intended before getting to DD, I should hopefully be able to plan things better. Cos last year, I think part of why I did so many jams was because I was trying to block out thinking about DD and CiQ because while I wanted to work on DD, I knew I wouldn’t be able to effectively with CiQ still unfinished, but rather than just get to working on CiQ, I tried to run away from it >.< I feel like I’ve finally got things under control a bit better now!
Thank you for your kind words and support :3 Hope you've been able to have a lovely weekend!
You may want to consider using AI voices for these massive projects. You already have significant issues affording lengthy voice acting for large scripts and you can always get regular human voice acting for the smaller projects later on.
When major companies refuse to hire or otherwise fire existing workers to replace them with AI for profit, then people get angry. However, I don't feel anyone would reasonably be upset with you if you went this route. I can direct you to some (free) sources as well if you want to experiment with it.
I'm aware of AI voice stuff since I wanted to have a 'narration' for audio-only videos on a potential content creation channel on Odysee. Maybe a donated still image or two from artists on my server ;)
It’s a funny coincidence you should say that because I did recently have an experience with AI voicing in the project I ended up randomly making for Winter VN Jam (despite telling myself no more jams for 2023 after Spooktober x3 - but it was a self-soothing project that I used as a way to work through my feelings after I got my ASD diagnosis, so I kinda made an exception, haha) and I had some pretty mixed feelings on using it!
I won’t ramble about it here cos I did make a pretty lengthy post on it already so I’d just be repeating myself >.< But basically, I also wanted to include narration in the project + since it wasn’t a planned project and I was so short on time, I had a bit of an emergency with some of the VA.
The project features 2 proper human voice actors that I cast, and then everything else was a mixture of me + AI because I recorded all the remaining lines myself, then used AI speech-to-speech to dub over myself with AI voices x3
Tbh it’s quite scary how well it worked, but I do think it wasL
A - Extremely boring compared to working with actual people >.<
+
B - Only just about acceptable for characters that don’t have a particularly big emotional range. I definitely think the AI would struggle to do a decent job with more emotive characters. (It also struggled to accurately replicate my efforts & other general sounds, especially laughter!)
VA for DD isn’t THAT much of an issue now I know how I’m handling the project going forward :3 It’s the only one of my projects that has had a significant amount of funding, and pretty much 100% of that is going towards VA, so I should be able to afford everything I need eventually. It will just mean abandoning my old voice director friend’s plan of paying each VA $500 per script section.
I know he said that’s like the bare minimum acceptable/non-insulting amount to offer, but I think he was only saying that in terms of the voice actors he knew/represented. As nice as it would be to be able to pay people fairly for their work, when it comes to situations like mine, it’s not always possible to do that >.< It doesn’t mean I won’t pay people, it just means I need to look for people who are okay with doing X amount of work for X amount of money.
I know that would probably make him mad because I guess he would think I should be in a position to afford to pay a whole cast that $500 per short script, but the reality is, I’m just not, and I probably never will be. But I do have a significant amount of funding for the project thanks to everyone’s generous support, so I should be able to at least make the most of it :3
I’m pretty confident that I will be able to find a stellar cast and pay them for their work, it’s just not going to be like union-level pay >.< But I will be more careful in the future and when making casting decisions myself, will be sure to only cast people once everything I need for their character is fully written.
The main thing that’s actually prevented progress with DD more than anything else is having my CiQ project hanging over me x3
Now that I’ve finally put my foot down with myself and faced up to that fact, I know I’ll be able to work through things better in the future :3 Because CiQ has haunted me for far too long and I’m never gonna get anywhere with DD until CiQ is finished and released and I don’t have to think about it anymore, haha. I was just too scared in the past to come out and say that because I was terrified of potentially disappointing anyone who was waiting patiently for DD to be finished (especially considering CiQ is a project that I imagine most people following me aren’t even really aware of. The ancient demo certainly wasn’t very popular, but it was from waaaay back in the days when I was still using Tyranobuilder & the 2nd project I ever started after finishing my very first!)
It might not be the logical course of action for most people, but my brain works in weird ways, and it says that since I finished all the writing for CiQ all the way back in September 2021 or something like that (and started CiQ as a project long before I started DD), it makes more sense to actually get CiQ made before focusing on DD since DD’s writing has barely even been started. So that's what I'll do, and DD will become a priority once CiQ is all done :3