Well, we made it. For a while, I wasn’t sure if we would—yet here we are. The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero’s first editing pass has been completed. It’s still a little weird to say. After sinking so much of my life into this project for over two years, it’s numbing to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Putting sentimentality aside for now, I suppose you’re asking what happens now? I’ll try to answer that.

The Plan

From here, we are going to run a proofreading/minor editing pass over the areas in the script that need it. This should take a fraction of the time that it took to edit the script, so worry not. Towards the end of proofreading, the testing phase is planned to start. Truth be told, I’m not 100% sure how long that will take, so Ribose will talk about that below! Either way, things are progressing at a rapid pace.

Testing Phase

Hello, Ribose here! The way testing will work is players will be given access to the patch (obviously), as well as a channel to talk to us with, and the issue tracker to report any and every issue found. The issue tracker also contains a wiki containing all of my technical notes for reference, such as a list of all of the quests (and notable optional interactions within them), the NPCs, the documentation of all debug functions (that we’ve found), and the things people are recommended to test.

Any and all terminology is being synchronized with Kiseki Wiki, such that an inconsistency between what the wiki says and what the game says is also considered a bug. Technical bugs, graphical bugs, scenario script bugs (typos, context, etc), inconsistencies, and anything else reported will be looked into and the team will attempt to fix it. Of course, the testers will be able to see reported issues and be able to talk with us and get feedback. Testing will begin soon and will be by invite. We hope it’ll only be a few months until release!

A Special Thanks

Zerker back. Before anything else, I have to thank our friend, Arvin. He has been an immensely huge help in finishing the first editing pass, and has grown to be an invaluable member of the team. Genuinely, I don’t know if we could have finished it (har, har) without your dedication.

Surprises?

On top of the patch, we also have a few mini-projects in the works—related to Zero, of course! Imagine it as the extra toppings on the pizza. Not necessary, but they’re nice to have! One is planned to be released before the patch, and the other concurrently with Trails from Zero.