The list of changes since the initial release are as follows:

• Twilight’s voice during the Rarity interrogation has been fixed.  Previously, the audio files had a bitrate of 48000 Hz but were being played back at 44100Hz, causing Twilight’s voice to be audibly lower in pitch than it should’ve been.  The audio files now have the correct bitrate of 44100 Hz.
• Rarity’s voice has been toned down; she no longer speaks with THIS MUCH VOLUME WHEN ADDRESSING HER SUBJECTS.
• A POTENTIAL fix for the data folder issue has been implemented, although no promises are made – without local reproductions of the issue on our own computers, it’s impossible for us to know for sure.  If not, we’ll keep at it.
• The launcher now opens a window before actually launching the game, during which several options can be selected:
  • You can now choose between frame rate caps of 30, 60, and 120 FPS.  Choosing a frame rate cap of 30 may improve performance a little for lower-end machines, while choosing a frame rate cap of 120 may improve quality a little for higher-end machines.
  • In the event of an error during gameplay, you can now opt to save a log of the game’s status and command line output, which can be sent to us (well, to Dawn) in the hopes that it might provide us better insight regarding the cause of technical issues people are running into.
  • Also included are options to account for hardware differences – you can now disable shared contexts and PBuffers.  If you don’t know what those mean, don’t worry – in layman’s terms, they’re effectively optimizations to speed up loading and make the loading screen more responsive.  That’s good, but they’re not supported by all machines, and although we’ve implemented logic that should account for a lack of support of these technologies, you can still opt to just turn them right off to see if that helps anything, if you’re running into technical problems.  Let us know if turning these off does improve things – that’s valuable information for us.
• Finally, we’ve changed the fonts used in the game.  We do this reluctantly, but after discovering potential legal issues with the ones that were previously in use, we’ve opted in order to ensure there will be no problem to change the fonts to ones that are guaranteed to be free for use.  We’ve done our best to find as close an approximation of the fonts that were previously in use as we could.  Try to take a bit to get used to the new fonts, and if after a while you still decide you don’t like them, let us know, and we’ll see what we can do about that.

This doesn’t fix EVERY issue that has been reported to us, of course – it only fixes the ones that were fixable in a brief period of time.  Rest assured that we will be addressing all of it in due time.

Thanks to everyone so much for all your kind support and wonderful feedback thus far! You all are grade-A awesome.

Get it, play it, have fun, and then come tell us what you thought in the forums!

I know, I know; you want it, and you want it now. And you’ll have it very soon. However, we’re currently making some last-minute fixes in order to make sure this demo is as high quality as possible, and we also have a presentation at a Florida brony get-together at which ZeusAssassin is going to be giving a demo of MLI. Once we’re done with both, then the demo will go up in this space. Expect it by end of day today – that’s 11:59 PM Pacific time. Thanks for your patience.

EDIT: I should clarify: this isn’t a delay so much as a clarification. By “May 5″ we meant that it would arrive at some point on May 5, not that it would be a midnight release on the dot. However, some people misunderstood, and are now wondering where it is given that it’s now May 5. It’s still arriving today, same as it always has been.

We’re now prepared to announce that that is the official targeted date of the case 1 demo of My Little Investigations. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it’ll be available for download right here on that date.

For now, however, enjoy a gameplay teaser while you wait:

To start with, we’ve got a first look at the original soundtrack in the game that Trot Pilgrim has been graciously putting together for us. This tune plays during the opening of the first case, where Twilight is going around Ponyville investigating the crime in question.

Soundcloud link

Trot Pilgrim has been doing some wonderful work integrating the quite diverse feelings in the soundtracks of MLP:FiM and Ace Attorney, and we hope you’re as excited as we are to have him on board.

Lots more to come in the near future, so stay tuned!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, though – the period since we talked last was definitely filled with productive work. Whenever a new team comes together, there’s always a period of time during which everyone gets to know each other and various foundations are laid, such as schedules, artistic direction, and so forth. This period of time is fundamentally important, as without it no coherent, unified work can be produced for the project – but, sadly, it also is a time during which not a lot is produced for the outside public to have a look at.

I’m happy to report, however, that we’re more or less through that point in time, and the phenomenally talented team we’ve assembled are now really starting to get into the groove and producing some great work. So, hopefully, from here on out, we should have updates at least more than once every month and a half or so. Since I’ve seen and heard from people who are really itching to see how the project’s going and to see proof that it’s alive and well, I figured I’d take this opportunity to give fans a very preliminary first look at the game and what we’ve been up to behind the curtain.

Find it all after the break!

Two things before we begin, though. First, I’d like to say upfront that what you’re about to see is not the full extent of everyone’s work; it’s just a sampling. One of the fun parts of a game like this is the enjoyment of discovering things for oneself, so I intend to do my best to keep you all happy and satisfied while at the same time ensuring that, once the case is finally released, it’s not just all old news to you all. And second, I’d like to remind everyone that the audio and visual content seen in the engine demos that you’ve likely seen to date was temporary, and was just taken from screencaps from the show and from Desktop Ponies. For this game, we’re creating an entirely original set of art and music. That’s going to make the game take longer, but trust me, compared to the paltry amount of stuff we had to work with from those temporary sources, this will make the game orders of magnitude better and more flexible.

