DesignHmm...I'm not really sure what to talk about in this month's diary. Most of the month has been taken up by the continuing saga of the sound effects. I finished with the Zone effects, which I talked about last month, and moved onto filling out the weapon roster in earnest. I've completed the current pass of that; all weapons now have sound effects but there are a lot of duplicates at the moment - all swords have the same kind of 'swish' etc. My plan is to come back to them when all the fighting animations and particle effects are finalised, and breathe a bit of variety into them.
I also did quite a few effects for specific objects in the world - gates opening, power converters rotating, horrifying factories turning peaceful lifeforms into mindless killers via the most painful genetic processes imaginable, that kind of thing.
The current count of sound effects is up to 250, with still more to come. And I thought that my initial list of 75 required sound effects was pretty exhaustive...
So, I can't really go on that much more about the sound effects without boring you all senseless. Let's see, what's the next big job? Once I'm done with the current pass of the sound effects (as I say, I'll come back to it later on), I'm probably going to move onto the rest of the story and dialogue; but I've spoken about that before too. Currently the story's all worked out, the main characters decided upon and the dialogue for the tutorial levels all worked out. The next phase is really a case of filling in the blanks - briefings for all the levels, dialogue for the remaining levels and text for the background information canisters that we'll be hiding throughout the levels for the more interested players to find. Those last ones should be a lot of fun; I've already got some good ideas for them.
Those are all important jobs, but they're things that I've told you about previously. That's the problem when you get to this stage in a game's production; all the jobs are very important (probably the most important in the whole production period - a game can be made or ruined in the final stages) but it's more a case of refining the elements that are already in the game, rather than originating new ones.
Ah, we've not talked about the music, have we? That's been done for a while now, but it was an interesting process. We were fortunate to get a very talented group of guys to agree to do the music for us and so we met up and had a discussion about the kind of music we all thought would fit the game best. There were two elements to this; firstly the more standard aspect of how many different tracks we wanted, and how they would be broken up into quieter tracks for when the player is exploring the world and more exciting tracks for when the action kicks in. Secondly, we discussed the way we wanted the music to 'feel', as the music plays a big part in fleshing out the game's universe and it had to complement the existing graphical and story designs.
Once all that was done, the musicians went off to beaver away on a hot sequencer and I was tasked with coming up with a sample sound effects track to help them out - this was way before I started on the effects in earnest, you understand. In order that the musicians could have a rough idea about how the effects would work within a level, and could then test their musical ideas against them, I made up a 3 minute effects track that played out as if it was a recording of someone progressing through the level, containing elements such as:
- Units arriving in the level
- Units moving about (footsteps)
- A small skirmish with enemies
- Capturing a base
- A larger battle, with some men dying
- Etc.
In all it had about 7 or 8 different 'scenes' that gave a good cross section of the kinds of events to be found in the final game. Then, once the musicians supplied us with the final tracks, I used the sample effects track once again to help plan out the mechanics of how we wanted the music system to work - how soon after the start of combat the system switches to an action music track, how long after combat ends the system switches back to a more sedate track, and so on.
Doing the sample effects track before I started on the effects proper was very useful for me as well, as it gave me good idea as to the kind of effects that would work together and the kind that would clash.
Anyway, enough rambling for this month, I'd better get back to work so you can actually play the game soon!
