50k Words and Avoiding the Oblivion Problem
Dear backers and friends,
It's finally feeling like Summer in my corner of the world, which means... well, mostly that I've been huddling inside or at least under a lot of layers and a wide-brimmed hat, because as of a few years ago my body has decided to have an autoimmune response to ☀️THE SUN.☀️
Folks may think I'm dressing like an Edwardian out of #aesthetic reasons, but I actually started doing that because I figure if I need to cover up every inch of skin I might as well own it.
When you play the game you might notice this very accurate depiction of me as part of a crowd scene, wearing sunglasses and carrying a picnic basket - except I'd probably also have gloves on.
What I've been up to
Other than huddling inside or zipping out to at least attempt to get some natural Vitamin D, I've been making lots of progress on the game!
Preparing voice acting script
One big milestone in the past few weeks is that I've officially completed the voice acting script! It's a few hundred pages long, and around 50,000 words of dialogue.
Although I'd already written all of the dialogue for the game before now, creating this script turned out to be a huge undertaking.
Some challenges were...
I had to figure out how to present all of the dialogue in some kind of logical order, despite the game having so many different options and little branches which sometimes make the flow of conversations unclear when you try to make them completely linear. It would have been really easy to just output each character's dialogue and have the actors read them out in alphabetical order with zero context for what they're saying... but uh... the history of video games has shown us what kind of results that produces...
Each line has to be assigned a number/code so that I can later ensure it ends up in the right place in the end, and will play at the right time. You might remember back in April I described how I was having to make a lot of changes to the code of the game to facilitate this - I'm pleased to say it seems to have worked!
I had to provide fairly extensive notes for the context and setting of each line - what setting is the character in? Is there anyone else around? What has been happening to them lately? This will help the director... well, direct!
Adding the Music
I've also been adding the wonderful music created by Sandy Garnelle to the game. I can't begin to tell you how delighted I am with the soundtrack. I remember waaaaay back when, imagining the game with a soft, impressionistic soundtrack... and now it's here!
I think I imagined adding the music being a much more straight forward task - this song plays in the cottage, this song plays at the beach etc. But there are actually lots of decisions to make.
Does the music stop when certain events happen? When should music continue between certain rooms or scenes? Should the music change for certain locations due to events in the game, and how do I program that?
Additional silliness
I don't know about you, but I've been plagued by ads for terrible mobile games lately. I don't know if it's a result of being a woman in my 30s, but everyone seems convinced I want to play weird decision-making games about cheating husbands and abandoned babies.
I also decided to take a half hour off one evening to produce this ridiculous thing in response:
Looking Forwards
I have a feeling that fiddling with the music is going to be a big task for the next few weeks. There are lots of technical challenges to overcome, including things like ensuring the player has full control over volume and being able to turn the music on and off.
(In fact, no joke, just as I typed that I've been hit with the realisation that I need to make some changes to things I programmed this afternoon so the player can do that- back to work for me!)
Believe me to be, my dear backers, very sincerely yours,
Jabbage
