Right now the main hold-up is because of Airi, but it's not her fault at all. It can't really be helped. She's in her second year of art school now and is so busy with projects that she doesn't have as much leisure time, so basically no new art has been done for MJ since late July/early August. The good thing is that she's learned a lot more in art school, so when the art is done, it will look even better than before.
Also, the Alonzo voice actor has quit voice acting. ): It has nothing to do with our project or anything; he won't be doing any more voice acting period, so... That plus problems with a few of the other supporting cast kind of soured the whole voice acting thing. In all likelihood, we will either end up not having any voice acting or make it into an add-on after the game has been finished and released without voice acting. (probably the latter because I do love the voice actors we still have and I'd feel terrible if their work was never realized)
Anyway, the reason I wanted to say all this was to explain why things have slowed down. However, both of us still want to finish this game, definitely. Quitting was never an option. It will take longer than we originally planned, but we will take that time to make MJ even better than it would have been had we finished it sooner. (if that even makes sense?) I have finished writing and scripting the first three chapters out of a planned eight. The game has gotten into the part where choices start to really matter and Charlene's (chosen) personality starts to really shine. This means I have to write a lot of variations. It's a lot of work. ): Naturally, it will be a lot harder for me to write the script from here on out, but I'm definitely not giving up. We understand that a lot of people are looking forward to MJ and above all, we want to honor the commitment we made to ourselves/each other when we decided to make the game in the first place. XD Nothing would leave a worse taste in our mouth than us not finishing MJ.
So I hope that everyone who's been looking forward to this game can wait a little while longer. We won't let you down. /o/ For now, to tide people over a little bit, I put together the Machina Jewel soundtrack so far. These are all of the tracks that have been composed especially for the game by Daniel Jansson. A few of these, I think, have never been heard by anyone (other than me and Airi) before. Eventually all of the main guys will have their own theme, but apparently even our composer is an Alonzo fan, so his was finished first.
Any comments on the music would be much appreciated. <3
