Care for a cup of Java?

Posted on December 26, 2011 by GabuEx

Ahoy!

First, a brief reminder that the deadline for applying for a position in My Little Investigations is December 31 at 11:59 PM PST. We’ll be making final decisions on positions after that time, so if you’re at all interested in applying (and we heartily do encourage you to do so), please make sure you’ve emailed your application recruitment@equestriandreamers.com by that time.

That aside, you might be wondering what we’re doing while we’re waiting for applications to come in! Well, I can assure you that one of the things we’re not doing is sitting on our thumbs. We’re hard at work getting everything ready for when the recruits come on board, and I’m finally ready to announce one of those items: My Little Investigations is being ported to Java! (Java using the 2D game library Slick, to be exact.) It had previously been written in C# using XNA, but after talking to a very helpful lady named dawnmew (who has since joined the team), I became convinced that this was definitely a good direction for the game and that it was something that should occur sooner rather than later, so it’s something that we’ve been working on during the month of December.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re on a Windows machine, it means that the status quo has been maintained – you were able to play the game before, and you’ll still be able to play it now as well. If you’re on a Mac or Linux machine, then you’re in luck, as this means that you’ll be able to play My Little Investigations after all! I had previously said that this wouldn’t be possible since the game was coded in XNA, but this port will change that, and thanks in large part to the help I’ve received from dawnmew to that end, it’s coming along very nicely. We’re just about back up at this point to the level of functionality that we had when the game was coded in XNA.

Exciting stuff, a day late for Christmas, but still in time for the holiday season. 😉 Thanks to everypony for their support thus far!

Recruitment update and YouTube channel

Posted on December 12, 2011 by GabuEx

Hello, all!

Couple of things to cover today. First up is an update on the recruitment for My Little Investigations. We’ve gotten a great turnout so far, so thanks so much to everyone who’s already sent in an application! That said, however, one area in particular that could really use more applications is the area of visual art – we’ve only got one application thus far for each of the dialog character artist, field character artist, and background & prop artist positions, and no applications for the cutscene artist position. I know that there’s a ton of artistic talent out there, having waded through countless amazing works of art in Equestria Daily’s Drawfriends, so I’d just like to make sure people understand that animation experience is not a requirement for any of the positions. If you have any artistic talent, I’d heartily encourage you to apply – you have nothing to lose at all! The more applications we get, the better a team we can put together, so don’t be shy!

We also definitely could use some more female voice actor applications, as well – we’ve got a number of great applications for the female roles already, but as above, the final result will be that much better the more people there are who apply.

And if you have any friends whom you know might be interested, definitely let them know, too!

Second, Equestrian Dreamers now has its own YouTube channel! You can find that right here. New videos regarding My Little Investigations will all get posted there, so if you want My Little Investigation updates without having to see my personal pony videos that are posted to my personal YouTube channel, this is for you! (I’ll still post new My Little Investigations videos to my YouTube channel as well, though, for those who are fine with the status quo.)

That’s all for now!

Welcome!

Posted on December 3, 2011 by GabuEx

Welcome, one and all, to the grand opening of the new website for My Little Investigations, and for the newly christened development group for the game, Equestrian Dreamers! The game was starting to outgrow its developer blog, so we figured that giving it its own website was the obvious next step.

We don’t just have a website and a new name, though – we’re also finally recruiting people who want to work on the project! It’s always better to show rather than tell, though, so head on over to the recruitment section of our website for more information, if you’re interested. We’re looking for visual artists, composers, and voice actors at the moment. If any of that sounds up your alley, have a look! The current recruitment call will accept applications until the end of December, at which point final decisions will be made.

We’ll have plenty more information on MLI to come in the weeks ahead, so we hope you’re as excited as we are for the future of the project!