That said, without further ado, let’s get to the content!

First up is dialog character art. HallowGazer and TehJadeh have been doing some wonderful, expressive work here as a tag team – HallowGazer does the concept art and sketches, and then TehJadeh vectorizes what he’s produced. They’re creating all of the art that is displayed when the player is conversing with another character. Here’s some of the Twilight art that they’ve put together thus far:

Next up, field character art! WarpOut has done some outstanding work here in creating some very fluid animation for characters as they stand idle and as they trot about the world of Equestria. Here’s some of his Twilight art thus far:

Third up is background and prop art! PonyArtist has been creating some wonderfully detailed backgrounds to house all of the characters, and to be investigated for clues. Here’s one example of a background that she’s put together, this one housing the bridge between Town Hall and the Carousel Boutique:

(Click for full – the above is a very reduced thumbnail!)

Last, but certainly not least, is cutscene art! Rautakoura has done some very fine work here capturing important moments in the game and bringing them to life in a detailed fashion. Here’s one example of a cutscene image that he’s worked on, this one occurring when Apple Bloom describes to Twilight what she heard the night of the crime:

(Click for full again.)

And just to give you all a sense of how these all come together to form the game itself, here are a few screenshots of them in action to whet your appetite a little. (Click each for full.)

That’s all for now! We’ll have more for you very soon, so stay tuned!

In order to get the voice actors for case 1 immediately to work, we all agreed that a fun project to do might be to do a little promo video to feature the voice actors that you’ll be hearing from in the case. I’m happy to report that it’s now done, so here it is for you to enjoy:

We hope to have more from you soon, but we hope this might tide you over until then!

First off, I’d like to announce that we now have a forum! We’ve already had a few people ask us for this, so we figured, why not? If you’d like to chat with us or other fans about MLI, about MLP:FiM, or just about anything in general, drop on by! Everypony welcome!

But that’s not what you’re primarily here for, is it? You’re all here because you’re wondering about the team that’s now been assembled! Well, wonder no longer. I’ve already sent invitations to everyone who’s been selected to join the team, so if you haven’t yet received an invitation, unfortunately, that means that you weren’t selected for this recruitment cycle. Before I give big shout-outs to our new team members, however, I’d first like to say a few words to those who weren’t selected. As I said before, please, please don’t take it personally – all of you are very talented, and this recruitment was filled with many, many tough decisions. You have my hearty encouragement, if you weren’t selected this time around, absolutely not to give up, as I have no doubt that all of you will be able to find ample opportunity wherever you go in life.

That said, here are the new members of our team. I encourage everyone to give them all a big super duper Pinkie Pie welcome!

HallowGazer – Dialog Character Artist
WarpOut – Field Character Artist
PonyArtist – Background & Prop Artist
Rautakoura – Cutscene Artist

Trot Pilgrim – Composer

PrincessRil – Twilight Sparkle
LoveKiku – Rarity, Sweetie Belle
BreeFaith – Pinkie Pie, Apple Bloom
DivinexRose – Rainbow Dash
TehJadeh – Scootaloo
Flootershai – The Mayor
ThatCanadianDude – Rover
HoodedYellowPony – Fido, Spot

You can find out more about all of them by visiting our team page. I’m sure you’ll be hearing or seeing from them soon!

I’d just like to say one thing to everyone who’s applied so far: wow. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I don’t think I was remotely expecting a turnout this large. To give a brief summary, over the course of the past month, we’ve received applications from ninety unique individuals, and have received over 360 MB of material that applicants have provided for us to look through or listen to. Those are… pretty big numbers, let me tell you.

Unfortunately, that also means that we have a rather larger number of applicants than there are positions, which means that the next step is the unfortunately necessary process of identifying those candidates who’d be a good fit for Equestrian Dreamers. That’ll be happening over the course of this week. Before decisions are made, though, I just wanted to make one thing clear in advance: those who aren’t selected should categorically not take that as an indication or a suggestion that their work isn’t good enough or anything like that. There are a lot of tough decisions in here, and a good portion of the decision rests not so much on absolute quality but rather appropriateness – i.e., how much the style of what applicants have presented matches that which has been pictured for MLI. Every and every one of you who submitted something is awesome, and I have no doubt that those who aren’t picked will certainly find many other opportunities down the road. There’s a lot of awesome stuff in here.

I also additionally have to apologize for having not sent individual responses to everyone who sent in applications – I would’ve liked to, but given the sheer number of applications we’ve gotten, that just wasn’t feasible. I will hopefully be getting around to responding to people who requested a response about their performance, though, once final decisions are made regarding recruitment. Sincere apologies to those who specifically asked for one and haven’t yet received one; I feel quite bad about having not answered them to date.

Thanks again to everyone for your amazing support thus far. We’ll have more info for you very soon.

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!